99% Invisible - 498- The Octagon House

Episode Date: July 6, 2022

99% Invisible producer emeritus Avery Trufelman traveled from New York to San Francisco recently, and took host Roman Mars to see an unusually shaped old building on the west side of the Bay. As it turns out, this peculiar octagonal home isn't unique -- there was a whole architectural fad of building these back in the mid 1800s, tapping into a parallel trend: self-improvement.Publisher Orson Fowler (most famous for being a phrenologist) used his professional position to self-publish a book about the many benefits, health and otherwise, of living in an octagonal home. His book, Octagon House: A Home For All, became a sensation. In its wake, hundreds of octagon houses started popping up all over the country.The Octagon House

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars and I'm in the Octagon House in San Francisco, California, with a redrofenman. So I used to work for 99% invisible and I used to live in the Bay Area and I recently came back for a visit and I wanted Roman to see this Octagon-shaped house in San Francisco. I mean, had you encountered an octagon house before? No, I mean, I must have passed this one at some point. I lived in San Francisco for eight years. I once thought this house was some sort of standalone bit of quirky architecture, but when I left the Bay Area, I realized this was not the only octagon house. Octagon-shaped houses are absolutely everywhere. There's a whole bevy of Oktagon Houses out in Long Island. There are at least a dozen Oktagon Houses in upstate New York, and if you zoom out, there's

one in New Bedford, Massachusetts, in Connecticut, in Kansas, in Alabama, and honestly, if you search Oktagon House plus state, you will probably find one. This Oktagon House, the one out in Cal Hollow, isn't even the only Octagon House in San Francisco. There are two others. But it is the only one that's open to the public every other Sunday. It's lovely. That's the first thing.

Yeah, can you do your magic? Can you describe it? It's powder blue. It is an Octagon. It has these things that where I think are the kind of the joints where the each side joins, it looks like a hint, so it looks like a giant toddler picked unfolded. Yes, it's very fish or price, it's like the vibe. This octagon house was part of a bona fide trend. In 1850s, architectural fad, people believed that octagonal houses would lead to better,

healthier, happier lives that were more in touch with the natural world. And so I was like, I've got to see if there's anything to this. I wanted to get into one of these utopian octagon houses to see what it was all about. All right, well, welcome toopian octagon houses to see what it was all about. All right, well welcome to the Octagon House. The technical name for this Octagon House is the McElroy House because a family named McElroy built the house when they moved out west. And then they decide they're going to build this new fad of a home, an octagon home, and you'll find out more about that when you go in there.

But here's what I learned about the Octagon House Fad once I went in there. Very little. Do you know anything more about the Octagon House Fad? The museum contents are colonial and federalists. The exterior is 1860 what? And so nothing in this was originally part of the Octagon. Is there any one or two things? No.

Okay. No, absolutely not. It turns out that the McElroy Octagon House is run by a group called the Colonial Dames of America. And the purpose of the group is to preserve colonial and federalist history. So now you're in colonial times here, up through 1787. And the colonial dames just so happened to buy this octagon-shaped house when it was condemned in 1952.

It cost them one dollar. They thought it was cool, and so they just filled it with their own historical archive, which has absolutely nothing to do with the octagon house or the era it was built in. In here is a lot of China from when the Martí de Lafayette returned to the United States from 1824 to 1825. And so I'm sorry not to sound dense but like is the Octagon House considered Federalist or Colonialist like what is the style? Well it's neither the house is neither. The colonial dams were so nice and sweet and I was a jerk on a single-minded quest. So this visit was very frustrating to me because every time I asked about octagons, I was

shown an oil painting of George Washington or a collection of old grocery lists and letters that were written by the members of the Continental Congress. We have 55, the original signatures of 55, the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence. We can talk about that. But there among the teacups and the calligraphed signatures and the colonial era, Brickabrac, the dams did have a copy of this book called The Octagon House, a home for all.

