Lore - Legends 49: Scars

Episode Date: March 17, 2025

Injuries often leave marks that stick with us for years. In locations designed for violence, though, scars often reach a new level of pain and darkness. Narrated and produced by Aaron Mahnke, with writing by Alex Robinson and research by Cassandra de Alba. ————————— Lore Resources:  Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music  Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources  All the shows from Grim & Mild: www.grimandmild.com ————————— Sponsors: BetterHelp: Lore is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at BetterHelp.com/LORE, and get on your way to being your best self. Squarespace: Head to Squarespace.com/lore to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using the code LORE. SimpliSafe: Secure your home with 24/7 professional monitoring. Sign up today at SimpliSafe.com/Lore to get 20% off any new SimpliSafe system with Fast Protect Monitoring. ————————— To report a concern regarding a radio-style, non-Aaron ad in this episode, reach out to [e-mail] with the name of the company or organization so we can look into it. ————————— To advertise on this podcast please email: [e-mail]. Or go to: https://advertising.libsyn.com/lore ————————— ©2025 Aaron Mahnke. All rights reserved.

Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds. At Mint Mobile, we like to do the opposite of what Big Wireless does. They charge you a lot, we charge you a little. So naturally, when they announced they'd be raising their prices due to inflation, we decided to deflate our prices due to not hating you. That's right! We're cutting the price of Mint Unlimited from $30 a month to just $15 a month. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Welcome to Lore Legends, a subset of lore episodes that explore the strange tales we whisper in the dark, even if they can't always be proven by the history books. So if you're ready, let's begin.

It's been called the most toxic ghost town in America. In the late 19th century, lead and zinc were discovered in northeast Oklahoma, largely around a river called Tar Creek. Mining operations expanded in the early 20th century, when more minerals were uncovered in the surrounding area. Soon, the region underwent a population boom as more and more miners moved into Oklahoma. Along with its population boom came the genesis of an entire town. It was called Pitcher, and during its peak in the 1920s, Pitcher boasted nearly 20,000 residents. But nothing gold can stay.

Over the decades, people got greedy, and they cut corners. Proper excavation practices were ignored in favor of quick, brutal mining methods. Pitcher soon suffered from massive cave-ins and contaminated groundwater. After a number of studies came out showing that a huge percentage of the town's children were born with lead poisoning, the EPA and state of Oklahoma agreed to a mass evacuation of its residents. By the mid-2000s, most of Pitcher's buildings were on the brink of collapse, with more and more falling into sinkholes each day.

The groundwater became acidic, and the risk of cancer skyrocketed. Even so, the last of the town's residents didn't leave for years. In the mid-2010s, six households and one business remained, firm in never leaving their home, no matter how dangerous it was for them to stay. The rest of the buildings were destroyed in 2015, and as it stands, no one knows if the land will ever be usable again. Some scars will never go away. Whether those are from a relationship or an accident, our wounds tend to stick around,

reminding us of the pain and the past. Nowhere is this more evident than in the places built for the purpose of warfare. And while there are military forts all across America, few can hold a candle to the dark legends that call the state of New York their home. It seems that the violence inflicted on the soldiers there has left behind some deep and bloody marks. Mark marks that can still be felt to this very day. I'm Aaron Manke and this is Lore Legends. Most people don't enjoy being visited by the dead.

So you can imagine how anxious poor Duncan Campbell was when a ghost came to call on him three nights in a row. Duncan was the lord of a castle in the Scottish Highlands. Now in the mid-18th century, the Highlands were remote, even more remote than they are today. His home was surrounded by nothing but miles and miles of rugged beauty. But one night, someone knocked at the door. The man who had knocked was named Stuart of Appen, and he was in trouble.

