S04 Episode 21: The Under Weight (Pt.2 of 2) - podcast episode cover

S04 Episode 21: The Under Weight (Pt.2 of 2)

Dec 27, 201923 min
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Episode description

Part Two of S04 Episode 21: The Under Weight 
In 1980, Harris County's Newport subdivision housing development in Texas, put its newest set of plots on the market. The Williams and Haneys were just two sets of couples who moved into the area shortly afterwards. 
It was a decision, they would soon come to regret...
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Transcript

Speaker 1

You're listening to Unexplained Season four, episode twenty one, The Underweight, Part two. The rain pelted the windows as thunder cracked and rattled ferociously about the sky. Tossing in their bed, Judith and Sam Haney tried their best to ignore it. Another heavy storm had hit Section eight of the Newport's subdivision, but it wasn't just the storm that was keeping them awake.

Ever since they'd uncovered the bones in their garden, the pair had been racked with guilt for having desecrated the grave, but also with shame for having, albeit unwittingly, moved into a house that had quite possibly been built on top of a graveyard. Having finally dozed off, who wasn't long until Sam was snapping awake again. In the dark, he lay for a moment, just listening to the sound of the wind and the rain lashing down against the house,

when slowly he became aware of something else, voices. Thinking that he might still be dreaming, a sudden flash of lightning brought him to his senses. Hearing the voices again, Sam realized they were coming from the TV in the living room. Stepping quietly from the bed, he made his way into the hall at the bottom of which a

gentle light was flickering against the walls. Turning into the living room, Sam stood for a moment, mesmerized by the silent images playing out on the TV screen, confused as to how on earth it had somehow turned itself on in the middle of the night, who switched it off at the wall and made his way back to bed. The following morning, Judith searched everywhere for her work shoes, but couldn't find them anywhere. Asking Sam in the kitchen if he'd seen them, she was suddenly drawn to something

out in the garden. The couple had had the grave filled in again as soon as the bones had been collected by the coroner, and had planted some flowers on top as a sign of respect, But now there was something else placed there too, Judith's missing shoes, and that

was only the beginning. Over the next few days, the couple were beset by a series of strange occurrences, from lights flashing on and off, to unaccountable noises, and that sinister sensation that, unbeknownst to them, had also been plaguing their neighbors, Jean and Ben Williams. The feeling that they weren't quite alone in their house. When the bone analysis came back from the coroner's office, it was discovered that there were, in fact two skeletons buried side by side.

Wedding rings found on their fingers suggested that they'd been a married couple. Both were determined to have died of natural causes sometime in the nineteen thirties. The bones were eventually delivered back to the Hanes at their request. The request had been made primarily because the couple believed it important that the bones be returned to where they had come from out of respect. However, it also hadn't been lost on them that those peculiar disturbances had only begun

after the grave had been disturbed. The couple placed the bones inside a specially made pine wood box alongside a single rose, and buried them back in the spot where they'd originally been found. A few weeks later, after a period of calm, Judith was woken by flashes of electric blue light coming from the alarm clock at the back of the bedroom. She looked aghast at the digital clock as electric sparks shot out at the top of it, hurrying to switch it off. She was confused to find

that it wasn't even plugged in. Moments later, the clock shut itself off. It wasn't long before news of the hans gruesome discovery, not just the grave, but the possibility that it might be only one of many in the neighborhood reached the other residents of Poppits Way, having been

one of the first to hear about it. The next day, Jean and Ben Williams wandered out into their garden and stared long and hard at the numerous six foot long depressions in the soil that were dotted all around, and at those strange markings carved into the bark of the great oak at the corner of their home that Jean had grown so fond of. It was as if they were seeing them, only then for the first time, an arrow pointing down and two small lines scratched in underneath.

Since the death of Jean's brother the previous year, there had been little let up in the misery that seemed to have engulfed the family since Jean and Ben had moved to Newport barely two years ago. Not long after Glen died, Jean's father was diagnosed with cancer, too, becoming the fifth family member to be diagnosed with a life

threatening illness since they moved into their new home. One night, Carly's cat, Smoky, disappeared into the woods at the back of the garden, only to reappear out of the blue a week later, seeming somehow changed. After he tore apart a bedspread and then tat Carlie unexpectedly, one night, the family took him to the vet. It wasn't clear exactly what ailment had worked its way inside him, but whatever it was, it was killing him, causing him great pain

and distress in the process. Faced with an impossible choice, the family elected to have Smokey put down or the while the family continued to hear what they took to be footsteps moving about at night, and labored under the continual sense that they were being watched by things unseen. Some relief had arrived toward the end of nineteen eighty two, when Tina was given the all clear from Hodgkins lymphoma, but before long, the now familiar dark clouds of misery

