O.P.I.S. Oklahoma Paranormal Information Syndicate

02/23/2026

AMERICA'S “GENTLE GIANT”
The Story of Robert Wadlow, Tallest Man in the World

The tallest man who ever lived was born on February 22, 1918 in the small Mississippi River town of Alton, Illinois. During his short, often sad, life, he gained international and lasting fame as the tallest man in history. Robert died tragically in 1940 at the age of only 22 but during those few years, he remained vigilant about being cast in the role of a "freak." He only wanted acceptance and a normal life, but even when he was very young, he and his family realized that this would be nearly impossible.

When Robert was born, he weighed in at just over eight pounds, an average weight for a baby boy, but his height and weight would not stay average for long. He was the first child of a Alton engineer and very soon, his parents began to realize that something out of the ordinary was happening with their son. By the time that he reached his first birthday, Robert weighed over 44 pounds, which was large, but not alarming. Fear came later, when he was five years old, weighed 105 pounds and was five feet, four inches tall. Needless to say, the Wadlows took the boy to the doctor but he was pronounced to be in good health. By the time he turned eight, he was over six feet tall and weighed 195 pounds. His parents, brothers and sisters were all of normal size.

When he entered school, Robert gained the attention of the entire world. His parents were already well aware of the fact that he was going to be an unusually tall man but they vowed not to accept the many offers made to them by showmen who wanted to put their son on display. They understood that for him to have a career as a human oddity would make it so that he was incapable of a normal life. The Wadlows saw that Robert's friends and relatives, through regular contact with him, were able to forget about his size and to treat him as a regular person. This is what they wanted for him and eventually, what he wanted for himself. For the Wadlows, subjecting the boy to a life in which his height would be his livelihood seemed detrimental to his happiness.

Whether he was exhibited or not (and readers must remember that "freak shows" featuring giants, little people and more were common at this time), Robert often found himself in the limelight. He was often followed by doctors, promoters and fans. He became a regular visitor at the Barnes Hospital in St. Louis, where his case was studied and frequent measurements taken. After diagnosing his size to be caused by pituitary gigantism, doctors explained to his parents about a dangerous operation that could be attempted on his pituitary gland. They could do it, they explained, but didn't recommend it. It was simply too dangerous and because of this, it was never attempted.

Despite Robert's new celebrity, he attempted to live a normal life. He joined the Boy Scouts, ran a soft drink stand in front of his home and enjoyed most anything that average boys liked. He attended the local elementary schools and graduated from Alton High School. Throughout his short life, he was known for his very quiet, sedate manner and was called the "Gentle Giant".

Although Robert was a good student and from all accounts, a likable and remarkably well-adjusted young man, he began to realize that his dreams of a normal career were impractical. The idea of becoming an attorney appealed to him when he entered college, but on campus, he began to run into problems with his size. In 1936, he was 18 years old and stood eight feet, three-and-a-half inches tall. He found it hard to keep up with the other students when taking notes as even the biggest fountain pen was dwarfed by his massive hand. He also ran into trouble in the biology lab, where the delicate instruments were impossible for him to handle and use. His monumental size dominated his relationships with other students and new people that he met. A chair, an automobile and every object around him that was made for someone of average height posed a barrier to him. He was also plagued by the weather. When the ground was covered with ice, he had to gingerly work his way along, flanked by his friends, holding onto their shoulders as he walked. His weight was enormous and his bones fragile. If he fell, it could mean a long stay in the hospital, or worse.

Realizing that earning a living in a normal career was impossible to him, he turned to the only avenue that was offered, promotion and entertainment. For years, Robert's shoes had been specially made for him by the International Shoe Co. and the company agreed to not only supply Robert with shoes (which cost more than $150 per pair to make), but also to pay him to make appearances that promoted the company. He soon began traveling and appearing in the company's print and film advertising. Obviously, Robert's height was being exploited to draw large crowds, but he refused to think of it that way. He preferred to see the exhibitions as advertising work instead. He also began to think of this "advertising business" as a way into a new career for him.

By his next birthday, Robert had shot up another two inches in height and he found himself making quite a bit of money from his shoe promotion work. The idea struck him that he would open a shoe store of his own, or even a whole chain of them, which would serve as a career that did not involve exhibitions and freak shows. To do this however, he would need some seed money.

