Lore - Episode 174: From Scratch

Episode Date: July 5, 2021

Much like our instinct to set up a home in new places, humans are good at creating everything else we might need. And that includes folklore. But if even half of the stories that have been born in this one town are true, there’s a lot to be afraid of. ———————— This episode of Lore was sponsored by: Wondrium: Hundreds of topics taught by professors and experts, all in one enormous video library. Start your 21-day free trial of unlimited access to the entire library! Go now to Wondrium.com/LORE.—and don't miss my newest recommendation: The Real History of Pirates. Native: Native creates safe, effective personal care products that use trusted ingredients and performance. For 20% off your first purchase, visit NativeDEO.com/lore20 and use promo code LORE20 during checkout. Stamps.com: Print your own postage and shipping labels from your home or office. Start your 4-week trial today, which includes free postage, a digital scale, and zero commitment. Just visit Stamps.com, click on the microphone in the top-right of the homepage, and type LORE. ———————— Lore Resources:  Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music  Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources  All the shows from Grim & Mild: www.grimandmild.com Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com Access premium content!: https://www.lorepodcast.com/support See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

They weren't always close to the shore. When you stand there today, you might get the impression that they were constructed so close to the water on purpose, but time has a way of changing things. When they were first built, they stood much farther inland, but rising water levels and erosion have played a magic trick of sorts. Located at Orkney, on the tiny island of Papawestri, the site is known as the Nap of Hauer. It's a pair of structures made of stacked flat stones and rectangular doorways, all

embedded in grassy mounds. The roofs might be open to the sky today, but evidence of post holes suggests that they once had proper tops, and inside, large thin pieces of slate have been used to divide the space into smaller rooms. Some believe the name Hauer comes from the Old Norse word for burial mounds, and if you looked at them and made that assumption, I can't blame you, but that's not what they were. These amazing structures were something very familiar to all of us.

Homes. And they're ancient, too. They date from around 3500 BC, which means they are early Neolithic and even older than the more famous Scarabrae site elsewhere in Orkney. They're older than Stonehenge, older even than the Great Pyramid, and they make something very clear. Wherever humans go, if we can't find a home waiting for us, we make one. And the same could be said about folklore.

If you spend any amount of time reading the stories that have been passed down through various cultures over the years, it quickly becomes clear that those stories have spread right alongside the people who told them. But just like our innate need for a place to live, sometimes that new life in a new place required new stories to make it all come together. Folklore evolves, it grows, and sometimes it's invented from scratch to help a people feel a better sense of community. And one place in particular is famous for its stories, both in the ones they've made

up and the ones that are too amazing to believe. I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore. There was a reason people began to move there. The area of the United States that we now know as Wisconsin started out as a sort of goldmine for early European settlers. Although the gold wasn't literal, it was everything else, and the reason was an idea called glaciation. That's when an area of land is covered by glaciers for a very long time, which grinds

the surface down and smooths out the hills and valleys. But southwestern Wisconsin is part of a region in the Midwest known as the Driftless area, where none of that happened. And that meant that all those valuable minerals and metals were more common on the surface, right for the picking, so to speak. And if you want proof, just look at the name of one of the oldest towns in that area, Mineral Point. If you were a settler looking for zinc and lead back in the early 1800s, Mineral Point

was the place to be. Easy picking meant easy money, and soon enough people flocked there from all over. In fact, so many miners moved there that there wasn't enough housing for them, so they started to carve out little caves for themselves in the hills. Soon enough, some people noticed that these caves had a striking resemblance to badger holds and started referring to the miners as badgers themselves. So if you've ever wondered why Wisconsin's nickname is the Badger State, now you know. When the surface resources were picked over, people started digging into the earth.

For a long while, the big target there was lead, and Mineral Point was the epicenter of that industry. But whenever humans have dug deep for resources, they've also found plenty of tragedy. And Wisconsin is no exception. In fact, mining accidents were so common that they didn't receive a lot of attention in the local papers. They were just sort of accepted as part of the job, although every now and then reports of larger accidents would appear.

And when they did, the language was always highly descriptive. One man in 1893 was described as being blown to atoms when the explosive charge was set off too early. And in 1909, four other miners were killed when the entire powder house detonated as they were walking past it. The men were said to have been vaporized, which paints a pretty clear picture of how dangerous the job typically was and how creative the newspapers had become with reporting it. But mining accidents weren't the only thing putting early settlers at risk.

