A very strange situation A long closed restaurant burns to the ground the day the original owner died.

Yes life has many strange and ironic events and twists   Some too strange to explain.

Take the case  of the former Rivers Edge Restaurant along Allegheny River Blvd. in Penn Hills Pa.
a long time staple from the 50's that lasted well into the late 80's when its Original owner Sonny Casale shut it down. The building then sat empty for almost 2 decades and then went thru 2 transformations the first attempt  around 2009 when restaurateur Mike Roman opened a Bistro which failed after 6 months and then  a Italian Restrorante known as Vincinos  which closed down last year after lasting only 3 months and which burned to the ground in a spectacular fire which initially trapped 7 Penn hills firefighters and injured 3 of them.

http://www.wtae.com/news/firefighters-working-to-battle-blaze-in-penn-hills/38709214

 The same exact day sadly  Sonny passed away .

. My dad and I did some wiring work for Sonny when I was a kid in about 1969 when he added on a bigger dinning room.   Sonny was a very generous man and thought it was great and got the biggest kick out  how my dad was teaching me the trade at the age of all of 10years old.

CASALE

PHILIP "SONNY"

Age 84, of West Deer, formerly Penn Hills, on March 26, 2016. Husband of Lorraine Pennetti Casale;Sonny was the proud owner of The Rivers Edge Restaurant in Penn Hills for over 40 years. There will be no viewing. Mass of Christian Burial will be held Thursday 10:30 a.m. in St. Victor Church, West Deer. Fr. Charles Speicher, celebrant. Donations in Sonny's memory to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital . Arrangements entrusted to SCHELLHAAS FUNERAL HOME & CREMATION SERVICES, LTD., Bakerstown.

Published in Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Mar. 27, 2016

Sonny will be missed by all and so will that fantastic view from his restaurant  which sat high on the cliff above the Allegheny River. is no more I watched it go up in smoke several hours after the fire started after driving in from Altoona
Here is a picture I submitted to 1st responder news as I am one of their corespondents 

The fire was so overwhelming and complete we will probably never know its cause

Good Bye Sonny and may you Rest In peace it was good to meet some one so unique as you all those years ago

Interested in the Paranormal If you live in western Pa and have the time 2 great events are coming to Hill View Manor

Some upcoming Events at Hill View Manor you may even see me there speaking on crossing to the other side while going thru stage IV Colon Cancer

Animal Intrusion , Rouge Employee or Poltergeist Possibly all 3 a very strange occurrence at a closed for season business in New Castle Pa.

Some days you have to play Detective in my security business.

Take the other evening after a heavy snow storm in New Castle Pa. area  a customer of mine a retail swimming pool business  had both its Glass Break and motion sensor trip.
I got on scene in morning due to all the snow to find over a foot of snow totally covering the lot thick enough I could not drive in.

I trudge thru the snow and find the door is locked but when I enter I find 3 trash cans tipped and tubes of Lube Tube a gasket grease all over the floor.

 OK so I have a small animal attacking a grease product ??

Very strange animal would attack these tubes  stranger yet I thought was the caps missing what animal takes the caps off and carefully removes a product from a open container .

Plus with all the snow and no tracks where or how did the animal get in.

just my foot prints

At first I thought OK we have a rouge employee  coming in  when store is checked every other week and sniffing the glue making it look like this was work of an animal.
 ( very hard to get  decent temporary  seasonal employees for any business any more  )  and I had this happen at another business  but I was still not ruling animals  out 
 So I changed the locks for owner and I would check store in a week and no one else  would as we could tell when alarm is armed and disarmed  But just to be certain I set poison bait all over the store.
maybe it is an animal.

But if it was animals how are they getting in  and just how did the large piece of shelving bracket get on floor which caused the glass break to go off.

black bracket which fell on floor

Even the cops where kind of creeped out what was going on like it was a Poltergeist  in this store and since it one time served as State Police under cover division office  well anything was possible. with such strange goings on and no trace who or what was doing it. If you have ever studied the Paranormal ou would be creeped out too.

 They recommended a Trail Cam  which I installed works great for people but not small rodents  saw me coming and going and nothing else. I set the tubes container on floor filled with tubes and poison to prevent alarm motion going off and leave.

So a week goes by I walk in and once again  cans all knocked over  Lube Tubes all over floor and all the poison I put down gone it had been consumed. It was then I found when I walked back to little repair shop  that ceiling tiles had fallen and there I found several dead squirrels from Rat and Mouse Poison I had put down.
Apparently they had been living in the building all winter having got in thru a missing vent in attic.
thats why there was no prints in snow. 

OK case solved not a rouge employee or a poltergeist but squirrels. So just to be sure I brought the bitten tubes home put them in back yard where I feed a dozen  squirrels and sure enough they where immediately after them.  I have contacted the manufacturer who finds whole thing amusing but they can not answer why they are attracted to product as nothing of a food consumable  is in product. 

Black Panthers ? Mountain Lions in Pa. ? Yes there have been rumored sightings for many years.

Were they house hold pets released int the wild or people just misidentifying big feral house cats there has been persistent rumors of large mountain lion size cats and black panthers. as recently as this year of a black panther along Indiana Road in Penn Hills which a freind of mine clams to have seen a very large black type cat bolt across the road and up a tree.
So whats the truth?

http://www.deerhuntingguide.net/big-black-cat.html

http://www.fieldandstream.com/answers/other/another-possible-black-mountain-lion-sighting-pa-while-out-my-4-wheeler-my-dad-and-few

http://hoothollow.com/Question%20of%20the%20Month/January-February%202012%20Is%20there%20a%20Puma%20Conspiracy.html
So many weird sightings of animals and creatures in Pa. its hard to keep track of them all.
that there are several groups formed in Pa over the years who study the phenomena.
 

http://www.centerforcryptozoologicalstudies.com/

 So what is going on are there really Big foots and black Pumas and Mountain Lions in Pa;s woods
ask any hunter and many have strange stories of things they have encountered in the woods and while experts are quick to dismiss sightings as mis-identifications Im not so willing to knowing just how thick and deep and dark our forests are in this state and having my self seen animals moving about at night which are unusually large . Like the Squirrel I have in my back yard thats as big as a ground hog.
So until some one kills one and brings t forth or can provide solid photo evidence it will be  just a wild tale or is it.

