And That's Why We Drink - E296 A Lemon Planchette Read-a-Long Graphic and a Material Girl Coffin

Episode Date: October 9, 2022

Welcome to episode 296 where Eva had a doctor's appointment so we're fending for ourselves, Lord of the Flies style! As promised, Em brings us the wild tale of Manresa Castle and we learn not to expect the toxic spirits to respect our boundaries. Then Christine covers the short but disturbing case of the Alexander family and the Lorber Cult. Tune in to join us for the mystery of why bells are ringing in Christine's neighborhood at 2:11pm est... and that's why we drink!Spooky season is upon us and we've got a few last Here for the Boos live shows to get you in the Halloween spirit! Get your tickets at andthatswhywedrink.com/live

Hello, Em. Hello, Christine. With the upper inflections? Question mark? I was just saying to Em that, you know, Eva had a doctor's appointment, couldn't be on the recording. And usually she runs the kind of behind the scenes stuff and moderates, if you will. And I said, it feels like our teacher left the class abruptly and we have to kind of fend for ourselves. Lord of the Flies style like anarchy.

You know, I did. Speaking of anarchy in a classroom, did your school ever do the thing on saint patrick's day where do you know where i'm going with this yet no where in elementary school you would like go play and he's clearly like asked another teacher to like ruin the classroom while you were gone and when you would come back he would say like oh a leprechaun got in no what okay what the fuck are you talking about i i remember i was okay that's what he was gonna come back and be like what the hell happened and we're gonna say a leprechaun got in we don't know what happened to this podcast it wasn't our fault it was uh it was like a thing i thought maybe only at my. But yeah, you would go out to play. And then on St. Patrick's Day, the room would be ransacked when you got back.

Did you have to clean it up? I don't remember. Maybe. See, it's like a bad game. Also, there was one time where I got pulled aside, which I felt so cool because I was the student that was selected. Not to be the leprechaun. This was another thing. the student that was selected not to be the leprechaun this was another thing um but same idea i guess from the leprechaun okay um well the same teacher my fourth grade teacher well i think you're getting the pattern here he just likes to fuck up his own room and then make us clean it up uh he uh pulled me

aside he was doing some sort of in hindsight i don't totally remember the lesson i think it was like like be responsible when adults aren't around because he apparently did this every year and everyone knew it was like at least i knew it was coming a few kids had told me about it that were older than me but i guess he did it every year where he would take one of the kids that i guess in it makes me feel good because i think he would always pick a kid that like people seem to respect and okay relax and i didn't say anything and he would uh like pull you aside and like hatch a plan that he was like gonna be gone for 15 minutes and he gave me just needed a reason to be gone for 15 minutes i don't know who he was sleeping with or smoking or what he needed the

potty baby i don't know but he uh gave me full permission to just absolutely destroy his room what he the goal was to see if i could entice other kids to be bad on bad behavior if he was gone if i could trick them into i don't know and the left this guy had to pick up a prescription at walgreens and just it does feel weird as i explain it as an adult but as a child it was i think the lesson was like even if someone you respect is telling you that you should be bad in a room when you know to follow a moral compass you should do it because then he would come in and be like because i did i successfully got the entire classroom to be fucking rowdy and she did it was a good time anyway those are two stories about the

exact same teacher who apparently has a problem an interest in more secret life i'm not really sure i don't think the messy room was the point I think the point was how easily can I distract these children while I go do something nefarious real well um by the way now your turn you tell me about your substitute teachers and how they were actually probably responsible uh well I don't know about that but um I feel like wow I don't really have anything off the top of my head that um that really matches up to that i will say um totally off the rails and since we don't have somebody here to monitor what we're doing oh yeah i'm just gonna kind of throw a wrench in everything and change the subject oh um if that's okay with you what's happening this is your uh your call everybody if you need a new spooky podcast, you should go listen to Jim Harreld's Campfire.

It's really good. It was the first podcast Em and I ever bonded over. I still listen to it every week. And if you call in with your own story, tell them that we sent you. Because I love those little shout outs. And I make everyone in my family stop what they're doing. And I disconnect my AirPods and I make them listen to the shout outs. I still say that he is absolutely

the reason why i wanted to do a podcast so yeah it's true it's it's pretty it's pretty cool um also yeah we did we started recording pretty close to time today but then again every whenever eva's here we always have like a meeting together for us exactly she has more important things to do like ask us about important things pertaining to our jobs uh-huh yeah and now she's not here so technically it's like a teacher work day yeah i can't i can't stop it with these like weird almost school puns are you okay like you just are like thinking about elementary school a lot that can't be healthy it can't be healthy and yet and yet you won't stop. Okay.

Got it. I just won't. Okay. Well, other than that, is there a reason why you drink? What do you drink? You know, I'm drinking a D Peppy because, you know, one of our mutual favorites, which is rare to find a mutual taste that we both can agree on. But we love a D Peppy, the two of us. And for those unacquainted that's a dr pepper

for you um for the squares squares out there uh but yeah i was out of the my iced coffee that i usually buy at the store like the and i didn't have time to go get some before we recorded so i'm drinking deep peppy and i the reason i drink this week m is because i've been having nightmares again and it was a long time since i had like bad dreams but i keep having just creepy bad dreams that are like a little too realistic you know where they put me on edge all day i wasn't going to say anything i actually i i woke up today from i'm not kidding the absolute worst dream i've ever had absolute worst are you serious top five if not top one are you serious i'm not i woke up in like full-blown hyperventilating yeah oh no it was a full to be fair it was a dream based on like my actual like world's biggest fear

yeah and so but it was i just could not get it together like I could I even though I knew it was I had woken up and I was dreaming just like then I had that I had the reflection of it and then I cried all over again but it was like a like an inconsolable cry it was okay well I will say mine wasn't that bad at least last night but I've been having the same thing where I just keep waking up with like in panic and like sweat and like freaking out. And the dreams are all very eerie and creepy and like I'm always going into some underground space. It's very unsettling and it's always like the same place, which I don't like. It's interesting what are also I love how I found a way to like upstage you with like you had a bad dream and I went I've been hyperventilating sorry no no I do I like I appreciate that we were both having bad dreams

it's creeping me out a little more it is interesting what your version of a nightmare is and what mine is because I feel like I have creepy eerie ghost stuff murder stuff all the time yeah no me too but I feel like for whatever reason for they come in phases and like i'll have them every night for like weeks and then i just won't remember them for a couple months and then all of a sudden it'll be like wham bam every night i'm in a creepy you know basement and do you have a go-to nightmare that like like a theme that you're familiar with i used to have a lot of uh stabbing dreams interesting i don't think i've had a stabbing dream i or this is a trigger warning where i

would have to dismember uh like dead animals or people that i did not kill but they were dead and they i was tasked by somebody to like dispose of the bot like just gruesome and that was when I was a little kid it's not like oh I'd read a lot of true crime and that's why it's just a reoccurring creepy thing that happened but also you know just the classics uh people I love dying etc etc yeah yeah yeah yeah wow I have not had a dismembering experience one of the most horrific dreams I ever had I was probably, and I dreamt that there was a huge horse in my room and it died and I had to dismember it. Well, it makes sense if you were little.

You couldn't drag a whole horse. You'd have to do it in chunks. It makes perfect sense. They said, oh, we murdered this horse. Now you have to dismember it and bury it in the yard. Yeah, it made perfect sense. You're right. I'm just saying, I'm just trying to defend that you probably didn dismember it and bury it in the yard. Yeah. It made perfect sense. You're right. I'm just saying,

I, I'm just trying to defend that you probably didn't want to, but in terms of efficiency, you're right. Uh, to be fair, my teacher said I have to leave for 15 minutes. Um,

what happens here is none of my business. Was your teacher like the fucking godfather? Yeah. Godfather. Yeah. Maybe that's what was happening. I needed the head for something. He needed the head for something. Yeah, no, I've never I've never had that kind of stuff. But I very regularly, I'd say at least once a week have a dream where I have committed a crime and I'm on the run.

What is that about? I don't know. That's interesting. I wonder if that's part of our psyche. Yeah. What am I guilty guilty of i don't know well don't get me started i mean i truly don't i i mean i've told you also one of my bigger fears is like just like ending up in jail and like for no reason like yeah the stories you tell about like people being it's horrible innocent and incarcerated is just like a such like a real dream like nightmare come true so a real dream come true for me yikes no but it's i think when it always seems to happen around the times when you tell stories like that actually so maybe that makes a little bit of sense i think maybe that adds up pretty smoothly yeah anyway i don't i don't have a reason um or i don't have a thing

that i drink i forgot a drink outside but in honor of your D Peppy, I wanted to know if how many of the 23 flavors that make D Peppy do you know? Zero. I mean, zero. You can't. It's 23 flavors. You can't venture a little tasty. Bubbly. Coca-Cola bubbly.