He'd fled through the Highlands after killing a man in a duel. He was seeking sanctuary, and Duncan was honor-bound to give it to him. So he let Stuart in, never thinking to ask who exactly the strange man had killed. It wouldn't take long for him to find out though. Another knock soon came on the castle door. This time it was a group of Duncan's own men. They told him that his relative, Donald Campbell, had been stabbed in the back and killed by a man named Stuart of Appen. Duncan was left reeling.

He had been close to Donald. In fact, Donald had once saved his life. Duncan owed him the same in return, but now he was harboring the very man who had murdered his relative, and he was required to give the murderer a sanctuary since he had asked for it. He didn't know what to do, so Duncan took himself to bed, determined to put off the decision until the next morning. But something would push him to make that decision much more quickly.

In the middle of the night, Duncan was awoken by a ghostly figure standing over his bed. The apparition had wild eyes, a mud-smeared face, and bloody hands, which he stretched towards Duncan, wailing, Blood has been shed, blood must avenge blood. And then the figure disappeared. Terrified and more confused than ever, Duncan decided the best solution was to lead Stuart to a hiding place in the mountains. But the ghost did not agree that this was a good idea

because he visited Duncan again the next night, stretching out his bloody hands and wailing again about vengeance. Willing to do anything to make the ghastly visit stop, Duncan went to find Stuart in the mountains the next day, but Stuart had fled and Duncan had no way to find him. So that night the ghost came to Duncan for a third time, but this time he added a new declaration to the mix, saying, blood has been shed, blood must avenge blood, we shall meet again at Ticonderoga. Duncan had never heard the word Ticonderoga before, and he had no idea what the ghost could have meant by it, but after the third visit, he wasn't haunted again, so he shrugged it off and went on with his life.

But he never forgot it. Several years later, in 1758, Duncan Campbell was a major of the Black Watch, a regiment of Scottish soldiers who were compelled to fight with the British in the French and Indian War in North America. Duncan's regiment was ordered to march on a French fort, which the French troops called Carillon, but the British called it Fort Ticonderoga. And this fort was brand new. Its construction only completed that very same year that Duncan arrived outside its

impressive 14-foot-thick walls. It was a remote New York military stronghold, settled on the shores of Lake Champlain, across from Vermont. Remote, though, doesn't mean insignificant. Fort Ticonderoga was about to bear witness to the bloodiest battle of the French and Indian War, with nearly 2,500 casualties, and Duncan Campbell was walking straight into the line of fire. When he arrived at the fort, he did not know that it was called Ticonderoga, but that didn't

last long because while standing next to Lake Champlain, the bloody apparition appeared before him for a final time. It made eye contact and then disappeared. Duncan trudged back to his fellow officers, who knew the entire story about the ghost already. He told them, I have seen him again. This is Ticonderoga. The apparition turned out to be an omen of death. Duncan

Campbell did not survive the battle. He was shot and died of his wounds nine days later, becoming one of 2,000 British casualties at the fort. He had finally paid for his role in hiding a killer. Blood had been avenged. Halfway across the state from Fort Ticonderoga is Fort Ontario. Like its name suggests, this fort is on the banks of Lake Ontario. The British constructed it in 1755, and only a year later, the French tore it down. But it probably needed to be put under new management anyway. Apparently the first winter there was so brutal that the British soldiers resorted to cannibalism to survive.

But it wasn't just that first year that was hard. Fort Ontario actually started out with a rough few decades. It kept being destroyed and rebuilt again and again. Attackers would burn the fort down, shooting and stabbing as they went, and then the winners of the conflict would build the fort back again. Fort Ontario was dragged through nearly every major conflict in early American history, from the Revolutionary War to the War of 1812, construction for the final iteration of Fort Ontario wasn't completed until 1844, nearly a century after it was first built, and only 30 years later it started to fall into decline. By 1901, it was abandoned.

Eventually, Fort Ontario was renovated to be Army housing, and from 1944 to 1946, it served as the only refugee camp in America for Holocaust victims. Nearly 100 people stayed there, safe within its walls. Fort Ontario has lived through many eras. It has been controlled by the British, the French, and the Americans. And most importantly, many, many people have died there over the years. And that has left a mark. and it's also left behind, ghosts. Ghost stories about Fort Ontario date back to the 1870s.