In 1937, Robert began making appearances for the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus in Boston and New York. Many circus and carnival showman had approached Robert and his parents in the past about appearing in shows but the answer to them had always been an emphatic "no". The salary offer was very enticing, though, and as Robert had recently suffered some problems with his health, he decided to join the circus. One of his conditions was that the Ringling organization would provide a hotel suite for Robert and his father and take care of all of their expenses. He also maintained that he would not be a part of the circus sideshow, but would appear in the center ring of the show, three times each day.

In all of the appearances that Robert made, whether for the circus or promoting shoes, he always dressed in an ordinary business suit. He refused to wear tall shoes, a high hat or any of the other devices used by showmen to exaggerate his already tremendous height. He even objected to attempts by photographers to create the illusion of greater height by shooting at low angles to make him look taller. He attacked overblown press accounts - one widely circulated story stated that he ate four times the amount of a normal person - as "deliberate falsehoods". He turned his back on this but still managed to become a popular icon.

He continued to make more and more appearances, always accompanied by his father. He operated concessions at fairs, to the delight of the general public, where great crowds of people turned out to see him. He also developed an entertaining routine that he and his father used during their public appearances. Dr. Frederic Fadner, a professor at Shurtleff College in Alton, wrote the book The Gentleman Giant in 1944 and reproduced a joke that Robert's father often told at their appearances.

"The greatest trouble that I ever have with Robert," said Mr. Wadlow, "is trying to keep him from walking down the hallways in hotels and peeking over the transoms above the doors".

"Yeah, maybe, I did," Robert would admit, "but the only thing wrong with Dad was he got mad when I quit lifting him up for a peek."

Robert's refusal to cooperate with showmen often extended to doctors, many of which hounded the young man continuously. His father even stated that Robert was usually more concerned with how physicians would present him than how circus showmen would. In June 1936, Dr. Charles D. Humberd made an unannounced visit to the Wadlow home, requesting to see Robert. The young man, disheveled by a rainstorm, was surprised to find Humberd sitting in his living room when he got home. The doctor became disgruntled when the family refused to cooperate fully with his requests for perform a physical examination and stormed out of the house.

The next February, an article by Dr. Humberd appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association that greatly upset and embarrassed the Wadlows and produced a deluge of telephone calls, letters and unwanted attention. The article, entitled "Giantism: Report of a Case", did not mention Robert by name but it did state that the subject was from Alton, Illinois, with the initials "R.W.". He was referred to as a specimen of "preacromegalic giant". The Wadlows understandably felt violated because, as they put it, they had not realized that any person in the name "of science had a right to come into a home, make whatever cursory observations he could, and then broadcast these observations to the world." Robert had always resisted being cast as a "freak" and he was also adamant about not being labeled as "sick" either. He wanted to be seen as a normal person, albeit a larger than ordinary one.

Robert was also extremely embarrassed by the way that he was described in the article, which noted that "his expression is surly and indifferent and he is definitely inattentive, apathetic and disinterested, unfriendly and antagonistic… his defective attention and slow responses hold for all sensory stimuli, both familiar and unexpected but he does manifest a rapid interest in seeing any memoranda made by the questioner. All functions that we attribute to the highest centers in the frontal lobes are languid and blurred."

Not only were these remarks insulting and humiliating, but from the descriptions of Robert's personality and intellectual talents given by his teachers, friends and those who knew him best, they were also grossly inaccurate. The comments were nothing more than a vindictive assault by an egotistical doctor who had been angry over Wadlows’ refusal to cooperate with him.

The Wadlows filed suit against Humberd and the American Medical Association, seeking damages for the article's libelous inaccuracies. Robert did not seek a large financial settlement but rather merely wanted to be vindicated from the published presentation. In the first legal hearing, the case was presented against Humberd in his home state of Missouri. The American Medical Association defended Humberd by providing him with two of their attorneys. Witnesses verified that the description that had been published of Robert was a blatant distortion of his condition but the case was lost on a technicality. The judge ruled that the doctor's observations might have been accurate on the day the young man was examined. The action against the American Medical Association never went to trial. After three years of legal maneuvering, it was dismissed after Robert passed away.

Unfortunately, even though he was never dressed in a giant suit or had to endure the barbs of the crowd who came to the see him at the freak show, the article served as a realization of Robert's worst fear -- he had been exhibited like a sideshow attraction.

