← Twisted Tales with Heidi Wong
Twisted Tales with Heidi Wong
The Mining Disaster That Turned a Town Into a Death Trap (Return to Silent Hill Cheat Sheet!)
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- [00:03]
Vanessa Richardson
Hi Crime House Community. It's Vanessa Richardson. Exciting news. Conspiracy theories, cults and crimes is leveling up. Starting the week of January 12th, you'll be getting two episodes every week. Wednesdays we unravel the conspiracy or the cult, and on Fridays we look at a corresponding crime. Every week has a theme. Tech, bioterror, power, paranoia, you name it. Follow conspiracy theories, Cults and crimes now on your podcast app because you're about to dive deeper, get weirder and go darker than ever before.
- [00:47]
Heidi Wong
This is crime house.
- [00:54]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
A relentless fire.
- [00:55]
Heidi Wong
Raging in an underground coal mine for over half a century. Century in a town that couldn't survive it. But what happens when the real story behind a notorious ghost town is worse than anything a horror movie could possibly dream up? Welcome to Twisted A Crime House Original. I'm Heidi Wong. Every week I'll take you deep into the true stories behind horror's biggest legends. From vengeful ghosts to psychotic slashers to alien encounters and more, these real life accounts are guaranteed to keep you up at night, but scary stories aren't any fun if you're telling them alone. If you've ever had a haunted moment or a twisted tale of your own, I want to hear about it. Drop it in the comments. The creepier, the better. Crime House is made possible by you. Follow Twisted Tales and subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts for ad free early access. And if you're into true crime as well as horror, go search and follow Crime House daily. Our team's twice a day show bringing you breaking cases, updates and unbelievable stories from the world of crime that are happening right now. Today I'm digging into the story of Centralia, the Pennsylvania ghost town that set the scene for the 2000 horror film Silent Hill, which was based on a video game series of the same name. Since the movie's release, Centralia has attracted tourists from around the world hoping to get a rush from setting foot inside the real Silent Hill. But what they find in Centralia is even scarier than cults or alternate realities. Instead, they're confronted with a town forever haunted by the ghosts of its tragic and terrifying past. If you like horror movies and video games, Silent Hill is a must play. It's spooky and atmospheric, and the movie adaptation is no different. It follows a woman named Rose, whose adopted daughter Sharon keeps sleepwalking to the edge of a cliff, repeating Silent Hill like it's her mantra. Rose figures she'll indulge Sharon's sleep talking. When she finds out Silent Hill is a real place, she takes her daughter there so Sharon can face her nightmares. But on the way there, Sharon goes missing. As Rose frantically tries to find Sharon in Silent Hill, she finds herself trapped in an alternate reality, like a prisoner of the town's dark, twisted past. The game is set in the fictional American town of Silent Hill, but that town wasn't necessarily based on anywhere specifically. In a 1999 interview, the game's director and designer said, we deliberately did not use an actual place since it might cause inconsistency with the real thing. But when it came time to adapt the game for the big screen, the film's director, Christophe Gans, had other ideas. He wanted the film Silent Hill to be based on a real place. The screenwriter, Roger Avary, had an ancestor with ties to Centralia, a small mining town with its own dark lore. And the more that Christophe Gans looked into Centralia, the more he was hooked by the town's creepy and tragic past. It was Saturday, February 14, 1981. Valentine's Day. But 12 year old Todd Dombowski didn't really care about all that. He lived just a few houses down from his grandmother, Carrie. And on this day, Todd was on his way to help her. Carrie had just seen a group of suspicious. Suspicious looking men come out of her neighbor's house. They definitely freaked Carrie out, so there was no way she was going anywhere near them. So she called her daughter, Todd's mom. And naturally it fell on Todd to go check it out. He ran through a few yards towards his neighbor's house. Hell bent on getting the scoop. But before he got there, a