Speaker 1: Monster House Presents.
Speaker 2: It's actually quite unlike anything we've ever seen before.
Speaker 3: A giant, very creature party part.
Speaker 1: In Luckness, a twenty four a mile long bottomless lake
Speaker 1: in the Highlands of Scotland.
Speaker 4: It's a creature known as the Luckness Monster.
Speaker 3: Monster Talk.
Speaker 5: Welcome to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters. I'm
Speaker 5: Blake Smith and I'm Karen Stolsner.
Speaker 6: Karen and Matt took a break from all the madness
Speaker 6: of twenty twenty five and went to the little town
Speaker 6: of Victor, Colorado to relax, unwind, and investigate the alleged
Speaker 6: haunting of the town's Venerable Hotel, where joined today by
Speaker 6: Matt Baxter to talk about.
Speaker 4: What they found and content. Warning.
Speaker 6: It apparently includes delicious cafe snacks. Now that's probably not
Speaker 6: a thing most of you need to be worried about.
Speaker 6: But I'm trying to lose some weight and just looking
Speaker 6: at the photo Matt provided, maybe gain five pounds. So
Speaker 6: you've been warned more Instantal, Okay, wow, twenty five it's
Speaker 6: been kind of a rough year, but I'm excited to
Speaker 6: get together one more time.
Speaker 4: I mean it is every week, right, but I mean.
Speaker 7: It's like it's a good part of the week, you know,
Speaker 7: And it's always good to get together with friends and
Speaker 7: talk about ghosts exactly.
Speaker 6: And I'm excited that Matthew's got another case to talk
Speaker 6: to us about today.
Speaker 4: You guys worked on this one together. It looks like
Speaker 4: and I am very very learned about this.
Speaker 6: I love haunted hotels, and this looks like another one,
Speaker 6: and so well, maybe not long I thought, wait, are
Speaker 6: you suggest what?
Speaker 4: Okay?
Speaker 1: Why did you just have to hear more surprise?
Speaker 3: Welcome back Matt and Karen, Thank.
Speaker 7: You, thank you, thank you. And I was ignorant of
Speaker 7: this place too until Matt illuminated me about this place.
Speaker 7: And so we wanted to just get away, get out
Speaker 7: of Dodge for a day or two, and so Matt
Speaker 7: suggested Victor, Colorado, and I'm like, where the hell is that.
Speaker 7: I hadn't heard of it. There's a little town that's
Speaker 7: nearby that is larger and known for its casinos called.
Speaker 1: Cripple Creek, and so I'd.
Speaker 7: Heard of that, but I hadn't heard of a Victor.
Speaker 7: It's just this little rural town about two hours south
Speaker 7: of Denver, and it's a How did you find out
Speaker 7: about it? Matt?
Speaker 3: Well, I had had, you know, family that had gone
Speaker 3: to Cripple Creek and Victor to you know, go gambling
Speaker 3: and seeing things like that. And I had heard about
Speaker 3: the legends of Victor and Cripple Creek. But the cool
Speaker 3: thing about Victor to me is that it is just
Speaker 3: a living ghost town. It is. It is remarkable at
Speaker 3: the size of it and everything. And then you know,
Speaker 3: I was able, you know, there's people there, but I
Speaker 3: was able to walk out in the middle of the
Speaker 3: street and take pictures for it as long as I wanted,
Speaker 3: and I did not get run died over.
Speaker 7: So it's this little old mining town, right, and so
Speaker 7: it was known as the city of Gold Mines, and
Speaker 7: it was the site of the eighteen nineties gold rush
Speaker 7: in Colorado. And so one of the reasons we went
Speaker 7: there is that the whole town of Victor is said
Speaker 7: to be haunted, but especially a particular building there called
Speaker 7: the Victor Hotel. So we decided to check it out.
Speaker 7: And this little hotel was built in eighteen eighty four
Speaker 7: by founders of the city, the Woods Brothers, the three
Speaker 7: Woods brothers, but the place actually burnt down in a
Speaker 7: massive fire that just took out the whole town in
Speaker 7: August eighteen ninety nine, but they started to rebuild a
Speaker 7: hotel that year, finished in nineteen hundred, and the new
Speaker 7: hotel stands opposite the site.
Speaker 1: Of the predecessors.
Speaker 7: So all the original houses were built from wood, and
Speaker 7: so they instead started to build places with brick or
Speaker 7: metal as well, and.
Speaker 3: That town ordinance that they had to they could no
Speaker 3: longer build with wood. And because the pine just went up,
Speaker 3: the entire town just was decimated in just a few hours,
Speaker 3: the entire count.
Speaker 4: The three mayors, the little pig mayors.
Speaker 1: Huffed and they puffed.
Speaker 7: But yeah, I mean, there is just so much history
Speaker 7: surrounding this place. The hotel is listed on the National.
Speaker 1: Register of Historic Places.
Speaker 7: There is an elevator in this building, which really comes
Speaker 7: into a lot of the folklore and the history. It's
Speaker 7: said to be the oldest operating one in Colorado, and
Speaker 7: it appears as it was built around nineteen hundred and
Speaker 7: Matt came across a bunch of articles about this in
Speaker 7: the local newspaper, and we'll get into that a bit
Speaker 7: more soon. It seems like it may not be the
Speaker 7: oldest operating anymore, but we'll get into that. But suffice
Speaker 7: to say, the Victor Hotel is just said to be
Speaker 7: affected by or afflicted by the usual haunted phenomena. Their
Speaker 7: stories of ghostly footsteps and ghostly smells, people smelling perfume
Speaker 7: and cigarette smoke, lots of cold spots in there, and
Speaker 7: flickering lights, and even.
