Author: skatoulaki

The Hedley Kow: A Shapeshifting Trickster from Northumberland Folklore

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Every village has its legends, but some are stranger – and rarer – than others. In the county of Northumberland in England, nestled among quiet hills and stone cottages, people once told stories of a mischievous trickster known as the Hedley Kow. Unlike dragons or witches, the Kow was not a creature of menace, but one of laughter, illusions, and odd lessons in perspective. While it is an obscure folklore tale today, it once delighted children and puzzled adults around the hearths of Hedley on the Hill. 

A Glimpse of the Tale

The story begins with a poor old woman walking along a lonely road at dusk. Life had not been easy for her – her purse was light, and her cupboards were bare. As she walked on this evening, she spotted something lying on the side of the road – an old iron pot.

“Well now,” she thought, “this will do nicely. A pot is always useful, even if it is cracked.” And with that, she decided to carry the pot home. She leaned down to pick up the pot, and to her amazement, the pot was filled to the brim with gold coins! The old woman’s heart leapt. “Fortune smiles at last,” she whispered and quickly tied her shawl around the pot to hide its gleam.

illustration of an old woman holding a pot that holds a trickster; obscure folklore

Dragging the heavy pot along the road, she thought of all the fine things she might buy: bread and butter, a new dress, perhaps even a proper Sunday roast; but as the shadows lengthened, the pot began to change. Feeling something amiss, she turned to peer into the pot again, only to find that the glittering gold had turned to shining silver. She gasped, then quickly consoled herself. “Well, silver’s not so bad. Easier to spend…and less likely to be stolen.”

After a few minutes of continuing her trek home, she peeked into the pot again. The silver was gone; in its place lay a heap of sturdy iron. Her back ached from pulling the pot along behind her, but she nodded firmly nonetheless. “Iron’s always useful. I can sell it for a fair price – or mend a gate with it. Better still, it won’t tempt thieves.”

The road wound on, and she pulled the pot along behind her, finally stopping to peer inside once more. The pot had become nothing but a large rock. For a moment, her poor shoulders slumped, but then she chuckled to herself. “Well, a good, solid stone will prop open my cottage door nicely. It’s not gold, but it’s something.”

She reached home and leaned against a fence post to rest before turning to fetch the stone from her shawl to find that the stone was no longer there. Instead, she heard peals of laughter ringing through the night. The rock had sprung to life, leaping and dancing down the lane, cackling in a voice that was neither man nor beast.

It was the Hedley Kow – a shapeshifting spirit of the Northumbrian hills, known for playing tricks on unsuspecting folk. Off it ran, vanishing into the dark, leaving the poor old woman laughing too. “Well, I’ll be! Lucky me, to see the Hedley Kow with my own eyes!” And with that, she went to bed not sorrowful, but smiling, for she decided she had gained more in cheer than she had lost in gold.

What is the Hedley Kow?

Unlike many spirits in folklore, the Hedley Kow was not feared so much as it was tolerated. It was a shapeshifter, known to take the form of pots, animals, or even bundles of cloth. Its purpose was simple: to trick people into believing they had stumbled upon treasure, only to watch their reactions as the treasure turned to dust, stone, or laughter. Yet the Hedley Kow was never cruel; its tricks ended not in ruin, but in surprise and often in amusement. In some ways, it was more a clown than a monster – teaching lessons about greed, expectation, and the fleeting nature of fortune.

Lessons in the Tale

At first glance, the story of the old woman and the pot seems like a cruel joke: she goes from gold to silver to iron and finally to nothing at all. However, the genius of the tale lies in her attitude.

At every stage, she interprets her changing fortune positively:

  • Gold was wealth beyond measure.
  • Silver was safer and more manageable.
  • Iron was useful for work and trade.
  • A stone even had a place in her humble home.

Instead of despairing, she adapted, and in the end, even the revelation of the Kow left her laughing. In this way, the story isn’t really about being tricked. It’s about contentment, resilience, and the gift of humor.

