Carriage House

The Carriage House or Congelier House is a famous haunted house in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was once considered one of the most haunted houses in America but today, it no longer exists. The history of the Carriage House is one of the most terrifying stories you will ever read.

The Carriage House on Ridge Avenue was once the home of Charles Wright Congelier and his Mexican wife Lyda. The Congeliers employed a young servant girl, whose name was Essie.

One day, in 1871, Lyda called for Essie, but the servant girl was nowhere to be found. Mrs Congelier went to look for the girl and heard odd sounds coming from behind Essie’s bedroom door. Listening at the door, she realized that her husband was having an affair with the young servant girl.

On discovering her husband’s infidelity, Lyda Congelier flew into a rage. She ran to the kitchen and began smashing up the pots and pans. Then she came tearing up the stairs, carrying a meat cleaver in one hand and a sharp knife in the other. She was screaming like a crazy woman. When Charles Congelier and the servant girl heard the wife’s screams, they opened the bedroom door and looked out. Lyda was waiting for them.

Seven days later, a family friend paid a visit to the Carriage House. He knocked on the front door but there was no response. He opened the door and yelled, but there was no answer. Then he heard an odd creaking sound in the parlor and went inside to investigate. He found Lyda Congelier sitting in a chair, rocking back and forth, in front of a bay window.

When he asked her if she was all right, Lyda didn’t respond. Then he noticed that she was holding something in her arms. It was a small bundle wrapped in a blanket and she was humming softly to it as she rocked it in her arms. He tugged on the blanket and it came apart. Something fell out and rolled across the floor, coming to a stop at his feet. The man recoiled in horror. It was Essie, the servant girl’s severed head.

The police later found the dead body of her husband Charles, lying in the bedroom with a sharp knife protruding from his chest. Lyda had become so enraged at her husband’s cheating ways, that she stabbed Charles to death and then chopped off Essie’s head.

The Carriage House remained vacant for the next 20 years. It had such a terrible reputation that nobody would live there. The locals considered the place cursed and avoided it like the plague.

Finally, in 1892, the Carriage House was renovated and used as a place for railroad workers to live. Soon, the railroad workers began hearing the sounds of a woman sobbing and screaming at night. When they all woke up during the night and saw the ghostly figure of headless walking though the house, they all suddenly moved out and the house lay vacant again for a few years.

Around 1900, a mysterious Doctor Brunrichter bought the home. He was a quiet man and kept to himself mostly. His neighbors said they rarely saw him. Then, one night, they heard a terrifying scream coming from the Carriage House. When they ran outside to investigate, the neighbors saw a huge red explosion. The ground beneath their feet began to tremble, and the sidewalls cracked. Every window in the house was shattered and Doctor Brunrichter was nowhere to be seen.

When police arrived and entered the house to investigate, they found a scene of unimaginable horror. The dead bodies of six young girls were lying in the basement. All of their heads had been chopped off. Eventually, police determined that terrifying things had been going on in the basement of the Carriage House, while the neighbors were completely unaware.

The evil doctor had been kidnapping young girls and conducting hideous experiments on their severed heads. Apparently he had been chopping off the girls heads and keeping them alive for a short time after decapitation.

The haunted Carriage House once again stood vacant and its reputation grew worse. It was purchased by the Equitable Gas Company and used as accomodation for their workers. One night, fourteen workers were having dinner in the house when one of them noticed that his brother hadn’t returned from the kitchen. He went to find him.

When he didn’t return either, the other workers searched the house from top to bottom. Suddenly, they heard horrible screams coming from the basement. They ran down to investigate and found the two missing men dead in the basement. One had a wooden board driven straight through his chest, and the other was hanging from a noose that was tied to the rafters. These men had both been seen alive just minutes earlier and nobody could figure out what had happened.

One morning, in 1927, the giant gas storage tank owned by the Equitable Gas Company exploded, completely destroying the Carriage House and many of the other houses nearby. This explosion put an end to the haunting of the Carriage House and its history of murder and mayhem once and for all.