Speaker 4: Apparitions sounds like Vegas.
Speaker 7: Or any city I guess in America or around the world.
Speaker 7: But we thought there's no point in really tackling all
Speaker 7: of these stories. I mean, how can you really dispute
Speaker 7: cold spots, how can you dispute stigar smoke and things
Speaker 7: like that. So we thought, let's focus on some of
Speaker 7: the specific claims that we can actually investigate. So we
Speaker 7: thought Matt could go into a bit of some of
Speaker 7: the legends and then I'll tell a specific story that's
Speaker 7: assigned or aligned to the place.
Speaker 4: Neat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So now what is now known as the Victor
Speaker 3: Hotel across the street is where the original Victor Hotel
Speaker 3: was before it burned down. When they built this building,
Speaker 3: just within the matter of a matter of weeks, this
Speaker 3: building started getting built and it was not the Victor Hotel.
Speaker 3: This was the Victor Bank Block, and the first floor
Speaker 3: was a bank and then there were some you know, accommodations,
Speaker 3: you know, a little bit further above that, but it
Speaker 3: was not known as the Victor Hotel at this time. Now,
Speaker 3: the interesting thing about it is there was a hospital
Speaker 3: that had opened on the top floor and during really
Speaker 3: really cold winters, when the ground because it is the
Speaker 3: the cemetery, there is the highest elevation cemetery in the
Speaker 3: country from what we understand, and in the winter times
Speaker 3: the ground would get so hard they couldn't dig graves.
Speaker 3: So that fourth floor became a makeshift morgue and the
Speaker 3: bodies that went up and down in that elevator continue
Speaker 3: to haunt the hotel to this day. And so I
Speaker 3: don't know what sounds we'd go along with a dead body.
Speaker 4: But.
Speaker 3: That's that's you know, there's a lot of e vps
Speaker 3: and everything, and they go along with that. So it's
Speaker 3: absolutely terrifying when you think about that. But there's a
Speaker 3: there was a bigger legend, the one that really intrigued Karen.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 7: Yeah, if you look up the Victor Hotel anything to
Speaker 7: do with the hauntings, you will come across the story
Speaker 7: of Eddie. And so the hotel is said to be
Speaker 7: haunted by I think a young child and a number
Speaker 7: of other people, as Matters said, but specifically you'll hear
Speaker 7: about Eddie. So as the story goes, he was a miner,
Speaker 7: because this is a gold mining town and Matt.
Speaker 1: Always likes to joke about that. Not underage, he was
Speaker 1: a gold miner.
Speaker 3: And he was over twenty one.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and so he lived in the hotel. So when
Speaker 7: it was a boarding house, he lived in room three
Speaker 7: hundred and one on the third floor. Now the hotel
Speaker 7: website itself tells us this, so he's a quote from
Speaker 7: the site. The most prevalent ghost is that of a
Speaker 7: man named Eddie, who allegedly fell down the elevator shaft
Speaker 7: years ago, staying in room three hundred and one at
Speaker 7: the time of his death. Eddie has often.
Speaker 1: Been seen in the room, in the.
Speaker 7: Hallways, and in the elevator. Guests who stay in Room
Speaker 7: three hundred and one also report hearing footsteps and other
Speaker 7: strange sounds that cannot be explained though the elevator.
Speaker 1: Yeh, yeah, yeah, always so.
Speaker 7: Though the elevator is regularly inspected and maintained, it often
Speaker 7: tends to activate itself going up and down the shaft
Speaker 7: when no one is near, always stopping on the third floor.
Speaker 7: The elevator's ghostly activity usually occurs around three So yeah,
Speaker 7: we've encountered a lot of that of the years, haven't we.
Speaker 7: The stories of go to the activity at three am
Speaker 7: or somehow involving the number three, the whole trinity association.
Speaker 7: So we're seeing that at play here again.
Speaker 1: So how did Eddie die?
Speaker 7: What happened here? Why is he haunting this building? So again,
Speaker 7: as the story goes, one morning he rose for work
Speaker 7: and he went to the elevator. He pushed the button,
Speaker 7: waiting for the elevator, and then when the iron gates
Speaker 7: opened up, he stepped inside. But the elevator wasn't there.
Speaker 7: Doctor Remorey record to first floor emergency stat Yes.
Speaker 4: That's me. Anyone else need to go on the elevator?
Speaker 1: He only said you, Oh okay, Ray, did they just
Speaker 1: come off doing.
Speaker 4: Now?
Speaker 3: Maybe?
Speaker 7: So Eddie steps inside and he falls to his death
Speaker 7: in the shaft. So he's a victim of the elevator's malfunction.
Speaker 7: And so you hear all the same stories about Eddie
Speaker 7: being seen in his room, in the hallways, in the elevator,
Speaker 7: the stories of the elevator activating itself even when no
Speaker 7: one is nearby. AH, and people hearing disembodied voices and knockings,
Speaker 7: strange sounds, particularly in Eddie's room, ghostly footsteps.
Speaker 1: The whole shebang.
Speaker 7: So what intrigued me was that I kept reading this
Speaker 7: story retold the same way again and again. But then
Speaker 7: I came across another version of.
Speaker 1: The story, so just slightly different.
