And That's Why We Drink - E258 One Titty Out History and Eternal Skinny Dipping

Episode Date: January 16, 2022

Welcome to episode 258, boozers, shakers and Wine & Crime Coven! We're so grateful to kick off our last month of Christine's parental leave with the Wine & Crime gals, starting with Kenyon! First, Em covers a story close to Kenyon's past with the haunted Castle of Good Hope. Then Kenyon brings us the notorious tale of Lavinia Fisher and the Old Charleston Jail. And P.S. if Timmy gives you a bouncy ball, you just might have given your soul to Timmy... and that's why we drink!

okay look everyone eva isn't here to tell me that we're okay so i'm hoping that this will continue recording the whole time i'm nervous about my icloud account anyway fingers crossed. Welcome to this already chaotic experience where you have seen Eva on the show for the last, for two months ago now. You've seen Zandy on the show for the last month. And now it is time for new guests. And a majority of this month, at the very least, three of the four weeks, are going to be taken by storm by the Wine and Crime Gals. Taken by Storm by the Wine and Crime Gals. They very lovely and very kindly volunteered to each take an episode. So we are starting with the lovely Kenyon.

Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here. We very much appreciate you being here and, you know, trying to snag Christine's job. If you wanted to do an official permanent collaboration with him that's what she has an adorable new baby she's fine she can handle it when this when this comes out uh it will be i think after i think it'll be 2022 i think this comes out next year oh finally finally we're very ahead it's not even it's not even halloween yet folks over here so i have my god i'm impressed we like if we're three weeks ahead in recordings we're like we're so professional that happened one time when we were on tour

r.i.p but uh we did it one time where we were ahead like i think i think we got to a month in five years that was the best we'd ever prepared and we felt so fancy and now technically i guess we are technically we're prepared but also christine and i should have recorded enough episodes in advance we didn't have to ask people to guest so i don't know if this is a cool fun way and you know what you gotta live your values and give parental leave to folks well i think it's great uh to anyone listening nobody knows this because we haven't talked about it and but christine uh had the audacity at one point to tell me oh yeah well like i had the baby and like it was like five days after giving birth she was like just let me know whenever you want me to come back and record and I was like Christine I was like

sit your ass down like I we've got it handled even I have got people available it's gonna be fine but of course in Christine fashion within like a week she was itching to come back she's ready it's like are you still sitting on ice packs and like wearing a diaper can you just calm down I told her I was like the second that I create a family like do not expect to hear from me for three months like at the very least like I'm not going I'm absolutely not working so please don't make me feel bad in the future by working now like just stay home so anyway we very much appreciate you and then next week we got another one of your buds on. So how are you and why do you drink?

Is there a good or bad reason at all? I'm putting you on the spot here. You are putting me on the spot. I'm doing great. Lucy, Amanda, and the fourth gal, Scott, were recently visiting me here in Louisville, Kentucky. And so that was really fun. They were here last weekend. And we went to Waverly Hills Sanatorium. Was that your first time there? Mm hmm. Yeah.

What was how did you like it? I really liked it. I am a total baby about that stuff. So I thought that I was not going to be able to handle it and they kind of dragged me to it because okay they were like it's it's you know we we call each other meh and so we were the weekend was called meh Halloween and we were excited and they were like we have to do it and I was like okay was it like a ghostly tour or did you just take like a history tour of it or what it was um it was like their halloween tour so it was kind of like i think they were packing in as many things as they could to like get as many tours through in the month of october as they could so it's kind of a smash up of history and paranormal um it was cool it was fun and i handled it much better than i thought i would

uh okay it was exciting and afterwards lucy took a bunch of photos because we were allowed to with no flash and afterwards i spotted a red ball in one of the hallways and no way that is one of the like stories that they have is like this ghost named Timmy that they've named Timmy who like plays with a ball in the hallways. Oh, so creepy. And I spotted one. So I don't know if they planted it there or not. I don't know. I do know there's there's one trick with green lights, but I've never heard of a red one actually doing that.

So this is like a physical ball. Shut the fuck up. up wait i thought it was like a light this whole time no a ball a physical toy ball that was in the hallway and it was it was on the second floor and they didn't tell us that story until the third floor oh if they if that is planted, genius organization of the story so that you feel like you saw something original. Right. But, like, also that's just so scary. And also I love when buildings just randomly pick a name for their ghost. And it's something as sweet as Timmy when Timmy could be a demon, you know? Right.

Exactly. It's like Timmy sounds fun, but, like, I'm not fucking with Timmy either. Right. Timmy giving you a ball is actually an exchange for your soul. Oh, God. And then is there a reason why you drink at all? Is there a good or a bad thing that's happened this week for you? You know, it's coming up on Halloween.

We carved pumpkins, but then the squirrels demolished all of our pumpkins. But maybe that's why I drink. All my pumpkin carving work was for naught because they're just ruined. I hear you. Are you doing anything specific for Halloween night? Are you dressing up as anything? I have this. So for our live stream, I got a headdress that's supposed to be like Moira Rose from the Toast of Eyes.

And I'll probably just rehash that because it's my favorite thing ever to wear very fun i we haven't figured out yet if we're dressing up or not every single year i tell allison she should dress up as the scarlet witch and like it one because i am obsessed with elizabeth olsen but two because there there's i think i i might just have like lovey-dovey eyes and maybe it's not true but in my mind Elizabeth Olsen and Allison actually have a lot of similar features and so I kind of want to put her in the costume just to see how right I am just to see how accurate if you were to put them next to each other it would look so and I'm I'm Allison good about like prepping a costume no that's it's we've been together for this is our fourth Halloween together Scarlet Witch has been on my mind for at least

half of that time and nothing but also like I where I just thrive under pressure and so usually if I can't get a costume together in like 20 minutes then I won't do it right so I have if we do it I want to do it right I want to have like a whole cosplay experience with it and and I just have I don't have the time and I can't justify the money so right well you have the skills though to create thank you I maybe I have the skills for props but but when it comes to wardrobe, I can't do anything. I there was actually a wardrobe person at the prop, the prop house that I worked at. And it was really weird. Everyone has so many skills at that company where you could basically bring in any unfinished task and someone would be able to do it for you during their lunch break.

So like I had a shirt, I had a shirt that I really liked with holes in it. And I was like, oh, can you patch this up? And people would just trade skills for favors. And so I, the fact that I worked at a prop house and had to go to a seamstress on her lunch breaks for help tells me I probably can't put together a Halloween costume. Well, my husband's going as Ted Lasso, not Not super inventive, but he's also a middle school principal and, like, has to have that kind of energy at work. So it's going to be really good, and he's going to shave to just a mustache. And do kids know which Ted Lasso is, or is that an adult show? I don't actually know Ted Lasso.

Kids definitely, middle schoolers definitely know Ted Lasso, so they are very excited. Okay, perfect. Yeah. Perfect. Well, anyway, thank you for coming on. Do you have a story prepped, or is this all me? kids definitely middle schoolers definitely know ted lasso so they are okay perfect yeah perfect well anyway thank you for coming on do you have a story prepped or is this all me i do have a story prepped should i do you want me to go first you are more than welcome to go first usually i do the paranormal first but it i i don't care it's a choose your show okay do it okay so you uh this is wow i'm either about to really well neither way i'm gonna earn brownie points now but i could really damage our friendship here because i always confuse

you and lucy for which one lived in south africa and it was you yes yes okay thank god okay because i wanted to uh come up with a story for you so this is a story in south africa uh i wow it's gonna be so embarrassing for a second i also got freaked out that lucy was coming on today versus you and then i was like oh my god i'm really gonna fuck this up i used to get eva and allison mixed up and have little mini panic attacks about which one to reference. You would not be the first or the millionth. I get so many emails or so many DMs being like, oh my gosh, you and Eva look so cute. And I'm like, Eva's not in that picture, girl.

