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    Hauntin' Taunton: The State Asylum
    Hauntin' Taunton: The State Asylum
    Hauntin' Taunton: The State Asylum
    Ebook118 pages1 hour

    Hauntin' Taunton: The State Asylum

    By Bill Russo

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    About this ebook

    Taunton State Hospital for the Insane: an eerie New England campus of forty ornate 19th century buildings that have housed some of America’s most bizarre and dangerous criminals – murderous monsters who avoided the hangman’s rope only because they were judged to be lunatics. Sometimes punishment comes from a different source, as Poison Ivy (the Hug and Drug Killer) and "Cannabelle" who pickles human fingers and toes, are about to find out in Bill Russo’s take on ‘Hauntin’ Taunton – The State Asylum.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBill Russo
    Release dateSep 29, 2017
    ISBN9781370073818
    Hauntin' Taunton: The State Asylum
    Author

    Bill Russo

    Bill Russo had lived in an area of Massachusetts called the Bridgewater Triangle for many years and never knew that it was said to be inhabited by scary swamp creatures until he met one. It happened on a midnight walk. Years later, two film producers read his blog about it and featured him and his story in their documentary, The Bridgewater Triangle. He also was approached by Discovery channel producers and was featured in the opening segment of Monsters and Mysteries in America - Season two, Episode two. Among his work, are two anthologies featuring the Bridgewater Triangle Universe. One is strictly fiction and the other contains his account of meeting the swamp creature - plus other stories from New England. As a disc jockey, he was the first person to play and promote the trucking classic "Tombstone Every Mile". He counted as a friend, the first man to cross the musical color line, in a 1940s Jazz Band. The "Human Jukebox", who opened for both Elvis and Roy Orbison, was a neighbor of his. Stories of these and other artists are included in "Crossing the Musical Color Line". Bill's background for writing comes from a Boston education at the venerable white shirt & tie, Huntington School for Boys. He followed that up with a study of journalism, music, and broadcasting at the famed Kenmore Square institution, Grahm Jr. College, where he said he learned more about music from an African American gentleman who was the school's janitor, than he ever could in a classroom. He introduced me to Gloria Lynne, Bill said. Years after he learned of her, she had a mega hit with I Wish You Love. One of Grahm's well known graduates was performance artist Andy Kaufman who created his Taxi TV character Latka while at Grahm. Andy also claimed he learned Transcendental Meditation at Grahm, although it was not taught there. But who knows? It could be true. Bill Russo learned music from the Janitor. Maybe someone in bookkeeping was a guru and gave Andy the secrets of TM. At various times during his career, Russo was a New England Newspaper Editor, a Disc Jockey, and a Radio newswriter and newscaster for a number of stations. He also has had stints as an iron worker, and a low level manager for a major mail order clothing retailer. One of his favorite jobs was partnering with Bill Barry, the inventor of a jewelry polish called Clear Bright n Shiny. The 'Bills' as they called themselves toured New England selling...

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    • 5/5
      I absolutely loved this! Did not put down until it was done! Thanks author!!

    Book preview

    Hauntin' Taunton - Bill Russo

    Chapter One: The Dreamer

    At first the monster was weak. A figure more of shadow than substance, it came only in bad dreams separated by spaces of weeks at a time. It was humanlike, but ugly - like a faded rock singer with long, greasy, mottled hair touching its bony shoulders.

    When the dreams increased in intensity and became full blown nightmares with no spaces between them, the ogre devolved into a solid, foul-smelling behemoth.

    Its face, hidden behind an obscure sepia mask, was lit only by two bloody, fire-like circles where the eyes should have been. Its hands were clad in rigid, bumpy, alligator skin ending in sharp claws where before there had been fingers.

    With each sunset the dreamer was more panicked, hopelessly awaiting, but equally dreading the nocturnal visit of the demon. In daily increments the thing edged ever closer, its drooping claws splaying out like a screaming sea-eagle ready to pierce the flesh of a defenseless fish.