All those people packed into wooden buildings and surrounded by thick woodland made for a lot of fires, too. For example, in May of 1896, a massive fire broke out in northwestern Wisconsin near the city of Ashland. Three dock workers were killed in the blaze. And four years later, another fire claimed four more lives in the very same town. Then in 1883, tragedy struck a lot closer to home. In Milwaukee, there was a hotel called the Newhall House, which had been built in 1856

by a local merchant named Daniel Newhall. Contemporary reports claim that it was one of the nicest hotels in America when it first went up, but within just 25 years, it had already started to look a bit rundown. But in January of 1883, that no longer mattered. The fire broke out on the 10th of that month, starting inside the elevator shaft and quickly spreading throughout the rest of the hotel. And by the time it was over the next morning, the entire building had been reduced to rubble. The cause was more than likely just a product of the time.

While the outer shell of the building had been brick, the insides were entirely wooden, and all throughout the hotel, gas light fixtures provided illumination for guests, which meant that there were hundreds of open flames dancing around at any given moment. Honestly, it's a miracle the place didn't burn down sooner. And while the guest records were also destroyed in the fire, at least 76 charred bodies were pulled from the ashes of the building. Most had died inside, while a few had tragically tried escaping the flames by leaping from their windows, only to die upon impact and then burn in the wreckage.

One bright spot in an otherwise dark moment is how one pair of guests managed to survive. Charles Sherwood Stratton and his wife Lavinia were traveling performers known all over the United States, and they had been staying there at the hotel. When the fire broke out, they both apparently climbed out onto the ledge outside their window and waited for a fireman to pick them up and carry them to safety. And I mean that literally. In fact, the fireman was able to carry both of them down at the same time, tucked safely under his arm.

That's because each of them were roughly three feet tall, being some of the most famous examples of dwarfism in their day. And while you might not recognize the name Charles Stratton, you will find his stage name familiar, General Tom Thumb. Clearly the early days of life in Wisconsin came with challenges and risks, but all of it was in an effort to carve out a new home in a brand new place, a home that quickly began to brew some of its own stories and legends. And all it takes is a quick tour of that local lore to learn something inescapable.

All the tragedy of the past has certainly left its mark. Some of it was imported. When settlers began to arrive in the region now referred to as Wisconsin, they brought beliefs with them from their old homes. It's something humans are very good at. When we migrates, even when we can't carry belongings, there's always room for story. British miners, attracted by the lead and zinc in the ground, brought stories of goblin-like guardians of the mine called tummy knockers.

And the German and Scandinavians, who made up a majority of early settlers, brought their own Old World folklore. But it's the tales born right there, after everyone's arrival, that have truly left an impression. One of those stories comes to us from that old industrial center, Mineral Town. In February of 1842, a local man named William Caffey attended a formal party at the home of a captain. But Caffey wasn't the sort of man to play by the rules, and had a reputation for being

a troublemaker with a violent temper. Basically he was the worst sort of guest they could have asked for. When he arrived, Caffey discovered that guests were being announced as they entered through the main door, so he stepped aside to wait for his own name to be called. When it wasn't, he became angry, asking why he had been ignored. After being told that his name had indeed been called, but that he had arrived too late to hear it, he stole the guest list and stormed out of the house into the cool night air. Outside, Caffey was confronted by a few of the more courageous gentlemen from the party.

Without that guest list, new arrivals couldn't be announced, and they wanted it back. But Caffey refused, and in the heat of the argument, he pulled a pistol from his jacket and shot one of the men dead where he stood. Caffey stood trial for his crime, and in November of 1842, he was driven to the gallows in the back of a wagon. Local legend says that he sat atop his own coffin there, straddling it like a horse and tapping its hollow sides like a drum. Once in front of the gathered crowd, he refused to say his final words and dropped through

the platform to his death a moment later. Ever since, there have been stories of people who claim to see Caffey's ghost walking through buildings in the area of his execution site. One location is the Walker House, which is an inn today, but was a tavern back in the mid-1800s, and while it has been remodeled many times over the years, some parts of the past refuse to go away. Guests there have seen a ghostly figure walking through the hallways at night, sometimes with his head where it belongs, and other times with it tucked under his arm.