Because just like for going carbohydrates or vampire erotica, or throwing out whatever doesn't spark joy, this fad also started with a book written by a man named Orson S. Fowler. This is the book he wrote that popularized octagon houses nationwide. But was he like part of a movement or is he just sort of some random... I think he's part somewhat of a movement and I'm not knowledgeable enough, but you know, but we have interesting things here too, like we have this fire bucket. When we have the kids here, we do a bucket brigade.

Okay, so the dams were clearly not gonna be the ones to explain why there were octagon houses all over the United States or what or some followers deal was. And honestly, there wasn't a lot out there to explain it. Yeah, it's not often that I get asked to talk about octagon houses, so I was excited to get your request. Irene Chang is an architectural historian and a professor

at California College of the Arts. She wrote her dissertation on the Octagon House FAD. But I also think, you know, we can't just write it off as a FAD, because what I find really fascinating is that, again, hundreds, if not thousands, of people took up his idea and actually tried it out and built off the gone houses. And the other reason the American octagonal house fad

is hard to write off is because it became the physical embodiment of all sorts of new ideas and new values that were really radical for their time, and many of them were inspired by Orson Fowler's very specific ideology. Orson Fowler was not a builder or an architect. He was able to publish a book on Octagon Houses because he was a publisher. Fowler's publishing house, Fowler and Wells actually published Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. They had a kind of publishing empire and they published books on things

like How to Write, How to Do Business, How to Behave. These were, functionally, early self-help books. There's a subsession starting in the sort of 1840s and really expanding the 50s with self-cultivation, self-understanding. To give you an idea of how new and how huge this was, in 1841 Noah Webster added 67 new words to his dictionary that began with the prefix self. And that's what Fowler really does an amazing job of is capitalizing on this obsession with self-improvement, self-cultivation. This was connected to a wave of social movements on the 1840s, like temperance and abstinence and abolition and abolition of child labor and women's suffrage, there was this desire to remedy the plight of the common man, to improve society by improving individuals, which Fowler was extremely invested

in, not only as a publisher, but by his primary trade. The thing he was most well known for, because Orson Fowler was perhaps America's most famous fornologist. You know, fornology, that's this kind of, you know, comical pseudoscience of being able to read a person's characteristics or personality based on the shape of their head. Fornologists like Fowler believed that certain lumps on your head corresponded to certain personality traits.

Like certain bumps could tell you how cautious or secretive or mirthful you were. And phrenology, which has been completely and entirely disproven, it is important to note, was applied in all kinds of very racist ways. You know, most American phrenologists that you read, including Fowler, say incredibly racist things about the capacity of African-Americans and other non-white groups about their capacity for improvement in their instinctive and innate traits. Fowler was used as a pseudoscientific way

to explain why women were stupid, and people of color were inferior and Jews were evil. And Orson Fowler was actually considered pretty progressive in his time as a feminist and an abolitionist, although it was all from this very paternalistic perspective, like, oh, these poor people in their mischaping heads. So this is all to say, what little I knew about phrenology, I thought it was exclusively the purview of ghoulish race scientists with head measuring calipers. And that is true, the racist history is very much there.

What I was surprised to learn about phonology was that it was part of this burgeoning world of self-improvement. In its time, it was almost treated like astrology or anyogram tests. Phonology was pretty popular. Orson Fowler and his brother had an office in Manhattan, and it was really much more of a showroom slash museum called the Phrenological Cabinet, and it became one of the most popular attractions in New York City.

It showcased hundreds of Phrenological portraits of famous people, so you could giggle and gawk at how unusually large the lumps for secretiveness and destructiveness were on Aaron Burr's skull, and lots of people went there to get their own heads read. You know, you encounter all kinds of writers referring to going to New York, getting a phonological reading, or ordinary people in their diaries mentioning that they went to a phonological lecture and got a reading. Employers sought out employees with particular franological profiles.

Some even requested readings from the Fowlers as a reference. Women came up with hairstyles that would show off their more flattering franological features. And Fowler and Wells published the American franological journal. So I think it's really telling, for example, that on the cover of their journal, the American franological journal, the motto is, know thyself. And there were not a lot of tools for doing that.

