Heart Starts Pounding: Horrors, Hauntings, and Mysteries - 37: Invisible Intruder: The Chilling Tale of the Denver Spiderman

Episode Date: October 5, 2023

 Here's a good reminder to check every nook and cranny of your house tonight.... Subscribe on Patreon for bonus content and to become a member of our Rogue Detecting Society. Patrons get a discount on merch.  Follow on Tik Tok and Instagram for a daily dose of horror. We have a monthly newsletter now! Be sure to sign up for updates and more.  Heart Starts Pounding is written and produced by Kaelyn Moore. 

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That too. Work less and sell more. When you automate your shipping needs with Ship Station, go to shipstation.com and use code audio to sign up for a free 60 day trial today. Philip Peters had owned his home in Denver, Colorado since the early 1800s, which in 1941 when our story starts was a long time. You would think that in almost 50 years of living in a place you would know it, like really, really know it.

Every nook and cranny, every shadow, but sometimes, when you're so familiar with something, you almost stop seeing it. You don't need to look at every square inch of your home to know what it looks like, so often you don't. And because of that, you may miss things. You may not see the dust that's accumulated on the TV. You may miss that the water ring on your table is getting darker and darker over time.

Even though you're not taking stock of these details every day, you may still be able to feel that something isn't right. Something's just not how it used to be. And that's what our story today is about. It's about Philip. Would lived in his house for almost 50 years and could feel something was off. Something was changing, but couldn't quite see it, and ultimately, it's about what was really hidden there.

As always, listener discretion is advised. It's that feeling. When the energy and the room shifts, when the air gets sucked out of a moment, and everything starts to feel wrong, it's the instinct between fight or flight. When your brain is trying to make sense of what it's seeing, it's when your heart starts pounding. Welcome to Heart Starts Pounding, a podcast of horrors, hauntings, and mysteries. I'm your host, Kaelin Moore.

We did it everyone, we made it to October. Sure, it's always spooky season here at Heart Starts Pounding, but now it feels like we can really indulge. Hopefully, you were able to grab some heart starts pounding merch during our first ever merch drop. If you were able to, it should be making its way to your mailbox, and if you missed out this time, don't worry, you can join us for the next one. Patreon members of course get discounts on merch, and access to bonus content, like the special episode I did about my haunted French Convent visit.

I also did a walkthrough of some of the police file on the Joan Rish case. This month, however, I will also be doing a book giveaway for US patrons, so keep an eye out for that. Come on over and check out the Patreon if any of that sounds interesting, but of course, you just listening to the show is more than enough support. You can also find some bonus content on the show's Instagram and TikTok both at Heart Starts Pounding.

For now, let's dive straight in. 73 year old Philip Peters was home by himself on October 17, 1941. Normally, his wife would be home with him, but she had recently broken her hip in a fall and was in the hospital rehabilitating. So for the last few months, it had just been Philip at home in his bungalow. It felt like the spirit of his wife was still in the house, though. Because according to Philip, he didn't always feel like he was alone. In the last few weeks, something about the way his home felt had changed. But it was hard to describe. One thing he noticed was the house was making more noise. There were more bumps in the night and more creaking floorboards, but that could just be

a side effect of the house aging. Both he and his home were getting older, and with that it was harder and harder for him to take care of the place. So maybe what he was hearing was the foundation sinking into the earth over time, but there was also the feeling of the house Almost like someone was there It was the same feeling he had when he knew his wife was in the other room even though she hadn't said anything It was only sometimes and occasionally He thought he caught something in the corner of

his eye. Motion. Just in his peripheral vision. But he had lived in the home with his wife for half a century. He probably was just so used to his wife being there that his brain was filling in her absence. It was pretending she was there with him, maybe as a coping mechanism.

He really did miss her while she was getting better and his neighbors could tell. One of his neighbors had him over for dinner every night just so he wouldn't have to eat alone. And this night, October 17th, wasn't going to be any different. But the time Philip said he'd come over for dinner arrives, and Philip doesn't show. That's very unlike him, but his neighbors give it a little more time and don't really

think much of it at first. But then it keeps getting later, and later, and soon it's well past dinner time. The sun has fully set beyond the horizon and the street lights were on. So the neighbor calls a few other people in the neighborhood and tells them what's going on. Philip was supposed to come over for dinner tonight and he hasn't showed. I'm worried something happened. Can you come help me check on him?" Soon a small search party is formed and they head over to his home. The first thing they notice is that his car is in the driveway. Some lights are on in the house and every single

