Speaker 1: Stephen had long been an avid outdoorsman, hiking, climbing, sleeping
in tents, or even under the stars. Family and friends
had seen him impulsively fill his backpack and had out
for a several day journey through all kinds of terrain
and in all kinds of weather. But it was on
a cold November evening that even Stephen realized he needed
to get himself to shelter. Storm clouds had pressed in,
blocking out the sun. The day was drawing to a close,
and the angry winds and rains began to batter Stephen
with a ferocity that shocked even an experienced outdoorsmen like him.
With increasing concerns, Stephen could not see the trail that
he had followed deep into those woods, but he knew
he had to keep moving, so, with his clothing soaked,
his pack heavy with water, his head barely covered by
a plan he could, he simply started walking For almost
an hour. His pace was as deliberate as the torrent
around him, But the exhausted and weather beaten man quickly
became a lucky man. As a small cabin appeared in
the distance, the target in sight, Stephen pushed himself hundreds
of yards through the wet grass, mud, and brush, until
he was standing under the pouring rain at that cabin door.
He knocked feverishly, Hello, is anyone here? I'm a hiker
stranded in the weather. Can you give me shelter? Please?
Speaker 2: Hello?
Speaker 1: Hello, Yet no one answered. Desperate to get dry and
warm and away from the angry skies, Stephen reached down
and he turned the door latch with his shaking fingers,
and the door opened. Stephen slowly stepped inside. Hello, he
said again. There was no sound in that dark, wooden house.
He crept in further, eyes looking in every direction. Hello. Hello. Strangely,
when he closed the door behind him, the rain suddenly stopped.
Within seconds, it became obvious the house was empty. No
one was there.
Speaker 3: He was both.
Speaker 1: Relieved and uncomfortable. After all, he had just intruded into
someone else's private residence, and it was obviously someone's home.
The main room had chairs, a couch, a fireplace, and
in the middle of the main room there was a
single small bed. Stephen could see these things so only
because he had a flashlight. That there was no power
to this cabin, and then Stephen's narrow beam revealed something else.
All around him. On every wall in that center room
were elaborate paintings, dramatic paintings, disturbing paintings. To his left
was the portrait of an old farmer, his skin aged,
his eyes narrow, his clothing retaining the dirts from the fields.
His left hand held a pitchfork, his rights held a shovel.
For reasons that Stephen couldn't decipher, the painter had given
this farmer a thin, creepy smile. Next to the farmer
was the depiction of a small child, a little girl.
She had a rounded face with wide expression, jet black
hair that stopped at the neck, pale, smooth skin without
any blemishes, And again there was a similar grin, but
this one was even more disturbing. The girl's thin lips
were drawn well back, as if she had been slipped
from ear to ear. On Stephen's right was the painting
of two silhouettes standing side by side. The figures wore
cloaks the color of charcoal, with hoods drawn up over
their heads, the faces hidden in shadow. These painted figures
were obviously large men with solid frames and broad shoulders.
Both looked like those old depictions of the town executioner.
The figure on the right was rigid with arms down.
The figure on the left was pointing. Finally, Stephen looked
straight ahead and stared at that painting on the wall
and this one. There was no single person but five,
their father and three children, dressed in coats and long
pants and gloves. Except for the adult woman. She wore
a long skirt which touched the grass. Strangely, all five
had bare feet. The father held a piece of broken
glass in one hand. The mother pointed at the ground.
The narrow eyed children were baring their teeth like circling hyenas.
What kind of twisted gallery had Stephen walked into. The
question certainly gave him pause. But this little shack was
also shelter. It was dry and warm and empty, and
the single bed called out to his exhausted body. Stephen
took a moment and allowed his breathing to slow. He
removed his soaked clothing, laid the flashlight on the table
next to the pillow. He clicked its light off, and
then he closed his eyes. He closed his eyes when
they should have remained open, because had Stephen allowed himself
just one more moment to recover from his long trek
through the stormy woods. If he had cleared his mind
and sharpened his wits, if he had taken just one
step closer to those walls and used his flashlight to
better examine those disturbing paintings, he would have realized that
they weren't paintings.
Speaker 3: They were.
Speaker 4: Windows.