Speaker 7: This version says that Eddie was a drunkard and late
Speaker 7: one night he was heavily intoxicated, and he went out
Speaker 7: to the elevator, pressed the button, the cage opened. He
Speaker 7: stepped out before the elevator had arrived and fell.
Speaker 1: To his death.
Speaker 7: So it was like, hm, you know, when we hear
Speaker 7: these light differences in stories are usually indicative of urban legends.
Speaker 7: So I thought, Okay, my curiosity here is peaud. I
Speaker 7: think that there's something else going on. So we looked
Speaker 7: into this and then we did our trip. But I
Speaker 7: guess we'll talk a little bit about our trip to
Speaker 7: Victor and what we found, and then I guess the
Speaker 7: truth behind all of the folklore.
Speaker 8: And you're saying that the town basically burn to the ground,
Speaker 8: but they rebuilt it slowly, and so everything there is
Speaker 8: roughly dating from nineteen hundred at this point exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, yes, and actually they built it really quickly.
Speaker 3: It was i mean the amount of money, yeah, the
Speaker 3: amount of money in this town was ridiculous. Yeah, both
Speaker 3: Victor and Cripple Creek, uh basically bailed America out of
Speaker 3: the eighteen nineties depression. It was just remarkable the amount
Speaker 3: of money and the gold now mine right in between.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but there's a gold mine right in between the
Speaker 3: two towns that is still operating today and it is
Speaker 3: a huge operation. So it's I'm sure there's still quite
Speaker 3: a bit of gold there, but just the millions upon
Speaker 3: millions of dollars and we're talking nineteen hundred dollars.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, there was several millionaires blind mind bobblink. But
Speaker 7: so the town was this bustling puns.
Speaker 3: When there aren't they aren't even there, I know exactly.
Speaker 7: But so the town once had a population of about
Speaker 7: eight thousand people whoa now has it about four hundreds. So,
Speaker 7: as Matt said, it's really true a ghost town. And
Speaker 7: we turned up. It was basly cold at that time
Speaker 7: of year, so it was early March, and the hotel
Speaker 7: it was very interesting it's modernized now. They've got state
Speaker 7: of the art locks on the place and everything's electronic nowadays, pass.
Speaker 4: Keys and all that kind of stuff. Gotcha, gotcha?
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's really cool.
Speaker 3: Well, no, it's it's you. You get you get a
Speaker 3: code and you kind of tap on the door and
Speaker 3: the screen kind of pops up for you to type
Speaker 3: in your code.
Speaker 4: Oh wow, yeah, it's it's very cool.
Speaker 8: It's it's uh, but if you've been drinking, how do
Speaker 8: you get inside your room anyway?
Speaker 3: Sorry, okay, don't take the elevator.
Speaker 1: Well, you can go into any room.
Speaker 7: And that was the strange thing we found that all
Speaker 7: of the doors to all of the rooms outside of
Speaker 7: those that had already been were already occupied, were open,
Speaker 7: wide open.
Speaker 4: Wow, that's peculiar, it was it.
Speaker 3: It comes in handy shortly. Oh I bet yeah, because yeah,
Speaker 3: there's more to the story now. It was really cool
Speaker 3: driving into Victor and getting to see this, you know,
Speaker 3: this such a historical town, and then getting into this
Speaker 3: building that much of it is very historical. Now. Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: the elevator was out of service when we were there,
Speaker 3: so the only floors that you could stay and were
Speaker 3: basically the second and third floor. So we opted, you know,
Speaker 3: for the third floor because Eddie, you know, was in
Speaker 3: room three oh one, and you need the exercise there
Speaker 3: it is.
Speaker 4: You know, yes, yeah, so you get to take the
Speaker 4: stairs every time you went up and down.
Speaker 3: So yep, ye wow, which was not not a big
Speaker 3: deal because you know, it was fine. Yeah. Now it
Speaker 3: was interesting because I went on a little bit of
Speaker 3: a looking around sort of the mission and everything, and
Speaker 3: I'm walking up the stairs and I'm all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: you know, it's like we're the only ones there. There's
Speaker 3: just like nobody except well except for the ghost, but
Speaker 3: I mean not there's no no staff or anything there
Speaker 3: that the owners of the hotel, nothing, no one there
Speaker 3: from no front desk, just they text you when it's
Speaker 3: time for checking. They text you your code and that's it.
Speaker 3: So you're on your own. So I'm looking around, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm feeling very free about looking around because there's no
Speaker 3: one else there. And as I approached the fourth floor
Speaker 3: where the morgue was, I hear these footsteps and I
Speaker 3: hear this like breathing and everything. It's just very strange
Speaker 3: noise and it's coming down the stairs and I'm thinking,
Speaker 3: oh god, I'm having an experience. I'm having an experience,
Speaker 3: and you know, two people around the corner and it's this,
Speaker 3: this woman and this guy, and they both are wearing
Speaker 3: blankets around their should holders because it's.
Speaker 4: Cold, but seeing to be ghosts, yeah, or.
Speaker 3: They were dressed as ghosts. It could go either way.
Speaker 3: But they had em F detectors, and so I'm like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: doing some ghost hunting, are we, you know? And the
Speaker 3: woman looked really sheepish and she's like, it's my birthday.
Speaker 3: It was a very interesting answer. So they came to
Speaker 3: the Vicar Hotel on our birthday to hunt for ghosts,
Speaker 3: and birds.
Speaker 1: Would do that, not like us. Yeah.
