Death Walker - Third Season

NICK GROFF (VOICEOVER): Nikola Tesla was a Serbian American

electrical engineer and inventor who is best known

for his design and influence of the widespread adoption

of the modern alternating current electric distribution

system.

An American businessman named Edward Dean Adams, who

was the President of Niagara Power Company,

wanted to harvest the energy generated by Niagara Falls

and requested Tesla's judgment on which system would

be best to generate power.

As a boy, Nikola Tesla had dreamed of harnessing the power

of Niagara and believed the alternating current would best

suit the Edwards power plant due to its high voltage

and potential to travel long distances.

Tesla's opinion helped convince Edward Adams to construct

a hydroelectric power plant known as the Niagara Power

Station Number One that would utilize Nikola Tesla's

polyphase alternating current.

Stanford White, the most prominent architect

in the United States, designed the power plant buildings

and used locally quarried limestone in its construction.

Powerhouse Number One became operational

in the summer of 1895 and was known as the electrical wonder

of the world.

The transformer building would house 105,000 horsepower

alternating current generators based

on the work of Nikola Tesla and engineer Benjamin G. Lame.

Niagara Power Station One would generate

22,000 volts before distributing it to customers.

When Plant Power Station Number Two became operational in 1899,

it was capable of producing 74,570 volts of electricity.

The generators in both power stations

would take flowing water from the Niagara River, which

was diverted into a pen stock that led it downwards

to the generating stations.

The pen stocks ended at the bottom in wheel boxes

in which were placed in bronze turbine wheels.

From the turbine wheels, the water whirled to

and rushed on through a passage into a 7,000 foot

tail race tunnel, which flowed into the Niagara Gorge.

This tunnel required over three years

to build and use more than 20 million bricks

and 2.5 million feet of lumber to line and shore the interior.

The building process of this tunnel

was so treacherous it would cost the lives of 28 workers.

Power houses one and two generated

power until 1926 when another power

station put them on standby.

In 1927, the power plant was officially

named after Edward Dean Adams.

Both power houses were permanently

taken out of commission on September 30, 1961

and demolished.

The only building left standing today

is the transformer house number three, which was

saved from demolish in 1965.

The building would sit abandoned for many years

until it was purchased by Pete Fontanarosa,

who's currently using the building

as storage and workspace.

Pete, who's a friend of my family,

has granted me exclusive access to be the first person ever

to conduct a paranormal investigation in the tunnels

beneath the power station where 28 workers lost their lives.

I'll also conduct a dangerous experiment in the power station

that will involve myself physically

interacting with the Tesla coil.

In order to do this, I'll be wearing a Faraday suit that

will prevent me from sustaining life threatening injuries

by allowing high voltage electrical charges

from the Tesla coil to run around my body

rather than through it.

Touching extremely high voltage and frequency

sparks from a Tesla coil without wearing a Faraday

suit can result in death by the electrical energy stopping

my heart.

I believe that this experiment will intensify my body

with electrical energy, but also induce the environment

with free energy, hopefully, giving any of the spirits

here more strength to manifest and interact

with the living inside the Adams Power Plant Transformer House.

When I was a young boy, I lived very close by here

and there was no parkway along the river.

There was Buffalo Avenue, which is still here now.

And we would go every Sunday to my aunt's

house out in North Tonawanda and we would drive by here.

And every time we would drive by,

this building stuck out among the others.

I didn't know what it was.

I just know it was a beautiful-looking building.

I used to say to myself, boy, I'd love to own that place.

I was, like, 11 or 13, or whatever.

So many years later, I was at a friend

of mine's office real estate.

And we're talking, sitting down.

And he gets up out of his chair, goes in the other room,

comes back with a photostatic copy of this building.

And I says, I'll buy it.

He says, you don't know much.

I said, well...

I says, I want to buy it since I was a kid.

So now, we met up with the people...

at the time was Niagara Mohawk and then it was

bought out by National Grid.

So we purchased through Niagara Mohawk,

but closed with National Grid.

And the gentleman that showed us the place,

he opened the gate up for myself and my father.

And my father strolled along to look at the stonework,

because my dad's a stonemason by trade.

And this guy shook his head and he had a big smile.

He said, boy, your dad reminds me so much of my dad.

Well, I believe there was other people interested in this place

as I was.

And I believe this gentleman...

Mark Agle was his name... was instrumental in pushing

it our way a little bit, I believe.

And that's how we got the place.

And my father would make sure always

that he told everybody that came here about that they brought

in Italians from Italy to do all the stone work here

and all the masonry work.

And it was just not this building.

There were two other big buildings

twice as long, twice as high.

And they were the powerhouses.

And even when I'd seen pictures when they had stone going

around pipework that was buried, they

had all detailed stone work.

Every place here, they had detail, incredible detail.

When they were setting this facility up,

the first thing they did was put in the discharge tunnel, which

they needed, because they were going to have canals

coming off the Niagara River.

And the canals would take the water in,

and then they would send the water

down to pen stocks, which would turn the turbines,

which then would produce power.

But the water had to be discharged somewhere,

so they built this tunnel previous

to the building of the buildings, so I understand.

And I believe there was many, many deaths.

When this facility produced power,

I guess, the first place they did send it to

was Buffalo, New York.

The area was infiltrated by industry

from all over the country.

And the reason being, they had power and relatively

inexpensive power.

Almost every industry you could name was here at one time.

So this was a booming place late 1800s into the early 1900s.

This particular building is part of the Adams Power Plant.

It's the Adams Power Plant Transformer House, which is

a national historic landmark.

And I believe there's only three national historic landmarks

in all of Niagara County, which are

Fort Niagara Reservation Park, the Falls,

and the Adams Power Plant.

The tunnels that were attached to this property...

they used about 20 million brick to build it.

It was triple lined brick.

They had intersects, a ton of people that worked on that.

And when they built this particular... or all

these buildings here, they brought in all the stone people

and masons all from Italy to produce

all this beautiful buildings.

And what's left is this here, the transformer house only.

When they built this place, apparently,

they lost a lot of people.

It could be more than 20.

And I'm not sure if they were all in the tunnel,

or building a building, or whatever.

But they did lose a lot of people here.

But it was quite a feat to do 8,000 feet of tunnel.

Very deep as well.

I understand some depths of over 175 feet.

When they set this place up, Tesla had a presence here.

There's no question about it.

But Tesla was here because of his belief in Niagara Falls

and the fact that they were able to do what he dreamed of when

he was a young boy in Serbia.

And I'm so happy for that guy that he finally

got his due that took this many years, because the guy was

strictly a genius.

I believe that he's still watching over all

of this conditions and so on.

And I'm so fortunate to own the place and be a part of history.

Really excited to be here.

It's based on energy.

Tesla was here.

He was here with the energy plant that he used.

And that's why I tinker with the stuff that I tinker with,

because I base my stuff on energy as

well for most of my projects.

And it has an opportunity for it to come through and work just

by trial and error, which I think Tesla was

a big proponent of doing stuff just

to see what happens as well.

And it excites me just being around here.

This whole atmosphere is great.