This was before the invention of talk therapy. This is before Freud. So people were aching to know more about themselves and improve themselves. And at the time, chronology fit right in with all of Fowler's proto-self-help literature. In the hands of Fowler and his family, you know, what they were really selling is this kind of method of knowing yourself, knowing your own capacities and proclivities, and then using that self-knowledge to strategically improve yourself. Strangely, it was phrenology that led Fowler to architecture. In all of his

franological observations, there were two particular headlumps that interested him. There was, supposedly, a lump for inhabitiveness, which is basically the desire to nest, and a lump for constructiveness, which was related to the desire to build a house. Fowler essentially came to the conclusion that all men should discover the pleasure of building their own home to meet their own particular unique needs. And Fowler decided that the best, most beautiful, most healthy, most cost-efficient way for everyone to build their own home would be to build a house in the shape of an octagon. And according to his book, here's why. Most fundamentally, if you have a house with a lot of sides, you can add more windows

to all the sides and get more light. You can look out of all those windows and feel more of a connection with nature. Give me a beautiful landscape and an elevated side. This also guarantees a fresh, dry atmosphere. And because the house approximated a circle, air was supposed to circulate well through it. He's also obsessed like many 19th century domestic reformers with ventilation. For every human being requires a copious and constant supply of this commodity. So indispensable, not merely to human comfort,

but even existence. The octagon was supposed to be practical, more affordable to the common man. We're supposed to look very humble, without much fancy adornment or décor. Tyler says ornament is very expensive, and shouldn't be the primary concern. Instead, you should focus on function, health, efficiency.

This sounds like the rationale of 20th century modernism, but this is the mid-1800s. Like, Orbusier wouldn't even be born for a few more decades at the time that Fowler was developing his ideas. And the biggest one was like, design for all. The octagon was supposed to be economical and efficient. Now since a given link to botcon wall, one closed one fifth more space

than the same link to wall and a square shape, of course, you can have the same size wall for one fifth less money. I don't quite get it, but that's perhaps my tiny little woman's skull. It's filled with all of these diagrams. Like quasi-mathematical diagrams. And then he compares the numbers and shows that the octagon is far more efficient.

Fowler claimed his house would save energy in terms of physical exertion, like you wouldn't have to walk as much. What a vast number of steps will the octagon save a large and stirring family annually over a square. It was, as he notes, especially important for the women of the house. She can save her steps and save her strength so that she can bear stronger children, essentially. How much frightfulness and ill temper as well as exhaustion and sickness in unhandy house occasions, nor does evil and here, it often generally, by perpetually irritating mothers,

sours the tempers of their children, even before birth, thus rendering the whole family bad disposition to bind nature. So this is where we start to get into the more wild claims about the octagon. Because fellers basically like this house will be the great reformer. It will liberate women from chores. It will put everyone in a better mood. It will have this big main parlor to hang out in so that you can keep the family unit intact

so no one has to go out and socialize in bars. You know, these spaces in the city that are emerging where men can behave in unseemly ways with other men. So that's ostensibly about temperance and men getting drunk and rowdy in bars. But it's also about behavior and propriety, because Fowler was really obsessed with this idea of proper sexuality, which is to say the old-fashioned notion of courtship,

which Fowler imagined would play out well in the beautiful parlor of the octagon. So he writes about the parlor as a space for the cultivation of this proper sexuality. And then seemingly, out of nowhere, in the middle of the octagon book, Fowler starts going on this long tangent about fruit, different kinds of fruit, the best kinds of fruit, and you come across these passages where he goes on and on about apples. And you're like, why are you so obsessed with apples? Okay, this argument I really love. Fowler claims that living in an octagon shape

would be more conducive to what was then the radical fringy movement known as vegetarianism. You know, for farmers, apples were a fruit that could be stored for a long time so you could have like fresh fruit in the winter and into the spring. In Fowler's vision, the ideal octagon house would be made entirely out of concrete, and you'd mix your own gravel yourself, of course, to know the pleasure of building. And it would mean you'd have this big, big cement cellar.