It's okay. Also, some people think that Allison is, people get Allison and Christine confused. So they'll be like, oh, how's your co-host? And how's your girlfriend Christine and it's so no no you're you're you're not alone it happens all the time so here is a story for you from Cape Town which was that where you were or Johannesburg we were in Johannesburg but we got married outside of cape town and and definitely visit cape town a bunch yeah did you get married at the castle of good hope no but i've been there and i hiked up a bunch of stairs oh good well uh this is what that story is the castle of good hope and i did not know it had so many stairs so thank you for already throwing up fun fact then how many stairs do you know i feel like a thousand it felt like endless and

my husband and his sister was like they were there and they're both really athletic and they were like miles ahead of me and I was like huffing and puffing up those bad boys I just came back from Allison's family trip to Denver and that whole family is just like I don't know if they're athletic or they're just like stubborn as shit and like think they're athletic and are willing to put in the work but they wanted to go to like the Red Rocks Amphitheater which is a bajillion stairs all the way up to like the clouds so not only do you not feel good about yourself because you climbed a literal mountain but now you can't breathe because of the elevation yeah when I went with the family I was like damn I like thank god i've been with allison for long enough that i don't feel the need to

impress them anymore because at one point i was like i'm i'm not going yeah i'm good beautiful from here right here feels awesome and i'm not gonna go any higher up thank you so anyway uh maybe if we ever go to cape Town, I will avoid taking them to this place because the second they hear stairs, they seem to get real giddy. Okay, so it's in Cape Town and apparently the Castle of Good Hope is the oldest existing colonial building left in South Africa. Fun fact. Another fun fact. It is apparently the quote, the best preserved example of a 17th century architectural structure in the world. Whoa.

Okay. Did not know that. So it was built from 1666 to 1697. It was built as a ship supply station. And it was built originally by the merchant. It's spelled like Jan, but i'm wondering if that's john probably jan jan yeah a lot of dutch yeah i i noticed that in this there was a few things i had to look up how to pronounce and this by the way wasn't one of them obviously since i

can't figure it out uh it was originally built by merchant jan van rebeck rebeek and he was the first commander of the cape so he got to he had the title of getting to build the first fortress here so he built it out of clay and timber which he knew at the time was not very secure and it was very economically friendly so it wasn't like a good fortress. And so he asked the rest of the Dutch East India company that he worked for, if he could get the funds to rebuild it. And they, they didn't give him an answer for several, several years.

They were just like, Oh, our money is more important elsewhere. So don't worry about this. It was kind of a backwater at that point. They hadn't quite ramped up the trade there yet. And it was i think it was really hard to sail around that cape and so it makes it seems like it was like a little jutted

out space or something like that is that apparently they're like really bad storms so it used to be called the cape of storms and then they were like uh fuck nobody wants to sail here we should probably change that and so they changed it to good hope well of course because you have to hope and pray that you'll get through the storm so eventually the dutch east india company said yes that they would refund the building of uh this castle it wasn't really a castle yet it was more of like a i think they one website kind of roasted the building being like, we call it a permanent structure because it was there for a while, but like, like no one was going there. This mound of mud and clay. It was just melting by the

sea. Apparently, eventually when England threatened war, they were like, oh, we need this as a fortress. So yeah, now we should pay to really get this thing built out of stone so uh i guess you would know this already because you've been there but it is pentagon shaped fun fact to others i did not know that until i looked at a picture of it and i was like holy shit that's a literal pentagon and each of the five points are a different bastion which i had to look up what a bastion was do you know what a bastion is i it's one of those words where like you think you know it and you can like read it in context but you don't actually know it that's what happened to me because i was like oh yeah five bastions dope and then i i kept reading more about the bastions and i was like what is this so technically

what the fuck is that it was so it's apparently an additional piece of, it's an additional surrounding fortress. It's like just extra protection. So on each five corners, there's more of a jutted out piece of building that was, I guess, supposed to be additionally strong to the rest of the building in case, I don't know,

soldiers tried to attack or bad guys show up the cannons at least the joists are solid so so it's just a stronger fortress more fortress and um they actually jut out of the five points and each of them are named after different titles that William III had. So he was also known as William the Silent, fun fact. And he, so he was born into the house of, you know how they would say like the regal shit of like William III, Prince of Blank, Duke of Blah.

Each of those locations is one of the Bastion's names. Oh, okay. So apparently he had even more titles than five but they just picked five of them so he was born into the house of nassau which is one of them he was the prince of orange he was the count of buren the count of leardom and the count of catsel nolan bogan so oh one of those one of those is not like the other. I was like, can't we just call that Katz or like the Kitty Tower or something? The old Boga Boga Bo.

The Katzl Nellenbogen. And I was like, you were already the count of so many. And you just had to throw a real wrench in the. That poor man who has to announce you by scroll has to say that every time so uh anyway so those are the five names of the towers and then through it which is interesting i wonder if it has any relation to castle nill and bogan is that if you were to look at this building or this castle from an aerial view it's's basically like a Pentagon perimeter and then the rest of it is hollow on the inside. So it's not a solid Pentagon building. It's just the exterior walls of the Pentagon

and then inside of it is a very long, narrow building. Okay. And it connects to either side of the Pentagon. And this strip is called the Cats or the Cat Building or something. so i wonder if there's any relationship there anyway back to more of the history in 1684 a bell tower was built and the bell is from the 1600s it's still there although it has been bricked up which we will talk about oh that sounds spooky it got bricked up because in the 1700s a soldier or a

guard who was there actually hanged himself by the bell rope and i guess that was enough dark history for that bell and they bricked it up so it's whoa that is spooky it's been behind walls for over 300 years i guess and um so then in the late 1800s early 1900s during the second boer war boer boer yep okay boer boer war uh the castle became a military fortress but it also held a lot of prisoners of war so this is where it gets dark fun fact before i get into the dark part uh wow this by the way is just filled with fun facts i usually don't have this many i love a fun fact i'm a huge history nerd so this is great so apparently one of the prisoners of war like the sad stories it's probably because the conditions

were so fucking terrible and he maybe he just wanted to escape jail but maybe it's because the conditions were horrible but he is one of like the only guys i've ever heard of in history that actually like a cartoon dug himself out of jail with a spoon i was like wow he shawshanked himself out of there he shawshanked himself out oh wow but almost because apparently there was like a foot left of wall he needed to get through or you know a very small portion compared to what he'd already done and right as he was like i guess hitting the exterior wall one of the stones that was holding up the wall he knocked it loose and it fell on him and crushed him no he was so close oh my god he was so

heartbreaking that's tough that's um rough that's that's uh you're not meant to get out of here buddy that was somehow the universe saying fuck you yeah yeah maybe he sucked you know maybe we shouldn't maybe you know what that's a really good way to look at it maybe we should actually be happy that happened right okay so not enough info not enough context for me to actually know how i feel about it i've started happy and now i'm confused yeah okay so the castle held prisoners of war because the castle had a lot of facilities to it including a dungeon and the dungeon tripled as a torture chamber and an execution site with gallows so and you can tour it yay isn't that the creepiest and worst thing yeah the torture chamber was apparently at the time called donker gat because it translates

to dark hole oh yeah and the cells were super cramped there were no windows so not only were you trapped down there often they were chained to the walls, but there was no fucking light. So if you were down there for months, you got no light. Um, there was no ventilation and the castle was so close to water. Like you said,

that during high tide waves, anytime they would hit the castle, I guess there were still like cracks in the foundation or something where the water that would hit the building would actually go into the house and flood the dungeon oh my god and you're chained to the wall and the water is just rising which means a lot of people drowned oh and apparently it was kind of regular there wasn't just one instance of people drowning by the water it was known that if the tide was bad enough the dungeon would apparently fill up at three feet per minute oh my god that's fast and so if you're chained to the wall and also it's dark

you can't even see where where the water is you just have to feel it and just know that it's getting worse oh my god pretty bad yeah i just wouldn't i think i i think my body would shut down i think my body would just be like nope yeah i wouldn't know what i mean what do you do you're just like well this is it you know terrible so uh they would also be punished. Apparently, one of the tour guides said that if you were there for anything, you would be punished. I mean, even if there was like the slightest infraction, if they thought you did something wrong, they would punish you while you were locked up there. So they would have very unnecessary punishments for maybe you didn't even do something. Maybe you didn't even do the thing that caused it. punishments included whippings beatings people got pierced with a stake and dragged by horses and sometimes dismembered jesus christ i just one source this is just a

one solid form of torture is that because it was so dark down there if you were down there for days or weeks or whatever it was they would then bring you upstairs blindfolded and once you got outside they would rip the blindfold off and force you to stare into the sun so as i imagine you'd be blinded by doing that i would i i don't know if you'd be officially permanently blinded but you're certainly not helping your eyesight yeah yeah i don't know i don't know how you'd be officially permanently blinded, but you're certainly not helping your eyesight. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know how bad it would be, but it would feel like you were getting blinded, I imagine.

