And That's Why We Drink - E256 The Quest for Vegan Fried Chicken and Waffles and a Ghost's Nightcap

Episode Date: January 2, 2022

Happy New Year! It's episode 256 and we're not judging any vegans today but we certainly are judging anyone who loves candy corn as much as Xandy. Buckle up as Em finally takes us to Savannah with the story of the Olde Pink House and some bricks that just wanted, in their soul, to be pink. Then Xandy covers a true crime case he first heard sung about in German by his father, the case of Fritz Haarmann aka the Butcher of Hanover. And please leave our peanuts alone... and that's why we drink! 

hello everybody and happy new year apparently it is 2022 uh zandy and i are in living in the past though it's still early november the holidays have not begun but i hope everyone's having a happy new year zandy have you prepared a timely resolution at all or is what do you think you're up to on this new year's weekend oh man uh probably up to nothing too special uh i have a i'll be traveling to minnesota soon for a uh a live show that one of my favorite podcasts is doing. What's the podcast? And That's Why We Drink. Oh, my God.

Oh, I really fell for that. January 6th. Very excited for that show. But yeah, no, I will be, I don't know, actually. I was just talking to my little sister about New Year's, and I have no idea what I'll be doing. I have no real plans. I have a girlfriend who lives in New York, very much not doing that. New York New Year's sounds terrifying.

She won't be there anyway. So I don't know. I'll probably just be chilling, not doing too much, but hopefully living my best life. You know, I've always thought that a New York New Year's would be fun. And I went. I must have been 16. My mom was like, oh, let's all go together and have a New York time. And we did, like, the parade. Or is there a parade on New Year's? Or whatever. When the ball drops and all that. I have no idea.

It was the really chaotic thing where, like, if you're a claustrophobic, don't go. You know? Yeah. And so I remember thinking at 16, I was like, I never have to do this again in my entire life. I'm never going to be here. And same with, I did the Thanksgiving parade. I think my mom wanted me to have those moments instead of just see them on TV. But I'm glad she did them early because I might always wonder what if.

And if you're wondering what if, let me tell you, it's very scary. You're like really like crunched up against people so if that's your vibe though have a great time but i'm happy to not uh partake in that i think for new year's this year i usually am i'm home for christmas and it always a kind of i end up coming home the day after new year's like the new year's party so actually right now as you're listening to those people i'm probably on a plane coming home oh exciting exciting and then in four days we start our tour again so actually uh shout out for me and christine um if you are coming to our next show please be nice to us because this is our first show we've done in the last uh two years so or this is the first show we've done in two years

so um please be sweet to us please applaud very loudly actually i know we're at what i'm doing january 2nd and i'm flying to your area your neck of the woods because christine and i are having a whole weekend of rehearsal oh i didn't know that that's exciting i know so anyway that i can be there and practice being nice because i i will try not to be too mean at that show we will be the propranolol will be sky high um uh no but we will be this is our first week of our tour it's super exciting and our show is really really good i just hope that i'm not too rusty after a while so i've never seen it i i'm oh my gosh to the minnesota show last time and i had i had an airbnb booked i was about to book a flight and that was right when covet hit and i thought okay

this is probably a terrible idea and then it got canceled anyway uh the show so um well oh my gosh you're gonna love it oh i think you're gonna love it this is like one of the only times in my life and i think christine can agree that like with confidence i know people will enjoy the show it's like not even a maybe why why the minnesota show i have a friend uh my friend steven lives up there uh and i he's someone who i've been friends with for like i don't know over 10 years or about 10 years and i uh have only met him in person like three or four times. We're like video game friends. I was talking to him like five minutes ago before we started recording.

So we're like talking every day, playing RuneScape together. But I always try to find an excuse to see him. So I'm very excited for that. So he'll be there too. Oh, awesome. I love a good online friend. My roommate, RJ, most of his friends seem to be online and i know when he's having a good day when i can hear him screaming through the walls that

other people he's probably never met okay anyway i've got a story for you xandy this isn't very new year's themed but it was recommended um so i'm just going to give the people what they want and i'm also excited because for some reason i know that savannah and probably coming up on like charleston south carolina they usually are fighting for the spot of like most haunted place in the country and yet i can never find a savannah story or I can never find a Savannah story with enough meat. That's the biggest struggle I always deal with. So many people will send in stories, and they're just not long enough. So I just can't cover it as a topic.

But I found a Savannah one, and I hope people are happy with me finally. And it is the Old Pink House. My grandpa lives in one of those. His house is like from the, I don't know, 19th century. It's like early 19th century, I think. And it's extremely pink. But this is in Germany. It's not in Georgia.

Is there a reason why it's pink? Because there's a reason why this house is pink. I don't know. I don't know the history behind it. But that's why he bought it. He really liked the color. You know, I've mentioned this before on our show, but there's a pink house in Fredericksburg. It's literally known as the pink house, and my mom is obsessed with it.

And one of my step-siblings ended up dating a kid whose family member owned the pink house. And so my mom finally had an in to see the pink house for herself. And we've lived here. We've lived in Fredericksburg since the 90s. Every month I'm hearing a new update about the pink house. Like, oh, they did new shutters. Or, oh, the landscapers at the pink house. And so it took 20 years, but she finally had her in for a moment.

Oh, happy for her. It was a small-town dream. And so so anyway, this is not that pink house. If, if you're listening, uh, people who I know who own the pink house, please, uh, let me know if there's any ghosts there. And my mom will, I don't know, her head will fall off. She'll be so excited. Okay. So this is in Savannah. It's, uh, one of the top rated is in Savannah. It's one of the top-rated restaurants in Savannah. I looked at their menu, and I don't know if this is a common thing on their menu,

but it is. Maybe it was a special, but I saw a fried green tomato BLT, which I love a good fried green tomato, and I love a good BLT. So smush those together. It sounds like a party. Do you have a favorite Southern food by the way sandy uh now that i'm vegan not really fair what did you used to love well so actually no i'll say i'll say this there's a place in la called doomies um so not in the south but they do a lot of like i don't know southern fair i would

say it's a lot of fried chicken and stuff i love a good vegan fried chicken or fried chicken and waffles things like that i love fried chicken and waffles i went to a i was just in new york and i went to a brunch place specifically for their vegan fried chicken and waffles and they said they don't make it anymore so i was really disappointed but wait you traveled all that distance to get told that they don't exist anymore it was like a 20 minute walk but oh sorry in my head it felt like a quest no no sorry i meant yeah i was already in new york i see and then while in new york picking brunch places i was like oh i want to go there because of it uh they're vegan fried chicken and waffles and alas they didn't do it anymore. So that's one of my favorite things. That story sounded like it could have been an adventure, though.

Like, I traveled across the seas. Like Harold and Kumar, but this time it's for vegan fried chicken and waffles. Doesn't have the same ring to it. I'm sure you get this question a thousand times, and for all I know, it's offensive to vegans. But is there a food you miss that you wish you had anymore? I thought there would be, but not probably early on sure there are some snacks when i found out like oh man those aren't vegan like i don't know silly things like i don't know m&ms or starboard like just random things i'm like darn it you know i wish i could eat those but it's been two years

a week from now it'll be two years. And I honestly don't miss anything. And because most things, there is a substitute for it anyway. That tastes good? Yeah, I think so. That's my bit. I'm just like so weirdly picky about I can't find alternatives that taste good sometimes. Yeah, no, to me, at least they taste good. And it's also, I feel like it hasn't been very restrictive.

