In June of 1908, the body of David Shilling, a 16-year-old office boy, was found hanging from a printing press at the newspaper offices of the Chambersburg People's Register. While evidence seemed to suggest suicide, there are many peculiar facts surrounding the incident which has led to speculation that the young man may have been murdered in a botched robbery attempt, or worse-- murdered by his own co-workers.

Note: Summer vacation! New episodes will return on September 1.

In July of 1863, a bloody battle fought near a small Pennsylvania town made the name Gettysburg famous throughout the world. But just forty-five years later, in July of 1908, tragedy would once again befall soldiers on the hallowed fields of Gettysburg. This time, the casualties would not fall by Confederate cannonballs or Union bayonets-- but by the hands of Mother Nature.

Located in Clinton County, Cherry Run, a tributary of Fishing Creek, is situated in a rugged, narrow valley between the small rural communities of Tylersville and Lamar. Today, a small clearing exists where Cherry Run intersects Narrow Road. On this spot once stood the two-room log home of a 34-year-old farmer named Isaiah Colby, his wife, Nora, and their two young children.

On August 8, 1887, Isaiah's mother and nephew came to visit. But when they neared the cabin, a ghastly sight met their gaze; on the grass lay the bodies of Isaiah and Nora Colby. It was apparent that Isaiah had died from a gunshot wound to the face, while Nora had been struck a violent blow to the back of the head. It was also evident that she had been sexually assaulted-- perhaps after her life was already extinct. But what was the motive behind the assailant's terrible actions? Greed? Or lust?

In March of 1932, a girl named Alice was born in Fayette County to Martha Harris, the unwed 27-year-old daughter of a prosperous farmer from Perryopolis. Years passed, but very little was seen of Alice. Neither Martha nor her father spoke of her, not even her brother mentioned her. It was almost as if the child had never existed.

Despite the secrecy surrounding the child, word of Alice's existence got out. On January 12, 1938, the Western Pennsylvania Humane Society sent officers to Perryopolis to investigate. Their visit to the Harris home left them mortified.

This is the shocking story of Alice Marie Harris, who was kept a prisoner in an upstairs storage room for five years, and the remarkable effort to rescue her from the depths of hell.

On the afternoon of April 1, 1965, state troopers visited the Duncannon home of 47-year-old Byron Halter and his family, consisting of his wife, Betty, their 17-year-daughter, Holly, and Betty's mother, Mrs. Elizabeth Swank, who lived in the adjoining side of the duplex. The reason for their visit was because someone had sent anonymous letters to local papers warning that four people were about to die. But this was not a cruel April Fool's prank-- it was a senseless slaughter carried out by a disturbed Sunday School teacher.

When Morris Foster died in 1889 at the Blockley Hospital in West Philadelphia, his friends suspected that he had been poisoned. Foster's corpse was exhumed and a graveside post-mortem examination was performed. But as the two physicians prepared to remove portions of Foster's internal organs and bone for a chemical analysis, they made a shocking discovery-- a line of deftly-placed stitches over the abdomen of the deceased. Evidently, someone had already performed an autopsy. But who? And, more importantly, why?

One of the more peculiar crimes in the history of Pennsylvania occurred in 1931 with the slaying of an elderly spinster from Forty Fort named Minnie Dilley. While most murders in our state's history have been carried out by heartless outlaws and seasoned criminals, Miss Dilley's slayer was a young female college graduate and the daughter of a minister. Stranger still, the unfortunate elderly victim was said to have belonged to a bizarre sex cult.

Sixty-year-old Elirio "Eli" Mantoni adored his family-- especially his grandchildren, who lived in Northampton County city of Easton with their mother, Lillian Mantoni Gabert. But when the county threatened to remove four-year-old Elaine, three-year-old Raymond, and 21-month-old Paul from their home and place them in foster care, Grandpa Eli took matters into his own hands.

Those of us with our sanity intact simply don't know what it's like to have that last frayed thread holding our lives in the balance cut, sending us plummeting into an inescapable abyss. Few of us really know the depths of such despair; we can only imagine. But Elirio Mantoni lived that nightmare, though no one can really say if he knew, when he stumbled out of bed that morning, that it would be his last day on earth. In fact, no one can say for certain just what happened on the morning of November 23, 1959, since no one involved lived to tell about it.

In the mid-19th century, an old farmhouse stood along a quaint country road in North Coventry Township. This was the home of an eccentric spinster named Hannah Shingle, whose brutal murder in 1855 remains one of Chester County's most perplexing unsolved mysteries.

Though no one was ever convicted of the crime, the evidence points to a killer who was closely known to the victim. And perhaps that is why Hannah's restless ghost was encountered by numerous witnesses in the years following her death, haunting the countryside near her former home.

This is the improbable, but true, tale of how Glinda the Good Witch helped save the life of a washed-up actor sentenced to death for murdering his estranged wife inside the Wilkes-Barre City Hall. This is the bizarre story of George L. Marion, a once-famous minstrel show performer with an addiction to pork and beans, and his wife, Frances Lee Brooks, who was raised in commune founded by a wacky faith-healing cult leader.