Others have heard disembodied voices in rooms that were supposed to be empty. Even doorknobs have been seen turning on their own. The inn might not sit on the exact location of Caffey's execution, but it seems his story has no intention of checking out. And there is a hotel in Milwaukee with a similar guest. Visitors to the Hilton Garden Inn have reported all sorts of unusual experiences, from doors that open and close on their own, to the sensation of being grabbed or pushed. And that would make it a creepy location all on its own, until I told you that it was originally

built as a hotel called the Loyalty House, built on the very spot that once held the New Hall House Hotel. One of Milwaukee's darker tales, though, comes from an area called Allen's Addition, in a house at the corner of Alice in Whitcomb. It was there in 1874 that locals had one of the most unexplainable experiences in this state. And if it's true, it gives us plenty of reason to stop and consider the darkness it might have left behind.

In August of that year, Mary Spiegel reported for work in the kitchen of the Giddings boarding house, owned and run by Mr. and Mrs. Giddings. Mary was a teenager with a rough home life, and the job in the boarding house was meant to give her an escape from the anxiety and violence there. In the end, it only made things worse. On the morning of August 8th, Mary was working alongside Mrs. Giddings, preparing food for the residents of the house. When a number of the chairs around the kitchen table suddenly levitated up from the floor

and crashed into the ceiling, plates began to fly out of the closet nearby and shatter on the floor. And a boiling pot of tea on the stove somehow fell over, splashing hot water everywhere. Obviously, both women were terrified, as any of us would be if it had happened in our own kitchen. And it continued, too. Vegetables flew, lamps toppled, and potted plants leapt out of their spots. So young Mary rushed from the house to find help.

When she returned, she had two neighborhood ladies in tow, Mrs. Mead and Mrs. Rowland. As soon as Mary brought them into the kitchen, the chaos began again. Mrs. Mead was so overcome with fright that she reported feeling sick and ran away from the house. Mrs. Rowland stuck it out longer, watching as objects flew from one place to another with no one near them to cause the movement. But eventually, they went looking for additional help. A short time later, two physicians arrived, Dr. Meacham and Dr. Gray, both of whom were

struck by flying objects almost at once. And what's amazing about this entire encounter is just how thorough the local newspaper was in its investigation. Local people of high reputation were quoted with names to support the story, which stated that these things occurred without human agency is vouched for by scores of eyewitnesses. Clearly, something unexplainable happened in this house. Some of those who witnessed it all blamed young Mary's spiegel for the activity, even though they couldn't explain it logically.

She was never seen throwing things, and oftentimes the objects that moved were doing so across the room from where she and others were standing. But she was young enough that some people just assumed that she was a troublemaker, as all children are supposed to be. Mary was sent home after that, back to her horrible father and life of loneliness and fear. According to the newspaper reports, this drove Mary to try and take her own life, although someone intervened.

And taking sympathy on her, Mrs. Giddings invited Mary back to continue her employment there at the boarding house. The moment Mary stepped into the kitchen, however, all of the chaos and flying objects started up again. And no one, either then or now, has ever been able to explain why. Every topic seems to have an epicenter. If you want to discuss civil war history, it's hard to do better than visit Gettysburg, the history of human flight.

You better visit Kitty Hawk in North Carolina. And if you were interested in exploring Wisconsin's paranormal reputation, most would tell you that whitewater was the place to be. The reason seems to be something that happened back in the late 1800s. It's when an unassuming man named Morris moved from New York to Wisconsin, settling in at whitewater to work as a farmer. But soon enough, he was pulled into the growing world of spiritualism, attending seances and building his entire social circle around it.

During one seance, it's reported that Morris asked a spirit where he might find a fortune. He promised that if it happened, he would devote his life and money to the cause of spiritualism to work as its champion. And in response, the medium relayed information to him about where he might dig a profitable mine. With a location in hand, he found the owner of the property, purchased it, and immediately began mining for riches. And it worked.

Soon enough, Morris was a wealthy man, and true to his words, he began to put that fortune to work promoting the teachings and the practice of spiritualism. Now, Morris was known around town for a lot of activities. He would speak publicly on the subject regularly and engage in lively debates with his critics. He was even known to get kicked out of local churches for showing up and interrupting their services with his own messages. But what Morris needed really was an epicenter for his life's work. So in 1888, he started construction on an entire school devoted to it.