strange sight stopped him dead in his tracks. Up ahead, a slight curl of smoke was rising out of a small pile of sticks and leaves on the ground. That caught Todd off guard. It looked like a campfire, but there was no one there. He carefully walked towards the spot where the smoke was. Then he realized the smoke was actually coming out of a small hole in the ground. Before Todd could fully process what he was seeing, the ground under his feet collapsed. I have literally had nightmares about this exact thing. But for Todd, it wasn't a dream. It was real. Todd was pulled into the narrow, muddy hole up to his waist. Then his eyes. In a matter of seconds, there was three feet of hole between the top of Todd's head and solid ground above. The more Todd tried to claw his way out of the hole, the more he was sucked down into the dark pit. Todd screamed for help, and as he did, a cloud of hot, rancid steam shot up from the bottom of the hole and blotted out the sky above before he was completely swallowed up. Toddlers. Todd managed to grab onto a tree root and hold on. And that was when he saw his 16 year old cousin Eric, who'd poked his head through the thick choking steam to try and rescue Todd. Todd grabbed Eric's hand. Eric exhausted every muscle, pulling his cousin's slippery, mud soaked body out of the sinkhole. He rushed Todd away from the smoking hole, careful not to trigger any new sinkholes in the process. Once they were a safe distance away, Todd flopped onto the ground. He tried to get control of his breathing, but something felt a little off. Like maybe he inhaled something dangerous. Todd's grandmother ran over to her muddy, shaking grandson. She urged him to go back and find those men that he just saw who might have seemed a little bit suspicious and tell them what had just happened to him. Because she and everyone else knew why her grandson was nearly just killed. That coal mine fire had been burning underground for the last 20 years, and it was about time the government finally figured out the right way to stop it. Naturally, stories where people were being eaten by a place they should feel safe in would be the perfect place to base a horror film. I mean, it worked for the 1977 deathbed the bed that Eats. If you want to, you can watch the whole movie on YouTube. So it's no surprise that Centralia would eventually inspire a horror movie. But before the underground inferno transformed Centralia into Silent Hill, it was just another small town. Also, just so you know, Centralia is located in central Pennsylvania. Native Americans originally settled there and then sold the land to colonial agents in the mid 18th century. Over the next hundred years, it changed hands again a few times until the mid19th century when a massive coal deposit was discovered underground. So of course, Centralia was bought by a mining company. If you had a job in Centralia in the mid 19th century, chances are it was in one of the five mines located deep underneath the town. And your day probably went something like got out of bed at 4am and stumbled across the cold floor of the small cabin you shared with your wife and kids. You pulled on sturdy wool clothes. At around 5:30am you heard it, the whistle piercing through the town. That meant get to the mine, boys. Then you and the other miners descended 300ft into the mine through a tunnel that might only be 3 or 4ft high. You spent hours in a dark, cramped cave hammering away at rocks to extract the coal. The only light came from a few oil lamps in the tunnels. And yes, I'm Thinking it, too. That's incredibly dangerous. But what other option did you have? To light a cave in the mid-1800s, and that was far from the only dangerous working condition. Every day, you inhaled buckets of smoky coal dust and carbon monoxide, the threat of fire or tunnel collapse literally hanging over your head. After 12 or so hours of this, you emerged from the mine covered in sweat and soot. You went home, ate dinner, and collapsed into bed. It was a hard, monotonous existence. But at the same time, there was security and safety in the routine. Until there wasn't.
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Close your eyes. Exhale, Feel your body relax, and let go of whatever you're carrying today.
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And breathe. Oh, sorry.
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- [10:22]
Heidi Wong
Oh, sorry.
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Namaste.
