Speaker 1: And I just turned around and I call ass out
of there.
Speaker 2: I was done.
Speaker 3: I wasn't deal with them. The hypocrisy of the cult
is one of the things that turned me.
Speaker 1: Away the quickest. When I turned my head lights on,
it turned and looked at us.
Speaker 3: And one of the things I remember the most, where
the eyes were glowing red. I see an orb of light.
It is just circling these steps like it is waiting
for me.
Speaker 2: And he begins to tell them that he saw a UFO.
Speaker 1: They're basically like, what are you talking about.
Speaker 3: That's seven foot up on a tree, peeking around it,
and that's where I saw.
Speaker 1: The top of the muzzle, nose and the eyes. As
soon as I made eye contact with this thing, I
don't like death.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to ten Foil Tells. I'm your host Brandon
Wright Night's episode. We're gonna be joined by my guest Wes.
We're gonna talk about some of the weird things going
on around in New Jersey, specifically the Jersey Devil and
some of the other locations out there that West wants
to talk about before we bring him on. Though you've
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the social media Spacebook and Instagram that we are going
to go ahead now and bring Wes on, So sit back,
relax and enjoy the show. I'd like to take this
time and welcome my guest tonight, Wes. Thanks for coming
on here and talking to me.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: Would you like to let the audience know a little
bit about yourself. Sure.
Speaker 1: Been doing the Words and Coffee podcast for about.
Speaker 3: A year now.
Speaker 1: It was kind of a natural segue getting into interesting
urban legends and history about New Jersey. I say segue
because it was sort of research that I was doing
for the books that I write. I do historical fiction
largely centered around the nineteen twenties inter war period, pull
out of gangster and industrial accidents and stuff that happened
in that period, which is just really interesting to just
completely geek out on. So and as I did that,
I started, you know, finding the real life stories and
weird sightings and hauntings and all this stuff that comes
up over the years that people talk about. So just
love getting into that whole thing supernatural aspect, the historical aspect,
and yeah, just love talking about it.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of weird stuff that around historically, Like
when you start to dig into like historical things, there's
a lot of weird supernatural stories that are out there,
and I don't know how true any of them can
be are or like what the urban legends and everything else,
but there's always folklore from something and you have to
wonder what caused the folklore, like where'd the myths come from?
Where these stories originated from? There had been something that
started as even just here in America, but like everywhere
you had fairy tales and everything. Like what inspired all
of that is what I always kind of think about,
because for me, it's like they had to have seen
something in order to write stuff about it. I don't
know that, sure, that's just what I think.
Speaker 1: You're actually pretty on the mark there. So in the
case of Jersey, you know, obviously our big namesake is
the Jersey Devil. It's got our name in it, you know,
that's the that's the big one for us. I think
there's something like I look this up. At one point,
there's like ten or fifteen states that have a you know,
designated state CRYPTID. So New Jersey's in that short list,
which is kind of cool. But in the case of
the Jersey Devil, it actually seems to have an origin
story in honey Lenape, you know, native tribe that lived
in the New Jersey region, and so as the European
settlers moved in, you know, they shared the same woods,
they kind of encountered the same creatures, and a lot
of what eventually evolved into the Jersey Devil legend that
we have today bears a lot of resemblance to this
forest spirit that the Lenny Lenape described, which is kind
of cool. I don't mean to jump the gun here,
but you know, the Jersey Devil is kind of this winged,
bipedal deer looking thing, you know, kind of like a
cross between a windigo and like a like a deer basically,
and you know the Lenny Lenape kind of described a
similar thing. So you just see where you know it,
Like you said, it has an origin in going back,
you know, hundreds if not thousands of years, depending on
what people encountered in the woods at some point. I
was at one time and I heard a mountain lion
somewhere in the distance, and like, that's terrifying, you know.
So now stuff like that you can see where people
would like, all right, terrifying animal. Maybe that's something else.
Speaker 3: How are you like, when you heard a mountain lion?
What did it sound like? Was it like got more
of a I've heard And I don't know, maybe I'm
confusing this, but like mountain lions sound like someone's screaming.
Is that right? Yes, Okay, that's that's weird to me
in general, because if you think you hear the word lion,
you see a lion, like an African lion roaring, but
then you hear a mountain lion and everyone says, oh,
it sounds like someone out in the woods screaming. Like
that's weird. Makes you wonder if a lot of the
times you hear things like this and people are actually
think it's someone's out there screaming and it's really just.