Yeah. Also, like, just don't want to sidestep this. I don't know all of the history for it, but let's not forget that early on, these were also holding cells for chiefs of indigenous people. So throw a little racism in there. And enslaved people. Oh, yeah. And I do want to say, too, there are a lot of sources said that this building, when it was being redone for the war effort or before war actually was declared,

they said that it was built by soldiers and sailors. soldiers and sailors but i think i think during yon's time when he built the original one out of clay and stuff yeah i i would bet enslaved people also were were doing most of the building very likely yeah so apparently i wanted to send you a picture there is the door still exists from the dungeon here the door still exists from the dungeon here. The door still exists and you can still see etchings from people on there. And it's really interesting. I'm texting it to you right now. Oh,

okay. It's so, it's very sad. One of them says in this place, a man has been five months and more without a crime, but from just like an interesting perspective, look at that font that someone etched. Whoa, that's fancy.

It looks like Harry Potter Hogwarts writing on the letter. It looks like Tom Riddle etched this. It does. We'll put it on our Instagram for other people to see. But the fact that someone was able to etch and in a font is kind of that etching of that tortured soul in a dungeon is better than my best handwriting yeah it's better than like the handwriting that i tried really hard to use for like my wedding thank yous yeah it looks like it looks like um like even i say it's a font because even, like, the H's have, like, the little shorter lines on top of the tall lines.

The T has, like, little, like, it's well-done. What I would consider unnecessary etchings into each letter. But, like, this person really took it seriously. So, horrible history, by the way. But the penmanship was worth mentioning on the penmanship yeah it was a little i i saw it and i double took and i was like someone had to have taken one big stamp and branded that into the door so what else it goes to show you if you were down there for five months like they had the time but also it was pitch black like how did you do that pitch anyway i'm i'm tangenting but it was worth uh mentioning

so the castle also you uh after it was a military fortress after it held prisoners of war probably closer to our timeline the castle is now being used as office space for early governors it was used as office space for the south afric was used as office space for the South African army at one point. Just miscellaneous government jobs. People seemed to hold offices there. And there's still not a lot of history about the castle itself because new spaces are being discovered during restorations over and over again. So architects have said there's a chance that there are still bricked up rooms

we know nothing about. More hidden bells. More hidden bells. More hidden bells. They're still finding foundations to like churches and bakeries and stuff that used to be on the property. So it's, I feel like every day the history is being updated. In 1936, it became a historical monument and is still, quote, the best preserved example of a Dutch East India Company fortress. It's now a main, mainly it's a tourist attraction. It has, it gives normal history tours on it, but it also has two museums in it.

One of them is the Castle Military Museum and the other is the William Fair Collection, which I guess the military museum, obviously military history of the Cape. But then the William Fair Collection is history of the people of the Cape. Okay. Very interesting. And the castle also hosts ceremonies for Cape regiments. So it's basically an all-around military tourist attraction or history tourist attraction. Marching and salutes.

A lot of people in uniforms and, I imagine, swords or something. So here are the ghosts. In the dungeon and in the corridors, apparently the lights will turn on and off by themselves. I imagine the doors open and close on their own because that's just like textbook haunting. Part of it. And people hear voices, footsteps, murmuring, whispers, and screams. The bell that has been bricked up since the 1700s rings on its own. So we think it could be the man who died by suicide in there.

The bell is really getting to me. But like, I love it. There's like a cask of amontillado thing to it it reminds me of like the emo kid that sat alone at lunch like there's so much to him and yet i know nothing i guy for for the bell to be it was cast in 1697 and for it to have only been around for a little bit of time, and then all of a sudden there's a death to it and it's bricked up, I just see untapped potential.

Right? Because bells have got to be expensive. You'd think that they could melt that down and turn it into a cannonball or something. It was 660 pounds. Holy shit! How did someone lift that onto original beams, which are still there, by the way?

Like, how... That's history right there. And the fact they just got bricked up is kind of crazy. And I feel like there's more to the history because I mean, I feel like the world is pretty insensitive to suicide in general. And I feel like one death wouldn't have

warranted getting... I don't think at the time that doesn't even like track. Yeah. It didn't give a shit about human life back then. The Cecil hotel in Los Angeles, by the way, has had like 15 suicides and they're still running that shit. You know,

now it's like an Airbnb. Yeah. So now there to be like this like massive bell that I'm pretty sure they like had sent in and they had to have all these men work on it. And now how much money is it costing to brick the thing up? Like it doesn't. I feel like there's something going on there that's a dark and mysterious a la emo child at the lunchroom. Absolutely.

I don't, I don't know what the rest is, but. If any listeners know specifically about the bell, get at us. There's, there's a mystere to it i'm i'm liking it there's also uh this is a weird one there's a black dog that lunges at people and then vanishes into thin air okay which makes no sense to me because i heard no history about a black dog but in i guess most lore a black dog is an escort to hell so usually if you see a black dog it means like you are on your way to death okay amanda has a black dog callie good not a hellhound decidedly she's a very happy she's a very happy little girl or she could have

she could have shown up in amanda's life as a hellhound and was turned in the right direction, you know? Right. So there's also a tall, glowing man that is seen pacing the ramparts of the castle and then leaping off the building. And before he hits the ground, he vanishes in midair. Apparently, he was first seen in 1915, and he was seen like 30 years later in 1947 by some soldiers who were staying there and they kept seeing this figure every three nights show up and look over like was pacing it would even look over the castle as if it was like gauging the fall and then backing up and sprinting off of the castle and jumping off. And to figure out if it was a bored soldier playing a prank on everybody else,

they actually had one guy mimic the actions in a sheet as a ghost. And then apparently the actual ghost did not like that. And the next time they saw him, he was hovering over them and the bells in the guard room were ringing. Oh, don't make fun of me, bitches. Yeah, also don't disrespect the way I went out. Like, don't make fun of me bitches yeah also like don't like disrespect the way like i went out

like don't yeah fucking don't make don't make a joke out of this so and around the guards area not only is the bell heard but people have heard a man and a woman arguing and that's apparently a very common one and i've also heard uh that not only would you hear them arguing but if you turn the corner to see what was going on there would be a black mass there gross in 1952 this is the most wild thing i've ever heard there was a couple who was given permission to stay the night in the castle and they woke up in the middle of the night to a military corporal in their room running around and screaming at them to wake up. Oh, no. They, thinking it was a real person because they were, because it was like a solid man who was walking around.

And they, no one else ever gets to stay the night. So they thought maybe it was a guard or something. Yeah. They were like, we have permission. They were like, it's okay. They said, oh, why do we have to get up? What's going on? And the man turned and looked at them and said,

people were rioting in the street and they need to get out. So it's like intelligently responding to them. The couple gets out of bed. They pack up all their stuff. They leave. And when they get outside to see masses of people riding in the streets nobody is out there and the corporal has vanished oh my god okay yeah that's that's a no i don't know how anybody i have to know from me dog i

i just can't handle this stuff no way i'd away. I don't know how anyone can spend the night in a haunted anything. I've done it and I've regretted it. So there have been places I've had to leave in the middle of the night just because it was too freaky. So that one is particularly weird to me. It always freaks me out when people have a conversation with the dead because there's intelligent hauntings and there's residual hauntings where residual hauntings are just repeating actions that's why you'll see someone like walking from the kitchen to the couch and

then they vanish and that's all you ever see of them because they're just repeating something on loop from their past but intelligent hauntings freak me the fuck out because it's like what else can they do yeah what else can they do? Yeah. What else can they do? Do they know that? What do they know? Yeah. Do like, do they know what era it is that I've,

I just did a story a couple of weeks ago where there was, uh, it was ghosts in a hotel who were intelligently responding, but also when asked what year is it? They thought it was like 50 years before. So it's like only having partial knowledge of what's going on it's very weird it's very creepy there's a ghost called the lady in gray who is seen running around all over the castle crying and holding her face in tears

we don't know what happened to her but we do know in the 1940s uh during some restorations a female skeleton was found on the ground or found in the ground. And when they dug her up, that ghost has not been seen since. Oh, OK. So presumably she got a different burial away from that place. OK. One of the last people to see her was actually the royal family at the time who was on a tour. And I guess Princess Margaret, Princess Margaret Princess she saw her saw this ghost apparently she was one of many love that for Princess Margaret I feel like I don't know

anything about Margs but I hope you know she was a bit of a drama queen so I feel like yeah so I feel like it's great that she spotted that that's fun i bet she saw like a woman crying down the hall and was like that's where i need to be i i want to know what's going on so uh yeah they were one of the last people to to see the ghost uh my favorite character in here is uh lady ann bernard who lived here in the late 1700s she moved in with her husband when she was 40 and he was 28 good lady ann no lady ann love it she loved swimming in the nude um and apparently she uh and she was also is still thanked for the fact that she documented everything in her life she had really intense journal entries she was a drawer, an artist,

so she drew pictures that actually have helped historians later figure out what used to be on the property during restorations. Yeah, I feel like I need to start a diary. I used to keep one when I was younger, and then I just haven't in many, many years, but like, I feel like I need to get into it. I've left uh anytime I've started a diary at the end I've been like wow this feels really good but I just can't keep up with it every day right but there's nothing I appreciate more than the people who were able to find time and do that the fact that like my uh one of my mom's exes like like when I met him, one of his, one of the coolest things about him was his mom had this, had journaled every single day. And you could read like, oh, and I'm going down to the diner and I'm hanging out with the old gang and I drank this and I ate this.

