The George Stickney Haunted House, McHenry County Illinois, in the Village of Bull Valley.

The tiny Village of Bull Valley, Illinois, has one of the strangest houses in northern Illinois. Initially located far off the beaten path, it remains secluded today along a quiet, primarily deserted country highway. George and Sylvia Stickney built this English country house in the middle 1800s. They chose such an isolated place for peace and quiet and for their spiritual activities. Both were said to be accomplished mediums and wanted to host parties and seances for their friends. The seclusion offered by the Illinois countryside made the perfect setting.

The George and Sylvia Stickney House.

The house itself was very unusual in its design. It rose to a full two stories, although the second floor was reserved for a ballroom that ran the entire building length. During the Civil War, the house served as quarters for Federal soldiers and was home to the first piano in McHenry County. But this was not why the place gained its fame or notoriety.

As devout practitioners of Spiritualism, the Stickneys insisted on adding distinctive features to the design of the house. These features, they assured the architect, would assist them when holding seances and gatherings at the property. Since the seances would be held quite often, they specified that the house should have no square corners in it. They explained that spirits tend to get stuck in corners, which could have dire results. It has also been suggested that the Stickney's believed that corners attracted the attention of evil spirits as well, a common belief in Spiritualist circles of the time.

According to legend, one corner of a room accidentally ended up with a 90° corner. How this could have happened is unknown. Perhaps the architect either forgot or could not complete the room with anything but a right angle. Maybe he thought that the Stickneys would never notice this one flaw. But they did see! And here, the legend takes an even stranger turn.

The stories say that it was in this corner that George Stickney was discovered one day slumped to the floor, dead from an apparent heart failure, although no visible signs suggested a cause of death. Was he right about square corners? Could a ghost, summoned by a seance, have been trapped in the corner?

After the death of her husband, Sylvia Stickney gained considerable fame as a spirit medium. The upstairs ballroom was converted into a large seance chamber. People came from far and wide to contact the spirit of their deceased loved ones and relatives. Sylvia also claimed to stay in contact with her unlucky husband and departed children.

Today the mansion is occupied by the Village of Bull Valley and its police department.

In 2005 Bull Valley Police Chief Norbert Sauers described his experiences with possible paranormal events in the Stickney Mansion. Sauers said village employees have heard numerous sounds that defy explanation. He heard footsteps in the second-floor ballroom, a room used today as storage for village records. The footstep sounds have extended out onto the stairwell at times. Other occurrences include hearing human-sounding voices and noises. Sometimes they hear toilets flushing when they are alone in the house.

The Village of Bull Valley and Bull Valley Police Department.

The Chief said he has personally experienced objects moving around on his desk, lights turning off, door knobs turning and a door opening seemingly by themselves, and voices from thin air. The Chief once heard a shout in his ear when no one was around him. Another police officer in Bull Valley claims to have come face to face with an apparition of Stickney's father-in-law.

According to a local news report, "over the years, two men who carry a badge and gun" have quit their jobs over supernatural events.

The Stickney house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is presumed to be haunted.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Nikola Tesla's "Egg of Columbus" at the 1893 Chicago World's Columbian Exposition.

Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) was a Serbian-American engineer and physicist who made dozens and dozens of breakthroughs in the production, transmission and application of electric power.

Tesla Electric Light and Manufacturing Company was in Rahway, New Jersey, that operated from December 1884 through 1886. Tesla is forced out of the Tesla Electric Light Company with nothing but worthless stock.

Nikola Tesla (1856-1943)

He endured a brutal winter of 1886/87 working as a ditch digger. He persevered, determined to develop his concept of generating electricity through rotating magnetic fields. However, Tesla knew that he must find a way to help investors and supporters understand the potential of his invention.

The rotating magnetic field is one of Tesla's most far-reaching and revolutionary discoveries. This is a new and wonderful manifestation of force — a magnetic cyclone — producing striking phenomena that amazed the world when he first showed them. It results from the joint action of two or more alternating currents definitely related to one another and creating magnetic fluxes, which, by their periodic rise and fall according to a mathematical law, cause a continuous shifting of the lines of force.

