Men At Work Podcast - Podcasting from the MOST HAUNTED Place in America!

Episode Date: October 27, 2025

Kyle and Matt sit down with a tour guide from the MOST HAUNTED place in the world: Fort Mifflin. The Fort has experienced so much death over three centuries that plenty of ghosts still haunt the place. We talk to Connor a tour guide about his paranormal experiences with ghosts, some of the famous spirits that still haunt the place, and share funny stories behind the history of the Fort that saved America during the Revolutionary War. 0:00 - How to Become a Tour Guide3:40 - The BTS of the Haunted Confederate Prison We're Recording in!6:59 - How Fort Mifflin Saved America 11:45 - Paranormal Experiences at Fort Mifflin + The Man by the Fire 19:50 - Jacob Sauer the Blacksmith22:40 - The Process of Becoming a Tour Guide at Fort Mifflin27:35 - The Lamplighter, Private William Howe, & the Faceless Ghost32:10 - How Gettysburg's Tour Guide Test is the Hardest in America33:10 - The Creepy Story Behind the Pratt Family36:59 - If you Were a Ghost Where Would you Haunt?39:45 - The Ghosts That Guard the Walls41:40 - The Screaming Lady that Haunts Fort Mifflin43:40 - Connor's Favorite Ghost45:20 - What's the Future of Tourism Look Like? 47:00 - The Rivalries in the Haunted Tourism Industry 49:00 - The Most Popular Ghost Hunters today50:41 - Tour Guide Love Life53:57 - Connor's Old Job at Dairy Queen55:40 - Kyle & Matt's Paranormal Experiences57:35 - Employees Quit Fort Mifflin Because They're Too Scared! Donate to Fort Mifflin: https://www.fortmifflin.us/donate/Follow Fort Mifflin on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OfficialFortMifflinInfoAbout Us: The Men At Work Podcast asks one question: What do you do for a living? After that the conversation flows from there. We've talked to substitute teachers, Bangladeshi t-shirt moguls, a real estate broker tight with LeBron James, and the Governor of Literal Pennsylvania. And we'll record anywhere. Random sidewalks during an eclipse, a furry convention, and more! Whether we like it or not, our jobs are most of our lives - might as well yap about it. If you want us to come to your event email us at: [e-mail] APPLE: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/men-at-work-podcast/id1373108039SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/4XcFWt0I6gFvMotqDp5bsZ?si=2273debc08e5485dIf you want more bonus content check out Office Hours a weekly workplace advice show on Patreon that subscribers submit their questions to and we answer them: https://www.patreon.com/menatworkpod*If you subscribe to the Patreon consider subscribing on a desktop or website or an android device, NOT THROUGH iOS (Apple) APP. Apple takes 30% of every month you're subscribed (yea they suck). Follow Us:The Pod: https://www.tiktok.com/@menatpodcasthttps://www.instagram.com/menatpod/Follow Matt: https://www.tiktok.com/@mattpeoplescomedyhttps://www.instagram.com/mattpeoplescomedy/Follow Kyle:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kylepagancb/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@kylepagancbFollow Vito: https://www.instagram.com/vito_visuals/?hl=en

We're here at one of the most haunted places in the country, Fort Mifflin. And right now, we're about to do a podcast in an old Confederate prison with a union war hero. Thank God we have a union guy here because if I'm fighting ghosts and Confederates at the same time, I don't know that I can win. But we're excited to be here and I am genuinely terrified. Yeah, we're not trying to be Sissy Boys, but we're being a little bit of Sissy Boys. We've heard some bumps already in there and everything. Yep. Kind of stinks.

But we're going to grit our teeth, get through it because we love you guys. Subscribe to the Patreon. We'll talk to you. Enjoy the episode. Yeah, and do that too while you're at. Why not? All right, welcome back to another episode of Men at Work. We're at Fort Mifflin in Case Mate 1.

Oh, yeah. As you saw in the intro, I'm here with my buddy Maddie, and I'm here with Connor, a tour guide at Fort Miflin, who is dressed as a union war hero. I'm going to call you a war hero. I think you're a war hero. You know, screw it. We're going to make it up along the way anyway, so who cares?

You're a tour guide here, and how long have you been a tour guide at Fort Miflin? For four years. Four years. Okay. We talked to Mary and we talked to Rebecca. They've been here for 20. They've been here for 18.

So you're kind of the new kid on the block, or is there? Relatively so. Yeah, absolutely so. I had a first thing I was actually studying abroad for two years and I've come back. I just love the ghost tours here so much, so I had to. So yeah, I was four years here as the lead tour guide and program coordinator, and back here again for the ghost tours. Nice.