Robert and his father continued to make personal appearances and to work with the Ringling operation. They traveled extensively, visiting 41 of the 48 states and the District of Columbia. They logged more than 300,000 miles and visited over 800 cities. Door frames, elevators, awnings and hanging lights still bedeviled the young man and to ride in an automobile, he almost had to fold himself in two. Three beds, turned crossways, provided him the only sleeping arrangements suitable in a hotel room.

In 1940, Robert reached his greatest height at eight feet, eleven-point-one inches. His weight was at a massive 490 pounds and he was forced to walk with a cane. He was traveling and making personal appearances throughout the year and on July 4 was in Manistee, Michigan at a lumbermen's festival. He and his father were scheduled to ride in a parade but at lunch, Mr. Wadlow noticed that Robert was not eating. Later, he complained that he didn't feel well but as their car was trapped in the parade route, it would be several hours before they could get to a doctor.

By the time the parade was over, Robert's condition had worsened and his father rushed him to the hospital. When they arrived, the doctors found that Robert was running a very high fever. He was wearing a new brace on his ankle and it had scraped through the flesh and had become infected. Robert never noticed because one of the consequences of his enormous size was that the sensation in his legs was defective. He would often be unaware of an object in his shoe or a wrinkle in his sock until a blister had formed and began causing him problems. In this case, the ankle had become seriously infected and the doctors insisted that Robert be admitted to the hospital. He refused but a nurse was stationed at his bed side, where he lay in great pain. The fevers and bouts of agony continued for the next several days and his mother was called. Finally, after 10 fever-wracked days, doctors performed an emergency surgery on his foot but it was too late. His temperature continued to rise, hovering near 106 degrees.

In the early morning hours of July 15, 1940, Robert Wadlow passed away in his sleep.

Robert's remains were returned to Alton and huge crowds came to the Streeper Funeral Home and lined the streets in his honor. A special casket was constructed for his body that was 10 feet long and 32 inches wide. The casket was too big to fit through the doors of the church, so the services were held at the funeral home. Robert was a Freemason and he was buried with full honors in a local cemetery. It required 12 pallbearers and an additional eight men to manage his casket.

Strangely, at Robert's request, special measures were taken to protect the coffin. At some point, Robert had read the story of Charles Byrne, the Irish Giant, and John Hunter, the anatomist who coveted his bones and had stolen his body to get them. He was not taking any chances with his own remains and so a thick shell of reinforced concrete was used to encase the coffin for eternity.

Since his death, the city of Alton, Illinois has embraced Robert as a native son and local folk hero. Have a passing thought about this kind young man on his birthday and remember that no matter how much fame he achieved during his lifetime, it was a life that he considered only half-fulfilled. He would gladly have exchanged all of the money and attention for a single day of what he really wanted – an ordinary life.

02/20/2026

Missouri State Prison! This place was built in 1836 and finally decommissioned in 2004. It was open for 168 years housing inmates. Some of the inmates included the killer of Martin luther King Jr, James Earl Ray. It is known for a long history of executions, murders and riots! Visitors have heard cell doors slamming, seen shadowy apparitions, and also have been touched by someone when it is seems no one is near them!

02/20/2026

“DO YOU EVER FIND YOURSELF TALKING TO THE DEAD?”
THE DEATH OF WILLIE LINCOLN

The Civil War took a terrible toll on Abraham Lincoln but there is no doubt that the most crippling blow that he suffered in the White House was the death of his son, Willie, on February 20, 1862. Lincoln and his wife, Mary, grieved deeply over Willie’s death. Their son Eddie had passed away a number of years before and while they didn’t know it at the time, another son, Tad, would only live to be age eighteen. Robert was the only Lincoln son to see adulthood. Lincoln was sick at heart over Willie’s death and it was probably the most intense personal crisis in his life. Some historians have even called it the greatest blow he ever suffered. Even Confederate President Jefferson Davis sent a letter to Washington to express his condolences over the boy’s death.

Seemingly beyond all hope of comfort, Mary Lincoln turned to the one of the most popular movements in America at the time – Spiritualism, which offered communication with the dead. She began to hold séances in the White House and communed with her dead son. And according to others in attendance, so did President Lincoln.