How incomparably superior in every respect this basement to our present pit hole cellars. respect this basement to our present pit hole sellers. This gravel seller had the capacity to get and stay very, very cold and this isn't the days before refrigeration. So, the cold storage might help you in the words of Fowler. Substitute berries and their juice in place of milk and butter. And so, the house becomes a prosthetic that helps support these systems and processes by which, you know, you can feed the body, healthy food that will make it stronger, just as the layout of the house helps facilitate kind of efficient movement. Another vision was that all of his philosophies would coalesce in the shape of an octagon, and the octagon home would become the ultimate self-improvement machine. Fowler published his book, The Octagon House, A Home for All, in 1853, and it became a

sensation. Hundreds of octagon houses started popping up all over the country. It could have even been thousands of octagon houses. There was never an official count of how many got built. There was even a vegetarian abolitionist commune made entirely of octagon houses in Kansas. It was called octagon city. That utopian experiment ultimately only lasted a few months.

But the point is, Fowler's ideas caught on and spread with the octagon house. Which is hilarious, because at the time that Fowler was writing this book, all of his assertions were more or less guesses. He was building his very first Octagon House at the same time that he was writing this book about why they were so great and why they worked so well. And Fowler's own Octagon House wasn't a simple modest house like the ones he ostensibly advocated for. Fowler constructed a massive 60-room octagon-shaped mansion

in Fishkill, New York. And he actually devoted himself so thoroughly to building this octagon house that Walt Whitman had to take over the publishing house. Fowler thought his octagon house would be his showpiece, his proof that his theories for optimal living were right. It was widely mocked as Fowler's folly. For a few years, Fowler was able to enjoy the fruits

of his labor. He lived in his Octagon house and invited friends over for vegetarian meals and lectured about frenology and wrote for the franological journal. But in the economic depression of 1857, the Octagon Fad started to slow down, and Fowler himself fell on hard times. He rented out his Octagon mansion, and it was converted into a boarding house.

Where it became the scene of a massive typhoid outbreak, partially because of a cesspool seepage through Fowler's supposedly superior gravel walls, Fowler's folly was abandoned by 1880, and Fowler died in 1887, and the house was torn down 10 years later. That's such a house. What earthly habitation could be more beautiful, more imposing, more convenient, or more comfortable. Okay, so Fowler's Fowler was a bust, but so many octagons are still around, presumably made by people who could mix their concrete better than Orson Fowler could. And so Fowler's ideas were so obviously bunk, then why did Octagon house is spread so widely

in the way they did? I reasoned there had to be something to living in an Octagon. And I've grown up in the house very much part of my life throughout my entire life. Michael Embardi is a caretaker of the armor Steiner House in Irvington, New York. It's massive, impressive. Perhaps the most famous octagon house in America, and not far from where Fowler's Folly would be if it were still standing. The physical proximity to where Orson Square Fowler built his home in Fischke in New York,

it's true that we're relatively close to where that was. So the armor Steiner House, I thought, would be my genuine look into what an octagon house is all about, especially because Michael had such a personal connection with the house. I thought there's Joseph Lombardi. He's the owner of the armor Steiner Octagon House. I have worked on the house on and off for the past 43 years. So I was like, great, maybe Michael felt some of the benefits that Fowler was touting, like the light and the air and the beauty and the vitality. Maybe this house could really speak

to what Fowler was getting at. And it turned out, once again, absolutely not. It's funny because it is taking Fowler's original idea and kind of turning it on end in every way. It was almost like exing out his concepts that it's not about lesses more. It's not about reductive simplicity. It's not about efficiency. It's about lavish fulfillment. The armor Steiner House is almost the opposite

of a Fowler home. Basically, the house started out as a simple traditional Fowler house, but then in 1872, Joseph Steiner, a very successful team merchant who had 76 coffee and tea houses in Manhattan moved into this house and totally redid it. Joseph Steiner painted the whole thing pink. He added a floor, he topped it with a gigantic dome with portal windows all around it.

