[music swells in abruptly.]
[Acoustic instrument playing a three note repeating pattern]
Downloaded from YTS.MX
[zapping noise]
[music is ominous. synthesizer wind noises
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
and dark sounding notes ring out]
[music title: the village]
[deep bass notes can be heard underneath higher
pitched notes and synth noises]
[acoustic instrument changes to a four note,
repeating pattern. same ominous tone]
[vocalization can be heard. no words]
[inaudible words and quick phrases can be heard in background]
[long vocalization. vowels only. no audible words]
[high pitched, synthesized female vocalization.
long vowel sounds. ahhhhhhh]
[female vocalization continues]
[thunder or loud noises can be heard periodically]
[very long vocalization and all notes end and ring out to fade]
[voice echos in distance as music fades]
[new music. slow, electric blues guitar & harmonica]
[music title: traveling crawford]
[traditional blues riff in the keys of E and A]
[music quites a bit as narration begins]
(Male Narrator) Southern Illinois, old earth, old forests, old testament.
This ground holds tales of many ancient civilizations,
historic events, and fantastic folklore.
The portion of the state that identifies itself as “Little Egypt”
is surrounded by the Mississippi, Ohio, and Wabash Rivers.
The rivers not only define its boundaries
but have shaped the histories and lives of
all who have lived there.
These waters encapsulate a land hundreds of
miles, attitudes and lifestyle away from
the cosmopolitan cities to the north.
This countryside has challenged all those
who have staked their claim here leaving behind
a place filled with fading stories, histories,
and lessons from the past.
[blues music continues in background]
This is the story of Elizabeth Reed
who in 1845 became the first woman to be hanged
in Illinois.
She was accused of poisoning her husband Leonard
with arsenic laced tea then tried and convicted
by a jury of 12 men.
Betsy was hanged on May 23rd
which to most would be where the story ends.
However, Elizabeth Reed’s story had just begun.
The circumstances of her arrest,
trial,
conviction, execution, burial, and afterlife
have been debated ever since.
The folklore that exists today suggests her
restless spirit wanders the countryside.
Does her ghost haunt the site of her execution
because she was falsely accused
or due to the very nature of her crime?
Some may argue it was because her voice was never heard.
While these ghostly debates may never end
what is known is that this
“murderous witch’s” story
fascinates to this day.
To fully appreciate the tale of Elizabeth “Betsey” Reed
one must understand the history
and culture of Southern Illinois.
[Chris Sutton] Well terrain wise Southern Illinois is…okay
you’ve got the rivers.Okay?
[blue music ends and fades] So the terrain is Southern Illinois is such that…
[upbeat acoustic guitar strumming] they slope down towards the rivers.
So you’ve got these hilly areas you know
around the rivers.
Cause there is a lot of towns around the rivers.
These river towns have a lot of barge traffic.
That’s where a lot of these towns in Illinois start.
[pleasant synthesizer notes] But then you get towards the middle of it
and it's flat. It’s prairie land so to speak.
So you’ve got rolling hills as you go around
the rivers as it goes down and you’ve got
flat terrain in Southern Illinois.
Normally after that there’s a lot of forest
and things like that around.
But there’s lots of agriculture
and corn and all that kind of stuff.
[Rob Byrley] Well, we have a lot of farming.
It’s a really agricultural area.
And then right out our backdoor
we have the Wabash River.
So a lot of recreation there
and commercial fishing.
To the south we have the timber.
It’s just a unique place;
a lot of agriculture,
a lot of industry related to the agriculture.
[music title: a peaceful life]
[Narrator] Early settlers in Illinois didn’t view most
of the land as fertile, advising to build and farm where trees grow.
In fact, for Leonard Reed
the farm ground had proven
to be a challenge greater than the
meager farming skills either
he or Elizabeth possessed.
It wasn’t until John Deere’s invention
of the metal plow in 1837 that farmers could
till Southern Illinois ground.
Little Egypt’s soil was much richer than
the eastern United States and therefore more
difficult to cultivate.
Up until the metal plow open plains were used
for a variety of livestock, especially cattle
and hogs.
Settlers foraged for much needed sustenance
and their options were limited
to what an area provided.
(John Winterbauer) I think it’s a cultural thing because Illinois
was settled from the south.
Those people came out of the upper-southern
region of the United States into an area already
seeped with the Mississippian culture
and the French culture.
And all that combined into a unique blend
of people
that have contributed,
or it’s contributed to the feel of the place.
It just hangs there.
There’s a different feeling in Southern Illinois
then there is say in Chicago, which
is bustling and crazy and violent.
That’s not really like that down there.
They are…
[music fades out]
they keep to themselves
from time to time.
But for the most part they are a friendly
group of salt of the earth people.
(Narrator) Before Illinois became a state [birds chirping]
it was known as the Indiana territory.
This new frontier presented many obstacles
to anyone attempting to carve out a life there.
Indigenous tribes grew increasingly alarmed
by the growing number of settlers that continued
to populate their lands.
In addition to the native tribes,
early settlers were met by a variety of forest creatures
who also laid claim to the territory.
[deep, rising tones and echoes]
Yes the land proved to be bountiful
but it also brought forth hardships
that not everyone was prepared to handle.
And this was virgin timber. (Rick Kelsheimer)
It was hardwoods. [birds chirping]
It hadn’t become Southern Illinois’s fields today.
But back then
it was hardwood forest.
There would be prairies in-between
that would look like oceans of grass
but where Betsy lived
it was old-growth hardwood forest.
At the time there were bears,
there were wolves,
there were panthers, which are mountain lions,
other than every other critter out there.
[Native American flute note echoes]
(Narrator) When the populations of the settlers
and Indians initially merged relations were
peaceful and friendly.
This proved to be short lived as the natives
grew to be uncomfortable with the foreign
incursion which increasingly
used up the areas resources.
Shawnee Chief Tecumseh came to the area
in the early 1800’s to recruit the Illini tribes
in his efforts against the white settlers.
[birds chirp in background]
The growing conflicts
with the Indian tribes
continued through the founding of Illinois in 1818
before culminating in the
Blackhawk War of 1832.
The brutalities of their conflicts left scars
throughout the region.
(Chris Sutton) The Natives were not, obviously [birds chirping]
and I don’t blame them, were not too keen
about the white settlers moving in
and taking their land.