Speaker 5: February twenty eleven, Auburn, Pennsylvania. The Bretzius family had lived
in a quaint farmhouse surrounded by the rolling hills of
Schuylkill County for years when they decided it was time
to properly insulate the walls. Imagine their surprise when they
stripped away the outer walls to discover that a previous
owner had been one step ahead of them. Yet the
homeowners from so many decades ago hadn't lined the walls
with fiberglass or even asbestos. Stuffed between the studs were animals,
dead animals wrapped in old newspapers. The Bretzius family also
discovered other strange artifacts and even a variety of cooking spices.
Traces of these things had certainly not been found during
the home inspection when the family first moved in. Somehow,
for long decades, no one had detected those wrapped and
long mortified carcasses of chickens, rats, dogs, and cats. What
the Britziest family had discovered ten years ago was something
obviously well known to those who lived in that house
way back in the nineteen forties. They weren't just looking
at dead creatures and exotic spices. They were looking at
Dutch witchcraft. Dutch folk magic stems from the beliefs of
early German immigrants who relocated to the Pennsylvania region in
the seventeen hundreds, Broucherreye magic or powaw magic for healing
and protection, and xiai magic for curses and revenge. All
of the evidence revealed that the Bretzius home had once
been used for braucherai for the goal of conjuring good
for restoration and safety. Braucherai was and remains a form
of Christian folk religion and was long embedded into major
population centers until as late as the nineteen twenties. Unlike
the term connected to Native American traditions, the German term
powaw borrows from earlier languages like the Proto Algonquin, with
pahwewa meaning he who dreams. Indeed, the priests of old
were said to have dreams or visions, tapping into the
spirit realm and serving as spirit physicians. This was a
kind of light magic which stood in contrast to the
dark magic of the And if you hear the root
word hex in that term, you are correct in making
that connection. Did those early residents of that Pennsylvania house
truly practice boucher eye? Did they incorporate the common elements
known to that culture, ranging as far as the Bible,
books of Egyptian secrets and various spell books filled with incantations.
At the very least, we can confirm their belief in
ritual animal sacrifice for protections against the forces of darkness.
For those who had come before had wrapped so many
carcasses into paper and strategically placed them behind the plaster
and slats, And since the nineteen forties, anyone and everyone
who had lived in that house unsuspectingly walked and sat
and slept mere feet from little dead bodies, creatures mortified
and mummified, and blockading against any devils outside. The specimens
were collected by the Bretziis family and sent to experts
for study. Interestingly, their insurance company declined to pay for
any restoration, leaving the family, not only with stripped away walls,
but with a twenty thousand dollars cost to repair them.
In the ten years since those animals were discovered and removed,
there have been no accounts of calamity befalling anyone living
in that house. No one has been terribly harmed, no
one has fallen gravely ill, no one has died. Life
seems to be continuing just as it had for the
previous seventy five years. Perhaps the magic lives on even
when the guardians are gone.
Speaker 1: For so many of us, it is the most wonderful
time of the year, not Christmas. I think Christmas is
kind of lame. I mean, it's okay, but no, no.
If you want personality, you want fun, you want danger,
you want drama, you want theatrics, you need the Halloween holiday,
and of course this is the annual tradition on this
broadcast our Ghost Stories show. I have really been getting
into the spirit. And yes there's video of my yard
display I do want every single year. Natalie just rolls
her eyes. I think she secretly enjoys it, and just
she likes to look like it's a pain in the ass.
Oh God, really, why are you talking about next year's
Halloween decoration seth It's November, and I try to assure
her Halloween is not a date, it is a way
of life. So it was in December January, February. I'm like, well,
what if we were to do this? Wait a minute,
I've got props for that. What if I was to
redesign and repaint and refigure and had this and like that,
and what if we were to do this theme? What
do you think Connie? And she just she is a patient,
patient woman. In the past, of course, I've done the
Wizard of Oz. We had Dorothy's house and the yellow
brick road and a big ten foot twisting tornado on
a motor I've had skeletons in a rowboat in my
front yard and they were rowing the river sticks and
the river was a lit river. I made it out
of just purple motion lights. She can buy him super
cheap at Spirit Halloween. I had him in the attic
and you just lay them all out, put a boat on.
It looks like like a river. One year I did
a version of that. Have you seen that Halloween meme?
It was Jason Vorhees, Freddie Krueger, and Michael Myers and
they were sitting at a table, just kind of chilling
at this table in the yard, and I had a
banner made and the banner said the teenagers deserved to
change our minds.
Speaker 3: That was a big hit.
