Hey y'all, and welcome to my new blogging series, "The Blog that Dreaded Sundown". The aim of this series of posts will be to provide an ongoing account of the world's history as it relates to the general subject of horror. I have a strong passion for horror, and I figured this would be a good outlet for me to write about it while providing a fun series for people who are interested to follow. The series might cover anything from serial killers, to the supernatural, to conspiracy theories; really anything I deem fit. I hope you all enjoy :)

Herbert Holmes

As this is the first post in the series, it's a rather personal one, for I'm about to tell you all a shocking secret. Herbert Holmes is not my real name. Herbert is, by all means, a part of me, but is not a real "person", in the eyes of society(lol). My name is Erik. But I like being called Herbert, so please continue to do so :)

Why does that matter? Well, the name Herbert Holmes was not by chance, although it doesn't hold any sort of clever or intelligent meaning, either. It was simply extracted from two sources, and I sort of liked the way they strung together. When Herbert Holmes was born, he had ambitions of becoming a horror fiction author. He still will, hopefully, but that's aside the point. He wanted a name fitting to the genre. So, I stole "Herbert" from H.P. Lovecraft's 1922 story "Herbert West- Reanimator". (If you've ever seen the movie "Re-animator" it is, quite obviously, based upon the same story.) Lovecraft might have been a piece of shit, but he did a lot for the horror genre, and I really enjoy some of his work, including this story. And then, what should go any more perfect with "Herbert", but the surname Holmes, taken from one of America's first serial killers.

H.H. Holmes

Source

Ok, onto the real topic of conversation here. H.H. Holmes was born as Herman Webster Mudgett on May 16, 1861. I feel like it's kind of hard not be at least a little fucked up with a name like Herman Mudgett, so in my opinion I feel the man was born with a natural disposition towards murder. I'm totally kidding; if there's anyone out there named Herman Mudgett, I sincerely mean no offense, and please don't kill me :)

Holmes was by no means the most reliable, or clever, serial killer. His own admissions of his body count varies so greatly and is filled with so many holes that it's almost laughable. Several of the people he confessed to murdering simply just turned up alive. He at one time claimed to have killed several hundred people; yet shortly before was put to death he changed that number to two. Due to his wildly inconsistent statements, it's hard to really be sure about ANYTHING about H.H. Holmes, but I'll do my best to paint a picture of my own understanding.

Childhood

Holmes' hometown; Gilmanton, NH Source

Due to the time period and the unreliability of Holmes' own accounts, not a lot is known about his childhood. It is known he was born into an affluent family in New Hampshire and experienced a privileged childhood, as many serial killers do. With a lot of these cases, there's usually a case of childhood neglect or abuse from either the mother or father(or, in some cases, both). The only account of Holmes' relations with his parents is his own, from an autobiography. His recollections tell of an abusive father and a strict devout Methodist mother. Now, this certainly fits the mold you need in order to create a monster; but, knowing what we know now, it's hard to take anything Holmes himself said seriously.

There were also accounts of persistent bullying, leading to one event that is speculated to be another key player in his transformation. Despite going on to lead a career in the medical field, childhood Holmes, or Mudgett, was terrified of death and the human anatomy. When two bullies from his neighborhood began to realize this, it was rumored that he was forced into a nearby doctor's office by the two and made to embrace a fake human skeleton, while sobbing and screaming. Shortly after this event, Holmes reportedly started to perform medical experiments on animals.

Again, this is from his own, unbacked and unreliable account of events.

Insurance fraud

University of Michigan circa 1880, outside the medical center. Source

Mudgett graduated high school at the age of 16 and after a brief time in Vermont, ended up in the University of Michigan Medical School. It was there that he started his career pulling insurance scams. These weren't your typical, run-of-the-mill insurance scams though; Holmes was on a whole other level. Holmes would steal cadavers, mutilate them in various ways to make it look like they had died a horrible death, and then planted them to look like accidents. He would, subsequently, take out insurance claims on all these people. And, for a long time, he got away with it.