And so yes there were massacres.
There was fighting.
Of course, we know who won the war.
But there were times where the Natives
fought back just like you and I would do
if someone was trying to take our land.
[music swells into new song]
[acoustic guitar strums as electric guitar notes play]
[music title: little egypt]
So traveling down to Crawford County, (John Winterbauer)
I hadn’t been there before I didn’t
get to spend as much time as I had wanted to.
I met up with Jason and his team in Palestine
[harmonica plays]
and
explored just a little bit around before
we went out to the cemetery to visit Elizabeth.
And I got to tell you,
like most of Southern Illinois, it’s a
quaint,
friendly, welcoming
place, which most of Southern Illinois is.
It’s a cultural thing.
I think they’re nicer (chuckles)
in Southern Illinois
than a lot of places in the state.
And that’s what I found in Palestine and
down around Crawford County.
I spent a lot of time on the dirt roads out there.
Didn’t see a lot of people
but those that I did see
were
very pleasant people,
glad to see people, happy to help
with what we were doing.
I really enjoyed it.
[guitar and harmonica continue]
(Jason Snider) We’re the Crawford County Ghost Hunters Society
and we investigate claims
of paranormal activity and phenomena
all over the state of Illinois
and parts of Indiana.
We investigate anywhere people call us into.
We’ve investigated businesses,
houses, any other place
people call us into that they
think they have any type of paranormal activity
or occurrence taking place at their location.
Crawford County is considered to be one of
the most haunted counties in Illinois, I would say,
because we have one of the oldest
white settlements in the state,
which is Palestine, Illinois.
And there’s a lot of activity
and historical sites in Palestine.
They’ve found city upon city of ancient
civilizations where they’ve dug into them.
There’s archeological dig sites in Palestine.
Crawford County back in the day
actually stretched its border up into Canada.
Crawford County is one of the oldest counties
in Illinois if not the oldest.
[music fades]
Crawford County has a lot of historical locations.
We had a Hutson massacre that took place
here in Hutsonville, Illinois.
[music begins. synthesizer vocals. ominous]
[periodic tapping noises heard echoing]
[music title: hutson massacre]
[notes hold and a deep, Australian didgeridoo note plays]
[huanting notes play]
The location we are currently at is the site
of the Hutson Massacre
that took place in 1813.
And what happened here…
it was a horrible event that took place
behind us here at this location
The cabins that are currently here now
are reconstructed cabins.
These aren’t the original cabins
from the massacre.
But in 1812
Isaac Hutson came to this area from
Turman Township in Sullivan County, Indiana.
He moved to this area because he liked the prairie.
He just thought it was a neat area.
He enjoyed this area.
He built a little cabin here with his family.
He had a wife
and I believe it was six kids
and he went to…
he went to Hutsonville…well
the this whole town here was named after
this event you know Hutsonville you know Isaac Hutson
that's how Hutsonville got its name.
But he went to Palestine one night
to the mill
so when he went to the mill he came back
home it was real late at night
when he got back here.
He saw a glow off in the distance.
When he got closer he kinda feared the worse,
you know, knowing something bad had happened.
When he got up here he realized his family
had been massacred by Indians.
When he got up there,
there was a guy by the name of
Dixon,
which was his neighbor.
He lived close to Hutson here too.
When he got up here, Dixon was laying on the ground
with his chest tore open
and his heart was on a post.
They were pretty brutally massacred.
His baby, they took it…
she was…like when they raided the cabins,
the Indians came into
the cabins,
Mrs. Hutson was holding the baby in her arms.
They took the baby and
put it in a boiling kettle of soup
and killed the baby like that
and then killed the rest of the family.
They chopped their heads off
and put them on a post out here…
was what some of the historical accounts say.
They scattered their heads and
put them on posts out here
by the cabin.
So it was a pretty
brutal murder that took place here.
After that, Hutson swore revenge.
He moved to the, well
what is now current day Terre Haute.
Fort Harrison was located there.
He joined the Army
there at Fort Harrison
which was kind of his downfall because he
was later killed by Indians, himself,
in a fight about a half a mile south of the fort
where Terre Haute now stands.
[Music fades out]
We’re currently about seven mile
north of Palestine.
So this massacre ties into the
early settlers in the Palestine area.
And then Heathsville and Baker’s Cemetery
where Elizabeth Betsey Reed was buried is
a little south of Palestine.
There was a lot of stuff and a lot of historical
evidence in this area showing the
hard time a lot of these settlers went through
back in the day.
The pioneers in the early area…
So you know it was a just a lot of
bad happenings.
(Narrator) Throughout history,
it has often been the tragedies of life that have lead
to the tales that are passed down
from generation to generation.
[deep, droning music]
In the world of the paranormal,
these tales often grow dark.
Hauntings are a lot of times (Robbin Terry)
caused by traumatic experiences or deaths [eerie synth tones]
that might have occurred.
It could be just from a hanging.
It could be from violent car crashes,
murders, [haunting notes]
just about any type of traumatic experiences
someone might encounter
could cause a haunting.
They could also be from
people who are basically staying back
and staying in a location where
they want to stay
just because they are not sure
where to go and how to get there.
And so they stay behind. [scraping noises in music]
We see different hauntings
that are residual and intelligent type haunting.
Where residual
is kind of like a tape replayer ...tape recorder
that just keeps repeating
itself, running over in time
over and over and over.
Where intelligent hauntings
are someone that's [odd noises in music]
stayed behind, left in the building, or a
location, or just in the grounds.
It doesn’t even have to be inside a building.
It could be where
someone… they know they’re there
and they want to communicate
to other people and [music tension rises]
you can ask them questions.
You can get intelligent,
which is why we call them intelligent hauntings,
you can get actual
answers back from them
that describe why they’re there,
maybe who they are
and what they’re doing there.
[music continues w/ haunting undertones[
(Narrator) Crawford County is among the oldest
territories in Illinois and contains possibly
more cemeteries than any other county.
Old plots and family cemeteries are scattered
along Highway 33,
many within mere minutes from one another.
[dissonant musical notes]
And the more graves there are,
the more folklore there is attached to them.
[eerie music continues]
So down here (Jason Dickerson)
or south Palestine
there's been a few stories.