And most notably, Joseph Steiner just mixed it up with all different forms of ornamentation from across all different eras. You know, Victorian eras is a lavish incorporation of different designs from different periods. In fact, there is an entire Egyptian room. Here we are in the Egyptian Revival Room. Wow. Decorated in the Egyptian Revival style, it's fully realized as it could be. It has a piano that's custom-decorated with sphinxes on it. The walls are covered in hieroglyphs. The ceiling is painted with 2,000 stars, which Michael painstakingly repainted himself.

To the best of our ability, we've tried in every room to restore everything to exactly the way it was in 1872. It is admittedly so cool. But it means there's really no way of knowing how this octagon house looked when it was originally constructed. If it followed Orson Fowler's floor plan and did all the things that Fowler said it would do, once again, not unlike the McOroy House and the Colonial Dames, the Armour Steiner House just so happens to be an octagon-shaped vessel for another time period. So maybe Fowler's octagons didn't do much of anything, he said they would. Yeah, I think he was kind of overselling both of these things, or using a kind of salesman platform for both the idea of fornology and of octagonal houses.

I mean, I think there's definitely, you know, a kind of legitimate case to be made that fowlers octagon house idea was a kind of snake oil type product. But the thing about snake oil is that Chinese water snake oil just so happens to be an excellent source of omega-3 fatty acids. It's real, look it up. And it turns out that modern octagon houses, because there are modern octagon houses, have a benefit that Fowler couldn't fully anticipate. We believe we are the world leader in these structures. We ship them all over the globe. We've got Delta coms in all 50 states, and I think almost 30 countries. Steve Linton is the president of Delta combs Inc. They make prefabricated homes that they ship all over the country in the world, and they

are all iterations of an octagon shape. You know, an octagon house is true in some sense, but a circular or a round home or a panoramic home is often how we describe it. Deltek was not inspired by the theories of Orson Fowler. In fact, Steve had not heard of Orson Fowler until I told him about him. Deltek started out in 1968, and they were inspired by the geodesic dome crays

that was happening all around them, because they're not far from where Black Mountain College used to be, which is where Buckminster Fuller used to teach, and build domes. And you've which is where Buckminster Fuller used to teach and build domes. And you've got people like Buckminster Fuller, and you've sort of got this hotbed of round-home construction here in Western North Carolina specifically. These homes were supposed to increase air circulation and be more cost-efficient

to build with more windows and light. It was all sounding very foul or ask. It almost feels like you're living outside because of the way the windows gently wrap around you. And they might have just stayed quirky and foul or ask. If Deltech hadn't accidentally discovered a huge benefit of their panoramic houses. I wish I could say there was this grand plan I wish I could say there was this grand plan back at the beginning to create a hurricane resistance home to create a home that could make a difference with climate change, but it was much more of an evolution. You know, people built a Delta home originally because of the amazing view and how it made

them feel. It was as simple as that. And over time, we saw again and again, storm after storm, deltex were the ones that were left standing. House's torn apart roofs blown away like paper. What could survive 140 miles per hour wins? This house can. It was actually designed to remain intact during a hurricane.

But very simply, high winds whip around a rounded house. can. It was actually designed to remain intact during a hurricane. But very simply, high winds whip around a rounded house. They don't press on the big flat sides. And Deltech began to make climate resilience their specialty. Right. One of the big things we're looking at is how can we design a home to withstand 225-mAh wind speeds? Of course, Orson Fowler was not anticipating the climate crisis. He wasn't thinking about hurricanes, but before Fowler introduces his octagon plan, he writes, and what if it is exposed to winter's plink winds?