A number of paranormal experiences have been reported by both servicemen and visitors, including the sound of invisible footsteps, moving balls of light, the feeling of a cat brushing against their legs, and the sound of a harpsichord. It's said that when the fort was still active, a ghostly sergeant carrying a musket and a unit lantern would appear after taps was sounded, saying, all's well, before vanishing into the night.

Sometimes, for no discernible reason, a headless Civil War soldier appears on the railroad tracks next to the fort. At other times, a no-nonsense, uniformed man tells children to get out of the officer's quarters. Multiple children have reported, and I quote, a mean man telling them to leave. One of the few ghosts that we actually know the name of is Basil Bassey Dunbar. Bassey was a British lieutenant who was killed at Fort Ontario in 1759 when he lost a duel with a fellow officer. Today his spirit can still be seen wandering around the fort in a daze, wearing the traditional British red coat. But the most notorious ghost at Fort Ontario is that of a

man named George Fikes. George died of an illness while stationed there in 1782 and his body was interred at the Fort Cemetery. The first recorded sighting of George's ghost was published in a newspaper in 1877, nearly a hundred years after his death. This paper claimed that George often visited a local family. They didn't know why, they just knew that for some reason a man in a British uniform kept showing up in their living room. The only thing that ever changed was his hat, which seemed to be swapped out with some frequency. One newspaper went so far as to say that they quote interviewed George's ghost, who they wrote, wore blue glass spectacles and talked like a telephone. According to the article, George told them, I am simply George Fikes, formerly a soldier of my country.

When a resident of the earth, I was loyal to my king. Now that I am no longer bound to it, I trust that I am loyal to truth. The story of George Fikes was immensely popular, eventually getting picked up by the New York Times and even published in papers as far away as New Zealand. But the same question remained in everyone's mind. Why did George Fikes keep showing up in one family's home?

Well, based on the legend, it's possible that someone in this family accidentally stepped on George's grave marker. You see, it's said that if you step on his grave, then you will be haunted by him for the rest of your life. But if you find yourself in the Fort Ontario Cemetery and a lifelong haunting doesn't appeal to you, then you can get around the whole ordeal. In fact, you can even use it as a weapon. If you jump over his grave, they say, then you can choose for someone else to be haunted

by George forever. It's the sort of legend that manages to point out a very valuable and very obvious lesson. In the world of hauntings, most of us rarely have a choice. And those who do should probably exercise that choice wisely. The French and Indian War isn't one of North America's better-known conflicts. Usually it's overshadowed by the more popular American Revolution. But it was devastating nonetheless, with 11,000 people dying over the course of the conflict. And a significant portion of those deaths can be attributed to the siege at Fort William

Henry in 1757. The fort there had only been in existence for two years before the attack. It was built by the British who stationed 2,000 troops there. Unfortunately, those 2,000 troops were no match for the 10,000 men that the French sent and those French soldiers laid siege to Fort William Henry, increasing their attack each day. After six days of increased casualties, the British surrendered. Estimates as to how many men died in the conflict vary wildly, swinging between 200 and 1500, but those numbers aren't all just from the siege. You see, the French troops had included 2,000 Native American men, all

from multiple different tribes. In exchange for their aid, the French had promised their Native American allies all the spoils from the fort. But they went back on their word, allowing the British to take their goods with them and leaving nothing for the Native Americans. Angered by this bait and switch betrayal by the French, these warriors decided to take matters into their own hands, and they began by attacking the fleeing British. When that was over, they returned to the

fort to claim the payment they had been promised. Legends say that these warriors dug up graves to reach the valuables inside, and even attacked the still living, angry that they had been tricked by the French. What those Native American warriors didn't know, however, was that the men whose graves they had robbed had mostly died of smallpox. The goods they had taken from those graves were still contaminated, and soon after returning home, an epidemic ravaged their communities, killing hundreds. As for the French, they ignored the fact that their duplicity inspired the entire event,

