The Bussey’s Woods Ghost Mystery & The Murders of Franklin B. Evans

Dark Histories

Ben Cutmore

History

4.8 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 11 July 2023

⏱️ 75 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Hi everyone! Thanks for bearing with me over the short summer break! It's good to be back and I've got a cracking episode to launch into the second half of the season. This one has it all, ghosts, murder... well alright, it's got ghosts and murder, but that's not bad! It is a darker one and has some fairly brutal murdery bits, but I don't think it's especially worse than what we've seen before. Little heads up though. I hope you enjoy! In the heart of Boston, Massachusetts, lies a 281 acre wooded parkland area known as Arnold’s Arboretum. A beautiful botanical garden and research institution planted in naturalistic style, its serene park walks bely a history before its life as the arboretum, where dark events in its past stained the ground and transformed a popular picnic spot into an ugly memorial that few wished to visit. Several years later, these events in Boston found themselves tied into a story of a murderer that the contemporary press called “The most monstrous and inhuman criminal of modern times - or indeed any time,” though despite their shocking nature, they have somehow become largely forgotten, if not for a bizarre report of a ghost sighting that keeps the linked cases alive, sparking the public imagination. ------- This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp, check out betterhelp.com/darkhistories to get 10% off your first month. ------- SOURCES Brent, Henry Johnson (1868) Was it a Ghost? The murders in Bussey's wood. An extraordinary narrative. Loring, USA. Bangor Daily Whig & Courier (1865) A Terrible Tragedy In Roxbury. Bangor Daily Whig & Courier, Tuesday, 20 June 1865, p.3. USA New York Daily Herald (1865) Horrible Tragedy In Roxbury. New York Daily Herald, Tuesday, 20 June 1865, p.8. USA Hartford Courant (1865) Horrible Murder And Outrage. Hartford Courant, Tuesday, 20 June 1865, p.2. USA The Burlington Free Press (1865) Tragedy In Roxbury. The Burlington Free Press, Wednesday, 21 June 1865, p.2. USA The Enterprise & Vermonter (1865) Horrid Murder At West Roxbury, Mass. The Enterprise & Vermonter, Friday, 23 June 1865, p.2. USA The Indianapolis Star (1865) The Roxbury Tragedy. The Indianapolis Star, Monday, 26 June 1865, p.2. USA Boston Evening Transcript (1865) Coroner’s Inquest In The Case Of The Murdered Children. Boston Evening Transcript, Tuesday, 27 June 1865, p.4. USA Boston Evening Transcript (1865) Reward. Boston Evening Transcript, Wednesday, 28 June 1865, p.3. USA The Buffalo Commercial (1865) Arrest Of The Supposed Murderer Of The Joyce Children. The Buffalo Commercial, Wednesday, 12 July 1865, p.2. USA The Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1865) AIsabella Joyce - The Late Boston Tragedy. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Friday, 14 July 1865, p.1. USA Boston Evening Transcript (1865) The Recent Tragedy In West Roxbury. Boston Evening Transcript, Wednesday, 19 July 1865, p.4. USA New York Daily Herald (1865) The Roxbury Tragedy. New York Daily Herald, Friday, 21 July 1865, p.8. USA Boston Evening Transcript (1865) The West Roxbury Tragedy. Boston Evening Transcript, Monday, 24 July 1865, p.3. USA DeWolfe, Byron (1872) Georgiana Lovering, Or The Northwood Tragedy. New Hampshire, USA. Spirit of the Age (1874) Franklin B. Evans. Spirit of the Age, Thursday 26 February 1874, p.3, USA. Brown, Janice (2004) Early History of Town of Strafford, Strafford County, New Hampshire. USA. St Johnsbury Caledonian (1873) The New Hampshire Murder. St Johnsbury Caledonian, Friday 14 February 1843, p.2. USA. Lewis, John B. (1896) Stratagems and conspiracies to defraud life insurance companies. J. H. McLellan, USA. Schecter, Harold (2012) Psycho USA, Famous American Killers You Never Heard Of. Ballantine Books, USA. Boston Evening Transcript (1872) A Young Girl Outraged And