Speaker 7: Yeah, So we we stayed there that night and we
Speaker 7: counted uh probably about five other people, uh so other
Speaker 7: than ourselves who were there, and they all seemed to
Speaker 7: be ghost hunting. We could smell a lot of recreational marijuana.
Speaker 3: Now, I mean from the birthday room. Yes, there was
Speaker 3: some Colorado recreational marijuana going on. It's perfectly legal people, it's.
Speaker 4: Funny Rocky Mount.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, indeed.
Speaker 7: So we did experience some phenomena or what other people
Speaker 7: would experience is phenomena. So things like cold spots, right, Matt.
Speaker 3: Oh, huge, The cold spots were amazing. Victor is a
Speaker 3: cold spot.
Speaker 4: But the problem is.
Speaker 3: They modernized the hotel, but they didn't modernize the hotel.
Speaker 3: The windows have these gaps that where you can see
Speaker 3: daylight on the edges of the windows and snow and
Speaker 3: the wind blowing has this unearthly howl as it comes
Speaker 3: through your window and freezes you.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: The only heat we had was this little electric like radiator.
Speaker 3: It was cold, a little oil yeah, it was like
Speaker 3: an oil heater. Yeah, And it was cool because that
Speaker 3: was the only heat we had. And as the wind
Speaker 3: was blowing in into our room. Now this part of
Speaker 3: the story is, you know, I'm treading lightly. They didn't
Speaker 3: give us much in the way of bedding, so we
Speaker 3: had like a sheet and we were, you know, worried
Speaker 3: about whether or not, you know, there were going to
Speaker 3: be bed bugs or anything. We just didn't know, so
Speaker 3: that we're going to sleep on top of the sheets
Speaker 3: and instead of getting underneath them, it just didn't seem,
Speaker 3: you know, perfectly safe. So we slept on top of
Speaker 3: them and we had one really thin blanket and we're
Speaker 3: watching this kind of led thermostat on the wall, which
Speaker 3: we had no control over, but it would tell us
Speaker 3: the temperature in our room. And we're watching it drop
Speaker 3: and drop and drop, and you know it's approaching, you know,
Speaker 3: the fifties, and it's continuing to drop, and it's like, okay,
Speaker 3: that's it. I'm going to go find blankets. So dressed
Speaker 3: as I wasn't, I got out of bed and started
Speaker 3: rating the other rooms, hoping it.
Speaker 1: Was it was lightly clad, so please don't think he
Speaker 1: was naked.
Speaker 3: I was not one hundred percent naked. I'll put it
Speaker 3: that way. I was not presentable, I'll say that. But
Speaker 3: so I'm going from room to room trying to steal
Speaker 3: blankets from the other rooms.
Speaker 1: And old rooms open.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're all open and everything. So I'm going from
Speaker 3: room to room and I finally get to Eddie's room,
Speaker 3: room three oh one. Now Eddie's room was left in
Speaker 3: the exact same condition as it was when he died.
Speaker 3: Same TV channel.
Speaker 1: Everything, same coffeemaker, right right, all of us the.
Speaker 3: Same, I assume. I assume.
Speaker 4: Do we know roughly what year Eddie passed?
Speaker 7: No, okay, just eighty died in the hotel.
Speaker 1: He was a border That's all we know. At this point, guys.
Speaker 3: Right now, Now it's it's often assumed that it's it's
Speaker 3: around nineteen hundred, but there's no hard evidence of when
Speaker 3: he died. So I go into his room and I
Speaker 3: get a blanket. And as I'm standing there in his room,
Speaker 3: I hear footsteps coming upstairs and he's right at the
Speaker 3: you know, his room's red the top of the stairs.
Speaker 3: And I'm standing there thinking, please don't come in here,
Speaker 3: Please don't let three or one be your room.
Speaker 4: See that's nice of you to think that. I would
Speaker 4: have been thinking, quick, put this sheet over my head.
Speaker 1: Well, and I think it's a ghost.
Speaker 3: It's Eddie, right, except for they were chatting with each
Speaker 3: other and it was a couple, so I knew it
Speaker 3: was it was people. And I'm just thinking, Okay, what
Speaker 3: am I going to say if they come in this room?
Speaker 3: What am I going to say? My first thought was.
Speaker 4: Boo to come up with some blanket?
Speaker 3: Excuse well my my My next one was I got
Speaker 3: these blankets for you.
Speaker 7: So because pretended that you couldn't speak English, right, right.
Speaker 3: Just you know, as I'm standing there naked with a
Speaker 3: blanket in my hands.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 8: It's right, you're going to get a quote complex, right,
Speaker 8: So yeah, that that was a very strange happening.
Speaker 3: But anyway, I made it back to the room. I
Speaker 3: got blankets for for for Blade and for for Karen
Speaker 3: and I and and we made it through the rest
Speaker 3: of the night, and that was that was wonderful. But
Speaker 3: we decided that we were going to go and check
Speaker 3: out the cemetery and and different things. We went off
Speaker 3: a cripple creek the day before and then check that out,
Speaker 3: and uh, they have a family dollar, so it's good.
Speaker 3: It's fine.
Speaker 7: A liquor store with assive people who had stolen bottles.
Speaker 4: You mean they like they used to have like bounce.
Speaker 3: Shot. This person is a thief and ye it has
Speaker 3: is their picture there on the wall. So we decided
Speaker 3: to put back the bottles we didn't pay for and
Speaker 3: because we didn't want to be part of the wall
Speaker 3: of shame.