Are they not bracing and healthy? Yet a plan will soon be proposed which will enable you to defy them, yet enjoy summer's balmy braces. It turns out a broken clock is indeed right twice. When I walk out the front door, I can't tell which way the wind is blowing on us. I walk away from the house. I knew that I had to find a way to see a genuine fowler home and then it had to be some small private house, not one that had been turned into a house museum devoted to another era. And so when a friend told me he drove by an octagon house on the side of the

highway in upstate New York, I figured I would just go knock on the door and try to talk to them. To see if their octagon house really made them live better and more efficiently. And I cannot believe how lucky I was that the people living in the house just so happened to be Bob and Larry. It's a great house, as you'll see, from the inside. And I was always the kind of person that would live in a loft or a converted white castle or something like that. Normal looking houses kind of bore me.

Bob and Larry have lived in their Octagon House for 10 years. It's buttery yellow and a modest two stories. The moldings and everything are very simple. And to my extreme delight, Bob and Larry knew all about Orson Fowler's Octagon theory of modern living. They had done nothing to change the structure of the house. It's actually intact from its original building, which they can date because they found an inscription on the wall of their kitchen. And if you look at it, it says Stockport, Columbia County, November 9th, day 1860, a clear cool day Lincoln Abraham elected. And this was written on what was the original faux finish on the windows.

So we know the house predates 1860. Wow. That's really cool. That's really cool. That's really cool. Bob and Larry's living room slash dining room is functionally one massive undivided parlor. And you can see the light stream in from all eight corners of the house across the course of the day.

Their parlor is lush, full of thriving plants and even some bonsai trees that Bob cultivates. Maybe it's parametric pressure, maybe it's light, but we could take a broomstick and stick it in dirt and it'll sprout. I mean, everything grows in here. I don't know what it is, but we rarely lose a plant. Granted, a downside of living in the octagon is that a lot of Bob and Larry's closets are weirdly

shaped and small. You can see that the closets are triangular. Yeah, here's a supply closet. You've made great use of this though. It's a very strange space. Yeah, but you know we're strange people. It's a very strange space. Yeah, but you know we're strange people. Ultimately, the benefits outweigh the cost for Bob and Larry. It's like by accident or by fluke or by luck, the Octagon House as a technology more or less worked for them. Architecturally, Bob and Larry are living Fowler's eight-sided vision. The thought that light was beneficial, we know that's true.

Air circulation being beneficial. Bob says if they leave the door open on a summer day, a breeze runs through the house and it circulates very well. And since living in the house, Bob and Larry themselves began planting fruit trees. Peaches and apples and cherries for the last couple years, because of health issues, I've been less active. But before that, I would pretty regularly

can preserve. Were you saying you got the idea for the fruit trees from Reading Fowler's book? Well, most of the history of the crop is from the house. From the house. I love that. They didn't learn it from the book. They learned it from the house. It's nice having the amount of space and the amount of light. It clears my mind. It's great. Sometimes we just sit here and Larry is a very poor health, but we still tell each other,

you know, how lucky we are to be able to put up with each other all of this time. You know, we like to say, you know, we've staying together for the sake of the kids, or to show face, or anything like that. You know, we're with each other because we want to. We have a good time. And the house is good for us. Although, Bob and Larry could learn to live in a converted white castle.

Yeah, I mean, I would never say that the octagon house is an idea that we should revive today because it's a great way of building. But I think they're really interesting to think about just because they are so eccentric. I'm really interested in what compels people to actually adopt the idea for a time. What I've realized is that over and over again, when culture is shifting and values are changing

and people are looking for new ways of living, that's when vernacular design reaches beyond the square. All those domes and urits and octagons were all full of promise and new ideas. And, sure, you could call them fads, but that's sort of writing them off. I think the thing about fads is they're short-lived, but they also point to the possibility of sudden shifts in culture and rapid changes in attitude. The hallmark of a fad is that it goes away quickly, that it didn't last, that it failed. But Professor Chang says what's really interesting about a fad

is how it starts. It's capacity to take off so quickly. There's power in understanding what gets so many people on board with something new and radical. And, you know, for somebody who's interested in the possibility of meaningful change, it's interesting sometimes to study the techniques of dissemination and like what were the techniques of persuasion that compelled people to try something different and try something new. Because homes, by their very nature of being homey, are supposed to be familiar.

