Haunted American History

In September 1900, ten nuns and ninety-three children were trapped inside an orphanage on the exposed western edge of Galveston Island as a Category 4 hurricane swallowed the city. With one dormitory already gone and the Gulf rising through the remaining building, the Sisters made a decision. They cut down the clotheslines, tied groups of children to themselves, and waited for the water. When the orphanage collapsed, ninety children and all ten Sisters died. Days later, recovery crews found them scattered along the coast—still tied together. The knots had held.

Tonight, we tell the story of St. Mary's Orphan Asylum, the three boys who somehow survived, and a decision made in the final minutes before the deadliest natural disaster in American history destroyed almost everything around them.

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@HauntedAmericanHistory
TikTok - @hah_podcast
hauntedamericanhistory.com
Patreon- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/hauntedamericanhistory⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
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For generations, San Antonio teenagers have driven to an old bridge after dark, killed their headlights, and honked into the trees. According to legend, something eventually answers: pounding hooves, a woman's scream, the bray of an animal—and sometimes hoof-shaped dents discovered on the car when they finally make it home. They call her the Donkey Lady. But ask who she was and the story begins to change. A murdered farm wife. An abused mother. A woman drowned beside her donkey. A victim of Satanists.

Different decades created different monsters, but every version preserved the same basic story: a woman suffers a catastrophe she didn't cause, and somehow she becomes the thing everyone fears.

Tonight, we cross the Donkey Lady Bridge and explore one of San Antonio's strangest and most enduring urban legends.

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@HauntedAmericanHistory
TikTok - @hah_podcast
hauntedamericanhistory.com
Patreon- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/hauntedamericanhistory⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
HAH DISCORD - https://discord.com/invite/bJdbpH3hQm

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Two hundred feet from the Alamo stands a hotel that has never closed its doors. Presidents slept there. Theodore Roosevelt recruited the Rough Riders from its bar. Gunmen died beside its mahogany counters. And for more than a century, guests and employees have reported that some of the Menger Hotel's former occupants never actually left. A murdered chambermaid still carries towels through the third floor. A cattle baron walks through a wall where his bedroom door once stood. Roosevelt apparently still enjoys the occasional drink. And a man in buckskin has one question for guests unfortunate enough to encounter him alone: Are you gonna stay, or are you gonna go? T

onight, we check into the Menger Hotel...where somewhere between thirty and forty-five ghosts are said to have already answered.

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@HauntedAmericanHistory
TikTok - @hah_podcast
hauntedamericanhistory.com
Patreon- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/hauntedamericanhistory⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
HAH DISCORD - https://discord.com/invite/bJdbpH3hQm

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On November 22, 1987, Chicago sportscaster Dan Roan was recapping a Bears game when WGN suddenly went black. Fifteen seconds later, millions of viewers were staring at a man wearing a rubber Max Headroom mask. Twenty-eight seconds later, he vanished. Then, two hours later, he did it again—this time hijacking a Doctor Who broadcast for ninety bizarre seconds of distorted jokes, obscure WGN references, and a woman with a flyswatter. The FCC and FBI investigated, but nearly forty years later, nobody knows who did it.

Tonight, we investigate the Max Headroom signal intrusion: one of the strangest unsolved crimes in television history, committed by someone who may have known far more about WGN than he should have.

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@HauntedAmericanHistory
TikTok - @hah_podcast
hauntedamericanhistory.com
Patreon- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/hauntedamericanhistory⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
HAH DISCORD - https://discord.com/invite/bJdbpH3hQm

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In the 1920s, workers clearing a hidden dungeon beneath an Irish castle discovered so many human bones they needed horse carts to remove them. An estimated 150 skeletons had been thrown into the pit—some onto spikes waiting below. Then, near the bottom, they found something that shouldn't have been there: a pocket watch manufactured in the 1800s. Someone had apparently still been using the medieval oubliette centuries after the Middle Ages ended. And that's only the beginning. Murdered priests, poisoned mercenaries, ghostly children, a woman in red, and a grotesque entity whose arrival is supposedly announced by the smell of a rotting corpse all belong to the history and folklore of Leap Castle.

Tonight, we enter the fortress often called Ireland's most haunted castle... and meet the family that decided to make it their home.

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@HauntedAmericanHistory
TikTok - @hah_podcast
hauntedamericanhistory.com
Patreon- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/hauntedamericanhistory⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
HAH DISCORD - https://discord.com/invite/bJdbpH3hQm

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