    Yewk. Yewk. Yawk. Cherawk, Yawk, Yew, It’s you, rasped the beast, its foul words saturated with fumes of putrid breath. The claws of the brute stretched to within a hair-width of touching the quivering, terrified man who answered the fiend’s cries with his own – Arrrrgh. Help me! Ahhhhh! Get away!!! God help me! Somebody help me! Please. Arrgh.

    The neighbors did not leave their beds to lend support – nor did they arrange palliative care for him. But they did help him, in a way. They had him committed!

    Angered at being awakened by the terrible screams in the middle of the night, every night for weeks, several people from the surrounding homes took action by calling the superintendent of the Taunton State Asylum for the Insane.

    Under a full moon and chained to a gurney, the dreamer, James Wilkes, was carted off to a padded cell without a hearing and with no recourse.

    A stranger to New England might wonder how Mr. Wilkes could have been incarcerated in an insane asylum without being a criminal and without being insane!

    Ah but he did commit a crime – disturbing the peace. In Massachusetts in the 20th century, men and women were sent away (sometimes for life) for even lesser crimes than this.

    Once behind the sturdy brick walls of the ‘hospital’ and its hundreds of secluded acres, all inmates were treated equally – equally bad!

    A person whose offense was perhaps no more than being considered ‘a little slow’ might be confined at close quarters with the most infamous murderers of the day.

    Perhaps the worst punishment an inmate could suffer in the asylum was to have Cannabelle for a room-mate.

    Chapter Two: Cannabelle

    One of the most feared dwellers of the asylum, Annabelle Parsons, was convicted of killing and eating more than two dozen people. Certified as a Lunatic, she escaped the hangman’s rope and was confined to the state hospital. A reporter for the Taunton Daily Chronicle dubbed her "Cannabelle’ and the nickname stuck with her for the rest of her life.

    In her early 20s, sickly and ravaged by tuberculosis, she developed an appetite for eating human meat after reading a series of ‘scientific’ articles claiming the ingestion of homo sapien flesh produces wondrous health benefits and prolongs life.

    Whether it was her cannibalism or the exercise regimen she began when she started her murdering ways, her ‘Consumption’ lessened and her constitution was markedly strengthened. She became a robust, healthy woman – more so with the ‘consumption’ of each new victim.

    Taunton police began to suspect Cannabelle’s involvement in the disappearance of a number of local residents and visitors to the city. She was using her home as a rooming house and some of the victims were her boarders.

    One evening just as she was about to make a fresh kill, the authorities broke into her quarters. She had slipped a ‘mickey’ into a glass of beer and served it to one of her guests. When the man fell unconscious she plugged his nose with corks and his mouth with an apple and patiently waited for him to suffocate. She was eager to begin her favorite job - gutting and butchering her prey. Luckily for the victim, the police arrived before he succumbed.

    Cannabelle was shackled to a stretcher and transported to the asylum. According to the Chronicle reporter, John Grady, the authorities were astonished when they pried opened her locked pantry and found four dozen mason jars full of pickled human fingers and toes, neatly stacked in rows, plus large quantities of jerked human flesh in cloth sacks.

    It took less than four hours for the vicious woman to make her mark of horror at the asylum. When Nurse Maggie Chappell and orderly Curt Martin entered the padded cell with her supper meal, they thought they were safe because Cannabelle was tightly bound in a straightjacket.

    As Nurse Chappell held out a forkful of food, Cannabelle turned her head and slowly opened her mouth, revealing a dazzling set of white teeth filed down to razor sharp daggers.

    Instinctively recoiling, the nurse drew her hand back – but not fast enough. Cannabelle’s head flew like the lash of a whip, tearing into bone and flesh, biting off three fingers at the second joint.

    While she was greedily chewing the fingers, the orderly walked towards the ferocious inmate and backhanded her across the face – only to have his fingers similarly munched off in a split second of agony.

    Four more victims lost pieces of themselves to the cannibal woman before the superintendent contacted the Raynham Iron Works and placed an order for a special metal mask that was fabricated and delivered in just two days.

    After Cannabelle lost consciousness from a

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