Hello, and welcome to Crimes and Witch Demeanors, the paranormal podcast where we go beyond the Wikipedia page and delve into historic and primary sources to find the truth behind your favorite ghostly tales.  I’m your host and loveable librarian – Joshua Spellman.

Welcome back, by the time this is airing it’s officially fall and I couldn’t be more excited to break out my layers!  But if I’m being honest – I think I’m a little bit more excited for today’s episode.  There are so many versions of this story it’s hard to find out which is the definitive one and the thing that’s crazy is that they’re all so different!  Like…so…different.  I did my best to include them all but I think you’re going to love today’s ghost story.  It’s the quintessential thing that local legends are made of but unique in such an oddly beautiful way.

Today we’re not straying far from where I am now and venturing down to the quaint hometown of Lucille Ball…Jamestown and no, we’re not talking Lucy’s ghost here, we’re talking about one she would have heard legends of growing up and one that she is buried with…the Lady in Glass.

Five young kids drove in the dark.  Their fear and anticipation had left them silent; unsure of what the night would bring.  They bumped and bounced along the ill maintained roads until the headlights of the old Chevy Malibu pierced the hazy night, highlighting the large stone sign declaring their destination: “Lakeview Cemetery”

“We’re here” Cyndi, the oldest, and the driver said in an almost whisper, parking the car a little down the road as to not raise suspicion. 

Jack, the youngest at only 8 years old, and Cyndi’s brother, let out a small whimper that he hoped the others didn’t hear. 

“Oh shut up, twerp” Cyndi said, turning off the lights, and climbing out of the car and lightly closing the door behind her.  The others followed: Jack’s two friends, Riley, the girl he had a crush on, Dane, his best friend, and Corey, Cyndi’s boyfriend.

“Thanks for driving us” Dane said.  The other muttered their thanks too before Corey motioned them to be quiet, and waving them to follow him.  The five kids walked a little ways through the woods before hopping over a low stone wall and into the cemetery.

Corey passed a flashlight to Jack and another to Dane before whispering “Well, we all know why we’re here, right?” he asked.

They looked at each other, nodding, some more assuredly than others.  “It’s the anniversary of her death” Corey continued “The Lady in Glass.  All the way back in in 1898 Grace Galloway was to be wed.  She was beautiful and came from a wealthy family.  She was an heiress like Paris Hilton or something and the man she was marrying was carefully chosen by her father.

But she was in love with someone else.  Grace had been having a secret affair with her chauffer and couldn’t bring herself to marry a man she didn’t love.  On the night of her wedding, as she was pleading with her lover who had decided to leave.  He had decided it was best she marry and live a happy life where she would be provided for.  She was heartbroken but decided to carry on.  But when it came time for the wedding…her fiancé never showed.  It turned out he had overheard her conversation with her chauffer and left Grace at the altar.

With her heart broken by not only one, but by two men that left her, Grace died of a broken heart.  This monument” Corey paused, shining the light dramatically behind the group, lighting up a beautifully eerie scene: behind them was a large stone pedestal, and atop it was an incredibly lifelike statue of a woman, encased completely in glass, “This monument” Corey continued “was made.  But something strange began to happen.  Some nights the statue would be missing from its stand and would wander the cemetery crying out for her lost love.  Because of this they had to put glass around it to keep it from wandering off, but her spirit can still be seen wandering the grounds…and if you see the monument without the statue in it…beware…”

“Wait wait wait” said Cyndi “that’s not how the story goes.  First of all, Grace died the night before her wedding when she fell of a party boat into lake Chautauqua and that’s not any old statue.  The reason it looks so lifelike is because her body is actually encased inside.”

“Well,” Riley started “I heard she actually made it to the altar but she was stung by a bee.  She was allergic and she dropped dead right there in her wedding dress – that’s why she’s wearing it!”

“Okay…you’re all wrong” Dane said defiantly, “she died on her prom night when her and her date crashed their car.”

“Well…” Jack started pointing at the stone “she was a little old for a prom date…”  He was right, the stone read October 5, 1871 – November 2, 1898. 

“Oh…maybe I am wrong” said Dane.