And it's like, damn, all the way down to what you ate. Are you kidding me? Yeah. And so, and the fact that there's also drawings that were like good enough that historians use it now and she probably just drew them for herself it's just bananas and so she ended up helping herself out in the afterlife because she loved what was called the dolphin pool it was the pool on the property she loved diving in it naked that was like her favorite thing to do and apparently at the time that sounds like a hoot i she sounds very cool i'm really hoping she didn't like own enslaved people or something horrible that makes us disrespect her yeah um

but from what i know all the only thing i found on any sources were this naked story people love talking about this naked story where she would dive into the pool every day and I guess one of the officers was really offended by the fact that she was always naked because I guess there was a difference between the woman here versus like the Victorian women in England and like one was very posh and others loved being naked I saw in one source at one point there was a trend where people wore ball gowns that exposed their breasts. Oh. Did you? In South Africa specifically?

Or just in the time period? I think in the time period. I don't know of the location. But I do want to deep dive that eventually. I mean, there are a lot of, like, portraits. And I don't know from what era. But there are a lot of, like, portraits in galleries. But I think it's from, from like the 16th century maybe where there's like one one titty out well look if you uh needed something to really distract yourself with all day everyone let's

all do a weird google search where we put titty out history the ceo at google is going to be like why is everyone looking this up we get it trending on twitter one day out history i uh apparently some people were from the other region where they knew of like more posh women where they they wouldn't be nude all the time or they wouldn't be so proud of it and so he actually demanded that people build in a staircase for her for in the pool so that way she had to walk into the pool instead of dive into it that way she wasn't just like unladylike flailing around in the sky before she hit the water mind your own goddamn business man i know i like you can't you've got a castle to watch you can't do anything else with your time so uh apparently she loved this pool wrote about it drew about it and at one point it went away

but when they were looking up during restorations when they were digging up the ground they found the foundations of the original pool and were able to look at her pictures and find out what it looked like and they have now restored it and ever since people see her ghost at the pool naked i don't know but they at least see her there uh i want a skinny dip for all eternity and when you uh finally clothe yourself make sure there's no top to it no no titties out i mean i already hate wearing bras. She apparently also, she was a huge socialite. She loved entertaining guests. And so now when there are important people visiting the castle,

her ghost is more likely to be seen. And she's usually seen in a big ball gown in the area that she actually converted into a ballroom. Cool. Yeah. So that's lady anne bernard also if you live in the area and her drawings are of interest to you some of them are on display at the vineyard hotel which by the way the vineyard hotel after she lived in the castle because she was like the colony's like first lady or something so that that's why she lived there, but then eventually had to move out. Eventually she moved to where the Vineyard Hotel is now.

So it's sitting on her old property. So I guess that's why they let her drawings now stay there. So it's still technically with her. And one of her drawings, by the way, or one of her paintings that she had was of peacocks. and it was for a long time over the mantle in the castle above the fireplace. And they say it's allegedly cursed that if anyone were to move it, you would die. And they think it's because I guess peacocks are a symbol of danger, which is interesting because they are symbols of the goddess Juno, which I guess if you, like, fuck with her, you die.

Like, there's no way. She seems like a really dangerous person to piss off. Peacocks are pretty intense when you, like, see them in person. So there's, where was it? It must have been, like, I don't know where the location, we were on tour and we went to an area, I think it was Manor, Vermont. were the location we were on tour and we went to an area i think it was mainer vermont someone had a a public peacock petting zoo where they were not behind fences or anything you would just walk into this area and there were just peacocks available just like just rubbing up on your leg

and like you can feed them if you want it was the scariest decision i'd ever made for myself because i was like at any at any moment no one's even going to help me. Because I walked onto their turf. So it was, getting so close to one, I decided they freak me out. But I had to find out once I was there. And ostriches are also really freaky. And there are a lot of, like, ostrich farms in South Africa. And one time, Zach and I, I like planned an entire road trip where one

of the full stops, you're supposed to stop for two nights in this little town in the middle of nowhere, that's the ostrich capital of the world. And you can like visit the farms and all this shit. And then we got there. And like, we saw a bunch of ostriches just from the car. And we were like, oh, they're really big and scary and really gross. And they, like, peck at each other. And so they're all missing, like, tufts of feathers. And, like, we just were like, no, no. And we didn't go to a single one. If they've already got, like, battle scars, maybe just, like, don't come.

They already have some trauma that you don't need to get face to face with them to fight yeah they're huge we got the fuck out of there how big are they they're really big they're way taller than a human oh well that's all i need if as long as if it's bigger than me i'm out so yeah it could be 10 feet or 100 feet i'm i'm equally disinterested and like you can't, because they're essentially dinosaur aliens, so you can't gauge what they're thinking at all. They just snap at any minute? Yeah, you look at them and you don't know from their eyes what their plan is.

There's some TikToker who's gotten kind of famous. I think she runs an ostrich farm and there's one literally named karen there's an ostrich who's like a real piece of work and i guess anytime they're they're filming you can see like karen behind the girl and karen will bull rush her and yeah what kind of confidence this trainer or this this animal owner has but she'll just like get in karen's face and be like back the fuck up and then karen listens but like karen would not listen to me let me tell you like who do you think you are on my grounds absolutely not anyway every time i see that i feel like the videos are supposed to make me laugh but instead i just go like i'm i

think i'm about to witness a murder yeah they're really scary and aggressive no thanks yeah so apparently these peacocks uh in the painting are it's a cursed picture and so they the one lore is that if you touch it you will at least be harmed or you will die another lore is that the reason it's cursed is because this painting is actually hiding a treasure behind it. Another is that there's a secret passageway to the bowels of the castle behind this painting. Huh. Interesting. I would like it to be all three.

Yeah. So. Then there's probably one of the more famous ghosts. There's the ghost of Governor Peter Gitzbertitzbert van newt that's crazy sounds good to me crazy name there's no way to newt and uh apparently nobody liked him he's a real piece of shit governor and uh very militant and in 1728 or 1729 i saw different sources for that, he sentenced seven men to death at the castle. And I think he even refused their final wishes. And right before he was killed, one of the prisoners cursed him.

And later that exact day that he was cursed, the government was allegedly found in his office dead of a heart attack. Oh, quick work. So quick work, like got the job done. And he was apparently found slumped over in his office chair. And that chair is now on display at the Koopmans Duet Museum. So turns out there are a lot of museums in cape town that i did not know about turns out there's a lot of museums with ghost related yeah items if you see it if you if you're at a museum and you happen to see a chair behind glass just assume it's haunted right um there's also speaking

of chairs that are haunted at museums the zach bagans museum has a chair that they used to let people sit in and then so many people needed uh corrective back surgery afterwards that they ended up having to like shut down the entire exhibit don't here ask somebody with chronic back pain do not fuck with your back don't do it it's not worth it it's not worth the risk don't sit in a haunted haunted chair don't go fucking skydiving or bungee jumping don't do it i don't even do anything and i've thrown my back out so many times and it's the you don't realize how pain is ungodly it's such a stupid thing to say but you never realize how important your back is until you can't use it and like there was one time i don't even remember what happened it was at christine's house and it was really bad and i ended up going to like a specialist for it and they told me i had

i forget what the word is it was like i splintered or i fractured my vertebrae like a disc like i'd like herniated a disc no that's what i assumed it was but he said something that like i fractured it wasn't a fracture in my spine it was something like equally scary sounding yeah and there was nothing i could do except wait it out and i had to get like a doctor's note i couldn't work for like two months it was like and because there were there would be moments where i was sitting up and all of a sudden my spine would just give the fuck out and all of a sudden i'd like fall over and there was no rhyme or reason to it it would just be it wasn't weak enough to hold up my body and i would just fall and then and the pain oh my god backs out you don't want to fuck with backs the second you throw out your back once, you appreciate your back for the rest of time.