Why It’s Obsure – and Why It Matters

The Hedley Kow comes to us from Joseph Jacobs’s 1894 collection More English Fairy Tales, in which he preserved stories passed down through oral tradition in Northumberland. Unlike giants, fairies, or Arthurian legends, the Kow never found wide fame outside its region. Perhaps this is because its lessons are gentle or its nature is too odd to spread broadly. But this obscurity is what makes the tale valuable. It captures a distinctly local spirit: a Northumbrian sense of humor, a glimpse into the mindset of ordinary villagers who lived with little and laughed at much.

The Hedley Kow is more than a mischievous sprite; it’s a reminder that sometimes fortune is not in what you have, but in how you see it. The poor old woman never lost her joy, no matter how her treasure transformed. In fact, the final trick gave her the greatest gift of all: the rare chance to laugh with a spirit of legend.

So the next time your life shifts your gold to silver or your iron to stone, remember the Hedley Kow – and try to see the fortune in what you do have, rather than the misfortune in what you don’t.

The Gods (?)

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One of my earliest childhood memories is waking up in my bunkbed one morning (I slept in the upper bunk since I was older than my sister). The head of our bunkbed was against the southern wall of our bedroom, and the right side was against the east wall. The walls were painted pale blue. We were living in a small white house that my parents rented around the corner from my maternal grandparents.

When my grandparents moved to the next town over, my parents bought their house, and we moved into that house when I was 6. When I had this experience, I was probably either 4 or 5 years old; I lean more towards 5 because I’m approximately 2 years older than my sister, and if I were 4, she probably would have still been in a crib and not in a bunkbed.

When I woke up one particular morning, on the wall beside my bed, I saw three figures in all I can describe now as bas relief. The first figure was a sun, the second a moon, and the third a deer (at least that’s what my child-brain interpreted it as; it had elaborate antlers, so it was a stag). I’ve tried to find images that most closely resemble what I saw. I am pretty sure the sun and moon both had faces.

Was it a dream? A hallucination? I can only say that it felt very real to me, and when I got up that day and was sent outside to play, the very first thing I did was run around to the east side of the house to see if the stag’s body was sticking out of the side of the house. I recall a feeling of confusion when there was nothing there, as well as disappointment.

I can still see these figures in my mind when I think on this memory. They were not “colored” in that the sun wasn’t yellow, the moon wasn’t white, and the stag wasn’t brown. They were all the same color as the wall, that pale blue, with shadows that made them appear 3-dimensional, or bas relief.

The sun was on the left, the moon in the center, and the stag was on the right (and closest to my face). The stag also protruded out from the wall, almost like a hunting trophy mounted deer head that people hang on their walls. If I had to guess at their size, they were all probably 16″-20″ across and the same top-to-bottom, not overly large, but not very small either. I’m trying to judge the size as an adult comparing their size to the size a twin bunkbed would be.

I’ve kept this memory for my entire life and often find myself wondering if it has any significance. I can easily say, “Oh, maybe that’s why I love symbolism and the occult,” but who knows. It could have just as easily been a dream.

The Bonfire

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I grew up in an area of Massachusetts that is part of the Bridgewater Triangle, which is a large area in the state where weird, strange paranormal and other events occur more often (supposedly) than outside of that area.

When I was 20, I was dating a guy named Ed. I related this story several years ago to a Bridgewater Triangle researcher, so this story appears elsewhere on the web somewhere (or it did at some point). Not sure if I used a pseudonym for Ed, but anyway, Ed was his real name.

Ed and I were parked in the main parking lot at Lake Nippenicket, which is also known locally as The Nip. We were in my 1975 Ford Mustang, probably making out. Across the lake from us, we noticed a huge bonfire on the beach, with several people dancing around it. Ed thought it might be some friends of his, so we decided to drive over there and check it out. He drove, since he knew the way in and out of that part of the Nip. It was bumpy old dirt roads (not ideal roads for a Mustang).