Speaker 1: An animal, especially with something like foxes, like it actually
sounds like like kids yelling. It's the weirdest thing. Yeah,
I've heard that too, like I myself have. I don't
think I've actually heard it per se that way, but
like I've heard that they claim that when foxes, and
I think even like coyotes yipping or whatever, sometimes people
confuse them for like little kids. Yeah, it's it's pretty eerie,
and like you can definitely see where in the case
of something like that, you get the legends of skin
walkers and stuff. It's like, no, it sounded like a person,
but it was an animal.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of Native American stories are all
based off of their old it's strange, Like you mentioned
skin of walk that's like a Navajo thing and wind
it goes. I think we're more of the Northern Nations
type stuff. But if you start to look into a
lot of their old bores, there were similarities to certain aspects.
Like I'm not saying they're the same thing at all,
but there's still some similarities in between certain things, and
I think a lot of them are spiritual. I think
some of them are not. I don't know where the
stories got intertwined, but for me, it seems to be
like these stories are passed down and then they got
altered as they got to different tribes and different things.
But they all spoke different languages and they all had
their own versions of stuff. So it is just weird
to me how some of these things have passed through
so it always goes back. Like I said, what inspired
the story?
Speaker 1: It's a good question. It's interesting that you bring up
the aspect of different experiences kind of mixing together and
getting retold, because I mean, so the Lenny Lenape legend
didn't start out as a It was, like I said,
the elongated deer thing. But how do you get from
that to Leeds Devil and then later Jersey Devil and
that's kind of where in this case the story kind
of takes an interesting turn because it, like I think
you had the original. I think in part it probably
came from a you know, an animal or something, you know,
fairly mundane. But then as people get involved in the
story and it starts, it kind of takes on a
life of its own. Now we got really creative before
we had Netflix. You know, has had people sitting around
the campfire and you know, shooting stuff back and forth,
and you know, the interesting stories that come out of
your particular village or tribe, and how that can kind
of transform.
Speaker 3: I think like just in my general area, we have
a local tribe and I'm going to be talking to
one of the people here soon from the tribe about
some of the local legends we have around here based
off of their stories and everything here. A lot of
the stuff that I keep being told about our I'll
say the overused phrase of high strangeness, but that goes
on in my general area. A lot of people are
related to the tribe that was here, and there are
still some here. But I don't think that's all true.
I think a lot of people have I don't want
to sound like a douche, but we've steardized their stories,
their traditions, We've turned them into more fantastical things, and
then we use them as like this is their old stories.
I was like, I don't want to talk to someone
that don't really know anything. I'd rather go right to
the source. So I've got stuff lined up where I
want to talk with them, because I would rather know
directly from them, like what their stories actually are, rather
than hearing it secondhand, third hand or who the hell knows.
Hommy hands has.
Speaker 1: Been sure, Yeah, there's definitely, uh, there's definitely use the
word bastardization, but a the watering down almost no, and
other people get their say in the story. Like I
was only able to find one source that mentioned the
whole Native American aspect of the Jersey Devil, and then
I don't know if that's author's sources were buried in
a university library or something somewhere, but was only able
to find the one reference to it, and then from
there the European settlers. You know, this part of the
country was heavily settled by the Quakers, who you were,
kind of the hippies of their time. You know, they
were very you know egalitarian, very open minded, which is
you know, probably why they had a lot of story
swapping and trading with the native tribes of the area.
And you know how the legend got introduced in the
first place, really, but they interpreted the whole thing through
a Christian lens. So oh, this scary demonic entity stalking
the woods, you know, it kind of sounds like a devil.
All right, boom, we got the devil introduction to the story.
You know, call it a basteardization, call it a hybridizing.
But you know that's like the first step in modifying
the existing legends to you know, kind of be adapted
by this new culture.
Speaker 3: Right, everything that you hear what the word devil in
it is like, well, it's like that's not what they
originally called it, like the devil's gorge or the devil's
triangle or something they added in there to give it
that mistikeness, to make it seem even more sinister because
we're throwing that name in it. So like the Jersey Devil,
they had to modernize it. I guess at the times
for all of the stuff for the white settlers, which
you mentioned when to go earlier, and I'm pretty sure
the original depictions of a Wind to Go, they were
actually just pale human looking figures spirit things. But the
modernized version and everytimes was a wind to Go. You
think of the big beast with the antlers and skull
and everything else. I don't believe that's what the original
Native America versions were. So again that's is that us
turning it into a more fantastical thing over the years
or as weird as this may be, but like sometime
people will reporting seeing these things now, So is that
something because we've put it out there in the thear
that it's now manifested, people think this is what they're
seeing because you've made like a pulp out of it.
Who knows, same thing with people to see shadow man
or a slender man. I've always thought that was weird
because that was a creepypasta that someone made up, and
now people report seeing that thing, all of them.
Speaker 1: That never underestimate what people will convince themselves up in
order to get a little bit of attention.