Cola is one of them. Okay. I'm on to it. Bubbly. Syrupy. There's a lot of flavor like flavors like think of like pumps at a coffee shop maybe like what are those flavors uh cardamoms one no way good for me yeah okay no well that's cheating the name it's in the name you're right oh no pepper pepper is it pepper is one i got really upset for a minute there interesting it could have been dr cardamom prickly or whatever you just said yeah

dr bubbly that's my new beverage it's called dr bubbly dr cardamom okay no it is the 23r cola tell me if you can taste these as i go down cola cherry oh that's why i like it i love cherry flavor licorice yum you don't like that. Amaretto. Ooh, fancy. Almond. Okay. Isn't that the same? No. Okay.

Vanilla. Uh-huh. Blackberry. Okay. So this is every flavor. Apricot. Blackberry. Oh, wait.

I said blackberry twice. Maybe it was blueberry. Blackberry. Blackberry's twice for some reason. Caramel. Pepper. Anise. Is that how you say it uh anise anise anise or anise i don't know uh sarsaparilla ginger molasses plum orange nutmeg

cardamom allspice coriander juniper birch prickly ash and lemon of course that's last i that's a lot of situations aggressive amount of flavors i feel like we can pull back on one of them and no one would notice i feel like uh that's probably true and i imagine it's cardamom because i still don't totally understand where that came out of my i'm on the prickly ash that prickly ash seems a little much you know yeah oh anyway well there's licorice and anise flavor are like the same thing so i i feel like they're also coke and cherry couldn't we just start out hot with a cherry coke and then it's 22 flavors well then that's a trademark that they probably have to pay for i guess so but isn't it owned by coca-cola don't they already have access to that i don't think they have access to cola.

Oh, I see what you mean. Because cola, I think, is just a more generic flavor. Wow, capitalism really hit me in the face. I thought cola was just owned by Coke for a second. Listen, as your resident non-conforming, non-capitalist, I can tell you, Coke doesn't own everything. You might believe it does. I think I'm right often, though. Yeah, actually, I said that out loud and went,

actually, I don't think that's true. Okay. I don't think that's true. Well, I'm here to tell you a story. I don't know if you'll remember my promise to you last week on what we were going to be covering. It's a house. It's a castle.

It's a castle. My bad castle my bad that zb calls man risa i can't wait um and i covered a little bit of it last time but uh this is the unabridged version okay okay also it i double checked it is on page 255 of a haunted road atlas if you own that so check it out i thought about doing a uh reading an excerpt but i mean this the book is a really condensed version of what i'm about to tell you and i feel like i already did that last week so yeah also they gotta pay for that if they want to read it. I'm just kidding. Paywall, paywall. Okay, I'm just kidding. Speaking of capitalism, but we should do that thing sometime we'll do a read along and then we can have like the little Mickey Mouse bounce along the words so that

people can follow along. I know I've said this before. And I promise you, I would someday learn how to do that. And I have yet to learn. So maybe maybe this is the time. I feel like the way that your brain works, only you would know how to do that. And I want it to be a planchette, you know, that bounces along so you can read. It's going to be a lemon and we both know it. So shut up. It's a lemon planchette.

I feel like only you and the original creator of that that skill on the television are the only two people on earth like how did you learn my secret i'm like i drink a lot of deep peppy and stayed up till six in the morning okay uh here we are with manresa castle uh so it starts in 1856 when charles eisenbeis he immigrates to new york from prussia and he moved west for the gold rush with his brother and they both settle in port townsend which we talked about in the last episode so they settle in port townsend and he had already been making some money in new york as a baker and so him and his brother moving to the west coast they were like okay let's open up a bakery together um and they call it pioneer bakery and they make i know and they make bread and crackers for supply stock for sailors who are coming through okay so not my favorite name but

i like the concept is that a bad name yeah i just the word pioneer i just associate with yeah colonial moments i suppose yeah that's a fair assessment i think it's a cute name but i can see where it would get um some flack it's one of those names where like if it didn't have such a gross uh context to it it like almost would sound nice there's there's like a tiktok i've seen where in the comments it's like leave your favorite name if it didn't actually mean what it meant and it's like just look like calorie like it's like it all of a sudden leave your favorite hold on say it again leave your favorite sound like your favorite what would be name if it didn't mean something else already so like someone

like the sound of calorie but it means a calorie wow this is a deep cut trend is it a deep cut my maybe not maybe my algorithm is full of it where i i feel like i'm always seeing people's like random words that they would turn into names a bad thing i guess guess in my mind, pioneer is more just like, oh, we just kind of live off the land and like go west. But I guess the idea is that typically they're, quote unquote, discovering places. Is that the kind of... I don't think the word pioneer is inherently bad. What about the pioneer woman cookbook? Is that bad? That's a bestseller that one's fine good we're okay it's successful speaking of capitalism is successful and that we can't touch it yeah i think the word itself probably isn't that bad i just get a little grossed out

at anything that reminds me of that time period and the word pioneer i associate with definitely like colonizing that kind of thing it's not it's not good you're right you're completely right I hadn't even put that together but thank you for educating me oh I don't for all I know I'm being uber sensitive but it's just for every time I hear that word I'm like where's the rest of the sentence going yeah you're right I I feel like that about that word because it's a cool word and I think pioneer bake was it called pioneer bakery like it's such a cute name but yeah I guess if it's yeah it's a cool word and i think pioneer bake was it called pioneer bakery like it's such a cute name but yeah i guess if it's yeah it's not a great connotation anyway sorry

i know we're probably irritating a lot of people but i have an abundance of caution well okay so they open pioneer bakery they're making bread for ships that come in and charles becomes very wealthy doing this he becomes an entrepreneur and he's working in real estate he's involved in building banks and storefronts for the area he helps invest into properties like a hotel a brewery a bakery he's also in charge of like a lumber yard and a brickyard so he's just kind of doing it all nice in fact he's so successful and I guess Port Townsend was so small at the time that i'm assuming there wasn't too much competition so it was easy for him to climb the ladder yeah he was elected as port townsend's first mayor and he served three terms and he was also part of the

big five syndicate which was port townsend's like five most powerful men essentially who ran the economy more or less i tried looking up the names of the other big five but i didn't recognize any of them i was hoping for like a fun fact like did you know snoop dogg was one of them yes i did actually he does everything so in 1865 uh charles marries or he is married to a wife named Elizabeth and then she dies and we never really hear about her again um as a living character or as a ghost but um so he marries Elizabeth she dies and then he marries Kate who is like Kate Eisenbeisen is kind of the wife of the story okay she's the lady in white. She is.

She is potentially a lady in white. Yes. Oh, okay. In 1892, when he's very settled in Port Townsend and he's doing all these big business deals, I guess, in town. In 1892, he plans or he ends up building this hotel, which was one of the properties I mentioned because uh the town had said that a railroad was going to be built soon and so he was trying to get ahead and he built a hotel for visitors that would be coming in and then the railroad plan never went through and he had built a whole fucking 120 room hotel for a place that is now not going to have a lot of tourists rough so one source said this hotel

burned down in a mysterious fire and then i heard nothing about that ever again while other sources said that now that this hotel was vacant and he'd already put so much money into it he turned it into his own home oh oh interesting kind of like a i always wanted power move i wanted my own castle anyway kind of thing yeah it's all for me then more for me i guess so if he's putting all of his money into it he technically does it would be an easy fix to just move in right yeah so he renovated it into his dream home it became it was supposed to be called hotel eisenbeis and then he just turned it into the eisenbeis castle um it looked i guess similar to the castles from his homeland in prussia and so that was he i think he built it originally to look like part of his homeland as an homage

and all of a sudden he just had his own fucking prussian castle i mean listen it's just sometimes that's what you gotta do there have been bigger problems in the world, I think. Certainly bigger problems. So Eisenbein's castle, he ended up turning it into three stories. It had 30 bedrooms. It had four separate heating systems. The walls were 12 inches thick of actual bricks from his brickyard because he also had a brickyard. Oh, sure. inches thick of actual bricks from his brickyard because he also had a brickyard oh sure the castle

is 25 000 bricks accumulatively and it was the obviously biggest residence in the city wow not even 20 years later it's 1902 and charles eisenbeiss uh has bright's disease which is like a chronic kidney disease and so he dies from that and we get a little drama from it um because his casket was put in a vault near if you're familiar with the area laurel grove cemetery um he's put into a vault and he is placed next to his first wife elizabeth which like i wonder how his living second wife felt about that. That's kind of rough. Elizabeth was in a Victorian glass top coffin material girl. And the vault was sealed for many years.