If anything, it's kind of opened up how I eat because I've explored more options and realized like, oh, okay. Like I've never had all these different types of tofu. I mean, and yeah, tofu to most people sounds gross, but you know, if it's cooked well and there's so many different ways to prepare it. So I don't know, it's just, it's weirdly opened up how I eat. And I think I eat a lot more variety now that I am vegan compared to before for for new vegans do you have like a favorite uh snack or something that they can explore for the first time oh gosh for the first time um I usually stick to the one that blew your mind like that it was vegan or just like a new thing that a new thing gosh a new thing i don't know i didn't mean to put you this isn't like you know the vegan talk show but i just because like my go

to snacks are still like red vines oreos you know things that you like the accidental vegan thing sour patch kids sour patch kids are vegan yeah and oh one thing that i was shocked by is movie theater popcorn butter is vegan because it's just oil for the most part i would look into it i don't take my word for all of this but yeah oh i will going back though thing i miss candy corn i think because i think we have heard we've heard about that people dm me we're like about it because you talk about this on the show still i i don't know. No one has come to me with a vegan candy corn option.

See, I can't judge a vegan, but I sure can judge someone who likes candy corn. So we're now going to quickly move on. You've lost your privilege to talk about veganism. Fair, fair. Okay, so it's the top-rated restaurant in Savannah, Georgia. Again, BLT, fried green tomatoes. It is not vegan. So sorry, Zandy.

But it's in Reynolds Square, which I guess is one of the oldest corners of the city. It was established in 1734. And the house was originally called the Habersham House. So it was built by merchant James Habersham Jr. And I'm going to commit to that version because there's, I was getting confused because his father keeps getting mentioned when people try to talk about James's background. So I feel like a few articles I read, a lot of my sources end up being like haunted blogs because like there's no real like solid sources for ghost stories but i think a lot of people were equally getting confused and so some of the stories were starting that the house was

owned by james habersham senior and not james habersham jr but i i'm pretty sure it was james jr and they kept bringing up his father because james and his two brothers named joe and john so they had a letter thing going on uh they were all three uh they were all fighting for independence during the revolutionary war and their father was loyal to the crown and so there was this local drama between like the dad and his three sons like not getting along because they had very different political views um i think a lot of people here can say wow that aligns with my current life because i i have seen in a few of the facebook groups that a lot of people are currently dealing with their parents, especially when I cover the QAnon episodes. Yeah. So anyway, history repeats itself,

and our dads all have weird politics. So go figure. So it was built by James Habersham Jr., and his father is, I guess, not involved in the story beyond that history of James' life. So this is where I get confused again, because people were saying, oh, well, James Sr. was really rich. james's life and j so this is where i get confused again because people were saying oh well james

senior was really uh was really rich he was one of the richest people in the colonies and i was like he was loyal to the crown so i don't know what's going on here i'm just running with james jr the whole time okay he was one of the richest people in the colonies he owned a cotton plantation yikes and uh he was the first guy to actually start sending cotton to britain wait so maybe it wasn't done ah fuck okay um either way so far like not loving this guy that he's got a cotton plantation doesn't sound good the only like green flag of him is that he started uh the country's first orphanage so when that's so random yeah it's like oh i'm glad you i'm glad you're doing something good yeah but how do you

how do you do that i honestly don't know so yeah not that i i expect an answer there i'm just like even in today's world i wouldn't know how to do something like that yeah like it wasn't like this wasn't like a social worker who's like let's find a better way to do things this was like a cotton plantation owner yeah um who was like let's start an orphanage what right it feels like um you care a lot about certain people but not others but anyway whatever his brother joe he was apparently the most famous of the three brothers because he actually was one of the men who marched into the British governor's mansion and arrested him. So for history buffs, we're talking about that guy's brother for the story. James helped fund the Revolutionary Wars effort by being a merchant.

He had a lot of connections and that's how he was able to help the effort or help fund the effort. And he later served as a speaker of the General Assembly of Georgia. And also he was on the Board of Trustees. And they later helped establish the University of Georgia. Oh. Fun fact. Did you know that the Board of Trustees, I know this is the Board of Trustees for Georgia, so I don't know if it's, it's probably not the same. But in a small town, or like a small city, did you know that the Board of Trustees,

being the president of the board of a city, is the equivalent of today's mayor? I did not. Yeah. So now if you're a mayor, you can just use the old school verbiage of, I'm the president of the board of Burbank. I don't know.

Interesting. Okay. I only know that because the tavern in my city uh used to belong to the mayor of burbank but at the time he went by the president of the board of trustees so fun fact for everybody that is a fun fact if you see that on a historical marker in any capacity know that it's just a mayor so uh in the middle of him building his home, because it took from 1771 to 1789, it's 18 years. The reason it took him so long was because in the middle of him building his home, it was occupied by British forces. So he ended up having to hold off on building the rest of his home until after the Revolutionary War,

which is ironic that they were British soldiers occupying his home when he was like not loyal to the crown so 10 years after it was finally completed james allegedly died under suspicious mysterious circumstances and there are two camps with james's death and that he did in fact have a suspicious death or that he just died. And like, it's not that it's like not that crazy of a story because the rumor is he walked in on his wife sleeping with their architect from when they were building the house. And he was so distraught that he died by suicide by hanging himself in the

basement. Others say there were different reasons why he did this. Either the wife died and he was overcome with grief or something like that but it all ends with him hanging himself in the basement but that can't totally be true because he was buried with his family on consecrated ground which if you die by suicide i i don't know if this is still a thing but because it was a is it a cardinal sin or a i i don't know the term but yeah i know you're not supposed to be buried within like at least in the catholic church if you kill yourself you just can't be buried in a catholic cemetery well

he's buried there so they're saying like well then he couldn't have died by suicide if that's what happened but then other people have turned it into a conspiracy theory where like there was a cover-up on how he died so that he could be buried with his family so i feel like it's people kind of like splitting hairs and like trying to make a story out of something because there's no real solid information except people saying oh well this is what happened and there's a cover cover up if you don't believe me. Also, because his death certificate says that he was in declining health. But then other people can argue like, well, he was in declining health and that's why he died by suicide. So, you know, I don't really we don't really know how he died. And that's what makes it mysterious.

But he was buried with his family. And people for that reason are like, no, he literally just died. Can we just leave him alone, please? Yeah. Other people who died on the property, it was just James and all of the enslaved people he had on his property. Many of them were kids and they died of yellow fever. Although I'm wondering if that's a cover up for reasons why enslaved people were dying on his property. to cover up for reasons why uh enslaved people were dying on his property so all the spirits happened to be uh james descendants of him and or enslaved people after james's death the family

sold the house and the building later became an antique store a bookstore became an attorney's office it became a tea shop which i like the most and it became a planter or it became planters bank which was the first bank in georgia i guess fun fact like like the peanuts yeah i don't know i don't know i planters i don't know i feel like peanuts when i think of peanuts i think of georgia and then i think planters peanuts i think of you think of peanuts for georgia why i think isn't that isn't that we're like as a virginian i'm offended because we are known for our peanuts really my thought is georgia but um i maybe i'm just i'm not educated yeah yeah back away back away zed leave my peanuts alone no virginia is very proud of their peanuts i have tried them there i don't know i

don't get it it's fine do you like boiled peanuts i do me too i had those peanuts in coke do you do peanuts in coke i've never had that i've heard that that sounds really good i i feel like i would like that it's very it's very much the salty sweet situation i like that it's a weird texture though because it's liquid and really hard crunchy things all at once so it's it's a weird mouth feel but it tastes good like crunchy boba yeah yeah it's like instead of boba it's rocks you know so appealing wow when i think of actually speaking of the virginia georgia uh love combo of peanuts and coke coke is from georgia yes yeah so i'm gonna let that be where your association drifted off to okay they also uh made waffle house which uh i love the waffle house i don't know why it's called planters bank yeah i don't know i started this

weird this weird side thing i wonder if it's as dark as like because it was a plantation yeah okay yeah i don't know farming plant not to make it like so sad but i don't know yeah and what's interesting is they must be proud of that history because um what the restaurant now in the basement is a tavern called Planter's Tavern. So they've kept the name. So maybe it's not as sad as we think. If it is, Georgia needs to hold the mirror up to itself with that name. Okay, so in the 50s to 60s,