door and window they try is locked. They think Philip must be inside, but they also breathe a little sigh of relief because it's not like someone broke into the house or anything. One of his neighbors, a younger girl, goes around back and finds a screen on a window that's a bit loose. She's able to force the window open and crawl inside. The other neighbors are still outside the house. They hadn't seen the young girl climb in, but they hear her. Just a few moments after she first crawled in, her piercing screams are heard echoing throughout the entire neighborhood. Inside, on the floor of his bedroom was Philip. At first, the girl thought maybe he had passed out or had suffered a heart attack. But the

full picture of what had happened came into frame as she stepped further into the room. Philip had been murdered. His head had been smashed in by blunt force trauma, and it was way overkill. Whoever had done this kept attacking after he had died. The blood from his head had spilled all around the room, but a trail of it also led outside the room towards the kitchen. The girl ran to the front of the room, but a trail of it also led outside the room towards the kitchen. The girl ran to the front of the house, unlocking the front door and undoing the chain to let

other neighbors in. The house had been reinforced with locks. The Peters were really mindful about safety. The police arrived on the scene and did a thorough search of the house, but they didn't find many clues. It didn't appear that anyone had broken in, and it also didn't appear that this was a robbery. Phillips watch and a wad of cash were sitting on his dresser.

Whoever did this wasn't after his possessions, which only added to the mystery. From the way he was positioned, they figured that he may not have even seen who attacked him at all. But then they find something strange. There were two iron stove shakers in the kitchen. These looked like the handles for a crank, where completely made of iron and weighed about 5 pounds each. One was covered in dust, and the other looked like it had just been washed clean. The kitchen also had a towel that was damp with fresh blood. It was decided that a blood thirsty maniac must have somehow gotten into the house and killed Philip with a shaker.

But how this person got in, or who they were, remained a mystery. Esa es la primera vez que la familia rompía. El sabor refrescante de esta laguerdorada. Y si no te vinde a lo ir... ¿Tú? ¿Te mereces esta cerveza elaborada para aquellos con un espíritu luchador? Modelo, la marca de los luchadores. Todo conmeía importado por Juan Impots, Chicago y Nuy. Para los últimos meses, la casa rompía en el último. few months, the house remained empty. Philip's wife wasn't well enough to be released from the hospital just yet, so as the fall cooled off into the frozen Colorado winter, the house remained in the condition it was on the last day that Philip lived there. Halloween came and the lights remained off, costumeed children walked past the home, spreading rumors, and scaring one

another with what they believed happened. A maniac snuck in and killed Mr. Peters, some would say. But some children had another theory. See, after the police left, the crime scene was cleaned, and the house was left abandoned. Some children swore they saw a ghost in the house. At first it was just a rumor. The ghost of Philip still haunts the house, they would say to scare each other. But then kids started swearing they saw it for themselves. If you peered in through a window, you may see a light turn on and off on its own. Kids also said they saw curtains gently flap in the windows.

Others claimed they saw a whole apparition float by on the first floor. It became so persistent that kids stopped walking by the house at all costs. If they had to, they'd cross the street when passing the home, afraid to get close enough to disturb the phantom they swore lurked on the other side of the curtain. Eventually, Mrs. Peters recovered and moved back into the house in January of the following year. She needed help with things around the house. Her hip was still healing and her mobility was severely impaired, so a caregiver moved

into the house with her. It must have been weird for Mrs. Peters to move back into the house that her husband had just been so brutally killed in. The culprit had still not been caught. The police didn't even know where to start with their investigation. But it's not like she had any other options. How was she going to move all of her things into a new home when she could barely walk? It also felt strange not having Philip around. The two had been married and lived in that house for nearly 50 years.

And now, here she was by herself, in the same way that Philip was there by himself when he was killed. But it didn't take long for things to start feeling weird in another way, an almost indescribable way. Mrs. Peters was hard of hearing, but there were a few times she swore she heard her nurse in the other room, only to learn that she had left for the day. There were bumps in the night around the house beyond the sound of the foundation settling. And her nurse had been noticing things too. It would sound like Mrs. Peters had gotten out of bed and was in another room, but when

the nurse went to ask what she was doing, she wouldn't be there. It gave her the chills, and it started feeling like the house actually was haunted. And then, one night, the nurse was getting ready to leave for the day. The sun had already set, and it was nearly pitch black outside when she was getting her things. The noises had been particularly bad that week. She swore there was scratching coming from inside the walls at times. As she's gathering her belongings, she hears a noise coming from the backstairs. She debates whether or not she should investigate. Maybe it's nothing, but she hears it again.