But then at some point, a part of the vault cracked and fell in. It fell onto their coffins. And so they had to open everything up for repairs oh boy and this slab that fell into their space it landed on elizabeth's coffin and broke the glass no as well as another coffin that was not supposed to be there and it was another victorian glass top child-sized coffin what yep the fuck is going on and it was sitting on top of charles casket so there's charles casket and a little child one on top next to his wife and so it almost looked like there was a whole family buried together but the managers of the graveyard never had any record of someone opening up the vaults again to put a child casket in there what they ended up asking the family like did someone sneak in and do this like how what happened and

the family had no idea that it had happened or who this child size casket was like it could for all we know it could have been just a random person who buried a casket on top of them but you'd have to like open up a whole ass vault. Yeah, that seems... And especially for such an expensive casket. Seems like this is a very particular type of casket they've got going. It's a weird one. So we don't know who this little kid is to this day.

You still don't know? Oh my god, how weird is that? It's funky fresh. It's very odd. And in... So, okay. so in 1902 he died he's that whole thing happens and his uh second wife kate kate eisenbeiss she remarries and leaves the castle for 20 years it's still i guess technically in their name but she leaves it to a caretaker and other than that it's abandoned so in the 1920s while it's abandoned and in theory a caretaker lives there a woman traveling through also named kate she uh stays here potentially

she's like friends with the caretaker or something to be able to get in here um and this is homegirl kate who had the tropiest of tropey deaths where she was waiting for her. I was thinking it was the other Kate. Okay. She's waiting for her lover to return from war or return from sea or return from the grocery store. And she had heard whispers that he did not make it and wasn't going to come home.

And so she ends up jumping out of the window of what is now room 306. Oh, boy. However, to everyone's surprise, yes, he survived. And he comes to find her. Survived his grocery store debacle. He figured it out. Honey, I'm home. Oh, no.

And finds out that she's dead. Jumped out of the window. He comes back. And that's allegedly it. Then after that was 1921. And another version says that she thought he was she thought she was pregnant and had been sleeping with someone else. And then when he comes back, she can't face him. So she jumps out the window.

There's a bunch of different versions of like why she, why she jumps. Oh, and to this day, her picture now hangs in the castle, which I'm kind of confused. Like this is another reason why it's very, very likely to be a legend because why would this random woman named kate was passing through but not the actual kate eisenbeiss who lived there yeah and also why was she there waiting for her love to come home from the sea if she was just passing through town it's just a strange it's a strange story yeah yeah i it, it's not clicking.

It's not clicking. They were like, oh, now let's paint her portrait. Yeah. I don't get it. It's weird. Okay. So in 1925, the house finally sells to somebody else and it becomes a vacation home for nuns. A vacation home for nuns?

And guess what? It didn't get used a lot. Are you sure it's not a vocation like a vocation it says vacation it said vacation i mean i believe it i just i've never heard of such a thing uh and in 1920 i thought it was going to be vocation too but like three different websites unless they're all copy and pasting the same text and they are using the same type i'm not doubting you at all i just um i'm I'm into this vacation home for nuns idea. I really would like to know what that looks like.

It's another reality show in the making. I would like to know what it looked like, but I got nothing. You'd think it's gotta be a typo, right? Because I feel like if it said vacation, someone would have felt the need to list what makes it a vacation home. I guess.

I also don't know what a vocation home is. So, I mean, I could be totally making that up too. All right. Maybe it's a little bit more. So, yeah, it doesn't get used a lot, probably because nuns are busy. And then two years later, Jesuit priests bought the building and decided that they were going to use it as a monastery for ministry students. And I think it was only ministry students in their last year of studying. Thanks, priests. We had a nice vacation home on our hands, and now it's, yeah, study in there? They're like, you know what? You're not using it, so we're going to take advantage of it.

Fine. The castle was renamed Manresa Hall, and there were different sources. The one I'm going to go with is that it was in honor of where St. Ignatius Loyola was born. Ignatius. Ignatius, thank you. In honor of where St. Ignatius Loyola was born.

Or it was named after where the actual order was founded. But most of them said where um st louis was born okay while it was a monastery the jesuits put in a 3500 elevator which is now over 50 grand today they put in a whole new addition to the building so they could fit a chapel they added bedrooms and apparently they added 43 bathrooms. What? Whoa. I don't know. I guess they added 40 because there were already three.

Today there are 43 bathrooms after the Jesuits were there. That seems excessive, doesn't it? How many rooms are there? Not 43, I don't think. I thought there were 30. He made 30 bedrooms. I feel like if you look at like Zillow, like a 30 bed, 43 bath would seem proportional to each other. I guess.

I guess. I don't know, homie. It makes no sense to me. Okay. So there is a the story that happens while it was a monastery is that one of the priests in training was hooking up with a nun who I guess was on vacation or something for them to both be there. And they ended up getting caught and he was later found in the attic hanging from the rafters above

what is now room 302. But there is no record, there's no official record of a student dying by suicide there, but it also could have very easily been kept quiet because... I was going to say, but I don't know if they're very open typically with their kind of scandals, let's say, in the Catholic Church. Well, because suicide's a cardinal sin, too. Yeah.

So they definitely probably didn't want to have that out. So that's what a convenient cover up if this is a legend, right? Like, oh, well, of course, there's no official document. Interesting. There is one official death of a priest nearby named Father John Murphy, who is said to have drowned nearby or near the property. But we don't ever talk about him. We only ever focus on Kate and the student who hang themselves i guess those are more dramatic backstories yeah so whatever of course the one actual potentially the one documented death yeah

so in 1968 the they end up selling the building again and then it becomes a hotel and the owners change the name because it was once Eisenbeis Castle and then Manresa Hall now they're calling it the Manresa Castle so they can take two parts parts of the original names and combine it and I was actually thinking earlier when you said oh he called it he was gonna call it Eisenbeis Hotel and then he changed it to Castle I was like honestly Castle is a cooler name for a hotel anyway so i'm glad they kind of stuck with that i am too i i would much rather as a tourist want to abstain a castle absolutely a prussian castle i mean come on and so since uh since it's become a hotel it has been owned by at least three different owners who have all done different

versions of renovations but they've all kept it pretty og and it has like a restaurant in it a lounge in it an event space in it and that is the history but now on to the ghosts um so one general manager who was basically confirming that the stories of kate and the student priest was confirming that they are not true. The general manager said that a bartender years ago named Nick, he invented both of the stories because so many tourists were coming in saying, this place looks haunted. Is it haunted? Is it haunted?

And so eventually he was like, yeah, here, here are two stories. And the general manager said that he okayed the stories as long as the stories were allegedly from the two most expensive rooms so that they would sell better. Okay, now we're talking. are bogus but that does not take away from the fact that many staff confirm that whatever the origins of the story is or whatever the untold stories of the real spirits there a lot of people experience really creepy stuff so interestingly the rooms 302 and 306 where both the legends happened they are said to be the most haunted rooms and also apparently room 304 and i guess that's just it's between the two of them it's just stuck in the middle 304 is like i didn't do anything i'm sorry it's not my fault but it's interesting uh like mind over matter of

like oh if those stories really didn't happen how come those two rooms are the most haunted and maybe because so many people put their energy into that space yes they're just like creating it create your own reality you know so room 306 is where kate died and people still say that they see an apparition of her she has long dark hair she's in a white gown so of course she's the lady in white um i've also seen that she could be the lady in blue but the overarching theme is that she's in white because they all fucking are yeah um she's often seen near the window that she allegedly jumped from and she is seen sitting on the guest beds of people while they're sleeping nah i don't love that just wake up to someone staring at you you've been there nothing yeah i have and i don't know if it was better or worse than a woman in a victorian

dress i think it was probably worse because it was a man creepy man without a shirt on so i guess i forgot he didn't have a shirt on he had like an undershirt like a um yeah the tank top yeah yeah yeah and i i um did i tell you somebody on twitter and I wish I had the name off the top of my head, tagged me and then said, oh, and tagged Knoxville Ghost Hunters or whatever and said, like, can you look into this? What was this building before? Because, like I said, it was a pretty brand new hotel, but, like, in an old part of town. And then I was like, oh, cool. And I liked it. And then the user, the initial person who tagged both of us, said that they went and did some digging and found out it used to be like an old newspaper, like the Knoxville Press or the Knoxville Times or something. And they were like, look through the photos.