“Anyway…” Jack continued “I heard that after her fiancée left her at the altar that she was so heartbroken that she literally turned to stone and her body isn’t just inside the statue…it is the statue.”

They all stared at it in awe.  It really was so lifelike, down to the details in the lace of her dress, it did almost look alive.

“Well,” said Cyndi “I’m going to go over to Lucy’s grave with Corey” she said with what could only be the look of teenage love in her eyes “We’ll be back to get you”

As the older kids walked off, the three young ones sat there.  They could see their breath in the November air.  They shivered a little and decided to play a game of hide and seek.  They only had one flashlight with them and it was decided Jack would keep it since he was “it”.

They walked aways from the Lady in Glass before Riley and Dane spun Jack around a few times as he began to count “30, 29, 28” they thought it would be funny to hide back in the car and let Jack wander around for a bit “3, 2, 1!” Jack said, opening his eyes. 

He stumbled around a bit, still pretty dizzy.  He shone his flashlight around “Ready or not, here I come!” Jack began to look around the cemetery; peeking behind headstone and looking in bushes but he couldn’t find his friends.  He heard a laugh in the distance…his sister, clearly having some quality time with her boyfriend.  Jack kept searching. 

Eventually he circled back around to where they had begun.  His flashlight scanned the ground and he began to track the beam up the monument but a sound behind him startled him.  Thinking it was Dane or Riley…he followed.  But what he didn’t notice was that if he had shone his light just a touch higher…the glass case was empty.

“I hear you!” she shouted futilely into the night “You can come out now!” but there was nothing there.  He saw a shadow dart behind a large oak tree and what sounded like the giggle of a girl.  “Riley!  I know you’re there!” he shouted, nervously coming closer “you can come out!”

But as he approached the tree the laughing sounded more like crying.  But he could see that Riley was there, he could see part of her jacket from behind the trunk of the tree. Was she wearing white?  He couldn’t remember.  He stepped closer and closer, ready to tag her.  Her spun around the base of the tree but before he could shout “You’re it!” he choked on his words.  Standing there wasn’t Riley, but the pale ghostly figure of a woman, tears streaming down her face, sobbing.  The lady looked up at him, a flash in her eye and something changed within her.  Suddenly the cemetery was silent.  Not even the crickets were singing anymore.  But before Jack could run or scream, he felt a cold marble hand slide over his mouth and everything went black…

I love this story so much, oh it’s so rich.  I’m hoping to visit the Lady in Glass this fall and simultaneously pay respects to the queen of sitcoms.  It’s on my potential list for these drag-ified versions of the podcast I want to do for tiktok.  But I digress.  What.  A. Legend.

My favorite part of this story is all the different iterations – from falling from a boat, a fatal bee sting at the altar, dying of a broken heart on her wedding day, a prom night accident, the paranormal phenomena of turning to stone – to all the reasons why her statue is there and what  it is.  That her body is actually encased in the stone?  And what I love even more is that this legend was circulating around when Lucille Ball was growing up in Jamestown.  I would love to know what little Lucy thought of the Lady in Glass and if she ever snuck into the cemetery at night to see if she walked the grounds.  I just adore that image.

But we’re not here to fantasize we’re to fact…i…size?  We’re here to get to the facts.  And it turns out the real story…doesn’t share any common threads with the legend.  It’s wild.  They’re two completely different tales but I can see why some of the legends started but we’ll get to that later.

Who was the real Grace Laverne Galloway?  And why is her statue encased in glass?

Grace Galloway was born on the 5th of October 1871 to Sara and John Galloway, a wealthy man who earned a fortune in the oil fields of Titusville, PA.  She was the Galloway’s only daughter and had two brothers: Fred and…well…I’m not sure.  Other sources say that she had another brother but I wasn’t able to find record of him anywhere.  Not a grave, not a census record…nothing.  Even the family tree the Galloway’s put together doesn’t have him on it.  Not saying he didn’t exist…just that for the online records I have access to it doesn’t seem like he did.  But I digress.