Speaker 1: And so ever since, my neighbors know me as the
Halloween guy, and this is the Halloween house. I feel
like we've got a standard I have to meet every
single year. I was out mowing the lawn. One of
my neighbors drove by, backed up, rolled down her window
and said, Hey, what are you going to do for
Halloween this year? It's a thing. So now I have
a sense of responsibility, you see, And this year is
a skeleton rock band, very much an eighties band. I thought,
hair band is what we want to do this year. Now,
I just had these cheap skeletons in the attic that
I've had forever. They aren't really meant to articulate like
a band would. But a hero in our audience, and
an engineer named Jason Stubbs offered his services. He knew
I had these little motors, these tiny little motors, and
he says, oh, I know how to rig it. I
know how to make it so that your skeletons will
play the guitars. And so as I was doing my
Texas speaking tour, he lived in Dallas, and I sort
of like, hey, let's meet, and I drop it so surreal.
We meet at a coffee shop. I bring a box
of skeleton arms. He's like, thank you. I'm sure anybody
watching it and be like, what the hell's going on
over there? He says, Oh, all right, I'll see you
when your Texas tour is done, when you're driving back
up through the state, we'll meet again and I will
have fully motorized and articulated guitar playing skeleton in arms
for you. And that's exactly what happened. So Jason Stubbs
is responsible for the fact that my band is actually
playing instruments. I've got the drummer up on a big
sort of pedestal, using like a child's drum set. It
was so cheap, but I wanted something that I could ruin,
just leave it out in the yard. And then there's
a disco ball that's not hung from a big post
but from the arm of a ten foot skeleton. So
this disco ball is going to blow light and color
all over everything, and the children will have a dance
floor so that on Halloween they can come by and
they can boogie with their parents, and we'll play all
the best Halloween songs, thriller and all that stuff. I
cannot wait. I love the month of Halloween, and I
love ghost stories. I also have a thing for ghost poems,
and I don't know why. I tend to include at
least one, if not three, during every broadcast. And I'm
going to read one for you here. It was written
by Thomas Hood back in the early eighteen hundreds. It's
called Mary's Ghost, a pathetic ballad. It says twas in
the middle of the night to sleep, young William tried,
when Mary's Ghost came stealing in and stood at his bedside.
Oh William, dear, Oh William, dear, My rest eternal ceases
a last, my everlasting piece is broken into pieces. I
thought the last of all my cares would end with
my last minute. But though I went to my long home,
I didn't stay long in it. The body snatchers they
have come and made a snatch at me. It's very hard.
Them kind of men won't let a body be You
thought that I was buried deep quite decent like and cherry,
but from her grave and mary bone, they've come and
boned your Mary. So I don't mean to be base.
I don't think boned. Meant this in the eighteen hundreds,
but they have come, so they boned. You're married in
the halloween sense in this bones never mind. The arm
that used to take your arm is took to doctor Weiss,
and both my legs are gone. To walk the hospital
led Geiss. I vowed that you should have my hand,
but fate gives us denial. You'll find it there at
doctor Bell's, in spirits and a vial. As for my feet,
the little feet you used to call so pretty, there's
one I know in Bedford Row, the others in the city.
I can't tell where my head is gone, but doctor
kape Can. As for my trunk, it's all packed up
to go by Pickford's van. I wish you'd go to
mister p and save me such a ride. I don't
half like the outside place they took for my inside
the cock it crows. I must be gone, my William,
we must part, but I'll be yours in death, although
Sir Astley has my heart. Don't go weep upon my
grave and think that there I be they haven't left
an atom there of my anatomy Mary's Ghost Apathetic Vallad
by Thomas Hood.
Speaker 3: That's a fun.
Speaker 1: One short break and much more Halloween fun to be
had in just a second.
Speaker 3: You're listening to cohost Stories twenty twenty.
Speaker 6: Five Half Hanged Mary, a poem by Margaret Atwood, seven pm.
Rumor was loose in the air, hunting for some mech
to land on. I was milking the cow. The barn
door opened to the sunset. I didn't feel the aimed
word hit and go in like a soft bullet. I
didn't feel the smashed flesh closing over it like water
over a thrown stone. I was hanged for living alone,
or having blue eyes and a sunburned skin, tattered skirts,
few buttons, a weedy farm in my own name, and
a sure fire cure for warts, oh yes, and breasts,
and a sweet pear hidden in my body. Whenever there's
talk of demons, these come in handy.
Speaker 7: Nine pm.
Speaker 6: The bonnets came to stare the dark skirts. Also, the
upturned faces in between, mouths closed so tight they're lipless.
I can see down into their eye holes and nostrils.
I can see their fear you or my friends.
Speaker 7: You too.
Speaker 6: I cured your baby, missus, and flushed yours out of you,
non wife, to save your life.
Speaker 7: Help me down.
Speaker 6: You don't dare, I might rub off on you like
soot or gossip, birds of a feather burned together. Though
as a rule, ravens are singular. In a gathering like
this one, the safe place is the background, pretending you
can't dance the safe dance. Pointing a finger, I understand
you can't spare anything. I had a piece of bread,
a shawl against the cold, A good word. Lord knows
there isn't much to go around. You need it all.
Twelve midnight. My throat is taut against the rope, choking
off words and air. I'm reduced to nootted muscle. Blood
bulges in my skull, my clenched teeth hold it in.
I bite down on despair. Death sits on my shoulder
like a crow, waiting for my squeezed beat of a
heart to burst so he can eat my eyes. Or
like a judge muttering about sluts and punishment and licking
his lips, or the crowd their own evil turned inside
out like a glove and me wearing.
Speaker 8: It, or like a dark angel, whispering to me to
be easy on myself, to breathe out. Finally, trust me
is as caressing me? Why suffer.
Speaker 6: A temptation to sink down into these definitions, to become
a martyr in reverse or food or trash, To give
up my own words for myself, my own refusals, to
give up knowing, to give up pain, to let go.
Three am. Wind seethes in the leaves around me. The
tree exudes night birds. Night birds yell inside my ears
like stabbed hearts. My heart stutters in my fluttering cloth body.
I dangle with strength going out of me. The wind
seethes in my body, tattering the words.
Speaker 9: I clench.
Speaker 6: My fists hold no talisman or silver disk. My lungs
flail as if drowning. I call on you as witness.
Speaker 2: I did no crime.
Speaker 6: I was born, I have born, I bear, I will
be born.
Speaker 10: This is a crime. I will not acknowledge. Leaves and
wind hold onto me. I will not give it.
Speaker 1: Margaret at Wood, Half Hanged Mary is such a profound
and heartbreaking commentary on the witch hunts of old, with
chilling anchos into the cult of today. In so many ways.
The witch hunts are not over. I hesitated including such
a somber story in the broadcast today. Ghost stories is
usually just an innocent series of various legends designed to entertain,
but Atwood's writings have been so profound and as human
history and its deadly witch hunts are a real world
terror that melts the fears of the supernatural into the
consequences of the real And because it's just powerful, I
wanted you to hear it on the broadcast today. Special
thanks out to Sarah Partridge for bringing that reading to life.
Also thanks to Jeffrey Headquist for his narration on magic
in the Walls, which is a true story. That's an
account which was in the headlines ten years ago, with
all the animals that were hidden in the walls of
that house. If you are ever driving the wooded areas
in the very northern parts of Maine, you will find
a stretch of old growth forest that the locals call
Blackwood Hollow. Outsiders think the name comes from the dark
pine trees, but those who grew up in that region
know better. They know it's because of the bell. This
story goes back to eighteen forty seven when settlers went
into the trees with their axes and chopped down the
timber to build a small church in the clearing. They
didn't think twice about stripping that entire region from tall,
branchy trees to splinters and dust. They sung, and they
they celebrated, saying that God had given them dominion over
the woods. The natural belonged to the super natural, and
with that reasoning, they would take dead trees to construct
a house for the living God. Archives still have records
listing the name of that place, Saint Luke's of the Pines,
although no one alive has ever seen that building standing.
The church did not last more than a decade. The
forests remained steeped in mystery, especially knowing the haunted history
of Blackwood Hollow, the story of one Sunday morning when
the residents of that town left their homes for Sunday Church.
They entered the building for service, and they simply vanished.
Sounds of the music in the sermon could be heard
from without, but no one emerged after that day. Not
one person dared want through the entrance and into the church,
and eventually the building would rot away, stone by stone,
beam by beam, until nothing remained except for a few
pieces of wood that somehow survived. Standing up like a
scaffold and hanging from the middle of a skeletal beam
was the church bell. The few who have dared to
enter that region say the bell still hangs there, suspended
on that weathered beam, one that should have collapsed long ago.
There is no rope or striker inside that bell, And
yet people say they have heard the bell toll, even
on windless nights. The sound is not right. It's muffled,
like iron striking iron underwater. If you stay in that
place long enough, you might even hear language words embedded
within the tolling sound. You might hear a name, You
might even hear your own names. Anyone entering that place
is warned. If you hear a bell, do not move.
If you hear your name in the toll of the bell,
do not reply. And if you are ever tempted to,
for any reason, take an ax and clear the timbers
to build a house, a shop, or another church. Stop, immediately,
turn around, run away, and never go to that place again.
Yet so many are so curious or simply skeptical about
any danger they do not listen, and many pay a
terrible price. There was a hiker found in nineteen sixty two,
barefoot and shivering at the edge of the woods, whispering
the same phrase over and over. I heard my name
in the sound of the bell. I heard my name
in the sound of the bell. In nineteen eighty seven,
two teenagers disappeared after telling their friends they were going
to go and find the old church. Their car was recovered,
doors still open, headlights on, but no trace of the
boys could be found. They remain missing to this day.
Even now, hunters refuse to enter Blackwood Hollow after dark,
and some won't go in at all. They say they've
heard the bell, and it's not just ringing, it is speaking.
Perhaps it is sounding the condemnation of a congregation, those
so presumptuous as to steal from nature so that they
might serve themselves, even as they proclaimed that they were
serving God. Sixty three people sat within the wooden structure,
sat on wooden pews, and rang that iron bell. And
more than one hundred and fifty years later, that bell
hangs suspended under those rickety beams, with no clapper inside,
and yet singing its terrible sound throughout the forest and
into the nightmares of anyone and everyone. Who has taken
for themselves what belongs to the earth. The tolling bell
remains its own kind of life in those woods. You
can hear it in the rustling of the trees. You
can hear it in the thunder with the storms. You
can hear it in the quiet of the day and
the dead silence of night. Beware the bell of black
Wood would hollow, And pray with all of your strength
that it never tolls for you.
Speaker 9: M hmmm, sess like a.
Speaker 2: Yes, Hello, Hello again?
Speaker 7: What do you want?
Speaker 3: I want to talk?
Speaker 7: You keep calling? Who are you? I'm a friend, You're
not a friend. What's your name? What do you want?
Speaker 3: Oh? So many names? So many names?
Speaker 7: What names.
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 7: No, I don't know.
Speaker 3: Here is a weeper whose name is Death, and with
his single king he leaps the bearded green out of
breath and the flowers that grow in between.
Speaker 7: You're the reaper, the grim reaper.
Speaker 3: So many names you know?
Speaker 7: I don't believe you. You're just a crank. You gets
off on harassing total strangers. And I don't have to
take this here.
Speaker 3: Do you keep answering the phone?
Speaker 7: The number is different every time.
Speaker 3: And when you try increase.
Speaker 7: It, the number doesn't exist.
Speaker 3: Would you like to tist me? Ask me a question?
Something I should not know, something you keep very close.
Speaker 7: Something you want to play games?
Speaker 3: Just because something is a game, and it doesn't mean
it isn't true. Just me.
Speaker 7: Fine. What was the name of my first dog?
Speaker 3: Too easy? But I know you miss little Lucy?
Speaker 7: What do I keep in the shoe box at the
top of my closet.
Speaker 3: Letters from your grandmother? She died in November.
Speaker 7: I have a birthmark which I never show anyone.
Speaker 3: Answers, Yes, your left shoulder.
Speaker 11: What scares me will is deep water, black girds, open
graves with a widow spider.
Speaker 3: That corner of your attic. Yes, do you know when
those things have in common? What in each of them?
There is darkness? Are you afraid of the dark?
Speaker 7: I'm afraid of you.
Speaker 3: Why I be afraid?
Speaker 7: Where are you?
Speaker 3: I'm looking into your windows, I'm in the closet, tim
in your dreams. I am the little bumps under your flesh,
the whispers in your ears. You're forever friend.
Speaker 7: You're not my friend. I am You're not my friend.
Speaker 9: I am.
Speaker 3: You just don't know it yet.
Speaker 7: I don't understand.
Speaker 3: You understand that I am real? Yes, do you understand
that I am always there?
Speaker 7: Yes?
Speaker 3: You understand that you can't escape?
Speaker 7: Yes, you escapes?
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: So take your hand and place it over your heart.
What think of it as another game that happens to
be true? Put your hand over your heart?
Speaker 2: Okay, what do you feel.
Speaker 7: It's beating?
Speaker 3: Why is it beating?
Speaker 7: I don't know, it's just beating. It's a heart, That's
what it does.
Speaker 3: And what happens when the beating stops?
Speaker 7: I die?
Speaker 2: You die?
Speaker 7: You're going to kill me.
Speaker 3: I am not and I will not on that day.
The one coming for you is time.
Speaker 7: Time.
Speaker 3: Tell me again, what do you feel.
Speaker 7: My heart is beating?
Speaker 3: Yes? And you are alive.
Speaker 7: I'm alive.
Speaker 3: For now, for now, and now you understand? A final
question from a friend. Now that you know that time
is coming and I am waiting, what are you going
to do about it?
Speaker 7: Hello? Hello?
Speaker 2: Hello, m.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Is that a bit too on the
nose for you?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: Carpeid dim sees the moments because the moments are fleeting.
Death may not be the enemy, but death awaits us
all and maybe the real enemy or adversary. Anyways, time
I like it, and I kind of like the message.
Of it, and I hope you did as well. I
may have mentioned a few months ago that I was
invited to participate in a paranormal investigation. Oh, this was
something that I had always wanted to do.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: I love ghost stories, but again I am a skeptic.
I myself have never seen a ghost, so I see
it as enjoyable fiction, a chance to escape, good storytelling.
That's what a ghost story is for me. But I
think also if we are creatures of the evidence, we
can't close our minds completely. We have to go in
and say where is the evidence? And so a friend
named Brandon Brisau does a lot of these. He travels
all around the region and he goes into supposedly haunted
places with his cameras, etc. And this time Brandon and
I were allowed to tag along with the Tulsa, Oklahoma
Paranormal Studies Group or TOPS is how they are known,
and they have a website Tulsa Paranormal dot Com. I
must say these were tremendously kind and gracious people. They
could have said, no, you're not allowed to come. We
know you are non believers in the supernatural and you're
going to come in and either kill the buzz or
you're going to make fun of us, and we guarantee
that it's absolutely not. Why we were there. We wanted
to investigate, and I've always been that guy, you know.
I'll spend the night in the house, I'll go to
the cemetery with a sleeping bag. I'll investigate the haunted mansion.
And the mansion in question this time was the Brown
Mansion in Coffeeville, Kansas, which was built well over one
hundred years ago by a wealthy guy who experienced a
tremendous amount of tragedy and loss of life in his
own family, and as such, it is said that the
mansion is haunted. So Brandon and I arrived there before
anybody else. We were outside in the parking lot. It's
a tourist attraction. You can actually go and tour the
place for its history. It's the kind of place that
has a gift shop downstairs. But also the haunted history
is an attraction for a great many people. So we
were outside did some stand up interviews. I had a
three camera rig, so I shot a bunch of exteriors
and then we went inside and room by room we
looked for evidence of spirits, ghosts, phantoms, something other worldly.
And as the paranormal group was gearing up, I got
to be careful how I say this, But as they
were preparing to go on their own investigation, I noticed
that many of the tools that they were using were
the same things that we have long debunked on this show.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: The EMF meter for electromagnetic frequencies. It has the little
dots on it one through five, and I'm like, well, actually,
you know, you get that thing close to an electrical
chord or something and it's going to go off. They
had the dots, the dots that shoot those little pin
dots all around in case an apparition moves through, you
can see its shape. I actually kind of buy that one.
If something was to move through and it's physical but
not quite physical, like invisible, then you could see the
form of it in the little laser dots. Okay, I'll
give you that one. They had a spear box, and
if you remember the interview that I did I think
a couple of years ago with Kenny Biddle, who is
the chief investigator at the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, he
was showing me how these things work. The spirit box
is a frequency scanner so it just goes all the
way up and down the dial, and you hear this
chap and he grabs whatever audio, whatever spoken word, whatever
song lyric might be sung, and then it moves on
after a micro second. And there are pattern seeking people
who will then pick up what they perceive as messages
in the spirit box. But it's just a frequency scanner.
So they had one of those. There were a bunch
of other tools that they used, infrared, temperature sensitive cameras,
that kind of stuff, And so I wasn't smirking, but
I had to resist the temptation to actually sit down
and walk them through what these things are and what
they don't actually do. And they took them selves very
very seriously, but again lovely folk, lovely lovely people who
were so generous to allow us there. I produced a
video of the experience. It does include the history of
the place, the stories of the people, their lives, their deaths,
and the supposed hauntings, what the ghosts are said to do.
And then at the end, because I didn't see anything
in the mansion and neither did Brandon, I thought, well,
I can't leave it like this, So for the last
four minutes of my video, I went back and using
special effects and music, I added my own ghosts. I
made the Brown Mansion Haunted. And it's big fun. And
if I'm going to be a man of integrity, and
I say that I added ghosts. I and one of
our listeners, a friend named Nathan Pizar, who knows a
lot more about using Adobe after effects than I do.
He was able to put together the bloody handprints scene.
I fubbled with it for a couple of days. I
couldn't figure out how to get it right. Nathan came
in and save the day. So huge thanks out to
him for those few seconds of genius. And that video
is linked in the description box. It's a ride. It
was something different. It's enjoyable for anybody who enjoys this
time of year. And then at the end, I get
to pull the rug out from underneath everybody and just
crank it up to eleven. So it is called is
the Brown Mansion Haunted? It is linked in the description
box of this podcast. Stand by for the final segment
and the final few ghost stories on the way next.
Over the years, we have talked about various haunted hotels
and homes. The Balliska Axe Murder House, the Queen Anne Hotel,
the Stanley. Right now, I want to tell you about
an apartments building on the northwest corner of seventy second
Street in the upper west side of Manhattan, the Dakota.
Back when the building was conceived, the upper west Side
was mostly undeveloped, but a man named Edward Clark, head
of the sewing machine firm Singer, decided to construct an
apartment building there, with four years of construction finally finished
in October of eighteen eighty four. Ironically, Edward Clark would
die before the project was completed, and that is a
tragedy unto itself, as he had put so much time
and imagination and heart and money into what he wanted
to be a place of perfection. The features of this
apartment building harkened back to the German Renaissance with flares
of French artistry. The design included a large courtyard in
the center, a big arched entrance for horse drawn carriages
to approach. The floors were inlaid with mahogany, oak and cherry.
There were originally sixteen apartments, which doesn't sound like a
lot for a nine story building until you realize that
many of those single apartments had more than a dozen rooms.
Some had as many as twenty rooms in a single apartment,
with fourteen foot ceilings and a unique designed for each
individual unit. The Dakota had so manyies, a gymnasium, a
central kitchen serving all of the residents, a private garden,
tennis court, croquet field. It's no wonder that the Dakota
attracted famous residents from all around the world. Living spaces
so often become dying spaces, don't they, And one hundred
and forty one years after it opened, the Dakota has
certainly proven itself no exception. Tony Award winning actress Judy
Holliday lived in that building until she died of breast
cancer in nineteen sixty five at the age of forty three.
When her apartment was being renovated for the next tenant,
workers were heard whispering about a strange vibe in the room,
cooling temperatures, a chill in the air, and the inescapable
feeling that they were being watched. Both residents and visitors
have reported seeing a little girl walking the hallways. She
is dressed in late nineteenth century clothing, has blonde hair,
and sometimes she bounces a little red ball. Usually she
only waves, but one resident reported that the girl spoke
out loud to her. The girl smiled and said, today
is my birthday. There's allegedly a poltergeist in the basement.
Of course, a poultergeist is a mischievous spirit which causes
physical disturbances, thrown objects, loud noises, and sometimes even tripping
or biting the living. The basement of the Dakota has
seen phenomena typical of a poultergeist, flickering lights and the
moving of heavy furniture. Some believe it is the ghost
of Edward Clark. The few sightings of that spirit describe
a man who looks exactly like Clark, short beard, a
long nose, and wire spectacles. As he himself never got
to take up residence in that building in life, many
wonder if he has made the Dakota his home in death.
I suppose this building will mostly remain known for two
other reasons. The Dakota was featured in one of America's
greatest horror movies. Think of the Dakota the next time
you watch the nineteen sixty eight classic Rosemary's Baby, where
Mia Pharaoh's character Rosemary is impregnated with the devil. Much
more horrifying is a moment in our history books from
just a few decades ago. Some have reported seeing the
ghost of the victim. But we don't have to see
spirits to be haunted. Haunted by the memory of the
killing of a famous resident, which took place under the
apartment archway at approximately ten point fifty pm on the
eighth of December nineteen eighty. In memory and legacy, the
Dakota remains haunted, and you and I are haunted by
the murder of John Lennon.