Yep. It's just, there's nothing like it. There's nothing like it. When you throw out your back and you sneeze, good night. Oh my God. Good night. Take me out. I threw it out so bad once that we lived on a third floor apartment building and I couldn't

get down the stairs to get to the ER or urgent care or something or the doctor to even like get medicine to treat it. So for three days, I was just in my apartment, totally stranded. And Zach had, I couldn't sit on the toilet because sitting is, is so painful. painful and so i zach had to like hold a cup for me while i like i believe it whatever did my business went uh well like essentially basically make a bedpan for me it was fucking horrible i believe it there's there's truly nothing like i mean go figure it's your literal fucking spine like i but like i know we're I know we're saying obvious things here. Doctors are like, yeah. I've been, there were times, I mean, I, there was one time I really fucked up my back when

I, Christine and I have mentioned on the show a few times, but when like, one of Christine's earliest memories of me is when we first moved out to Los Angeles. earliest memories of me is when we first moved out to Los Angeles. I, in the same week I had broken up with my longterm girlfriend. Uh, I had salmonella and I'd gotten in three car accidents all in the same week. Were you driving?

I was driving. One of them was my fault. Two of them, it's just LA and I was new to the city. So I didn't know how stupid people drive. And so I got like hit from the back and push into another car someone side swiped me it was and but my the amount of whiplash I had was so bad and I couldn't even first of all with a bad back couldn't climb into the car to go to a chiropractor but also I couldn't get in the car because the door had been torn off so So like, I like, like there was nothing. It was also when I was working at the prices,

right? So I distinctly remember drew Carrie watching me with like a broken back and my broken car trying to get out for my free $0 internship to work for him. And he was like, here's a patio set. He gave me a glow in the dark toilet seat. here's a patio set he gave me a glow-in-the-dark toilet seat he was like this will help oh no anyway anyway back stuff is not good folks yeah um so anyway he

that all came from the fact that like his haunted chair is at a museum He, that all came from the fact that like his haunted chair is at a museum. So people can still feel his presence. Apparently it's super dark. It's super intimidating. And they can hear him cussing from his old office. And one source said that he likes, his ghost likes to tear out plaster from the ceiling, which is so specific. That would be me as a ghost.

Just like sitting alone alone cussing and like picking at stuff like i just always like i'm always doing something like it's like everyone else is renovating the place i might as well contribute like just oh yeah home decor and swearing and bad backs i do think if i if i were to fall over tonight and people saw my ghost tomorrow, I would still be in the middle of like a midnight crazed project that makes no sense to anyone else. I just did something, well just, when people hear this it was months ago, but for Allison's birthday I made her a glowing, I made her like a big like four foot by four foot, the number 30 out of poster board. But I also like did a bunch of fairy lights in it.

And I, it looks like a 3D, it doesn't look like it's made out of paper. It looks pretty cool. And for making it in the middle of the night, I'm pretty proud of it. But as I was making it, I was like, I feel like Buddy the Elf when, just in the middle of the night,

he just like made a rocking horse because he couldn't go to bed. And I'm like, I feel like Buddy the Elf when just in the middle of the night, he just like made a rocking horse because he couldn't go to bed. And I'm like, I feel like that's just perfect. That's very apt. It's like the perfect description of like ADHD is like, if someone were to walk into the room in the middle of the night and be like, what are you doing? Whatever I had to say would not give it logic. I'd be like, I'm making a 30 out of posters.

You'll understand later. It's going to look really cool. It's just crazed. Just crazed. So anyway, that would probably be me. I understand his tearing up plaster. Maybe he just has trouble sleeping at night.

He also haunts a nearby house called the Rustenvoogd, which I don't know if I'm saying that right, but apparently it's the most haunted house in south africa and i found that out after i did all these notes so i was like motherfucker so um apparently there is there's a legend that there's a secret passageway between that building and the castle itself and so people regularly have seen ghosts from that i've been mentioning in this story. They are also seen at the Rustin Voods.

So that's why they think there must be a secret passageway and the ghosts are traveling through the tunnels between each building. Or maybe it's just a spectral tunnel. Ooh. I like how you said that. I love a good spectral tunnel. Apparently, also fun fact, if you care about the Penk Ridge Parish Church, the iron gates from there were originally from Rustin Moog. People that guard the building at night and have to do the graveyard shift

are fucking terrified of the castle. They avoid walking through the halls. They just walk the perimeter, which feels like you're half-assing the job as a guard because now I know in an Ocean's Eleven heist, I could just break into the halls and no one will find me. Right it feels like you shouldn't let people know that even if that is the case but okay. Yeah it's like just pretend you're doing your job. One of the guards named Guard Frederick says that he hated the graveyard shift because of creepy stuff that would happen there. Apparently near the dungeon, people hear screams for help. People feel cold spots and they sense a dark force luring them into the area.

And that's particularly why they hate the dungeon because they don't, they feel like they're getting dragged in. Oh, I don't want to be lured into a dungeon. No, not at all. There's another guard named Guard Franck who once walked into a room and on the other end of the room saw a black shadow figure waving at him. No, that's, that's a lot like the, the guy screaming at them to get up. It's like, I don't want you to feel so confident that you can, that you're openly telling me you see me like I see you, you know? telling me you see me like I see you you know if you had to pick to be haunted by one of the ghosts that we one of the aforementioned ghosts which one would you pick hmm the one that tears

a plaster baby or a plaster guy or maybe the bell ringing I can I can be fine with the bell um I'm not loving any of these confident waving waking you up at night fuck that like i need sleep i kind of like the corporal i'm gonna be honest really i kind of like the delusion of like there are riots in the street and it brings you back to like such a specific time period i kind of dig it you know actually what i would I would do, I like the Lady Anne Bernard, the naked lady. Oh yeah, yeah, of course. She seems like a blast. She seems like a blast. There was another, there was a story I recently did of, I think of the same hotel I mentioned earlier. There was a ghost who came through during a seance who, her name was Catherine,

and she was just looking for someone to party with and I was like that's the kind of ghost I need yeah she apparently pointed at someone at the seance and went you look like you know how to have a good time and then just like faded away yeah the one of the original or one of the former caretakers of the building says that he has quote felt a heaviness on my chest and my body felt as if it was tied up. I couldn't move. And eventually I struggled free kicking and screaming and ran out of the room. I stayed awake until sunrise. Yeah. No, no, no. And then finally there is an education officer, which I don't know what that means, but he says, quote, there is definitely a presence.

You are definitely not alone. You are being watched. Maybe like a tour guide. Maybe that's what that is. Maybe that's, yeah. Like, pick your own title. And it was just fancy tour guide. So now I'm just going to end on this last piece where I think it's very sweet and very important that the current CEO named Calvin Gilfelen, the CEO of the castle, he's doing his best to better respect and represent the people of the Cape that in this history were harmed by colonizers in the

castle's history. And so he took down all of the pictures of the former commanding officers who did wrong by others in history, and he replaced them with more accurate historical figures of South Africa. This is a quote from Gilfelen. Oh, here it is. If you look at the main courtyard, you'll see that there are four statues in front of the space, which arguably symbolizes the strength of colonial power. What we've selected to do is counter the power represented in that space, and we've put up statues of four prominent figures who fought colonial rule. The four that have been chosen, I tried looking up pronunciations online and some of them I just was not finding. So I am so sorry if I mispronounce these. But the four that were chosen, they were each leaders of different communities. So there was one Khoi Khoi leader, one Zulu leader, one Halubi leader, and one Peti leader. Okay. Yep. So a lot of those are like, yeah, still ethnic

groups within South Africa and each have their own languages and own a history and interesting alliances and cultures. Yeah, very interesting. So I think the Khoikhoi leader that was selected was a chief named Doman, who led the first war of independence by indigenous folks in South Africa. Another one was the Zulu king named Setshweyo, who was a prisoner at the castle after his men died fighting the British. The Holubi one is the chief named Longolobalele, and he was forced into war by white colonizers and then the fourth one was for petty which was

the king named sukukun and he was also a prisoner there and forced into war by white colonizers so they're they're doing their best to better represent the castle's history and giving them their space and yeah i just think that's super important. I love that. Way to go to that CEO. And that is the story of the Castle of Good Hope. Wow. I learned so much.

Thank you. You're welcome. I'm sorry. That was a little longer than I expected, but we had some good tangents there. We did. Talking about our backs. We're so old. I know.