And in one of the photos, there was a dude in like a white tank top. And I was like, I don't like who used to work there. And I was like, I don't love that. Can you imagine still being stuck at work? Oh you're right that would suck well so back to kate because we were talking about last time how she was pretty messy she might actually be the leprechaun because she will move your stuff around she'll leave the drawers open she likes to cause a scene um she's also heard singing in the bathroom in the middle of the night and here's actually just a journal entry from one of the guests after they heard her singing in the middle of the night while

they were sleeping and got woken up and not only is it annoying like oh i'm waking up because i'm hearing someone sleeping but it's in your bathroom like saying you're not sleeping right sorry no i i i imagine that not only is it annoying because you're trying to sleep and they're singing and bothering you but now on top of it like in your locked safe space there's someone in the bathroom yeah it's and it's it's that i feel like it's also that weird trope of um things that aren't supposed to be creepy suddenly becoming way creepier when it's like a haunt like someone be singing like a happy tune is so sinister yeah in that context 100 forget it so here's a journal entry of someone waking up to her singing

in the bathroom i got up to go to the bathroom and see who was in there and then the door eerily came open there was a swish of cold air and a glowing light and then all the lights came on by themselves. After that, we saw nothing else. Ugh. In the 1970s, in the same room, a housekeeper, I mentioned this last time, but the housekeeper sat his keys on the table and when he turned back, he saw them floating two feet in the air and then crashed down on the table as if they had been caught. I remember that. In room 310, interesting, but still the third floor, which seems to be the most haunted floor, at least.

In room 310, the desk manager named Jodi and a maid were both making a bed, and they saw an apparition walk through the halls. And they knew it was an apparition because it was someone walking through the halls when the hotel was completely vacant and closed and no one should be in there she was in period clothing and they could see the fire escape through her forget it and when they go out to talk to her to be like hey who are you she's disappeared hey go talk to that woman who you can see the fire escape through her entire body just see what she's doing here you know just check in yeah it's not at all threatening but she clearly doesn't have insides.

Yeah, like, oh, she's transparent, but like she's also trespassing. So can you get her off the property? People also regularly hear footsteps in the attic, especially above 302, which is where the student died by suicide. And the whole, like I said, the whole third floor is allegedly haunted. People also hear voices here. They often hear the phrase, help or help her. Oh, that's sad. In the dining room,

the apparition of Kate Eisenbeiss is said to show up in a long Victorian gown. And people also see a sad violinist. Okay. Okay. Okay. victorian gown and people also see a sad violinist okay okay okay uh also keep in mind the dining room is the old chapel and so because it's become somewhat of an event space or a party drinking room they think that the people that were from the monastery that often were in this part of the room don't like that it is now a party space yeah Yeah, I can see why that would grind their gears a bit. A lot of times people will hear like chanting at night as if like it's still a chapel. But because they think that they're unpleased with why people use the space now, a lot of people have said that glasses will explode in their hands.

They will turn upside down on tables. And when you look back, they're in a different position i don't uh that's very poltergeisty to me throw themselves off the table yep uh pictures apparently will throw themselves off the walls and there has been writing on mirrors like get out okay people also hear moaning they hear knocking they hear um tapping nearby them people have felt something petting their back the doors will open and close by themselves the tvs and lights will turn themselves on and off and people often feel bursts of freezing cold air in the hallways um staff also feel constantly stared at and they have gotten evps of a man saying i am not here and evps of a german woman who says quite a lot so um oh sorry that was me i was just passing through

waiting for my lover to come home from the grocery store and i just had a few things to say they think it's probably kate eisenbeiss because she was i think she was prussian or it might be elizabeth it was one of the wives. Oh, Elizabeth. Yeah, we never hear about her. Maybe that's her. She's trying to tell you all about that coffin that is sitting out in front of her. Yeah, she's like, somebody put their little coffin in there. This one is not a personal favorite for what this person had to experience. But in terms of spook factor, there's a housekeeper named Mardella who was working in the laundry room and saw a small handprint as a bruise on her leg.

All of a sudden she had a bruise. It looked like a little kid's handprint. And she knew that this place was haunted. And when she saw that, she was like, I don't like that they're touching me. So she said out loud to the ghosts to leave her alone. And then she got fucking sucker punched in the face. By nothing. By nothing. I don't like that at first it was a kid's handprint. to leave her alone and then she got fucking sucker punched in the face i had nothing i had nothing

i don't like that at first it was a kid's handprint and then it was like but watch this oh yeah was it like just supposed to be small to be less threatening or was it or was it two different entities yeah i don't know i hate it also like i hate that because also they tell you you know if you set boundaries they oh jesus sorry my window's open and i have not had it open all year and the door just like started to swing open because the wind bye bye um no but they tell you if you set those kind of boundaries out loud that ghosts will like leave you alone and i clearly this is not one of those examples. Oi. Well, yeah, apparently at Manresa Castle, you should not be. Don't expect to be like. Don't expect your boundaries to be met by toxic spirits.

Also here, apparently investigators have used a Ouija board and they were talking to a man who had allegedly died by suicide. And all the responses they got were bible verses oh that is creepy that one i cannot get behind simply um it also makes you wonder like the uh trustability that can't be the right word but the the um the it makes you wonder how effective a Ouija board really is or if people are just going in there and messing with it on their own because if it's really a legend and this guy didn't buy their wire bible verses showing up on the Ouija board great question but who on this ghost team knows so much about bible verses that they can just like call them up on a whim I guess so but i would argue that a lot of people that are in the ghost world are people who have

deconstructed their faith yeah but like i i don't know if i'd be able to like you'd have to really know your bible to like be able to just call i mean i i don't know maybe it just said luke and then a bunch of numbers i don't know but i feel like if it said like specific numbers and then it like correlated to the bible i feel like it's a very niche what if maybe someone on the investigative team wasn't telling everyone that they were training to be an exorcist because that would require knowledge of that you know yeah they were like these are just the ones i'm learning in class right now yeah but you don't know that you don't know but we don't want to talk about it i don't know it's it's still creepy no matter what.

There was one ghost hunting team called the Olympic Paranormal. Nope. The Olympic Peninsula Paranormal Society. And in 2010, they got 51 EVPs in one investigation here. Oh, my God. Also, like I said earlier, there are journal entries and pictures that have been kept by the staff to show people. And at one point, they would just sit in guest rooms. But then it freaked the guests out so much that they had to get removed from the rooms. I think they still have a hold of them behind the desk, though, so you can still ask about it.

And this is one of the guest entries. Our son, James, went down to use the restroom. guest entries our son james went down to use the restroom down the hall uh it was the room 303 bathroom and came back concerned that he heard a woman crying mournfully in the bathroom next door but the lights went but the lights were out in that room so basically nobody should have been in there because the bathroom was dark he brought his dad down to the hall to show him and he also heard the crying i then went down there but by the time i got there she was no longer crying i did however hear movement coming from inside the room when i knocked on the door and asked if somebody needed help the response was two knocks back for whoever was in there at the at that point we decided to call the front

desk to tell them what was going on they sent up four maids to check the situation out and when they opened the door it was dark inside and no one was there but the maid commented that someone had been into the Kleenex because it was strewn all about oh oh oh I just got goose cam hate it oh I got goose cam oh that moment where they turned to you and they're like, but there's Kleenex everywhere. And you're like, oh. So you definitely heard all the crying. Oh, that's horrible. They should.

Oh, you know, I wonder, too, because Kleenex tissues are so light. I wonder if it's just easy to manipulate. Oh, yeah. You know, as a spirit. I don't know if that's a stretch, but it seems like it would be easy to kind of throw about. Speaking of stretches, part of me felt like, oh oh maybe it was like fake crying just for the attention or something like to get like that would be what we think just to make people hear the sound of like and it's like just actually having a party throwing tissues around i don't know like i

needed an excuse to play with this tissue box um there's another journal entry here uh that says finally around 11 30 at night we heard we started hearing things earlier we were looking forward to hearing things but when we actually did hear things we were huddled with the blankets to our noses ain't that the way it goes you're like i want to see a ghost and then all of a sudden you're like i'd rather do anything but see a ghost right now that's exactly how i feel all the time i'm like oh spooky and i'm like oh my god never mind there wasn't really anything in the room it was in the hallway definite dragging and walking sounds they would stop right at the door it was so scary then scratching and scraping sounds at the door it was like someone was right on the other side and would open or come through the

door this all went on for about an hour and a half gross i hate it for sure you'd be like paralyzed with fear in there like is somebody outside that door oh can i get 90 minutes you're just like am i safe oh no by the way i don't think so well so uh the manresa castle has been featured on our favorite ga ghost adventures uh it's also been featured on haunted history and also my ghost oh my ghost story okay and this location has participated at least in 2018's world's largest ghost hunt so i looked into world's largest ghost of course and uh it did participate in 2018 i don't think it's participated since but it happens every year on September 24th, which is National Ghost Hunting Day. Five days away, baby.

