A Bit of History
Below are some of the little known spooky places in Indianapolis, ones I have often visited and know well. I could have included such well-known locales as the Slippery Noodle Inn, the House of Blue Lights, or Hannah house, but you can find out something about those yourself with little effort. For those of you visiting Indianapolis for GenCon, sleep well in the knowledge that these ghosts just want to say, "Welcome to our City", and then eat your soul. For those not coming to the Big Show, you're safe for now, except for your local unspeakable evils. And for all, these places should form the basis of many a frightening game session as fall approaches in the Northern Hemisphere and Nature herself begins to die.
Crown Hill Cemetery
It’s a cemetery, it's supposed to be haunted, right? Well, there's more to this place than run of the mill restless dead, as befits the third largest private cemetery in the United States (though in case of a zombie outbreak having a huge cemetery in the middle of the city will not be good). It is also home to a sizeable deer population. Several noted figures are buried here, including the poet James Whitcomb Riley, President Benjamin Harrison, bank robber John Dillinger, and over sixteen thousand Confederate prisoners of war who died while being held at Camp Morton. Oh, yes, and a large mass grave from the 1918-1920 influenza epidemic.
It is those last two parts that are of particular interest, after all nothing says restless dead than prisoners of war and mass graves. Camp Morton was built in 1861 as a military training camp on the site of the newly completed State Fair Grounds (which my family helped to build). In 1862 three thousand Confederate POWs were transferred there, but were poorly fed and housed, prompting several city residents to donate food, clothing, and labor to see the prisoners through their first northern winter. Despite this effort on the part of the civilians, the death rate was very high with one hundred and forty-four dying in their first month of captivity. More humane treatment was instituted, including self-governance of the prisoners, and conditions improved. However, these original prisoners were exchanged back to their homes, and new prisoners were brought in, as well as a change in command of the camp. This cycle of humane treatment followed by brutal neglect would continue, leading to an average death rate of fifty prisoners a month. Amongst the prisoners were soldiers captured during Morgan's Raid. In 1932 the graves of the deceased prisoners were moved from the State Fair Grounds to Crown Hill and reinterred there. Now, you have dead prisoners of war, relocated bodies, and the makings for several legends about spectral Confederate soldiers, usually cavalry from Morgan's Raid, rampaging through the cemetery at night, fighting battles with their Union counterparts, and generally not lying down and being quiet.
Then we have the mass grave of the influenza victims. From 1918-1920 a worldwide influenza epidemic killed millions. The disease was especially deadly as it came during a major war (and thus rode along with its friends Famine and War) and several bad winters. The result, at least for Indianapolis, was a sudden upswing in deaths amongst the very young, the very old, the poor, and those already at risk due to illness or working conditions. Those in certain industries that already had stressed immune or respiratory systems were at special risk and died in the dozens. In all, there were many hundreds of deaths in the winter of 1918-1919, on top of the normal death rate, and this taxed a city whose infrastructure was already strained. The ground was too frozen that winter to perform proper burials, and many of the victims were too poor to afford them anyways. This meant that the city had to pick up the cost of corpse disposal, and considering that the city government was not too keen on the poor, especially those who were from an ethnic minority, bodies ended up stacked in railcars on the outskirts of town until spring. The gruesome job of relocating these bodies was given to city workers, and several plots were purchased at Crown Hill. All the bodies were dumped in, and the city didn't even take the time to note down many of the names, as there were far more bodies in that grave than are listed in the official records, and this was not even a cover-up as documents of the time mention that there are just too many corpses to count, and hey, who cares anyway. If these people aren’t motivated to become ghosts, possibly haunting the descendants of those who treated them with such a lack of human dignity, then I don’t know what motivates the undead. Having been to the mass grave, I can tell you it is an odd, somewhat creepy place. Whereas everywhere else is row after row of headstones, here is a broad expanse of unadorned green grass, empty, unloved, and unremembered.
IUPUI Stem Tunnels
They are closed now, but not so long ago you could easily access the steam tunnels beneath Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis just a few blocks north of the Convention Center on West Street. These tunnels connected nearly every building on the IUPUI campus, as well as the hospitals in the medical center (including Larue Carter Mental Hospital, and its experimental ward in the basement.