Let me tell you another thing about back oh my god so good all right well that was awesome well done thank you thank you and also thank you for preparing a story too i i know i i asked you guys too but honestly if you said fuck you we're already like coming on to listen to your story i would have been like I totally get it so it's nice that you went out of your way and are sacrificing material to bring on to our show because I know the fear of that I'm happy to do it and uh came across this story recently and I never heard about it and it is a really good fit I think for and that's why we drink so I was excited to cover it. So should we

launch right into it? Sure. Yeah. Okay. So I decided to go big or go home for this episode. And like I said, really tried to embody the spirit of your show. And so my case combines true crime and the paranormal. Shut up. Okay. Oh, I'm so excited. And there's actually randomly, because we didn't like talk about what cases we were going to cover before this, but there's like a weird amount of overlap between the case that you covered today and my case. Yeah. No way.

Is it about haunted backs or bells? Which one is it? No bells, but it's like a haunted old timey jail. Fun. Okay. I'm ready. I'm ready. Okay.

So I will be covering the old Charleston jail and one of its most infamous inhabitants, Lavinia Fisher. So some believe. Okay, great. Have you covered this? No, right? I don't think I've covered it, but I do know Lavinia Fisher. I watched the Ghost Adventures episode on this for sure.

Okay, okay. So some believe that Lavinia was America's first female serial killer. Hashtag probably not, but we're going to go with it. Okay, perfect. Yeah. So I recently visited Charleston with Zach on vacation like two weeks ago, and we took a tour that featured like the outside of the old Charleston jail because right now it's closed,

and they're probably going to be converting it into office space. Oh, okay, cool. But whatever. It's a crazy old building. Okay, cool. But whatever. It's a crazy old building. I have a bunch of photos, but it might be easier if you just do a quick googs to see the outside of the building.

Love a good googs. Okay. Old Charleston Jail. Yep. Oh, wow. That is foreboding. Right? Okay.

Yowza. Wow. Every picture is worse than the last. That's pretty grim. Okay. It's really grim and scary. So they're not even trying to hide it. That's going to be office space. Can you imagine like bringing your spouse lunch at that building? No, and we will get to it. And it's just a crazy use for that building. But okay, I don't know. So old charleston jail is considered to be one of the most haunted sites in north america which i think is the sentence that every single haunted place

yes that's why that's why i always say either allegedly or i quote it because i'm like who the fuck knows at this point what actually is the most haunted you know it is believed to be plagued by the ghosts of the many, many inmates who perished there. The plot of land where the jail would eventually be built was originally parceled out and set aside for public use by city planners in 1680. And for over 120 years, the site served various purposes, including a hospital, a poorhouse, and a workhouse for enslaved people. It wasn't until 1802 that the actual jail building that still stands today was erected. And like we said, the architecture is quite imposing. And it kind of somewhat resembles a medieval castle. Don't you think? It still does. It still kind of looks like that. Right. And it has like an arched facade over the front door and

then lots of like small barred windows yeah it seems somehow i mean i'm just i'm still looking at the google image of the front of it but it seems very ornate for today's architecture it's right it definitely stands out yeah so the large four-story stone building towered over most of the other structures of the period, and it also featured two octagonal towers at the front. Huh. So later on, the building would be expanded with a new Romanesque revival wing added in the back in order to house more sad souls within its walls. Conveniently located in the backyard of the prison was the city's gallows.

Oh boy. Okay. So just, they could just immediately be sentenced to death right in the backyard. Yep. And these remain standing until well into the 20th century when first some people tried to like take it down because it was falling down and then the city was like no that's history you can't remove that okay and so they had to leave up what remained of the gallows into like i think the 1950s geez and then a hurricane finally blew the thing down oh okay that was god that was yeah yeah yeah like bye yeah and then on the other side of the backyard within full view of the gallows like of the hangman's rope stood an orphanage what so like literally the backyard of the orphanage abuts the backyard of the prison

and like windows from the orphanage looked out directly onto the fucking gallows where people were being hung oh my god are you serious wow wow and at and they were like both active buildings at the same time so children definitely like saw that for decades. Whoa. Okay. So, cause I think about all the times I was not paying attention in class and just staring out the window. Can you imagine if that's what you have to fucking look at?

Yeah. Yeah. So actually, um, some say that this was done on purpose in order to scare straight these children. You know, I feel like for that time period it was perfect like perfect

planning in terms of like child development it was like that's this is the latest and greatest thing we've ever fucking done to make sure children are stable and not at all unhinged let's just compound their trauma yeah yeah i feel like for the time someone could have like pitched that idea and they'd be like you know what why hasn't anyone thought of that before right yes but well literally they were like well this is great they're gonna learn to not become criminals like no that's definitely not how that works but okay fine nice try yeah hall freud yeah not their fault that they're orphans. Anyway.

Oh, my God. I totally forgot that they were also orphans. Wow. Yeah. So it's just. It's rough. Yeah. It's all bad.

Okay. Yeah. They have no one. They don't even have parents to, like, talk to about it. Nope. Nope. It's real bad. Wow. So the old jail operated from, I saw 1802, I saw 1803, whatever, until 1939, when it was shut down

for its inhumane and unsanitary conditions. So you know it's bad. Like 140 years of them keeping it open, though, despite the inhumane conditions, means that there's 140 years of people that were certainly suffering. Oh, we will get to it, the conditions. And yeah, imagine how bad it had to have been for a jail in the deep south in the 1930s to get shut down because of the conditions. Yeah, it had to have been. I can't even think of how bad the conditions had to have been. I'm trying even think of how bad the conditions had to have been. I'm trying to think of like the worst thing that could have happened. I'm sure it's actually worse than that. Yeah.

So it is estimated that over its 137 year history, between 10 and 20,000 prisoners died in the jail. 10 to 20,000? that's horrific and 100 140 years that feels like a massive percentage of the inmates i feel like 20 000 is like the number of inmates i would think were there for 140 years and it feels like it sounds like almost all of them died yes yeah wow wow so mostly like the vast majority died due to disease and malnutrition not due to like being executed some also due to like violence amongst the inmates who were like struggling to survive and it's like squalid

and like cutthroat and you know there's like one very like Dickensian like one fucking slice of bread and then people fighting over it oh okay very scary yeah so the few who actually made it to their execution dates were either like the lucky ones who who got an execution date pretty quickly and they didn't have to be in the jail for that long. And then they. Yeah. Like how sad is it that that makes you lucky because at least you're put out of the misery. Right. Or these were definitely like the strongest and healthiest of the bunch.

The fact that they were able to survive in the jail long enough to make it to their execution date. Usually they'd be sentenced, but they'd die way before. Wow. Wow. Okay. Holy crap. How many people, do we know how many people actually were executed on the property? I couldn't find that number, but I'm probably historians somewhere have estimates, but I didn't read that anywhere. and somewhere have estimates okay but i didn't read that anywhere so overcrowding uh was one of the biggest issues at the facility which was originally built to house 130 prisoners okay i feel like the number is about to like triple itself or something but often had three or four times that many at any one time and also they're dying so quickly so they're like rapidly cycling through oh yeah well it seems like there's always a vacancy even though it's like beyond overstocked with people right like wow okay right and it's not like they had beds or anything you know like it's just

throw them in yeah so prisoners were organized according to the severity of their alleged crimes with the most violent offenders kept on the highest floor because that was considered to be the most difficult area to attempt to escape from. Okay. On the second floor were petty criminals such as debtors or sex workers. And then on the ground floor were wealthy or white collar so-called gentlemen prisoners. Okay. so-called gentlemen prisoners okay but ironically the hardened criminals on the top floor definitely had like comparatively the easiest living conditions because they had like fresher air up there they could like catch a breeze oh okay and also because of like the design of the building and the total lack of sanitation,

a lot of like sewage and other. Uh-huh. Yeah. Was just seeping through those wooden floors onto the floors below and like the prisoners in floors below. So they were just like sleeping in, in sewage. And also it was like,

also like what's the deep south so it's like hot and hot and mosquitoes malaria i'm sure there's no ventilation so they're just breathing in hot air and poo they're cooking in poo geez okay so yeah you kind of just hope that you're a hardened criminal and if you're being categorized out of those. Right. And allegedly some people on the lower floor would try to kill a fellow prisoner to be moved to the top floor. Oh, I mean, I don't blame them, which is a fucked up thing to say, but like, if that's, if the mentality of the time is... I'm not getting out of here. Yeah.