Speaker 7: Well, yeah, I think it was fun to explore up
Speaker 7: the place and and clearly other people who were staying
Speaker 7: there were going ghost hunting, and uh, you know, we had.
Speaker 1: Some fun little experiences here.
Speaker 7: And their blade came across thought he was hearing voices
Speaker 7: and disembodied voices and came across televisions being on in
Speaker 7: some of the rooms and the lights flickering and things
Speaker 7: like that. So we put it down to electricity issues
Speaker 7: or maybe the previous occupants that left the television on,
Speaker 7: and it was just debatable that they had many people
Speaker 7: coming through there really at all, even though though the
Speaker 7: place is well known and a lot of people go
Speaker 7: ghost hunting there.
Speaker 6: I mean, if the whole population of the town is
Speaker 6: now four hundred, just you guys, the ghost owners are
Speaker 6: like a pretty substantial chunk of the population.
Speaker 4: Over the weekends.
Speaker 3: I guess, yes, yes.
Speaker 1: Well, I think that's the real attraction to the town.
Speaker 7: But before I get into the story of Eddie and Matt,
Speaker 7: do you want to talk a little bit more about
Speaker 7: the kind of facts behind the folklore of the town
Speaker 7: and the hotel.
Speaker 3: Well, I can say that there there was a morgue
Speaker 3: in town. I believe it's called done in company d U.
Speaker 4: N N you wastly done.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you would think don would have been more appropriate.
Speaker 1: For the funeral. Yeah, but so it's.
Speaker 3: I can find nowhere that the fourth floor was ever
Speaker 3: a morgue, and also could find nowhere that there was
Speaker 3: ever a winter where the ground was too hard for
Speaker 3: them to dig graves, so that was not true at all.
Speaker 3: Now was interesting to hear. You know. The owners were
Speaker 3: there the next morning and we dropped in and asked
Speaker 3: them and they verified everything is true, the Morgue, Eddie
Speaker 3: and everything else. Now, one of the other interesting things
Speaker 3: that I did find is that the elevator itself was
Speaker 3: was very interesting because nineteen hundred there it's in the newspaper.
Speaker 3: You know, this new fans the elevator that's going to make,
Speaker 3: you know, things so much easier in this building. They're
Speaker 3: everyone's so excited, and it'll be ready to go this weekend.
Speaker 3: And then several months later it's like they've almost got
Speaker 3: the elevator working. You know, it's it's going to be
Speaker 3: ready at any time now. And then a few months
Speaker 3: later the same story. It was from February to August
Speaker 3: of the following year, there were headlines every few months
Speaker 3: about how the elevator was almost ready, and I did
Speaker 3: find that very hilarious. But one of the things is
Speaker 3: in I believe it was nineteen oh two. In April
Speaker 3: of nineteen oh two, there was a hospital on the
Speaker 3: fourth floor, and it was because going to Cripple Creek
Speaker 3: could prove deadly. You know, if you had to rush
Speaker 3: someone to the hospital, to have to go to a
Speaker 3: town that's you know, even five miles away in those days,
Speaker 3: could have been enough time for them to die. So
Speaker 3: they they did have a small hospital on the fourth floor.
Speaker 3: Several months after it opened, one of the doctors, uh
Speaker 3: had his foot crushed in the elevator and as he
Speaker 3: was getting his uh uh kind of.
Speaker 4: Oh, what would you.
Speaker 3: Call it the house call bag, you know, ready to
Speaker 3: go help somebody, and he's you know, not paying too
Speaker 3: much attention, and he gets his foot stuck in the
Speaker 3: elevator and it crushed it and he actually had to
Speaker 3: have his foot amputated. And it's just, you know, such
Speaker 3: a tragic story because these the two doctors that ran
Speaker 3: this hotel were really altruistic.
Speaker 6: Oh it's called a Gladstone bag that the big doctors.
Speaker 4: I couldn't remember what they were called.
Speaker 3: Sorry, thank you.
Speaker 1: Oh I didn't know that.
Speaker 3: I just thought, yeah, yeah, I do appreciate you, uh
Speaker 3: kind of with that. But uh and and just you
Speaker 3: know a lot of the different things that that has said.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 3: Another thing we did experience though, while we were freezing
Speaker 3: in the room, we kept hearing uh voices that that
Speaker 3: sounded disembodied, and it was just like lots of talking
Speaker 3: and chattering and laughing and just all kinds of different
Speaker 3: noise with like music in the background. And you know,
Speaker 3: it wasn't like coming from someone's room. It was It
Speaker 3: was really an interesting, creepy kind of sound until you
Speaker 3: realize that the building, uh was right next to an
Speaker 3: operating bar.
Speaker 4: Ah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there it.
Speaker 1: Travels blaring and yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: It's quite well.
Speaker 7: But yeah, I think that accounts for that accounts for
Speaker 7: some of the claims of you know, people hearing disembodied
Speaker 7: voices and and music. But so before we even got
Speaker 7: to go to Victor, we solved the case of Eddie.
Speaker 7: And I think we've just been talking about the trip
Speaker 7: and Matt had to go and get the laundry or
Speaker 7: something before bed and.
Speaker 4: I had five you saw the case of Eddie.
Speaker 3: I was getting laundry.
Speaker 7: Well, I had five minutes up my sleeve, and normally
Speaker 7: these kinds of things don't go this smoothly or this quickly.
Speaker 1: But I was just really suspicious about those variations of
Speaker 1: the Eddie story.
