Witches, Magic, Murder, & Mystery · Megan and Kara

360. MYSTERY: The Disappearance of Elsie Whittemore

·25 min·1 clip

Elsie Whittemore steps outside in a white dress, brown overcoat, and brown beret, and is never seen again.

1. Witches, Magic, Murder, & Mystery covers the disappearance of Elsie Whittemore in Plymouth, New Hampshire, beginning on June 29, 1936. 2. Kara and Megan host the episode, and their back-and-forth framing matters because they walk through the timeline, the local geography, and the later identification dispute. 3. The episode asks what happened after 25-year-old Elsie Whittemore said she was going out to get some air and never came back. 4. The hosts place the case in 1936, when the Great Depression shaped daily life, radios were central in homes, and only about 40% of U.S. households had electricity. 5. They describe Plymouth as a small New England town with Main Street, the town common, a river, and woods close to where people walked after supper. 6. Elsie is described as a young mother who was pregnant again and living with her in-laws while her husband, Edward, worked construction in Vermont. 7. She left wearing a white dress, a brown overcoat, and a brown beret, and she did not take a purse, money, or a bag. 8. Her family and police searched the town overnight, and Chief Felix McCarthy organized volunteers, dogs, and searches along the river and in the woods. 9. The dogs from Northampton, Massachusetts trailed Elsie through town and then lost her scent at Avery and Highland Streets. 10. Early reports included unverified sightings near Campton and Holderness, and later a truck driver from Hill, New Hampshire claimed he picked up a young woman with a loaf of bread and dropped her in Franklin. 11. The truck-driver account became the most publicized lead, but investigators could not verify the woman's identity or find anyone in Franklin who saw her arrive. 12. By the first week of July 1936, police were dragging reservoirs and checking for a drowning, but they found no clothing, no personal items, and no body. 13. The episode notes that multiple false leads followed, including a clothing remnant in the woods, a woman at a Concord bus station, and a rumor about relatives in Maine. 14. In Thanksgiving week 1948, hunter Harold Huckins found bones beside a fallen birch tree on Pulsifer Hill near Durgan Brook, about five miles from Plymouth. 15. Investigators recovered fragments of a brown overcoat, a light cotton dress, machine-knit underwear, brown size 7 shoes, a purse with coins, horn-rimmed glasses, and a small bottle with barbiturate residue. 16. Dr. Alan R. Moritz of Harvard Medical School examined the remains and said they were female and likely from the mid-1930s, which led authorities to connect them to Elsie. 17. The in-laws, Carl and Pearl Whittemore, did not recognize the items, and the hosts stress that Elsie reportedly wore smaller shoes, did not wear glasses, and had no documented burial record. 18. Kara and Megan talk in a conversational, skeptical style, with interruptions, quick jokes, and repeated comparisons to other disappearance cases and to Barbara Newhall Follett. 19. Listeners who like unsolved disappearances, 1930s history, and forensic disputes. 20. Listeners who want a linear case with a confirmed ending.

As heard by us

A 1936 mystery, a 1948 bone find, and a case that never fully resolves.

The episode follows a path from Plymouth, New Hampshire, on June 29, 1936, to Thanksgiving week 1948, when a local hunter found bones near Pulsifer Hill, about five miles from Plymouth, beside Durgan Brook and a fallen birch tree.

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Why you'd press play

You want a New Hampshire disappearance that gets even stranger when bones turn up years later.

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