They're kind of
I don't know if they're urban legends
so much but I know a lot of kids used
to come down here to scare themselves little bit.
There’s a church up here
called Pleasant View
and it's got a bell and there's three
crosses out here.
And supposedly
three witches
were killed here, buried here, or something.
And so if you ring the bell at midnight
[sudden, jarring tone]
it's supposed to ring
and if it rings one less
than how many people are in your party
[grating noises in music]
one of you is supposed
to die is supposed to be the story.
[synthesized, haunting vocals]
So
a few years ago i come down here
with my kids and
we rang the bell at midnight like
you're supposed to and
it tolled three times and as soon as it stopped,
which was weird,
[dissonant notes]
three birds flew out of the bell after it rang.
Well (chuckles) it freaked everybody out.
We took off for the vehicles
and drove away.
[dissonant undertones]
(Narrator) Yet another legend involves
the Bartmess Cemetery that was once located at
the top of this hill.
Cleared to create more farmland,
the Bartmess family headstones
were moved over to nearby
Greenhill Cemetery
while their remains were left behind.
[droning music continues[
The custom of farming over old graveyards
was a common measure in the Illinois early years.
The value of Illinois farmland
sometimes supersedes even burial customs.
[higher pitched dissonance]
There are countless reasons why family plots
are altered,
moved, and sometimes forgotten.
[rising ethereal music begins]
Paranormal traditions
cite the separation of bodies
from their gravestone marker
as a possible contributing factor
to ghost haunts.
[music sounds more angelic]
[soft tones, synthesized notes]
[music swells then fades]
[deep, throaty, synthesized music with slow eerie keyboard]
[music title: heathsville]
(Narrator) The Reed’s lived and sharecropped
on farmland in Heathsville Illinois.
This nondescript parcel of land lies
off an ordinary curve next to highway 33.
The doomed pair never made a decent living,
leaving Elizabeth in debt when her husband
Leonard passed away.
[odd tapping and inaudible female voice]
One of the things about Southern Illinois (Winterbauer)
is the
multitude of names that have
ominous overtones. [creepy, breathy noise]
In the Crawford County area there's
Purgatory Swamp,
which of course purgatory
implies you're wandering in the afterlife,
The Devil's Neck along the river,
Devil's Backbone is the name of the ridge.
Where those names come from I’m not exactly sure
but they all imply this ominous vibe.
And the area actually gives that off
in strange ways.
Not that I’m a psychic
or have that ability but the
the air
it just picks up on those names
and it permeates everything around it.
That interests me a lot about
Southern Illinois. And that feeling's still there
even when you're not looking for it.
Well Heathsville is the closest town (Teri Nash)
and nowadays it's about six houses.
But it was a little bigger than that
in the early 1800s.
And the center of the community
was the Heath Inn.
[eerie voice]
Which, was
besides being inn it was a stagecoach stop.
And the mail went there
so everyone gathered there.
And it would have been about a half a mile from
the Reed cabin.
And the lady that
worked for our family name was Orma Baker
and her family, on her mother's
side of the family, were the Heaths.
And so they knew the Reeds.
and , um
Then Leonard Reed is buried in the Baker Cemetery,
which sits behind our property.
[music continues. high-pitched swells and clicking]
(Snider) The Betsey Reed story as we know it goes like this:
Elizabeth Betsey Reed was convicted
and found guilty
of poisoning her husband
with arsenic-laid sassafras tea.
On April 26 1845
she was actually convicted
or they started the trial
and then on April 28th of 1845
that's when she was convicted and found guilty.
(Narrator) Elizabeth Reed’s story seemed destined to exist
between generational gossip
and cemetery tales
until attracting the attention
of The Lawrence County Historical society.
Through countless hours of research
led by society treasurer John King
the society compiled
the official record
including newspaper accounts
from as far away as London England.
The local arts council staged the play “Hanging,
The Saga of Betsey Reed”
which Dann Norton wrote based on the historical societies’
meritorious research.
[ominous music fades away]
There was nothing in the records (Dann Norton)
that explained how they knew for sure this
was arsenic.
The only reason (John King)
to suspect arsenic poisoning
was that Evaline Deal
said that she found
this particular piece of paper
between two plates in the cupboard
and and then Mrs. Reed threw it outdoors.
She retrieved it
and in that traced back to
Dr. Logan at his pharmacy in Russellville
saying ,
"it had to be me.
That had to be bought at my store.
I don't remember selling it to anybody but
only I would have packaged it in this way
in this sort of paper."
(Dickerson) So some of the [birds heard in background]
accusations the reason why they accused her of it
was there was a I assume a salesman in a general store
that swears he sold her the arsenic.
And the only witness that actually saw her
put the powder in his tea was i believe a
niece or a younger daughter.
That was who testified and
that testimony was enough.
You know, she was a woman.
Back then they really didn't have rights.
That was good enough.
[birds stop[
I got involved with the "Hanging (Nash)
of Betsey Reed"
book by Rick Kelsheimer
when a mutual friend introduced us
when he was writing the book
and she knew that I had grown up
on the farm where Leonard and Betsey Reed had lived
in the 1840s.
And that
an elderly woman who worked for my family
had a close connection to the case
and had
taught me about the case since i was young.
Then I
started working with Rick
on researching the book.
(Kelsheimer) Leonard her husband had
gotten sick over a period of time.
And then what Evaline Deal said is that
she saw Betsey puts a white powder
in his squirrel stew [dark music begins]
And then [weird chattering]
of course
at the end
supposedly he put it in her…
she put it in his sassafras tea.
But, and there's another neighbor who
[music title: the gift of poison]
the Reeds owed money to
who came over and said
he'd seen her
feed him squirrel stew and he'd get
deathly sick,
and they thought he was going to die then
but he didn't say anything
'cause he didn't want to get involved.
But he said it after they hung her.
She was arrested (Nash)
after the neighbor
girl who would have been Evaline Deal
had went to the neighbors
and reported she saw
Betsey put white powder in his tea.
And supposedly it was sassafras tea
because tea was very expensive then.
Among the claims against the Reed estate (Narrator)
following Betsey’s trial were that
from Doctors Boyle, Wynn, and Logan,
who had separately been treating Leonard for a persistent
stomach aliment over a three-year period.
The claims were for unpaid medical bills
including doctor visits and antimony treatments,
which were used to purge inflamed bowels.