A totally made up Urban Legend about a City of Clairton Pa neighborhood

The City of Clairton has gone thru a rough time like many of the Mon Valley  community's  and you will find entire areas of empty homes. One such section in the Wilson section of Clairton known as  Lincoln Way .Which interested a writer Johnny Joo  who wrote a made up story  about a monster haunting it.
and how the monster had scared away the residents . The street  is now totally abandoned and shut off to traffic .

http://architecturalafterlife.com/2015/01/27/the-eerie-abandoned-neighborhood-of-lincoln-way/

 The whole story of any kind of a monster haunting this area is total nonsense . I know many who lived in the area and no one ever talked of a monster  . The reason the homes are abandoned is because people moved away to find jobs elsewhere in the country. Plus these homes in particular where bought out for the stalled Mon Valley Expressway .  Many a time I was up and down this road and never saw or heard a thing.,other than to see how it was deteriorating like so many other areas in the valley. The reason so much was left behind is because some of the people where elderly and moved to Nursing facility and did not need to bring things with them and they left stuff behind. See this all the time in community's an elderly person whose children live out of town gets sick goes to hospital and never comes home children come to town take what they want and leave the rest even see meals left on tables uneaten plenty of homes all over the area like this sitting abandoned and taxes and utility never paid and will never be fixed up due to all the tax  and utility liens on them.
I have done work for realty company's and you should see all the stuff left behind by apartment renters especially college students when I go to do repairs and check units conditions.So how these homes where left does not surprise me. as far as cars left probably have blown engines transmissions etc. or could belong to some one in jail. My mom had a car sitting for 9 years across from her place after owner was sent to jail and city finally towed it. 

The houses were  torn up by thieves looking for scrap to sell or old stained glass windows which could be stolen and doors and mantle pieces  anything of any use was stripped from the homes by thieves not some made up monster. 

But now that the whole made up story has hit the internet its being taken for gospel truth just like the totally fabricated story of the Gongalier mansion on Pittsburgh's North Side and the Wood Chopper in Penn Hills. 

I recently saw some one post about a house with Address of 666 on Rodi Road in Penn Hills and they wondered what went on there. Again total nonsense there  some ones imagination. 

Yes ghost story's are fun but if your going to publish them as fact instead of legend you are doing the 

paranormal community a disfavor.

Note : The entire block of homes has been torn down and leveled with No Trespassing Signs posted
in 2018 

Who switched the Account File at a Local police station that lead to police and fire being sent to wrong buildings?

Back before 911 in early 80's  and local police depts dispatched there own officers one prominent community in the South Hills of Pittsburgh Bethel Park  maintained their own  Digital Communicator receiver to receive and dispatch alarms.

It was a high end Silent Knight Receiver and a alarm company  AAA Alarm ( No relation to AAA Road Service )installed and maintained it for them Unfortunately AAA alarm did not have a very good reputation and was known for very poor installations.
 I had a customer Larry Fulton  who owned 3 Foodland  Super Markets which had their alarms monitored at the Bethel Park Police Station.
System worked extremely well and police where always dispatched any time any of the alarms went off.

But then one day the now long gone South Park  Food Land was broken into and meat and cigarettes stolen and  Police where never dispatched.
After checking the system over I found out that the Acron Digital Communicator set for 3/1 format inside the Moose Panel had been tampered with .
At first it was thought and employee in the store messed with it but no one was ever charged and since it was a small burglary .
A few months after this happened the owner of AAA sold his company to Holmes Protection  in Pittsburgh  whose parent company was based in NYC.
 I get a call from Larry one day to tell me Bethel Park was not getting alarm system when he checked it  which he started doing weekly after the first incident.
I went to the store and again found wiring to communicator was tampered with but this time a service tech from Holmes had been in the store working in panel with out mine or Larry's permission.

Needless to say Holmes Protection got a registered letter from me about what was going on and all  the stuff that was going on at Pittsburgh office including when I worked there.
I corrected the wiring  and tested it to Bethel Park PD he said he did not get a signal . I tried it again and no signal . I put my telephone butt set on phone line heard communicator calling  so I knew it was talking to receiver . I asked dispatcher did any other alarms come in and he said  yes Presbyterian church came in  twice. I asked him what was the account number he said #789 I said wait a minute thats South Park Food Land Alarm account number. Apparently some one switched out the log book with account numbers. Bethel Park PD  launched an immediate investigation I got a call from a Sgt. who got my information  and after it was found some one was fooling around with log book either by accident or deliberate  they took immediate actions to prevent it from happening again .I do not believe an officer was involved but a holmes employee
We never had another issue after I found out the log book account numbers had been switched around which explained why alarms where not being received  and why fire dept or police where being sent to non exsistant alarms.

When Allegheny 911 center was formed many depts no longer received alarms at their stations any more and its now handled by 3rd party monitoring centers  and panels have communicators built into their boards preventing miswiring issues.

Holmes protection in Pittsburgh after Holmes Corporate came into town and saw how bad the operation had become sold the branch to Westec which is now Vector who cleaned house and straighten out the former holmes branch.