- [10:24]
Heidi Wong
Visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order. 1-800-contacts. On the morning of October 17, 1868, a man named Alexander Ray was traveling from his home in Centralia, where to a nearby town of Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania. Alexander was basically known as the founder of Centralia, at least the Centralia that became a mining town. Alexander also ran the coal company that Centralia had been built around. So naturally, a group of outlaws looking for a big score might think he was carrying a lot of money on him, like maybe the company's payroll. Three men ambushed Alexander's buggy on a desolate road en route to Mount Carmel and tried to rob him, but he didn't have anything on him at all. The men got angry when they realized they weren't hitting the jackpot with Alexander. They beat him within an inch of his life, then shot him to finish the job. Twice in the chest, once in the head and once in the face. Now, the guys who killed Alexander and left his bullet written body on the side of the road weren't your average highway robbers. They were the notorious Molly Maguires. The Molly Maguires were a group of Irish American miners in Pennsylvania who fought the mine bosses for better working conditions. But they weren't exactly peaceful about it. Violence, arson and murder were basically their MO and no one was off limits. The Molly Maguires were not above attacking religious men like father Daniel Ignatius McDermott, who was the first Roman Catholic priest in Centralia. In 1869, the year after they killed Alexander Ray, Father McDermott was assaulted by a gang of mollies. He survived, but he was pissed the father was not having it. Legend says that he put a curse on all of Centralia for being a town that allowed the Maguires to have the run of the place. So as these miners rebelled, quiet coal towns like Centralia got more and more used to violence as a way of life. And along with assaulting people, the Molly Maguires also set a lot of fires throughout the early 1870s. They got away with a lot of mayhem, but not killing Centralia's founder. Eight years after they murdered Alexander Ray, one man confessed and ratted out his partners in crime. Three of the men were hanged for the murder. The one who confessed was spared. Legend has it that the ghosts of the executed Mollies haunted Centralia for years, roaming the highways, waiting to prey on anyone they thought might be getting more than their fair share. And while there's no record of anyone actually seeing those ghosts, an event like that, plus the curse of a shaken, pissed off priest, can definitely cast darkness over a town. But after a while, the darkness faded. Nearly a century after the Molly McGuires caused chaos in Centralia, things in central Pennsylvania seemed to quiet down a bit. The town had settled into a new identity of being a peaceful, tight knit, working class community. Unfortunately, it would only be the calm before the storm. By the mid 20th century, Centralia was still a mining town and about 1,400 people called it home. But there was still something about the fires that plagued the town. In June 1908, a restaurant fire broke out that destroyed an entire block. And in 1923, another fire went on for 11 days and burned 40 buildings to a crisp. But these fires all had one thing in common. They all started above ground and stayed that way, which meant they were fairly easy to control and contain. But the same couldn't be said for the fire that was about to take over the town. On May 27, 1962, the weekend before memorial day, A small fire burned bright in a massive landfill. The fire was likely set by city officials, but for good reason. According to journalist David d. Cook in his book unseen danger, Centralia's city council had decided that the trash in the landfill Was out of control and had to be cleaned. So the city agreed to take care of it in time for memorial day and set the day of May 27th to clean it by setting it on fire. But no one wrote this kind of plan down anywhere, because doing that kind of thing was illegal in Pennsylvania. So, off the record, they planned to set a fire and hired a few firemen to put it out Once all the trash had been burned. Sounded great in theory, but the problem that no one seriously considered. The landfill was on top of one of the town's coal mines, which was full of endless rocks that would burn forever. The firemen watched closely as the landfill burned. When they saw that most of the papers on top had burned to ash, they turned their hoses on and doused the flames. With the flames extinguished, the firemen called it a day and headed home. But their work wasn't done. Turns out, landfill fires are actually very complicated beings. With so many layers of flaming trash, There could be smoldering embers underneath where the firemen couldn't see, so that when the top layer dried up, the fire would start again. And that's exactly what happened. Two days later, the fire was raging again. The firemen came back and turned their hoses on. The fire went out and then flared up again. This went on for days, and no one could figure out why a fire in a landfill, which had likely been set many times before, Just wouldn't die. And that's when the firemen saw it. A crack in the ground, 15ft long that had previously been covered up by piles of trash. That crack went straight down to the mines. The reason the fire wouldn't go out Was because it was being powered by the coal underneath the ground. The fire was now fueled by an endless supply of coal and natural gas, Connected by miles of tunnels that ran under Centralia's houses and streets, and it was spreading. Most people in Centralia had no idea what was happening right beneath them. And for a couple of days it was business as usual. Kids played basketball outside. Their mothers watched them through open screen windows while they chatted on the phone. Inside, it was an ideal, if unremarkable start to a lazy Pennsylvania summer. Except that a fire was crackling, hissing and raging just beneath their feet. The first people to know that something was wrong beside the firemen and city officials were the gas station owners at the time. They would take the temperature of their gas every day. The tanks were kept underground and a safe temperature for the gasoline was generally below 80 degrees. Now they were noticing temperatures up near 397 degrees and gas explodes at 495 degrees. So they were the first to sound the alarm. The fire continued to spread underground and it started to send ominous trails of smoke into the air. The smell of burning sulfur got more and more intense. Soon everyone knew that an uncontrollable fire had broken out underground. And this was a town that knew all about coal mines and fires. It was clear they were in serious danger.