The treatments should beckon the question
as to the whether the white powder seen by
Evaline Deal
was prescribed by one of Leonard’s physicians.
[bubbling sounds heard in music]
Our county at
Charlottesville, which is
west of Birds
between Birds and Chauncey
where the Birds - Chauncey blacktop
crosses the Embarras River,
was a mill operated by the Shakers.
This was the westernmost
Shaker community in the nation.
[music continues]
The Heaths…
they gave up on the mill
after it had been washed out and they had rebuilt it
and the Heaths purchased it.
And it's this same family that
has the namesake of Heathsville
in southeastern Crawford County.
And family members have gone on to form the
Heath Candy Company of Robinson
who is now owned by the
Hershey Candy Company of Hershey, Pennsylvania.
Then the Harrimans who she reported (Nash)
seeing the poison to
Mrs. Harriman’s father was
the constable
which was Duane Gaines…
and if you could see this area it's all within
about a two mile radius…
and so they got her father
who was the constable and they
told him that they thought
Leonard had been poisoned
and the doctors came
[creepy sounds in ambience]
when he had died because he became very ill suddenly.
But um
he had been having chronic stomach illness
[music continues. airy and dark]
so they suspected that he was being
slowly poisoned.
And then Betsey
got a little excited or in a hurry and
gave him a bigger dose that day
that killed him.
And i think that's what his autopsy
led them to believe.
She told me
that her grandfather…
might have been great grandfather
I can't remember at the time
right now… what she said but
he was a ten-year-old boy
about the time of the murders
and he knew them,
that they would come down
to do their trading at the store
that was down there and
stop in and get their mail.
And that Betsey was very odd.
She wasn't liked.
That she wore a white bonnet…
she never mentioned a veil which
has been mentioned
in some of our research…
and Rick Kelsheimer’s book says it was a veil.
It’s a historical novel
but in our research that's why he said a veil.
But i was told a white bonnet.
And when she would go outdoors
she would put a black bonnet
on top of that and that was odd
is what the neighbors said.
(Kelsheimer) But even the eyewitness
reports that I found
contradicted each other.
Some people said she was horribly ugly
disfigured
and then there are eyewitness reports from
the hanging that said she was beautiful,
even angelic-like.
So everything was contradicted.
But from reading and all
there a couple things became perfectly clear;
women hated Betsey Reed,
[ambience continues]
the men, not so much.
I mean so
maybe she was kind of a gal the men liked
maybe she's easy to look
at or maybe she…
but the women really did.
There was a lot of hatred for her.
(Nash) It kind of creeps you out to go over where
the house was.
Just…
I don't know
because I guess you know the murder occurred there.
There's a creepy feeling there.
I’ll say that.
[ambience ends but new music swells in]
[music title: Palestine]
[periodic, rhythmic drums sound]
(Terry) the historical part of the hauntings
is probably some of my favorite part.
Because history is what is really kind
of cool with these older locations and
the older buildings that are out there
and even the older grounds like the Gettysburg.
Places like that.
That's the most fascinating part of it.
And it's kind of like
why are why are they still there?
What keeps those spirits
and that energy at those locations?
And I’ve always tell people
before is like
the only thing we know about the paranormal
is we don't really know anything
about the paranormal
until we've crossed over to see it ourselves.
But we can still talk
to some of these intelligent spirits
at these locations and probably get
bits and pieces
and put it together and try
to figure out a little bit more all the time
of what's happening
at different locations and different grounds.
[high pitched, frequency noise in music]
Southern Illinois since it's older (Sutton)
than our friends up north.
It's older.It's got more ghosts.
Because there's been more people living here.
It's been around longer.
And some of these river towns…
I have not come across a river town yet
that is not haunted in some way.
Whether you go up to Hannibal
which is up in Missouri
all the way around the Wabash
up and around that area,
there's always some type of haunt going on.
It's because they've been here for so long.
And back then you know
when the state started
there was a lot of frontier type of justice
still going on.
Things like that.
It was settled pretty early
and so lots of weird things happened
in Southern Illinois
as far as around violence and things like that.
(Narrator) Downtown Palestine has all the comforts
one comes to expect from a
Southern Illinois community.
This historic downtown area is loaded with charm
but visitors are most likely never aware
of the circumstances that befell
this small town in 1845.
[Palestine music continues. High frequency ambience]
As far as the main (Byrley)
towns in Crawford County we have Robinson which is
the county seat.
Originally the county seat was in Palestine
from I believe 1821 to 1847.
In 1847 it moved to Robinson
and that's our... our biggest town.
And you have Oblong to the west,
Palestine here to the east,
Flat Rock to the south,
and you have a Hustonville to the north.
And there's been different little towns
that popped up and faded away.
One was Vernon right south of town here.
It got started in about 1830
and by 1883 it was gone.
There's Bolivar a little settlement north of town here.
It's long gone.
(Narrator) The early pioneers had entrenched themselves
in Fort Lamotte
and a recreation
can be found along the edge of town.
The standard French fort is a stark reminder
of the hazards the encroaching settlers faced.
Yes that was the beginning.
And actually
when the people started arriving here
[ambient music fades]
it wasn't called Palestine.
The first name
that I’ve come across was
a Lamotte settlement,
the settlement of Fort Lamotte.
And then later when the town was laid out.
And actually the first name
of this town wasn't Palestine.
The first name was Mount Pleasant
[music ambience begins]
and for some reason
Cullom and Kitchell you know donated
the ground for Palestine…
[dark, airy ambience]
For some reason they
must have or someone must have told them
you know the lore of Jean Lamotte …
the land of milk and honey…
and they changed it to Palestine.
[music title: Calling Forth Flame]
[dissonant clanking]
And then they
brought her to Palestine
which was at the time the county seat.
She was held in the jail at Palestine
and this is where the whole
witch story comes in with Betsey Reed.
But some people claim she was a witch because
while she was being held at the Palestine jail
she actually burnt the jail down
with no source of ignition, no matches.
You know no way of actually burning the jail down and
she somehow managed to set fire to that jail.
So that's still a mystery in a legend [sounds of fire]
to this day how Betsey actually burnt the jail down.
But anyway when he had died,
he had obviously been poisoned
and she was arrested.
Because you remember at that time
Palestine was a county seat.