How did you get into tourism? How did you get into being a tour guide? Well, I knew about Fort Mifflin, because I'd come here for some reenactments in the past. And I really liked it. And I've always wanted to go into a career with, you know, historic sites and museums. And when I was looking for a job, Fort Mifton popped up. And I thought, why not? And here I am.

Very interesting. So you studied abroad. Did you study any civil wars abroad while you're out there? Where'd you go? Did you find out what they were doing over there, infighting anything going on? You ever seen any of that? Well, I studied over in the UK, actually. Oh, God.

You went back to the homeland. I like that, dude. You're a real yank, dude. I appreciate you going back there. To the enemy, dude. You're a little Nathanale. I know, I know. I was studying in Wales for a little while.

And actually, there was some courses there on the American Civil War I took as well, which were great. But I did get involved to some English Civil War reenacting over there pretty funny enough. So, yeah, good fun. I know you're doing Civil War, but did you do, did you do any, like, a little American revolutionary? Because, you know, if you go down to the South, they kind of tell the Civil War a different way. Like, does Brits tell the American Revolution in different way? It's like, we didn't really lose. We were just outgunned.

They do. There's different things that they say in the, they teach it differently in the UK. One of the big things they talk about is how American marksmen were so much better, how they lost duty, a lot of riflemen in hinders. from the woods and things like that. They were just simply outguns by this ungentlemanly warfare kind of thing. Ungentleman. Is that what they try to do? Oh, look at them.

Move in the goalposts. Yeah. Riflemen were pretty much hated by both sides because they had such accurate weapons compared to the mussels. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that country that was like 20 years old. Yeah, they should know. Enough with the cannons. Figure it out. Get a, right of rifle on hand. Yeah. You'd think. Yeah. Seriously.

Man, so what was it like over there? Like, how did you take that experience and kind of make it into like what you do right now in Fort Mifflin? Well, that's actually kind of funny. So after my four years here at Fort Nifflin, I did two years over there. And while I was over there, I was actually a tour got at a castle.

So kind of translates every well, Fort Castle, an old medieval caskina, and I did Ghost Tremouth Castle. And I did Ghost Tours there as well. How about that? What kind of ghost tours were given? Who was the Big Cohoon over there? Oh, that was in Oystermouth Castle,

was Lady Alina, the White Lady. Got it seen roaming the halls of the castle and a white dress. Got it. So, you know, ghost tours are everywhere, always old, spooky haunted, places. Who's cooler? A British ghost or an American ghost? Well, I think the ghost here at Fort Mifflin are a lot cooler.

Is that right? I apologize to anybody. A little biased. Well, you have to say they're all around us at once, so I could understand. Yeah. Yeah. You said what, American ghosts are better than British ghosts? What was that? Well, I think the ghost here at Fort Mithlin are a lot cooler than the one that I had over there. But that's just because I'm biased. That's right. Yeah. We're surrounded by ops right now. We have no idea. So I can understand that you're kind of keeping your eye up. Well, I guess we are in a former Confederate prison, right? And also Union deserters?

Right. So, yeah. During the Civil War. This case made where we are now would have held 82 Confederate prisoners. This was in December of 1863, so after Gettysburg, the Union Army had more prisoners than it knew what to do with. But on top of the Confederate prisoners, it had draft dodgers,

so people who didn't want to sign up for the war and tried to run away from the draft. You had political prisoners, which were a thing during the Civil War, and you had some Union War criminals who had done things like, you know, robbed or murdered while on duty, so they were also held here.

82 people crammed in here. Into this case, made alone. And do you see a toilet in here? I don't. Do you see anywhere to wash your hands? No, but I see a fireplace. They have a fireplace. Which is nice.

Which is, to be fair, it's a static. My girlfriend, we're looking for houses now, and she's obsessed with a fireplace. So I'll show her this place, and we'll see if we can make a deal. What's the Zillow rate on this bad boy? We'll get the Kelly Blue Book later. Yeah. So, I mean, it would have been just filthy, deplorable conditions in here. To answer your question, by the way, they probably would have just had a bucket.

Is that what it was? That's where they would have to use the facilities, which just been a bucket in the corner. So no showering, no hand washing. you just work with what you can do, and then the bucket is kind of like the go-to, if you have to go number one, number two kind of deal. Yep, and it probably would have been emptied into the mode every day. Damn. And then they also probably would have gotten water for washing up from the same place.