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Tesla invented the first alternating current (A/C) 'motor' and developed A/C electric  generation and transmission technology.

There is a vast difference between an ordinary electromagnet and the one invented by Tesla. In standard electromagnets, the lines are stationary, and in Tesla's invention, the lines are made to whirl around at a furious rate. The first attracts a piece of iron and holds it fast; the second causes it to spin in any direction and speed desired. 

Long ago, when Tesla was still a student, he conceived the idea of the rotating magnetic field. This remarkable principle is embodied in his famous induction motor and power transmission system, now universally used.

Tesla's exhibit at Chicago's 1893 World Columbian Exposition.

Tesla devises a machine to illustrate the concept: an electromagnetic motor that generates the force needed to spin a brass egg and stand it upright on its end.

Nikola Tesla's "Egg of Columbus" was exhibited
at Chicago's 1893 World Columbian Exposition.

Tesla named the device the "Egg of Columbus" after the famous story in which Christopher Columbus challenged the Spanish court and investors to stand an egg upright. When they failed, Columbus took an egg and crushed the bottom flat so it would remain upright. They accused him of playing a cheap trick. Still, Columbus overcame their objections by explaining that an idea can seem impossible until a clever solution is found, at which point it suddenly becomes easy.

How The "Egg of Columbus" Works.

Canadian Tesla Technical Museum.

Tesla Projects Laboratory Inc.

 

Tesla incorporates this logic in his Egg of Columbus to present his concept of alternating current A/C electricity to investors. It is a stroke of brilliance that results in funding from investors Alfred S. Brown, director of Western Union, and Charles F. Peck, a big-shot attorney from New York City. 

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Tesla’s first laboratory opened in April 1887 and was located at 89 Liberty Street in New York’s Lower Manhattan Financial District. This is where Tesla began planning and developing his designs for the A/C induction motor.

Tesla wrote in his autobiography of this time in his life when he went from ditch digger to laboratory owner, where he finally built the first models of his induction motor concept: "Then followed a period of struggle in the new medium for which I was not fitted, but the reward came in the end, and in April 1887, the Tesla Electric Company was organized, providing a laboratory and facilities. The motors I built there were exactly as I had imagined them. I made no attempt to improve the design but merely reproduced the pictures as they appeared to my vision, and the operation was always as I expected."

Nikola Tesla (year unknown).

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In 1893, three years prior to the earliest attempts in Hertz wave telegraphy, Tesla first described his wireless system and took out patents on a number of novel devices which were then but imperfectly understood. Even the electrical world at large laughed at these patents. But large wireless interests had to pay him tribute in the form of real money, because his "fool" patents were recognized to be fundamental. He actually antedated every important wireless invention.

Nikola Tesla lived a century behind his time. He had often been denounced as a dreamer even by well-informed men. He has been called crazy by others who ought to have known better. Tesla talked in a language that most of us still do not understand. But as the years roll on, Science appreciates his greatness, and Tesla receives more tributes.

"Today, Nikola Tesla is considered to be the greatest inventor of all time. Tesla has more original inventions to his credit than any other man in history. He is considered greater than Archimedes, Faraday, or Edison. His basic, as well as revolutionary, discoveries for sheer audacity, have no equal in the annals of the world. His master mind is easily one of the seven wonders of the intellectual world."                                                                                        ─ Hugo Gernsback

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There are a lot of assumptions made reguarding Tesla's private life. One of the few 

things that we know for sure is that Tesla never married. Tesla's seemingly indifference  in women {friends, like a sister}, made him the perfect target for whispers and gossip that he was homosexual, but, of course, there's no evidence. (Karl-Maria Kertbeny coined the term 'homosexual' in print 1868.) 

Tesla, unbeknownst to him, was the cynosure of all the lady's eyes. Despite being surrounded by beautiful, intelligent, women of substance, many who grew to love Nikola, yet nobody became Mrs. Nikola Telsa.

The issue wasn't the failure to meet his expectations. Instead, it turns out to be Tesla's 'no distractions' attitude allowing him to focus his energy on inventing (solutions to a problem), improvements, and , most importantly, the documentation.

 

"I don't think that you can name many great inventions that have been made by a married man." ─ Nikola Tesla.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.