Slowly she makes her way over to the backstairs, where the noise is coming from. She can't see anything at first, it's too dark outside, but as she gets closer to the window, she sees the shape of something. It looks human. But she doesn't spend enough time looking at it to be sure. Instead, she runs off screaming. That was the last time that nurse ever stepped foot inside of the house. She quit the next day, convinced that a ghost really was haunting the place. Mrs. Peters was now on her own to look after herself.

So a neighbor offered to help out when she could, come over and cook meals, clean up a little bit, just some basic stuff until Mrs. Peters was fully healed. But the neighbor knew the nurse left because she thought there was a ghost. And that couldn't be possible. One day, though, she came by and thought she caught the glimpse of someone running up the stairs. That couldn't have been Mrs. Peters. She was in no condition to run. That couldn't have been Mrs. Peters, she was in no condition to run. It looked like a skeletal man. That's it, the neighbor decided. We're getting you out of the house.

And so, the neighbor helped Mrs. Peter move in with her son. But she also called the police and told them what she saw. There's someone in the house, I just know it. The cops offered to spend a few days taking out the place to see if they noticed anything strange. So two officers were stationed outside just to monitor and make sure everything was okay. And at first, it was. They didn't see anything.

They almost gave up on watching. But then a few days in, the postman comes to the Peter's house to drop off mail. And as the mail delivery truck is approaching, one of the officers sees a curtain move inside. He gets the attention of the other officer, and when they both look back at the window, they see the skeletal face of a man.

Eyes sunken in and pallid skin. He's just in the window for a moment before he disappears. That was enough for them. They barge into the house, guns drawn, using their shoulders to knock the door down. Police! Police! They shout.

But no one is there. The two officers search through every room. Nothing. Then one of them hears a noise upstairs. Coming from the attic. They both run towards it and as they get up there, one of them sees two bare feet sliding into a crawl space in the back corner of the attic. A small door closing behind them. One officer reached out to grab a leg before it disappeared behind the door,

but tattered trousers ripped off into his hands. When the two officers get the door open, what they see is the stuff of nightmares. Crammed into the crawl space, a space that was 36 inches high, 46 inches wide, and 12 feet long, making it just a little larger than the size of a coffin was a man. He looked to be about middle aged with dirty hair and sunken in eyes. He was amaciated. Some reports claimed he was only 75 pounds when he was found, despite being nearly 6 feet tall. The officers pulled him out of the space and took a look at the conditions he was living in.

There were a few ratty blankets as well as empty jars of jam. In one of the corners there was a small electric toaster, which it seemed he had been using for heat in the winter. Mostly, though, the officers noticed the spiderwebs. There were thick webs and tons of spiders all throughout the crawl space. It seemed like the man had been living in a giant spiderweb. It was revealed that the man's name was Theodore Edward Coneys, and he was booked and brought down to the station. When he got there, he confessed that he had been living in the Peter's crawlspace for

the last nine months, and admitted to the murder of Philip Peters. He was ready to tell his story. So who was Theodore Edward Coneys? And how did he get into the Peter's crawl space? Coneys was born in 1882, and from an early age, he was frail. His youth was plagued with poor health, and doctors told him he probably wouldn't live to see his 18th birthday. Because of this, his mother was overly protective of him and made sure he didn't engage in sports or other high-risk activities. So Koni's dedicated his time to learning the mandolin. Something he eventually became pretty good at.

In 1899, he joined a mandolin club in Denver, which was run by a man who had just gotten a job in a railroad office, and was kind enough to let strangers come to his home and practice the Mandolin together. That man was Philip Peters. Coney's played with the Mandolin Club for a little while, but then moved out of Denver. He came back and reconnected with the Peters in 1910. Mostly, they were excited to see that the boy had lived years beyond what doctors told him and seemed to be doing well.

They were known to occasionally have dinner together. What they may not have noticed, however, was Kony's was struggling internally. His mental health had been suffering since he was a child, and now he was getting an urge to go off the grid and never be seen again. He didn't like the way people looked at him in public. He thought they were judging him for being odd looking and scrawny. He just never felt like he belonged. So, in 1917, he moved out of Denver to New York to pursue a career as a salesman, but that didn't go as planned. By 1929, Coney's had fully decided to give up trying to have a career and instead chose to live life as a transient, sleeping wherever he could and surviving on just what he could scavenge. In 1941, he made his way back to Denver, now a grown man.

