They
say that truth is stranger than fiction, so is it any wonder that our
scariest ghost stories were inspired by real events? Well, the ghosts
may be fictional, but the circumstances of their deaths are more
terrifying than the supernatural aftermath. One concerns a historic
house in Albany, New York, called Cherry Hill.
The
trouble began when a worker at Cherry Hill named Joseph Orton (his real
name, it later came out, was Jesse Strang; he’d changed it after faking
his own death in 1825 as part of a scheme to desert his wife and four
children) fell for one of the “upstairs” ladies who lived in the
well-populated house. Elsie Whipple was related by marriage to the man
who’d originally built Cherry Hill; she herself had gotten married at
the tender age of 14, and her husband John had turned her inheritance
into a growing fortune.
But that didn’t stop Elsie from
reciprocating Jesse’s forbidden feelings, and the two began exchanging
steamy love letters. The only way they could be together, they decided,
was to do away with John Whipple. That would free Elsie from her
marriage—and free her money, too. They concocted a scheme that included
false sightings of strange men lurking around the property, culminating
in John’s death on May 7 (Jesse shot him through one of Cherry Hill’s
windows; the bullet hole is still there).
Jesse Strang was executed for the murder, and the ghost of John Whipple still haunts Cherry Hill. That’s just part of one of
five real murders that became legendary ghost stories at io9.
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