Laura Wright 
Haunted Houses of Yesteryear
When Frank Turnbrook was summoned to fight in the Civil War, he left behind a wife and several daughters. He would eventually become known as General Frank Turnbrook, but in 1861 his wife had a more immediate concern.
She needed to protect her family.
Mrs. Turnbrook took her children into Maryland, believing they would be safer there. In the small town of Glenwood, she found a large house available for surprisingly reasonable rent.
With a war raging and her husband away, ghosts were probably the last thing on her mind.
Then the servants began hearing noises.
Before long, the family discovered a forgotten bedroom on the upper floor.
In the center of the room stood an enormous iron cage.
A New Home in Glenwood
After settling into the house, Mrs. Turnbrook waited for her husband’s check to arrive so she could pay the family’s expenses.
When it came, she took the check to the bank and instructed the staff to deliver the cash to her home.
The bankers hesitated.
Mrs. Turnbrook overheard whispers about a haunted house, but she dismissed the reaction as nonsense and insisted that her money be delivered. Eventually, the bank agreed.
For approximately two weeks, life in the house continued without incident.
Then the housekeeper came to Mrs. Turnbrook with troubling news.
The Servants Hear Strange Noises
Two of the servants had announced that they would leave if the strange noises in the house did not stop.
Rather than lose them, Mrs. Turnbrook moved the frightened servants from their quarters on the second floor to bedrooms closer to her own.
She then decided to investigate.
Mrs. Turnbrook explored the upper floors, moving from room to room in search of anything that might explain the noises.
She found nothing unusual.
Then she discovered a room she had not known existed.
The Room With the Iron Cage
The room was enormous and spacious, but apparently abandoned.
In its center stood a huge iron cage.
Mrs. Turnbrook had no reason to suspect anything sinister. She assumed that one of the previous owners had kept pets in the room.
She continued her inspection but found nothing else that might explain the strange sounds.
For several days afterward, the house remained quiet.
Some of the servants nevertheless left because of the disturbances. Mrs. Turnbrook believed their imaginations had simply gotten the better of them.
Then she heard the footsteps herself.
Footsteps Overhead
One night, Mrs. Turnbrook heard someone walking on the floor above her.
The footsteps seemed to approach the strange room containing the cage.
Then they receded.
Back and forth they went.
For approximately an hour, someone appeared to pace across the upper floor.
Mrs. Turnbrook suspected an intruder had entered the house, but she decided to keep the incident to herself until she could determine what to do.
The following morning, the family gathered for breakfast.
Mrs. Turnbrook almost told them about the footsteps.
Then her son gave her another reason to remain silent.
Knocking at the Bedroom Door
Her son had returned home well past his curfew the previous evening, and Mrs. Turnbrook chastised him for his behavior.
She expected him to make light of the situation.
Instead, he seemed unusually despondent.
He told his mother that he had been unable to sleep because people kept knocking on his bedroom door and looking inside.
The boy assumed the servants did not trust him to extinguish his candle before going to sleep.
His confession opened the verbal gates.
Suddenly, everyone had a story.
Mrs. Turnbrook’s daughters had seen and heard strange things. So had members of the household staff.
Mrs. Turnbrook was speechless.
She decided to consult a nearby family friend named Mrs. Adkins.
Mrs. Adkins Investigates the Haunting
Mrs. Adkins was a stalwart skeptic.
After listening to Mrs. Turnbrook describe the disturbances, she concluded that the family was suffering from nothing more than bad dreams and overactive imaginations.
She decided to prove it.
Mrs. Adkins brought along her cocker spaniel and volunteered to spend the night in the most haunted room in the house.
The room with the iron cage.
Upon arriving, she carefully inspected everything from the ceiling to the floor. She then examined the entire second story.
Satisfied that there was nothing unusual to discover, Mrs. Adkins unpacked her belongings and prepared for bed.
She lay down with her dog.
Only minutes later, the animal began to howl.
