The Jar, The Discharge, The Man Who Never Left Crestholm

The Jar, The Discharge, The Man Who Never Left Crestholm

Cold earth yielded a sealed glass jar and a human skeleton in 1951, and inside that jar was a discharge form declaring the man alive and departed - a document buried beside the bones for forty years. Why would a sanatorium bury proof that a patient had “left” when the body showed he never did?

In this episode, we recount the discovery at the decommissioned Crestholm Tidal Sanatorium and trace the records and testimonies tied to Todd Morgan’s disappearance and death, asking how a punctual twenty-six-year-old vanished without a missing-person report and why staff buried a contradictory discharge form with his body.

Person: Todd Morgan
Date (discovery): November 14, 1951
Date (admission to Crestholm): November 9, 1911
Location: Crestholm Tidal Sanatorium service yard, Maine
Staff: Rhonda Holt (head nurse since 1907)

- A road grader operator named Jean Cooper uncovered a sealed glass jar wired shut and a human skeleton on November 14, 1951.
- The jar contained a discharge form naming patient Todd Morgan and declaring him “alive and departed.”
- Todd Morgan arrived at Crestholm on November 9, 1911, at age 26 for a rest cure for neurasthenia.
- Head nurse Rhonda Holt had run Crestholm since 1907 and told laborer Dennis Farr to dig the trench for the body on the night of November 15, 1911.
- No missing-person report was filed, Morgan’s employer replaced him after about five weeks of absence, and Morgan’s sister kept a three-sentence Crestholm letter for forty years.

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