When it opened doors in 1903, the school had his name right there on the sign, the Morris Pratt Institute. And it had his passion inside, with classrooms and curriculum devoted to the study of spiritualist beliefs and practices. And the pinnacle of all of that was a space on the third floor, known as the white room, thanks to its white walls, white floor, and white furniture. It was there that only true mediums could enter and practice. Everyone who stepped inside had to be dressed entirely in white, and then they would gather

around the table and make contact with the spirit realm. If it sounds like something pulled right out of a horror film, with a crazy old rich guy building a mansion devoted to spiritual energy, that's not too far from the truth. And that sort of story has a way of impacting the community around it. Morris Pratt died in 1902, but his school lived on for decades more. In the 1940s, the Institute sold their building and moved to a more modern facility, where they still operate today. But the old structure found new uses as the gears went on.

And as you might imagine, with that sort of story at the center of city life, darker legends were bound to pop up, giving Whitewater a reputation and a nickname, the second Salem. For example, there are rumors of a haunted book locked up in the basement of the local library. All sorts of legends have been attached to it too, that a number of students and even a local professor have all taken their lives after reading it, that the contents could drive a person to madness, that it was a gateway to a realm of darkness. But the story is larger than reality.

It turns out that the only locked book in the library is an old Catholic hymnal, thanks to its large size, ornate gothic decorations, and forbidden nature being locked in a cage. The community has crafted a story to fit it. It's all fiction, but it feels like it should be true. And it's not the first time that sort of thing has happened in Whitewater. There are a number of people who believe that there is a triangle of evil activity in town, and the corners of its territory are three local cemeteries. And sure enough, if you look at a map, those three points, Calvary Cemetery, Oak Grove

Cemetery, and Hillside Cemetery all seem to form an obvious and clear triangle. Whether the stories set within it are true, though, is up for debate. But geography doesn't lie. Right in the center of this triangle is the Granddaddy of them all, the location of the old Morris Pratt Institute. And the largest complex of buildings in the center today belong to the University of Wisconsin Whitewater, which has its own fair share of tales of haunted dormitories. But there's one building with more darkness than most.

When Sarah Posey and her husband bought the place in the late 1800s, it was supposed to be their home. The house became the center for their life, and they had two sons there. Sarah was an artist and helped support the family by teaching. And one of her passions was tile making, which she used to craft a number of beautiful tiles that were placed in among the woodwork along the Grand Staircase there. Two of the tiles, though, were special. Sarah crafted one with her own image on it and another with the face of her oldest, Little

Oliver. And they were mounted in a place of honor, right in the decorative facing of the dining room fireplace. But when opportunities in California pulled the family west, those tiles were left behind. One more part of the house they had turned into a home. And it's clear that it held a special place in their hearts, because when Little Oliver died young at the age of 37, he was brought back to be buried there in Whitewater. His mother, Sarah, followed him six years later, also returned home for burial in 1926.

But one thing had changed since their time there. Little Oliver's tile on the fireplace had gone missing. Ever since, people who lived in the house reported seeing a woman in a white gown wandering the halls. Others claimed to wake in the middle of the night to find the figure of a little boy standing at the foot of their bed. As the stories flooded in over the years, many began to assume Sarah and Oliver Posey had returned to their beloved home.

But it was clear that they were unsettled, perhaps looking for something. In the 1980s, the house went through a series of renovations to restore and update much of the home. And in the process, one of the workers made an amazing discovery. It was a hand-painted tile with the image of a little boy on it. Oliver Posey had been found, and the tile was returned to its home above the fireplace. Ever since, the ghostly figures of the woman and child have never been seen again. We humans have an intimate relationship with story.

We build our lives around them, we entertain ourselves with them, and we hold our hopes and dreams up against them like templates. Story drives us, and arguably makes us more human in the process. There are a lot of stories that we've been telling for millennia. The obvious examples are classic mythologies from the ancient world, but even some of the fairy tales we think of as relatively modern, like Cinderella, for example, are actually just descendants of older tales from places like China and Eastern Europe. When we find a story we love, we tend to hold onto it and pass it down through the ages.