Read the tragic true story of Willie Lincoln’s death and the Lincolns' fascination with the spirit world in my book ONE NIGHT IN WASHINGTON! Get a signed copy at https://www.americanhauntingsink.com/lincoln

02/20/2026

well that is creepy
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1417703426394442&set=a.254046059426857

120-YEAR-OLD REMAINS FOUND AT OU: Construction crews unearthed human remains on the University of Oklahoma campus Thursday believed to date back to the turn of the century in the 1900s. The remains were found off Elm Street, near the University of Oklahoma library during a building project. Anthropologists are now assisting the state archaeologist in the recovery of the remains. No foul play is suspected.

02/05/2026

https://phantomsandmonsters.com/post/1770223253637?fbclid=IwY2xjawPxyD5leHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETE4eU9QT2pQZGw2Sm5iQUNvc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHsFkjzMDecbPPZeJNQ5XeuIkhwR0r-GWn_lXqLIM_8Exrub6XdRYgkHk4LDc_aem_qtyoe6o22BsG9hOEtmmYBA

Investigating unexplained phenomena, cryptid encounters, UFO sightings, and paranormal activity worldwide. Report your encounter today.

02/05/2026

THE DOCTOR WHO DIED TO PROVE THERE WAS AN AFTERLIFE

On February 5, 1921, Dr. Thomas Lynn Bradford decided that he could easily prove the existence of the spirit world – by dying. He wasn’t sick or suffering from some chronic illness. He decided he could prove his research by taking his own life.

The idea of life after death has been pondered since the beginning of recorded history. It’s been debated by believers, skeptics, theologians, and scientists but no one has ever been able to prove the existence of the afterlife beyond an absolute doubt. But one scientist decided to try. As with any kind of science, though, the theory had to be tested, and Dr. Bradford was sure he knew exactly how to do so.

Bradford, a native of Detroit, was born in 1872. He pursued a rigorous education, earning a doctorate and a position as a professor, he also developed an interest in Spiritualism. He became so convinced in the validity of the movement – which had been founded on the idea that the soul continued to exist after death and could communicate with the living – that he believed the only way to irrefutably proof it was to personally produce the results. His approach was unconventional, to say the least. He decided to take his own life so that he could contact someone and finally confirm what existed after death.

Bradford advertised for an assistant that was interested in “Spiritualistic science” and a woman named Ruth Doran responded. She was a writer and a member of a prominent family, but she had no experience with as a scientist – or as a Spiritualist. She told a reporter: “I answered his advertisement through a simple desire to know more about a thing in which I was little versed. I am not a Spiritualist, nor a believer in the psychic.”

Ruth was likely shocked by the extent of Bradford’s plan, knowing that he intended to leave his physical body and communicate with her from the afterlife as a spirit, bet she agreed to assist with the experiment.

On February 5, Bradford turned on the gas in his rented room and successfully asphyxiated himself. Before he turned on the gas, he wrote a note on his typewriter, explaining why he had taken his own life and confirmed his commitment to prove the existence of the afterlife, no matter how drastic his method might have been.

After Bradford’s death, Ruth began a two-week-long vigil in hope of receiving some sort of communication from him. However, at first there was only silence – from Bradford anyway. Everyone else seemed to have something to say about it. The story captivated the public and the NEW YORK TIMES even published a tongue in cheek article called “Dead Spiritualist Silent.”

But the story seemed to be a little premature three days later when a woman named Lulu Mack claimed to hear Bradford’s spirit calling his name out to her during a séance. She swore that she was unfamiliar with Bradford and his experiment, and that all she could make him out was him saying his name.

Conveniently, she claimed further communication wasn’t possible because his spirit had been made weak from the su***de.

News about Mack’s claim initially excited the public, who wondered if Bradford’s experiment might actually work. More excited followed when, one week after the professor’s death, Ruth Doran announced that she too had felt a presence she believed belonged to the professor.

Enlisting several witnesses, including skeptics, she held a gathering in her home. When she sensed what she believed was Bradford’s presence, the lights were turned off. Ruth then said she heard Bradford’s faint voice. Indicating that he wanted to pass along a message, she dictated the following that she said was directly from the dead man:

“I am the professor who speaks to you from the Beyond. I have broken through the veil. The help of the living has greatly assisted me. I simply went to sleep. I woke up and at first did not realize that I had passed on. I find no great change apparent. I expected things to be much different. They are not.