had drifted back into view. In March nineteen eighty three, on the exact same day as her brother the year before, Jean's father Robert died. It was an unusual coincidence, to say the least, and one that only exacerbated the impact of an already traumatic event, with the hanes gruesome discovery and all that that might entail coming only a few months later. At first, it merely compounded everything else. Soon, however, for Jean, at least, finally, it seemed there might be

an answer to it. All. The grave's discovery, the strange activity, the illnesses, deaths, and even their daughters Marcia, Anne's broken marriage and Judith having to give up custody of Carly. Might all of it be connected? With Jean, now convinced more than ever that something about the location was bringing so much tragedy to the family, her and Ben's thoughts

once again turned to escape. However, not long after finding the bones, the Hanes began a lawsuit against the developers of the Newport subdivision, accusing them of knowingly building on top of graves and failing to disclose that information to their clients. And when the case hit the news, the Williamses struggled to find anyone willing to pay a suitable

price for their home. The next eighty months, however, proved relatively calm for the family, who, although they couldn't yet move, had found the perfect place in Montana to at least give them something positive to focus on. Tina had also continued to thrive since getting the all clear from Hodgkins's disease, and by the end of nineteen eighty four she was

married and pregnant. In February the following year, Jean noticed the Hanes escorting an elderly man around the neighborhood, but soon realized it was he that was escorting them, stopping every so often to point something out to them. The man, as she later found out, was Jasper Norton, an eighty year old resident of Bared Station, a small township located at the other side of the woods that backed onto Jean and Ben's property. The area had once been part

of the McKinney plantation. Some time after the abolition of slavery in eighteen sixty five, a three acre section of it had supposedly been deeded by the McKinneys to their former slaves. Many of those who still lived there were descendants of those people, Jasper with one of them. As Jasper went on to explain to the Haynes, the land had once been home to a church, a school, and a graveyard known locally as Black Hope Cemetery, a final resting place for the community that had grown up around it.

According to Jasper, who'd been helping to bury people there since the age of fourteen, much of Section eight had been built on top of the graveyard, and Jean and Ben Williams's home was right in the middle of it. Are you always taking care of your family? Do you often take care of others and not yourself? Now it's time to take care of yourself, to make time for you. You deserve it. Teledoc gives you access to a licensed therapist to help you get back to feeling your best,

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For teledoc therapy is available through most insurance or employers. Download the app or visit teledoc dot com forward slash Unexplained podcast today to get started. That's t e ladoc dot com slash Unexplained podcast. The neighbors were understandably shocked by Jasper's story. It would be one thing to have unknowingly built a housing development over a grave site, quite another to have built it over an entire graveyard. But that was the thing. Just how much had the development

company known about it. As the Haneys legal suit rattled on, Gene and Ben drove out to bed Station to speak with some of the local residents to learn more about the cemetery for themselves. Their meetings were documented, along with the rest of the Williams's experiences living in Newport, in their nineteen ninety one book Black Hope Horror, written in

collaboration with John Bruce shoemaker. Ninety year old Elbert Pritchard came to the area from Louisiana with his mother and stepfather in nineteen hundred and recalled that even then they were burying bodies in the local area. His own stepfather was buried there too. He also confirmed that the Williams's home was placed directly in the middle of the site.

Will Freeman, his name a stark testament to his family's past, was blind, and in his nineties when the Williams has met with him, Freeman explained that bodies would often be buried haphazardly because the land that had been granted to the freed people was either too boggy to do anything with, otherwise it was too rocky or wooded. Most of his neighbors, having been so institutionally crippled by slavery, who were unable to afford formal burials or even headstones for their loved ones.

Will Freeman also remembered the difficulty of trying to find a suitable place to bury his two sisters, eventually settling on a spot right next to an old oak tree. And if he wasn't mistaken, as he went on to explain to Jean and Ben, you might still be able to find it due to the markings he'd made in the bark of the tree, a large arrow pointing downwards

and two straight lines underneath. Jean felt a sudden lurch in her stomach when he said it recognizing those symbols immediately as the ones on the tree at the corner of her home. There was no question now that Jean and Ben had to find a way out for their family's sake as well as theirs. Though Jean didn't know who or what it was exactly, she was convinced that something had been ruptured by the act of desecrating so many graves, and whatever had materialized as a consequence had

focused its attention on them. With property values declining as much as seventy percent. Now that the cemetery's existence had become more widely known, their only hope was to seek legal compensation. But despite testimony from bed Station Residence that the McKinneys had once needed the land where the cemetery was located to their former slaves and their descendants, this arrangement had never been officially recognized as such when the

housing development company later bought it from the McKinney family. Legally, they hadn't done anything wrong. Had they known about the cemetery before building on top of it and not disclosed this information to future buyers, the might have been reasonable grounds to sue. However, since the state hadn't formally recognized the symmetry either, there was no way to prove that

the company had any prior knowledge of its existence. After seeking advice from their lawyer, it was decided that the next best option for the Williamses was to seek compensation from the title company for the loss of value. Only there was one big catch. Even if they succeeded in convincing a jury that compensation was justified, they would ultimately need physical evidence of the semmetry for a judge to

award it to them. In order to do this, however, would mean deliberately digging up a grave, which, even if the grave is not formally recognized, could in itself be deemed an illegal act, effectively avoiding their claim. After a period of relative calm in the fall of nineteen eighty six, Jean and Ben were woken one night by what sounded like heavy footsteps padding up the corridor toward their bedroom.

