Just off the northern tip of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, where Lake Huron turns cold and clear, there’s an island that remembers. Beneath the postcard charm of Mackinac-- the fudge shops, the bicycles, the horse-drawn carriages-- lies a history far older and far deeper.

Before it was a tourist destination, it was a center of trade. A crossroads between worlds. And at the heart of it all was Magdelaine La Framboise, a Métis fur trader, Odawa woman, and entrepreneur who built one of the most successful trading empires in the Great Lakes.

Her story is one of power, loss, and legacy, a woman navigating between languages, faiths, and nations at a time when few women held any authority at all. She retired to Mackinac Island decades before it became the place we know today, leaving behind a church, a school, and a memory that the island still carries.

This is the story of the woman who kept the island alive long before it became a souvenir.

Welcome to The Archives.Bloodstained: Exploring Michigan's Darkest Murders Forgotten By Time
Householdhistory.com
Instagram: @allieinthearchives

Michigan’s first “official” serial killer is usually dated to the 1960s. But the records say otherwise.In 1916, a new husband, a picnic, and a bag left at a Grand Rapids grocery store unraveled a man of many names-- James Allen, James Curtis, John Allerton-- until only one remained: Henry Scott Mausell. We trace the pattern that shadowed Mausell for years: a dead son, two sisters in a staged scene, and countless women who answered his letters and disappeared.  
Welcome to The Archives.Bloodstained: Exploring Michigan's Darkest Murders Forgotten By Time
Householdhistory.com
Instagram: @allieinthearchives

When we think of pirates, we picture the tropics. Rum. Cannonballs. Eye patches and parrots. But not all piracy came with a flag. And some of it happened much closer to home.

In this episode, we dive into the eerie and violent history of piracy on the Great Lakes and inland waterways-- from the Harpe Brothers and the bloody bluffs of Cave-in-Rock to the Apostle Islands bandits and a timber thief turned government informant. These are stories without palm trees. Without treasure maps. Just cold water, easy targets, and men who vanished into the fog.

Welcome to The Archives.

Instagram: @allieinthearchives

At the height of its influence, the House of David was a utopian religious colony in Michigan—a place that promised purity, community, and the second coming of Christ. But behind its walls, something far darker was unfolding. This episode unearths the rise and fall of Benjamin Purnell, a charismatic preacher who claimed to be the seventh and final messenger of God. As his following grew into the thousands, so did the accusations: fraud, abuse, and the exploitation of teenage girls. We trace his early life, his mysterious disappearances, the shocking 1927 trial, and the devastating legacy left in his wake.

Bloodstained: Exploring Michigan's Darkest Murders Forgotten By Time
Householdhistory.com

Instagram: @allieinthearchives

On Christmas Eve, 1913, nearly 700 striking miners and their families packed into the Italian Hall in Calumet, Michigan, for a children’s holiday party. It was meant to be a moment of joy during a season of hunger and fear.

Then someone shouted a single word: Fire.

What followed was one of the most horrifying tragedies in Michigan’s history. Seventy-three people died, fifty-nine of them children. And over a century later, we still don’t know who was responsible.

In this episode, we travel to the copper mines of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, trace the rise of Calumet, and examine the brutal strike that set the stage for a massacre. We follow the grief, the cover-up, and the generations-long fight for truth.

Because the fire was a lie.
But the cost was real.

Welcome to the Archives. 

Bloodstained: Exploring Michigan's Darkest Murders Forgotten By Time
Householdhistory.com
Instagram: @allieinthearchives

You’ve heard of the KKK.

But you probably haven’t heard of this other group.
The one that wore black robes instead of white.

That hid in mayor’s offices, police stations, and factory floors.

That didn’t march, but hunted.

They called themselves the Black Legion.
And for a time, they were one of the most dangerous domestic terror groups in the country.

In this episode, we uncover their strange origins, their brutal tactics, and the chilling truth behind the murders they carried out—including the suspicious death of a Black activist in Lansing… whose son would later be known as Malcolm X.  

Welcome to the Archives. 

Bloodstained: Exploring Michigan's Darkest Murders Forgotten By Time
Householdhistory.com
Instagram: @allieinthearchives

On a warm August evening in 1930, fifteen-year-old Alice Collier was sent to the corner store to buy a dozen eggs. She never came back.

What followed was a citywide search, a grieving mother’s voice on the radio, and months of rumors that led nowhere-- until a rabbit hunter stumbled across her body in a field nearly ten miles from home.

This episode traces the disappearance, the brutal discovery, and the confession that cracked the case open-- revealing not just one horrifying crime, but something far worse.

Because the man who killed Alice wasn’t a stranger.

He lived just down the street.

And for a while, at least, he looked like everyone else.

Instagram: @allieinthearchives

Welcome to the Archives. 
Bloodstained: Exploring Michigan's Darkest Murders Forgotten By Time
Householdhistory.com
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In the fall of 1898, a wealthy former legislator in Battle Creek, Michigan, died quietly in his home.

He was 80. His new wife was 28. And just weeks after their wedding, he was gone.

At first, no one questioned it.
Until a servant came forward with a story—one so strange, so specific, it cracked the case wide open.

But the questions didn’t end with one death.
They spread-- through old family wills, upstairs visitors, and a string of illnesses no one could explain.

And at the center of it all stood a nurse.
Calm. Capable. Smiling.

This is the story of Mary Butterfield Sanderson.
And the house on East Main Street where everything began.

Henry Ford is often remembered as the man who put America on wheels. An industrial titan, a visionary, a symbol of progress. But beneath the shine of the Model-T lies a darker legacy. This episode unearths the other machine Ford built: one driven by control, fear, and silence. 
From his antisemitic publications that inspired Nazi ideology, to his private army that brutalized labor organizers, to the utopian rubber empire he tried to construct in the Amazon rainforest-- this is the side of Henry Ford history prefers to forget. 

With real photos, video archives, and chilling quotes from the men who followed him, this episode explores what happens when a man decides not just to build cars... but to engineer people. 
Click the link in the episode description to view archival photos, documents, and more. 

Welcome to the Archives. 

Archived Documents
The Ford Hunger March video archive
Bloodstained: Exploring Michigan's Darkest Murders Forgotten By Time
Householdhistory.com

Instagram: @allieinthearchives

In Fenton, Michigan, the name Joe Smallbone still lingers—like the faint hum of a radio just past the dial. He was the town’s quiet repairman. A man who lived alone in a soot-covered house on Wakeman Street, surrounded by broken machines and rusting cars. Most people knew his name. Fewer knew his story.

This episode traces the life of Joseph Milo Smallbone—from his childhood shaped by absence and illness to the quiet genius of his radio repairs, and the complicated love Fenton showed him in return. It’s not a ghost story. It’s not a tragedy. It’s a reminder that even the quietest lives leave echoes.
Welcome to the Archives. 

Bloodstained: Exploring Michigan's Darkest Murders Forgotten By Time
Householdhistory.com

Instagram: @allieinthearchives