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Heidi Wong
Early attempts to stop the fire were at least based in some kind of logic. First, they thought about digging out all the coal under the landfill and soaking it with tons of water. But the fire was spreading too fast for the digging and dowsing to work. So the next plan was to pump a fire resistant gloop made out of a mixture of ash, water and rocks into the ground. But there just wasn't enough of it to make a difference. After determining the fire was too big to put out, they figured they should at least try to contain it. They dug a trench around the fire, but the flame just jumped right over it and continued spreading. And when they tried using clay to fill in the pits that were venting the fire, that just pushed carbon monoxide into people's homes, causing them to pass out. A year passed. Then Two, then three. Not only was the fire still going strong, but it started to spread underneath Centralia with no end in sight. People just started to accept that this is the way life would be. Now the people of Centralia tried to look on the bright side. Since the ground was always warm, it meant that snow would never really stick to the roads, keeping them clear even during the worst blizzards. By accepting this underground blaze as their new reality, it was like the people of Centralia were being consumed by the dark spirit of the forest fire itself. But as the years went by, the fire began to make the town more and more uninhabitable. Carbon monoxide levels in the area were sky high, to the point where people were basically breathing at their own risk. And when there was a shortage of carbon monoxide monitors, people started relying on canaries to see if the level of poison gas were enough to kill the birds. People's houses, once straight and on rock solid foundations, stopped, started to tilt. Homeowners watched in fear as their lawns began to turn brown. The patches of dead grass growing like a stain that inched closer and closer to their houses. They wondered what would happen once the fire hit their foundations, their pipes, their gas lines. In a truly gruesome turn, graves started sinking into the swirling pit of fire below Centralia cemeteries. And in 1981, 12 year old Todd Dombowski nearly died when the smoking ground he was standing on gave in under his feet, sucking him into a smoke filled sinkhole. People in town panicked and started to let their imaginations get the best of them. Rumors and conspiracy theories swirled around town like superheated embers. Centralia's hard working families wondered if this was somehow the government's way of pushing them out so that they could get their hands on the coal without paying a fair price. In 1980, the federal government's Bureau of Mines officially declared that they failed to do anything to stop the fire that was burning under Centralia for the past 18 years. They said the only option left was to stop trying to put it out and let it burn out on its own. And that wouldn't happen for a very, very, very long time. The fire was being fueled by a huge supply of coal and gas underground. It went as deep as 300ft and covered six square miles of Centralia. Scientifically speaking, it probably wasn't going to burn out on its own for another 250 years. The best that the government's top experts could do at that point was to let it run its centuries long course. They actually called the proposal the do nothing operation. And in 1983, the Pennsylvania State government adopted the do nothing proposal. Which was not that encouraging. But at least they knew that they couldn't just let people stay in a town that was burning underground. And had dangerous levels of carbon monoxide hanging in the air above ground. So they switched goals from putting the fire out to getting the people out. No one was forced to leave at first. In 1984, the federal government gave $38.9 million to Pennsylvania's governor. To basically buy Centralia. People could sell their homes to the state. And start a better life in a neighboring town. One that hadn't been on fire for the past 22 years. It didn't take much to talk a lot of the Centralia residents into this deal. But of course, there were some residents who insisted that they would never leave Centralia. It had been their family's home for generations. They weren't about to be forced out. So they hung on, knowing in their bones. That the only way they'd leave Centralia was in a body bag. Two residents who decided to stay in Centralia. After everyone was being strongly encouraged to leave. Were John and Bertha Mayernick. They were a couple in their late 60s. Who rented half a duplex in town. For Bertha, Centralia was the only home she'd ever known. It was