Five days away. As we record. This year will be the seventh anniversary of the world's largest ghost hunt. And it looks like it's not that everyone, I guess it's not like everyone comes to one location to ghost hunt together. Which I was curious about because I was like, if there's like 300 people who won't shut up in a house, like how on earth is this quality ghost hunting? And you know someone is whispering and trying to make it seem like there's a ghost and like tugging on people's clothes just to fuck with them. So instead it's the concept of globally all the ghost hunters go out that day and ghost hunt at a haunted location. I actually know about this because when I moved to Cincinnati or Kentucky, I went up to the local crystal shop, you know, and I walked in there and there were all these cats.

And I was like, I like it here. And I was walking around and I was talking to the guy up front and he gave me like a flyer about the local paranormal site and he's like oh have you ever participated in national ghost hunting day and I was like what and I think I immediately sent you a picture of the business card and said like what is national ghost hunting day and we had never heard of it and he said that they like are the local ghost hunting group uh participates in it every year so I don't know where they go, but we need to start figuring out locations near us and do it together. Yeah. I think that would be fun.

I wonder if that, I mean, this might just be a stretch again, but I wonder if like so many people are doing it at once. If it like raises the ghostly vibration, you know what I mean? Yeah. I would imagine it does the opposite.

It makes it like much less scary and spooky and like you're less connected to things. Oh, you think? I don't know know i don't know i wonder what if the spirits what if it's like a thinning of the veil like on day of the dead where it's like well they know that we're all trying to communicate so maybe this is the time that they all step forward you know so smart yeah maybe i wonder maybe they should have participating locations that are like certain tiers where it's like if you want to fuck around like go to this one and if you if you are trying to like like really do it the elite tier yeah yeah uh so each participating location because it's not just go go stunning at any location very people have to like sign up and like be cool with people showing up to their location each participating location also is

asked to offer a live stream so that way people can see it from wherever they are. And they can, it's just more eyes and ears on it to see if they spot anything. I love that. And there are two goals of World's Largest Ghost Hunt. One is to preserve historical properties and to educate people on the historic locations that are out there. And the second goal is to explore cultural diversity influences within ghost hunting wow so it's educating people on different beliefs and ways of working with the supernatural um and i guess like a side quest of that is getting to see how different methods of

ghost hunting all work at the same time so a quote from the website is what will be the difference between a seance in a victorian parlor in australia versus a ouija board session in a jail in mystical ireland and it's all happening at one time so you can see yeah so anyway i thought that's really cool um so fun fact that is it's coming out in seven days or five days for us. Too bad when this comes out it'll be over but next year everybody. I will say one of the places that seems to be a regular participant I think it's in Tennessee is the Carton Palace. I've never heard of it. So here's the problem with the website for National because you can go to nationalghosthuntingday.com and it'll show you like world's largest ghost hunt but there's a lot of um like password protected sections so like i'm

trying to click on locations right now and it's saying like you can't visit this page so i'm like well that doesn't help anybody but um yeah if you want to sign up i'm sure that you can i'm sure there's someone out there who knows a lot more information than i do on this so if you are interested immediately on the uh ticket site and i have quite a few uh locations here we have good okay the lep castle in ireland which you've covered i believe uh ancient ram inn in england you've done that's one of the scariest ones that i've covered oh i i vaguely remember uh tilly pierce house in gettysburg uh bran castle dracula's castle in romania wow waverly hills that's very close to me um it's like an hour away come on uh skirrid mountain inn in wales uk and the ohio state reformatory an hour in the other direction so oh my god and then Conjuring House as well.

So we got a lot of options, Em. Nice. We should have tag teamed the Waverly Hills and Mansfield. Damn. Well, next time. Next time. So anyway, as for the episodes that have covered the Manresa Castle, I could not find the episode to save my life for Haunted History.

I know it's season two, episode three, but I couldn't find any sites that were. If Em can't find it, then it's probably not there. Even the illegal ways, my friend. Yeah, exactly. I did find my ghost story, which is season three, episode six. And the ghost story was that a couple was sleeping there and they felt this huge cold blast of air they could feel someone staring at them they even took a picture in the pitch black being like what the hell is going on and they got a very distinct shadow figure sitting next to them uh and then the next morning the wife is showering and she felt her back burning while she was in the shower and when she gets out there are three massive scratches down her entire back,

like from shoulder blade to hip bone. Hate it. They go downstairs for breakfast, and when they come back up to the room to pack up, apparently the room feels like a freezer. And they believe that what happened was a spirit almost went through them, because when they walked through the door, they felt something hit them. And the wife immediately got lightheaded. She felt dread and she had to run to the bathroom to get sick.

Oh, God. Yeah. So now we're going to talk about G.A. ZB. Yes. And this is season 14, episode three. And this is a pretty good one. 14 episode 3 and this was a pretty good one uh this is during just like the mid-interview walkthrough a door opens by itself and they stop the interview to ask the spirit to open the door again and it does on camera yikes yikes they did an evp session and got the phrase help her on tape

which apparently is one of the common sayings people hear. In the kitchen, someone lifted a pitcher of orange juice and slammed it on the counter, like a random something lifted up the pitcher and slammed it on the counter. And apparently when the staff are washing dishes in the restaurant, they will feel something holding their hands under the water. Ugh! It feels like another person holding their hand. Gross! Oh, I thought you meant like pushing their hands into the water, It feels like another person holding their hand. Gross! Oh, I thought you meant like pushing

their hands into the water, like holding them there. Like holding their hand. And holding it down so they can't get out of the water. Oh, okay, okay. It's all bad. All the bad things. It's all holding it in every possible bad way. Okay. One of my favorite quotes of the episode is Zach Bagans saying,

I haven't taunted in a long time, but I will taunt. God, a long time since what, two weeks ago? What do you mean a long time? Then he's talking to the housekeeper who got punched in the face. And he's saying, like, can you punch me as hard as I punched you? And she's like, I can't punch that hard, which is I feel so bad for her. That's awful. So the door opened on its own.

Zach tells Zach tells the spirits to make sounds in the room it wants them to go to. And then you hear two loud bangs in the basement. No, thanks. Great. So Zach starts taunting the spirit as he does. And he told it to punch Aaron in the face. She is such a dick. They see a child staring at them from under the stairs.

Huh? They see it? Forget it. They see it. I didn't see it. But they say they see it. And they also got the sounds of a little girl giggling and saying hi to them on tape. Like on an EVP.

Yuck. yucko they then hear uh loud footsteps pacing the hallway above them which is canon and so uh then they hear very loud sounds of plastic crinkling or a tarp being stepped on ew that's weird it's it's so weird i that one i don't have an explanation for but huh uh then they feel something really cold and when they ask is there something you want us to know they got an evp saying something is here yeah we know that thank you that much we know thanks they asked what is your name and with the spirit box they got the name natalie which could have been the little girl that they saw i guess um that's the story that they were going with at least uh could this be yeah the little girl um technically i guess it could be but okay it's like it's likely and also not likely it's also very not yeah they also got evps that said get off the table trouble and enter

when they asked what do you think of the guests that come in here all the time the spirit box said stay out okay that i can understand fair enough pretty when and when aaron gets the response uh when aaron gets that response of stay out, he says, whoa. And then the spirit box mockingly said, whoa. I love that. I love when they mock them back, you know? Yeah. They also hear tapping and knocking on a table by the bed

and the phone starts ringing in the room that Aaron is in by himself, but nobody's in the hotel. Good night. So the fucking phone just started ringing on its own. That's gross. Absolutely not. And Zach was just trying to order room service and got the wrong number. is in the hotel good so the fucking phone just started ringing on its own that's absolutely not and zach was just trying to order room service and got the wrong number he was like have you

gotten punched in the face yet and that's manresa castle i love it and just on cue that now that my window's open i hear the local church bell tolling it adds a very creepy factor to it yeah what's the weather there um it's very lovely it's been like uh 75 and sunny um nice we had some rain last night you know it was it's been a nice this fucking gong is going real long i don't hear it to be clear it's 2 11 p.m i know i've complained about this before what are they gonging about like it's not like it's on the hour 2 11 i don't 2 11 i don't know is there like an in memoriam situation oh well that would make me feel bad i have no idea oh maybe it's the queen i don't know do we do this in the united states does kentucky give a shit about the funeral i have no idea i don't uh today oh maybe it is something about that. I'm not

sure. I feel like that would be really a stretch, but you know. How silly. Okay. What a mystery that we don't dare to unravel. What a mystery that I'm just going to ignore. And hopefully you all can ignore and it's not too loud. So, Em, I've got kind of a short one for you today although today i was in the kitchen and blaze made a noise and i went what and he said i'm listening to the episode that just came out and you and em said we both have really short stories today and he's like this episode is over two hours long we don't know how to control to be fair i came into this episode knowing my story was going to be longer because you said yours was short so yes i know i tried to even it out yeah we even it out by saying oh they're short let's just tangent as much as possible and it just ends up being long anyway so

he should know that by now but i do have a shorty here um and this is a story about the Alexander family slash the Lorber cult. And I guess a lot of people have, not a lot, but several people have requested this story. But there's like barely any information out there about it. So especially English information. So there is some German information out there. But it's very shocking, honestly disturbing, and something that I can't believe I've never heard about. There's not even a Wikipedia article about this. That's how little there is on the internet. So no wonder it's short. You probably had like a link.