that was when the house had its first real restoration. So it had all these different shops in it, but this was the first time it was getting kind of really renovated, I guess. And it was sold in the 70s. Restoration continued with the new people and it ended up becoming a restaurant in 1971. So it's been a restaurant ever since. From 1971 to 1992, the original people that kept it as a restaurant ended up selling it to the family that uh now still owns it today so since 1992 it's been under the same operation uh that's uh as of reading these notes i don't know if there was like some sort of covet update i didn't find online but i feel like every single story i do

now there's like it might have only been owned by people by the people i'm talking about until like a year ago you know so as far as i know it's still owned by the same people since the 90s. The house has survived multiple wars. It's survived multiple fires, including one fire that actually destroyed 200 buildings around it in town. So it's got some strong bones. Wow. And it was occupied, again, british soldiers at one point and then during the civil war it was it was occupied by general sherman's people it was general sherman's

headquarters momentarily and allegedly this house held secret meetings by our james held secret meetings here during uh the revolutionary war to help the colonies gain independence so this might have been like a little spy house too wow so please ask me why it's pink because this is my favorite fun fact of it all um what i've been wondering is why is this house pink it's you know a lot of people ask and so uh james when he first got the house it was built on really solid red bricks uh and i say solid red bricks because the bricks were so red i don't know what sort of potency was going on with them but james desperately wanted the house to be white i don't know why he just wanted to paint it white so he had red bricks and he wanted to put stucco stucco stucco yeah and no matter how many layers he would put on uh the red just showed

through the white and it ended up making the house look pink wow okay that's fun apparently he kept trying to like re-plaster stucco onto this house until he died like non-stop and it i don't know if like maybe the the the mix or the formula he was using like would melt with the sun or something it just it always kept letting the red shine through but no matter how many layers he put on it would always stay pink up until that was in the 1700s up until the 1920s this house was annually getting repainted white to try to keep the pink from showing through and it would never work that's some like lady macbeth shit like they're getting that spot out and they just can't i know so apparently this house was just ready to be pink and that's why i keep saying it like aggressively red bricks. Like, what formula is in these bricks?

Because I feel like that should be in makeup or something if you really want a bold look, you know? Oh, yeah. So anyway, they ended up not having to deal with this problem anymore of painting it white through the red bricks, and then it'd be pink. In the 1920s, because a woman started working there, she was finally the owner of the building,

and with her big fat brain, she was like, let's literally just paint it pink and own it. Let's just own the fact that we have a pink building. Clearly the house's spirit wants to be pink and we're going to let that happen. So in an aggressive display of anti-toxic masculinity, she was like, this house is pink

and we're just going to love it anyway. And after that, that was when the owner was a tea shop owner, by the way. So when the house was a tea shop, it officially became the pink house versus it being like mocked as the pink house. Today, it has multiple dining spaces. If I'm reading that right, it sounds like there's like four different restaurants all attached to this building or at least four different dining spaces for one restaurant it seems like the first two floors were all dining rooms then the basement was its own tavern and then adjacent to the house was another bar that was owned by the property so it seems like there I don't know if it was a i don't really know what was going on i would have to actually come to this old pink house and understand with my eyes but it seems

like there's at least one bar or maybe two bars i'm unsure uh the bar downstairs is called planters tavern like i said and then the second bar which is the one adjacent to the house, is called the Arches. So most of the stuff that people have seen is James himself. But like I said earlier, the other spirits have been James's descendants and the people he enslaved. And by the way, this is a quick little story. We're already on the ghosts. So just to give you some spooky tales about this place, if you happen to be in the area and are hoping to find a ghost, keep your eyes peeled for these fellas. There is the apparition of a Revolutionary War soldier.

And all of these are apparently solid as can be. You would not know that they are ghosts. So when you keep your eyes peeled, your eyes are going to fool you, too. So maybe don't actually trust your eyes at all. The soldier is seen at the bar uh has literally walked up and ordered a drink or has been seen sitting at a table and ordering a drink he has toasted with patrons he has uh people have watched him take a drink smile at them and then he disappears there is one man who recalls making intense solid eye contact with this man uh so like they both recognize the other and i guess one was sitting on one side of the bar the other was sitting on like it was like a like a star-crossed lovers moment of like across the

hall we saw each other and one of them or the guy the guy who is witnessing this ghost took his glass and lifted him and went like hey you know to you and the guy did it back took a sip and then because he was dressed as a soldier the guy witnessing all this looked to the bartender to be like who is that guy that just toasted with me in the in the costume and the bartender was like what man like i don't see anything and when he turned around the guy was gone i'm not too familiar with savannah but what i've heard is it's very lovely and known for its history so i i and uh i imagine if i were there and saw someone dressed like that i think oh okay they're part of some sort of reenactment or they work yeah in town

uh so i could see that but then once they disappear i think oh no i just saw a ghost i i don't know how to feel anymore that's i also anytime i'm in i guess like the south or on the east coast parts of the east coast that were like one of the 13 colonies i'm just like oh you know anything's possible like it's like if i see someone in a reenactment outfit i wouldn't even really think about it especially because fredericksburg is like really heavy on the reenactment stuff so i feel like i've been primed to just ignore ghostly looking soldiers so who knows how many you saw not realizing and then you like looked away thinking oh it's just's just another person. I don't know. Hey, that would be pretty wild. I wish I could – there would be no way to know unless I had asked somebody.

Exactly. I'm too shockingly introverted to ask about the reenactment people or I'm too accustomed to the reenactment people to not even mention it. So there's that guy. He's the ghost that I would want. He didn't bother anyone he just lifted his glass he just took a sip and faded away that's my favorite kind of ghost there's also apparently james himself where people have seen him uh still doing like general upkeep around the

restaurant so people have seen him like straightening tablecloths or like moving moving chairs around okay so apparently he will uh straighten the tablecloths or like moving chairs around. So apparently he will straighten the tablecloths, he'll move the chairs. And if staff are too slow or too messy or if they leave their post before finishing a task, they will come back and it's done for them. Interestingly, employees have only seen him. I don't know if this is a new thing or if this has been the haps since he died. But people only see him from october through march but april to august he is not there he's on vacation he's a seasonal ghost kind of thing like a seasonal worker he just kind of shows up and he goes on vacation i love that actually

that's so fun let's go with that i saw some people making the joke online that he's like avoiding like the georgia summer heat and i'm like well that's also a ghost i can understand like if i'm a ghost it doesn't matter if i can't die from heat exhaustion but i will certainly make it seem like i can so people also often see children in the basement which are were enslaved children um and they're sitting in the basement which is now the bar so they're seeing a lot in the tavern um i apparently one of their pastimes people report seeing is children throwing dice against the wall i don't know what that means i don't know if that was like a game they created or if that's just like a game that's just like been lost to time and i don't know how to what throwing dice at a wall does or maybe you're like

gambling by yourself i don't really i'm unsure but that's what people say apparently they also like to play with people's shoelaces they will untie them they will loop them around things they'll tug on them so if you try to pull on your own shoelace because it's you want to tie your shoe something will be holding it on the other end which is super creepy to me yeah i wonder what that means or if it's just kids pranking people but anyway look out for your shoelaces i like that that actually happened in the movie casper the friendly ghost because it now makes i now attribute it to friendly ghosts do that. Oh, yeah. Or really unfriendly ghosts who are going to like tie you to like a banister

and then you trip off down the stairs. I don't know. It could get really dark really fast. They also, so not only do they like to prank people with their shoelaces, but they will also regularly knock over cutlery. They'll knock over glasses. They'll knock over the menus. They will throw wine bottles at people.