Grace, or Gracie as she’s adorably listed in the 1880 Federal Census, grew up in a mansion which is now the Moose Club in Jamestown.  Grace was known to be an outgoing and friendly girl but despite this she was never known to be involved romantically with anyone.  Instead she focused intensely on her career and ambitions in music.  Grace had a gorgeous singing voice and it wasn’t long before she became an opera singer.  She would often perform at the Chautauqua institution.  Her talent was so immense that she was given the chance to perform with the New York City Metropolitan Opera--but her father forbade it claiming “it was an inappropriate thing for a lady to do”.  I have no verifiable source for this tidbit but it does sound decidedly Victorian.

Naturally, since she couldn’t perform in Opera she was sent to Boston to study music there.  Makes sense?  But maybe her father was onto something because while in Boston, Grace contracted tuberculosis.

Desperate to help their ailing daughter, the Galloways sent her to Asheville, North Carolina hoping that the warmer climate would improve her health.  Sadly, Grace showed no signs of improvement and it was decided that she should return home to Jamestown.  However, on this return journey her condition rapidly deteriorated while passing through Pittsburg – and it was here that she died on November 2, 1898.

I found her death listed in the Pittsburgh Press from November 3, the day after saying: “Wednesday evening, November 2, 1898 at 8:30 o’clock Grace L. daughter of John and Sarah Galloway, aged 27 years”

This wasn’t really an obituary but a death notice.  Grace did a lot of traveling with her father when she was younger – I saw a lot of travel notices for her – so it’s no surprise that I found a notice all the way in Ohio in the Crawford County Forum saying:

Word has been received by friends in this city that Miss Grace Galloway, of Pittsburg, is probably fatally ill with consumption.  Miss Galloway officiated as bridesmaid at the marriage of Mrs. James Cass, nee Lizzie Monnett, and while a visitor in the city not only made many personal friends, but became quite well known as a singer.  Very many Bucyrus people will be grieved to learn of her ill health”

And honestly they’d probably be grieved to know that she had died 9 days earlier.  But I do like this notice because it sheds light on her personality and how much of a light she was to those around her.

Her family was naturally devastated by her death and her father, inspired by a statue he saw in a cemetery in Buffalo (holla! We do have an incredibly famous cemetery where Rick James is buried…actually less than a mile from my apartment but I digress!)…he was inspired by a statue in Buffalo and wanted to create a monument for his daughter.

John Galloway commissioned an artist in Pittsburgh to model Grace’s figure in clay from her latest photograph.  She was made exactly to her size and figure – 5 foot 6 – and then the clay model and one of her dresses was sent to Italy to be sculpted from marble.  Now some sources say that the dress was one of her “lawn outfits”, some say it was picked out at random, and another, the Fenton History Center, says that it was said to be a graduation dress made by Mrs. Loyal Bushee who was a seamstress for wealthy families.  Regardless, it was a beautiful dress with intricate lace detailing which was sculpted expertly – probably giving rise to the notion that she was a bride, as the marble would make it white and it looks a lot like a wedding dress.

John Galloway and his own father were masons by trade and constructed the base of the monument.  Upon seeing the fine detailing of the sculpt, and fearing that the statue would be weathered by the harsh elements of Western New York winters, tit was decided it would be enclosed in glass.

This encasement has kept the remarkable detail of the statue, which you can peek on the podcast Instagram, and it’s so lifelike that it’s no wonder people may think her body is actually encased in the stone – which is not what happened though as mentioned briefly in the Niagara Falls episode that is a unique form of burial used only in Niagara Falls called cementation where that actually happens…but I digress.  If you want me to do an episode dedicated to that weirdness let me know!  But ANYWAY…yeah, just a really gorgeous statue.

Hello, and welcome to Crimes and Witch Demeanors, the paranormal podcast where we go beyond the Wikipedia page and delve into historic sources to find the truth behind your favorite ghostly tales.  I’m your host and loveable librarian – Joshua Spellman.

Today we have a very exciting ghost story filled to the brim with scandal, murder, and historic characters ranging from Thomas Edison to Wyatt Earp the outlaw but even these prominent figure are obscured by today’s ghostly tale.  Trust me, it’s juicy, and we have all the gossipy progressive-era tabloids to prove it.  And boy, are some of these newspapers gorgeous, so make sure to check them out on the podcast Instagram. 