Speaker 3: I won't say that what people see is not what
they think they're seeing, but U I don't necessarily think
that everything out there that people see is what they
think it is. So I'm not saying that I've seen
some weird stuff too, So I can't go on record
and say I don't believe any of that stuff, but
I try to remain ground it so I try and
keep a skeptical mind. But I'm not gonna argue with
someone they said they've seen something. I want to say, well,
you must have saw something, because who am I to
say you didn't. I wasn't there?
Speaker 1: Sure, Yeah, and I mean I'm not. I agree. I
wouldn't go so far as to say that. At the
end of the day, I think there is more to
existence than what we think we understand, and I think
that leaves a lot of room for explanations.
Speaker 3: Is there anything with the Jersey Devil? Like what the
origins and everything? Has there been anything close to what
anyone's actually physically had proof of that you're aware of?
There's it all just stories that were passed down.
Speaker 1: So fast forwarding a little bit. Probably the most significant
series of sightings was in nineteen oh nine, but a
lot of people, you know, reported seeing it to varying degrees.
You know, everything from a fluttering sound in the distance
to hoof prints to you know, red eyes did this?
One guy who claimed to you is actually attacked by it. Unfortunately,
a lot of those. In the one case, the guy
who said he was attacked by it happened to be
leaving a saloon, said, you know, red lights came out
of the dark and knocked him down. And it was
moving as fast as an automobile. Mmm. Who knows could
have been. I mean a lot of these sightings, you know. Okay,
So the Jersey Devil's stomping grounds are supposed to be
in this place called the pine barrens. So in New
Jersey that's like our more rural southern region. A lot
of pine trees, a lot of woods has a certain reputation.
I say it has a reputation. It's kind of a
signed of reputation by urban types who kind of, you know,
looked down their nose at their rustic quote unquote inferiors.
In fact, there's historical precedent that kind of fed into
the Jersey legend or the Jersey Devil legend back in
colonial times as well. But sticking with the nineteen oh
nine sightings for now, what's fun about this one is
the newspapers were printing it like as far away as Virginia.
There was like a one week period in the middle
of January just followed this big snowstorm and there are
a few inches of snow on the ground, so there's
prints and tracks all over the place that people are following.
I kind of draw parallels to the nineteen thirty eight
War of the World's broadcast, which I don't know how
familiar you are with that, but basically Orson Wells narrated
a radio broadcast of the novel War of the World,
but like people would tune in halfway through it, and
I think that there's actually an attack going on, and
the whole mass hysteria thing.
Speaker 3: Again.
Speaker 1: You see, it's kind of a pattern emerging here. But yeah,
in nineteen oh nine, a bunch of sightings people were
in a trolley car and where was that one. I
think that was outside of Glassborough. All South Jersey towns
was kind of in this area. And then you had
groups of guys going out into the woods doing vigilante hunts,
and honestly, I think a lot of that was just
an excuse for them to, you know, go in the
woods with their friends, have a couple of beers and
shoot some trees. Seems plausible, but uh so The punchline
with the nineteen oh nine sightings is that a week
later there was this dime museum in Philadelphia with this
guy claimed to have caught the Jersey Devil. And so
the thing about a dime museum is it's kind of
like an old timey tourist trap. You know, they'd have
stuff like, you know, strong Man exhibits, kind of sort
of like a circus free show sort of vibe. And
so basically what this guy did was he took a kangaroo,
painted it with green stripes, glued bat wings to it,
and would walk it out into this dimly lit room,
give people like, you know, two seconds to see it,
and then he'd quickly i'sher it out of the room again.
Speaker 3: And that was.
Speaker 1: The culmination of one of the most significant rash of
sightings for the Jersey.
Speaker 3: It's weird to think that people are that gullible back
in those days, which I say that in those days,
but even today they still think there might be people
who would fall into that category.
Speaker 1: YouTube would like a word.
Speaker 3: Right, I am off topic, but not really. Someone had
posted something and I could clearly instantly tell it was
AI generated and they were claiming that they were able
to tell from being a professional and some sort of
feel that they were in or whatever that this was
one real photo. And I was like, I can totally
tell instantly that it's not a real photo, and I'm
not going to argue with someone on the internet and
be in that'll echo chamber. But I'm like, it clearly
looks in the sense of things just don't seem correct.
And AI has a typical thing about itself, like I
don't know why, but sometimes when it's drawing things or
making images, it usually has some sort of like a
walking stick or a cane or something too, which doesn't
make a lot of sense. But this thing was supposed
to be like a giant, and I had a cane
it was leaning on, Like I don't.
Speaker 1: What was at least them appropriate. Was like a giant
oak tree that the giant was using as a cane.
Speaker 3: No, it was a giant and standing next to somebody else,
and it was supposed to look like an old time photo.
This thing was supposed to be like a fifteen foot
tall giant. You could everything about it to me. I've
seen it posted so many different times, but I see
so many people trying to defend it and I see
things like there's a big foot photo that the guy
that made it literally came out and said after he
released it, it he this is all AI and he was
doing at the warm people. They still pass it around
it it's one hundred percent reeal. I was like, the
guy that made it is admitted that it's not real.