That's a lot. Whole bottles. That's a little much. It's also scary at how much strength they have. Oh, good point. You know? Because I feel like if only really powerful spirits can even muster up the strength to do that. Because on little ghost equipment, if you're like, oh, can you make the light turn on? I feel like I've seen a bunch of times people ask questions like, oh, is it really difficult

for you to do that? Does that take a lot of energy? And that's why the machines aren't lighting up as much as I'd like them to. And I've seen spirits say, yes, that takes a lot of energy. I don't know if that's true or if they're just giving me an excuse. I don't know. But if that's true,

where they can barely even make a machine light up and now there's ghosts out there just throwing heavy, full wine bottles, it's pretty scary at how powerful they are. The employees are apparently so used to wine bottles getting knocked over or pulled out of the racks and thrown at people that they don't even seem to be fazed by it. There was one person who witnessed one of the general managers watch a wine bottle just like fly out of a cabinet by itself. And she just kind of caught it and went back to work.

She was like, whatever. Like, this is just my everyday. Which is so mind blowing to me that there are people out there who don't believe in spirits. But then there's other people who are just like, their muscle memory is to like catch flying objects at their job. One worker, actually, their job when closing up was to blow out all of the candles on the tables. And when they left for a moment, they came back and all the candles were relit and it was not long enough that someone could have gone in and relit all of these candles and in a moment this this for a moment the worker was like oh maybe i didn't blow them out yet but even though

the candles were lit the candles still had smoke hovering over them from when she blew them out okay weird employees have also just like the shoelaces they've tried to pull tablecloths had smoke hovering over them from when she blew them out. Ooh, okay. Weird. Employees have also, just like the shoelaces, they've tried to pull tablecloths off of tables at the end of the night, and something is pulling on the other end, and then they'll check to see, like, oh, well, is it stuck on something? It's not stuck on anything, but you can see that it's being tugged on. Or at least you can feel it. It's like there's a tug-of-war thing going on where

you can like something's holding on and then i guess i saw one note that uh this worker was trying to yank on the tablecloth and something was matching her strength the whole time and eventually it yanked harder than her because i guess she it said that it said in this tug of war the spirit won and she when she realized that it had like yanked harder than her she like ran away which like duh i would do it too um but it could have also been kids pulling pranks on people who knows so people also hear uh the sound of heavy coins being shuffled around and apparently that this was an area where gold was being handled at one point oh and also it was a bank so maybe there's like you know coins in that i don't know and so uh near where the vault used to be people

hear their name being called by voices they don't recognize they will see a floating light move around one of the rooms and it will all of a sudden vanish out of nowhere and pictures will turn out distorted at random times so there was one picture a person got of an apparition of a solid man and then also i don't know if it was the same picture or another picture but it was the same person looking through uh their camera and they found hiding behind a chair was a little kid's face staring into the camera oh no no thank you on the second floor there is a woman seen in a scarf looking very sad and walking upstairs and she is heard sobbing at night as the staff closes up where they've actually thought there was a guest still upstairs, and they went looking, and nobody was there.

Ooh. James's son has apparently been seen around the area, and he also looks solid. He orders and pays for a beer, and people will see him walk out of the bar. I don't know if he's, like, also now holding the beer.

Like, he just, like, takes it with him out the door. But people have followed him out and have seen him head towards the cemetery, which by... It by relatively early at night, the cemetery closes. And it's completely fenced off with an iron gate. But they will see this guy order a beer, leave the bar, head towards the cemetery. And then he will, quote, stop at the iron fence surrounding the monument where he's buried and walk right through it and disappear.

Oh, just needs a beer. Have a drink, you know. He's just grabbing one for the road before he goes to bed at night, you know. It's a nightcap. So James's wife is also here. I don't know why. I don't know if James's wife had like a reputation for being a nasty person in life or something. But they say this is james's wife and i don't know why or why the the behavior of the spirit seems similar to the

wife but i guess she hisses at you and she will yell at women in the bathrooms and if you're in the bathroom either for too long or maybe she's in the bathroom and you walk into the restroom the stall doors will shake and you will hear a woman's scream get out i'm like okay that's oh don't like that like i don't like that and also like i like poor if that's your wife james i'm sorry but also like how do we know that's his wife like what like was she doing that when she was alive just like rip install doors off the handles some boomer was like sounds like my wife must have been James's wife that feels kind of like what happened actually speaking of the bathroom doors I don't know if this is James's wife or the children playing pranks or whatever but the

spirits often lock women in the bathroom and management at one point kind of shaved part of the door off thinking maybe it warped. And so that was what was making people get stuck in there, but the door still kept sticking. And I guess after enough attempts of doing different things, management just literally took the entire lock mechanism off the door. And it was like a hold the door while you squat kind of thing and even then when the door was completely unobstructed and there was no lock on it it would

still feel like someone was holding the door shut and there was no way people could get out i've had that happen before it's a really jarring experience to get locked in a bathroom that you know is unlocked and you know the door isn't disturbed at all. It's really weird because it does feel like someone is just leaning their whole body into the door and there's nothing you can do. Creepy. And then finally in 2011, there is security footage of a figure floating down the hallway and then disappearing, which you can find on YouTube. And those are all of the ghosts at the old pink house. It sounds busy.

It does. And that feels right for a restaurant, especially a bar. And especially at such a historic place. I mean, based on what you talked about, I mean, a lot of stuff has gone down here. So it makes sense. It makes total sense. I feel like restaurants often have

the most activity but it's also the most chaotic activity which i i like that it's matching the same energy as the people really working there but it's uh just that it's always so kind of i feel like half the things that happen in haunted restaurants don't even get documented because people are so focused on their own job they're't even get documented because people are so focused on their own job they're not paying attention or because it's so fleeting like oh a glass will break and then it's like well that could you know for all we know an actual patron did that and i didn't notice and so i feel like restaurant stories are one of my favorites because it's very rare you get a whole set of records of ghost hauntings when so much is probably just you know overlooked totally so

anyway i'm happy that i that i found a restaurant one and a savannah one so hopefully you georgians are happy for a little bit i've always wanted to go to savannah and now i have another reason to i've never been i have also been told that i need to go. Same with Charleston, South Carolina. Yeah, yeah. Also never been there. Oh, that was fun. Thank you. You want something less fun? You know, I had a hunch I might get it, so my expectations were low. Next one that I'm in is going to be a lot more fun, I think. This one, not so much. Great. I can't wait to be bummed out. Still cry me the next one. Okay, in is going to be a lot more fun, I think. This one, not so much. Great. I can't wait to be bummed out.

Still cry me the next one. Okay, whatever. I'll just get into this one. This one has a little story behind how I got into it. Because for one of the episodes that I just did, the first one, I think, I did Bartsch, that one German fella who wasn't so good. And I told my dad about that and i said oh i'm doing this guy and then a week later so we were watching football and i brought it up again i was like oh you know that that serial killer that i'm doing and then he started singing a song and i'm like what are you singing and i'm like this is a he's yeah, you know, Fritz Harman. I mean, that's not, he says it how a German would say it, but he says Fritz Harman.

And I'm like, no, I don't know who that is. And he said, yeah, like he was the butcher and the vampire of Hanover. I'm like, who are you talking about? And he sings a song and I'm like, it's like a nursery rhyme, but it's terrifying. It's typical German. Yeah. Yeah. Also, it's typical germans yeah yeah also it's typical bernie i feel like

every time anything comes out of his mouth it it's followed with well you know and it's like i promise i don't i've only met him a few times and with certainty i can say that's probably half your conversations yeah it's so true and in hindsight you're probably saying this to us as a kid. And I looked it up, and sure enough, I found a video of... One was like a kind of a... I don't know how to describe it. Like a fun, like, big band version of it, of this song. And then another was an old woman singing it, which was very creepy. But I have the translated lyrics.