Once we reached the area where the bonfire was, there was no sign of a bonfire, nor did it look like there had been one there anytime recently. We stood on the beach, gazing across at the parking lot where we’d been parked before, certain we were in the right spot, but we looked up and down the beach and saw nothing. It was also dead quiet. If it was further along the shore, we’d have at least seen a glare from the fire reflecting off the water and we definitely should have heard voices. We saw and heard nothing, and there was just this creepy feeling while we were there.

We sat in the car for a few minutes, looking at the water, and we saw something rise up out of the water. It looked like a snake or turtle head, definitely something organic, maybe about 6 inches across….with one giant eye in the center of it, staring at us like a periscope.

That was it for us! Ed started the car and we drove back out and back over to the parking lot across the lake. Once back on the opposite shore, we could again see the bonfire as well as the group of people dancing around it. We had definitely been in the right spot, there’s no doubt in my mind.

The Ouija

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I was listening to the Belief Hole podcast recently, to an episode they did on the topic of Ouija boards, so I thought I’d share a couple of my experiences.

There is a Ouija board that hangs on the wall in my home office. I’ve had this board since I was a kid. I still remember what the box looked like. I don’t remember where or when we got it, but I remember the box was tattered and broken. It was the box pictured below, though this one is in MUCH better shape than ours was.

From what I have been able to find, this packaging was used in the 50s and 60s, and the box image changed in the 70s. Our board, this would have been in the very late 70s, early 80s that we got it, probably picked up at a yard sale or flea market, because my family was big into those things back then.

I remember my sister and I “playing” with it a few times, and my mother said it was evil and tossed it in the trash. I found it under the bureau in our room a few days later. I think I may have mentioned in a previous post that I had an abusive mother. Of course, she assumed we pulled it out of the trash, so I got a beating for it being back in our room, and she tossed it again. A week later, she found it under my bed. Another beating, another toss in the trash. When it turned up under our bureau again, this time I just hid it away in the top shelf of our closet, way in the back. Mom being only 5’2″, she wouldn’t have known it was there lol!

By this time, because it had been trashed so many times, the planchette had lost its little plastic pointer. The round clear plastic part was still intact, but the little pointer had broken off, so there was a tiny hole in the center instead of that little pin thing hanging down.

Years later, when I moved away from home, I left the Ouija board behind, forgotten way in the back on that top shelf of the closet. With my sister and I both gone from the house, our younger brother (9 years younger than her, 11 years younger than I) knocked the wall down between his tiny bedroom and our bigger bedroom. Doing so, he emptied out the entire room, closet included. The next time I saw him, he handed me the battered old Ouija box and said, “You left this in the closet.”

So I brought the board home and it moved with me, buried in the bottom of some box or another, from our first apartment to our second apartment to our third apartment and finally to our house when we bought it (closed on Halloween 2003!), at which point, I found it. I think the box is still in the house somewhere, I don’t remember. I don’t think I’d have thrown it out. I’ve heard enough stories about Ouija boards being destroyed that looking back, I realized that the thing belongs to me, whether I want it to or not, and I’m okay with that. It has a nice home and someone who respects it, doesn’t mess with it, doesn’t treat it like trash.

Pulling it out of the box in the early 2000s, though, the planchette is fully intact, pointer and all, which is weird. I mean, I know we never replaced the planchette. The board pretty much just languished in the back of that closet shelf until my brother gave it back to me. I know the pointer was missing in the 80s, but now it’s fully intact. The Ouija board now hangs on the wall of my home office behind me (actual pic to the right here), and I have the planchette hanging from a piece of fishing line. I haven’t actually used it since I was a kid. After the Belief Hole episode, I’ve thought about pulling it down off the wall and giving it a go, but I don’t know if I will. BUT, I will share a story about an experience that I had with a Ouija board in high school.

As I said, I grew up with an abusive mother. It made me weak…well, maybe meek is a better word. I was meek and mousey when I was a kid. I was also small and skinny. I got bullied incessantly, from grade school right up through high school. I guess I was an easy target. In high school, the marching band was my saving grace. I wasn’t in the band, but I was in the color guard (I spun a rifle). So most of my high school friendships were there. I still was a square peg trying to fit into a round hole, even with them, but the glory of it was that they didn’t care. They accepted me for my weird self.

