The Dolls of Harry Powers' Victims

Merry Christmas! I hope Santa brought you and yours lots of goodies this year! Maybe he brought you lots of fun, new ghost hunting gadgets, or maybe a trip to your favorite haunted location in 2023? Maybe he even brought you a possessed or haunted collectible...

In the not too distant past, it was pretty much accepted that every little girl wanted a new dolly for Christmas. Baby dolls, fancy porcelain dolls, rag dolls---it didn't matter. As long as there was a new doll waiting under the Christmas tree, you were going to have one happy tot. 

On Christmas morning in 1931, little girls in and around Park Ridge Illinois may have woken up to a dolly under the tree...but that dolly may or may not have been NEW. In fact, it may have been previous owned by a victim of Harry Powers, West Virginia's very own serial killer!
 

Harry Powers was actually born Harm Drenth in the Netherlands on November 17, 1893. He moved to the United States in 1910, first settling in Iowa, before moving to a little area known as Quiet Dell, West Virginia in 1926. A year later, he married Luella Strother, owner of a grocery store owner, whom he met through a 'lonely hearts' personal ad. But, even after his marriage, Powers continued to correspond to multiple women through such personal ads.

One such woman was Asta Eicher of Park Ridge, Illinois, who Powers wrote to under the name of Cornelius Pierson. Mrs. Eicher was a widow with three children named Harry, Greta, and Annabel. Powers went to visit Mrs. Eicher in Park Ridge on June 23, 1931 and the two went away together for a few days while the children remained in the care of a family friend named Elizabeth Abernathy. While gone, Powers sent a letter to Abernathy saying he was coming to collect the children to bring them to their mother. When he showed up, he brought with him a check to cash from Mrs. Eicher's bank account. However, when he sent one of the children to the bank to cash it, the teller refused because the signature appeared to be forged. In response, Powers and the children immediately left, telling a concerned neighbor they were taking a trip to Europe. 

Unfortunately, this would be the last time that the people of Park Ridge would see the children alive. In August of 1931, police began investigating the disappearance of the Eicher family, and found "Mr. Pierson" had cleaned out the Eicher home. They also found letters connecting "Pierson" to the home in Quiet Dell, West Virginia. Authorities searched the Quiet Dell property and made a series of gruesome discoveries. In a set of rooms under the garage, a bloody child's handprint, bloody clothing, hair, and a burned bankbook were found. As neighbors began to ascend on the property to watch the proceedings, a 15 year old boy told authorities that he had recently helped Powers dig a ditch. When the filled-in ditch was searched, the bodies of Mrs. Eicher and her three children were found, along with the body of Dorothy Lemke, another 'lonely hearts' victim of Powers who had recently gone missing from Massachusetts. 

On December 12, 1931, Powers was found guilty and sentenced to death by for his crimes. He was hanged on March 18, 1932 at the West Virginia State Penitentiary at Moundsville. He is buried at the prison's cemetery, known as Whitegate Cemetery. 

The photograph above comes from the September 17th, 1931 edition of the Burbank Daily Evening Review (Burbank, California). It was posted by the awesome Facebook page, Historian of the Strange.  The photo shows a collection of dolls owned by presumably Greta and Annabel Eicher that were left in the house after their disappearance and murder by Harry Powers. The police officers are preparing to auction the dolls off to the public...just in time for Christmas! So, I'm guessing there were a few little girls out there who received a rather unique present that year, and a few macabre relic collectors who treated themselves as well. And I know it was a different time, but even back in 1931, it just seems really bad taste to auction off a bunch of toys owned by children who had just recently been discovered to have been brutally murdered.

I can't help wondering if any of these dolls are still out there and if any of their owners ever reported any paranormal activity associated with them. 

Another photo of Herbert Fraker with some of the dolls.
From NY Daily News Archives via GettyImages

Book Review for Real West Virginia UFOs

Title: Real West Virginia UFOs: Sightings and Close Encounters, Revised Edition

Author: Dave Spinks

Published by Starborn Illumination Publishing, 2022

Amazon Purchase Information

Dave Spinks' Website Information

After a two-year pandemic related hiatus, the annual Mothman Festival finally returned in September of 2022...and I'm pretty sure it was one of the largest paranormal events in history! So, needless to say, it was pretty crowded and pretty overwhelming, so much in fact that I really didn't get a chance to take many pictures or really do too many of my usual festival activities---except for one of my favorite activities: book buying!

No amount of crowds can stop me from taking advantage of having so many wonderful paranormal authors and vendors in one place. Yeah, most of the books that I buy at these types of events can be picked up online, through Amazon or the authors'/publishers' websites, but there's something really special about getting to meet the author in person. Even an introvert like me enjoys chatting about the paranormal with other paranormal enthusiasts. I love having the opportunity to add personally autographed books to my library. And, most importantly, I love directly supporting my friends and colleagues in the paranormal community. 

Among my pickups this year was Real West Virginia UFOs: Sightings and Close Encounters, by local author and researcher, Dave Spinks. As the title suggests, it is a compendium of UFO sightings in the Mountain State. Much of the book is laid out chronologically---each chapter covers a decade of UFO sightings in West Virginia, ranging from highly publicized cases such as the Flatwoods Monster incident and the Woodrow Derenberger encounter, to  never before reported sightings found only in this book. However, this book is more than just a laundry list of sightings; it is a fascinating look at how the history of West Virginia's ufology directly correlates with the history of ufology in the United States as a whole. 

For whatever reason, West Virginia is an absolute hot spot for UFO sightings and UFO-related phenomenon. This book is packed with information about eye-witness accounts, famous close-encounters, and the people/organizations who investigated them. Historically, there has been so much strangeness going on in the skies above the Mountain State and within the hills below, that we were chosen as an official spot for Project Ozma and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence! The huge radio telescope can be toured today at the Green Bank Observatory in Pocahontas County, and special SETI tours are offered periodically. 

Real West Virginia UFOs is a well-researched glimpse into that strangeness mentioned above. There's plenty of meat to each featured case to give readers a good, satisfying summary, but not so many details as to bog down the casual reader with unnecessary information. Resources and bibliography provided at the end are available for those who wish to deep-dive a little further into certain subjects discussed. Photographs of suspected UFOs are provided when available, and there's even a whole chapter contributed by Ron Lanham featuring cases sent into the Wild and Weird West Virginia High Strangeness Collective!  Overall, this is just a really fun, informative read about one side of West Virginia's unique history. Grab yourself a copy if you love anything to do with the strange and spooky history of the Mountain State, or pick up a copy for a friend or relative this holiday season---I'm sure this book will be the perfect stocking stuffer for the UFO enthusiast in your life!

Want MORE UFO content? Check out my post, UFO Tourism in West Virginia!