Then the bedroom door opened.
The Pale Boy
A pale, sickly boy entered the room.
At first, Mrs. Adkins assumed he was Mrs. Turnbrook’s son.
Then she looked more carefully.
This boy was far too thin.
Still convinced that she was looking at a living person, whether related to the family or not, Mrs. Adkins watched the strange child walk across the room.
The boy entered the iron cage.
Then he walked back out.
Eventually, he left the bedroom altogether.
Mrs. Adkins followed him.
She was determined to discover who the boy was and how a stranger had managed to enter the house.
The pale figure began descending the main staircase.
Then it disappeared.
The Skeptic Leaves
Mrs. Adkins stopped.
She waited, wondering whether her eyes had simply deceived her.
They had not.
The boy was gone.
That was enough for Mrs. Adkins.
The woman who had arrived determined to prove that the Turnbrook family was suffering from bad dreams promptly packed her belongings and left the house.
Mrs. Turnbrook was furious.
She confronted the owner of the property.
A Landlord Who Wouldn’t Listen
The landlord was unsympathetic.
He told Mrs. Turnbrook that it was no time for Virginians to allow their imaginations to run wild. She had signed a legal agreement, he reminded her, and she was obligated to remain until the end of its terms.
Mrs. Turnbrook found another solution.
She rented the old house to other people while she and her family moved into a different rental.
The landlord knew what she had done but apparently did not object.
He simply wanted the entire matter kept quiet.
Before long, Mrs. Turnbrook learned why.
The Macabre History of the Iron Cage
A neighbor finally revealed the story that people throughout the area apparently already knew.
Before the current landlord acquired the property, the house had belonged to another man.
That man took in his orphaned nephew.
The boy was wealthy.
According to the story, the uncle deceived the surrounding community by claiming that his nephew lacked discipline and required constant punishment.
Behind closed doors, however, the child was being tortured.
As the boy grew older, the punishments became increasingly brutal.
Eventually, the uncle ordered an iron cage and had it installed inside the house.
At first, the cage was apparently used as a threat.
Then the boy was actually imprisoned inside it.
The Boy in the Cage
Confinement in the iron cage eventually became a common punishment for what the uncle considered “bad behavior.”
The boy might remain inside for days at a time.
Eventually, he was imprisoned for days without food or water.
He died.
The uncle inherited everything.
What became of the uncle afterward was never recorded.
Neither was the ultimate fate of the house.
Who Was the Caged Ghost of Glenwood?
If the story told by the neighbor was true, the identity of the pale boy Mrs. Adkins encountered seems obvious.
She had known nothing about the house’s history when she volunteered to investigate. She arrived as a skeptic, inspected the room herself, and expected to spend an uneventful night proving everyone else wrong.
Instead, her dog began howling.
A pale and emaciated child entered the room.
And of all the places he might have gone, the boy walked directly into the iron cage.
Then he disappeared while Mrs. Adkins followed him down the stairs.
Perhaps the story grew more elaborate with every retelling. Perhaps the cage had an innocent purpose and the strange noises had ordinary explanations. Perhaps Mrs. Adkins saw something entirely different from what later accounts described.
But the most disturbing element of the story is not simply that the house was supposedly haunted.
It is that the apparition seemed to reenact the place where a child had suffered.
What Became of the Glenwood House?
The ultimate fate of the house was never recorded.
That leaves the story with an appropriately frustrating collection of unanswered questions.
Where exactly did the house stand?
What became of the iron cage?
Who was the wealthy orphan supposedly imprisoned inside it?
And what happened to the uncle who inherited the child’s fortune after his death?
The physical evidence has apparently disappeared.
All that remains is the account of a Civil War family who rented an inexpensive house in Glenwood, servants frightened by unexplained noises, footsteps pacing toward a forgotten room, and a skeptical visitor who followed a pale child from an iron cage only to watch him vanish on the staircase.
If the story is true, perhaps the boy never really left the cage at all.
About the Author