Yeah, there's a few links. And Medium wrote an article that was basically the title, I think, is Hands Down the Creepiest Family Cult Ever. And there's a few YouTube videos. And I do have photos for you of these people. I want to warn you, this gets, it's disturbing. It's short, but it's disturbing. So let's get into it. The Lorber Society was a relatively small religious sect of about a hundred members and uh how it was created is there was this man in the 1800s named Jacob Lorber and he felt influenced to write some teachings by a voice in his head that he claimed was Jesus Christ so starting off strong uh recipe for a cult I would say I would agree so Jacob or Jakob if you're speaking in the German wrote over 25 books following this voice in his head and over the decades these books were

inherited from one man to the next who believed in the teachings and followed the book's teachings and apparently the voice spoke through new people until there were over 40 volumes of this Lorber scripture. And the books themselves were published in the early 1900s. And in the 20s, the scriptures followers officially formed a sect called the New Jerusalem Society. uh under nazi rule after austria was annexed they were temporarily suppressed but they post world war ii they reformed as the lorber society or the loewe gesellschaft in germany snaps to you thank you so much uh a core belief was divine and free love members felt this is where uh this is when i this and I go, how have they gotten like hundreds of people to follow this? But I guess there's weirder shit out there. Basically, what they believe is that Satan existed in the world and commits evil acts through people, but only through people who are not in this Lorber cult, of course, like Satan doesn't touch them. OK.

of course, like Satan doesn't touch them. Okay. And so everyone outside of the Lorber society was under control of the devil and their souls were lost to Satan already. And one day God would appear on earth and destroy anyone who would not see the truth and give up Satan. And only fellow Lorber member members were safe and trustworthy and like exempt from destruction. Okay. Is there, do you know, I don't know why i'm no ask away why how does someone then become saved if they're already lost to satan and

they don't you know it's just you're either you're born into this and lucky i guess so okay i guess maybe if you join the cult you can be saved but like they're kind of saying well you know there's billions of people out there and they're all kind of a lost cause. There's only 100 of us. So they're special chosen ones. So starting really quickly into the world of narciss and God loves me more than everyone else. Well, I'm in. Sign me up. Yeah. Sign me up. So not only that, but Lorber followers had to adhere to very strict religious lifestyles. Every single day was centered around prayer and worship. And in the mid 1900s, a professor in California began translating the works from German into English english and this is when the teachings kind of moved uh more outward so more people had access now that they were in english so this is where it gets just so fucked up i'm like very quickly wow yeah four minutes in four minutes

in you think like oh well it's like a fucked up cult and it kind of dies out no okay just okay so there was this couple uh harold and dagmar and you know take it away dag classic german couple i actually have an aunt named that um it was dagmar a female name yes oh well what's a female name? But it sounded... Yeah. It's traditionally Dagmar. Yeah. Masculine. Dagmar.

Harold and Dagmar. Sounds like... It's spelled like Dagmar. Alexander. That was their last name. Were a married couple. They were living in Dresden, Dresden, Germany in the 50s. And they were members of the Lorber Society. Harold was extremely close

with the then current leader whose name was George Riele. So when George passed away in the 50s Harold was kind of next up to take over this cult as the leader. He took the throne and there didn't seem to be like an official ceremony or anything. He just kind of stepped into the role and now he was the boss. Okay. So along with the leadership position, Harold also inherited a harmonium. What is that? It's a portable.

Thank you for asking. It's a portable organ slash accordion that you can kind of take with you and play music on okay and so he would use this to accompany religious gatherings like to play music as they were doing their you know rituals and prayer etc but more importantly harold had a big announcement uh which i assume he said over the chords of the harmonium as he sang to his people. What did he say? He said the next prophet would soon arrive. Oh, shit.

And everyone had to follow this prophet. And was Dagmar pregnant or something? Oh, boy, she was. You're onto something here. How mysterious, Em. It's almost as if I can see right through it. It's almost as if this pattern has repeated itself over and over again. So conveniently, Dagmar was pregnant with their second child, who was an infant son

named Frank. And how convenient that he, what are the odds, turned out to be the next prophet. Also, imagine being the firstborn, being like, what? Well, it was a girl, so I don't think she stood a chance. I see. But now imagine you're like a five-year-old and you have to listen to your newborn brother. Oh, it gets worse. Like, it gets that times 10,000, like to a disturbing degree. Oh, God.

Okay. I'm already dreading telling you about. So this little Frank, he's born. Um, and from that moment on all Lorber followers were to consider Frank's every word as the word of God himself. Uh,

anything Frank ever said or commanded was the utmost truth was the divine law. This is an infant. So he's probably saying like baba and like poop making sounds and they're like this is a divine like truth like no one questioned like maybe we should give it like 10 years wait till he's a little bit older i mean i understand i do understand in the chaos of it them probably probably thinking like, oh, well, whatever the baby says is God working through them or some bullshit like that.

But everyone has been a baby. Yeah, they're still constrained to not being able to vocalize words. Like no one thought, no one thought, oh, this baby's not gonna be able to tell us like what god wants from us for at least a few years yeah no they just were like wow this is our new prophet we gotta like trust everything that happens uh here so this child frank he had been born in its conflicting sources either 1954 and 1953 um and frank had an older sister named Marina, who was clearly not cut out to be the prophet.

And he had two younger sisters who were twins, Sabina and Petra. And they were also expected to follow Frank's every command, as was his mother. Gross. Yeah. So Frank grew up in this. I mean, imagine how toxic this is in this role where he was glorified by everyone around him from the literal day he was born uh and talk about like raising a narcissist like yes i mean you're literally telling him he's the voice of god from the moment he's set foot on

earth it's a recipe for trouble so he did have a st stutter and it's believed he saw a psychologist for this, but there's not really much information on that. But aside from that, a little hiccup in their plan, I guess he was the divine prophet of God and everything he wanted, he got. And wouldn't you know it, this takes an extremely dark and disturbing turn. I knew it. You figured it out. I did know that. Yeah. Well, as a teenager, Frank got curious about sex. But here's the problem. People outside of the Lorber society, I don't know if you remember, but they're all controlled by Satan. And he couldn't have sex with people outside of the Lorber cult or religious sect. So because this would be unholy so in the late 60s when he was a teenager frank decreed that the holy and pure option was incest

okay yeah i'm not to be clear i'm not for this but i do want to say like i'm not surprised that a teenage brain who thinks he's a literal god and wants to like explore his sexuality like i'm not surprised that he just made it so like however he needed to his his religious quote-unquote upbringing is like you can't sleep with people outside of the cult and it's like well and he's like well i'll fix that like if every what's the next option i i yeah i it's it's sick but also like in a in a teenage brain who's been told everything you say is own mother would have to satisfy his sexual desires oh my god and because they were you know raised in this way and treated in this way they all obeyed and said okay if that's what he says that's what that's what's

true even the even his mother a grown woman who's like and she wasn't like born into this world was she like she has you know they were both in it together when they were married um so i don't know if she was raised in it or not it seems like she may have been um at least they were in it from early days i was gonna say she doesn't have any like prior experience before all this the like parents don't okay well what whatever just can keep going this isn't just your normal parent-child relationship this is a god on earth you're right you're right i mean there's just no logic and even the entire lorber society was like okay we're not gonna question it if that's what you say, you know.