There's a land office up here on the square.
Where the high school now
is now was the town square
land office on the south end.
The jail was on the north end.
She was arrested and brought to jail.
And this jail was a formidable structure.
I mean
it was recessed into the ground a couple feet.
It had 12 by 12
timbers 12 inch by 12 inch
on the inside and outside
but and then 12 inch gap between them
that vertical boards were just stuck in.
There wasn't a door entering the jail. You had...
at first you had to go up a ladder to
the second story.
A two foot by two foot trap
door would be lifted up
and you would go down into it.
And later on they actually put a stairway
up to the second story.
And there's two windows .
I don't recall the size but
they had one inch iron bars i believe
about three inches apart.
So it was pretty well escape proof.
Somehow she had got hold of matches or
a lighting device anyway.
You got to figure if that jail went
up in around 1821
or 1820 by 1844 the timbers
would have been pretty well dried out.
So it may have got started fairly easy.
[dark ambient music continues]
Betsy was held in the Palestine jail
and somehow
they never knew how she did it
but she managed to burn
the wall of the jail a little bit at a time.
Until one night
the fire got away from her.
And when the fire got away from her
she burned the jail down.
And she was running down Main Street
in Palestine
because the jail sit where
what is now the
high school sits in Palestine.
And there was a
hotel where the Fife Opera House sits
and a gentleman was sitting outside
and his last name was Gerard.
And he saw her running down the street and
I think her clothes were smoking.
And he tackled her and saved her.
And I know one thing that
Orma Baker told me was that
helped lead to the
rumors that she was a witch
because they didn't know
how she started that fire.
[music is very quiet]
(Narrator) One interesting story that we were
told is that of the belief that a secret,
select few practiced the craft of
creating fire from thin air
and that Elizabeth Reed
was gifted with this ability.
It is a hypothetical explanation
as to how she was able to set her
formidable confines ablaze
with no known source to do so.
Whether or not one believes in this is not important.
but it certainly adds to the belief
in witchcraft
that the people of the time accused Betsy of.
It is interesting to note
that the jail fire was Betsey’s
only documented attempt at
any type of defense
or desire to escape her fate.
Unfortunately for Mrs. Reed,
the failed plot was further proof
of her guilt in the eyes of the community.
One thing is for certain:
the townsfolk were relieved
when she was finally removed from Palestine.
[music swells to a crescendo and fades]
Lawrence County, Illinois
is a small county
in rural Southeastern Illinois.
We have a population of about 15 000 people.
We have...
we are about
back to our population of the 1880s.
We are a county
that suffers economically.
The oil industry is on a…
it's been the lifeblood of this county
along with farming
and both industries have taken
it on the chin here in recent years.
We used to have a massive Texaco
refinery in our county
and employed good jobs
for a lot of people.
That is gone.
The Marathon Ohio Oil Company
and the Marathon Oil Company are gone.
There's very little industry.
There's a huge unemployment
of numbers.
It's a low-income county,
one of the poorest in the state.
But yet it's a fine place to live.
We have all the amenities that one needs.
We are close to metropolitan areas.
It's as good a county as any in our nation
to to reside in.
[music swells in. dark, rhythmic synth.]
And the jail was
pretty much destroyed so they had to move Betsey to
Lawrenceville.
And when they moved her to Lawrenceville
that's where she was tried.
[music title: Lawrenceville]
[pulsating notes]
Betsey Reed’s two
lawyers defense lawyers, she had two.
One was Augustus French, who I mentioned
a year and a half after trial became the
ninth governor of the State of Illinois.
But the second lawyer and
the one who actually was the lead
lawyer in the case name was Usher Linder.
Usher Linder
was a famous attorney in Illinois.
He had been Attorney General of the state.
He had been involved in Alton, Illinois
with the with the case of Elijah Lovejoy
when he was executed
and his press destroyed, which
is the whole basis of freedom of the press
in this nation,
based upon this Lovejoy case.
In Alton, Illinois
there was an abolitionist named Elijah P. Lovejoy
and he didn't believe in slavery.
So he printed, he was the newspaper printer.
He was the editor.
He owned the paper.
He kept printing you know
kept writing his paper…
not...that we should not have slavery.
And first they threw his printing press in the river.
And so after that he got another one.
Well then they burned it and they killed him.
And so they say that his ghost
haunts part of Alton, Illinois.
Now Usher Linder
was born where Abraham Lincoln
was born in Kentucky,
in the same town.
They grew up together
and they both came to Illinois.
Illinois was really if you wanted…
The political stars were coming out there:
Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, all that.
Well, Usher Linder
was a real good friend of Lincoln’s.
But he was also
kind of a rebel rouser.
At age 27
became the youngest
Attorney General for the State of Illinois.
They were having a big
convention down there with Lovejoy
and he's writing his anti-slavery
paper, and he's a speaker.
Well,
Usher Linder got everybody riled up
there and they actually
got the mob together.
And then,
and this is while he's Attorney General,
and basically did a speech to get
them, the mob to go…
They burned down the newspaper,
Lovejoy's newspaper
at the time, pulled him out and
lynched him.
One thing that interests me
is about this story is Usher Linder
who in 1837
was a pro-slavery advocate
who battled
with Elijah Lovejoy
whose death in November
of 1837 in Alton
not only
lit the fuse that sparked the civil war
but left a haunting
behind where Elijah Lovejoy died.
There's a vacant lot there now and
his ghost is said to wander there.
[music ends] Later on
Linder was
Betsey Reed's attorney
and then
her ghost wanders the cemetery.
So there's this weird connection between Linder
and these two historic vents in Illinois’ history
that I just find kind of interesting.
From what I read, hangings were kind of a
big event back then and people would [birds in background]
actually come in and set up like a festival.
Like, they would sell and trade and barter.
And the people got mad
because when they moved her
everyone was supposedly set up
had shops set up to to sell things.
And when they moved to Lawrenceville,
which is 20 some miles from here,
that's a long trip by a horse-drawn cart
or something like that.
So everyone had to move down there
for the hanging.
And
supposedly when they got there I think
the estimate was 20 thousand people, I don't
know if that's accurate or not, but
a rather large crowd.
When I started writing the play I
had just kind of assumed that
Betsey Reed was probably guilty.
She was probably from a
hard life and things just happened.