He did it to show people not to believe everything,
and yet they're still saying that that's not true and
that this is real. It was like, what point do
you become obsessed with wanting something so bad that you
know it's not real, but you're going to use it anyways.
You're just already making it very hard for anyone to
take you seriously.
Speaker 1: Some people just love to argue on Facebook, like I, actually,
it's funny you mentioned that I ran a foul this
a couple of weeks ago. I I've been posting like
interesting newspaper clippings that I find, and you know, going
back a hundred years, there's not a whole lot of
pictures in the papers at that time. It's you know,
it's text only. So I thought it'd spiced up a
little bit by you know, making a quick little period
representative photo as just like a visual aid and like
someone made the mistake of like, oh wow, you know,
it's crazy, that's what it looked like back then, and
then I stepped in it. This was on me, like,
oh no, no, actually, that's that's a I generated. I
just you know, threw it in there as a visual
and like people got like war with the machines level
of uh irate over it.
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 1: It was crazy. It's like, oh could you do that?
It's like, dude, I I said, it's a I generated.
This is obvious to me. I don't know how you
would mistake that guy's four fingers, Like, I guess four
is easier when six is work gets weird. But uh,
they're working on the finger count. That's that's improving.
Speaker 3: There are certain ones that are out there that are
very detailed, but there's still a little bit about them
that's not that you can somewhat detect. But I don't
know if I've ever talked about this on air, and
I I might get sued if I do, but I'm
going to anyways, So I guess I you won't name
the one. I'll just that's why it'll keep me out
of issues. But I was one of the first testers.
Like I'm not gonna say the first but I was
one of the few beta testers of one of these
revalent ai generators. And the area that it was from
you had to start paying. It was free for a while,
but then they wanted to get to start paying to
get new credits in order to keep generating things. And
this is before I even started the show or anything
like it. But I liked making this stuff. I thought
it was fun, just not that I'm making it, but
just seeing what type of stuff I could create with.
I thought it was kind of neat, is before was everywhere.
So I signed up for like the monthly fee. I
think it was like fifteen dollars or something. It wasn't
anything ridiculous, But right after it came out a few
days later, my bank account been hacked. Oh they'd taken
my debit card and tried to get a uber or
lyft or something like that in the town this city
that this software was developed, and they tried to go
to the ATM of a lot money will like stop
my carcas suspicious activity. And then I ended up getting
my money refunded. But I was like, well, I was
this thing is very prevalent right now, people are using it,
people are paying for it. So I was like, why
was I the one they got hacked and there's no
one else getting hacked. And then a couple months later,
I made my show or whatever, and I found other
ones that I made it with that are free, and
I don't mess around with it at this point. But
there's too many similarities to the fact that I just
gave money to this company and then three days later
my car gets hacked from the same city as this
company is based out of, on the other side of
the country.
Speaker 1: So it was a little on the nose.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I don't mess with that one. And I'm
it's one of the best ones that I think that's
out there, but I don't mess with it just because
of that whole situation. But certain ones do better artwork
than other ones, which is weird considering they're all AI based.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know enough about the different back end
for the different ones, but yeah, I've played around with,
you know, a few different ones, and you're right, there's
definitely a difference in quality.
Speaker 3: Like the artwork that's right now that if you can
see it on the screen of what I have that's
all AI. Even the logo is aim I've been a
real minutaur. I've embraced the AI overlords at this point.
Now that is actually a upright walking canine with a
field mouse, very prevalent for myself, but we won't dive
into that one. Yeah, back to the weirdness of Jersey.
I know there was a lot of older stories of
the Jersey Devil too, like what year did it? What
was it the seventeen hundreds or is it the eighteen
hundreds that supposedly happened?
Speaker 1: Seventeen thirty five was the eponymous night in question, with
mother leads giving birth to her thirteenth child, and actually
it seems to have actually been the thirteenth child. So
mother leads in the story, you know who supposedly proclaims,
you know, after a very difficult pregnancy and birth, you know,
may this child be the devil? And then it is.
The baby is born, apparently a healthy boy, but quickly
transforms into wings, claws, tail, the whole nine, lashes out
at the assembled people and then escapes up the chimney
and out into the night. And in fact, you know,
you think thirteen, it's just like okay, Yeah, you know,
thirteen is a scary number. It's got to be thirteen,
you know, the thirteenth, et cetera. But in this case,
what seems to be the truth of it is that
mother Leads was a woman named Deborah Leeds Smith. She
had had twelve children. You know, I think like eight
of them made it to adulthood. You know, that was
sort of their reality for the time. But her her
husband by the name of Jaffittsmith excuse me, jaff Athleets.