instead choosing to condemn the actions of the Native Americans. They buried the dead in unmarked graves, and then they burned Fort William Henry to the ground. For the next 200 years, the government left the land empty. Then in the 1950s, a replica was constructed, opening its doors to visitors in 1955. Archaeological excavations have been carried out since its reconstruction, and according

to one archaeologist, and I quote, "...it seems likely that hundreds of skeletons may lie beneath the modern parking lot." And where there are skeletons, there are often ghosts. You see, there is no question that Fort William Henry is the site of one of the most traumatic attacks in early colonial America, and that trauma seems to have echoed throughout history. A number of paranormal events have been reported there, including unexplained cold spots, disembodied screams, and objects moving around on their own power. There have been multiple reports of visitors hearing uneven footsteps,

earning this ghost the title, The Limper. After an amputee skeleton was found, some have speculated that these footsteps belonged to the ghost of a soldier whose leg had been surgically removed. There have also been several instances of names being erased on a chalkboard that listed all the soldiers who were present during the massacre. More than once, all the names but one that of Private Jacob Hardy were erased. Eventually the staff just gave up and wrote all the names in permanent ink. It's somewhat common for visitors there to actually see the ghosts of soldiers,

particularly in the East Barracks, the West Barracks, and the library. Witnesses report seeing the men going about their daily lives, maybe chastising subordinates or playing cards. A spectral soldier holding an axe has even been caught on camera. cards, a spectral soldier holding an axe has even been caught on camera. Thankfully the spirits aren't violent, for the most part that is. Some visitors have claimed that they have felt invisible hands grab and push them around. It's speculated that one particularly aggressive spirit was a French soldier who resented losing his life protecting British captives, and now he trips and shoves docents who are dressed in British uniforms.

Still, I suppose it's to be expected. Soldiers dying violently and leaving behind tortured ghosts is nothing new. Violence after all. Always leaves a scar. As I said before, locations like military forts are a natural hotspot for painful memories. Our history of violence has a way of leaving scars, and even generations later, those scars can still be felt. But soldiers aren't the only spirits at Fort William Henry. The military stronghold also has its fair share of ghostly children.

Now, it goes without saying, but children should never die in a war, especially not in a military fort. But that was one of the greatest tragedies of Fort William Henry. The families of the British soldiers suffered just as much as the servicemen did. And so it's believed that the ghost children of Fort William Henry were the children of the soldiers who were stationed there. Visitors to the forts have reported hearing the sound

of children playing and laughing in the West Barracks. Their high voices and their small feet patting across the ground make it clear just how young and innocent they were. Some have even claimed to feel tiny hands brush against their own. Staff have seen the ghost of one little girl sitting on a bench so often that they leave flowers for her. Ghost hunters there have claimed to have caught her on camera, and when one of them asked who she was, she said her name was Abigail. From what I've read,

the Ghost Children seem to make do with their lot in life, or as it were, their afterlife. Staff members report that the Ghost Children do like to play with the toys in the museum gift shop, and that they have a particular fascination with the wind chimes. But they never should have been reduced to playing with invisible hands

and laughing with friends they could never grow old with. They never should have been in the line of fire at all. One of the harshest realities of war is that everyone is touched by its bloody hands, soldiers, spouses, and children, and that violation always leaves a scar. And the best we can do today is to try not to tear those wounds back open. I hope you enjoyed today's tour through some of New York's most haunted military forts. As places built for violence, their ghostly echoes shouldn't be a surprise. Still, the legends that fill their hallways never fail to deliver chills. But not all forts are haunted with the spirits of the dead.