But Donna Burton from the society had
pointed out this antimony.
So for me the big surprise
was that
he…the man is taking antimony
and she said , "You look up antimony."
So I looked this up
and of course
you find out that
antimony poisoning mimics arsenic poisoning.
So very much so his symptoms
could have been caused by this antimony.
The next big surprise for me
was that he was sick for three years
but then all of a sudden
in 1844
they think it's arsenic poisoning.
Nobody thought this
for the two and a half years prior to
his death?
One of the aspects I appreciate
about this story is the fact that she left
no record of a defense.
Her attorneys apparently didn't put her on the stand.
There are no public statements
with her defending herself.
She could have very easily said,
“my husband had been ill
with stomach problems for three or four years”
which gives credence to the idea
that she didn't kill him.
Ghosts hang around places
for a lot of different reasons.
In her case,
even though I believe she was guilty and
committed the crime,
maybe she didn't
and her ghost still wanders
the cemetery because she's accused of
a crime she didn't commit
in the 1840s
I don't think they would have questioned
the guilt of a woman.
i mean she was a woman
everybody could see it was
a possibility and they just
moved on with their lives.
Well and remember she had
burned
had had the jail at Palestine on fire
whether to commit suicide or
it's just an accidental…
it caught on fire.
So they were considering her
a witch and a bad lady
[deep, ominous music]
[music title: May 23, 1845]
[loud clang]
[creepy hissing and stretching sounds]
[inaudible whispers and breathing noises]
We are in Lawrence County Illinois
at the location where Elizabeth Betsey Reed
was taken to be hung.
Behind me here is the old football field
and this is the location
where they brought her.
The judge said to take her to a place within
one mile of the courthouse to a convenient place,
which ended up being the location where
this football field is now located at.
So the crazy thing about all this
and still a mystery
is there's no historical marker
at this location whatsoever
indicating that she was hung out here.
So if you just come out here and look it's
just an abandoned football field that's grown
up now and it's creepy.
[music continues. breathy noises over dark ambience]
[grating noises of tension]
[sounds like distant wind]
[creepy deep breath]
So uh it's still a big mystery
as to the exact location of where
the scaffold and the she
was actually placed to be hung.
It says that there was people that watched
this event from a hill
and that she was down
at the bottom of the hill.
So the location over here definitely fits
the description and all the scholars definitely
say this is the location where it was at.
We just don't have an exact
you know spot with a marker
saying you know this is where
Elizabeth Betsey Reed was hung.
So that's just weird.
I think a lot of people today are
more fascinated with the afterlife and the
spirits and ghost stories
than they ever have in the past just because
basically the tvs.
The tv has put a lot of people out there and
they've talked about it, they've seen it on tv
and they consider... it's more of
a way of life now than it used to be.
it was kind of the old thing was like
oh no. you don't talk about the spirits.
You don't talk about that type of thing.
In comparison to what it is today
it's more accepted.
And i think people enjoy going out
and they want to find more about the paranormal
and see what's out there and see what the
see what's happening.
Because they've all had experiences
and they've never wanted to talk about those experiences
until now.
They feel more comfortable that they can share those
and everybody's had an experience at
one time or another probably.
They just either don't know it
or didn't want to talk about it.
[ambient music still playing but very low key]
Historical records actually show that
the county just doubled in size you know
during her hanging like Dickerson said.
you know people came in from
all over the place to watch that.
And backing the story up just a little bit
but before she was actually hung as she was
being brought out to her execution site
she was actually put on her own coffin.
She was in a white dress
and she was on her own coffin
and she got religion you know.
She became very religious when she
found out (chuckles) she was going to get executed.
There was a guy that actually
baptized her
in the river near where the new bridge is
located at now in Lawrenceville.
So she got baptized you know found religion.
She was actually singing gospel songs
as she was going to her own grave.
Singing they said she was singing
all kinds of songs on the way there.
So that's kind of a weird and eerie side.
I’m sure too, seeing somebody sing
as they go to their grave.
There's a lot of,
a lot of reports you know with the haunting too.
You know people seeing that
that's what they see.
They see the residual activity
and the residual occurrence of
that event taking place so.
John Seed was a Baptist preacher who
did a sermon who was her minister at the time.
He
Once he gets her Betsey rides down the
hill to the side of the hanging
riding on her coffin on this robe.
And she's singing hymns on the way down there.
And this John Seed he's he's from Scotland
and he's a firebrand,
hell and brimstone preacher.
He sees whatever this crowd is
20,000 people
and he said he's going to deliver a sermon.
So he preaches for over an hour and it's a hot sun.
Betsey Reed
is sitting on her coffin yelling,
“hallelujah and amen” all the way through
the sermon.
And then she gets up,
Sheriff Samuel Thorn puts a bag over her head,
a white or excuse me a black bag,
and
then
pulls the or… chops the rope.
She hangs
and about a half… they let her hang for about a half hour
and then they put
her down into that shallow
open grave there underneath the gallows.
(Male Narrator, southern accent) Psalms 23: The Lord is my shepherd
I shall not want.
He maketh me lie down in green pastures.
He leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul.
He leadeth me in the path
of righteousness for his name's sake.
Yea though I walk through the
valley of shadow of death
I will fear no evil for Thou art with me.
Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
[different dark, ambient music begins]
(Dickerson) There’s a hill that the high school sits on now
and i guess a lot of people were sitting on it watching.
But some people decided to climb up in a tree
and sit on a branch.
Well
after they you know they announced the
conviction this that the other,
right as they were getting ready to throw the lever
to hang her,
the tree branch those people were sitting on broke.
Well when they fell they all screamed
and it stated that the majority of the crowd
heard the screams
and turned to look
to see what the commotion was about
and missed the actual hanging.
[music title: from the rope to the ground]
Now i don't believe there was any actual
organized protest at the hanging.
But I wanted this character to show up
and explain to
the audience watching the play
that this was something that was controversial.
Especially that it was a woman
who was to be hanged.
Although I think the
majority of people in this area
probably were a
pro death penalty
and they were excited
about this execution.
It was going to be something
entertaining to watch.
And we have an eyewitness account
of Alexander McCarter
who as a young boy came
with his grandfather, Hamilton, to
Lawrenceville to watch this.