Also thank you to everyone who purchased some merch from the shop!  You are true bibli-ahh-graphers!  If you want to support the podcast please go ahead and grab something for youself, crimesandwitchdemeanors.com link in the description!

So, anyway, you’re here for the salacious historic scandal and the modern haunts that resulted from it.  So put on your sunnies, grab a parasol, we’re headed to Santa Cruz and learning the legend behind the Golden Gate Villa and the tragedy that transpired there…

Considered one of the most historically significant homes in all of California, Golden Gate villa is perched atop Santa Cruz’s historic Beach Hill neighborhood.  It’s face is painted a buttery gold with a bright orchid trim; cheerful colors that belie it’s dark and twisted past.

Major Frank McLaughlin was born sometime around 1840.  During his early career he served on the police force in Newark, New Jersey and developed a life-long friendship with esteemed inventor Thomas Edison.  He fought with Union forces briefly during the Civil War, but his stint was brief and it’s unlikely this is where he earned his military title.  Instead, it is thought he achieved it from his later activity with the California state militia.

McLaughlin became an engineer on the Pacific Railroad, helping to lay tracks across the plains and the Wild West.  In the Wild West he earned quite the reputation, known as “one of the quickest men on the frontier” and was one of only a handful of men to ever challenge Wyatt Earp and live to tell the tale.

In 1877, McLaughlin returned to the East coast where he began to court a New Jersey widow by the name of ­­­­Margaret Loomis.  During this period Thomas Edison was developing the incandescent light bulb but ran into trouble finding a dependable source of platinum to use as filaments.  Without this precious metal, he would not be able to market his invention.

McLaughlin suggested that Edison source from the Feather River in California, as McLaughlin heard that there had been a find there.  Upon this suggestion, Edison commissioned McLaughlin to head out west and prospect for the mineral.  Before he did so, McLaughlin married Margaret Loomis and adopted her young daughter Agnes.

Like with most of his endeavors, McLaughlin went all-in.  It was said that he "never settled for the petite when the mammoth was available" and his exploits in Butte county were no exception.  He soon earned the title “King of Feather” for his domination of the river where his sights quickly turned from platinum to gold.  He soon began to make a fortune, but he was smart never to invest his own money – instead he organized companies he would manage giving himself a hefty salary.

During this time McLaughlin commissioned San Francisco architect Thomas J. Welsh to design a home for Margaret and Agnes to escape the brutal summer heat.  McLaughlin instructed Welsh to "spare no expense in making Golden Gate Villa the showplace of Santa Cruz” – and that he did.  The mansion was named the after Golden Gate Mining Company, which managed the operations back in Feather, and provided all the funds for his lavish home.  Naturally, being friends with Thomas Edison, the home was outfitted with the newest luxury available – electricity.

The home was magnificent and the McLaughlin’s hosted many events including costume parties, magic shows, musicals, fireworks displays, and the first moving picture ever shown in Santa Cruz.  Agnes became a figure of note in the local community and was pronounced as “indescribably pretty”, a “petite beauty with rose leaf complexion”, and as the “ideal American girl” by a number of publications.  Perhaps it’s no wonder the focal piece of the Golden Gate Villa is a gigantic stained glass portrait of a young woman reaching to pick an apple blossomed branch.  Rumour has it that McLaughlin cut some of Agnes’ hair to be mixed in with the color of the glass.  Despite Agnes’s earthly beauty and love of parties and extravagance, she regularly attended mass with her dog…who she often sprayed with expensive cologne.  Agnes had never married, though she almost did once.  She was engaged to a man named Sam Rucker, and while the invitations to the ceremony were sent nothing ever came of it. 

While the McLaughlin women lived in luxury in Santa Cruz, McLaughlin was busy with various endeavors: From olive orchards to orange groves, to a 9-mile tunnel at Big Bend, a 30-mile flume for the hydraulic mine, and funding development in the area, McLaughlin was quickly amassing a fortune.  However, his biggest endeavor was to divert the water of the Feather so that gold could be mined from the river bed.