Wow. But of course, people on the outside pretty quickly noticed something was up. The Lorber Society ended up subject to an official police investigation. So the Alexander family stepped back from the Lorber Society and they relocated to an island, one of the Canary Islands, Tenerife, and relocated to Santa Cruz. Mary Island's Tenerife and relocated to Santa Cruz. In Spain, Frank's fanaticism surrounding the women in his life, aka his family members, only got worse. He started to believe that women were inherently evil, which I think is something we all saw coming as far as like, oh, you're raised, the women in your life are raised to obey every word you say, even the ones who are older than you. Of course,

like that naturally leads to like, well, there's something wrong with them, you know? And so he decided that special rituals were necessary to make sure women could enter heaven. And the rituals involved death. What now? So they have to be killed to get to heaven correct as like so that they

so that a man can basically help them along their way and escort them you know i don't even know if there was that much logic i think he just decided he wanted to kill women yeah precisely i can't believe there's not more information about this i know I know. That's what I'm saying. It's like, what the fuck? How can you Google this and it's like hard to find stuff on it? Maybe, I don't know. Maybe someone just like scrubbed the internet to be like, this is too bad. I don't know.

So obviously he's like, well, you can't enter heaven alive. So I'm going to have to perform a ritual to send you there you know uh he frank out he outlined this process this ritual as the killing process uh which all women in the family would have to undergo at some point to save their souls and basically he said this will happen whenever i decide it's time so i now dictate when people die yes so now he Yes. So now he's also playing executioner. Oh, yeah, he's God. Remember, he can decide when people die, I guess. Wow.

In the meantime, the Alexanders lived a pretty unassuming life in Spain, and their neighbors kind of didn't know anything about them. They kept to themselves. Frank was working as a delivery boy. Harold was known to play his harmonium day and night. And in December of 1970. So at this point, Frank would be either 17 or 16 or 17. Is that right? 53 or 54 to 70. Yeah. So either 16 or 17. He's sitting in bed and he and his mother's there and he suddenly takes issue with the way

she's looking at him and he decides there's something demonic in her eyes and he realized that the killing hour was upon them oh my god so he tells dagmar his mother that it was time for her to die and she said okay i mean it's like so deeply disturbing. And I just want to warn everyone again, this gets pretty graphic and horrific. So, you know, we're already there. It's already graphic and horrific. But here we go. She laid herself face down on the bed to make killing her easier. now like time to go just this this very moment oh as you look at me and this is not a joke harold started playing the harmonium oh that's so creepy so creepy can you imagine if you were sorry speaking of like hauntings like that's the kind of fucking music where i'm like that would be the kind of thing you think think would play at a haunted house, like that creepy organ music, you know. So he's playing the fucking harmonium and reciting psalms as his son literally kills his wife in front of him, his own mother. So he starts to put her to death with a wooden coat hanger and is just like beating her. What?

Yeah. And of course it gets worse because of course it has to frank's sisters marina and petra were also at home and according to frank and harold they also submitted themselves to frank's will waited until frank was finished beating their mother for him to beat them into unconsciousness so after beating them frank stabbed them multiple times to make sure they were dead then he and harold used garden shears and razor blades to mutilate all three bodies this is where it gets even darker or or at least more graphic it's already as dark as it can get i think but it's this is where it gets more graphic. Just a warning. Frank and Harold cut out Dagmar's heart, wrap it in cord, and hang it on a wall.

They also cut out... I'm sorry. Your face is like pure and utter shock. I feel so bad. I feel like I'm throwing you into a wind tunnel and you just can't even breathe. You're getting sucked away. I don't know what comes next. breathe you're so no i don't i don't know what comes next okay they also cut off pieces of her genitals along with some of the women's nipples and nailed them to the wall and apparently the

whole time uh frank is just like instructing his father on how this works and is saying oh this is all part of the killing process how they get into heaven like at this point this is just like a delusional teenager making this shit up and saying oh i know that he that i know that the dad is like submitting to him and thinking like okay well this is how they get into heaven doesn't he you could still feel sad right like he didn't feel bad or upset no i think they were just like they did feel sad actually you know what i take that back uh that we get to a point soon where you can see they do feel like sad but they felt like oh but this had to be done you know like that's wild there's a sick twistedness of like oh this is just how it goes you know um wow so they genuinely determined that this was part of their ritual process.

I don't know who believed what. Clearly, the father, Harold, was believing this to some extent because he went along with it. And then the two of them sang, danced, and destroyed all the material goods in the house that linked them to Earth. That was the next thing they had to do. But they also included passports among those objects interesting incidentally this thwarted their future plan to escape back to germany because they destroy their own passports as part of this well that's what happens when like a 15 year old is in charge of the plans i guess seriously seriously like

what are you cutting your passport up it's part of the ritual whatever so that night the two men slept out of their home on another property they owned and meanwhile there's still one of the daughters not home because there were the twins and then the older daughter so one of the twins was at work while this was all going on oh so she comes home to this fucking brutal massacre not quite so she's at work. She's working as a housemaid for a well-respected local doctor named Walter Trankler. And she's 15 years old. She's working in the kitchen when her father, Harold, and her brother, Frank, knock on the doctor's door.

The doctor opens the door and finds both men covered in what he thought was mud and dirt. Spoiler alert, it's not. covered in what he thought was mud and dirt. Spoiler alert, it's not. They introduced themselves as Sabina's family members and asked to speak with her. Walter let them into the house but thought something seemed off, so he pulled a classic move

and eavesdropped on their conversation from the other room. Sure. As you should, especially in this scenario. He hears Frank and Harold tell Sabina that her sisters and mother were dead. Because Frank had decided the killing hour was at hand and it was time to cleanse and release the souls of his mother, Dagmar, who, by the way, was 42, and his sisters Marina, 18, and Petra, 15. Now, Walter is listening to this, like, horrified around the corner. He doesn't know any of this

uh and he hears sabina start comforting her father and brother and she takes her dad's hand presses it to her cheek and tells them i'm sure you have done what you think is necessary i mean she's been brainwashed into this whole idea of like oh her brother is the hand of god you know yeah but imagine being walter being like he's like this is i thought i would be hearing like you know some juicy gossip not like the crime of the century so according to walter the trio then hugged each other lovingly and like comforted one another because like you had mentioned they were sad but they thought this was what they had to do and so he just stood there in total terror. And now there's two sources or two different stories

that sources say happened next. Some say Walter barricaded himself in another room and called the police. Understandable. Another source says that he politely asked the Alexanders to step out on the patio for a moment. And then while they were out there, he called the police himself. It's like, be a a doll would you mind a doll step outside for a moment either way when the spanish police arrived the alexanders were still there uh carrying on like nothing was wrong uh of course it turned out that it wasn't mud on frankenherald it was blood uh but they still sat there talking to sabina business as usual and they were acting so casual that the police actually thought this was a mistake and they went to the wrong house or they they were like this

there must be walter must have misheard because they're just so chill and acting like nothing is wrong so they asked harold uh the police asked harold what was going on and he tells them everything he says oh well my son is the voice of God and he said that the killing hour was at hand so he you know murdered my wife and my two daughters uh he even told the home address for the police to go see where the killings had taken place not like a tinge of regret or like dawning of understanding here I wonder like what their process was when it comes to talking to the police because i know that the police are like or anyone that's not in

their circle they're not in the like they but they wouldn't understand so i wonder if you if they thought like oh because they wouldn't understand just spare them and lie but i guess not i know that's what my thought is too because like you hear about these cults where they're like oh well they would never understand so i got to protect myself from the law, even though I know what I did was right. Like, I agree. I found this very surprising how just casual and nonchalant they were about this. They even gave the home address and sent the police there. That's really bizarre.

Bizarre. It's very bizarre. I totally agree. There was not one attempt to like cover up the crime or any of the bodies in fact it was like much more gruesome than anything the police had ever seen boy i was gonna say i wonder if it was if they never felt like they needed to hide it from the police because maybe the the guy the boy what's his name jacob uh frank frank why did i think jacob um maybe he like was thinking i'll you know he either wanted a pat on the back because he thought well of course

they're gonna know i'm a god or maybe he thought like i'll convert them like maybe they just need to see with their own eyes i mean right like he's still a he's still 16 years old like maybe he just has some delusion about i mean they like 16 year olds like love a good bout of shock value right so like maybe he felt like this will really blow him away and i'm especially if he genuinely believes he's the voice of god like you're right maybe he just thought like oh well they'll know they'll understand they'll believe me so they send them to this crime scene. And apparently the Tenerife police had never encountered something so horrible or gruesome. It was very shocking, obviously.

