Bab 11: The Sodder children (West Virginia, 1945)
By far the eeriest story in the Charley Project archives is that of the five Sodder children, who all disappeared under suspicious circumstances on Christmas Eve night. The children (five out of 10 siblings) asked their parents if they might stay up and play with their new toys, rather than go directly to bed. Their parents agreed and turned in for the night, and a series of strange events transpired.
First, the phone rang, the children's mother answered, and the voice on the other end asked for someone the mother had never heard of. When she said so, the voice laughed and hung up. The mother later realized all of the lights in the house were on, the shades were drawn, and the doors were unlocked. She awakened again by a sound on the roof, and then she woke up for the final time at 1:30 am with the realization that the house was on fire. She, her husband, and their other five children got out, but the five children who had asked to stay up late never emerged from the inferno. When their father went to climb his ladder up into their bedrooms on the second floor, he could not find it. It was later found dragged away from the house.
The official conclusion was that the children had died in the house fire, but the Sodders never stopped believing their kids were still alive, right up until the two parents died. And they were encouraged by a strange photograph mailed to them in the '60s, purporting to show one of their sons as a grown adult. Did the Sodder children die in a fire set by never-caught perpetrators? Perhaps. But the tantalizing thought that they might have been kidnapped — might still, indeed, be alive, perhaps in Italy — has kept some sliver of hope that this strange case might find resolution.
Status Power Mingguan
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