Remembering all that had come before, the couple lay paralyzed in fear as the steps drew closer and closer, with their eyes fixed on the open doorway. For a moment, a shadow seemed to fall across it, only to slip away again as the sound of footsteps continued on, now heading toward Carly's room. The couple leapt from their bed and darted into the hall. Jean gasped at the sight of Carly's closed bedroom door at the end of the corridor and the sliver of light peeking out from underneath it.

She always left it open at night. The couple later claimed to have found Carly sat bolt upright in bed but fast asleep, with what appeared to be a number of transparent shapes crowded around the bed. Clutching the crucifix around her neck, Jeanne had then proceeded to pray loudly until the figures had apparently slowly dissolved away. The following morning,

jean knew exactly what to do. It would be wrong to say it felt good ramming the spade into the dirt at the base of the large oak tree, but there was little denying the sense of relief that jean felt now she'd finally taken matters into her own hands. After almost an hour, however, with the ground full of stones and roots, Jeanne had barely got more than a foot down when she was forced to call it a day.

The next day was more of the same as Jean continued to work away at the pit, but no matter how hard she tried, she seemed barely to make a dent in it. By lunch time, with some help from Ben, she was about three feet down when Tina arrived with her new baby to look after Jeanne's mother for the afternoon.

Angered to find Jean attempting to dig up the grave, Tina suggested that they just forget the whole thing and move on, as surely, if disturbing the graves had been the cause of all their misery, what good could possibly come out of disturbing another one. That evening, with Ben and Jean returned, Tina's husband joined the rest of the family for dinner. Later, with the family gathered together in

the living room, Tina suddenly doubled over in pain. Ben yelled for some one to call an ambulance as he tried his best to comfort his daughter, who knew instantly that something was deeply wrong. Tina, who was judged to have suffered a massive heart attack, lost consciousness on the way to hospital and would never regain it. After spending three days on life's support, the family agreed to turn it off, with Tina's untimely death. A final line had

been crossed. After seven years of cumulative grief and terror, Jean and Ben simply packed their bags and left, canceling all future payments on their mortgage until finally the lender had no choice but to foreclose on the house, taking their eighteen thousand dollars deposit with it. Like their neighbors, the Marshals and Andersons, who had also been driven out at the neighborhood under similar circumstances, the Williamses, who resettled

in Bitter Root, Montana, lost their whole investment. In total, seven of the area's eight original homes would eventually be abandoned by their owners. In May nineteen eighty seven, the Haines lawsuit against the housing development company finally came to an end. Although at first having convinced a jury to find in their favor, with the couple being awarded one hundred and forty two thousand dollars in compensation, this was

ultimately overruled on appeal. The judge presiding over the case concluded that there was no evidence to confirm the company had been intentionally negligent. The remains of the married couple found in the Hanes garden were eventually removed and reburied in the nearest Perpetual Care cemetery. The couple were later identified as most likely being Betty and Charlie Thomas, who'd

both been born in the mid nineteenth century. For many years, the Hanes visited the Thomas's new grave to leave flowers and pay their respects. Other individuals thought to have been buried in Black Hope Cemetery and unmarked graves are Becky Thornton, Tom Fawced, Billy Cash, Rosy Booth, Joseph Freeman, D. J. Bradley, Ella Freeman, Maude Holmes, John Frejoy, Louise Childress, Roy Childress, Mary Francis, Terence Brossard, Charlie Bates, Ben Hubley, Many Booths,

Bob Hunter, Joe Turner, Nancy Turner, and Billy Parrish. Unexplained. The book and audio book, featuring ten stories that have never before been covered on the show, is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Waterstones, among other bookstores. All elements of Unexplained, including the show's music, are produced by me Richard McClane smith.

Please subscribe and rate the show wherever you listen to podcasts and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of your own you'd like to share. You can reach us online at Unexplained podcast dot com, or Twitter at Unexplained Pod and Facebook at Facebook dot com. Forward Slash Unexplained Podcast. Now, it's time to take care of yourself. To make time for you.

Teledoc gives you access to a licensed therapist to help you get back to feeling your best. Speak to a licensed therapist by phone or video anytime between seven am to nine pm local time, seven days a week. Teledoc Therapy is available through most insurance or employers. Download the app or visit telldoc dot com. Forward slash Unexplained Podcast Today to get started. That's t e l a d oc dot com Slash Unexplained Podcast

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