Wealthy department store owner George Gano built Bradmar in 1920. There’s a great hall, with marble flooring and adjoining halls dividing the mansion into two wings connected by a second floor balcony that crosses between the staircases. Other rooms include a drawing room, solarium, library, dining room, butler's pantry, kitchen, bedroom suites, bathrooms, guest rooms and servants’ quarters.
Daughter Ethel loved the mansion. After her second husband died, she lived there twenty more years. After her death, it was abandoned and fell into disrepair. Vandals trashed the inside and broke over 100 windows. Although the house was badly in need of repair, Dr. Robert A. Bradley and wife, Dorothy loved and bought it and restored it to its former glory.
Poltergeist and Ghostly Phenomena
Dorothy kept careful records of all incidents. Among the phenomena were electrical and bell systems being affected. The Bradleys did extensive research about “ghosts,” attended lectures and parapsychological discussions and had séances performed. Later, they would write a book, Psychic Phenomena: Revelations and Experiences about Bradmar.
- Lights went on and off by themselves. Sometimes, the library’s chandelier lights inexplicably flared up. When a psychic friend visited the Bradleys, the library lights flared, then dimmed continuously until she left the room.
- Footsteps were heard, shuffling through the house, with the lights going on and off, as they went from room to room. The wiring was checked, but the cause wasn’t electrical. When the electrician was installing new wiring, something interfered. Carefully braided cable, properly connected, was undone.
- Bells, including the maid’s in the kitchen, sounded in the middle of the night.
- Faucets turned themselves off and on.
- Robert went to the drawing room to light his cigar with the heavy, bulky metallic lighter on the table. The lighter soundlessly rose into the air by itself, floated slowly, and landed about a foot away on its side.
- The heavy bronze chandelier in the great hall furiously bobbed up and down on its own. The ceiling clasp had to be reinforced.
- Dorothy opened her purse to look for a handkerchief she had put there. It wasn’t found, so she closed the purse. When she reopened it, she found three small green, plastic mermaids lying on top of her missing handkerchief.
- After the family returned home from shopping, the plants in the reception hall had been uprooted and the dirt strewn about the floor. There was no sign of forced entry.
- Dorothy’s mother was an overnight guest. One night, she heard approaching footsteps, the bedroom door open and close, drawers opening and shutting and the rocking chair squeaking. She assumed this was her daughter and asked her about it the next day. Dorothy hadn’t been in the room.
- When the Bradleys were getting Christmas decorations from the attic, they found a mysterious box, labeled Halloween Lollipops. Inside there were six crudely fashioned pudgy pottery angels. A friend told them they appeared to be pregnant. Dr. Bradley was an obstetrician.
- Although the Bradley family never saw ghosts, some visitors reported seeing phantoms.
Arthur Ford’s Input
Ford was a famous medium at the time. Robert contacted him. Ford went into a trance and told him that an elderly couple had lived in the mansion. The wife liked a dark place and kept the blinds shut. Her husband went through the mansion, turning the lights on. She followed him, turning the lights off. Ford said they were still doing this. After the meeting, the Bradleys invited the former head housekeeper to visit. She noticed how bright mansion’s interior was and told them Ethel liked a dark house.
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Source:
Haunted America, Michael Norman & Beth Scott, (Tor, 1994)
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