So that's, we read a little bit about this. The dysentery seems like that was a big kind of life-claiming thing that happened. Is there any complaints to be made at that time? Oh, absolutely. Like, what does that look like? I mean, the conditions here in these case meets have always been terrible. I mean, as soon as they were built, they realized they wouldn't be, healthy to keep anybody in for a long period of time and dysentery was one of those diseases

that was super common and you might know dysentery is one of those diseases where you die from a lack of fluids because those fluids are coming out of a certain it's funny you said that I always played the Oregon trail and I never knew I died at this entire yeah it's a horrible way to go you gotta go back to start now and unfortunately we do know that some of the people here at Fort Miflin likely died of dysentery now we have only four known prisoners to have died here during its time as a prison which is actually pretty low rate compared to Mount Rush more prisoners that died here for me yeah that's actually only four people in the entire from disease but okay sure i was going to say that seemed a little okay gotcha gotcha got

that makes more sense uh over the fort's history of course you have hundreds right right right battle there was executions that took place here disease and um some other various ways people died people drowned in the moat people froze the death there's no shortage of death here at fort mifflin it seems to be the slogan that's what i want to hear while i'm sitting in a case made with a little 10 by 10 room where probably some dude walking through the camera behind us right now. I hope we get one. A little spooked, a little spooked. I mean, I mean, you're a tour guide, so you see tons of different people. Dead in a life. Dead and a life. Yeah, true. That's good point. I mean, through your walking's through, who gets more easily spooked out? Is it guys or girls?

Oh, I don't know. I think, honestly, the girls here at the fort are pretty tough. I mean, most of our tour guides are female. Sure. I mean, my coworker Mary, for example, she's dealt with everything, and she's real tough, so she doesn't get spooked anymore. Nothing like a lady that looks her to tell a guy to sit the hell down, whether he's dead or alive. I kind of need it. Yeah, they need it a lot more of that. Get away from me. Yeah. I hear that, dude, there's a lot going on at once.

So why is, so I know Fort Mifflin is called the Fort that saved America. Like, what is kind of the history around it? Like, I know a little base of it. We did enough research where, and I think this is a really cool place, because you've been a part of so much history and history that has, like, literally built this country. You're Revolutionary War, War of 1812, and the Civil War. Like, what is when you are on your tour, like, what's your favorite story to tell or like, what's your favorite history to have been of, like, Fort Mifflin to kind of get your point across?

Well, Fort Mifflin was the site of the largest bombardment in North America, and it would only be later beat during the Civil War, right before Pickett's charge. What happened here was effectively the precursor to Valley Forge. It's the reason why Washington was able to encamp at Valley Forge. So you get to September of 1777, Washington is defeated at the Battle of Brandywine. The British capture Philadelphia, monumental thing that happens. They captured the capital of the rebel forces. Everybody thought the war might have ended then and there, but no, Washington.

Washington kept fighting, the army kept fighting, but Washington needed to make it to winter quarters at Valley Forge. Even though the British had captured Philadelphia, they had not captured Fort Mifflin or Fort Mercer across the river. And these two forts were told by Washington to hold out to the last extremity against the might of the Royal Navy. And they did so for six long weeks, and during a thousand cannonballs an hour at the height of the siege. Wow. It was an incredibly intense bombardment. Estimates of casualties here at the Fort 250 to 300. but because these men held out for so long, Washington made it to Valley Forge.

So we were kind of the prequel to that momentous thing. Sure. So is there, I guess that was kind of like the early understanding of like, don't put your capital right on your coastline. I guess that makes a little more sense. They kind of learned a quick lesson right there. Like we should put it a little more inland, make it a little bit tougher. Was there any kind of like speaking about that?

Maybe a hill, it's a quick hill. It didn't help too much during the War of 1812, though. It just kind of happened again. Sure. Say, Livy. Yeah. I heard that, I heard a story from watching about Fort Mifflin is that you guys were getting bombarded, you guys, everybody was, we were getting, yeah, thanks, man. Us, us, our ancestors were getting bombarded so much that they had people go out and retrieve the cannonballs and they paid them by giving them rum.

And they got the Revolutionary Army, the Continental Army, so drunk that guys just started trying to catch the cannonballs out of the air and they were literally losing them. their head. That is absolutely true. It's an account from a... Sorry, Big Brothers. I don't want to do rude or anything, but we appreciate it, of course. That's fucking nuts. Yes, of course. Of course. Of course we appreciate it. That did happen. The British had a 32-pound cannon. We had a 32-pound cannon. We ran out of cannonballs for it. Now, 32 pounds is not the weight of the cannonball. Dang. So they're pretty heavy cannonballs. Yeah, dude, I can do some... Listen, dude, you get me on a little... Yeah, he's been doing Pilates lately. He knows a lot about a 32 pounds going up to this, of course.