They're supposed to be what we already know. And something about the octagon shape, something about breaking out of the literal box, seemed to liberate the people who interacted with them. The octagon seemed to provide the space for inhabitants to break their own molds, to try on new lifestyles, by canning their own peaches or restoring a sphinx piano or hell taking this radical structure and filling it up with collections of colonial t-sets. The Colonial Dame Museum inside of an octagon house is the biggest manifestation of a square pagan around hole that I've ever seen

look architecturally. That square pagan and octagon on the floor. I just kind of, and I love it. So thank you so much for coming with me. Coming up after the break, octagon houses don't just have a lot of fresh air and sunlight. They also have a lot of ghosts. Avery tries to convince me after this. So, hi, Roman. Hey, Avery.

Are you sold on the idea of living in an octagon house? I mean, not even remotely, actually. Oh, really? I mean, the light, the air. I think the light and the air and stuff would all be very beautiful. And you met lots of really fun people, and I wish to be included amongst the fun people who would live in an octagon house. Sure.

And so yes, I guess I'm actually more sold than my cynical first take would tell you. But being inside the one with you in San Francisco was actually quite lovely. I enjoyed it. And that's the thing. That was like a museum renovated octagon house. Like going into an actual home, it is kind of incredible.

I mean, there's all this space in its got to the slide. And honestly, after going to all these Octagon houses, I was like, I'm pretty soul, especially after seeing Bob and Larry. I was like, I'm pretty soul. This looks pretty nice. But if you are considering moving into an Octagon-shaped house,

you should be warned that it is probably haunted. Okay. Do you feel like there are notable differences living in an octagon house? With a light for one. And the ghosts. The ghosts. Oh.

First the light, then the ghosts. What about the light? So I shouldn't say that all octagon houses are haunted. I can't speak for all octagon houses, but I have to say when I was beginning to research the story, I was like, surely other people must have made podcasts about Octagon houses. And I looked around and they were all like ghost hunting podcasts. At first, I was like, oh, you know, whatever, anyone thinks anything's haunted. But Bob and Larry specifically are not normally the ghost hunting types.

Are you ghost people? No. I was like, I could capture your face. And neither is Michael Lombardi at the Armor Steiner House. Is it haunted? It is. There is a ghost. Yep. And I'm not a big ghost proponent or you know I'm not running around talking about ghosts, but there is absolutely a ghost here, the octagon house. Like you felt it? I have felt it, I have smelled it.

She comes in the form of floral scent, of lilacs, yep. So Orson Fowler had nothing about like guaranteed ghosts or anything, but octagons do seem to attract a certain kind of like genre of ghost, which is to say playful with bizarre but generally okay vibes. She's mischievous. She's done things that I can't explain. My father has a couple of ones early on. He was trying to open up a window that was painted shut and he couldn't

get the window open and he kept rattling and moving it. And so he went to go to the kitchen to get a knife or screwdriver or something and when he came back, the window was wide open. Ah, there's more. I was giving a tour of about 20 people and I was telling the ghost story that she comes in the form of a Lylex sent and she's kind of mischievous and somebody said I smell Lylex and there is some chocolate and then another person said I smell Lylex and then another person said I smell Lylex and then everyone got really quiet and It was like the tour was over and everybody just walked carefully out of the house and that was it.

I love it. And then Bob and Larry really have a definitive handle on who their ghost is. They've kept articles from local papers about the haunted octagon house and they think their ghost is a member of the original family that built the house. That makes sense. The Smith family, it seems, we're still living with it. The fourth child, the daughter that we know of is Rachel and she shows up every once in a while. How does she appear? Tell her about the... Oh, the cocktail party. That's probably the best story because we had...

How many witnesses? Like six people here, and we're sitting, we're drinking, and one of our friends, Louise, who is Colombian, who is a very deep voice. And in Colombia, there are spirits everywhere, have it handling. She says, Ladi, have you heard from your ghost lately on

you footsteps loud as day across the ceiling from one side to the other? Everyone looked up, snapped up, followed the footsteps across the ceiling and then everyone looked at me and I said, does that answer your question?