One time after a band competition, there was a party at one of the band member’s houses. In the family room in the basement, a bunch of us girls started messing with a Ouija board that was down there. There were two sisters – I’ll call them Carol and Lisa Quimby. Their last name did begin with a Q and Carol’s first name did begin with a C, and I’ve kept those initials because they’re important to the story. Carol was older than me by two years, and Lisa was younger by a year. I think at the time, I was a sophomore, Lisa a freshman, and Carol a senior. The board seemed to respond especially well to Carol, and when the older kids decided to go upstairs and left us younger kids downstairs, we kept trying to talk to the Ouija board. I asked it if I’d ever get married, and the board responded with “CQ.” We rolled our eyes, thinking it wanted Carol Q. to come back, and I asked again, and again, the board responded with “CQ.” The third time I asked, the board then kept responding “CQ CQ CQ CQ CQ” over and over again. We all just thought it would only respond to Carol Q., so we lost interest and put it away.

Fast forward about a decade, and I met the man who would become my husband, and his initials are CQ. I didn’t remember the Ouija board incident at the time; it wasn’t until a few years later when it popped back into my brain and I remembered. I even brought it up to Lisa Q. at some point, and she remembered. Her sister had passed from cancer a couple of years before, and we were talking about her, and that’s what made me mention the Ouija board incident.

Interestingly enough, I’ve also since learned that CQ is an amateur radio call essentially meaning ‘Calling all stations.’

So do I believe we can communicate with spirits through the Ouija? I don’t know. Was the CQ just a coincidence? I don’t know. Maybe. I mean, if the initials were something more common, maybe I could completely write it off as a coincidence, but last names that begin with Q aren’t all that common as say Jones or Smith or Brown. So who knows. And maybe…whomever or whatever was speaking to us through the board that night was simply putting out a call to anyone who was listening… “Calling CQ, CQ, CQ, CQ…”

Moth

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For most of my childhood, I languished in a cocoon of my own making, hiding from a monster that was trying to pass itself off as a “mother” and mean kids who mistook my meekness as a sign of weakness rather than a sign that I was just hiding from monsters.

When I finally left home, I began – slowly – pecking at the inside of that cocoon, trying so hard to emerge from that shell of loneliness and false safety. As I grew older, I started to poke through the shell and let the air and sunshine, the mist and moonlight, in a little bit at a time.

Moth created with MidJourney AI
2023 Skat / MidJourneyAI

What finally emerged from the cocoon was strange and weird and newborn and fresh and raw, a soul seeing light for the first time but also fully aware of (and embracing) the shadows. I don’t think it was a butterfly, colorful and bright, emerging from a chrysalis. I think it was more likely a strangely beautiful moth, fluttering by night under the light of the moon, flittering around the world and alighting on the weird and beautiful ugly things that other people shun. When it flits around, finding its way through the world, it lands on things randomly, fascinated with the wonders of the world.

There is little structure in its wanderings; it finds joy in simple pleasures – it plays and frolicks as it sees fit, spontaneously and serendipitously; sometimes it lands on one thing for a while, stays for a bit and becomes enraptured. But then it’s off again to the next big adventure or the next beautiful thing, where it might land for a moment or a lifetime before moving on again. These are the games I play, the books I read, the shows I get addicted to and spend a month binge-watching, the weird conspiracy rabbit holes I dive into.

People often misunderstand this moth and try to catch it in a net and put it in a cage or, worse, pin it to a board to enjoy it at their leisure. Then they label it and decide what type of moth it is, how it should behave, what its likes and dislikes are, even though they haven’t taken the time to watch it in its free state…only as it’s pinned to their board. The moth stays because it’s contained there or pinned there, but it yearns to fly and explore. It stays there because it’s expected to stay there, and instead of protesting, it simply stays there, maybe fluttering a wing every now and then, maybe escaping for a brief amount of time.