These tunnels were creepy, simply lit with flickering fluorescent lights, largely deserted, and with occasional clouds of steam from one of the many pipes running overhead. Under some buildings, you would pass doors with hazardous materials, radiation, or other warning labels. Beneath the medical center, white lab coated man and women might pass by you, as would patients on gurneys. Plus, in the winter the homeless sometimes sought shelter down there.
Then there were the odd doorways that were bricked over, as well as the urban legends that cropped up amongst the university students. Such as if you placed your ear to one of the bricked over doorways you could hear scratching on the other side. Other legends spoke of students that had gotten lost down there, or had died of various causes, and their spirits now haunt the tunnels. Others spoke of the tunnels being the lairs of psychotic murders, serial rapists, escaped test subjects from Larue Carter, and murderous homeless men. Legends persisted in my college years that the tunnels once connected all the university buildings, and that some of the tunnels had to be closed off, or that the university was manipulated into closing them off so dark groups (like the journalism or engineering students) could use them for nefarious purposes. Also, some legends say that the steam tunnels connected to other tunnel systems beneath the city, such as the urban legend of tunnels leading from the White River into downtown to bring in alcohol during Prohibition, connections to the city's combined storm-sewage tunnels, bricked off portions that led to the Underground Railroad tunnels (which also ran to the normal railroad at Union Station, or links between the abandoned Indianapolis subway system and the steam tunnels. Plenty of story seeds here, especially for some modern day urban fantasy.
Southport Pioneer Cemetery
On the south side of Indianapolis is a cemetery whose first occupant took up residence in 1810. This in itself is not that unusual, there are several pioneer cemeteries scattered around the city that have been preserved and not bulldozed over. What makes this one especially creepy despite being next to a busy road is the local legend that surrounds it. One of the headstones belongs to a one Mary Bryan (1776-1830), who, if tales are believed, haunts her grave and the neighboring houses and churches. One tale I heard was that her homestead was attacked by Indians and she hid in the cellar with her two children. The two kids were crying, and Mary was afraid that would draw the attention of the raiders, so she covered their mouths, accidently suffocating them. Now, she haunts the cemetery where she is buried, just feet from where her cabin once stood. If you go there on Halloween night at midnight and say here name three times, she will appear. Be careful, for she is a vengeful ghost and may try to smother you. Other stories say she appears with her dead children in her arms and begs the summoner to take them and care for them. If you agree to, good luck will come to you in the next year. Not far from this cemetery is a set of railroad tracks where legend says either a drunk passed out on the track or a gang member was beaten by rivals and left there. Naturally, the person on the tracks died and now haunts the area just north of the Southport Library, waiting to come out of the woods and push people in front of oncoming trains. These sorts of legends are common, but they are a lot of fun to work into a game, no matter where or when it is set.
They Sleep Beneath
Before I hung up my hat and whip, I worked a few archaeological sites on the growing edge of Indianapolis. These sites were historical cemeteries, often ones containing only a few members of the same family, and thus were not thoroughly protected by existing state and federal laws. The standard procedure was to determine who the closest living descendant is, and if none could be found or they simply didn’t care, it was up to whoever owned the land to determine what happened to the human remains.
As the owner was usually a developer, and the process of full excavation of a historic burial and reburial in a different location was expensive and time consuming, it was not unusual for the remains to be left in place and housing or strip malls built on top of them. Now, consider the sheer number of unmarked, poorly marked, or inconveniently placed graves, and that past generations often showed less concerns for old burials than we do today, and you have hundreds, possibly thousands, of burials sitting under the city, waiting for the call to awake and burrow up into someone's living room, hotel, or storefront. Quite likely, wherever you are, there is a body within a few feet, one that has been lying there, its grave desecrated.
My Basement
I swear that place is just a creepy hole in the ground. This is why I don’t do the laundry unless absolutely necessary. I don’t even like looking down the cat flap in the basement door and seeing that darkness and those glowing eyes.
If you are attending GenCon, Friday night at 7pm in Crowne Plaza's Pennsylvania Station A (in Union Station, another haunted locale of some infamy), I am hosting the first annual A Bit of History Roundtable discussion of history and role-playing. Unless I see you there, have a great August and we will return in September for another bit of history.