part of who she was as a person. Her family had lived there for generations. And had run the local grocery store. So even as the town was disappearing, she insisted that she wasn't leaving. She felt that it was her duty to stay. If she left, history would leave with her. There would be no more stories and no more life. The town would die for real. And she couldn't live with that. The problem was her landlord, who sold their house. And they didn't have enough money to buy their own place back. So they were ordered to pack up and go. John thought it was the right thing to do. Centralia wasn't in his blood the way that it was in Bertha's. But Bertha stood firm. Even as the notices started to pile up. And the sheriff had threatened to remove them by force. If anyone wanted Bertha Mayernick out of Centralia. They would have to take drastic measures. Unfortunately, fortunately, there was someone who managed to do just that. On October 12, 1987, Bertha and John had a fight about the most recent eviction notice. And Bertha's refusal to leave. As the fight escalated, John suddenly grabbed a knife and lunged at Bertha. Bertha was shocked, but her reflexes kicked in. And she put her hands in front of her face to defend herself. Sadly, it did nothing to protect her. But John stabbed Bertha in the face and neck, right through her hands. It was too much for Bertha to overcome, and she died from her wounds before the reality of what he'd done could sink in. John got in his car and peeled out of the driveway. He drove until he hit the outskirts of town. Then he parked. He reached for a can of gasoline that he kept in the car, and without getting out, he poured the gasoline over his head and lit a. A match. John's body was found in his still burning car. Bertha was found stabbed to death in her living room. Today, there's not much left in Centralia. There are, however, five people still living there, according to the US Census. Because there are people still living there, Centralia can't technically be considered a ghost town. Not that you would know by looking at it. Driveways lead leading nowhere. Boarded up houses, overgrown empty lots where houses and churches once stood. Signs warning people to keep out cracked, overgrown roads. With smoke still wafting out of those cracks. One of the main highways leading into Centralia, Route 61, was covered in colorful graffiti. That is, before the highway was completely covered in dirt in 2020. To discourage visitors, the graffiti said things like, you will die here. Welcome to hell. 666. And of course, Silent Hill, Pennsylvania. Because on paper, you couldn't come up with a more perfect setting for a horror movie if you tried. A dark curiosity has always drawn people to Centralia, much in the same way Rose was pulled into Silent Hill because of her daughter. But since the release of the movie in 2006, tourism to the almost ghost town has exploded, which has made the town's remaining residents very unhappy. They don't want tourists there, especially not the kind who are only there because of a movie that they feel like made a mockery of their town's rich history and the disaster that tore it apart. But people still go desperate to see what it's like to be in the real Silent Hill. The story of the real Centralia doesn't need paranormal lore lore to be a real life horror story. It's not haunted by the tortured spirits of those who once lived there or cursed by demons who made it burn for years. It's straight up terrifying without all of that, because it's a real world disaster that led to the slow disappearance of a town and its people and an erosion of the stories and memories that at one time gave it life. And maybe we're all fascinated by a place that like Centralia, not because of any fictional horror, but because there's no better ghost than the world that used to be. Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of Twisted, a Crime House original. I'd love to hear from you. What did you think about today's stories? Anything you're dying for me to COVID Leave a comment or review wherever you're tuning in. And be sure to follow Twisted Tales so we can keep building this community together. I'll be back next week with another unbelievable true story. Until then, stay curious and remember, there's no reason to fear the dark unless you try to hide from it.
- [27:56]
Vanessa Richardson
Looking for your next listen? Hi, it's Vanessa Richardson and I have exciting news. Conspiracy theories, Cults and crimes is leveling up starting the week of January 12th. You'll be getting two episodes every week. Wednesdays we unravel the conspiracy or the cult, and on Fridays we look at a corresponding crime. Follow Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen.