1413: The Haunted Tourist

Speaker: Hey, it's Javier and it's that time of year, you know, it's October, things are starting to feel a little spooky. And every now and then I'd like to do a pretend Halloween episode. And so I started talking with my friend, Brandon Schechtschneider with the Southern Gothic podcast, which by the way, you should check out. Super creepy, awesome, best audio production in podcasting in general. And this guy lives and breathes Halloween. I mean, this is like his Christmas, right? It's so, so Brandon, welcome to pretend we are going to talk about. You know, ghost stories, ghost tours, dark tourism, haunted tourism. Is it, is it real? Is it baloney? You know, let's talk about it and hopefully we don't ruin this stuff for, for everybody. I don't think we're going to ruin it, but I certainly, I, it's wonderful coming on here on pretend because, you know, we can have a conversation about ghost stories and stuff. In a way that's different than I get to have on a lot of other shows and, and, and something from being on the inside of haunted tourism and, and, and giving tour guides out on the, or being a tour guide out on the street and doing these things and researching all ghost stories. There's so many inaccuracies there. There's so many things there. And it's the kind of stuff that you dive into all the time. So I think this, this is going to be a good episode, I think. Oh yeah, man. Yeah. Cause I, you know, I live in North Carolina and so I'm driving distance away from Wilmington, North Carolina. Charleston, Savannah, I've been to New Orleans, been to Key West and we've all, most of us have probably done a ghost tour. You know, we, we, I've been in a, in a hearse. One of the hearse tours. Yeah. And I always wonder, I was like, how much of this is bullshit. I mean, like, is this real? Like, is it, are these real stories? And, and are the people who are delivering these stories or do they even know what they're talking about? So, so that's why I. I don't even know what we're talking about today, but I want to talk to you because you have the most historically accurate, you know, ghost story podcasts out there. I mean, it is like, well, you think I do, right? I think, Hey, I'm wearing the t shirt. No, you're, you're right. You know, and that's, this is a question that I have all the time. So, you know, I was born and raised in new Orleans, right? So I grew up down there hearing stories all the time. You know, it was, it was just said that city so steeped in this stuff. Like you're saying, Charleston, Savannah, right? Of course, new Orleans is way better, but that's a whole other podcast. So going down there, you know, we, you go in the French quarter and you know, there's just full of tours. You want a vampire tour, you want a cemetery tour, whatever spooky ghost tour you want. Right. But as you walk by there, if you actually know the history, it kind of bothers you. What some of the folks are saying, right? And you realize that it's certainly when we were making Southern Gothic, that was something. When I initially started the podcast, that was, here's these stories that you might've heard growing up from your mama, right? You might've heard like, all right, you know, here's this scary thing down the road. And then, you know, maybe the kid on the street corner or something told you something. It was like, well, what's really under there. Right. What really is this? And so. Uh, you know, I make the show with my sister who is an archivist at the Louisiana state museum. So she actually works in the French quarter, uh, regularly calls me annoyed. Cause she goes to get lunch and she hears some tour guides saying something, right? All right. And I, and I told you, I would start you off with, with a really good story to really set the tone here, uh, you know, one that's like the, the, the epitome of it. It's the one that really. We've sunk our teeth into, um, it's from down in New Orleans. Okay. So if you head west out of New Orleans and you're, you go towards Baton Rouge and you end up on these long concrete bridges. Okay. And they just go over swampland. Alright, you spend about an hour and a half getting to Baton Rouge. And about halfway between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, you're out in the middle. It's called the Manshack Swamp. And there's this little place there, it's called Freniere. It used to be this town that was there, right? But all that's left there, where this town is, they now have a swamp tour. Okay. So obviously this is a company, they make money off tourists coming out on swamp tours. Well, you go get on the tour, you go, you take the tour, you know, you pull up, they got flat boats, they're taking you out through the swamp. And as you're going through the swamp, they have there on the side, on the bank there, this little cemetery. Okay. And there's a little cemetery. It's got like a wrought iron gate in front of it, and it's got a bunch of heads or a bunch of like, like gravestones. It's really wooden crosses and stuff back there, and they're all up there, and there's this kind of gate over the gate. It says 1915 above, and that's when this town of Frenier was destroyed, and over on the other side, away from the rest, Is this other little cross over here, you know, and they say, tell you the story right about how this is where this is for a year. This is the people who died here from this, this awful hurricane that back in 1915 destroyed this town. This is a mass grave. But they have that one over on the side that's of someone else who was buried there. And that person is a woman by the name of Julia Brown, who is supposedly the voodoo priestess who cursed the town. She's the one that caused this hurricane to come in and destroy everything, right? So, so of course you hear this on the tour and all it makes, it's interesting, right? Like, okay, that's, that's a crazy story. What time, what time of day is the tour usually? Is it like, usually during the day it's not really at night, right? You know, I was picturing a dusk . It could be, it might be really cool if you go down there, but, uh, although alligators at night, not when it was during the day, at least there's alligators everywhere. It's a fun tour. It's not just about the ghost at that point. Right. But this is just one of the selling points. And of course the company has used this. This story to promote itself and tour and excuse me in TV and things. Right? So there've been some TV shows come out there over the years. They show the cemetery, they tell the story and this is how the story goes. Okay. The story is, is that this small town of Frenier is once this, this, this town of German immigrants out there in the swamp and Manchac swamp. And they were harvesting cabbage. And, uh, and, um, timber. Okay. And they were cutting down all the cypress trees at that point in time. They're out there in the swamp in this particular swamp. There's no way in or out really, except for boat or train. It is a very isolated community at the turn of the 20th century. Uh, but there's this one individual that lives out on the edge of town, a woman by the name of Julia Brown. She lived there with, with her husband, Celestine and she was born enslaved. Her husband, Celestine actually got the land. We know from records. He got the land because he fought in the U S army. During the civil war. And this was payment was to have this land out here in the swamp. And so they lived out there for years and years. And as the story goes, this is a Julia practiced voodoo. She was like a root worker or something like that. Right. And, uh, so they were so isolated out there. If folks got sick and, you know, it might take them a week for the train to come to get them in new Orleans, they might go see Julia Brown for healing, for some help, right. Something would happen. And of course, at the same time, she Became like the local midwife and you should deliver babies and things like that. And they say for a long time, the relationship with the community was beautiful. She's a beloved member of the community. Everybody, she was taking care of them, delivering them as children. She's, you know, up in years at this point in time. Like I said, she's born enslaved. This is early 20th century. So eventually though, her husband passes away. I say sometime after he passes away, her relationship with the town starts to sour. I don't know why they say, you know, maybe it's, they started taking her for granted. They didn't, they didn't, you know, they, they thought that she just, they were entitled to her help. Maybe they just didn't understand what she was doing. Uh, didn't understand her religion, things of that nature. Maybe it was race, but for whatever the reason she starts to sour with the community. And so people started saying when they'd go out to her cabin out there in the swamp, out on the edge of town to go visit her, it would always find her sitting on her porch in a rocking chair, kind of hanging out back and forth, singing this one song. When I die, I'll take the whole town with me. When I die, I'll take the whole town with me. So, I mean, look, you know, here's these guys, uh, it's, I know there's this song. You can imagine these guys are scared, right? They live in this dark swamp outside of the city. Here's this voodoo practitioner that they don't understand. You know, I bring it, I say, this was a German immigrant community. So it was called Schlosser at one point. So I joke, these are people who look like me. Okay. Blonde hair, blue eye, SCH last names. Okay. You know, this is what's all these people like that. And then you have this woman that is entirely different from the community, right? And this said race, religion, all those things factored in. So they're scared to death. What's going to happen? Well, eventually she passes away from old age. She's human. It doesn't matter what religion she practices. Right? So she passes away September 28th, 1915. And so two days later, They have a funeral for Julia. Now this funeral, of course, this is a small town out in the swamp. They have it in one of the homes there, have her laid out in the casket up front. And they say there's only standing room only at the funeral. Everyone came, everyone was there, whether or not that's because she was this beloved member of the community who delivered babies or, you know, and she was the one who took care of them or all scared of that song, right? Like last chance. Let's appease her spirit because we don't know what's going to happen. But while they're there at her funeral, say that the wall started to shake. And the wind started to pick up and a rain started to come down and a storm started and they didn't realize because they were so all the way out there that a hurricane was making landfall in Louisiana at this point. Massive hurricane. This hurricane is the largest storm recorded prior to named hurricanes. Okay. 1915 storms. So these people, the walls are shaking. You can imagine they're thinking, remember that song that Julia was singing all those years when I died, the whole town with me. So they're scrambling around. They don't, I mean, they're going everywhere. Some of them may go get on the, they run out, they get on the train and they make the train goes, but maybe about a mile down the road, it gets stopped on the tracks. Cause you got the storm surge from the water's coming up, the rain coming down. The winds are over a hundred miles per hour. People are getting boats, trying to scramble some people. are so trying to get away from the waters. They climb trees to try and get away from drowning, which I mean, a much more horrific death even because they could hear their family and friends drowning below them. So absolutely horrific scene. And then of course the day passed and over 200 people died in Southeastern Louisiana that day. And for a year, it's just been non existent ever since. All that's left is a little swamp tour today. There's a little restaurant down the road as well. And that's all. In Frenier. So, did she curse the town or not? Right? Did she curse the town? The timing is impeccable. Absolutely. Here you have this, this woman who everyone in town knows, obviously it's not a big town, but she, she's kind of like the center of the town and here she is, people are hearing her rocking, singing this song and almost. Immediately after she dies, the town literally goes away. I mean, all that that you mentioned, it's just kind of chilling. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and these are documented things, right? Well, and that's where I'll go with it. And I love the story. I was just thinking about it as I love that story going through. You did. I remember your series. You did a while back. Okay. I remember that. And I remember thinking about this one as I was listening. Yeah. You know, cause I didn't have much exposure to that, uh, growing up, obviously voodoo was everywhere, but so down. So in this, uh, in the, the historic record and all these things, right. What we've done with, with kind of looking back at the records and everything is that we know that that storm started to make landfall and that storm started in for a year. At her funeral, that is a true fact, there was an obituary two days later that talked about the folks in the community were there when the wind started to pick up. Documented fact, okay, she's on census records, we have found the land, we know exactly which Plot of land she owned. We know she had some children. We know about her husband. Uh, we haven't been able to obtain his, his military records. Um, but we know they exist, right? Like we, we, we've seen them. If you understand records, like we've seen the indexes knowing that we just haven't gotten them, but, um, anyway, so, so you have all these facts lineup, but the question then becomes is, Well, was she actually practicing voodoo and was this curse? And, and so what we've found over the years and the way we study is that stories evolve, it's oral history, right? You know, even if she wasn't in that obituary, it never mentioned her practicing voodoo, but you know, look, maybe they just left that part out. Like, maybe not. We don't even know if she sang that song. Exactly. You know, so, so we don't, we can't really pin that down, you know, as we've We trace through records and stuff. We see in the seventies, we find out that, you know, there was a newspaper article in the seventies where a girl who had survived, she was like 12 years old when this storm hit and her and her family were able to get out, uh, she was interviewed in the seventies and she said, no, no, no, Julia branch. Everybody loved her. There's no way she cursed the town, but you know, she's probably warning us. Okay. And that's what that was the take then. So you knew the history at some point in those 50, 60 years had picked up and then you get the TV shows, like I was saying. And so now we fast forward and we have this swamp tour. Okay. That relies on tourism income and they have this really creepy little cemetery there. Okay. And that really creepy cemetery. Has no one buried under it. It is an absolute little Disneyland spectacle. What? So that, that cemetery that you saw there in the swamp, it's a prop. It's a prop. Crazy enough. No joke. This Nazi that coming, by the way, it's a pro I know. I know. I know. Look. You're, this is the only podcast I have said that on, okay. Because I know your listeners, uh, you know, appreciate what this says. So yeah, it's a total prop. Now this land that they do the swamp tour on, we found it really is her land. This actually part of that swamp tour is part of the land that her and her husband owned. Uh, you know, so it is very accurate that way, but they do, this is a prop there. You can go look at pictures on the internet and everything of it. It's a great prop, man. But no, it's not where those people were buried at all. But if you were to take this tour, they would pass it. They would pass it up. Yeah. Now, now, depending on who your tour guide is, how much they play it up, you know, that's up to him again. This one isn't a ghost tour spot. However, here's the thing over the years, television has played a very good role in, in, in promoting this tour. Because they've been on several shows. They've been on early on. There was an early MTV show. Gosh, I can't remember now. It was one of these early reality TV shows where people would go to a haunted place. And of course they came here. They were at that cemetery and stayed there at night. Right. Is it haunted? So very much played up this, uh, it's been on, uh, again, that weather channel show. Uh, recently there was something called Atlas of Cursed Places. They came out, they did that. So, so obviously this is a promotional tool for them. Now, as a prop, this is where we get into ethics and anything else you might want to talk about, about capitalism, right? Are they, what are they doing here? Is that, is that a method for them to tell the story? It's a good way to tell the story and remind this, uh, or is it just meant to be a kind of tourist traps, you know? Well, and then as a consumer of these things, you know, how much stock do you put into these tours that, that obviously they are, it's a tourism company, right? You know, and, and a good story sells, right? So if, if the real cemetery, let's say it was, I don't know, like a hundred yards deep into the swamp, but it's not accessible by that road, you know, it's like, Oh, well, we'll just bring the cemetery. To the edge of the swamp, you know, it sounds like how a horror movie starts. Let's bring the cemetery on down. Yeah. Yeah. And so it's like, as a consumer, you have to have a little skepticism, you know, but, but we want to be scared, right? We want, that's why we're paying 30 bucks a pop, 40 bucks a pop, because we want, you know, to be freaked out a little bit. It's kind of like going to a magic show. We want to be fooled. But what's interesting is. That these are real events. Like there's a kernel of truth to all these stories, but it just depends on the delivery of the person telling the story. How much are they embellishing, you know, what are there are some other examples of some ghost stories that maybe. We're embellished or exaggerated a bit. I couldn't believe the fake cemetery. Well, you know, it's, it runs the gamut, right. And it runs, you know, and I think that this, this story about Julia Brown, it's, it's fairly innocent in the grand scheme of things. Right. I don't think they're really, you know, doing too much. They're making a little money off it, but you know, there's, there's ones that are more let's, we can call them innocent in a way of it's just, you know, it's kind of gas. So, so we have. You know, I do tours in a town called Franklin. It's a Franklin, Tennessee, old civil war town. Lots of civil war history. There's a place that's haunted. It could be here, right? And you go to this one building. So I started doing these tours a few years back. A friend of mine, she owns a tour company. Uh, obviously I tell ghost stories for a living, right? So she just asked me, can you cover one of the nights? And so I went and learned her stories and all and started doing it. I've loved it. It's been fascinating. Obviously it's something I've been fascinated with. You know, she had been telling this one story probably for almost 20 years. She had gotten it from someone else, another tour guide when she started, and she's a total history nerd that is in the County archives. The County historian knows her by name. She checks everything. But I learned this one story and, and, and it made me question it. So it's his little building and they, and I'll give you, I'll give you the, the story of how you would deliver it here. So building it's built in 1821, beautiful, magnificent federal style home right here, right outside of this small, beautiful Southern main street town. Right. And. The man who built it is a man named Edward Clouston. He was the local pharmacist here in Franklin. He emigrated here from Scotland and he had properties all over. He had a big farm out on the edge of town where his family lived and Edward was so rich. That what he did was he built this beautiful place right here in town as like an after church brunch spot. Okay, like this gorgeous property here. And you know, he's politically connected, invited a lot of folks in to come. They say all three presidents with Tennessee ties have dined and danced on this hardwood floor. Okay, so rich dude, rich property, right? But according to the legend in the ghost story, They say that, they say that Edward, he was in a rush to get this property done because he had a special event that was going to happen here. His oldest daughter was going to get married. And so he of course was going to have a big wedding, invited all these people in as you would do. He wants all the dignitaries to see everything. And so. The night before the wedding, everybody's in town. The church is beautiful, done up, ready to go. And everybody is going to go to sleep in this building he just built in town. They call it Clouston Hall now. So they all go to bed that night. And in the middle of the night, Edward and his wife were woken up by a sound out in the foyer. And they walk out on the landing. They look down, they realize that their daughter, the bride to be, had hung herself the night before the wedding. Just awful. Despicable. Now, they said for years, all the people here in Franklin, they had this legend. They said that, you know, look, it must've been, she was in love with a boy down the road. Right? It's Romeo and Juliet story. And this was an arranged marriage, but in reality, what we know now looking at records and everything was, was that this young woman was 17 years old. And the groom was 48. So of course, everybody in the audience now groans. Oh, I see. Right. Yeah. Well, here's the thing. I heard this story and I've done so many stories all over the South and I just looked at my friend one day. I was like, I don't think this is real. There are so many hallmark stereotypes here. So we went down to the county archives and we found out when Edward built this house, he wasn't even married yet. So we went further and looked at census records, Edward didn't have any child. Until about 10, 15 years after this building was built, when he sold the house to the next, to the next family, he kept it for like 20 years. I remember the exact dates, but, uh, when he sold the house, most of his children were under 10. So we asked the county historian who's gotten very well used to us with weird questions, you know, like, you know, he asked the county historian and he just looked at us. He's like, where did you hear that mess? Hundreds and thousands of tourists have walked past this building with ghost tours here hearing this story year after year. And so I guess it's just an honest mistake that's been passed down. And do you think that it was, uh, like a story that just snowballed out of control or do you think that somebody just like made it up? Well, okay. So part of it is, you know, and I, I know. I don't know if we'll be able to show a pictures. There's this one picture. Oh yeah. We'll, we'll YouTube this. Yeah. All right. All right. All right. Anytime I have Brandon Sheckshneider, I'm going to YouTube this thing. Yeah. People need to see this. I didn't do my hair very nice today, Javier. Um, he has a much better background. Then mine, so it's all right. So they got, so what we do is we say, you know, of course, as the way it went, all right, the way the story, you know, we don't tell this story anymore because it's inaccurate. Right. But it was told for years, you know, just picture that was taken and, you know, we, we, we talk about this, this bride. Okay. This is the way that, like, you know, we're kind of instructed as like an early, like what it was. Um, was you talk about this and, and you somehow slip in there that, you know, they walk down the stairs and there's their daughter, the bride to be, she'd hung herself and she's wearing her beautiful blue nightgown, you know, and then of course later you, you know, we talk more about the history of the building. Then we circle back after the history and we say, okay, you know. Now about about six or seven years ago, and about six or seven years ago, a young man was, he came to the building. It's now an art gallery. His mother was purchasing a painting here in the building here. Okay. And she'd heard the story before and she decides she's going to snap a picture of where. That woman had hung herself because it is a well known legend through time and it really is a well known legend, by the way, people ask about it all the time, but she decided to snap a picture of the spot because she wanted to take it home and scare her brother like any good, you know, sibling, teenage sibling, right? So she gets in the car and she realizes, Oh my gosh, she's thumbing through a picture. It's like, and do y'all remember what color nightgown she was wearing that night? It was blue. Right, right. So, all right. So, and, and we All right. I don't know how well we could, we can see here, but you know, so there's this like image that, that we show people or, or would show people, like I said, we don't do this anymore, of this kind of like, what looks like a nightgown. Okay. Or what Oh yeah, I see it. Yeah. Yeah, you can at first. Okay. So like for the people listening, there's a staircase and uhhuh, you, you're taking the picture from the bottom of the staircase. It's one of those staircases that turns and, and, and it has like a landing in the middle. Fancy southern foyer, and it's not a very good picture. You know, it's, it's kind of, uh, like somebody just snapped it. But if you look closely, there's like, it, it appears to be a lens flare from the light. Yeah. But, but in it's, you look coming downward. Yeah. Yeah. It, it's not coming the same direction as a light and this, it has this bluish hologram hue to it. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. And, you know, I, I don't know how this story started. I haven't dug too much deeper, you know, obviously. You know, my friend was horrified that she had been telling this story because she, you know, she had, she's so interested. She's horrified. Oh my God. Is a story. Story, right? It's the story story in Franklin, right? Still. Well, I mean, it was one of like, there's one of three. So like, you know, when people come on a tour, I mean, there's, if you were especially a local teenager, that's one that they'll ask for. So, I mean, I will tell it sometimes and kind of, you know, rearrange how, you know, I, I, yeah, I will tell people what, you know, what it is and all, and you know, it might have started, you know, there was somebody on the tour. A few weeks ago. I, and, and she said that she knew who it was that took that. She knew the gentleman who took this, you know, um, a few years back and, or excuse me, the woman who took this and anyway, you know, so it's, who knows? It's just like a local legend. It built up that way. I say a very innocent mistake in the grand scheme of things. Right now, now, now, as we're throwing props around, when you talk about haunted tours, and this is not something Mike Brown would do, Mike Brown would not have not put up with this. He would have had all the research. It would have been, yeah. Yeah. So yeah, let's give a little love to Mike Brown because Mike Brown, for those of you who don't know, he's the host of the pleasing terrors podcast, completely different style than Southern Gothic, you know, with Brandon. But, uh, Mike Brown, if it weren't for Mike Brown, pretend podcasts, this podcast you're listening to. Would not be a thing because that guy, I don't know how he found my podcast. And it was like six years ago. Uh, you know, people don't realize when you start a podcast, you have like zero listeners and somehow, somehow you got from 10 from zero to 10 to 50, you know, and, and Mike Brown was probably one of those 50 and he goes, Hey, I just listened to this great podcast on Facebook, you know, on a Facebook group. And he's like, you should check it out. And from that moment on my show took off. Seriously. The guy is amazing and I've had the privilege and you have had the privilege of going to his Charleston, South Carolina ghost tour, which I want to promote. What was it called? I don't have it, pleasing, pleasing terrors. No, he calls the tours as well. You can go pleasing terrors tours in Charleston. Yeah. And it's fantastic. I mean, it is fantastic. And, and the thing is that we were talking about this Brandon earlier that I don't know, I did not fact check everything that Mike Brown said in his tour in Charleston, but it, to me, it sounded like he was telling us. Factual things had happened, but it was the delivery that made it spooky. Okay. And it actually, can we take, we're going to go out a little psycho. We're going to get back to the meander back out in the swamp. I'm actually going to ask you about one of the stories that Mike Brown told me. Okay. And my family. And you're going to fact check. Okay. And you're going to tell me how accurate the story is. All right. So, and so we were walking around Charleston with my daughters, this was our first ghost tour, they were terrified and it's at night and we're walking around and there's this, uh, this little street and, uh, you know, there's this two story old house, it's a restaurant. Yeah, it's called Pugin's porch, you know, and Mike Brown, and we're looking at it from the side, right? We're not looking at it up front. We're looking at it from far away. And there's a window up on the second story. And Mike Brown was telling me that there were these two women that lived there. And there were sisters, I think. And when they died, the house caught on fire afterwards. And And they renovated it and turned it into a restaurant. And since then, the police have been called because they, I guess the buildings from next door, they see what appears to be a woman outside the window. And there's all these mysterious things that happen, right? And that creeped us out so much that that's the singular story that's stuck with us. Did you go eat there? That's the, yes. You did. Yes. This is where the story is. story comes in, because you're going to all learn how bad of a parent I am. So, um, so we're like, this was Saturday night. We were leaving Sunday morning, but I was like, we have to get, we have to go to this restaurant. So we, we were the first ones there on Sunday morning for brunch. We get there and the moment you walk in. You see a picture of the two old ladies that used to be there. Like they have it like right there where, where the hostess is. And so I snapped a picture of the two old ladies. This will come into play later. So, so they take us, they take us around to one of the back rooms and we have. You know, brunch or whatever. And it was great. And so we, I asked the waitress, I said, so where, you know, supposedly the legend and you're going to fact check this, right? But supposedly the legend is that if you go to this one bathroom, okay. And you look into the mirror, you will see one of the old ladies behind you. Okay. So, and I asked her, I said, where's this bathroom? And she said, Oh, it's upstairs. And you guys should go check it out. And so We ate our lunch, our brunch, and then we got up and we went up the stairs and we went into the bathroom and I went to the bathroom. I didn't see anything, but then my daughter, she really wanted to see this ghost, right? So she goes into the bathroom. I take a picture of her looking. Oh no, no, no. She takes a picture of herself, but because we're all under the same iCloud. Yeah. Her picture shows up in my phone and I'm outside the bathroom and I quickly Photoshop with the Photoshop app. Shout out to Photoshop for this one. I quickly photoshopped the picture that I took from downstairs of the old lady. And I like really roughly put her in the background with intern down the opacity. And when she came out of the bathroom, she was just looking at all the pictures. And there was like, maybe like 50 pictures that she took of herself. And one of them had the old lady and she dropped the phone. And she was so freaked out and I didn't tell her the truth until like we actually got home, but oh my gosh It was the best Halloween. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So how much of that's really yeah How much of that story is real? Unfortunately, you know, that story, you know, I did, I did a little mini episode on it recently. I love that. I just listen to it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cause that's what I, I, I, I stole some of Mike's stories after visiting using this Halloween, but that particular one, I don't think there's anything inaccurate there. You know, it really, that house, uh, just a little bit about, uh, what is it's beautiful house is beautiful as a neighborhood. Right. Uh, you know, they did live there. Zoe, she was a teacher and all, and all that. Right. And, uh, lived at the property, the sister, they. They were, they were, you know, what they called spinsters, right? It's just two unmarried women live in the house. Right. And of course passed away. And so we lived there and she didn't actually die in the house. Um, I believe she had gone to a nursing home and passed away there, but you know, the, the, the big, the point is when the spirits came back was at some point, I believe it was in 76 is when they opened the restaurant Pugin's porch. And when they were remodeling in the seventies, they say that's when it stirred up the activity. It was those remodels, uh, the folks who owned it now, but you know, the, the one that I, the reason why I went, okay, was, uh, the, um, uh, my girlfriend is way into animals and there's a ghost dog there too. Oh yeah. That's why it's called. I didn't know that. Yeah. She's like, Oh no, we're going to, I want, I want to play with the ghost dog. But, uh, you know, there's, there's a little too, there's a little burial plot for the local does Pugin. Which was the, the, the dog. It was a local stray that they kind of took in and was eaten off the porch and all. People say the dog still runs around between tables, but you know, you can't really fact check it. You know, I guess we could call the police department to see if some of those are true about the stories of that. You know, that's kind of the local war there. You know, it is, it is a hotel across the street now. It was once a neighborhood, but I mean, it just expanded so much. And, um, you know, so the hotel, so that's the story is that visitors to the hotel will see a woman on the second floor. And so that you could fact check that or not, but the history sound, but the history, yeah, that's the thing that makes a good go. Story is that you have like actual events that happened, they're documented events and it. Guys like you, Brandon, or guys like Mike Brown, who, who really are just great storytellers, you know, you, you want a good story and sometimes you don't need to embellish history much. It, that story of the voodoo lady down in new Orleans was creepy before they added all the others, right? Yeah. And you're like, I thought, I thought it was creepy by itself. Yeah. Let's get back to what pretends all about. Okay. That's right. All right. So. You guys have probably heard of this place. It is called the Myrtles Plantation. Okay. It is considered America's most haunted home. That's what people always, you know, it is the way it's on all the TV shows. It is a plantation in St. Francisville, Louisiana. It's right outside of Baton Rouge. Okay. And of course, this plantation and being America's most haunted home, they say that over 10 murders, maybe just 10, 10 murders happened in the building. Some of those are documented. Some of them are absolutely documented. Okay. But there's this one story that has gotten really popular there. Okay. Remember this is a plantation as well. So very Southern ghost story. All right. And so the story goes, is this gentleman by the name of Clark Woodruff, he, uh, starts running the plantation. His father in law actually established this plantation back in 1794, 96, somewhere around there. The Spain actually owned this part of Louisiana. Okay. And so he establishes this plantation. Clark Woodruff is now running it. He married the daughter, Sarah Matilda, running the plantation, just doing all the, all the awful things plantation owners do, right? They say that there's a spirit that came from this time of this young enslaved woman who walks around the property or appears on the property. And she's got a green turban. On her head. Okay. And people have said that they have seen her different spots. There's a classic photo. We believe this girl named Chloe is even over on the property. This photo, they put on all their stuff and everything. So people visit, they hear the story of Chloe and who Chloe was, was Clark, Park Woodruff. Uh, supposedly Chloe was One of the domestic enslaved women. So she basically was the nanny in the house. She was somebody who worked in the big house. And of course, as stereotypes go and everything, the way they tell the story is the pair fell in love, right? But well, again, this is awful plantation story. So it was obviously, it was described as a light skinned enslaved woman, possibly of mixed race. And, uh, you know, he clearly coerced her into a relationship, right? She was a, she wanted to stay in the big house. This was easier living for her there. Then out in the fields, right? As the story goes. So she has this relationship with the man in the house, the secret relationship. And of course, at some point in time, he gets bored with her. He kind of his interest moves on. He's no longer worried about her and say, she's just have broken hearted, right? She's, you know, man, he's not interested anymore. And one day, you know, she's, she's getting really paranoid. She decides to go and listen on the door when he's doing business in his office and he catches her. And catches her eavesdropping on him. So he cuts off her ear for doing that. She's vicious. So, so she wears this turban on her head to hide this awful scar. And that's how people see her today, but it continues to go on that she is so afraid of getting sent back out to the fields. That concocts this plan to try and have Woodruff fall back in love with her and what she's going to do is it's the kid's birthday. It's one of the kid's birthday and so she's going to bake a cake for the kid but she's going to be sneaky about it and she's going to sneak a little bit oleander in there. Which is poisonous. Right? She's just enough to maybe make him a little sick. She's going to nurse the family back to health. And then of course the, he's going to fall back in love with her. Right. You know, he's, you took care of my, you saved my children. Right? Well, you know, she does this and you know where this is going, right? She puts. Way too much oleander and that cake, the kids and the wife and all die after this occasion. Well, knowing what she did, she of course decides she's going to get out of the house. She rushes out. She goes out to the fields and everything, and she asks all the other folks out, all the other enslaved people out there to help her. It's a helper get away because he's going to find out and he's going to come for her. And of course they don't want anything to do with her. Right? In fact, they know that if they harbor her, they're going to be in trouble. So they take her out to the levee out there and they hang her for her crime because they want to make sure that he knows they don't, you know, they're on his side. They did not. Yeah, exactly. So this story is told at the Myrtles all the time, but this famous ghost, this, this woman named Chloe. Okay, this, this, this enslaved woman who had a relationship and, and had this horrendous murder, this one in and of itself, there is absolutely zero evidence or truth whatsoever to it to the point of even the stereotypes in the story have become perturbing. Okay, because was Chloe even Chloe? No, no. Unfortunately, I don't think Chloe's real at all. But I mean, just down to the fact, we know some of the things about the story that we can prove. I know. Let's let's talk about the provable. All right. Sarah Matilda, the wife, she passed away from yellow fever. She wasn't poisoned. The kids actually they passed away Separate times that the two youngest children, I don't know if they're the youngest or the oldest, uh, but two of the three children, they did pass away within a year of each other, but it was months apart, likely yellow fever, something like that. Sure. Third child lived into her old age, had her own family and everything. None of those things line up with this part of the story, right? Very, which is really the, the, the, the essence of the story. The heart of the story. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, so a lot of people have broken this down. A lot of people go out to the Myrtles. Uh, there's this, this, uh, a, a Harvard professor, Dr. Taya Miles. Uh, she's, uh, studies African American history and she actually wrote a book called Dark Tourism. It's a fascinating book. She came down to Savannah. She, uh, was going to write a fiction, a period piece. So she's visiting Savannah. And as she went down there, she went on a couple of ghost tours and goes, what the hell? Like this is not what is this? Right? So she went to a couple of these places. She went to the Myrtles and she really broke down a really eviscerated this, the racial stereotypes involved, uh, what this was, you know, the, the Jezebel character, you know, that they portray Chloe as, uh, you know, and, and what that is and what, what sex and stereotypes there and, and the Mammy character that, that would come just these awful stereotypes and, you know, and what, what we know now in looking at it is, you know, This story developed likely back in the seventies. A woman by the name of Francis Kermien, Kermien Meyer. She purchased the property, made it an Airbnb or not an Airbnb. This was the eighties, right? She made it a BNB, an actual BNB, an analog BNB. Um, I So, you know, so she of course went in heads and beds, right? And how do you do that? You got stories and all, you know, maybe she learned some of these stories from the previous owner, maybe not, who knows, but she wrote a book and everything. And this story just took off. It was in, you know, like timed magazine and everything. They called it America's most haunted home, you know? And so the story that really, we don't even know where it came from. It's got this, this awful kind of racial stereotyping that was just so pro, you know, prototypical for this, this plantation culture to begin with. And it's gone on and these folks still continue. I went and took the tour about two years ago. They're still telling the story. Still telling the story. Like you said, it puts, it puts heads in beds, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And that's the whole thing with dark tourism. And we're just like, you know, ghost stories. It's just the most, um, the most innocent ways of being a dark tourist. I'm sure there's a lot more like. Yeah. Creepy things that people do, right? To get sweet. Well, you know, a place like the Myrtles, it, it fascinates me that we have a story like that. That, that, that can be so false and problematic at the same time because as I said, you know, I mean, there's, there actually were murders in the building. When a man by the name of William Winter lived there, uh, uh, uh, someone came up, these were affluent people. Okay. So, I mean, they had money. They were very, they were in the community and everything. One day he goes, answers the door at the front of the house, a gentleman shoots him. Runs away. No idea who has shot him. He died on the stairwell, crawling up the stairs to go get his wife. You know, this is a real, real part of the story, you know, so, so there's stuff there. There are things there not to mention. If you're looking for ghosts, I'm not telling you ghosts aren't real. Okay. As I was saying earlier, you know, I'm not saying that I, I absolutely. And when I talked to some of my ghost friends that really get into the paranormal, you know, they'll talk about it as all kinds of theories and, you know, whatever. But if there's a place that's haunted, it's going to be a plantation. Think about the trauma that happened at this. There's so much there that could. It could actually cause a haunting if, if you believe in that, the paranormal in that way, so much trauma, but yet we stick to this really stereotypical story here to try and convince people and they've stuck with it. And that's what kind of the Myrtles can, can give this kind of. Kind of thing. Of course, the ghost adventures have been there and, you know, all the TV shows and just flying in. So, so I say that's, that's kind of, you know, as, as we go down this spectrum of good to bad, I always feel like Myrtle's really capitalized. It's a private owner. It's not a, they're not trying to save the house. It's not about preservation. It's not about anything like that. I mean, obviously they've done a great job keeping the house. Uh, I don't believe that they have a historian on staff from what I could tell. It didn't really seem like a lot of the stuff was really. Uh, very well documented. I could be wrong. So, so please don't come after me. Um, but you know, there, there's a lot of inaccuracies there. It's a wonderful property to visit even, and maybe I'm covering my butt for, for, you know, for kicking their tour or whatever, but it is, it's fascinating. It's again, it absolutely could be haunted. Chloe's not real. Right. That's, that's interesting. Cause like you're talking about like, you know, this is not just a little bit inaccurate, like the, the whole, the, the main character in the story is not even real and you know, uh, before we started recording, you mentioned the Winchester house and that my interest, do you have time for one more story? No, totally. Yeah. No, I can talk about this forever. Unfortunately for your listeners. Uh, you know, Winchester, that, that really, that, that really is the third element that I'd bring about here, you know, going from Julia Brown and kind of the just minor inaccuracies and all, you know, the Winchester house, it's, it's interesting because as most folks might know, this was, uh, Sarah Winchester, she married into the Winchester family, right? And so she was the widow of the Winchester rifle. You know, so of course, uh, you know, obviously this is a big deal. So they say that, you know, the, the family was cursed by all the folks who had been killed by the Winchester rifle. Right. And she was widowed and basically the heir to this giant fortune. So, you know, in California, of course, she has this house that, you know, in her life, what she did was she constantly was adding onto in the creepiest of ways. She had an unlimited budget. Unlimited budget. She was always building. She never stopped construction. And there are in this building, there's like stairwells into nothing, doors, just everything, giant proper, just wild. I mean, it is, uh, the things nightmares are made of type thing, right? Well, you know, well, the actual legends about her started while she was alive. So it isn't, it isn't really necessarily something that happened after the fact folks thought she's crazy. They believe that she thought that the only way to keep the curse off and, and I'm not totally brushed up all the way on it, but it was to continue building that as soon as she stopped building, that's when the, you know, that's when it would come back and haunt her or something of that nature. So, so she just perpetually was building onto the house over and over and over again. She's in the newspapers. They say she was involved in. Spiritualism and all these things. This was all while she was alive. Well, let's say it was about a, within a year after her death, it was 1922. Uh, she passes away within a year after her death. It gets opened as a tourist attraction. Okay. Because of course, You know, what do you do with this property now? Right. Like, what do you like? She dies. She has no heirs. Real, you know, they're gonna, the city, if you go there today, my understanding, I haven't, I haven't visited. So my understanding is that the city is built up all around her. And then out of the blue, there's this. This little property now that seems small in comparison, but, um, you know, so it's, it's, it was a, a circus, um, uh, a circus owner that purchased the building immediately became a tourist attraction. Right? So, uh, it's still a tourist attraction. There's a big marketing budget with them. They do all kinds of events. They do stuff. Um, they were involved in helping make that, that Winchester horror movie, which is horrifically historically inaccurate. Right. Right. I was total leaning into the whole thing and all it, you know, but, um, two Halloweens ago, I brew very briefly. I for, I'm not like you, I I'm not a serial podcaster, but I tried to be at one point. Okay. I tried to come out. I did a show called ghost tour. Serial podcaster. That's going to be on your tombstone. That sounds like a t shirt. Sorry. What does your wife call it? Cause I'm sure it's more negative, right? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You know, I tried to, I tried to make this little podcast. I called it ghost tour and we were interviewing ghost tour guides from all. There was a lot of fun because it was like collecting stories from places. You know, and they all had different spins on things. It was fascinating. And it was a, it was a good time. It was a, it was a laugh. It wasn't like a horror thing. thing. And we actually, for one of our final episodes is, uh, the historian from Winchester mystery house came on the show, which was this huge get, it was wonderful. Right. And um, she came on and we got to chat with her and she talked about a lot about these things. Is there anyone knew about, you know, Sarah Winchester, this, she even started working there as a teenager. And then, you know, this has been at this house for like 40 years and read all the personal letters and knew everything. And, you know, she, you know, is, is it telling us, you know, a lot of this was this buildup. It was this air around her. It was, uh, even when she's alive. And, and the reality is, even as that she probably was doing this, she She had the people there, the folks who did construction and families, they lived on the property there and it was probably more. She was just so loyal to these people. She wanted to make sure that they continue to have work. When that's kind of, you know, it was kind of this, it was a very kindhearted woman. And, and, and that's what the history is so interesting that it turned sinister when, when, uh, another way of looking at it was she was just giving people worse. I thought, I don't know too much about the story, but I, when you were telling me that story, I thought maybe the real story was that they were taking advantage of this woman, but I don't know. I don't know too much about the story, but you know, the thing about Ghost stories is that the person telling the story is kind of forcing you in a maze, right? And they're not letting you see the other parts of the story, right? Like they're taking you down this path and you could only see the story that one way. And if you see it that way, then Of course, there's a ghost story, you know what I mean? But how could there, you know, but then you start looking at the big picture and you realize that, yeah, it's real life. Life is complicated. Yeah, you want the gasp. Yeah, exactly. You know, but what the historian said about this thing and about her and in that reality was, you know, we continue to lean into it. Because this is a historic home that needs saving. And it costs a lot of money to keep this thing. It is made of wood and this is, this is a lot of work to maintain this historic property. And so the way that we do this is, is through that it's through visitors. It's through visitors who, who want to kind of, you know, it's a flirt with this, this, this stereotype. And so it seems like, you know, I say that's much, much more innocent and, you know, anyone who's ghost hunting. Okay. We really go, we go out of haunted tourism, ghost hunters and things like that. They actually, they serve like an economic purpose in some regards, you know, a lot and a historical preservation. That's why, right? Because a lot of these private places will open their doors up to ghost hunts. And those ghost hunters, they'll pay, you know, maybe a hundred bucks ahead in some cases, and it'll be a private historic property that doesn't have a nonprofit or benefactors, you know, and on a weekend that could make a few grand from ghost hunters coming in, respecting the property. And kind of helping take the case. And so, so there's, there's that, you know, we, we, that's, that's our kind of our gamut on haunted tourism today, you know, that's, that's a super fascinating man. And when you told me this idea that you had, I was like, let's do it. And honestly, before we press record, I had no idea what we were going to talk about today. So I'm glad. As you said, I have to weave you through, Javier. Yeah, exactly. And I, I was just along for the ride, just like you guys. But you know, Brandon, next week I was going to play the pretend vampire episode. I did a, I don't know if you listened to it. Oh, I didn't catch that one. Yeah, real vampires, people, especially like in New York and New Orleans that, that actually some of them feast on blood and they consider that they identify as vampires. And so I did this episode, I was going to re release it for Halloween, but then you reminded me about the Santeria episode, which is like, well, that's a deep cut. That that's like way back early. We didn't know what we were doing back then. Right. We had no idea what we were doing. I think I'm going to play the Santeria episode because I actually would like to listen. I don't listen to my own podcasts, but that was a very personal one for me. That's what I remember. That's why I connected with it. Was your, your, cause it's kind of what I try and do. Right. It was like, you, you knew this growing up. You knew what was like freak. You would freak out about it. You didn't really know. Right. This was actually something that I was afraid of personally. You know, like when I, when I go on these ghost tours, Yeah, whatever. I'm, I'm not that afraid, but this really freaked me out. Like even my kids, they, they see this stuff when they go down to Miami, we could be walking to my grandmother's house and then there's a bag with a dead animal on it, like laying in the sidewalk. And I have to explain to them, like, they're like, why is there like this dead chicken or a dead goat's head? No, it was a dead goat's head. Oh my gosh, I did not see that with voodoo growing up. So yeah, yeah, like this is stuff that we still encounter, like to this day. And so I had to explain to them, no, it's like, you know, some people practice Santeria, but then there's some people that practice brujeria. And then I tried to explain to them the differences, you know, once Santeria, I didn't even know much about it. It's part of my culture. And like, I know, I know people in my family who practice it, but I just didn't know a lot about it. And so this was like my exploration, yeah. Trying to learn about my culture, part of my culture that terrified me. Like, like I got chills just thinking about it. Cause it's very scary. But actually after I was done during that podcast episode. I learned to really appreciate that religion and the historical aspects of that religion. And, and it's not so scary. I think some people use it as, as which, you know, like to harm people, but the vast majority of people are not, it's just an Afro Cuban religion. It's, it's a, it's a Christianity and they mixed it with African beliefs. So it's a cool episode. I thank you for reminding me. I will play that. Cause I think that would be a really cool Halloween episode, but Brandon, thank you so much, man, for, for doing this. This is totally here's in the making. Cause we needed to do this at some point, right? I know. No kidding. I, I, I never thought. Thought I'd find a way on pretend. That's most people don't want to be on my show, by the way. I know. That's what I was going to say. Unless it's through the bars, you know, your collect calls. I didn't think I'd actually make it here. Maybe everybody thinking that I'm a new, uh, successful podcaster of comedy. Well, you are. And seriously, if you have not, I mean, this is the time of year. Okay. If you're looking for a podcast and some really good ghost stories, but not, All right. Great historically accurate ghost stories, but really well produced. I mean, you're going to listen to this thing and you're going to be like, this is an independent podcast. Well, and you're going to, you're going to, your mind's going to be blown. I'm an audio engineer by trade. That's how I started with all this. So I, you know, I was an audio guy and I tell people I learned to storytell, uh, from recording songwriters and country music and bluegrass. So, you know, I, I kinda, I came by this kind of honestly. And so. It's, uh, I, I hear awful things with the audio when I do it, but I, but I do know I was able to, I was able to lean on that trade and in the same way. And that's, what's incredible about your show though. You know, you, you have this incredible way of telling stories because of your trade. It's kind of cool that we both come from. You know, some sort of production background where we could make our stories better. But, uh, dude, you're an amazing ghost storyteller or storyteller. And, uh, I would, uh, some people tell me that they would, they want me to read the phone book that they could listen to. I don't understand that, but I would, uh, I would apply that to you. Oh man. Yeah. Well, I mean, Brandon, thank you so much for coming out, pretend and happy Halloween, right? Yeah. Happy Halloween, everyone. Good luck out there.