I’ve spent a lifetime learning to love myself and embrace myself for exactly who I am and who I have become. That person is not someone who is set in routine and structure. She’s spent decades learning to keep her inner child alive, to be a free spirit and enjoy the things that give her pleasure. She spent the majority of her first 17 years almost completely friendless – her only friends were her dog, books, and music, in that order, and she lived inside her head. The older she got, the less closed off she became, and she began, bit by bit, to allow people into her world. Even all these years later, the number of people in that world can be counted on the fingers of one hand…because it’s a very exclusive world and only very special people get to enter the gates. They’re the ones who see her weirdness, acknowledge her weirdness, and love her anyway. When one of those people turns against the world – they (exes, ex-friends) get shoved out the front gates, and the world inside shrinks a little; she pulls it inward and the gates remain locked for a good long while.

This is to say, I’ve been burnt by a lot of people in my life, people I thought were friends, but who for whatever reason could not understand who or what I was. They mistake my silence for coldness, my inability to deal with conflict (I freeze) as non-caring. The more they badger me to explain my words or my actions, the more I shrink back into myself, all but retreating back into my broken cocoon.

It took me all these years to realize that other people’s reactions are not my problem. Other people’s inability to understand me is not my fault. The fact that I don’t fit into their way of thinking or being isn’t something I should feel guilty about. I’m happy with my small circle of friends, and I won’t let anyone fuck that up again. Quality over quantity…and finding people who “get” me is more important than holding onto people who don’t care to try.

Words of Wisdom from Ernest Cline

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image of Ty Sheridan as Wade Watts, Ready Player One (film)

Human beings were never meant to participate in a worldwide social network comprised of billions of people. We were designed by evolution to be hunter-gatherers, with the mental capacity to interact and socialize with the other members of our tribe – a tribe made up of a few hundred other people at most. Interacting with thousands or even millions of other people on a daily basis was way too much for our ape-descended melons to handle. That was why social media had been gradually driving the entire population of the world insane since it emerged back around the turn of the century.

 

I was even beginning to wonder if the invention of a worldwide social network was actually the “Great Filter” that theoretically caused all technological civilizations to go extinct, instead of nuclear weapons or climate change. Maybe every time an intelligent species grew advanced enough to invent a global computer network, they would then develop some sort of social media, which would immediately fill these beings with such an intense hatred for one another that they ended up wiping themselves out within four or five decades.

Wade Watts, Ready Player Two, Ernest Cline

Pod People!

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image of cute cartoon dog wearing headphones (artist: Jeff Bartels)
image © Jeff Bartels

What are you listening to?

I am remarkably new to the world of podcasts. A coworker turned me onto one last year (This Podcast Will Kill You), and from then on, I have become obsessed. I started out with strictly paranormal/weird pods, but I’ve since expanded my listening pleasure to include true crime pods as well. There is some crossover with the paranormal podcasts sometimes covering true crime topics too. In fact, I’m not sure “paranormal” is actually the correct name to use – maybe “weird” would fit better. Forteana might fit as well, but a lot of people don’t know that term. Most of them cover everything from aliens to cryptids to serial killers, so they have a WIDE breadth of topics and episodes. Sort of the equivalent to the psychological thriller film category?

I listen on Spotify (which probably shows you how much of a noob I am, right?), and here are some of my current favorite pods! You can click on the image for each podcast to visit their website. A few of these I support on Patreon. Patreon is a great way to support creators of all types – podcasters, artists, musicians, content creators!

Morbid podcast logoMorbid: A True Crime Podcast. This show is hosted by two women (Alaina and Ashley) who are local to me (New England). Alaina is an autopsy technician (how fitting!) and Ashley is a hairdresser. Alaina is Ashley’s aunt, but they were actually raised as sisters. This one’s in my Top 5! Currently 95 episodes (approximately). They pepper in some “listener tales” (and other) episodes which they don’t seem to include in their episode numbering. 

Killer Queens podcast logoKiller Queens. Killer Queens is also hosted by two sisters – Tori and Tyrella. They actually remind me a lot of the Morbid chicks, but they are the southern belle version, hailing from (I think) Tennessee. Also in my Top 5! I think KQ and Morbid are tied as my #1 true crime podcasts. Currently 82 eposides (approximately? They only recently started numbering their episodes).