Ah, the 1800's, right?

This continued for quite some time, and there are a ton of ridiculous stories regarding it. My personal favorite is when he asked his partner to fake his own death for a scam, but then just got over it and burned him alive instead. However, let's move forward to probably the most infamous, interesting part of Holmes' life:

The Murder Castle

Source

In 1884, he graduated med school. In '85, he moved to Chicago to work in a pharmacy. The owner of the pharmacy died, leaving it to his wife, who sold it to Holmes and shortly after, surprise surprise, was never to be seen again. The focus point of his career, however, was not the drugstore, but rather, the empty lot he purchased across the street.

Over the following years, Holmes constructed a 3-story building that would later be dubbed, "The Murder Castle". This Castle was constructed by many different construction crews, Holmes making sure no one stayed too long so that they would be suspicious of the bizarre building. There were doors that opened to brick walls(like, a lot of them), secret stairways and shafts that led to vats of acid and torture chambers. There was a surgical room, trap doors, shoots, sound proof rooms; you get the picture. Imagine the Winchester house but designed for serial killin'

Source

Holmes would require all tenants of the hotel to have a life insurance policy(he just couldn't give that up), as he did with his several wives and fiancé's, girlfriends, etc. He was a ladies man; yet most of these women died or disappeared.

1893 World's Fair

Source

In 1893, the World's Fair came to Chicago to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus' invasion. Even though Chicago had started to notice the many people who would enter Holmes' murder castle and never come out, his operation was still in full swing. So, as the city was flooded, the murder business boomed, and he made full use of all the nifty traps in his castle.

Holmes wasn't very smart, though. I mean, it was reported that he was very intelligent, but some of his moves were downright stupid, even for the 1800's. It was pretty inevitable the man would be caught. The World's Fair ended, and Holmes left the castle to go commit more murder and insurance fraud around the country.

Holmes got caught because of a failed horse scam. Yup, horse scam. He stole horses and sold them across the country. So after his many, many murders, a horse brought Holmes to the attention of the authorities. It was when he was in jail he developed a plan with his cellmate, in which his cellmate would fake his own death and they would split the insurance money(by split, I mean Holmes would take 9500 while his cellmate took 500). While that plan never came into fruition, it birthed the idea that caused the afore-mentioned death of his insurance partner.

That partner was Benjamin Pitezel, who was to fake his death. But, Holmes got over it, drugged him, and burned him. Now, the wife of the previous scam, from the cellmate, was pissed about the money, so she called the cops on him. When they picked him up on an outstanding warrant, they became suspicious of Holmes due to his nature at the time. They investigated the Murder Castle and well, they found a lot.

Execution

Source

Upon searching the castle, authorities found all of his crazy bullshit along with many horribly dismembered corpses. Due to the nature of the dismemberment, they couldn't even tell how many bodies were laying there rotting. Holmes was hung in May 1896 for one account of first-degree murder, although it is believed he killed as many as hundreds. After his death, 10 murders were confirmed; however, Holmes confessed to killing 2, 27 and 200 people. There is evidence that the latter is very much possible.

Thank you all for reading this first installment of The Blog that Dreaded Sundown. If you enjoyed the post, or have any criticism, please let me know in the comments. I am looking forward to continuing this, and if there are any terrible people such as this you'd like covered; or terrible events; or whatever.. please, let me know! I'd love to hear from all of you. Stay spooky :)

Sources

• https://www.crimemuseum.org/crime-library/serial-killers/hh-holmes/
• http://www.prairieghosts.com/holmes.html
• http://www.fosters.com/article/20100131/GJNEWS_01/301319990
• Dr. Herman Mudgett, Holmes: A Serial Killer in his Own Words

edit: Several things mentioned here are based on my own interpretations of unconfirmed evidence and accounts. I do not claim to be entirely factual. This is the way I write. If I wrote this strictly on the basis of 100% confirmed facts about the man, it would be no fun :)

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