Receiving letters of recommendation from Thomas Edison, the governor, and two California state senators, McLaughlin travelled to London to try and secure investors.  He was charming, as usual, and made such an impression that the newspapers declared that “Not since Benjamin Franklin had an American made such an impression on English society”  McLaughlin seemed to have luck in all of his projects and this trip was no different – due to a misunderstanding he came home with $12 million in funds…a great deal more than he planned or ever dare thought to get.

However, the project itself would not see the same luck.  The project took four years to complete the end resulting in a 7,000 foot long canal and a retaining wall twelve feet wide and twenty feet high.  It became one of the greatest mining feats of the era and Thomas Edison, McLaughlin’s chum, provided the first electric lights ever to be used on a construction site as the workers labored all hours of the day.

When the water was diverted and the riverbed dry, McLaughlin was the first to take his shovel to the dirt.  While he struck gold in London, much like the river, this project would soon run dry.  McLaughlin was sure that he would make a 100 million return on the initial 12 million invested but the project ended in catastrophe.  Instead of hitting gold, he hit bankruptcy.  All they found were small gold nuggets, old rusty picks, and buckets.

It turns out that McLaughlin was 50 years too late. Half a century earlier, 49ers diverted the same river with a simple wooden flume, exhausting all the gold in the area and walking away with a fortune.  The locals of the area knew this, and knew that McLaughlin’s project was doomed from the start but decided to keep it a secret to watch the man go down in flames.

Like his previous project, McLaughlin declined to invest any of his own money, and upon learning this, the English investors were furious.  They found out that McLaughlin had lost no money at all, and was paying himself a generous salary.  Queen Victoria herself launched an investigation and sent Scotland Yard to investigate. However, when the agent arrived, he was scared off by McLaughlin who wasn’t afraid to wave his pistol about…he did survive an encounter with Wyatt Earp, a timid Englishman was nothing to him.

McLaughlin soon got into politics, earning quite the reputation as a staunch frontiersman and capitalist though he never held office he became chair of California's Republican State Central Committee during the 1896 presidential campaign and was credited with carrying the whole state for McKinley.  In fact, McLaughlin was offered a seat in McKinley’s cabinet though he declined, just as he declined to run for governor despite the pleas of the people.

Mrs. Margaret McLaughlin died in on November 16, 1905, turning Frank into a widower and leaving her daughter Agnes behind.  On that same date in 1907, Agnes attended an early mass in memory of her mother.  After returning home, Agnes retired to her bedroom in the tower to take a nap.  While Agnes slept someone entered her room unnoticed, pressed a 44 caliber pistol to her temple, and fired.

Knowing that his step-daughter was sleeping, Major Frank McLaughlin set their maid out on an errand before going upstairs and murdering his beloved step-daughter.  Shortly after the deed was done, McLaughlin called his banker William Jeter and urged him to come to the home immediately.  Jeter was preoccupied and could not come but McLaughlin insisted shouting "You must come at once. I have just killed my Bob (his pet name for Agnes) and I am going to kill myself.”

And he did.  He ingest a fatal dose of potassium cyanide, dying just as his friend arrived.  To everyone’s shock…Agnes had survived…at least for the time being.  While she survived the initial wound at the hands of the Major, she succumbed to her injuries at 6:30 that evening.

Newspapers published salacious headlines for weeks that ran alongside the obituary that McLaughlin had penned himself.  The tragedy was naturally a hit with the media being full of scandal and intrigue as it was.  McLaughlin for the most part was an incredibly popular and well-liked man and the thought of this crime was nearly inconceivable.  Why…how on earth could he do such a thing?

You see, this was not just a random act of violence or a crime of passion.  It was not executed on a whim.  No, the Major had been meticulously planning the did for months which he outlined in the documents he left to Jeter including farewell letters to friends and family, instructions, and an explanation for his crime.

It turns out that McLaughlin was beginning to suffer financially, though he kept it hidden from everyone.  Major McLaughlin feared falling into poverty and being unable to provide for his step-daughter that he loved so dearly.  He wrote in his letter “"To leave my darling child helpless and penniless would be unnatural and so I take her with me to our loved one. She is the very last one who could face this world alone.”