Oh my God. Bob and Larry hear footsteps a lot and they said in the night, sometimes they feel like a weight on the bed. Like the cat has jumped in bed with them, but the cat's not near the bed. And you might be like, oh, well, you know, they're old, they're old, creaky buildings. And like the wind comes through in funky ways. But Larry used to keep a shelf with glassware in his office. And one day when Larry was in the kitchen and Bob was out in the front room,

we hear bang and a martini glass exploded. Exploded it. It didn't fall off. It had been there. It wasn't like newly cleaned or it was just sitting there like every other glass was sitting there. Doesn't this scare you? Not at all. Everyone who was on a free-state tom with Rachel. And you know, people that come here always say the house has such a good vibe to it. And I think that's Rachel.

Hmm, let's wait. I think it's Bob and Larry, who makes the good vibe. We why? Well, they just seem humble and of good spirits and very kind and make a warm place. And that includes a warm welcome to Rachel as well. But. Do you buy it? Do you think the ghosts are real?

Well, okay. So, I don't think they're real, but I enjoy people enjoying their homes and enjoying stories and enjoying laughing and having dinner parties with baritone Colombians who conjure ghosts. I love all that. And so, it doesn't matter what I really believe,

I like it as a story. I don't have. No. No. It was just funny, like, thinking about the Octagon house, I was like, oh, I feel like the apartment I live in is probably very old and presumably lots of people have lived in here.

And the Octagon just sort of, by very nature of its different nists points out the things that are actually quite normal about houses. We're like, oh, like light air, aren't they great? Like, the history, it's so cool that like this house has had many lives and was like constructed by someone who had dreams and goals in a way they wanted to live.

But in a weird way, just the shape of it announces itself. Like you can see the hand of intention. Exactly. And I feel like that lends itself better to ghosts. I think you put your finger on it, which is it is a shape and an intention therefore it concentrates spectral activity. Or you could say it concentrates stories and thinking about the past. But this is a place that screams for that kind of attention. And it is a place where you kind of know your part of history when you're in it, even when it was just being built.

They knew. Totally. And that carries forward to today. And so everything becomes a story. Everything gets wrapped up in a story. And a ghost story wraps up a ton of things, you know? It really is a nice basket to hold history. And that's why I like ghost stories a lot, even though I'm not really a believer in ghosts.

Well, thanks so much for telling us stories and coming back on 9% of Israel. It was real pleasure to have you. Oh, yeah, of course. I'm just your friendly ghost on ten Europe's Eurek Place. 99% of Israel was produced this week by A.E. Free Truffman. It was edited by Delaney Hall, fact-checking by Sona Avekin, mixed in tech production

by Martin Gonzales. Production assistance by Jacob Maldonado Medina and Sarah Baker, music by director of Sound Swan Rial. Special thanks to Alison C. Meyer and Rebecca LeWin McArley, who was so helpful with research for this story, also thanks to Meredith Hotenot, Drew Hopped, Joy Eusson, and most of all, to Zach Fischman. 99% of visible is executive producer is Delaney Hall. Kurt Colestet is our digital director. The rest of the team includes Emmet Fitzgerald, Vivian Le, Joe Rosenberg, Chris Baroube, Christopher Johnson, Lashmodon, Jason Dillion, Sophia Klatsker,

and me Roman Mars. 99% of visible is part of the Stitcher and Series XM Podcast family, now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora building, in beautiful, uptown, Oakland, California. You can find the show and join discussions about the show on Facebook. You can tweet me at Roman Mars and the show at 99PI org. We're on Instagram and read it too. You can find links to other Stitcher shows I love, as well as every past episode of 99PI at 99PI dot org. So I'm, this is, this is new since I've been here.

How do you do the stitcher stings? So we kind of like figure them out, like kind of at the last minute. It's like the last thing we do on the show at all. So, do you have any ideas? Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh No!