Young McCarter was on his grandfather's shoulders
[female vocalization in ambience]
and at the time when
Elizabeth Reed dropped
from the gallows.
Somebody in a nearby tree
the limb snapped
and the boy's attention was given to the to
that and he missed the actual instant of death.
The common thought
has always been at the at the football field
of the old Lawrenceville High School.
All accounts
that I can gather suggest that
it was about a quarter mile to the east.
Walnut Street is in front of the high School.
That extended with
I believe Fifth or Sixth street.
Would suggest where the Mills Terrace
apartments is, which would have been
as good of a site
as could be, b ut the same story.
[old time projector sounds]
Some of our night investigations that we've
conducted out here
we've actually recorded strange
cold spots in the area that seemed to move.
And they moved through the football field
area behind me here.
We’ve heard what sounded like a scream at one point.
But we can't confirm that
it wasn't locals. You know we are in an urban area.
We try to debunk everything.
but we have heard mysterious sounds that
just they don't sound right you know.
They don't sound like your typical noises
you should be hearing out here.
We've captured [female vocalization in ambience]
a couple evps, electronic voice phenomena, out here.
But
not as much as what we have at Baker Cemetery,
which is where
you know we've got a really good evp
that we captured.
And we're going to be playing that i think.
But the the evp is extremely good
we captured at the cemetery.
But out here it's mostly sounds
just
things you see out of the corner of your eye.
But you're not sure it's there.
We haven't got a whole lot of scientific evidence
of stuff going on in the area
but we have physically seen and heard more things
than what we've captured on our equipment.
It’s definitely a location that I believe
is haunted you know [faint music fades out]
especially some type of
residual activity
definitely I believe exists here
due to the hanging that took place on
May 23rd, 1845.
[high-pitched note swells in and fades]
[soft, ominous music begins. new song]
You know there's a lot of times people
will talk at different spirits
in a location in a different building
and they always think they're talking to Charlie
or John or whoever
they think the spirit's talking about.
But I always look back and say, “you know
how do you know you're talking to that person?”
Because if I was a spirit at a location
you just want to talk to Susie
and I said yeah my name's Susie on a
by tripping an emf detector, something like that,
you really wouldn't know that was Susie or not.
You wouldn't know who it is.
It's hard to tell.
The only way I think that you can actually
really talk to spirits in a location is ask
them questions that
they may be the only one
that knows the answer to that question.
[base heavy synth note with wind instrument]
(Narrator) The next mystery of the case involves
the handing of Mrs. Reed’s body
following the hanging.
A confusing account states
that she was laid into a shallow grave
next to the gallows.
But newspaper articles of the time
confirm documents that reference
results from her autopsy.
[subtle, haunting notes]
Speculation is that it may have been
a temporary resting spot
to delay effects of the hot sun
until the body could be properly examined,
the necessity of which is debatable.
[music title: finding God in broken glass]
[light chimes throughout ambience]
[higher synth notes play slow melody over synth bass]
[sounds like synth vocalization. no words]
Well first of all,
a couple named Richards
decided to put a newer tombstone
at Baker Cemetery.
I think they were trying
to keep the history alive.
I didn't speak to them about it
I don't know exactly what their thoughts were.
And this one included Betsey's name.
There are…
So people assume because the tombstone is
there with her name on it that she's buried there
[music present but in background]
In all our research
we found a lot of different stories.
And um
the one that she was buried
under the scaffolding
after the hanging, if it's true,
she couldn't have been buried very long
because there was an article in the New York Times
in 1845
that talked about her autopsy.
And in the autopsy they found
that her stomach was…
had pieces of brick and glass
where she tried to commit suicide like
that to cheat the hangman.
And so
if they'd have buried her
I don't think they would have just
dug her up. I don't.
It didn't make any sense
that she was buried underneath
the scaffolding.
The other
things that I read that
seemed the most feasible to me
and the research I did
showed that this is what they did
with a lot of murderers
at the time was they weren't
to be buried
on ground that had been blessed or hollowed ground,
which were the cemeteries were,
since they had committed murder.
So they usually buried them outside the gates
or the fence
instead of inside the cemetery.
So from what I read
there's an entrance at the old
Lawrenceville
Cemetery
and that she was buried outside the gate.
And there was some kind of depression
you could see there for years.
And that supposedly was where Betsey was buried.
[haunting ambience continues. chimes]
Some people they still argue to this day
what happened after she was hung.
And this is where the real mystery comes in.
Because it doesn't matter who you talk to
everybody's got a different opinion on this.
There's some historical accounts that state
she was hung (buried) right there
on the old where the old football field
at right underneath the gallows.
And
the historical records show in some
of the records that
the doctors and there was
a group of medical students
that dug up her body
and used it you know
for examination.
Used it for medical purposes ,back in the day.
That's one story.
Another story is the family actually
dug up Elizabeth Reed
and brought her to where we
are currently standing today,
which is Baker Cemetery.
And that's the whole mystery
behind this thing too.
Is she actually buried here?
Those people that claim she's not.
There's hardcore skeptics that say
she is not buried in the cemetery.
[gentle but ominous ambience continues]
[sounds like synthesized vocalization. no words]
(Roger Creed) Okay I lived in this area for about 40 years,
about a mile a half up the road here.
I was on the cemetery board for
about eight years back in the late 90s
early 2000's.
And our duties were to repair stones and
trim brush.
This guy had this dowsing rod that he used
to find graves.
When he located the grave
we would try to find
to see if there was a missing stone.
[chimes]
And
he went over to Betsey's grave,
just for the heck of it,
and
he found actually two graves there.
And we were poking around trying to find
maybe another stone
and I found a I found that stone
it's got “ER” on it.
I dug it up.
Re-buried it because I didn't
want somebody to come along steal it.
But since then
somebody has placed it in concrete,
not exactly in the place that I found it but
somebody has placed it in concrete.
[music ended]
[new ambient music slowly fades in]
[long synth notes with echoes throughout]
[very eerie and creepy]
[bell chimes in the distance]
[deep, base thuds]
[music title:death by murder death by hanging ]
[long, synthesizer base note continues to hold]
[bell in the distance]
[obscure noises and echoes]
[possible synth voices, male]
[sounds like, "ahhhhhhhhhh"]
[no words, only ambient music]
(Snider) Some of the paranormal activity
and claims that we have
heard about and even experienced
ourselves in the cemetery:
people have reported seeing Elizabeth
Reed walk around in here in a white dress.