Hysteria 51 podcast logoHysteria 51. Probably my current #1 paranormal podcast, this one’s hosted by John Goforth and Brent Hand, along with their annoyingly lovable and sociopathic robot, Conspiracy Bot (and his occasional sidekick-bot Kyle). They cover everything from cryptozoology to aliens to serial killers to mysterious disappearances. Currently 158 episodes.

Blurry Photos podcast logoBlurry Photos. This was my first paranormal podcast, and I literally devoured every episode and fell in love with the two hosts – Dave Stecco and David Flora. Then around the 2018 mark, Stecco left, leaving Flora to host solo. The format changed a bit at that point, became more structured, and while I definitely missed the interaction between the two hosts, it’s still one of my Top 5, and David Flora has gotten into his groove now, I think. He also shows up occasionally on Hysteria 51. There are a LOT Of episodes with a very wide breadth of topics! Currently 232 episodes.

Last Podcast on the Left podcast logoLast Podcast on the Left. Rounding out my Top 5 is Last Podcast on the Left. LPotL is hosted by Ben Kissel, Marcus Parks, and Henry Zebrowski. These guys do live shows in addition to the podcasts and recently returned from Europe and are currently doing gigs in the US. Kissel and Zebrowski are both comedians (Zabrowski is also an actor), and Parks is a podcast producer and researcher, all longtime friends. This one took some getting used to because sometimes it can be overwhelming (especially if they have a few guests on the show). Sensory overload! Very, very, VERY broad topic range! From their website: “Last Podcast on the Left barrels headlong into all things horror . . . dark subjects spanning Jeffrey Dahmer, werewolves, Jonestown, iconic hauntings, the history of war crimes, and more. Whether it’s cults, killers, or cryptid encounters, Last Podcast on the Left laughs into the abyss that is the dark side of humanity.” Currently 385 episodes (approximately). These guys also do a lot of “side” episodes that I don’t think are included in their episode count.

Spooky Southcoast podcast logoSpooky Southcoast. Honorable Mention to a very long-running podcast that is also a radio show on a station local to me here in Massachusetts is Spooky Southcoast, hosted by Tim Weisberg. This show started airing on AM radio in southeastern Massachusetts in 2006. Besides Weisberg, the SSC team also includes a co-host/psychic medium (Stephanie Burke), content director (Chris Balzano), and a science advisor (Matt Moniz). I’d heard previously of Chris Balzano, as he has authored several books on local folklore (including on one of my favorite topics, the Bridgewater Triangle). They also have a wide array of topics, focusing mostly on southeastern Massachusetts area folklore (Bridgewater Triangle, Lizzie Borden, urban legends, etc.). Currently 577 episodes.

If you’re a podcast aficionado, I’d love to hear about your favorite shows as well as suggestions for a podcast-specific app I can use that would offer me more features than Spotify.

The Suitcase Mystery

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First things first…I first registered 99shadows.com back in 2000/2001 and, through my own stupidity (and having way too many email addresses to keep track), it image of shocked woman and the words Oh The Horrorexpired in 2016 because I missed a payment and by the time I realized it, it was too late to get it back. Imagine my horror when it “reappeared” online as an…eyeshadow blog. 

I have spent every June since then hoping and praying that the owner would not renew the domain, and sure enough, that’s exactly what happened last month, and I was able to retrieve it through a backorder and an auction (you know, at one point, I even offered the owner a couple hundred bucks for it…I got it back for $29). Woo! 

Anyway, I’ve decided to go in a different direction with the site now. Lately, I’ve been (obsessively) listening to paranormal and true crime podcasts, so what better topics for a site called 99Shadows than the weird, morbid, and creepy, right? 

So…please bear with me as I resurrect my site and enjoy this true crime story that I wrote in anticipation of being back in the shadows!