Sometimes though, we find ourselves staring at a blank page, and sometimes there's something big and obvious that gets people talking, and those things have a way of kicking off stories that are new and fresh and really connected to the community who tells them, which is what I think happened in Whitewater. A great example is the landmark known as the Witch's Tower. Its real name is the Starren Park Water Tower, built in 1889 to hold 185,000 gallons of water for the community. In fact, it's the second oldest continuously operating water tower in the state, but it

also has an appearance that's generated quite a reputation, resembling a thick, gothic tower, crowned by a metal tank up top. And that medieval image has led some to believe that the tower also serves as the home to a coven of witches, who exit the structure at night to perform rituals around it. And for a long while, it seemed there was proof on the building that the town was trying to keep something trapped inside, because the barbed wire at the top of the surrounding fence faced inward rather than toward the outside. It was nothing more than a mistake by the installers, but it took on a life of its own.

And I have one last story that stands out as a perfect example of that concept in action. To understand it though, we have to return to the home once owned by Sarah Posey and her husband. By the 1960s, the house was being used as fraternity housing for students attending the University of Wisconsin. As you might imagine, those frat members got up to a lot of mischief during their time there, and for one of those students, those memories were foundational, becoming stories that would live on through his work later in life.

Specifically, one of the students reportedly drove his motorcycle up the stairs to the second floor. The very same staircase that once displayed Sarah Posey's handmade tiles had become a ramp for a wild college student, who left his own marks on the floor. That student who watched it happen right there in the Posey house would go on to start a career in entertainment, known for his wild antics and crazy behavior. And all of that bold personality, fueled by memories of life in that whitewater frat house, was poured into the 1978 film Animal House.

And that frat boy turned actor and comedian, the legend himself, John Belushi. There's something powerful about ghost stories when presented in their historical context. As we've learned from Sarah Posey's house, as well as other locations from within the center of Whitewater, Wisconsin, the two are inextricably tied. Where there are tales of hauntings, there's usually a backstory. Which brings me to an announcement. You know I have a healthy love for haunted locations, as well as the historical details that anchor them in the real world.

And so does my good friend, Amy Bruni. If you don't know her name, Amy is the star of the hit travel channel show, Kindred Spirits. And years before, she was a regular on the legendary show Ghost Hunters. And just like me, Amy loves the history behind the hauntings. So about a year ago, I started talking with her about making a podcast of her own. But together, we've crafted a really special show that I absolutely know you're going to love, called The Haunted Road. In each episode, Amy will take a deep dive into the history of one of her favorite haunted

locations and then sit down with paranormal investigators who have spent time there to hear about their experiences and impressions from the place. Haunted Road arrives July 7th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. One more and final link to subscribe over at GrimAndMild.com slash Haunted Road. But since it's a Grim and Mild podcast, I have the power to share a bigger chunk with you right here, right now. And if you stick around through this brief sponsor break, I'll do just that.

In 1912, in Veliska, Iowa, a family of six plus two of their guests were the victims of a horrible axe murderer. This unspeakable crime took place as they slept in their beds and horrified the small town of 2,000 people. Since then, the house has been dubbed the Veliska Axe Murder House and is the site of many paranormal happenings attracting paranormal investigators from around the globe. Robert Larson is one such paranormal investigator from Rhinelander, Wisconsin. In 2014, he was investigating the Veliska Axe Murder House with his parents.

He told them he wanted to attempt an experiment where he would recreate the scene the murderer left following the horrible crime that took place there. He asked them to leave him completely alone, but to monitor the building from outside from their DVR cameras. Robert proceeded to stage the home exactly as it had been found the morning of the murders, including covering all the mirrors with cloth, drawing the curtains, leaving a bloody bowl of water in the kitchen, and even laying a large pile of bacon on the kitchen counter. We'll talk about the meaning of that later.

The only thing Robert didn't have was an axe, so he made do with a knife. Robert lay down in one of the beds in the downstairs bedroom and clutched the knife in his right hand. Robert proceeded to call out to what he believed to be the ghost of the killer in the dark. He hurled horrible names and insults at the killer and provoked unrelentingly. The last thing Robert remembers is a strange light anomaly emerging from the closet in the room he was in and heading straight for him. When he came to, the knife he had been clutching was buried in his shoulder.

He was screaming and his parents were calling for help. Robert was severely injured. He was actually life-lighted to the nearest hospital where he coded due to blood loss, but thankfully revived. The police ruled that Robert did this to himself, but to this day, he swears otherwise. He claims the knife was in his right shoulder at an angle that would have been impossible for him to do himself, and that even then, he is right-handed and had the knife in his right hand.