His older brother was a guy named Titan, and Titan
ran the family almanac. You know, they were publishers kind
of politically affiliated, and he gets into it with this
competing almanac in Philadelphia who basically starts, you know, s
posting on him to kind of get a leg up
for his own business. The Leeds family had had some
falling out going back to Titan and Jaffett's father, who
unfortunately backed the Brits in the whole Revolutionary War thing,
so family kind of got dinged for that. But the
competing almanac in Philadelphia was run by guy by the
going by the pen name of Richard Saunders, as in
Poor Richard's Almanac, and that guy was actually Ben Franklin.
So we have a founding father who is directly involved
in the Jersey Devil myth, which I always thought was
cool and hilarious because you know, you picture Ben Franklin,
it's the guy in the hundred dollars bill. At this time,
he was like twenty six years old, so he's just
you know this basically, this this punk ass kid who
is dunking on this guy to try and further his
own career, and it just paints this completely antithical picture
of you know, the Ben Franklin of legend basically. And
it was so it was tough to the effect of like, okay,
so the Leeds Almanac would the whole One of the
things that they got in trouble with the Quakers for
was quote unquote paganism, and that was basically stuff like
referring to the months by August September instead of like
you know, month eight, month nine, stuff like that, and
you know, it was actually kind of useful information, you know,
farmer's almanac type stuff. You know, land your crops, you
know this month, you know the weather's looking good for
this year, you know, things like that. And so Ben
Franklin decided to do his own predictions, and so he
basically predicted the day that Titan Leads would die, and understandably,
Titan kind of took issue with that. It's like, okay,
well that's a jerk thing to do. I didn't die.
And then Ben Franklin responds with, oh, Titan's ghost is
harassing me stuff like that. But right, so, how does
that factor into the Jersey Devil story? So when Titan's father,
Daniel fell out with the church, they would publish stuff
in the other papers and pamphlets at the time calling
him harbinger and you know, devil, So you have Devil
in association with the family Leads. And then later on
I couldn't find the direct connection to how Deborah kind
of got tainted with this whole thing. As far as
I could tell, she basically married into this family and
had a couple of rough pregnancies. But I could kind
of see a situation where, you know, after losing a
couple of children at a young age, the family could
be seen as you know, having a bad luck or
you know, open or something like that. But best anyone
can tell, that's essentially how you made the connection to
from Devil to this family. And so that Lenny Lenape
forest spirit that I mentioned earlier, that legend was also
circulating around the Pines at that time. So something that
was described as a devil, this family being described as devils,
these stories kind of get bounced around back and forth
until eventually, oh yeah, that forest spirit we've been talking about,
Oh yeah, I think it was birth by that family
that we describe as devils. So unfortunately the Lee's family
kind of got the short end of that stick. But
that's seems to be how.
Speaker 3: It shook out. I don't know a whole lot about Jersey.
I guess I could look, But where the pine barns are,
Where is it located compared to like the bigger cities
of Jersey. Is it more remote?
Speaker 1: About as remote as you can get around here? I
mean acre for acre, we've got the highest population density
of basically the rest of the US. But yeah, so
if if you go off of the I ninety five
carridor so, like if you drew a line between New
York and Philadelphia, the pine barrens are east of that,
going towards Atlantic City, the shore area.
Speaker 3: About how many acres? I know, it's it's fairly big,
but for some reason, when I think of Jersey, I
don't ever think of like Baroness. I don't even New
York's the same way. Like whatever I think New York,
I think I like New York City. Well, clearly that's
not like Niagara Falls, and all sorts of other things
are in New York too.
Speaker 1: But.
Speaker 3: There's been a lot of different strange things. I've always
heard about the pine barrens, But when you start to
dig into these type of stories, I think everywhere has
those legends. It's not just that, like anything wooded, you
hear a lot about it. Weird things happening now in
the woods, And I wonder if that's just not our
natural fear of the unknown. We don't know what's out there,
so we're going to be afraid of it, Or again,
why are we afraid? Why are some people it's clearly
my ADHD brain probably kicking on all cylinders at the moment,
But why do people have fears about things that don't
seem to make any correlation? Like I don't like spiders.
Why am I afraid of spiders? I don't know, Like
I don't bother them, I don't try and just kill
them all. I'll leave them alone. But same thing with snakes.
I don't I'm not afraid of snakes, but a lot
of people are afraid of snakes. People are afraid of clowns.
Why do we get these weird phobias of stuff? And
I wonder if some people just don't get it, like
because of the woods, like they're afraid of that. That
makes sense.
Speaker 1: I mean, in the case of clowns, I think that
is a rational reaction. But you know, now, dangerous, dangerous colors.
You know you're in serious answer, though, I think I
think there's definitely a rooted reason for that, you know,
like why do we sleep at night though? Because our
eyes are kind of shit compared to excuse me, it's just.