I grew up in the small town of East Bridgewater, Massachusetts. About 25 miles south of Boston, it’s considered a Boston suburb, but it’s very rural to those of us who live there. The neighborhood where I grew up consisted of a lot of image of several young people on a dock at Waldorf Park, Robins Pond, East Bridgewater, Massachusetts circa 1950s or 1960ssmaller homes, most without basements, that had started their lives (as my childhood home had) as summer cottages, several of them occupied only by their Boston area owners during the warmer months.

Across the street from our house (north) was a two-story Cape house and to its east was a one-story ranch. Between those two houses and sort of diagonally across the street from our house was an empty lot. This empty lot went back to a large wooded area that was behind all of the houses on the opposite side of the street from us, all part of a large piece of property belonging to a woman whom we knew as Evelyn Waldorf. Evelyn seemed ancient when I was a kid, and my mother said she was old when she was a kid as well (my mom grew up in the house I grew up in).

The property was known as Robbin’s Pond Park Campground, but we all just called it “The Park.” The actual campground, and Evelyn’s house, were on the other side of the woods and accessible by Pond Street, which wasn’t very close to us at all. Hillcrest Road turned into a dirt road across from our house and if you went all the way to the “end,” it became a sort of trail that led into the woods, and that’s the way most of us kids went into The Park (and got chased out by Evelyn a lot of the time).

Evelyn would occasionally drive down our road and stop her car at the empty lot across the street. This was her way of maintaining “ownership” of it because it really was part of her property, though we had neighbors who seemed think if they mowed the grass there, they’d eventually own it by right somehow. 

image of map depicting the area of Waldorf Park at Robin's Pond, East Bridgewater, Massachusetts

Anyway, it was mostly a sloping field with some big raspberry bushes in the middle of it, and we kids used to use it for neighborhood games like Red Light/Green Light, Red Rover, and for sledding in the winter.

My mom told me a story once that she’d heard when she was a kid about Evelyn’s mother being murdered, but she didn’t know all the details, just that she’d been decapitated. She also said that Evelyn’s family had changed their last name afterwards to dissociate themselves from the case.

As someone with an inborn fascination with all things weird, I of course needed to know more about Evelyn’s mother, but it wasn’t until the advent of the internet that I finally got my answers. As it turns out, Evelyn’s surname at birth was actually Wolschendorf. Her mother was Alice Mildred (Orcutt) Wolschendorf. I’m not even sure how I first found the story about Alice’s death, other than perhaps a simple search for “murder” and “East Bridgewater” and perhaps tossing in “Evelyn”…but eventually I found the story of “The Suitcase Murder.”

On September 1, 1923, the headless, dismembered torso of a woman was found floating in a suitcase in the Merrimack River near Tyngsboro, Massachusetts. Two days later, the limbs belonging to that body were discovered in a second suitcase in the river two miles away. Detectives in cities across the state began trying to figure out who the woman was and eventually learned, through a scar on a finger of her right hand identified by her husband George Wolschendorf, that she was his wife Alice, age 43, who had been missing. William Bowen, by whom Alice had been employed as a chauffeur, also identified the body by way of the scar.

From information supplied by the husband and Alice’s employer, police began investigating two men – Dr. Dalva H. Swope of Brockton, Massachusetts, and Dr. William H. Robb of Boston, and on September 14, both men were arrested. Dr. Robb was charged with illegal surgery, resulting in death, and Dr. Swope was charged as an accessory (he sent her to Dr. Robb’s office), though he (Swope) was never brought to trial and died in January 1926.

As additional confirmation of the story my mother told me is a news article from the Trenton Evening Times (a New Jersey paper) on September 29, 1923, which stated that George Wolschendorf told a reporter that he “has taken steps to have his name changed from Wolschendorf to Waldorf. ‘I hope in this way I may free myself and my children from association with the suitcase murder some time in the future. The name Wolschendorf has been dragged through the mire.’ “

Interestingly, William Bowen attempted suicide by poison and slashing his own throat with a razor on September 16, 1923, apparently despondent over the case (he survived initially, but from the news article below, it appears he died at some point afterwards). Mrs. Wolschendorf was last seen when her son Harold and Mr. Bowen drove her to the vicinity of Dr. Robb’s office in Boston on August 27, 1923.