Try that for yourself. Hold something in your right hand and try to reach your right shoulder with enough force to bury a knife in it. We will never know the answers as to what happened that night. Robert's actions were just out of the camera frame, and his parents were so horrified by what they heard on the recorder Robert was running at the time that they destroyed it. Now I actually interviewed Robert face-to-face. I expected to walk in and find a man who may not be entirely truthful, but I believe him.

Whatever happened there that night has left him a different person, and it was to this day probably one of the most powerful interviews I've ever conducted with someone. I think that was the first time I had ever met someone who had had a paranormal encounter that made me question whether paranormal activity can actually be dangerous, because I had never heard a story like this, and the look in his eyes was one of just complete and utter terror. Eventually we were able to get Robert to return to the house, and I think that was incredibly therapeutic moment for him that he needed, but it was also in the middle of the day and he was surrounded by people.

I don't think you could pay him enough to ever re-enter that home by himself. I'm Amy Bruni, and this is Haunted Road. So I am now joined by Johnny Hauser, who is the, I guess, resident paranormal investigator at the Felizca House. Would that be your title? Yeah, I'm kind of a, all titles with the ex house, the tour guide, the overnight guy, the website guy, the lawnmowering guy. Oh yeah, a jack of all trades.

Jack of all trades for that house. I'm the Norman Bates of the Axe Murder House. And so you actually live right next door, is that correct? Yeah, I live right next door in Mary Peckham's house, and she of course was the neighbor that initially found or noticed something was wrong at the house next door. Which is interesting because the more children used to play over in my house. I mean, Mary was like a grandma to them. I've investigated there for a few nights, and I didn't really find any evidence of the

children, but I do know that many people have. And then we did have an experience that we felt might have been with something more, I don't like to say negative, but someone or something that was a little more angry and a little more malicious. And your thoughts go to this must be the ghost of the murderer, but what do you think that is? Who do you think that is? I think that everywhere on this planet where something horrible has happened, it leaves

that negative imprint. It's just like you walk into a room where someone had an argument, you feel that negative energy. It's very real and it lingers. This place had an atom bomb of negative energy dropped on it. Right. I mean, I think that just in general hauntings react to the vibe in the space, and that goes for the living and the dead.

I want to give listeners kind of the vibe of the house because I experienced the gamut there. I experienced that kind of positive moment and the negative moment. So I'm just wondering if you could kind of pass on some of those. Oh man. Over 15 years of being in this place, I've seen just the normal footsteps, door open and closing there. For like a month, there's a lot of poltergeist activity of things stacking and arranging,

which is odd because nobody lives there at all. It's just an empty place. I've seen the positive. I've seen the negative. One of the most profound things that I've ever experienced was a Friday night. The overnight's canceled for whatever reason. So I thought, I'm just going to go in, fix some things in the upstairs bedroom, lock the kitchen door so nobody could walk in.

And as I'm up there, somebody walks in the house and I'm like, come on, people were closed. It's like, well, obviously idiot. They broke in because it's like nighttime. And I thought, they have no idea I'm upstairs, so I'm going to have fun with this. And I hide in the kids room closet and this plan was to scare this kid, jump out and just do that. And if you want to see it, I'll just show it to you. So the walking around downstairs for like 10 minutes, it comes upstairs into the room

I'm in. I kick the closet door open, do the big blah, nothing. There's nothing. And I couldn't even move. I couldn't talk. I always heard, oh, I felt a rush of cold air. I thought, yeah, everybody says that. I've never experienced it.

That time I did. I checked the whole house. The door was locked. You watch the surveillance video. There's nothing. Wow. And I've seen, you know, a lot of like a Amityville quality of the house, a mental manipulation. And I've experienced that in there to where, and especially in the downstairs bedroom,

Ein and Lena's room, where you just kind of zone an owl and pretty soon you're just like out of it. You go out of the house and, you know, it's like an hour or two later, you like start coming back to normal. And that's a, that's a very scary part of the house for me. I know what it can do, so I don't push it anymore. If you want more lore in your life, I also make an executive produce a whole bunch of other podcasts, all of which I think you'd enjoy.

My production company, Grim and Mild, specializes in shows that sit at the intersection of the dark and the historical. You can learn more about all of our shows and everything else going on over in one central place, grimandmild.com. And you can follow this show on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Just search for lore podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. And when you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi.

And as always, thanks for listening.