@2000 by Patty A. Wilson

The Evil in Congelier's Hall

Over the next few years the house's reputation continued to grow more sinister. Local folks told stories of the haunted house, and from time to time local mediums visited the old house with newspaper reporters and gave their impressions of the evil in the old Congelier mansion. One psychic who visited the house in 1922 came away very shaken and convinced that soon someone was going to die in the Congelier mansion. The psychic's name was Julia Murray, and her experience in the mansion was chronicled in a book entitled, Haunted Houses by Richard Winer and Nancy Osborn. Winer and Osborn reported that Julia Murray felt an evil presence and that she was pummeled by objects thrown by an unseen force. "Objects hurled by unseen hands, barely missed striking her," they reported. Julia Murray was deeply impressed by the feeling that the evil presence would soon kill someone, and she felt that the entity would eventually be able to destroy objects and people beyond the house itself.

Not long after Ms. Murray's terrifying visit...the Equitable Gas Company, a natural gas supplier, purchased the house...along with several other buildings in the area...They turned the house and the other buildings into boarding homes for the itinerant Italians who took the low-paying jobs...The Italians were the victims of much hatred in some quarters...At first the men in the old Congelier mansion assumed that the strange thigns they experienced were tricks being pulled on them in order to frighten them away. The men endured the "pranks" for months until one evening when everything changed.

After dinner one night a group of men were sitting at the dining room table drinking and talking. One of the men noticed that his brother had not come back from taking his dirty dishes to the kitchen. Curious as to what was keeping his brother, the man excused himself and walked into the kitchen.

A few moments later horrible screams destroyed the pleasant evening. The men at the table grabbed a lamp and dashed into the kitchen where the sounds had come from and found the basement door open. Quickly they ran down the stairs into the cellar. The sight before them froze the men on the stairs.

The two brothers were in the basement. The brother who had just left the group was hanging by the neck from a rough flooring beam. Below him on the floor lay the first brother to have left the group. He had a broken board driven through his chest.

As the men stared in horror at the macabre sight, a great, unseen force pushed paset them up the stairs. They later reported that they felt it as it passed and they heard its foot falls upon the treads of the cellar stairs as it ascended past them. The men in the kitchen neither saw nor felt anything, but only seconds after the force passed, every door in the house suddenly slammed simultaneously shut.