The Disappearance of the Sodder Children
Christmas. Family. Ended. The disappearance of the Sodder children will be one of America’s most popular unsolved mysteries. This mystery has haunted Fayetteville, West Virginia for over seventy years. The Sodder family was like any other family spending time together on Christmas Eve, but it ended too soon. After that night, for over fifty years; the disappearance of the Sodder children are surrounded by these two theories: they tragically died in the fire or they were kidnapped.
The Sodder children disappearance left others puzzled, yet it left the people of West Virginia intrigued. Christmas Eve 1945, the Sodder family had ten children, one away in the army, and had just finished opening their presents. Before George and Jennie headed off to bed with the youngest, Sylvia, Jennie “told the children to turn the lights off, close the curtains, and lock the door” (MacGowan). Apparently, many believe that the children’s disappearance can be traced to these tasks. Throughout the night, Jennie woke up three times. The first time, she awoke to a phone call in the office. It was a woman that Jennie didn’t know and told her that it was a wrong number (MacGowan). The second time, she woke up to an item being chucked onto the top of the house (Horn). The last time, Jennie woke up
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Approximately, the fire had grounded the home in thirty minutes (MacGowan). Although many speculate that the fire was blistering enough to incinerate the remains, belongings in the home were still identifiable. (Newton 349). Before the fire started, a passerby saw “unknown persons lobbing ‘balls of fire’ onto the Sodder’s roof” (Newton 349). Consequently, this leads to help support the theory that the Sodder home was burned from the roof down instead of upwards (Newton 349). This theory has been the most supported theory because it is the most
On the way over to burglarize the home, the group of 5 juveniles rode their bikes and stop on the way to feed some ducks, then dumped their bikes in some bushes. At the last minute, two of the five juveniles took off. Leaving behind Kane, who didn’t want to be labeled a scaredy-cat, and 19 year old Alvin Morton and 17 year old Bobby Garner. The group of juveniles expected the house to be empty, but found 75 year old Madeline Weisser, and her son 55 John Bowers were in fact at home.
The Williams family was the last to live in the Oklee depot. It was in bad shape after the great elevator fire in the fall of 1967. The depot probably would have caught fire if it hadn’t been for my father, my uncle and the help of the townspeople who doused the rooftop continuously while the flames roared just across the track. The windows of the depot were so hot that you couldn’t put your hand on the glass without burning yourself. The main telegraph window broke and the paint blistered and peeled.
Strange things began to happen the next couple days. First, Joey was in the living room of Grandma’s house making a jig saw puzzle. He heard the sound of a horses hooves walking slowly on the street then the sound stopped in front of the house and heard someone put something in Grandma’s mail box. Joey heard the horse walk away and a little while later Grandma’s mailbox blew up. Next, Ms. Wilcox’s outhouse was destroyed by a cherry bomb. Then, a dead mouse was found floating in the bottle of milk that was delivered to the front
...d. While some say that Charles killed them himself, others argue that Caril was there helping him. The story behind the tragedy may never be known, but while the corpses of Velda, Marion and their youngest daughter were rotting in a chicken coop and the outhouse, the young couple lived in their home for several days. Though a great amount of people were suspicious of the sign on the door saying “Stay Away Everybody is Sick with the Flue”, by the time someone did something about it, the young couple had fled.
Stated by John Ramsey, “As I was walking through the basement, I opened the door to a room, and knew immediately that I’d found her because there was a white blanket- her eyes were closed, I feared the worse but yet- I’d found her” (Bardesley, and Bellamy). On December 26, 1996, one of the most famous, unsolved murders took place in Boulder, Colorado (Christopher). The murder caused many events including accusations, interrogations, false claims, and examining of evidence. The case also caused the Ramsey family to go through a hard time. The murder of JonBenet Ramsey was very shocking and caused a huge investigation that is yet unsolved.
Ghosts and goblins are lurking around every corner. Mysterious creatures are waiting to jump out of every shadow. The boogieman and his accomplices are posted under the bed and in the closet, counting the minutes until children go to sleep so that that can attack and scare the life out of them. We all grew up with these fears in the back of out heads. There is always at least one person and one building in every town, whether it be small or large, with a story... a history of mysterious, paranormal behavior. The little town of Canton, Missouri is no different.
The case begins with a report of a house fire in a Virginia suburb. When firefighters arrived and extinguished the flames, they made a horrible discovery. All four members of the house were dead. 41-year-old Blaine Hodges, 37-year old Teresa Hodges his wife, and their two young daughters, 11-year-old Winter and Anah who was just 3 years old. Investigators arrived and interpreted the burn pattern. They also discovered the presence of an accelerant. They determined that the cause of the family’s death was not an accidental house fire. This immediately shifted the focus from an accident to something more sinister.
'Is it true that long ago firemen put fires out instead of going to start them?’ ‘No. Houses. have always been fireproof, take my word for it.’ ‘Strange. I heard once that a long time ago houses used to burn by accident and they needed firemen to stop the flames.’ He laughed.
