Hello world! My name is Steve Carroll and one of my passions is discovering the stories hidden behind antiques and vintage collectibles. I love collecting mid-century radios and lamps… I have way more than I could ever use… and stereoview cards, postcards and maps of the Pacific Northwest. Each object has a history; a story behind it waiting to be told. This is my blog to tell those stories.
I am certain that I inherited my love for history and collecting antiques from my dad. He was a big history buff (besides majoring in Museum Curatorship and being the first curator of the General Patton Museum in Chiraco Summit, CA) and could tell the history or provenance of any item in his collection. He did this in a way that was more story-telling than history lesson. I could listen to my dad talk about history for hours on end. And I could tell he enjoyed sharing them with me.
Besides antiques and collectibles, I am also going to write about my outdoor adventures. Some of my outdoor interests include kayaking, hiking, backpacking, camping, caving and just being in the outdoors. I’m looking forward to sharing these fun experiences with you.
Writing Frank Geyer in the Devil’s Shadow
I’m currently writing a historical true-crime novel about Detective Frank Geyer, the Philadelphia investigator assigned in 1895 to determine what happened to the missing Pitezel children in the aftermath of the H. H. Holmes case.
This book didn’t begin as an attempt to retell a legend. It began as an attempt to understand an investigation.
Geyer’s work was quiet, methodical, and deeply human. He relied on paperwork, geography, witness statements, and patience—not spectacle. Over time, the distinction between investigation and capture has blurred in modern retellings of the Holmes case, allowing myths to replace documentation. This project works in the opposite direction, returning to the historical record: period newspaper coverage, court testimony, Geyer’s own writing, and the everyday artifacts of late-19th-century police work.
Rather than centering on Holmes himself, the story follows the process of how truth was assembled—city by city, address by address—often in isolation and uncertainty. It’s a narrative shaped by absence, delay, and the emotional cost of following facts to their end.
I share research notes, historical context, and occasional excerpts here as the book takes shape—not as promotion, but as a way to show how real investigations unfolded and how easily they can be misrepresented when details are ignored.
What’s with this “Hello World” stuff?
The first thing many software programmers (now called developers) typically learn to code in a new language is how to output “Hello world” onto the screen. It’s simple to do in pretty much any language so I don’t know why that is the first things they learn. Maybe it’s to build confidence in the new language, but basically in this post I use it as an analogy that with this new blog I am learning how to communicate my thoughts better. Hence, Hello world!
While I don’t consider myself a programmer or developer, I do like building WordPress plugins as a hobby but for my day job I am employed as an Active Directory Engineer.
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