Speaker 7: And I thought, you know, I'm going to look up
Speaker 7: Eddie in the annals of the local cemetery. So I
Speaker 7: found Victor's closest cemetery, Sunnyside Cemetery, and I was using
Speaker 7: Finder Grave, and I looked up Eddie. There weren't any Eddies,
Speaker 7: but there were fourteen different Edwards who were interred in
Speaker 7: that cemetery, and I went through them all and looked
Speaker 7: at the dates of death, and there was one that
Speaker 7: really stuck out like a sore thumb, that seemed to
Speaker 7: fit in with the story, and that was a gentleman
Speaker 7: by the name of Edward Mattler. And so he was
Speaker 7: born in eighteen seventy three and he died in nineteen hundred.
Speaker 7: And it wasn't a picture of his grave or anything
Speaker 7: like that, but there were a couple of newspaper articles
Speaker 7: that were listed there were added by someone by the
Speaker 7: name of Jay Beckham, and so it was you know,
Speaker 7: I don't know if you know much about Find a Grave,
Speaker 7: but you can subscribe and you can set up a
Speaker 7: profile and leave flowers for people and poems and all
Speaker 7: kinds of things. So there's a bit of a community
Speaker 7: around it.
Speaker 8: And some of the content is generated by other users.
Speaker 8: I mean, it's very collaborative. I like that a lot.
Speaker 7: Yes everything, and that's the case with this Jay Beckham,
Speaker 7: and so his motto was making sure no one is forgotten.
Speaker 1: So I was really touched by that.
Speaker 7: It included a couple of newspaper articles that told the
Speaker 7: story of this Edward Mattler, and it's a really tragic
Speaker 7: story about a young Timberman who died in an accident
Speaker 7: at a nearby mine called Minie Haha. There are actually
Speaker 7: quite a few Mini Haha mines around America and even
Speaker 7: a few in Australia too, so it's a strange name.
Speaker 7: But it's near Elkton, Colorado, so it's in the Cripple
Speaker 7: Creek area, and it's about maybe ten miles away northwest
Speaker 7: of Victor, which was one of the largest mines in
Speaker 7: the area. So Edward had lived in a nearby town
Speaker 7: called Ana Condor. He had not lived in the Victor Hotel,
Speaker 7: so he wasn't living in one of the boarding rooms there.
Speaker 1: So it just became.
Speaker 7: Abundantly clear that the Victor Hotel isn't haunted by Eddie.
Speaker 1: He didn't live there, he didn't die there.
Speaker 7: That the story has become conflated with this true tragedy
Speaker 7: and the history of.
Speaker 1: The Victor Hotel and the town.
Speaker 7: So, Matt, do you want to do us a favor
Speaker 7: and read one or two of these little articles from
Speaker 7: the local newspapers that tell the story of Edward the real.
Speaker 3: Aig, Sure, sure, sure. Here's one very.
Speaker 2: Sensitively titled Down the Shaft Edward Butler meets death by
Speaker 2: plunging down minie Haha shaft. While employed in timbering the
Speaker 2: shaft on the Minnehaha mine near Elkton last night, Edward
Speaker 2: Butler lost his footing and fell to the bottom a
Speaker 2: distance of seventy five feet, breaking his neck and meeting
Speaker 2: instant death. Matler was stepping from one timber to another,
Speaker 2: and the rubber boots which he wore caused him to
Speaker 2: slip and he plunged to the bottom. The remains were
Speaker 2: raised to the surface and brought to this city and
Speaker 2: taken to the undertaking establishment of TF. Dunn and Company,
Speaker 2: where they await burial. Matler was twenty seven years of
Speaker 2: age and a residence of anacon. That's from the Victor Times.
Speaker 1: And Blake, you helped us with this too. You helped
Speaker 1: us to find a free.
Speaker 7: Access to the Victor Times, and we found articles in
Speaker 7: the Rocky Mountain News that were around that time as well.
Speaker 4: Hand, I didn't ask what it was all about.
Speaker 1: It just.
Speaker 3: That's awesome.
Speaker 7: Yeah, So we found several iterations of the story. But
Speaker 7: he was just a young guy and involved in that accident.
Speaker 7: So there are even some links to the folklore that
Speaker 7: had happened at eight o'clock at night. One version says
Speaker 7: that it happened at eight o'clock, whereas some of the
Speaker 7: folklore says that he was drunk and stepped out at
Speaker 7: eight o'clock, presumably to go to the bar nearby. But
Speaker 7: we were just really touch to hear about the story
Speaker 7: of this young guy. He had a brother in the area,
Speaker 7: it didn't seem like he was married, that he had children,
Speaker 7: so he hadn't lived much of his life. And I mean,
Speaker 7: this was incredibly dangerous work working in the mining industry.
Speaker 7: And we've read some history of the town too, and
Speaker 7: a lot of the unions that were formed and people
Speaker 7: who were paid a pittance When there are people making
Speaker 7: millions at that time. These men were being paid just
Speaker 7: a couple of dollars a day and working very long hours,
Speaker 7: ten hours a day, very dangerous work, and so these
Speaker 7: accidents were really common so Eddie did exist, but he
Speaker 7: didn't exist in exactly the way that the folklore is told.
Speaker 7: So we really wanted to honor him because he truly
Speaker 7: did exist and died in such a horrible way, and
Speaker 7: yet he's just been swept up into this folklore. So
Speaker 7: we wanted to visit the cemetery and to take a
Speaker 7: picture of his headstone and to supply that.
Speaker 1: To find a grave.