Other news reports covering the case indicate that Dr. Robb told authorities where they could find the missing parts of the body and directed them to a camp in the woods of New Hampshire where the body had been dismembered and where the head and other missing parts were found. Another article said that Alice was the mother of four children with her husband, but that she and George were separated. Her employer, William Bowen, was a real estate developer and the father of seven children.

On December 8, 1923, the following article appeared in The Morning Call (Allentown, Pennsylvania):

CONFESSION CLEARS UP “SUITCASE MYSTERY”
Doctor Dismembered Body After an Illegal Operation

Cambridge, Mass., Dec. 7. (AP)—The solution of the “suitcase mystery,” one of the most sensational cases to come before the police of Massachusetts in years, was written today when Dr. William H. Robb, held under an indictment of first degree murder, in connection with the death of Mrs. Alice M. Wolschendorf, of East Bridgewater, pleaded guilty to a charge of illegal surgery in Middlesex Superior Court. Dr. Dalva H. Swope, of Brockton, indicted as accessory before and after the alleged murder, was re-indicted today as an accessory before and after the illegal operation. District Attorney Arthur K. 1923 newspaper clipping image of Mrs. Alice M. WoschendorfReading moved for sentence next Tuesday. The murder indictments have not yet been nol prossed.

On the first of September of this year, the headless and dismembered body of a woman was found floating in the Merrimack river near Tyngsboro, Mass. Two days later, the limbs of the body were found in a second suitcase in the river two miles away. State detectives and the police of a dozen cities joined in the unravelling of the mystery. Through a scar on a finger of the right hand, the body was identified by George Wolschendorf as his wife, who was missing. William Bowen, who had employed Mrs. Wolschendorf as a chauffeur, also identified the body by means of the scar.

Through information furnished by the two men, the authorities investigated the movements of Dr. Swope, of Brockton, and Dr. Robb, of Boston. On September 15, Dr. Robb and Dr. Swope were arrested. They protested their innocence.

Two days later, William Bowen, Mrs. Wolschendorf’s former employer, committed suicide, although the investigation had never linked his name with the crime.

According to investigators Mrs. Wolschendorf died under ether in the physician’s office and then, to avoid identification, the body was dismembered.

Anyone reading this, especially in the 21st century can pretty much guess what happened. Alice became pregnant and didn’t want to be pregnant. Dr. Swope directed her to Dr. Robb for an “illegal operation,” and unfortunately, she died during the procedure. We can speculate about who the father of the pregnancy was, but since it was never disclosed, we should probably just leave it to the past.

Evelyn Waldorf (nee Wolschendorf) was born Oct. 6, 1910, so when my mother was growing up in the 1950s, she very well could have seemed “old” to her, and she certainly was old to me growing up in the 70s. She died on August 4 2005 at age 96. She bequeathed her property to the Full Gospel Tabernacle of Brockton, Mass., but the last I saw it had been sold to a developer and there were issues with the Native American historical significance of the area hindering the development of the land.

UPDATE 7/28/2019: I did a bit more research on this case via Newpapers.com and found confirmation that Mrs. Wolschendorf died as a result of an abortion procedure. On Dec. 7, 1923, Dr. William Robb pleaded guilty to a new charge of abortion. On Dec. 12, he was sentenced to either 5-7 years or 7-10 years (accounts vary) and directed officials to the location of the parts of her body that were still missing (her head and her pelvis).

1923 news clipping with headline "Dr. Robb gets 7 to 10 years" 1923 news clipping: image of men with headline "Officials Entering Woods in Acton Where Part of Body Was Found"1923 news clipping: image of men examining site with caption "Place in woods at Lexington where Dr. Robb pointed out to officers the head of Mrs. Alice Wolschendorf; Left to Right - Dr. M. J. Ailing, medical examiner of Lowell; Dist. Atty. Arthur K. Reading and Medical Examiner George B. Mcgrath of Boston"

A sad end to a tragic story, but at least there is now closure. It’s also a very timely story considering all the folks in 2019 who are trying to make abortion illegal again.