However, at the inquest it was revealed that he could have liquidated his estate and had a large surplus to spare – hardly leaving him or Agnes impoverished.  Some supposed he was simply embarrassed by his failure at Feather River, his reputation shattered by the incident.  However, no rationalization could really explain why he did what he did.

Though whispers around Santa Cruz gave wind to a new theory.  Many thought it strange that after Mrs. McLaughlin’s death that Agnes continued to live with the Major since she was not of blood relation to him.  The fact that she had remained unmarried well into her thirties also didn’t quite sit right with the local community.  In fact, they could recall that many years prior announcements of Agnes’ marriage to Sam Rucker were sent out but that the wedding was cancelled at the last moment…presumably because the Major couldn’t bear to see her married to another man.

Then, a man by the name of Christian R. Wolters, a prosperous merchant in the city, stepped forward claiming that the was secretly engaged to Agnes at the time of her murder…making it hard to believe that Major Frank McLaughlin couldn’t stand to see his step-daughter fall into poverty when she would be well-provided for by her would-be husband.

Regardless of his motivations, whether the Major was truly in love with his step-daughter or whether he just could not stand the thought of aging alone in the villa without a family he wrote in his letter “I love her so and so I take her with me”  In a letter to the family doctor, F.E. Morgan, McLaughlin wrote  “Please see that we are not cut up, at least that my pure sweet child is not” and on the outside of the envelope he had written “Dear Doc. Please do me one last favor and chloroform our old cat”

And so, the mystery remains.  However, inside the confines of the shining Golden Gate Villa the spirit of the McLaughlin’s remain…if only they could divulge their secrets the living…

I got a lot of my information from an article in the November 17, 1907 issue of the San Francisco Daily call titled “Frank McLaughlin Kills Daughter and Himself at Santa Cruz” which had an interesting juxtaposition with another article “Suicide Ends Happy Love Affair of Girl – takes poison when father refuses to consent to wedding.”  Just such similar situations but different ends – albeit both tragic ones.

But the majority of my information, or the source I followed to historic ones was by a life-saver of a librarian or historian from the Santa Cruz Public Libraries local history collection by the name of Susan Dormanen.  There wasn’t very much online at all historically speaking and Susan wrote a great piece, and like any great librarian, had an endless supply of footnotes for me to peruse leading me to the primary sources.

I found it interesting that reports of McLaughlin fighting Wyatt Earp were published awhile after his death, no doubt the papers were still riding the coattails of the tragedy.  On the 19 of November two interesting stories came out, and while they came out later it does make sense that they would – they wouldn’t have had much reason to publish these prior but I think it gives an interesting look into the Major’s personality…at least towards those that weren’t his wife or Agnes. 

­­1

Always a Foe of Earp Major McLaughlin was unsparing in his denunciations of the rascality of Wyatt Earp, and it was said up and down Market St. that Earp had vowed to shoot McLaughlin on sight... When the two encountered one another at Johnny Farley's Peerless saloon, Earp and the little Major had a staring match for a thrilling instant in which the petulant pop of the pistol was expected by all. But the Arizona gun man saw that he could not intimidate through many a gun play on the western frontier, and so he said with a tone smacking something of an apology: 'I know, Major McLaughlin, that you would not have made such remarks unless you believed them to be true,' and left the saloon while the man he was supposed to kill on sight took his time over his drink, uttered a few jocular remarks for the benefit of the bystanders, and went his own way with a nerve seemingly shaken not at all.[5]

No Fear of a "Bad Gun"

There was never any doubt of his physical courage or his willingness to accept a challenge from any bad gun man. When he was managing the campaign of D.M. Burns for the United States Senate there were many threats that he would be killed, and one day in the corridor of the Golden Eagle Hotel in Sacramento he met Major Goucher of San Diego, who was supposed to have a particular grudge against him. Major McLaughlin calmly spat in Major Goucher's face and pushed him with his left hand. Goucher made no effort to resent the insult and afterwards said: "I was too wise to be taken in by that old frontier trick. He spat in my pistol eye, and pushed me off with his left hand, so that he was free to draw on me with his right."