Speaker 7: But we scoured the grounds, we could not find his grave,
Speaker 7: so it was the three of us running around. It
Speaker 7: was frigidly cold, and we're wearing scarves wrapped around our
Speaker 7: faces and it was just freezing. We couldn't find him anywhere.
Speaker 7: It's quite a sprawling cemetery too, and as we were
Speaker 7: leaving we saw there was a potter's field, so in
Speaker 7: Australia we'd call that a pauper's grave.
Speaker 1: And I contacted the.
Speaker 7: Cemetery's project manager to see if we could find out
Speaker 7: more about Edward and where he's buried, but she hasn't
Speaker 7: applied yet, so I guess we can update that information
Speaker 7: if it comes through. But I came across some interesting
Speaker 7: articles saying that there are about three hundred people that
Speaker 7: are buried in Potter's Field there and they only discovered
Speaker 7: that there were that many people buried there in the nineties,
Speaker 7: in the sorry nineteen nineties, and.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, so.
Speaker 3: They are ongoing ground radar and.
Speaker 1: Yet something like that.
Speaker 7: But they're still trying to find out the names of
Speaker 7: people who were interred there in cemetery. So we don't
Speaker 7: know exactly where he is, but hopefully we'll find out more.
Speaker 7: And again it's one of these cases where the history
Speaker 7: is just so much more interesting and colorful than the folklore.
Speaker 7: And it's surprising too to find out often the names
Speaker 7: associated with ghost law these people didn't exist. And so
Speaker 7: this was an interesting case where there truly was an
Speaker 7: Edward and he suffered such a horrible death, and that
Speaker 7: his story was transported to the Victor Hotel. And there
Speaker 7: are kind of shades, i think with the accidents that
Speaker 7: happened in the elevator. You can see how the folklore
Speaker 7: was conflated with the history. You can see it kind
Speaker 7: of forming over the decades. But we were just really
Speaker 7: touched that they Saidward did exist, just a young guy
Speaker 7: died so horribly and yet now he's just been woven
Speaker 7: into the folklore of this amazing in hotel.
Speaker 4: Well, Matt, thank you for putting these photos into the show. Notes.
Speaker 6: This is these are really cool. This is like a
Speaker 6: really fun place to visit. And I know it was
Speaker 6: really cool, but golly, the cemetery looks really beautiful. I
Speaker 6: like the way the mind sign, the sign, the sign
Speaker 6: at the cemetery has the mining elements iconography built into it.
Speaker 4: That's just really it's really it's really cool looking. I
Speaker 4: don't know how to put it.
Speaker 7: Yeah, And it's just so touching to see the potters
Speaker 7: Field and people have been trying to lay crosses there
Speaker 7: just to remember that the people that were buried there,
Speaker 7: and just a lot of poor people, a lot of
Speaker 7: people of color, a lot of people passing through the town,
Speaker 7: and those just didn't have family. So it's just really
Speaker 7: exciting to think that they're going to slowly find out
Speaker 7: exactly who's there.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's just so interesting to find out the truth.
Speaker 7: And that well that there's no way that the owners
Speaker 7: or any one traversing through the place could possibly experience
Speaker 7: Eddie in room three.
Speaker 1: Hundred and one and in the elevator.
Speaker 7: And as Matt said, they it was never a morgue,
Speaker 7: so not getting bodies transported, well living bodies anyway, transported
Speaker 7: up and down the elevator.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it was just just a really fun story.
Speaker 7: We love the history of this place and it's yeah,
Speaker 7: we love folklore too, But it was I think were
Speaker 7: gratifying to be able to solve this than to just
Speaker 7: hear the creepy stories and pay a.
Speaker 3: Little tribute to the actual man behind, you know, the myth. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I think it's it's important that some of these people
Speaker 3: got you know, treated better, I guess and death. That
Speaker 3: was the thing about Victor is when all this was
Speaker 3: going on, Cripple Creek was where all the owners and
Speaker 3: all the people with all the money state, and then
Speaker 3: Victor was more of the the mind workers and the
Speaker 3: Victor Record, the newspaper, the Victor Times, the Victor Record,
Speaker 3: uh record. Yeah, but they also had one called the
Speaker 3: Victory Record, which exactly right, exactly, and that can easily
Speaker 3: be confused. Uh. The thing is is that there were
Speaker 3: so many murders and suicides on a daily basis readings.
Speaker 3: I went through fifteen years of these newspapers to make
Speaker 3: sure that Eddie wasn't real, you know, that that this
Speaker 3: didn't actually happen. I went to another right to make
Speaker 3: sure there way wasn't someone else or and it wasn't.
Speaker 3: Nobody passed away in this hotel that that I can find.
Speaker 3: But there were murders and suicides almost on a daily
Speaker 3: basis in this town, and U it's it's amazing to
Speaker 3: see that they think that this one building where it
Speaker 3: seems like lives were saved in the in the hospital upstairs,
Speaker 3: but virtually nobody died. But this somehow is the most
Speaker 3: haunted building in the town. It's bizarre.
Speaker 1: It really is haunted by a foot, right, well, I.
Speaker 3: Mean an amputated foot at an appendix, but I.
Speaker 4: Mean from the folklore side of things.