Some, as one final story will reveal, have more unorthodox residents. Stick around through this brief sponsored break to hear all about it. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. In a society that glorifies hyper-independence, it's easy to forget that we're all better when we have a support system behind us. Leaders, mentors, or idols, call them what you want,

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or your money back. Visit simply safe.com slash lore to claim 50% off a new system with a professional monitoring plan and get your first month free. That's simplysafe.com slash lore. There's no safe like Simply Safe. Imagine if mouthing off to your boss led to a paranormal experience. Well for one man, that bizarre situation became his reality. John Carroll was a young piper in the United States Army, and in 1804 he was stationed at Fort Niagara.

Located at the mouth of the Niagara River, the fort dates all the way back to 1678, when it was built by the French. The fort was passed back and forth between the French and the British soldiers during the French and Indian War. And then during the Revolutionary War, it was taken over by American troops, who held on to their possession of the stronghold

until the War of 1812. It was during this pocket of American ownership that the Army Piper John Carroll was sent to Fort Niagara. Unfortunately for John this wasn't an exciting assignment. Fort Niagara is practically on the American Canadian border, tucked against the shore of Lake Ontario. It was miles from any sort of civilization and therefore miles from anything that would be fun for a young soldier. And so John found little ways that he could let loose. A pint of ale here, a card game there. But sometimes he indulged a bit too much. His lips got a little too loose. One night he decided to

have a few drinks with his buddies, but the alcohol clouded his good sense and John ended up lashing out at his commanding officer. Even in the middle of nowhere, Army decorum had to be respected, so John was punished for his lapse in judgment. He was thrown into the Black Hole. Now this Black Hole was just that, a hole in the ground. They used it as a sort of solitary confinement for prisoners and misbehaving soldiers. And since John fell under that latter category, the hole would be his home for the rest of

the night. Illuminated only by the light of the moon, the dark, dank pit made a poor excuse for a bedroom. But his comfort would turn out to be the least of John's problems. Because while he was stuck down there, he was visited by hobgoblins. Now hobgoblins are English creatures from folklore that date back in writing to at least the 1520s. Originally the term referred to good-hearted fairies who helped people with chores around

the house. Eventually though the name transformed to mean something a bit more dark. Hobgoblins became known as malicious beings who found delight in messing with humans. And that was the sort that John Carroll met during his time in the Black Hole. According to the legend, John was tormented by at least one hobgoblin, but there may have been more down there in the hole with him. The legends aren't terribly clear. He screamed for the guards, telling them that he had seen a demonic hobgoblin. The guards, assuming that he was still drunk, scoffed at him and walked away. But before they

left, John asked them for paper, a pencil, and a candle. And, kindly, they gave it to him. In some versions of this story, the hobgoblin ordered that John write a song. In other versions, he was desperate to come up with a song that would drive them away. Either way, he spent the night in a feverish haze, scribbling on his borrowed paper. By the time the dawn arrived, John had written a hymn titled Carol's Thoughts on Eternity. He was released the following morning, shaken but unscathed and determined, I'm sure, to be on his best behavior unless he wanted to be at the mercy of the hobgoblins again. But John wasn't the only soldier to report seeing these creatures. In 1812, for example, one man was on sentry duty when he saw a shadowy shape lurking in the fort's

cemetery. When he went to investigate, he was confronted by a hobgoblin. It's said that the soldier fled this creature so quickly that he actually ran into a wall and was knocked out cold. They say that it was later discovered that his canteen was filled with liquor. And yes, drinking on the job would certainly explain his hobgoblin sighting and his clumsy retreat. But there will always be those who disagree.

This episode of Lore Legends was produced by me, Aaron Manke, with writing by Alex Robinson and research by Cassandra De Alba. Don't like hearing the ads? I've got a solution for you. There's a paid version of Lore on Apple Podcasts and Patreon that is 100% ad-free. Plus subscribers there also get weekly mini-episodes that we call Lore Bites. It's a bargain for all of that ad-free storytelling and a great way to support this show and the team behind it.

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