Like, I mean, it's horrible and I don't condone murder, but also like I understand the. Being brought to that point by these horrible conditions. Yes, exactly. Yeah. So the ground floor prisoners were much more likely to catch diseases like cholera or dysentery. And then parts of the ground floor also had dirt floors or like patches of dirt floor. And so prisoners were more likely to catch worms or other parasites from like walking around barefoot. Oh my god. It was bad. You didn't want to be on the ground floor.

Wow. I wonder, I doubt this number even exists, but it would be interesting if you could see the percentages of death per floor also just like the smell must have been unimaginable i just can't even fucking imagine how horrible it would be i yeah and also to be overcrowded by so many people and i so it sounds like there wasn't there wasn't like there's a lot of physical torture necessarily because like the jailers didn't want to even go near the prisoners sure just the conditions were so it was just the conditions were so horrible that that torture enough this feels like a jail that probably doesn't have, like, sanitation under control with, like, plumbing or, like, I feel like they're not washing their hands.

I mean, they've got parasites on their feet and they're swimming in blue. Oh, it's just buckets and floor and it's just... Holy shit. Yeah, it's crazy. Wow, so no wonder this place is haunted. There's just thousands upon thousands of pissed-off ghosts. Yeah. Okay.

Horrifyingly, not only were convicted criminals housed in the jail, which still wouldn't be okay, but, you know, that's what you think of when you think of like a prison is like people who have been convicted of crimes and they're awaiting their sentences or their sentences are being carried out. But along with those, there were also those awaiting trial who had been denied bail so you know technically still innocent innocent until proven guilty they were just thrown right in there at the same time and also key witnesses to crimes that the authorities wanted to keep an eye on before trial so they wouldn't disappear so that they could be compelled to testify that made witnesses stay there fuck that fuck that oh my god also what's the wait so if witnesses

stayed there and then couldn't they have left and complained out like to the to the small government or something and been like hey why are these conditions so horrible i mean i think people knew they just didn't care right wow yeah i would bet i mean talk about an incentive to not testify right are you kidding me of course you just be like i didn't see shit yeah i know nothing i see nothing i found nothing right yeah yeah so the old jail housed a vast array of prisoners in its time including enslaved people who had attempted to escape or revolt against their enslavers and the most famous of of these was a formerly enslaved and later free carpenter named denmark bessie so definitely check him out he's a very interesting character. Oh, okay. Denmark Bessie. Also Civil War Union prisoners of war and also Confederate deserters and even pirates.

Oh, okay. So just the whole gangs here. Just anybody. Island of misfits. Okay. Wow. So we don't have time to get into all those interesting cases and all the prisoners and the hauntings so i want to focus on one in particular yes lavinia i love her story she's so fun oh okay well chime in because you probably know more about it than i do but i only know the Ghost Adventures, I only remember the Ghost Adventures information where she showed up as a spectral

figure to Zach Bagans. Well, there you go. So, that's the part that I got into her story, but I didn't get into the alleged specifics of the hauntings because I don't know about that stuff as much so sure sure

okay i know that she's been supposedly like spotted wandering the halls of the jail in a long white dress but a long white dress is not period appropriate from when she was there so fair enough and also i will tell you after doing like 250 episodes, every fucking building has a woman in a white dress or a red dress. It's always white or red. I don't know why. So it could be any, it could be the same ghost for at every other location I've ever covered.

Just make it a pit stop for the year. Right. She gets around. She gets around. So Lavinia Fisher, Fisher is her married name. We don't know her maiden name, was born in 1793, which was actually the same year that the cotton gin was invented and then enslavement like really took off in the South.

Neither here nor there. Okay. The first, the first half of that, I almost went fun. And then you. Well, here's the thing. The way we were taught history history we're taught that like the cotton gin is like one of the best inventions and it's such a good thing but actually the invention of the cotton gin led to cotton becoming a huge industry led to an increase in enslavement. Oh, I don't know why that would have never. I never put that together

either. How as a nation did none of us have that click on its own? Right? I thought it was the opposite. I thought, oh, they invented the cotton gin and like fewer people. Yeah, that's what I thought too. Like, oh, it was like, now we didn't have to worry about enslaving people because there was a machine that could handle cotton. Okay. No, opposite. Isn't that wild? Wow, that's a real bummer.

Yeah. Yeah, it's taught, it's definitely taught poorly in our schools. Anyway, okay. So, we know she lived most if not all of her life in the Charleston, South Carolina area, but very little else is known about her early years or upbringing. She was known to be, quote, strikingly beautiful. Okay. And there are many posthumous portraits of her that have been painted, although their accuracy is impossible to assess. At some point, she met and married John Fisher, and the couple went on to own and operate

two roadside inns, the Five Mile Wayfarer House and later the Six Mile Wayfarer House. Fun. Yeah. Okay. Each was named thus due to its respective distance outside of Charleston, making them ideal spots for travelers to stop over on their way into the city. And at this point in time, Charleston was one of the largest cities in the US and it was one of the biggest hubs for the transatlantic slave trade. So it was like, it was popping.

Got it. Okay. So there are presumably lots of anonymous business travelers, lots of people coming and going, lots of money changing hands. People coming into the town would presumably have a lot of cash on them if they were going to, you know, buy enslaved people or do other kinds of trade. So, yeah, we've got like an H.H. Holmes almost thing going on, right? I see, I see. So then travelers started to go missing and wild rumors began to spread. As one story goes, the stunning Lavinia would entice lone travelers to the inn, question them about their business.

So like try to figure out if they had money. How much money they had. Okay. Right. And their family. Oh, if anyone knew where they were, is anyone looking for you? Right. Would anybody notice if you went missing or know where you went missing?

Before plying the poor fool with a special tea concoction that would cause them to sleep soundly for several hours. Ooh, okay, okay. I think I know what happens next, but I want to hear you say it. So during this time, John and Lavinia would rob them and then, as one more fantastic story goes, pull a lever this is it yes that would cause the floor under the bed to open up and then they would

drop down onto like a be like impaled on a pit of stakes and spikes yeah that's not there's no fucking way that that happens I like to believe that one just for its fantastical

features, but I feel like that would... How would you get away with building that? How would you... It's expensive to build. Beds are expensive. How many beds are you going through? Are you going to have a new bed

every time? I imagine that the bed is like actually like drilled into the floor or something so it's and then it's with the floor and you slide out of the bed oh oh oh like a tilt slide like a wallace and gromit yes you get it or maybe like the bed like falls through in the middle so you just like drop right like maybe the bed itself is the trap door and you just and there's not like a mattress there's like hay or something is something's happening i don't know i don't i honestly have never built a murder trap door before so i don't know the ins and outs of it but maybe we should ask amanda i feel like she would feel like she would know she doesn't have

like an engineering brain but she could come come up with some ideas for sure. I think she definitely has the chutzpah. She's got the moxie. Yeah, totally. Okay, so this part of the story I think is almost certainly made up. And it's much more likely that if anyone was actually killed by the couple, they did so just because like the person was sleeping and they just like, you know. Sure. Stabbed them them or whatever killed them somehow a less difficult complex way yeah right just like a little simpler way to kill travelers so what is known and there were like references to this in newspaper articles from the time period is that John and Lavinia Fisher were

in cahoots with a larger gang of highwaymen and they would like help identify easy targets for their robberies or muggings and like pass on information to the highwaymen who would do more of the robbery. Gotcha. And then the inn also was like a good hideout for the outlaws, you know, if they were, if like the heat was on them or whatever. Gotcha. And by February 1819, folks in the area had had enough. enough so after numerous complaints made to the local sheriff about guests disappearing at the six mile wayfarer house were ignored or they were dropped due to lack of evidence a band of local

townsfolk turned vigilante and they went after the fishers oh okay i didn't read much about the attack itself by the vigilantes but they like i don't know if they fucked up the inn or they just roughed them up a little bit. They didn't kill them, but they roughed them up. Okay. to remain near the inn to stand watch until morning presumably when like they would get more help or like police would come or something sure okay not a fun job at all the the lone vigilante standing right can you imagine the vigilante all the vigilantes are like okay we gotta get home for dinner but you stand guard like i feel like he was the one that like wasn't married with kids yeah and they were like this is your task now a thousand percent because every report is like young david ross Young Spencer David. Yes. Poor guy.

So anyway, during the night, two of the Highwaymen gang members counterattacked. And Ross would later claim that Lavinia was among them. And he saw her and was like, oh, woman, she's going to help me. Or like tried to like appeal to her womanly empathy but she just viciously joined in the violence and like choked him and smashed his head through a window oh my gosh wow well i mean duh like at the same like if this woman had done after her yeah and also if this woman is actually killing people like how why on earth do you think she wouldn't kill you right

right i mean it's like it's like me standing guard in front of like jeffrey dommer's house for a night it's like what do i think's gonna happen like right yeah not i'm not gonna be alive by the next day that's for sure so somehow david ross managed to get away. I don't know how, because he was super outnumbered. And told the authorities about his ordeal. But not before another unsuspecting visitor came to the Fisher's door. A man named John Peoples. P-E-E-P-L-E-S. Okay.

