Many consider Irvington to be the most haunted place in central Indiana. Certainly, during the month of October the Classic Suburb may live up to that reputation with its over-the-top celebration of Halloween. Homes are decorated, spooky stories are told, hundreds go on the ghost walk tours, and thousands attend the street festival. October is a time for retelling tales of eerie, macabre, and strange events, long past.
The first week of October 1894, a stranger came to Irvington with evil intent. Giving his name as A. D. Laws, he rented a cottage east of Audubon Rd. in a secluded place on Julian Ave. for his sister and her son. He had some cheap furniture delivered along with a large drum stove. The man instructed that no gas connections be made to the stove because “he feared that gas would not be healthy for children.” Over the next couple of days, the stranger and an eight-year-old boy were seen around the cottage. The man and boy also were seen walking to a nearby drug store. Six days after renting the cottage, “Mr. Laws” left Irvington, leaving the boy’s overcoat at a local grocery store, saying that “a boy would call for it.” However, no boy ever appeared.
Ten months later, Philadelphia detective Frank Geyer came to Indianapolis looking for a house that may have been rented by a man who was being held there for the murder of Benjamin Pitezel. The detective was looking for Pitezel’s young son Howard Pitezel who had disappeared along with his two sisters. After showing the photograph of the man identified as H. H. Holmes to various persons, Geyer was led to the Irvington cottage on Julian Ave.
Accompanied by Indianapolis police detective David Richards, Geyer searched the house and barn. A battered trunk belonging to the Pitezel children was found under the porch and a stove was found in the barn, but no human remains were discovered after a cursory search. The detectives left late in the afternoon, planning to return the next day.
After the police left, three curious boys decided to conduct their own investigation and entered the cottage making their way to the cellar. An opening for a stovepipe drew the attention of one of the boys who said to the others, “Let’s look in here.” Ramming his hand into the opening, he pulled out a handful of charred human remains that included pieces of skull, sections of vertebrae, and portions of ribs later identified as Howard Pitezel. Additional burnt bones, teeth, a pair of boys’ shoes, and clothing buttons were also found buried in the cellar floor.
The boys ran to the nearby offices of Dr. Barnhill to tell him of their find. He in turn notified the detectives who conducted an additional search of the cottage and grounds and concluded that Holmes injected a sleeping Howard with morphine and then smothered him with chloroform. The body was then crammed into the stove, covered with corncobs and chunks of wood, and saturated with coal oil. Supposedly the corncobs would mask the odors of burning flesh. After incinerating the body, Holmes shoveled the ashes and the remains into the stovepipe hole where they were later found.
The investigation of the cottage drew sensation seekers. Extra trolleys ran to Irvington to accommodate spectators who went to the cottage, peered through the cellar windows and jammed into the narrow cellar space to watch the detectives conduct their search. Some young men engaged in the macabre at a social held at the Methodist Church, labeling soup bones “Holmes.”
H. H. Holmes was linked to the murder of dozens at his “Murder Castle” in Chicago and elsewhere. Justice for these victims and Howard Pitezel never came. Holmes was tried, convicted, and hanged for the murder of only one of his victims, Benjamin Pitezel.
One summer’s night in 1902 a darkened carriage pulled up in front of the home of Wesley Gates, East Washington St. and Bolton Ave. Gates was summoned to the carriage and was told by a muffled voice from within the curtained shadows that the grave of Glendore Gates may have been robbed and, if so, the girl’s body would be found at the Central College of Physicians & Surgeons. Twenty-seven-year-old Glendore Gates had died of consumption (tuberculosis) days earlier and her widowed father had laid her to rest in Anderson Cemetery on East 10th St.
Stunned by the news, the following morning Gates and some friends went to the gravesite and found the grave decorations apparently undisturbed. Digging into the soft earth and brushing off the cedar box containing the coffin, it was discovered that the lid was in two pieces. As the lid over the head of the white coffin was removed, there was a universal gasp as it revealed an empty white satin interior. A search of the cemetery found the graves of 41-year-old farmer John Dietz and 15-year- old African American Stella Middleton had also be disturbed.
Glendore’s brother got a warrant and accompanied by detectives, a search was conducted at the Central College of Physicians & Surgeons. By the light of a kerosene lamp, the janitor led the party down a narrow flight of stairs to the trash littered, foul-smelling cellar. Passing through a door into another room dimly illuminated by the flickering flame of a gas jet, the searchers found a long row of open barrels filled with pickling solution. A barrel in a corner of the room was covered with a heavy stone. When the stone was removed, the corpse of an old woman came into view. Throughout the space, shrouds and garments were strewn, evidence of bodies once having been brought into this area. The upper floors were searched, but no other corpses were found. After searching other downtown locations and the Medical College of Indiana, six additional corpses were found, but no Glendore Gates.
Days later in the pre-dawn hours, two sacks containing bodies were found leaning against the Georgia St. side of a building on south Meridian St. This grisly discovery led to reports of two sacks containing bodies lying in the alley behind the Central College of Physicians & Surgeons. The corpses were taken to the morgue and the families of those whose graves had been robbed were notified. One of the bodies was that of Glendore Gates. While examining Glendore’s body, it was discovered that the ghouls had knocked out her teeth stealing the gold fillings, and they had also stolen the rings she was wearing when buried. Glendore Gates was again laid to rest in Anderson Cemetery, and the ordeal for the Gates family was finally over.
Rufus Cantrell, self-styled “king of the ghouls,” was arrested and admitted to leading a gang of African Americans in stealing numerous newly buried bodies from several small cemeteries around Marion County and selling them to Dr. Joseph C. Alexander at the Central College of Physicians & Surgeons for thirty dollars for each corpse delivered “in good condition.”
Early in 1903, Dr. Alexander was brought to trial on charges “of taking, concealing, and buying human corpses.” The jury deadlocked eight to four for acquittal. “The King of the Ghouls,” Rufus Cantrell, was tried, convicted, and sentenced to the state reformatory at Jeffersonville. His accomplices were also convicted and sentenced to the Indiana Reformatory.
The revelations of the Cantrell gang and the practices of the Central College of Physicians & Surgeons led to the 1903 law creating the state anatomical board that was empowered to receive and distribute unclaimed bodies from throughout the state to medical schools. The act was “for the promotion of anatomical science and to prevent grave desecration.”
These are but two of the tales that bring a mysterious chill to the air of Irvington in October.
