Welcome to Haunted Road, a production of I Heart Radio and Grimm and Myld from Aaron Manky.

Listener discretion is advised.

In 1914, Albert Charles Houghton had it all.

A prominent businessman and a respected local politician,

Houghton enjoyed a reputation throughout New England as a man whose influence extended well beyond the bounds

of his small town in the Berkshires.

He also had a large and loving family with his wife and daughters, most of whom had married and were starting families of their own.

Houghton lived in the grandest house in North Adams.

He had everything, until he didn't.

A terrible accident one summer day changed the entire course of the Houghton family's history,

leaving behind a legacy of tragedy and a mansion full of harrowing memories.

That mansion is also full of ghosts.

The restless spirits of those who can't forgive themselves and those who can't forget.

I'm Amy Bruni and this is Haunted Road.

Today, North Adams is the smallest city in Massachusetts.

Nestled in the Berkshire Mountains of Western Mass, the city is best known as the Home of Mass Moka,

the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.

But once, North Adams was a center of manufacturing during the Industrial Revolution,

topping out at a population of 24,000 in 1900.

A.C. Houghton wasn't just an important figure in the history of North Adams.

He was seminal in the founding of the city itself, which was incorporated in 1878

and became an official city in 1895.

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