So I'm going to start with that, because this was my introduction, was this song to this guy. So I'm going to introduce everyone the same way. I'm not going to sing it. I'm sorry. But here are the lyrics. Okay. In Hanover by the Leine, which is a river, Red Row No. 8 lives the mass murderer Harmon, who has killed quite a few people. Harmon also had a helper. Granz was the name of this young man he enticed with pleasure all the little boys it's not it

sounds so much like creepier when it's like german to english translation it sounds so much creepier also when you are just i think singing is what makes it seem jolly because when you just tell me like he had a helper this was his name it sounds all of a sudden so like a court document you know yeah and the music though too it's all it was very fun and like lively i'm like what and the lyrics are just awful uh so then it says uh this is this is the kicker here wait wait just a little while soon harman will come to you too with a little hatchet he'll turn you into ground meat uh this is this is the part my dad's saying in german i was sitting there like what are you saying to me um he'll make meat jelly from your eyes he'll make bacon out of your butt

he'll make sausages from the intestines and the leftovers he'll throw away and that is the song so wow i have a lot to say um mainly i don't know why i'm shocked because when you really look at the history of any nursery rhyme it's so horrible true but i love it's just such a good way to show how times have changed and especially in like the world of like cancel culture and humor of like that was definitely humor from a different time where someone was like i'm gonna make this up and sing it to my baby and like just the baby will grow up totally well developed you know and now i think if you sing that to any children who are being raised through like gentle parenting they'd be like what like what do you mean so it a, it's a nice timeline of where we've been

and where we are. I can test your theory out and, uh, sing something like this to Leona and see how, uh, her parents react. You know, I, you know, you and I could really conspire some real trickery there. You and I could both do it at different times and we'll just always make sure the baby is like at some it's a little nervous all the time just see what happens. Oh no. So yeah so that's how I got I found out about this guy uh his name was Fritz Harmon uh he is known as the butcher of Hanover the vampire of Hanover as the Vampire of Hanover, as well as the Wolfman. That was another one. I'll get into the reasons why. It'll be clear once I get into it. But we'll start at the beginning. uh october 25th 1879 in hanover germany the youngest of six children and the favorite he was spoiled by his mother and his dad who was a railroad fireman uh was very strict and was also unfaithful uh to harman's uh mother but they stayed together until harman's mom died in 1901 uh this was kind of thrown in there and there wasn't much information about it,

but he was molested at age eight by one of his teachers. He was very open about many things, including his crimes in the end, but he would not speak about that any further than that. He had below average grades, but was known to be very active and physically fit. So he opted to enroll in a military academy at the age of 15. Oh, he volunteered. Yeah, yeah. He wanted to join the military.

So he joined at 15 and he did actually really well. But he suffered from, quote, periodic lapses of consciousness, which ended up being likened to epilepsy. So they didn't say he was having seizures specifically, but they said that that's pretty probably what it was. He chose to discharge himself, putting his military career on hold, and he went back home and worked in his dad's cigar factory that he had recently started. So while home and worked in his dad's cigar factory that he had recently started.

So while home, that is when, and working for his dad, that's when he committed his first known sexual offenses. He would lure young boys to secluded areas, especially cellars, and sexually abuse them. And he was even arrested for it in July of 1896 at the age of 16. Wow. And he was sent to a mental institute in Hildesheim in 1897. So then he was sent back to Hanover for mental evaluation. And a psychologist said that he is, quote, incurably deranged. Whoa.

Big words. Yeah. quote incurably deranged whoa big words yeah and so was like lock this boy up for good or at least for now i guess we're gonna get we're gonna be in trouble if we don't lock him up yeah and uh he was locked up for seven months uh until with the help of his mother he managed to escape and flee to switzerland uh where he worked as a handyman in a shipyard and lived with one of his, I believe, uncle, his mom's relatives. So he lived there for 16 months. And then at the age of 19, he returned to Hanover, where he met and eventually got engaged to Erna Löwert. I don't know how to, Löwert? I'm going to say Löart. I'm going to say it like an American would.

Who then became pregnant with his child. And one thing that bothered me about reading this, and based on all the sources I read, they just said he returned. And I'm like, this guy was... I was going to say, was he only supposed to lay low for a minute? Because I would never go back to... If I was already deemed a danger to society, why would never go back to if i was already deemed like a danger to society why would i go back unless it was like some sort of like weird arrogance yeah i have no idea i i think um and like i i don't know i don't know if it's it was more of like a oh rehabilitation so

like he's been away for so long and he was just good to come back but i could i read there was nothing that i could find about him just kind of coming back. And he didn't have to report to the police or do anything. But maybe it was because he was a minor. He was under 18. And then he came back. I think he was over 18. So maybe that had to do with it.

But he also was in the military by 15. So were they allowing minors? What's a minor at that time in that area that was like a military academy so i think he was it was more of like you know school but you're for you're going to be in the military um like a jrotc situation yes uh and speaking of which he actually did end up joining the military because he was it was compulsory you every person had to um and including myself when i was so i actually when i was in a senior in high school received a letter from the german government i don't know what what specifically but i've got a letter saying hey you're a german citizen

a male german citizen you have to report for uh your compulsory military service. And I was here in the U.S. in high school, and I was like, no. I surely do not want to do that. Well, so I assume you had to, yeah? No. What happened was my mom found it. So this was actually last year, 2011, last year that this was required in Germany. So now there is no compulsory military service.

But my mom found out that it wasn't that strict. You know, if you were an academic, quote unquote, like going to college or doing certain, you could get out of it, basically. out of it basically so my mom had my school advisor write a very well-worded letter on my high school stationery like he will be going to the universe to a university here in the united states it was this very like flowery to try to get out of it and sure enough they were like okay and i didn't have to give up my citizenship because that was a concern was i was worried that i'd have to give up my dual citizenship if I said no. But they were chill. They were like, okay, you're good. Oh, wow. Okay. Did you have to sign up for the U.S. draft, though?

I did not. Oh, good. Okay. But actually, if I did join either military, I think if I joined the U.S. military, I would have to give up my German citizenship. That is my understanding. I don't know if that's still the case or if that, I'm pretty sure that at least was the case, but don't worry though. I have no interest in joining the U.S. military. Anyway, so that's what he was up to as well. So he was, he was forced to go back into the military, but he loved it. That was his, he said it was the happiest time of his life was when he was in the military. He was known to be a good soldier and an excellent marksman. But a year in, so this was 1900, and a year in, he suffered from dizzy spells, and they deemed him unsuitable for military service, and he ended up being dismissed after staying four months in a hospital. Wow. And he ended up being dismissed after staying four months in a hospital. So his like dream was somewhat shattered where this was his purpose.

He felt, well, it seems like every time he's tried to do something in the military, there's like a medical cause he finds out later and that's like, keep taking them out of it. So I, it's, I was anyway,

keep going before I give my theories. Sorry. Okay. Okay. so because of this he though he did get a pension so he was given 21 gold marks per month i could not find out how much that was but it seemed like okay like he did fine um and then he went home to hanover and lived with his fiancee erna uh he began work in his dad's cigar factory again, but then the two had a lot of falling outs. He ended up filing a lawsuit against his dad because he said that he was claiming he was unable to work the way his dad wanted him to because of his ailments from the military.

And those charges end up getting dropped and his dad was like you know what let's turn the tables and a year later filed a lawsuit against his son because apparently fritz was uh was threatening him was threatening blackmail was uh gave had these there were verbal death threats between them. And he said he wants his son to be recommitted in a mental institution. Those were also dropped. And a psychiatrist deemed Harmon mentally stable. So that just kind of all ended. And they seemingly made up.