And astonishingly, neither Frank nor Harold were convicted of this crime because after extensive interviews and evaluations, the court found them both unfit to stand trial. I, okay. I can see where that would come in. Yeah. Doctors believe that Harold suffered from a personal inherent mental illness and that he'd induced it in Frank when he raised him. One Spanish article called Frank's alleged disorder a, quote, psychic contagion spread to him from Harold. disorder, a, quote, psychic contagion spread to him from Harold. And again, this is like 1970s.

So obviously this is 50 some years ago as far as like understanding mental health. Right. Yeah. A psychic contagion. Yeah. Which is like quite a term. But so the court declared both men perpetrators responsible, and had them transferred to the Penitentiary Psychiatric Assistance Center in 1972, where they would be held and treated permanently. So essentially for the rest of their lives. However, in 1990, Frank and Harold escaped.

Escaped? Yes. I feel like... How old would he have been when he escaped, Frank? The early 1990s, so he would have been in his 40s. Oh, wait, the son would be in his 40s? Yeah, he was born in 53. Okay.

So... Okay. I'm not good at math, so... No, you're right, 40s. Yeah. Late 30s, early 40s. Okay okay because in my mind i was like oh wow he's still 16 how on earth did he come up with a fucking prison escape plan no yeah they've been there for like 20 years uh okay so we don't know exactly what year but yeah early 90s so either late 30s early 40s for him um and frank and harold just escaped and i don't know this is where it

starts to just kind of disintegrate into history because interpol was uh brought on for this and they filed an arrest warrant for them but nobody ever found either of them and if they are still alive which uh frank very well could be i mean he would be what 70 in his 70s born in 53 or 54 yeah um if they are still alive uh which is possible you know then they're still at large and nobody has ever caught these guys wow i is it wow shocking and then the story just died i wonder when when he was inside, if he learned anything. Because I feel like you don't get to keep acting as God in prison for 20, 30 years. Like someone's going to knock some sense into you.

Right. Do you think that he would have changed his mind? Maybe he was put on medications. We don't even know what treatment was given to him like because like he has to know something to have been able to escape in the 90s and then spend the next 30 years like not causing a big kerfuffle you know exactly and like you assume they would have changed their ways from telling the police everything they did to i'm assuming change their names and avoid interpol somehow so clearly they've been doing that successfully for decades yeah it's almost like they must have had some sort of shift but then again like i guess they were already like able to control 100 people and no one knew

so maybe there's another small town that's currently being completely controlled by this guy i don't know it's an interesting point because there are rumors that they somehow made it back to germany to rejoin the rest of their lorber society and they they're the rumors are that the lorber society harbored them as fugitives but there's not really any evidence this is all just rumor um you know legend uh which i mean then i can understand how they were able to be hidden because if there's they have 100 people like working together to like hide their identities then sure but there's no you know proof of this or confirmation um you know it'd be interesting though imagine them the lorber society over there

taking them in and then this guy is like oh my people hi I'm your god and they're like what we have not been operating under that assumption yeah they're like wait we thought that was over we thought there was another god hang on awkward we didn't know we were supposed to be doing that what a weird uh having to reconcile with like oh the Lorber society here doesn't actually know I'm God yeah yeah that's rough well as for Sabina because she survived and that must have been a very I mean obviously very traumatic tragic like end to what you knew as your life I mean your whole family was destroyed basically oh yeah um and so she was sent of course to a convent uh because she was 15 and her

family was murdered so she was sent to a convent and from then on we have zero paper trail she disappeared from the media from the records nobody knows what her life led to after that i wonder if it was because she like same thing with them but i wonder if it was because she actually wanted to go quiet or it was advised for her to go quiet or if she doesn't really understand. I don't know. Yeah, well, and I know that typically, I believe at least, if you join a convent as a nun, you know, you adopt a new name. So you're like sister of so-and-so. So, you know, maybe they just changed her name and then the paperwork didn't. Yeah, we know she got sent there.

Maybe that's when her old identity kind of faded away. And also, I imagine you'd want to. I don't know. I mean, I don't know. It depends on if she still believed it or not. But I imagine if you were kind of shaken out of that belief system, you'd probably want to avoid your brother and your dad. Yeah, I guess so. I wonder.

I mean, that's a big leap to go from one religion so yeah true with such blind faith to then just become a freaking nun like and it's like oh no that's not god that was your sick brother yeah like you must have you must do all sorts of mental gymnastics to to reach that point um and so like we said shock, this is a very underreported and little known case. It seems like it just got lost to time, which is so alarming because I feel like we hear much less bananas stories that somehow persist through time. But this one just kind of vanished. I mean, think about the studies you could do on this case alone for like how to like the the abuse like the manipulation and the guilt that comes like i i don't know enough about the psychology or the

the neuro workings of how to get someone into a cult but like i feel like we really glossed over that and not because you didn't try your best but like i feel like there's not a lot of information on how it got this way and you know i tried to like do more digging and i found um information on i think probably the reason you said jacob is because that was the guy at the beginning who wrote those his name was jacob lorber and so he's the one who kind of started this whole thing as far as like saying jesus christ was speaking to him and there is a wikipedia article about him it mentions none of this and i'm like don't you think that's relevant that like oh my god this happened as a part of this society the cause and effect of what you're researching right now and it literally there's a section in wikipedia called criticism and i was like here we go

nothing i'm like it says criticism oh he said it was jesus christ and people take issue with that and it's like well sure but what about like it was Jesus Christ and people take issue with that. And it's like, well, sure. But what about like all the incest and murder? But no, not that. Okay, sure. And I'm about to send you and unfortunately, Eva as well, even though she's not here and she doesn't know what's happening. This picture. This is Frank and Harold.

All right. LOL. We'll explain later, Eva. And Frank is on the left. You can see his very alarming eyes those are some alarming eyes wow aren't they and then there's his dad uh to the right the dad has some charles manson vibes he does doesn't he i actually had that exact same thought um and here's i'm actually gonna send you one more photo it's just a different angle. But for whatever reason, you can see that Frank is still making that same horrible face with his eyes, like bugging out his eyes.

Like, that's what I'm saying about like if this what a what a case to forget about. And hang on. Someone's calling me. Is it the Interpol? They're like like stop sending these photos um no but i mean in terms of like using this case as a study like i would love to be able to know if frank was going to be a fully functioning human being or like just looking at his eyes and the way he's kind of poised i'm like i like did just being told you're a god your whole life

do this or like were you already predisposed to like some sort of mental illness like because i mean again like maybe it does go off of um what the newspaper was saying and it's many words but like maybe his father was really mentally ill and then you know either genetically or just as far as socializing goes he passed this mental illness to his son like who knows i mean maybe they were both already ill and then this just kind of set it off into a very terrible direction like or this is just like fully nurture and nature and like yeah i don't know that's know. Maybe that's like some sort of alpha pose he thinks like kind of is like menacing. Yeah, I don't know.

I'm sending, I know this is sad, but I feel like it's worth sharing. It's a picture of Dagmar. Yeah, and then the sisters, Dagmar, Petra and Marina. Just like very, very, very sad. So we'll have Megangan put these on instagram just if anyone needs wants to see the face we're thinking of or talking about because it's yeah very unsettling um wow yuck so anyway that's the story it's like one of those where i said what's that and then i said how on earth have i never heard of this it's a it's

it's pretty incredible in the worst ways that i see a tiktok on and they're like the creepiest cult you've never heard of maybe i'll make that tiktok later i'll be like okay before tiktok does it for me yeah yeah yeah before your algorithm already knows you just did all this research it's like m's is just like, calorie is a cool word. And mine's like, here's this incest cult. I'm going to send it to you. There was a, because there really are some names on there that really actually, when you take away its meaning, you're like, oh, that is a good flowing sound.

Yeah, I believe it. I do, unfortunately. Anyway, cool man. Well, that's a terrible, oh terrible oh wait you're supposed to say and that's why we drink oh god i forgot about our cool new thing that works really smoothly every time so stupid anyway and that's why we drink folks that was not even well done um christine are do you have anything planned for us for our after chats this week all i had was just those same questions and stuff because we only of course got to four out of like 600.

But did you have anything planned? No. I just liked your questions last time. Okay great. Well I have some more fun ones for us. So we can do that in the after chat. But other than that. You know life's good.

Life's good. We've got two shows this week. We've got. We're seeing each other very excited to see you um what else i feel like that's that's it we drink and that's why we drink and oh we're doing that sure i don't know oh my god i tried to say oh and other than that life's good and you were supposed to say and that's why we drink and it didn't happen and you said yep life's good okay here i'll do it man life is good and that's why we drink