Talking to the Dead: The History of Spiritualism in Michigan

The Greatest Race on Earth: New York to Paris, 1908

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 [https://a.co/d/eVBJu15] Householdhistory.com [https://www.householdhistory.com/] Instagram: @allieinthearchives [https://www.instagram.com/allie.in.the.archives/]

The Bath School Disaster

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 [https://a.co/d/eVBJu15] Householdhistory.com [https://www.householdhistory.com/] Instagram: @allieinthearchives [https://www.instagram.com/allie.in.the.archives/]

Charles Dickens and the Ghost of Christmas Past

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.  Bloodstained: Exploring Michigan's Darkest Murders Forgotten By Time [https://a.co/d/eVBJu15] Householdhistory.com [https://www.householdhistory.com/] Instagram: @allieinthearchives [https://www.instagram.com/allie.in.the.archives/]

Talking to the Dead: The History of Spiritualism in Michigan

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. Welcome to the Archives.  Bloodstained: Exploring Michigan's Darkest Murders Forgotten By Time [https://a.co/d/eVBJu15] Householdhistory.com [https://www.householdhistory.com/] Instagram: @allieinthearchives [https://www.instagram.com/allie.in.the.archives/]

Burt Lake Burn-Out

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 [https://a.co/d/eVBJu15] Householdhistory.com [https://www.householdhistory.com/] Instagram: @allieinthearchives [https://www.instagram.com/allie.in.the.archives/]