Because his dad was like, here, let me set you and Erna up. I'll help you start a fishmongery. So this was when Fritz was 25. What the hell was that? That's a place where they, so it wasn't exactly clear. Some sources I saw called it a fish and chips shop, but those were like old newspapers,

so I wasn't sure how accurate that was. So I just left it fishmongery, which is a more general term for, they deal with fish. Either they sell fish wholesale, or they just, maybe it's a smaller fish shop. I don't know. Okay. But the dad was like, you're 25 years old.

You and your fiance need to need some help here. Let me help you open this up. And while there, Fritz was like, you know what? This, I physically cannot work. Fritz was like, you know what? I physically cannot work. So he petitioned to get more of a pension. And sure enough, he was granted a greater pension.

And he didn't have to work anymore. And then Harmon and Erna had a falling out. He accused her of cheating on him. And she ended up kicking him out. And the fishmongery was in her name. So he was just kind of left to his own devices and yeah then he's he this is where things took a not so great turn and he started to get into a life of crime uh-huh he spent a lot of the time in prison over the next like 10 years uh he was petty thief a burglar a con artist uh and he also later admitted to robbing several graves,

but that was never anything he was charged for. So after some time in prison, he was released in April of 1918, seven months before the end of World War I. So he was in prison for most of World War I, and he moved back to Hanover to live with his sister. So World War I is relevant because with World War I ending, there was a ton of poverty, a ton of crime. It was just not a good place to be, Germany post-World War I. And Harman took advantage, though, because there were a lot of shortages on different foods, supplies, etc. So he used his thieving skills to get a hold of these items and then sell them on the black market. So whether it was clothes, personal belongings, but one of the main things he did was he sold meat, he would steal meat, or get fake meat. And I say fake,

because he would take meat from horses and dogs and rep would repackage it as like pork so oh so it was falsify what it actually was to make some good money and sure enough he was making decent money by doing this got it it was not it was actual it was different to me yes it was exactly meat you would eat no exactly he wasn't like cooking up impossible burgers passing them off as like the real thing no right okay um so yeah also things i wouldn't eat um by the way did you hear about this it's like getting it's becoming a little viral on the and that's where i drink community but this who foo have you heard of this i have i have but it's uh meant to taste like humans and it's it's supposed it's vegan, right? But it's mimics...

It's plant-based human flesh. Yeah. I'm going to say, personally, I think it's more ethical than animal flesh. So I'm like, well, fair for it if you want to try it. Certainly, I have addressed many times on the show that I am very, very curious about the taste of human meat. Not that I could not partake in cannibalism but i it just it's a general wondering of like oh i'll never know that information so it's something i'll because i'll never know it i long to to look for the information and uh it's a hey if it if we knew that it tasted the same but then i would go into the same way

it'd be like well who tasted human meat to know that this is what human meat tastes like you know very true anyway tangent my bad yeah would you try it you would like it sounds like you would try it but now that i would try the fake one yeah and i also in a sick way i think i wouldn't try it unless i knew for sure it did taste like human meat, because the only reason I would want to do it at all was to know the taste. Yeah. And honestly, I would support you trying human flesh as long as there was consent there, and the other person said, hey, here, try some of my flesh. We've talked about it before. There was a guy who had his leg removed. He had like a,

he needed to go, he needed it amputated. And then he requested to have it afterwards. And him and his friends had a barbecue so they could all try it together. I don't know if I, I think I would be, I would go to the party. And I think as soon as it was sat in front of me, I actually couldn't do it. I don't know if I could eat my friend's leg, but technically I think that I would consider that. Maybe some vegans will get mad at me, but that sounds vegan because there's consent there. This is someone who can consent to their own meat being consumed.

So ethically, it can get hairy. If a cow could go up to you and say, yeah, you can do this. Like, would you eat a cow? I probably still wouldn't eat a cow. For dairy, maybe. If a cow was like, I would love for you to drink my milk. I don't know.

Like, it's some weird thing that they're into. If a chicken is like, please God, eat the eggs. Yeah, maybe. That would be at least more vegan than not, I think. I understand what you're saying, though. I don't think what you're saying is odd at all. I'll back you on that statement like it's hey consent is sexy it doesn't matter in what form it is if you need people if a chicken is saying please when i go

i really want to be fried chicken i'd be like yeah shit all right i'll eat i'll eat fried chicken it's like breast milk people think it's a gotcha kind of thing. And on my stream, people will be like, hey, what about breast milk? Would you drink breast milk? I'm like, yeah, because there'd be consent there. I would consider it. I'm not seeking it out. But if someone was like, hey, you want to try my... Okay, this is getting weird, especially with a sister who's breastfeeding.

I'm just saying it was one of those things where i'm like there's consent so i would consider it hey i would try my friend's breast milk i if if i mean if christine was like give it a shot i'd be like this is gonna be weird but let's do it you know to clarify i would never drink my sister's breast milk i have no interest in that this is i also don't have she listens to this episode for christine i also don't really have interest but if i was like what does it taste like and then christine was like do you like oh there's some spilled right here do you want to give it a whirl i'd be like we can never tell anyone about this but i i'll i am thinking about it you know you know what i think that sounds normal i think that sounds normal um and also to to to clear christine's poor

conscience if it were any of my friends if it were anyone i know who was like you want to give i would say yes across the board probably perfect perfect okay i'm glad we figured that out let's run away move on to post-world war one germany um okay um so at this time har Harmon was a known criminal. And the police were like, okay, you think like them. Do you want to be an informer? And he said, sure. And the reason he said sure was because, one, it helped him get away with his crimes.

But also it brought him into close contact with young men who, in eyes would be perfect victims whether it's because of their history you know their criminal history or because a lot of them were just stray runaway youths and so it gave him a lot of opportunities to find victims so these were people he would offer a meal and a place to sleep and that brings us to his first victim, who was a 17-year-old runaway, Friedl Rote, who disappeared when Harmon was 38. So at this point, he's 38. And Friedl's friends were like,

yeah, we saw him with a detective. And Harmon would pose as a detective. So the police realized, oh, they're talking about harman here so they went and they raided harman's apartment where they found harman with a half-naked 13 year old boy they searched the rest of the apartment but couldn't find any link to friedel's disappearance so they were only going to charge him with uh what he did to that 13 year old boy were only going to charge him with uh what he did to that 13 year old boy but later harman said that uh the time at the time when he was being his apartment was being searched uh friedel's head was sitting behind his stove wrapped in newspaper oh my god so it was supposedly his first victim i

think there were one or two prior that people link with him um but basically this could have put an end if they had found the head they could have put an end to uh his future crimes that i'll obviously get into that doesn't totally feel like it would be a first crime i feel like it takes a lot of commitment to cut someone's head off like that that feels like not a first try situation yeah and he did talk about how much he hated that part of it he said that was his which he did not like the actual dismemberment the butchering that is the part that he liked the least uh and he said he would pour a strong black cup of coffee to like fortify himself to get himself through it um all it took was coffee it would have taken recreational

drugs and the near overdose for me to even consider doing something like that but okay exactly and uh it's he was like oh it took me days to recover i'm like it would take me a lifetime to recover if i would take me and the next lifetime pieces yeah exactly but uh so he did get charged though um with uh sexual assault and battery of a minor uh And he was sentenced to nine months in prison. But, and it didn't go into detail how, he did manage to avoid serving the sentence for a while. So he was just kind of like,

oh, I'll serve it eventually. And unfortunately in that time, he met his would-be accomplice, Hans Granz, from the song. The man from the song, yep. Yeah, who was an 18 year old runaway uh who would go on to be not only his accomplice but also his lover oh and yet harman said he considered grance like a son um and he said quote uh he pulled him out of the ditch and tried to

make sure he didn't go to the dogs so he had a bit of a savior complex where he's like oh i saved this boy from this runaway from turning into something terrible or dying by taking him under my wing and um yeah i saved him from something terrible and now he's my accomplice in murder like exactly okay and he like was obsessed with hans like completely obsessed saying, quote, I had to have someone I meant everything to. So he, they would, it was not a healthy relationship, obviously. In a lot of ways,

my friend. Very many. And so Harmon did eventually serve this nine months in prison, was released at age 40. And of course managed to regain the police, police's trust. And he began working as an informer again, and he and Granz, I don't know whether to call him Hans or Granz,

either way it sounds the same, so I guess I'll just go between the two. They moved in together, and that's when the murdering really started to pick up. He committed at least 24 murders. Holy shit! the murdering really started to tick up. Uh-huh. He committed at least 24 murders. Holy shit. So this was a big-time serial killer in Germany, if not the most prolific serial killer in Germany, which makes sense why he has a song that my dad is singing over 100 years later.