Speaker 3: A outstanding.
Speaker 1: We got lousy eyes, say, at night, compared to stuff
like lions and bears and anything else that might be
walking around the dark. So yeah, all your ancestors that
found success, they left at night. They stayed put, they
didn't go venturing out in the woods. So I think,
I mean, call it ancestral memory, call it instinct. They
be inherited culture to a degree. But I think there's
good reasons why where we have kind of a love
hate relationship with remote areas in the forest. Now, it's
like you like the natural setting, you like being around trees,
but at the same time you appreciate that there's things
out there that can kill you.
Speaker 3: So there is a show called The Missing for one one.
I'm not sure if you're familiar with it. I am.
This is me putting on the tinfoil hat. Now, when
you start to look into a lot of these remote places,
there's a lot of people that go missing. I was like,
Walls is a remote place, so I can see where
people could naturally just get lost. But a lot of
the stuff that were people to abandon without a traces weird.
But when you start to add in the areas and
you overlay the sightings of what people say are bigfoot
or something like that, weird creatures. They're all in these
areas similar to where people will come up missing. If
you do the thing with the UFO, you see it too.
You do the things with underground like cave systems, it's
the same thing too. I think that's weird. Maybe it's
all just a coincidence, but it seems to be people
come up missing, no traces. But yet there's also been
reports of strange creatures are flying UFOs or something like weird, making.
Speaker 1: A great case for the national park containment theory.
Speaker 3: That yeah, they I don't know the whole theory in
and out, but I know they claim that the national
parks are basically just used to keep people out of
these areas because they know what's in these parks.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I like that one, which, Hey, this point in life,
I'm gonna probably just go ahead and say it's probably true,
because it wouldn't surprise me if it is.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean they're actually joking aside, there is something
to it. It's more mundane though. It was usually like
the government accidentally contaminated a site dump some toxic waste there,
set off a couple of nukes, and it was just
easier to buy it up and be like, oh, yeah,
we're waiving the environmental rules in that area. You can't
go in, though, trust me, you don't want to. That's
another kind of dirty side of our state. We've got
the most super fun sites breaker than any other state. Actually,
I think we have the highest absolute numbers too. But
you know, there's some variety in there. Some sometimes it's
a relatively benign stuff like a soap factory was here,
so we've got some rancid stuff underground. Other times it's
like there's bombs here and we don't think we got
them all we buried it. Just stay out of that area.
In fact, I don't know if you've ever heard of
the Radium Girls. They got a Netflix show a couple
of years ago.
Speaker 3: No, I'm not familiar.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, the women who painted radioactive paint on watch
dials and got in their mouths and stuff. They all
died very hardly. That site wasn't fully cleaned up about
until about two thousand and nine. So like that, like
the twenty no World War One weird idore one going
into the twenties.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I didn't hear about that, and if I did,
I guess I just didn't really pay attention.
Speaker 1: There is something they publicized very well.
Speaker 3: You mentioned like there's someplace out that way, and I
do thought it was Pennsylvania for some reason. But they
actually lost a nuclear weapon, like an atomic bomb somewhere.
Have you ever heard of that?
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, there was more than one. I didn't hear about Pennsylvania.
I heard about one in I think Georgia and maybe
one of the Carolinas.
Speaker 3: Okay, maybe I'm getting those confused.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sure Pennsylvania had some goofy stuff too. I
know Pennsylvania had this weird bell thing that supposedly crashed
I think in the sixties. It was like sixty eight
or something like that, and some people claim they've seen
and getting taken out by the military on a truck
or something like a corn shape, But I can't think
of what that place was called. But I've always kind
of correlated that with them trying to build whatever the
Nazis had going on in World Ward two with the
Nazi bell, maybe that was the testing out because at
that point they'd already had the scientist over here, so
who knows what they were trying to make with it. Yeah,
I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the whole
Nazi alien spacecraft thing was actually a CIA cover up
to distract everyone from the fact that we invited the
Nazis over here.
Speaker 3: Well, I have an episode that came out sometime earlier
this year, and it's called The Truth about Flying Saucers.
The term flying saucer was actually pushed by the military
or the government, or whoever you want to call it,
because I think that was a way for them to
control the narrative. There had been reports from I can't
Kenneth Arnold, he'd seen something while he was flying, but
the way he described it, he never said flying saucers.
He said they looked like they're flying are there, like
saucer would skip across the water. I mean that's how
the term flying saucer got pushed, and then everyone, Oh,
they were like disks. They're flying discs, and that's not
the shape that he actually drew. They're very crescent looking
and if you look at modernized stealth vehicles, they didn't like.
Some of those designs, like the stealth bomber is reminiscent
to what this design was. I'm not saying they had
that back in the nineteen forties, but who knows what
they're working on.