And if you look at the historical accounts
that's what they say she was
buried in because
she was hung in her white dress.
She rode to her execution site
on top of coffin in a white dress.
People reported seeing Elizabeth Reed
walking around here
at all hours of the night and
even daytime reports
of a lady in a white dress here.
That's one of the ghost stories
you know behind this cemetery,
that she still walks the cemetery grounds.
And people have also reported seeing her go
up and down the lane of the cemetery.
That's one of the cool ghost
stories behind this place.
And it's got to have some type of
evidence behind…
some type of real thing going on
because there's been so many people
report this event that
we can't really discount it
as people's imaginations
because there's been so many people see and experience that.
People actually told me that they
see something white move out of the corner
of their eye
and they'll turn and look and it's not there.
It’s never
a defined shape, a dress or anything.
It's just a white blur.
And multiple people have told stories that
didn't associate with each other.
They just came to me and said,
“hey I was there and this is what i experienced.”
It's weird when more than one person tells you
(Snider) For sure.
a story that when they weren't together
when it happened.
We have some
records that state that
she was buried underneath
the gallows
when the doctors did the autopsy.
[ambience continues)
But if she was buried there she wasn't
buried there to stay there.
Then there was
the idea that she was going
to be buried in the city cemetery.
The upstanding ladies of the town were not
about to have this “bloodthirsty tigress”
buried in their cemetery.
And so
in the play I had some
upstanding women of the community
stop them from
burying her in the cemetery.
And those women
repeated some of the
items that were supposedly given in
her confession
that was to be published.
And they also gave some other items that I
found in newspaper reports.
But then we believe
that her body was removed.
If she was buried in the city cemetery
it was removed and then buried
in Crawford County
or close to that line by
some relatives of the family.
I believe that she her body was removed
from and reinterred at the Baker Cemetery
in Crawford County.
I accept that notion.
Okay there is the mystery
is she buried here or not.
My opinion is that she
that she is.
Of course I don't know. Nobody knows.
But some of the things I’ve seen and heard
I believe she is buried here.
I was talking to an old timer
up the road here
and his grandfather, I believe it was
his grandfather, said that one night
he looked over here and saw a bunch of lights.
So he came over here
to see what was going on
and he found
several men with shovels and lanterns,
horses and a wagon.
And he asked them what
they were doing and they said,
“This is none of your concern
you need to leave.”
So he left.
And that's the night that we think
she was reburied
by family members.
[bell tolls in distance throughout ambience]
Yeah i mean
and you know we've kind of backed up
a lot of the claims here too
with scientific evidence.
We try to rule out
out all natural explanations before
we come to the determination
a location's haunted.
We've brought a lot of equipment
out here over the years.
We've used emf meters,
thermal imaging cameras.
We've set up infrared
camera systems.
We've been out here
night after night trying
to collect evidence of paranormal activity
out here.
One of the strange occurrences
that do take place out here
are strange electromagnetic field spikes.
We've had our tri-field meter
like just spike out here.
We've had emf meters go to like
anywhere from 3.2 to 7.2 milligauss for no reason.
We’ve documented and recorded strange
electromagnetic field phenomena out here,
balls of light,
just everything you can imagine
from strange feelings
to people smelling things.
I mean a lot of people
will also report the
smell of chocolate out here,
which is kind of weird because this is
another paranormal event
that's associated with this cemetery
that's not what really
related to the Betsey Reed story.
But over in that part of the
cemetery, over here,
there's a Heath buried over there.
The Heath family.
And if you look back into Crawford County
history the Heath bar was actually invented
in Robinson, I believe. (Dickerson) Mmmhmmm
You've got some of the Heaths buried here
in Baker Cemetery and (chuckles) people report
the smell of chocolate, which is really strange.
On one of my haunted tours,
this is kind of strange,
I had a psychic come up to me.
And this psychic, and this has happened on
two different occasions, two different people
that claim to be psychic
have told me the same story.
They said that Elizabeth
dances over here
and she likes it when I bring people here
on haunted tours.
And they say that she dances
around over here in the corner.
[background ambience very soft]
[faint echoes and airy sounds]
[ambient noises fade away]
Here at Baker,
over the times that we've been investigating,
we'll get one lead
and we'll think that,
“Okay this is the story and this is it.”
And then…
I’m a big believer in synchronicity
and I don't think anything's a coincidence.
And it just seems odd that
when we're looking for something,
something pops up that has
something to do with what
we're looking for.
So in the process of investigating this place,
I mean there's probably three or four other
places that we need to investigate
that's attached to this place.
No one really knows.
No one documented the story
so it's all hand-me-down stuff.
And one person says
you know,
“Well my family member knows this and said this”…
None of it's documented so
there's no written proof. Everything is
a story.
There's no
there's no truth
that you can actually read like look it up.
Cold hard fact this is what happened.
I think that's part of the mystery of the place.
I think that's what draws everybody here.
[music begins. synthesized female vocalization.]
[haunting melody]
[music title: beyond the grave]
(Narrator) This is the story of Elizabeth Betsey Reed
whose alleged crime, attempted escape
trial, conviction, execution, and burial
are debated to this day.
Modern perceptions lead many to look upon
the settlers of the 1800’s as backwater,
superstitious hicks
the Reed case wasn't deliberated
by the superstitious or the ignorant.
Rather, it was judged by the Chief Justice
of the Illinois Supreme Court,
argued by a former attorney general,
and a future Illinois governor.
The challenges the pioneers faced
and overcame on a daily basis
would overwhelm the majority of citizens today.
Modern misconceptions allow us
to dismiss the fantastic
in the light of day
while haunting our dreams at night.
[haunting angelic vocalization and eerie synth]
(Narrator) We leave you with one final
mysterious piece of evidence
that has been provided by
the Crawford County Illinois Ghost Hunters:
an evp recording which they believe is a direct
answer to the question,
“Betsey,
did you kill your husband?”
[music ends sharply]
[White noise]
[difficult to understand female voice]
[repeats phrase]
(sounds like, “I’m Innocent”)
[somber synthesizer music]
[rhythmic beat and repeating 3 note melody]
[music title: discovery]
[music fades to end]