“Human forms are retained in outline but not in the physical. I have not traveled far. I am still much in the darkness. I see many people. They appear natural. There is a lightness of responsibility here unlike in life. One feels full of rapture and happiness. Persons of like natures associate. I am associated with other investigators. I do not repent my act.

“My present plane is but the first series. I am still investigating the future planes regarding which we in this plane are as ignorant as are earthly beings of the life just beyond human life.”

It was a generic message and one that failed to produce the kind of proof that skeptics and scientists needed in order to be convinced that Bradford had succeeded. It was also pointed out how unusual it was for a man of science, who was dedicated to scientifically proving an afterlife, hadn’t arranged some sort on rigorous test or secret message before taking his life.

Ruth continued to speak out about the communication that she insisted she’d had with Bradford from the beyond, but it lacked so little insight into the afterlife that it was difficult to take seriously.

After it became clear that the public wasn’t interested in what Bradford allegedly had to say, Ruth quickly faded from public view. Records indicate she continued pursuing fame and fortune, though, placing regular advertisements that offered her services as a medium, giving lectures, and providing character analysis.

In the end, there is no question that Dr. Bradford went to extraordinary lengths to try and prove something he strongly believed in. And while the aftermath of his death caused a stir and generated numerous headlines, it seems he ultimately failed to fulfill what he turned out to be the most important work of his life – and death.

01/18/2026

😳 this is a story I have not heard of

“THERE WAS NO ESCAPE FROM THE WAVE”
THE BOSTON MOLASSES FLOOD

On January 15, 1919, one of the strangest disasters in American history occurred at the harbor in Boston, Massachusetts. Although it seems unbelievable, 21 people were killed that day and another 150 were injured when a flood of molasses swept over the neighborhood, bringing with it terror and death.

The events began four years earlier, in 1915, when the Purity Distilling Company constructed a huge storage tank in Boston’s North End. It was designed to hold shipments of Caribbean molasses that could be distilled into rum and industrial alcohol. Located on Commercial Street, near Boston Harbor, the immense tank towered over the nearby neighborhood of homes and businesses.

In the years that followed the tank’s construction, Purity and its parent company, U.S. Industrial Alcohol, had thrived thanks to the wartime demands for industrial alcohol, which was used in the production of weapons during World War I.

Those who lived and worked near the tank watched it with growing concern. The immense structure shuddered and groaned each time it was filled. Molasses seeped through the tank’s seams, running to the ground in thin, sticky rivulets. Purity Distilling responded by painting the exterior of the tank brown, making it harder to see the leaking molasses.

There was grumbling that something terrible was bound to happen one of these days.

That day was January 15, 1919. It was an unseasonably warm winter’s day for Boston – close to 40 degrees -- and many people were out and about. Robert Burnett was at home on Commercial Street eating dinner with his family. Ralph Martin and Dave Spellman were relaxing in North End Park, sitting on an automobile. Bridgett Cloughtery, her daughter Theresa and her son, Stephen, were eating in their dining room at 6 Copps Hill Terrace. Bridgett’s son, Martin, who worked nights, was asleep in the next room. Earlier, Mrs. Cougherty had been hanging laundry outside and had stopped to wave at a neighborhood child, little Maria DiStasio, who was gathering firewood.

Things were quiet in the nearby business establishments. William White, the custodian of the giant molasses tank, locked up and headed uptown to meet his wife for lunch and shopping. At freight house No. 4 of the Boston & Worcester Street Railway Company, freight agent Dorley worked with a crew of three clerks in a small office above the warehouse.

In the recreation room of a nearby firehouse, the men from fireboat No. 31 were passing the afternoon. Hoseman William H. Connor, who had just returned from the war, was playing cards with fellow firefighters Nat Bowering, Patrick Driscoll, Frank McDermott, and George Lahey. Lahey later recalled that one of the firemen remarked on how quiet the day had been with no alarm all morning.

Daily life in the neighborhood continued just as it was supposed to. Horses pulled freight wagons down the street. Children from the nearby homes finished their lunches and told their mothers goodbye, walking back to school after the mid-day break. Workmen finished their lunches and returned to their labors. A railway train rattled past on the elevated tracks just west of the giant molasses tank.