Can you imagine, like, finally the one thing america has done right is we don't have a song about like jeffrey dahmer like that's like the best we got but like hey at least we've got that gosh yeah and so uh but so he said 24 murders but um or they said he was officially charged for 24 murders but he claimed to have killed between 50 and 70 people yeah so he wow and he wasn't sure he was like i think it was between 50 and 70 so after luring his victims he would uh rape them and then kill them by strangling them while also biting their neck which is how he got the um the vampire the vampire and the wolf man

because he would oftentimes bite through the victim's adam's apple and the trachea holy shit so he was like that was how he would kill them what he would literally sometimes bite through their neck oh my god i didn't know that was actually possible i guess i guess it makes sense well i don't know i've just never thought about it that much but now i can't stop thinking oh yeah it's disgusting it's terrible um and there are the details that i couldn't even bring myself to read i was like reading them and i'm like i i don't want to bring this i i don't want to talk about these specific things uh but that is so like core to like the the story because of sure nicknames and that was like know, obviously one of the more horrific things to have to read about.

God, there's really something so awful about the notion of anything happening to your neck. I mean, this is such an obvious statement, but it holds your brain. It holds your whole head up. For something that traumatic to happen, it's like just one of those things you don't think about. It's for something that traumatic to happen. It's like just one of those things you don't think about. I was talking with Kenyon about back problems. And like the second you throw your back out, you realize how important your back's been all along. I don't think I've ever really felt until this moment how important a neck is until you're thinking of someone fighting through it.

You're going through all the body parts. I'm really, I'm having a real crisis here okay what's our next episode gonna be like the the ears don't make it about fingernails and we'll be okay oh gosh okay i won't and there's nothing like that in here okay okay well i i have a personal story i could tell but i won't um god absolutely not that's that's the final episode of and that's where we drink i'll keep it to myself. DM me, everybody, if you want to hear about my... Don't do that.

That's weird. Okay. I take that back. Anyway, so after pouring his black cup of coffee, he would take out the organs. He would dice them and put them in buckets to be dumped in the river, the Lina, like in the song. And, yeah. And, um, one thing, you know, he's called the butcher and in the song, it talks about making these, making meat out of your body parts. Uh, that was a big part of this case. A lot of people,

there were rumors going around about, uh, how he would actually sell human meat. And that was part of what made it so shocking to people. Like, oh my God, I might've eaten human because of this guy. Ooh, he's very Sweeney Todd. Yeah, but based on what I've read, there is no evidence to support that. They raided his apartment. And while there was plenty of blood, there was no human meat, like meat that was being passed off as anything else like human meat being passed off as anything else he he seems to have some some shame

and uh the the dismemberment or having after the killing he seems to have some sort of shame i don't know if i don't i mean him and me, our morals don't match totally, but I feel like if he's dumping them in the ocean and like, he's just trying to get rid of it, I feel like it would be additional work to have to like, kind of sift it through a cooking process and all that. Yeah. I, and there was no like money-making, uh, the reason for his killing was not to make money and was not to sell meat for money. Uh actually said himself he doesn't really know why he did any of it. And he just kind of did it. He was like, yeah.

And he said when he would bite through these throats, he said it was like in passion. He said it was like a passionate thing. It wasn't really meant to kill them necessarily, but it's like he would definitely kill them. So I don't know why he would say that. But he said it was more of a passion thing, nothing else so wow that's i mean okay no yeah uh so back so back to his victims yeah so he his victims were mainly commuters uh they were or runaways uh and occasionally uh male sex workers all between the ages of 10 and 22. His first victim was Friedel in 1918. Then he killed 11 boys and men in 1923, 12 in 1924, and that brings our total to 24.

But those were only the ones that he was able to be charged with. There were five other boys who were murdered or went missing who he was never officially charged with, but he was a prime suspect. I'm going to go through those to justify why he's the suspect. There was one boy who Harmon wrote a letter to his school. After the boy went missing, he wrote a letter to the school giving an excuse for why he was absent

for so long. So clearly he had something to do with this boy. And then there was a boy whose body was found with a handkerchief that had Hans Granz's name on it. And it was stuffed in his throat. And then there was a boy whose belt buckle was found in Harmon's apartment after his arrest. And then another who he actually said Granz was responsible for. He said, oh, Granz killed this guy, not me. And then finally, a missing man whose suit Harmon was wearing on the day he was arrested.

Wow. Ding, ding, ding. Those are all smoking guns yeah crap and that brings us to what he would do after killing these victims and disposing of their bodies he would uh he would make money but not off their meat off of their clothes and their personal belongings so he would uh sell their belongings on the black market uh and his victims clothing were either in his possession in bronze's possession or in the possession of his acquaintances wow and then a year later may of 1924 at this point

no one knows what's going on you know boys have been missing but no one knows who did it okay and then two kids found a human skull in the river whoa and at first the police were like oh this might just be a prank just medical students throwing a skull in the river wow and do medical students do that that sounds so little i mean post-world war one germany is a wild place maybe i don't freaking know i i wouldn't be surprised weirdly. And then though, a second skull turned up and these were again, like boys or skulls, it's between 10 and 22. So it was, it fits this, they were similar skull shapes and they're like, Oh, okay. Something's fishy maybe. Uh, and then eventually in a nearby field, a bag of bones was found and the police were like, Oh, maybe we

should be taking this a little more seriously. Finally, it only took a whole skeleton to really get going. Yeah. And at this point, there were rumors about the missing boys. So a group of citizens did choose to check the river more closely, and they found more than 500 more human bones, which they turned into the police. And the police were like, okay, let's search the river. Fine. Now that you found 500 bones.

Right. Yeah, exactly. The bones were all of young boys and men. So Harmon was actually an obvious suspect because he has a history. And yet, you know, no one was looking into him before because he was an informer. You know, he had very close ties to the police. He helped them out. So finally, the police were like like let's put him under surveillance and they found him arguing with a 15 year old boy at the train station and decided to step in when things got uh heated and

the boy told the police that he had been staying with harman for four days and had been repeatedly raped uh sometimes with a knife to his throat oh my gosh so they charged harman with this with a sexual assault took him in for questioning um and searched his apartment in his apartment they found numerous blood stains uh which he tried to explain away by saying yeah i'm in the illegal meat trade of course there's going to be blood in my apartment okay and then they interviewed his neighbors who had seen him with many young boys and two neighbors said they saw him carrying a heavy sack down to the river and dumping something in um then the police took a lot of the clothes and personal items from his apartment and put them on display in the police station inviting family

members of uh missing boys to come in to try to identify any of the objects that they saw there. And sure enough, a lot of the items were identified as belonging to these missing boys. But Harmon again was like trying his best to explain it away, saying that he got them from either trades because he was a part of the black market, or that they were left behind by sexual partners. So, but then there was one like key missing boy, and this was Robert Witzel, whose clothes, boots, and keys were connected to that missing boy. And a friend of Witzel's had said that he had seen harman with him the day he went missing and his landlady harman's landlady was also found to be in possession of witzel's jacket