Peoples. Little Peepers. Little Peepers. Little Peepers. So according to legend, Peoples was not fond of tea. Oh. But not wishing to be rude and refuse it when the innkeeper's wife so kindly offered him some, he instead dumped the tea surreptitiously when Lavinia wasn't looking and didn't drink it so he ended up not getting drugged i see not i see didn't didn't get drowsy wasn't roofied so people's managed to pick

up on lavinia's sketchiness when she was chatting with him about his business and like presumably you know the other people would already be kind of looped. Right. And would tell her more. Right. And this guy was like, why are you asking me so many questions? Yeah. Yeah.

Finally, someone a little more reserved had their, was on high alert. Being like, don't ask me about that. Yeah. Like, it's kind of none of your business. And so he kind of got wise to this. But also, it's like the middle of the night, he's miles from the city. He can't just like leave.

I'm assuming, you know, he's either waiting for like a stage coach or like his horse needs to be watered and rested. Whatever the version of like, like meeting somebody like, like, yeah. When I think of like a stage. Tesla had to recharge. I was going to say like, when I think of, like, a stage... If Tesla had to recharge.

I was going to say, like, when I think of, like, the stage coach coming in the morning, you can't just text your stage coach and be like, never mind, meet me somewhere else, you know? Right, right. Yeah. So he's like, okay, like, she's creepy, this is weird, I got to make it through the night. So he chose, he went up to his room, pretended like everything was fine, and chose to sleep sitting up in a chair next to the door rather than in the bed. Smart.

He awoke in the night. Different stories. Some say the bed opened up and he wasn't in it. Some say maybe one of them approached him or tried to get into the room to kill him, whatever. He woke up, figured out it's bad news, and flees on foot. Oh, wow. Okay. So, now with two living witnesses to their crimes, Charleston law enforcement were finally able to arrest Lavinia and John Fisher. Wow.

How long did that take? Do we know the time period, the time? Like how long they owned the inn? And yeah, how long had they been killing people without getting caught until? I don't know exactly. Sounds like a couple years. A while. Okay. Yeah. So John tried to strike a plea deal and like he gave up the names of a few of the highwaymen and he tried to like strike a deal to get Lavinia off. But in the end it didn't work and they were both sent to the old Charleston jail to await trial. they were housed together for over a year in one six by eight foot cell oh my god six by eight foot cell i'm assuming other people lived in there too because oh my it was so overcrowded i was like did they have like a like a marriage like like, like a, like, A wedding cell. You know? A honeymoon suite.

You know how, like, in college, like, married couples get to, like, get married together? Yes, I feel like that's what this was, but maybe not, because there's other people. By the way, if the person I love, we didn't commit crimes, if we had to be in a six-by-eight space together for a year, I would become a murderer i think she'd become a murderer first right but like i and then add other people into that space i mean

that that alone is crazy making so right yeah it's bad it's bad but their romance endured it sounds like so they're on the top floor at least okay because they were murderers or alleged murderers sure um so at trial both were found guilty of highway robbery but not of murder or attempted murder so all the murder stuff is alleged still right uh-huh but they were granted the chance to appeal the verdict which was also pretty rare for the time most people didn't get an appeal it was like was it because she was a woman or something i think so okay yeah uh so during the interim before their second trial the couple attempted to escape by like tying together bed sheets and forming a rope, like real old-timey. Like Rapunzel.

Yeah. From the top floor. They just rappelled down. Right. That was the plan. And so John, it worked. John got out down the rope. But it broke while Lavinia was still inside.

Oh, shit. And her loving husband wouldn't abandon her so even though he was out of the building he allowed himself to be recaptured and brought back okay but like that's a man like i i know he's a murderer like i i know he's a murderer but like that's true love as far as i'm concerned right i? I mean, that's... That's the man you want to marry and, like, get in trouble with the law with, I think. Right? I mean, that's pretty amazing.

I feel like I would be like, Zach, at least one of us can make it. I'd be like, Allison, I'm so glad that you love me enough that you want me to go live a free life. Zach, I'll honor you. You're with me right here.

Always. A thousand percent. So after their escape attempt, their living conditions inside the jail were made even worse. And there was like tighter security. And it probably was like, Oh God, why did we even try?

So then John found jesus in jail he like had a he met with the pastor a lot or the reverend or whatever i don't know tried to ask for forgiveness but lavinia had the opposite reaction and she just like hunkered down and became quote more vitriolic oh like anti-jesus just like fuck everybody fuck all y'all this is bullshit whatever okay so she seemed to be in shock that she wasn't pardoned and she really didn't believe until the very end that she was actually that the sentence was actually going to be carried out. She thought she was going to be pardoned last minute. Oh, okay. She was not.

But I guess in the end, she wasn't technically hanged. Because rather than let the hangman push her off the gallows, like once the noose was around her neck, she, a second before she could be pushed, jumped. Oh. She just was like.

She went, fuck it, I'll do it myself. Yeah. Wow. Fuck it, we'll do it live. I,

I, I kind of love the, the taking the power away from them. Right. You know, of like, oh, like, I'm not even going to give you the power away from them. Right. Of like, oh, I'm not even going to give you the satisfaction of killing me. Right. Isn't that wild? Yeah.

And then this is my last little bit. And the thing that, you know, it's probably apocryphal. Who knows? But let's pretend it's real. Okay. Her final words exclaimed before the crowd of onlookers just moments before her death were if any of you have a message for the devil tell me now for i shall be seeing him shortly and then she jumped that's a that i know she was not a good person but that's also a badass way to

go it's fucking badass i do remember that part of it because when she when zach bagans goes to the jail and tries to talk to lavinia fisher he is able to get on get audio of her finishing the sentence because he started her final words and then was like what were the last words to that and she was able to say the devil and you know all this stuff so okay fun stuff fun stuff so anyway I didn't know any of that stuff I thought it was such a creepy amazing place well I will tell you that that place is also full of ghosts so uh I thank you for covering Lavinia I I think I actually might have covered that story before, but I definitely did not go into that kind of depth with Lavinia Fisher.

I think she was just kind of like a bullet on the note. So thank you for doing the, for giving like such a full in-depth version of that story. Cause I did not know half of that. So that's awesome. I'm glad. Thank you. Thank you so much for coming on.

I really appreciate it. And I, is there anything you want to for coming on. I really appreciate it. And is there anything you want to shout out for Wine and Crime while you're here, by the way? If you like true crime and comedy, which if you're listening to this, you probably do, check out Wine and Crime. We are at Wine and Crime Pod on most social medias, but I don't think we have a TikTok.

We're in our mid-30s, so we're not there yet. We don't think we have a tiktok we're in our mid 30s so we're not there yet we don't have a tiktok either by the way i have i have a personal one but i'm like i don't know about the podcast one i like watch them but i don't know how to make them but anyway wine and crime pod uh wine and crime podcast.com is the website do you have a are you guys going back on tour soon that's the plan so you said this will come out probably in january so um we don't have details yet but supposedly we will be starting up live touring again maybe in january fingers crossed well if you come back to la i want to obviously thousand percent um last time you had a show in LA we ended up having a sleepover right we did and you did like a um how am I blanking a scavenger hunt in the green room

and like around I said that up I surprised wine and crime with a scavenger hunt after there well I don't I don't remember how I made that happen. Oh, you were doing your meet and greet. And so I was alone in the green room and I made like a whole thing. Thank you for mentioning that. I completely forgot. I will make another one for you if you come to LA. So look up here. But thank you so much.

I really do appreciate it. It's as someone who I know what it's like to do all the research and build notes out. And it was a big ask to have you come on and happy to do it so you we owe you for sure um come back next week for uh more wine and crime i don't know which which of the the two uh lovely ladies will be here but someone will be here and uh we'll keep going with our missing christine tour i guess is what we're calling it now. I know. We love you, Christine.

We're trying our best to fill your shoes, but it's not possible. The way we usually end this is we say, and that's why we drink, but word for word. So I say, and you go, that's why we drink. Okay, I'm going to try. Okay. Honestly, it's never been done in a classy way.

So the more butchered it is the more the better the more authentic it sounds yeah okay and that's why we drink