Then, suddenly, the lives of those who lived and worked near the tank changed forever.

Most of the witnesses later agreed that the first sign of disaster came not with an explosion but with an ominous rumbling sound. The cause of the accident remains a mystery to this day, but whether it was a tank failure, or an explosion, makes little difference – the deadly results were the same.

The giant tank suddenly ruptured with such force that its three-quarter-inch steel sides blasted into the elevated railway tracks. The huge steel girders were bent and twisted, and more than 100 feet of the elevated tracks were utterly destroyed in a matter of seconds.

Every gallon of the thick molasses weighed almost 12 pounds. In a few moments, more than 27 million pounds of molasses was freed from the tank. A sticky wave more than 30-feet-high gushed out of the tank and bore down on the homes of Copps Hill Terrace. After the wave smashed against the brick structures at the base of the hill, it swirled with deadly force back toward the harbor.

Robert Burnett, who had been at home with his family eating dinner in their second-floor dining room, told the Boston Post:

“I thought it was an elevated train, until I heard a swish as if the wind was rushing. Then it became dark. I looked out from the windows and saw this black wave coming. It didn’t rush. It just rolled, slowly as it seemed, like the side of a mountain falling into space. Of course, it came quickly… We snatched open the door of the hall and molasses was already at the top of the 14-step flight of stairs. I slammed the door and we ran for the roof.”

At 6 Copps Hill Terrace, Martin Cloughtery woke up when he heard a slight rumble outside. He later told the newspapers that he “could see nothing but blackness all around with a few flashes of light. I seemed to be smothering when I got a breath of fresh air. I did not know where I was. I thought I was in the water… I found what turned out to be part of my house resting on my chest.”

Martin’s mother, Bridgett Cloughtery, was killed when the wave of molasses struck their home. Reports stated that she had been “blown through the walls of her home and buried under the debris of her dwelling.”

Martin McDonough lived in another apartment in the same building. The last thing he remembered hearing was a crash as he was taking a bite of mashed potatoes. He was later found unconscious in the street. The entire building had been flattened when the molasses spill swept it more than 100 feet off its foundation.

The body of little Maria DiStasio was found buried beneath wreckage near the elevated train tracks where she had been gathering firewood.

At the freight office, agent Dorley knew exactly what the sound was when he first heard it. “The molasses tank is gone,” he cried to the other clerks in the office.

Twenty-one people died in the disaster and another 150 were injured. Many others escaped death by sheer luck. A police officer who was walking his beat felt some liquid hit the back of his uniform and was able to duck around the corner of a brick building before the force of the wave hit. A sailor, who had been standing on a corner chatting with a girl, was swept away, but only slightly injured. The girl was listed among the missing. In North End Park, Dave Spellman watched as the wave of molasses washed his friend Ralph Martin into the harbor. He tried to save him but was unable to fight his way through the thick and sticky goo. A workman unloading a load of lard was severely injured and his horse killed when the wave of molasses struck his delivery wagon. Another workman, who was loading a wagon at the street railway terminal was thrown to the pavement and his horse and wagon crushed. An oil tanker was completely demolished. Two girls, ages nine and eleven, didn’t return to school after the noon break and it was realized they were lost in the wave.

Most of the deaths that resulted from the disaster were caused by suffocation. There was simply no escape from it. As the molasses swept over its victims, they were unable to run, swim or even move. Once it washed over a person’s head, there was no way to breathe or get free from the sticky mass. To die in such a way was undoubtedly terrifying.

Lieutenant Commander William Copeland was on the upper deck of the training ship “Nantucket” when he saw the tank burst open. Within five minutes, his crew had rushed to the scene with stretchers, first-aid kits and sailors to aid in the rescue of survivors. From the Charlestown Navy Yard, Commander William Rush sent crews from the minesweepers “Starling”, “Breaker”, and “Billow”, which were anchored off the North End pier. Two Navy tugboats and a submarine chaser hurried to the scene and an Army hospital in Roxbury sent a medical detachment of 80 men. The Boston Red Cross also rushed to the accident site to offer support services.