Speaker 1: I mean, they had flying wings, at least in a
in prototype. I forget if the if the Nazi flying
wing actually ever got off the ground, because they found
like the cockpit for it and plans, but I don't
know if they ever got that one flying before the
US grabbed up the scientists and designs.
Speaker 3: Good old Project paper Clip, and then yeah, the one
guy uh Warner von whatever ended up making that. Yeah,
very interesting time.
Speaker 1: I guess I had that kind of Disney show.
Speaker 3: How many people that I got to help murder, but
we're going to give him a high ranking job over here,
and all sorts of stuff again, weird times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you wished you could write it off as a
one off, but yeah, it's uh, happens with unfortunate frequency.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm. Oh, go ahead, I say, this is the
show where I talk about whatever. So when it comes
to stuff like that, for me, it's just like I'm
one that doesn't trust whatever is sped to me by
the media or the governments or whatever. I think there's
all sorts of stuff behind the scenes, And honestly, I
don't think we're supposed to know everything. I don't think
we should know everything, but we do a lot of
weird stuff. I think we instigate a lot of stuff,
and it's just like there's not really anything you or
I can do about it either. So too many people
get all worked up over but at the end of
the day, this is just business as usual. It's been
going on for how many years, and I don't see
it stop it anytime soon. So but not just me
on my little opinion, here that means nothing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I hear you. It's no one likes being lied
to or or made to feel full, especially when you
take more exception to some of the stuff you're seeing.
But yeah, it's it's like, you're right, what what what
can you do? And you know, feeling helpless on top
of that, it's no good for anyone, you know. That's
why it's Uh, it's always good to kind of recenter
and you know, focus on the stuff you can control,
you know, how you interact with the people in your circle,
and certainly in your case, you know, definitely working with
your audience and giving them some cool stuff to think about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't, like I said, I just I try
not to worry too much about it, just because there's
not anything that anyone can do. I don't personally think so.
But you'd mentioned some other places in Jersey before we
wrap this up that I kind of want to touch
base on some of the weirdest locations and things that
have happened, like supernatural locations or whatever. You want to
dive into some of those real quick.
Speaker 1: Sure, I think a good place to wrap us up
would be I mean, we can't talk about weird stuff
in Jersey without talking about the asylums, I think Essex
County Snake Hill, but I think my favorite must be
Greystone because just the the high lofted goals that went
into overuse and deterioration and then it was met with
the wreck and ball in just such a inauspicious way.
So okay, so what's Greystone. It was a mental asylum
in a very picturesque part of the state. You know,
it was on this nice rolling hill, you know, open fields,
you know, beautiful view and it was started in the
whole theory of the time. Now this is like late
eighteen hundreds, and you think, you know, you think of
like lunatic asylums and straight jackets and you know, like
the worst parts the worst cliches for mental health. And
actually at the time their theories were pretty sound. It
was get the patients in fresh air, get them interacting
in a healthy way, you know, get them doing constructive
things with their hands. You know, they had like a
you know, carpentry shops and you know, gardening, and you
know they had patients doing productive things. And it's like, well,
all right, that's actually seems kind of sensible.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like lock them in a room or electrocutem
or anything like that. Unfortunately, that kind of took a
turn later, but at least when it started out, it
was pretty sound for the time. I'll say, you know, certainly,
you know, there's me making broad generalizations about mental health.
Speaker 3: Hah.
Speaker 1: Now. But so fast forward several years, as often, unfortunately
seems to be the case, oh you've got beds and professionals, good,
we've got trouble cases we need to send you. And
the hospital you know, originally had like seven hundred beds,
and they at their worst they were forced to take on, like,
you know, thousands of patients, so people in a very
already distressed state of mind who now were not getting
the care that they were in desperate need of. There
was a tuberculosis war at one point, you know, just
a lot of very unfortunate human misery occurring within this area.
And you fast forward to the nineties and the state
opens a new facility, and the place gets closed down,
starts deteriorating, and becomes, as often seems to be the case,
a popular spot for urban explorers. And then, of course,
you know, once it's creepy and dirty, then that's when
all the ghost stories start coming out people supposedly you know,
hear chains in the hallways. Oh there's underground tunnels too.
That that was another one, so abandoned mental asylum and
there's subterranean tunnels running underneath it, so like they got
the whole subterranean aspect to creepy to go on top
of it.
Speaker 3: That is a weird coincidence with a lot of other
places where you hear a lot of stuff like this.
There's always those underground somethings, like sometimes there's like underground springs,
or there's underground cave systems or it is weird.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Unfortunately that whole place is is a gorgeous building too,
is a something called a Kirkbride building, just very distinctive.
Like you look at this, you know, you're looking at
a Victorian era mental hospital, and unfortunately it's not there anymore.