Speaker 6: I mean, there's elements of this that remind me of
Speaker 6: the Lord Dufferin story.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, I think I told you guys. Here in
Speaker 8: my hometown. Actually it's in Marietta. There's a house called
Speaker 8: the Kennesaw House, which is yes, I live in Kennesaw,
Speaker 8: but Marietta has the Kinnesau House. And there was a
Speaker 8: whole story about there being a Civil War era hospital
Speaker 8: in the basement and like someone went down there and
Speaker 8: saw like a like time slipped into the operating room
Speaker 8: and then go to go check, and there is no
Speaker 8: basement at all, so the elevator is certainly can't go
Speaker 8: down to their maybe metaphorically you're going somewhere.
Speaker 4: Else, but anyway, you can't.
Speaker 6: There's a lot of these elements that sound very much
Speaker 6: like tropes or motifs from folklore, you know, but absolutely
Speaker 6: you know, laying it down to like you know, checking
Speaker 6: the veracity.
Speaker 4: This is cool.
Speaker 6: I mean you found more without an EMF detector, you know,
Speaker 6: so nicely done.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't a birthdays.
Speaker 7: Yeah, but yeah, it's difficult, too difficult to think about
Speaker 7: elevators and not think of Lord Dufference. So certainly he
Speaker 7: was on my mind as we checked out the elevator.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, absolutely me too, And I included in the show
Speaker 3: notes an old the railroad going through There were several
Speaker 3: different ones that were all competing, and now you have
Speaker 3: lots of coaches that are just sitting. Wow.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like I said, I.
Speaker 3: Threw that that coach in there for you to it.
Speaker 6: Was like somewhere a gunfight is going to happen, you know,
Speaker 6: like I mean like cowboys shooting each other, you know, that's.
Speaker 1: Right, right, Yeah, So you know, despite.
Speaker 7: Being able to bust the claims the ghost legends of
Speaker 7: the hotel. I think it's truly worth a visit, so
Speaker 7: anyone who's local or anyone who's passing through should definitely,
Speaker 7: uh stay there and check it out.
Speaker 1: It was really fun.
Speaker 7: We just hung out in the lobby area and had
Speaker 7: had a couple of drinks and just did some work there,
Speaker 7: and it's so atmospheric. It was really nice trip away
Speaker 7: and ghosts or no ghosts. We enjoyed it. And it's
Speaker 7: nice to to preserve, help preserve the place and the history.
Speaker 4: Yeah, is it. How far away is this from Denver?
Speaker 3: It was really about two.
Speaker 7: Just south of Denver, so it's pretty close to Colorado Springs,
Speaker 7: Okay Springs, it's right around there, and just so many
Speaker 7: places to see.
Speaker 1: You could even do a day trip there. Really, it's
Speaker 1: that close. Nice and there's a really good German bakery
Speaker 1: in the downtown area. It's worth the trip alone.
Speaker 4: It is very cool.
Speaker 8: Well, I'll definitely put these photos in the show notes.
Speaker 8: That's okay, Matt, And this is in the links to
Speaker 8: the newspaper articles.
Speaker 4: This is very cool.
Speaker 8: Isn't it fun when you go on a little trip
Speaker 8: to be able to solve a mystery?
Speaker 4: I know I enjoyed that sort of thing.
Speaker 7: It is, and you know, we've got a problem with
Speaker 7: things like this. We can't go anywhere without looking up
Speaker 7: local legends and thinking, well, what are we going to
Speaker 7: explore and how are we going to turn this into
Speaker 7: an episode of monster Talk?
Speaker 4: And why not? Yeah, exactly. My wife wants me to.
Speaker 8: Every time I go anywhere, She's like, you know, we
Speaker 8: should see if there's a mystery to investigate.
Speaker 1: Im.
Speaker 4: I can't believe you're so interested in mystery. She's like,
Speaker 4: I'm so interested in text deductions? Is that fair enough?
Speaker 1: Will supply the receipts?
Speaker 4: There you go?
Speaker 3: Well, and and I also supplied one of the little
Speaker 3: wedges that we ate at the German restaurant, German Bakery.
Speaker 4: I'm still a low car, Matt. You're gonna have to
Speaker 4: bear with me.
Speaker 1: Here.
Speaker 3: You can just smell the picture.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, that looks tasty. Is it like cereal
Speaker 4: on top?
Speaker 3: Or like it looks like it is but it looks like, yeah,
Speaker 3: like frosted flakes on top.
Speaker 1: But it's not talking about the almonds.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's almonds.
Speaker 4: It's a little chocolate triangle with it.
Speaker 1: I can't I can't see that there is there is.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I'm not sure quite what it was, but Matt,
Speaker 9: I think you should include for the patrons only the
Speaker 9: story of the bakery owner.
Speaker 4: Bonus bonus bonus material. Wow, that sounds like such a
Speaker 4: fun trip and it's so beautiful. Check the show notes, everybody,
Speaker 4: and check out Matt's photos. Oh, I say, Matt, I
Speaker 4: mean Karen may have taken some of these, but I don't.
Speaker 1: Know, Matts.
Speaker 7: And it's certainly very atmospheric pictures especially not really it
Speaker 7: makes the place look haunted.
Speaker 4: It really it does. It's just it looks like a
Speaker 4: really fun place to visit.
Speaker 5: That's really neat Morenster, you've been listening to Monster Talk,
Speaker 5: the science show about monsters. I'm Blake Smith and.
Speaker 1: I'm Karen Stolsner.
Speaker 6: You just heard a discussion with Kiaren and her husband
Speaker 6: Matt about the relaxing rest and research in Victor, Colorado.
Speaker 6: Check out the show notes for photos and news clips
Speaker 6: and links.
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