Speaker 12: My sister Christine and I had just been kids. She
was nine, I was eleven. We lived for many years
on that big Nebraska farm in Cherry County. Inside the
old farmhouse, we spent so much time exploring every dusty
corner of that place, from the downstairs closets to the deepest.
Speaker 2: Corner of the attic.
Speaker 12: Christina and I loved the shape of the house, the
labyrinth of rooms, the cracking white pain on the outside,
and the lived in chairs and sofas on the inside.
Speaker 2: The floors creaked when you walked on them.
Speaker 12: The window glass was not quite smooth, making everything beyond
look just a little out of shape. The kitchen countertops
were old ceramic tile, The fixtures seemed like something from
an old hotel. We loved that house, but even more
we loved the ghost that we called Mother. Our real
mother had left us years before, not on purpose. She
left this world. She was taken by something called Typhus,
which we didn't understand. We only understood that she had
gotten very sick, fallen asleep, and stayed asleep. Her name
had been Evelyn, and that's how we referred to her
in memory. We didn't call her mother because that name
was already taken. Mother was the ghost, and she was
the secret. Christina and I kept to ourselves. Whoever she
had been in life, she must have been a wonderful mother.
She took such interest in us. Some mornings, when Christine
and I woke up, we'd both find a cup of
milk on the table next to our bed, each had
been left there by Mother. Also inside our shared bedroom
was the old chair, which I've been in that house
long before we moved into it. In the night, as
we were sleeping, Mother the ghost would scoot the chair
inch by inch out of the corner and to the
center of the room. It was as if she wanted
to watch us, be with us, protect us. After a time,
the chair would then tip on its own and fall
backward to the floor, as if it was a playmate
fainting to make you laugh, and we would laugh and
then playfully. We would scoot the chair back into the
corner every day, just so Mother could move it forward
in the night. There was something comforting about this routine.
Soon Christina and I would see the chair inching forward,
even during the day when we were wide awake. We
might be reading a book, or playing with toys, or
maybe just daydreaming. When we heard the scratching of the
chair's feet on the wooden floor, we weren't afraid of it.
There was no reason to be afraid. It was just
the ghost. It was just mother's chair. Those days were
so long ago, and those events looked so innocent through
the eyes of children. I was an adult of twenty
eight years living a thousand miles away before I committed
myself to learn about the history of the old house
a murder house. I remember browsing the newspaper clipping from
December seventeenth, nineteen nineteen. The columns of the story had
been stamped by a typewriter and printing press from a
century ago, before being imperfectly scanned and neatly tucked into
a library archive. I remember that the captured image of
the ink and paper felt like a time machine, and
I remember mouthing the words of the story as I
read it silently. Murder and Madness come to Cherry County.
A community reels from shock at the discovery of the
body of Agnes Hill, a recent widow and mother of
two daughters, who was found hanging from a rope in
the center of the children's room upstairs. Under her suspended
corpse was the toppled wooden chair which she had stood
upon to secure the noose. In the nearby beds were
her children, both of them murdered with a cup of
poisoned milk. It appears the woman had succumbed to grief
and taken her daughters with her to the grave. Whether
she was acting from spite or twisted sympathy, the true
story of this terrible event may never actually be known.
Memorials for the children will be announced, the farmhouse will
be put up for auction. Isn't it interesting how children
have no say in how they're born or to whom
or where. Even now I can't decide if Christine and
I were lucky, we were unlucky. Our midnight milk never
made us sick, but we slept exactly where Agnes Hill's
daughters had slept, and it would have been oh so
easy to literally drink us to death. I think about
this often. I also think about that wooden chair. If
only we had known why it moved out of the corner,
why it always found the center of the room, and
why it would tip over on its own. My sister
and I spent years in that room, in that murder house.
We were the girls under the gallows, drinking milk brought
to us by the ghost we called Mother.
Speaker 1: Oh there is a lesson, there isn't there. Always raise
an eyebrow. Always be skeptical of anyone, especially a guardian
who brings you something to drink right before you go
to sleep. Again. Thank you to my amazing voice actors
for the show today. I mentioned Jeffrey Headquist and Sarah Partridge.
Also Aleno Wiss, Daisy May Parsons, and Wolf Williams. Really
really talented actors and a great addition to the show.
I hope the rest of Your month of October is
spooky and safe and amazing and happy Halloween