I got demoed in twenty fifteen, despite a huge outpouring
from a preservationists, you know a lot of concerned citizens,
you know, people really trying to not necessarily the whole
thing because you know, in truth it had become kind
of an attractive nuisance. Those underground tunnels I mentioned became
a problem in particular, and so when they protested the demolition,
they were overruled. And then they wanted to know, Okay,
well why was this overruled? We had a place in
the National Registry of Historic Landmarks, so why are you
able to just ignore that? And so they got like
one hundred pages of documents that were like ninety nine
percent redacted the speculation. What seems to have happened was,
you know, the powers that be had already decided that
this was the way things were going to go down.
The contract had already been written, and uh that was that,
which unfortunately is kind of emblematic of New Jersey's track
record with historic places. So one has to wonder if
the ghosts get evicted with the demolition or if they're
tied to the ground. But I don't have an answer
for that.
Speaker 3: M weird. There a any other places do you want
to talk about too? I'm just trying to figure out,
like some of the bringingone out there listening, and I
always trying to give the audio the places because I
find out that a lot of people are always close
to some of these things that they might learned something
that they're not even sure bound they live right around
the area.
Speaker 1: Let's see stuff that hasn't been demoed. Oh okay, yeah,
perfect one Whitehill Mansion in Fieldsboro, New Jersey that's near
the Philadelphia area, if anyone is around there. That was
a mansion going back to Revolutionary War times. The second owner,
Robert Field Second, drowned under somewhat mysterious circumstances and then
his property transferred to his wife and she ended up
living there for many years and today it supposedly has
strange sounds at night. So I don't know if they
do nighttime tours or just daytime tours, but people have
done like sleepovers there. I think it was for like
a ghost hunter shows type thing. But Whitehill Mansion definitely
worth checking out if you are interested in something spooky.
Speaker 3: Well, we can probably wrap this one up, but before
we do, where can everyone find your podcast up?
Speaker 1: Probably the best spot would be on YouTube. Just type
in wes verde w E s V E R d E.
I can also find me at wesverday dot com. That'll
have links to all my videos, books, interesting newspaper clippings
that I find. And yeah, well we come check.
Speaker 3: It out, I guess. Before we wrap this up, I'm
going to ask, so, what really got you inspired to
do all of this? I want to join this crazy
world of podcasting.
Speaker 1: Like I said, I started doing the research for the
books primarily, and then I mean that kind of came
out of personal interest. I I didn't get to talk
about the boot And Reservoir, which is a lake that
is the former site of a town that was had
some kind of again shady business deals going on there
in order to produce a reservoir for Jersey City in
New York. But I grew up in that area and
so grown up hearing about that story. So I started
researching that and then from there that kind of you know,
once he had kind of established the sources for you know,
looking this stuff up, you start poking around and finding
other stuff, and you know, just a lot of these
interesting stories just started coming out, and you know, it
was just fun to talk about. I can only tell
these things to my wife so much before I just
you know, get the eye rolls and just you know,
clearly not interested anymore. So I had to seek another audience.
Speaker 3: I understand how that can be sometimes. Well, Wes, it's
been a pleasure talking to you.
Speaker 1: Pleasures all here Brandon, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: Yep, not a problem for anyone out there listening. Make
sure to check out Wes's show and you can find
more information about that in the show notes. But we're
gonna wrap this one up, so we'll check you on
the next one. And that's the show everyone. I really
hope you guys enjoyed the conversations. If you would like
to be a guest on Tenfoil Tels, remember to send
an email to Tenfoil Tales Podcast at gmail dot com
or go to the contact section and foiltel dot com.
Just get your message to me. We'll get some schedule
for a future episode. And just remember the truth lies,
and the stories we share, the connections we make, stay
curiously open minded. Thank you all for joining us on
this journey, and until next time, keep questioning, keep seeking,
and keep exploring the unknown. Good Night everyone, See thought.
Speaker 2: Sounds and the headphones. Yeah, it's turn to rock.
Speaker 1: Got a story about a cryptic creature.
Speaker 2: Let's take a walk, big Foot Tugmer. They're out there
in the talk, but the truth is out there likingly
as fuck.
Speaker 3: Us.
Speaker 2: Both sightings got the whole world. Shop conspiracies on phones
like a story in the book control sign the.
Speaker 3: Kid us back.
Speaker 2: We're all gonna use them a line in myty. They
don't want us to know the sea mist hide if
they will show Nonnado Society. They keep us in chase
when sending Tomas time.
Speaker 3: To break the reins.
Speaker 2: Control trying to keep us fine, but I'm all before
we're gonna.
Speaker 3: Use in history.
Speaker 2: They want us to know the secrets to hide since
they will show Donnado Society. They keep us in chase
when sending talk does sound to break the reins