Before the fire broke out on Sunday night, October 8, 1871 there had been a large drought causing everything to be dry and extremely flammable. Many fires had been breaking out in Chicago. Records show that in 1870 the fire fighters went to nearly 600 fires. On Saturday night there had been a large fire that destroyed about four blocks and lasted for 16 hours. Another reason why everything in Chicago was so flammable was because almost the entire city was made out of wood. It was a lot worse in the middle class and poor sections of the town (19). Just about every house was made out of wood. Even buildings that claimed to be fire proof had wood roofs covered with tar. The richer part of town had stone and brick homes, but wooden interiors, wooden stables, and wooden storage buildings (Cromie, 81). Chicago was built on marshland and every time it rained the city flooded, so to help this problem the roads were made out of wood and elevated above the waterline. The day the fire started there were over 55 miles of pine-block street and 600 miles of wooden sidewalks. “Chicago in 1871 was a city ready to burn,” according to Jim Murphy, author of The Great Fire (Murphy, 18).
Regine Donner, a famous Holocaust survivor, once said, “I had to keep my Jewishness hidden, secret, and never to be revealed on penalty of death. I missed out on my childhood and the best of my adolescent years. I was robbed of my name, my religion, and my Zionist idealism” (“Hidden Children”). Jewish children went through a lot throughout the Holocaust- physically, mentally, and emotionally. Life was frightening and difficult for children who were in hiding during the rule of Adolf Hitler.
Spirit had nowhere to go. The family lived in harsh conditions and drug abuse played a major role in their lifestyle. The abuse was constant and extreme. According to the article, Florida’s child care services had gone out to the home on several occasions, however, the six children were never taken. The agency also never gave reason as to why they did not remove the children from the house. According to witnesses, the children expressed aggressive like behavior at school as well. One witness mentioned how his son had tried to befriend the oldest Spirit child but he had to interject because he noticed the aggressive like behavior that he displayed in school and he did not want that type of behavior rubbing off on his son. The oldest son had very little friends and he was constantly in fistfights. The superintendent of the school stated that he never saw any concern to interfere when it came to these issues. Unfortunately, the perpetrator murdered everyone in the household, including himself (Alvarez, Robles, 2014). Had someone intervened, would that family had been saved? Had the school picked up on the children’s behavior, could they have been one less
In Corsicana, Texas Cameron Willingham and his family’s home was burned down the twenty-third of December is 1991. According to the report Cameron was asleep when the fire started and survived the accident with only a few injuries, as for his children they were not so lucky, they lost their lives to the tragic accident. At the time of the accident Cameron’s wife was buying presents for their children for Christmas. According to a witness and her Daughter Diane and Buffie from a few houses down went outside and saw Cameron screaming, “My babies are burning up!” Diane and Cameron tried countless attempts to rescue the girls from their room until the fire department could get there. According to the New Yorker “The house, in short, had been deliberately transformed onto a death trap.” According to the reports on December twenty-fourth and twenty-seventh of 1991 the fire was declared arson and they later decided to conduct a criminal investigation. Cameron was questioned by the investigators on December 31st and was then later arrested on January 8th of 1992 for the death his three daughters.
...ta Bank, the disappeared, and the relatives of the disappeared are still being found and identified presently.
The Great Fire of London, as documented by Samuel Pepys and other writers, began on the early morning of Sunday, September 2nd 1666 when a fire erupted at Pudding Lane in Thomas Farriner’s bakery (Dailey and Tomedi 43). Farriner, who was the king’s baker, went to fetch a candle some time close to midnight. While going to get the candle, Farriner observed that his oven was not lit and that there were no embers. However, two hours later Farriner and his family awoke feeling “almost choked with smoked” (Shields 80). Farriner quickly dashed over to the top of the stairs and found flames making their way up from the shop below. According to Farriner, the fire was not in the proximity of his over nor the pile of wood close to his house (Shields 81). However this and the actual cause of the fire in the house are debatable due to Farriner possibly attempting to remove any blame placed on him from the fire by lying in his testimony of the in...
They had three girls and four boys. That isn 't a terribly huge family because back then all of the families were big. However, there kids were a bunch of rascals. There are many stories about bad things that they have done and some of them could have caused death if they weren 't so lucky. For example, one time my aunt Tara was jumping on a bed and my uncle Brett had a .22 caliber long rifle in his hands. I don 't remember how but it went off and shot the wall behind where my aunt was jumping. Another crazy story was when they my uncles and my dad were having a BB-gun war. My uncle who was the oldest in the family, besides my grandma and grandpa of course, was hiding behind some balls and peeked his head out. My dad saw him and shot at his head, which wasn 't a very intelligent decision. After he shot him my uncle reared his head back in pain. My dad said at first I thought “Oh shit I shot his eye out.” Then ran up to him and saw that he was bleeding from the mouth. Instead of shooting him in the eye he had hit him in one of his from teeth causing it to dislodge from his gums and fall to the ground. They never found his tooth and he now has an artificial tooth which is very easy to see because it is larger and more bland color than all of the