Murdered By Her Uncle. Boston Evening Transcript, Monday, 04 November 1872, p.1. USA The Boston Globe (1872) The Northwood Tragedy. The Boston Globe, Friday, 08 November 1872, p.5. USA The Argus & Patriot (1872) Summary Of News. The Argus & Patriot, Thursday, 14 November 1872, p.5. USA North Star (1872) The Northwood Murder. North Star, Friday 29 November 1872, p.2. USA. Boston Evening Transcript (1873) The Northwood, N.H, Murder. Monday 03 February 1873, p.4. USA. Boston Evening Transcript (1873) The Murder Trial At Exeter, N.H.. Tuesday 04 February 1873, p.4. USA. Boston Evening Transcript (1873) The Murder Trial At Exeter, N.H.. Wednesday 05 February 1873, p.4. USA. Rutland Independent (1873) Confessions Of Evans. Rutland Independent, Saturday 08 February 1873. P.8. USA For almost anything, head over to the podcasts hub at darkhistories.com Support the show by using our link when you sign up to Audible: http://audibletrial.com/darkhistories or visit our Patreon for bonus episodes and Early Access: https://www.patreon.com/darkhistories The Dark Histories books are available to buy here: http://author.to/darkhistories Dark Histories merch is available here: https://bit.ly/3GChjk9 Connect with us on Facebook: http://facebook.com/darkhistoriespodcast Or find us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/darkhistories & Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dark_histories/ Or you can contact us directly via email at [email protected] or join our Discord community: https://discord.gg/cmGcBFf The Dark Histories Butterfly was drawn by Courtney, who you can find on Instagram @bewildereye Music was recorded by me © Ben Cutmore 2017 Other Outro music was Paul Whiteman & his orchestra with Mildred Bailey - All of me (1931). It's out of copyright now, but if you're interested, that was that. aa4541908247c2084f5dc715198cf917ef95e812 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	In the heart of Boston, Massachusetts, as a 281-acre wooded parkland area known as Arnold's
0:06.7	Arboritum, a beautiful, botanical garden and research institution planted in a naturalistic
0:12.5	style, its serene park walks, belire history before its life as the Arboritum, where dark
0:18.6	events in its past stain the ground and transform a popular pick-mix spot into an ugly memorial
0:25.2	that few wish to visit. Several years later, these events in Boston found themselves
0:30.9	tied into a story of a murderer that the contemporary press called the most monstrous and inhuman
0:36.6	criminal of modern times, or indeed anytime. They, despite their shocking nature, have somehow
0:43.2	become largely forgotten, if not for a bizarre report of a ghost sighting that keeps the
0:49.1	link cases alive, sparking the public imagination. This is Dark History, where the facts are
0:55.9	worse than fiction.
1:02.0	Hello and welcome, I'm Ben and this is Dark History's Season 7 episode 14. It's good
1:09.1	to be back after a little short summer break there. It was nice actually to get back on
1:14.1	top of a bit of my research and organize a couple of episodes that I sort of half organized
1:19.7	and half sort of put on the back burner and just sort of cast off into the Dark History's
1:24.8	Abyss. Yeah, so it was nice to sort of get those back sorted out and ready to go and things
1:30.0	like that. I'm glad everyone seemed to enjoy the MR James sort of standing episode, had
1:36.4	quite a lot of emails about that. Everyone seemed to actually really enjoy it, which was
1:40.3	great. Except for I didn't get a few emails saying, by the way, you have actually read
1:43.9	a school story before, which I completely forgot about. Apparently I read it for one
1:49.1	of the Christmas campfires, which I knew that I read MR James story for the Christmas
1:55.1	campfire before, but I thought it was the Stools of Barges as a Cathedral, but apparently
1:59.7	not. Apparently it was a school story. But anyway, I'm sure, you know, well, hopefully
	...

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