Top Ten Most Haunted Places #6: Congelier House

Congelier House
Pittsburgh, PA

This house is the former most haunted house in america.

Built by Charles Wright Congelier, a wealthy carpet bagger in the 1860s (he moved from Texas with his wife, Lyda, and his servant girl, Essie), the house has a long history of murder, human experimentation, and gruesome death.

After a few months of living in the mansion, Charles began to have an affair with Essie (it is uncertain if she did it willingly or not.)  For several months Lyda was unaware, until one day, when she heard panting and moaning coming from Essie's quarters.  She immediately went downstairs and grabbed a meat cleaver and a butcher knife and hurried upstairs to await her husband.  When he opened the door, he was greeted by a large meat cleaver entering his forehead.

When a friend of Charles noticed he hadn't seen him, he went to the house to investigate.  He found Lyda sitting in a rocking chair with a swaddled item in her hands, murmuring a lullaby.  When the man examined the item, he found it to be not a baby, but Essie's decapitated head.

The house remained empty after the incident until 1901, when it was bought by Adolph C. Brunrichter, an aspiring doctor. Nothing seemed to happen for several months.  But on August 12th, a fire broke out in the house.  Suspecting that Brunrichter was still in the house, fire marshals enter the blaze and found a most grisly sight.  In an upstairs bedroom, lying on a bed, was the decapitated, decomposing body of a young woman.   The head was found soon after, in a makeshift labratory in the basement.  What they failed to find, however, were any remains of Brunrichter.

In 1927, a New York street vagrant was arrested for public drunkenness.  He stated that he was Adolph Brunrichter, and admitted to the murder.  He spoke of lavish parties where he enticed women into spending the night, and how he would use their heads for experiments in immortality.  He was sent to prison for a month, then released and deemed harmless.

In 1920 the house was abandoned, gaining it a more fearsome reputation as being "too evil to live in."  This attracted one of the greatest mind in America: Thomas Edison.  He was attempting to create a device that could communicate with the dead, and thought of Congelier house as the perfect place to test it.  There is no record of what happened in the house, but some say that he actually communicated with the dead.

In the late 20s, the house was converted into a living space for Italian immigrants, working on a natural gas storage nearby.  One night 14 men were sitting around a table, laughing and having fun.  One went into the kitchen with a stack of dirty dishes, but never returned.  One worker noticed his prolonged absence and went to check the kitchen.  When he saw what was there, he let out a scream which attracted the others.  The basement door yawned open, revealing a dark abyss.  Scared, but determined, several workers headed down the stairs, but they never got to the bottom.  At the foot of the stairs was the missing worker, impaled through the chest with a splintered board.  A few steps above him was the screamer, hanging from a board by an electric cable.  The men left that night.

Years later, several tanks in the storage facility exploded, leaving 28 dead, but destroying the house for good.

At least, that's the myth...