and witnesses said that they saw harman trying to remove identifying information from the tags oh so partially because of that because that was like a big smoking gun they're like look this is like so clear cut. And Harmon's sister apparently was there talking to him, trying to encourage him to speak to the police and open up about whatever it was that he had done. So Harmon did finally break and confess to not only Witzel's murder, but many of the other ones. So he just opened up and talked about everything. So then the trials begin he was found fit to stand trial by a psychiatric evaluation and on december 4th 1924 um yeah his

and hans granz's trials began so harman was charged with the murder of 27 boys and young men, but he only was convicted of 24 of them. Oh, okay. Do we know why the other three weren't? I think that those three were also connected to Hans Granz, and there was conflicting reports from both of them. So they couldn't for sure say, yeah definitely because they thought oh well it might actually be hans who was responsible for this but they couldn't say hans was responsible for it because but because harman might have been so uh that's what happened there but harman did plead guilty to 14 of the cases um and said that he couldn't verify that he participated in the

other 13 uh which weirdly i like reading this i kind of believed him because he'd be shown a photograph in court of a victim and he'd shrug his shoulders and be like i don't know who the hell that is but then he was told that he had the victim's clothes or personal items in his possession and he'd be like oh yeah then it probably was me so he was very like feel weirdly believable in that like he's like i i get what you mean but it's like oh well i guess if you're that candid about it even not knowing the person then maybe you aren't on the truth and he was weirdly insistent that the skulls found in the river were not of his victims because he said for every skull he smashed it into pieces so like he was

like yeah i know i did this terrible thing to the skulls i didn't just throw them in there i smashed them first so those two skulls were not uh related to my crimes huh so that would be it really does make a give it a more more give him more credibility if he's willing to like fess up to something else but then i guess he could i don't know well that's what he was doing with the legal me trade he was saying oh but i'm i'm doing this terrible thing uh so look don't look at that look at look at me doing this other terrible thing to distract you so but at this point you know he's agreeing to four or what 13 murders or 14 murders. So he's like, he's fucked either way.

So yeah, he's like, I might as well just say whatever the fuck I want. Yeah, exactly. I'm not going home tonight. Yeah. And he had no remorse. And he even said that if he were set free, he would most likely kill again. Well, especially because you said he didn't even know why he was doing it. Right. Exactly.

He didn't even give a motive. So he probably was definitely going to do it again. Yeah, he was like, yeah, this is what I do. And he described it as like, you know, this dark feeling. He just said it was just kind of what he did. It was very like weirdly dismissive, disturbingly dismissive. But yeah, no real motive. So which is just not.

Yeah. So and here's a quote from him before he was sentenced. He said, condemn me to death. I ask only for justice. I am not mad. Make it short. Make it soon. Deliver me from this life, which is a torment.

I will not petition for mercy, nor will I appeal. I want to pass just one more merry night in my cell with coffee, cheese, and cigars, after which I will curse my father and go to my execution as if it were a wedding. Oh, so he was like,

yeah, now that I did all this awful things, just kill me, whatever. Like, I don't know. It's just, this is just,

I feel like I had, I'm, I'm happy for you that you've like like made your bed with this but like yo like you're leaving a lot of damage behind oh yeah exactly um and sure enough he was in fact sentenced to death so okay and convicted of murdering 24 uh boys and young men and uh meanwhile grance was found guilty of incitement to murder and was also sentenced to death both of them uh death by beheading oh holy crap wow i didn't know that was an option at that point it was still a thing um it was still a thing and um so going down the

hans granz route quick uh before i get back to Harmon, right at the end here. A note was eventually found that Harmon wrote and signed and sent to Granz's dad, saying that Granz was actually innocent and did not know of, nor did he help with the murders. So because of this letter, it earned him a retrial. So Granz had a retrial and was eventually sentenced to life. And then that was reduced down to 12 years in prison. Wow. So after serving his 12 years, he was sent to a concentration camp, Sachsenhausen concentration camp, until the end of World War II.

And then he returned to Hanover and lived there until his death in 1975. So, yeah. And I tried to find an interview with him. I tried to see if, like, anyone, but I, nothing, I couldn't find anything because I thought that would be just a wild thing. I couldn't imagine living, you know, you're in the, in 1970s and you were part of like the most famous serial killers um yeah murder spree in germany and no one's interviewing you um talking about i mean this is just yeah i feel like there would definitely be room for some sort of news outlet to be like hey now that the main guy's gone tell us the truth on like or i mean even i don't know how the legal system works there but like you can't i don't know what the right word is but you can't try someone after they've been

sentenced or yeah i mean at that point like i just start talking like if there's media interested in your story right yeah i imagine after going through that and then life in a concentration camp if he truly didn't know about the murders and if he truly, uh, was innocent to a degree, um, I could imagine why he wouldn't want to. And, you know, that would be quite a bit of trauma to have gone through in, in, uh, in, in a single lifetime. So I wouldn't necessarily blame him for not, but yeah, I was surprised. I thought, I thought maybe there'd be something out there and I, nothing I could find, at least. But yeah, so now let's get back to Harmon and what he was up to.

Like I said, he was sentenced to death on the morning of April 15th, 1925. At the age of 45, Harmon was beheaded by guillotine. He spent his last night smoking an expensive cigar and drinking Brazilian coffee. his last night smoking an expensive cigar and drinking Brazilian coffee. And his last words were, quote, I am guilty, gentlemen, but hard though it may be, I want to die as a man. And then right before placing his head on the guillotine, he added, I repent, but I do not fear death. And that's it. That's the butcher of Han of hanover the wolfman the vampire of hanover

the man my dad still sings about right yeah everyone's favorite tune um wow butcher of hanover i don't think i'd heard of him before yeah it's i feel like um i'm always shocked i don't know why but i'm always shocked that i don't know why, but I'm always shocked that I don't know people. If they're notorious enough to have gotten a nickname, it's still crazy that after all these years of doing this, there's just names I've never heard of before, but they clearly have some sort of infamous past. It's the fact that your dad sings about him.

It's like, hold on. Actually, this makes me go back to the nursery rhyme thing of like why don't we just make nursery rhymes about happy things like so true i don't know i don't know if anyone has ever dug into the history of nursery rhymes that actually maybe i'll make that as a topic one day but um but yeah pretty much any nursery rhyme you can think of has some like really fucked up history and i don't know why everyone was just singing about that and not like hey today i got a raise like why isn't there a song that makes people happy so anyway it's just interesting science that you can say anything in a happy tune and people will listen for years and years and years yeah and i i encourage everyone to

like go go on youtube and check out that's the songs there's a whole list of them there's also a metal version um what song so something for everyone's genre of music um the one i found was an older woman the one most interesting i thought was an older woman um who must have heard it as a child or sang it to her own children singing the song so what is it called the song um i think it's just like harm the harman so his name is spelled h-a-a-r-m-a-n-n and it's like the harman uh you would say lead l-i-e-d that's song in german so um if you if you type that in you should be able to find it. In a fucked up way, I'm surprised it's not called The Harmony.

Right? Also, I still have yet to send you my three CD set of The Bunnyman guy. I owe you that. And everyone, please go check out that Bunnyman CD while you're at it, if you're listening

from a couple weeks back. Anyway, thank you so much for coming couple of weeks back. But anyway, thank you so much for coming on and telling us a horrible story. You said next week is going to be a little more entertaining, a little more. Okay. Not bad. I don't know what the right word is.

Yeah, exactly. I don't know the right word either. Um, there is a murder involved. It is not, that's not a good thing, obviously.

Um, but it deals with a, a passion of mine. So researching it was a little bit more, let's say a little less disturbing than this one was. So hopefully people agree when they listen. I have no idea what my story will be for you next week, but I appreciate you being here and putting in the work

and also teaching us all a really horrific German cautionary tale. You're welcome. I expect nothing less from the sheepers and that's why we drink