Allie In the Archives

In June of 1908, two lighthouse keepers disappeared from a remote station on Michigan's Grand Island, leaving behind a mystery that would confound investigators for more than a century.

What happened at the Grand Island North Light? Was it a tragic accident on the dangerous waters of Lake Superior, or was something far more sinister at play?

In this episode, we travel back to the summer of 1908 to explore one of Michigan's most unsettling and little-known lighthouse mysteries.

Because sometimes, the most dangerous thing about isolation isn't being alone.

Welcome to the Archives.

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Michigan is full of places that used to be something else.

This week, we’re exploring five Michigan towns that once had homes, businesses, schools, mills, factories, and hundreds of residents—and then disappeared.

From a town buried beneath Lake Michigan sand dunes, to a company town dismantled piece by piece, to a settlement whose most famous destruction story may not actually be true, these are the stories of Singapore, Deward, Marlborough, North Unity, and Aral.

And in some cases, you may have already stood exactly where they used to be without ever knowing it.

Welcome to the Archives.

Theme music: "Evening of Chaos" by Kevin MacLeod

Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0

incompetech.com

ISRC: USUAN1200041

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In 1897-- six years before the Wright brothers' flight-- people across the country began reporting a mysterious airship moving through the night sky.
By the time the sightings reached Michigan, witnesses were describing colored lights, mechanical sounds, falling debris, strange occupants, and even voices from above.
Some reports were obvious hoaxes. Some had ordinary explanations.
And some are still just… weird.
This week on The Archives, we’re going back to the original newspaper accounts behind one of America’s strangest pre-UFO crazes.
Theme music: “Evening of Chaos” by Kevin MacLeod
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
incompetech.com
ISRC: USUAN1300041

Visit my website here!Follow me on Instagram!

In 1897— six years before the Wright brothers made their famous flight— people across the United States began reporting a mysterious airship in the night sky.

What started as strange lights over California quickly spread east, with witnesses describing cigar-shaped machines, mechanical sounds, colored lights, voices from above, falling debris, and even supposed occupants. By April, Michigan was caught up in the frenzy.

In this episode, we dig into the original newspaper accounts behind the 1897 airship craze, from eerie sightings and bizarre “evidence” to obvious hoaxes, skeptical editors, and one alleged pilot who was nearly ten feet tall.

So what were people actually seeing? A secret inventor? Misidentified lights? Mass suggestion? Or something we still can’t neatly explain?

Welcome to the Archives.

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In the summer of 1929, Detroit became the scene of one of the most brutal—and baffling—murders in the city’s history.

Benny Evangelista, his wife Santina, and their four young children were found slaughtered inside their home on St. Aubin Street. Benny had been decapitated. Upstairs, Santina and the children had been attacked as they slept. There were no signs of forced entry, no clear motive, and almost no physical evidence pointing to the killer.

Then police entered the basement.

There, they discovered an extraordinary collection of handmade figures, religious writings, and the remains of what Benny called his Great Celestial Planet Exhibition. Newspapers seized upon the scene, transforming an already horrifying crime into a sensational story of cults, black magic, and ritual murder.

But behind those headlines was an Italian immigrant family, several possible suspects, and an investigation repeatedly shaped by rumor, prejudice, and the public’s appetite for the bizarre.

Nearly a century later, the murders of the Evangelista family remain unsolved.

Welcome to the Archives. 

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

In 1908, six teams stood in Times Square, pointed their automobiles west, and decided to drive to Paris, France. 

There were no highways.
No GPS.
No reliable maps.

But there were blizzards dumping feet of snow onto nonexistent roads, cars hauled out of drifts by horses, engines rebuilt nightly in the cold, and entire continents where the idea of an automobile was still closer to rumor than reality.

This wasn’t a race in the modern sense. It was an endurance experiment dreamed up by newspapers and fueled by national pride, overconfidence, and a truly alarming lack of planning. Teams followed railroad tracks across America, argued over what “counted” as driving, attempted to cross Siberia by following telegraph lines, and—at one point—fully expected to drive across the not-so-frozen Bering Strait.

Through mud that swallowed cars whole, duels that nearly happened, champagne shared in the middle of the Siberian tundra, and rules that bent just enough to keep the whole thing moving, one battered American car refused to quit.

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

On May 18, 1927, a series of explosions tore through Bath Township, Michigan, killing forty-four people and injuring dozens more in what remains the deadliest act of school violence in American history.

This episode traces the full arc of the Bath School Disaster-- from the conditions that allowed it to happen, to the devastation that followed, to the stories that were shaped in its aftermath.

Along the way, we look closely at Andrew Kehoe’s carefully constructed narrative of grievance, the failures of oversight that gave him access and proximity, and the lives that were forever altered-- including the life of his wife, Nellie Kehoe, whose death came before the bombing and was largely absorbed into the disaster that followed.

The Bath School Disaster is often reduced to a single morning of violence. But understanding how it happened requires looking earlier-- at silence, at power, and at the stories that are allowed to stand unchallenged.

Content note: This episode contains discussion of mass violence, domestic murder, and the deaths of children.

Welcome to the Archives.

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

Charles Dickens is synonymous with Christmas. 
With generosity. Redemption. Kindness. 
But behind the stories that shaped Victorian morality was another story-- one carefully rewritten, tightly controlled, and believed for more than a century. 
In this episode, we examine the marriage of Charles Dickens and Catherine Hogarth Dickens, a union that collapsed under the weight of celebrity and power. 
Drawing on letters, contemporary accounts, and modern archival scholarship, this episode explores how a cultural icon became one of the earliest examples of a global media figure shaping "truth," and how Catherine Dickens quietly ensured that her own story would survive long enough to be heard. 

Welcome to the Archives. 

Long before ghost tour tickets were sold and Ouija boards became party games, Michigan was at the center of a national movement-- one that believed the dead were still speaking, and the living could learn to listen. This is the strange and powerful world of Spiritualism: seances in pine groves, table rappings by candlelight, and the people who built communities around messages from the other side.

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

It began as an eviction.
It ended in fire.

In 1900, the Burt Lake Band of Ottawa and Chippewa watched their homes burn on the shores of northern Michigan-- a community destroyed not by war, but by paperwork. This episode traces the story of Cheboiganing, the village the law tried to erase, and the generations who kept its memory alive.

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