According to him, he had thought of reaching out to the Peters as a friend, but chose not to. Instead, he decided he was going to go to them to ask for money, or rob them, whichever was easier. But when he got to the house, no one was home. He said he was able to crack a back window open and sneak inside without anyone noticing. From there, he wandered around the house and saw where they kept their money and valuables. Instead of taking them in leaving, though,

he continued to wander until he got to the attic. That's when he saw the small crawl space in the corner and decided that was his next move. For the next few weeks, he lived up there and noticed that it was only Mr. Peters in the house. At first, he kept his distance, only coming down at night to raid the fridge after he figured Philip had gone to bed. If there wasn't enough food in the Peters fridge, sometimes he'd leave the house to try the handles of the other neighbors, which were usually unlocked. He'd then take whatever he could from inside and bring it back to his spider web, as he called it. That's what he did to survive.

And eventually, it became easy. So he made it a kind of game. He would come down when Philip was awake and he would shadow him throughout the house, following him as closely as possible without getting caught. Then what happened the night of October 17th, the police wondered. Konees explained that, on that particular evening, he heard Philip get up and leave the house to go to the neighbors for dinner. At least, he thought that's what he heard. Philip really had gone to his bedroom to take a quick nap, so Coney's came down to raid

the fridge. When all of a sudden, Philip was right there watching him eat a roast. Coney's believed in that moment that Philip was going to kill him if he didn't kill Philip himself, so he grabbed the shaker and attacked. Philip was able to crawl away back to his room when Kony's finished the job. After that, he ran back up and hid out in the crawl space. He was in there the first time the police investigated the house right after Philip's body was found. When the Peter's daughter-in-law hears this story, she doesn't believe it for a second.

She had been over at their house the day before to help out, and she knew there was no roast in the fridge. She also didn't believe that a 73-year-old man who could hardly cook for himself was enough of a threat to Coney's that he felt the need to kill him. After that, Coney's remained in the house all winter while Mrs. Peters moved back in. The cold was the hardest to deal with, which is why he procured an electric toaster to keep him warm.

At one point, he claimed that his feet completely froze and he couldn't walk. For the next few days, he was unable to come down and get food, so he just lay in the crawl space, wasting away until he regained feeling in his feet. The heat was almost worse, though. The police noticed how stiflingly hot it was in the dead of summer when they found him. They couldn't believe he had made it through the winter, let alone most of the summer in those conditions. When asked what he did all day while he was up there, he told them he had rigged up a small radio that he would listen to. Other than that, he would just sit in silence and think.

Two weeks to want to get up and do much more than that. In the end, he gave an official statement to police that was over 8,000 words. Part of it read, particular. I killed Peters because he caught me robbing his ice box. I was looking for money I knew he had hidden in the house, but I did not torture him in an effort to make him show me the hiding place. He would have killed me had I not finished him. Even though I have changed since the old days, I was afraid he would remember me. When asked why he killed Philip with such force, more than would be needed to incapacitate him and get away, he said, I don't know why I hit him so many times. I guess it was just the hatred I had been storing up for years against everyone who had

the things I'd always wanted and could never get. That remained his official account of how things happened. He feared for his life, and so he took Phillips. He then lived in the house with Mrs. Peters for seven months. Konis was sentenced to life in prison in 1942, and he died in prison on May 16, 1967. He was remembered as Denver's Spider-Man, a nod to the conditions he lived in. You may want to check your home tonight. The spaces you think you know by heart, but haven't looked at. I mean, really looked at in ages.

Because these spaces may have become so familiar that you miss the thing that's off about them. Maybe it's a few pieces of mail that moved. Maybe it's a few extra bites taken out of your leftovers. You never know what could really be there. You never know what could really be there. This has been Heart Starts Pounding, written and produced by me, Kaelin Moore, Sound Design and Mixed by Peach Tree Sound. Shout out to our new patrons who will be thanked in the monthly newsletter, which you can sign

up for on our website. Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grace and Jernen, the team at WME and Ben Jaffee. Have a heart-pounding story or a case request? Check out Heart StartsPounding.com. Until next time, stay curious. Woo! you