April Fool’s Prank Results in Haunting

Many enjoy a good April fool’s joke, but not many know the origins of this day.

Many historians attribute this tradition to France. In1582, France changed to the Gregorian calendar—this switched the New Year day from April 1^st to January 1^st.

News traveled slow back then so some still celebrated the New Year on April 1^st.

Part of this day’s celebrations was to play pranks or jokes on others. People that fell for these jokes were called “fish” because “fish are easy to catch.” Paper fish were tacked to their backs marking them as gullible.

Some people today still refer to people that are easily fooled as fish.

Jonathan Swift

Over a century later, Jonathan Swift the author of Gulliver’s Travels managed to pull off a classic April Fool’s prank. Swift pretended to be an astrologer by the name of Isaac Bickerstaff he then published several predictions.

His most successful prediction, published in January of 1708, stated that a well-known astrologer and almanac maker—John Partridge—would die of a raging fever on March 29^th. Swift then reinforced his prank by circulating a rumor anonymously that Partridge had indeed died. *

The result was for months Partridge was kept awake at night by mourning fans outside his door. Then on March 30^th, he opened his door to a man that informed him he was there to make his funeral arrangements. This joke continued because for the rest of his life Partridge had to insist he was not dead.

The following is a short excerpt from a letter Swift published anonymously about Partridge's death to reinforce his prank:

“I saw him accidentally once or twice about ten days before he died, and observed he began very much to droop and languish, though I hear his friends did not seem to apprehend him in danger. . .”

You can read the entire letter here.

John Partridge

Seven years later, Partridge did die on March 30^th. While alive he never discovered it was Swift who was behind this joke but after he died one account claims, he got revenge.

It states that Partridge’s ghost visited Swift every April Fool’s Day.

* Swift enjoyed this prank immensely because he felt Partridge was a quack since he dared to make predictions. Partridge wrote a public statement that he was not dead but Swift countered it with—Partridge could not have written it because who would dare to make a joke about death.

Haunted Melrose Hotel

The Ghost Adventures team investigated this old hotel located in Grand Junction, Colorado recently. This episode is due to air tomorrow, Saturday, March 16^th.

The Ponsford family built the Melrose with their own hands in 1908. It stayed in this family until 1994. After this is when strange things began to happen.

The ghosts in this hotel seem to target men.

The building has plenty of history that leaves little doubt it is haunted. A murder occurred in Room 15, and there is evidence the previous owners practiced satanic rituals in the building.

Marcus Bebb-Jones previous owner
and his wife whom he murdered.

The previous owner brutally murdered his wife in the hotel. It appears one of the female ghosts that is seen is this unfortunate woman.

The present owner who has renovated both the interior and exterior of the hotel found jars of blood and bones in the basement, which leads her to believe vicious energy has been conjured.

The starkest activity occurs in the basement, an entity has physically attacked people in this room. Another member of the staff was possessed while in this area.

Present hotel staff feels members of the Ponsford family also haunt the hotel. These entities seem to be more benign.

The current manager of the Melrose lives in the hotel. He states he saw the ghost of a woman that resembles a Ponsford family member. He claims the activity has picked up since the fall of 2018.

He has also witnessed doors opening and closing on their own, and he went to the hospital recently when he woke up covered in bruises.

By far although what frightened him the most was when he saw a figure in his mirror that wasn’t in the room with him.

Melrose Hotel today.

An Unwelcome Roommate

The following is a scary first person account:

When I was a sophomore in college my roommates, and I decided to move off campus. Within walking distance of our university was a once affluent neighborhood with large colonial brick homes.

A friend of mine knew the owner of one of these homes. He was looking to rent out the last remaining floor with living room and kitchen privileges.

Feeling excited and grown up, three of my friends and myself moved in. A week later we encountered an elderly women who lived next door. We stood around bored as she reminisced about how grand the neighborhood had once been—without a lot of noisy students in residence.

As we turned to leave, she caught our attention with her last statement. “” Where you live no one seems to stay very long.”

I was the first of the roommates to encounter what was to become a series of creepy incidents. I was standing washing our dinner dishes when I caught sight of a male figure out of the corner of my eye.

I turned around, but I was alone in the kitchen. I then heard heavy footsteps heading down the hallway but when I followed no one was in the living room. Perplexed, I remembered there were no men in the house that evening.

One of my roommates came down one morning to announce that she had not gotten any sleep. She felt a cat jump up on her bed several times during the night. It then wandered around her room.

She never saw this cat. No one in the home owned a pet. We looked around for a couple of hours but never found a stray cat.

The week before Spring Break my sister came to visit. She fell down the stairs as we watched from the living room in horror. She told us someone had pushed her, but we were the only ones in the house at the time.

A month later we were eating popcorn and watching a movie when my roommates’ laptop disappeared. She had placed it on the coffee table in front of where we sat but when the lights came on it was gone. We searched but never found it until several weeks later when it appeared in the exact same spot where we had last seen it.

By this time we were all spooked. We agreed that at the end of the semester we were moving out. But two of my roommates left within two weeks of the laptop incident.

So there were only two of us left during finals week. This is when the creepiest incident occurred. I awoke one morning to find all the boxes I had packed stacked one on top of another all the way to the ceiling and the heavy bedside table was three feet away from where it normally sat.

I ran to my roommate, but before I could describe the chaos in my room, she asked me if I had heard the footsteps during the night. I hadn’t. She told me she had heard me go to bed and an hour later she heard footsteps climb the stairs—they then entered my room. She didn’t hear them leave my room.

No one was in the house but us. The other tenets were away on vacation. Two days later we both moved out.

Traces of Ghosts Who Rode the Rails

When the Great Depression hit America in the 1930s, more than a million men and women were forced to seek food and work—thousands of miles from their homes.

Riding the rails.

The only way they could afford this travel was by hopping a freight train, illegally. In just one year, it is estimated that 6,500 hoboes, as they were called, were killed in accidents or by railroad “bulls.”

These bulls were the brutal guards hired by the railroad companies to make sure no one but paying customers rode on their trains.

Many people who became famous later rode the rails. Including the Novelist Louis L’Amour, TV host Art Linkletter, Oil billionaire H. L. Hunt, the Journalist Eric Sevareid and Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.

Hopping a freight

Because the bulls were always on the lookout, hoboes were forced to hide near the tracks. As the trains picked up speed and past them, they had to run, then grab hold and jump in the moving boxcars.

Unfortunately, sometimes they missed, which resulted in lost limbs or lost lives.

When the hoboes reached their destinations, they had to jump off the moving trains before the bulls could arrest them. If caught they were often beaten, some so severely they died.

In the small town of Attalla, Alabama, several rail lines met. During the Great Depression, thousands of hoboes traveled through this area.

Mountains around Gadsden and Attalla

Riding the rails was dangerous enough but south of the Attalla rail yards the area was even more treacherous. For this community is surrounded by mountains and down the tracks are steep grades—which meant some hoboes plummeted to their deaths.

Today, passenger trains no longer travel through Attalla, and the freight trains are disappearing as well but the ghosts they brought still linger. For decades strange sightings on the south section of the tracks have been shared.

Countless ghostly figures in worn clothing, carrying knapsacks are seen strolling along the tracks.

Even more dramatic is that strange lights are seen in the surrounding mountains when these figures appear.

Two hoboes walking the tracks after being released by "bull."