What the rescue crews found was a huge sticky mess. Reeking, waist-deep molasses sloshed through the ruins of houses, freight terminals, and warehouses. Wagons and railroad cars had been shattered and overturned by the heavy tide. Stunned survivors staggered in the morass, shaking and bogged down by the thick liquid. The sludge was so sticky and impenetrable that medical personnel on the scene and at the local hospitals were unable to immediately determine the gender of the survivors that were brought to them. As it slopped onto the floors, the molasses fouled the wheels of the hospital gurneys and dirtied the hallways and exam rooms.

Rescuers waded through tangles of debris, the hazards of which were hidden under the mess. They risked their own safety as they slogged through the wreckage. Their rubber boots became a hindrance as they filled with the oozing slime and men could be seen in their stocking feet as they chopped at debris with fire axes or cut through metal with acetylene torches.

During a day filled with valiant efforts, the most harrowing rescue occurred at the fireboat No. 31 firehouse. George Lahey had just left the card game and was going upstairs to check on the crew’s boat when the wave of molasses hit. The tide actually lifted the three-and-a-half-story firehouse and then slammed it on the ground again. The force of the blow threw Lahey back down the stairs to the recreation room and sent him sprawling. Molasses and pieces of metal tank crashed through the firehouse and overturned a huge slate pool table, pinning Lahey to the floor.

Meanwhile, before the impact, fireman William Connor saw a wall of molasses that he guessed to be 150 feet high approaching the station like a cyclone. He yelled at the other men to jump and Patrick Driscoll hurled himself headfirst through the closest window. But Connor and Nat Bowering, along with Lahey, were not so lucky. They were knocked down on the floor and trapped in the building when the second story collapsed. The only thing that kept the men from being crushed to death by the second floor was a few chairs and a piano. There was barely 18 inches between the trapped men and the floor that loomed above them. Connor knew that if anyone attempted to rescue them – and entered the second floor – they would be killed instantly.

The prospect of being crushed to death was only one of the men’s worries. The building had barely escaped being washed out into the harbor. Stuck at the edge of the wrecked dock, the fire station was directly in the path of thousands of gallons of molasses as it flowed toward the water.

Trapped on their backs, the three men would see out of a narrow opening and quickly realized the danger they were in. The flood of molasses, deadly in its own right, carried crushed pieces of wreckage with it as it flowed toward the place where they were trapped. If they were not crushed by the building collapsing, they could be drowned in the molasses or cut to pieces by the debris that came along with the wave.

Connor was able to grab hold of Lahey’s foot, which was sticking through a partition that separated them. Lahey pleaded for help. The molasses was flowing in around him and was nearly up to his neck. Connor was also stuck but knowing that the men would be drowned if the molasses was not allowed to flow through the building, he crawled to an opening and kicked out a tangle of boards that were stuck over an open hold in the side of the firehouse. The level of the molasses dropped as it seeped through the ruins. “It seemed like weeks that we lay there,” Connor later recalled. “The flood of molasses at times flowed up to our ears. We bumped our heads on the floor above, always trying to keep our nose and mouth above the fluid.”

Finally, after about 30 minutes, a sailor from the “Nantucket” saw Connor’s foot moving in the ruins. He signaled his fellow rescuers and they began a two-hour effort to work the firefighters loose. Not worrying about their own safety, a team of sailors smashed into the building and worked their way inside. With saws and their bare hands, they tore away the beams that imprisoned Bowering and Connor. Sailors pulled the two men to safety and then went back for Lahey. They desperately cut away a portion of the wood floor beneath him and rescuers were able to make contact with the trapped man. With Lahey’s fading voice directing their work, a team of 50 men used torches and cutting saws to remove the iron and steel that held him in place.

Sadly, the rescue came too late. Just minutes before the sailors reached Lahey, he had lost consciousness. His head dropped into the molasses and he drowned.

Lahey did not die alone in the disaster. Another 20 people joined him in an early grave. Crews spent months spraying the area with fire hoses to clean molasses off the bricks and cobblestone streets of Boston’s North End.

The question of who was responsible for the tragedy languished in the courts for years. The distilling company argued that some outside force caused the tank to explode. Prosecutors called it a “ghost defense,” laughing that the company seemed to think that “ghosts and hobgoblins” were responsible for the rupture.

In the end, most came to believe that the tank was simply not strong enough to contain the massive load of syrup. The company paid out nearly $1 million in claims, an insufficient amount to make up for the lost and shattered lives caused by something as simple as molasses.