A little kettleball, actually. A council from Martin record that these men were picking up the cannonballs that had literally just been fired by the British, tossing them into our cannon and firing him right back? I love that. So we talked about it before we started, the gangs of New York, I just watched. And you talked about draft Dodgers. Now, is that, like, my understanding was a lot of the soldiers were maybe, like, from a lower kind of status family that were, like, forced to be drafted into this.

So these guys are in the middle of a war. They're probably, what, 18 to 25 is the predominant age of the guys. Have you seen any history about what their perspective? was, like, did they want to be there? Are they like, I'm really fighting for the union? Are they kind of like, shit, I don't want to end up here? This is not what I expected. Well, it depends. You had a lot of people who were, of course, devoted to the union cause, but especially at the outset of the war, you had a lot of people who simply didn't care about slavery. I mean, there were a lot of people who simply didn't want to die. They were just too scared to go out to war. And especially after the Union Army was racking loss after loss in the beginning of the war, they thought, no way. I'm doing that. So quite a few of those draft Dodgers ended up here at Fort Mifflin because they tried to run away. And back then that wasn't an option. Where are you run? South?

Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know of any defectors. Yeah. They're both in the war. That's got to be tough to try to, you're running away from like the old Delco area and you're like, shit, I'm at Fort Mifflin. I ran too far. I'm on the coast. I think a lot about how easy it would have been to kind of do crimes and try to evade authorities back then.

It's not like they had ID or anything like that. D&A, yeah. Fake your name everywhere you went, no ID. Yeah. Grow a mustache? That would have been tough for me. like that. It seems like there's a devious bone in your body there, Connor. You think about what it was like to do crime in the past. I like that. I'm right there with it, because I think

about the same thing. It feels like you could just do it willy-nilly, and you would get like a cool nickname. They'd call you like, old Connor of the South. He's struck again and took the rum. They don't do that anymore. It's a good thing, though, because, you know, you get those cool nicknames and that just encourages more people to go do stuff. Yeah. Now just, you know, billionaires do crimes. So times have really changed. It used to be kind of a poor thing to do crime nowadays we've got a lot of the rich people toad it so you know so a lot of people had died here you've been here for four years have you had any experience with the paranormal fortunately not as much as my co-workers have okay there have been occasions where i actually i sleep over here at

portminton pretty often not here not here my name's crazy it's only done it once in here during a reenactment but um what are the beds like i just sleep on a cot i have a nice cot that i sleep it's crazy to sleep in a place that's definitely haunted and the sleeping arrangements aren't even that great is this like an encouraged thing or you're just like a i Well, wait, are they hazing you? No, no. You can tell us. That's not what it is.

I do it of my own volition. So sometimes it's because we have scouts or paranormal investigation groups here, which, believe it or not, there are paranormal investigators to rent out the fort for a night. They can investigate. Boy Scouts stay over here. So each one of those, we need somebody here just to make sure, you know, nobody's setting on fire, there's anything on fire or anything. So we have one person on staff, always on site, for any of these things.

So I've stayed over here at the fort plenty of times. And while here, I've heard bootsteps. I've heard the serious little whispers and things like that And you always feel like you're being watched That's one thing that doesn't really go away Yeah, I turned the corner a couple times And I always thought I saw something in the corner But I think it was just kind of me

You're just being a big baby It's a tall shadow. You're too long of a guy Yeah, the shadow is crazy. I'm the Southern man So you're staying here overnight, you hear boots I mean, are you like waking up Are you like a sound sleeper while you're here And you're like this is kind of almost putting you at peace

I am a pretty sound sleeper most of the time But the boot thing It was pretty hard to get sleep afterwards And what's he like dancing? No, so, was over in the hospital building, which is outside the fort's walls. A lot of people would have died in there, of course. And I was sleeping on the first floor, and I heard those bootsteps coming from the second floor. And it's actually pretty silly. I try to convince myself it was a raccoon, so I grabbed the room. I don't know why. I got the room, and I walked up the steps, and then I thought, wait a minute, at Fort Mifflin, I go back down the steps, and I grab a musket, and I put a bayon on it. I must look very, very silly in my pajamas with a musket and bayonet. I go up the stairs, I look in the windows, and of course, there is no raccoon. I go back downstairs. I try to get some sleep. Could have been a Confederate raccoon. Who knows?

That guy, yeah, he's up there, yeah. I wake up in the middle of the night, and I hear the bootsteps again, and I don't bother going up to investigate again. I just try to go to sleep, but I didn't really get much of that night. That would have been so sick if it was a raccoon, he killed the raccoon, and the raccoon came back to Han Connor. That's a true. That's an interesting idea, yeah.

Certainly on the table. I heard there's a spirit who's a tour guide. Yeah, the unknown tour guide. So over in the gunpowder magazine, which, in my opinion, is probably the spookiest place here at the fort. I agreed. On numerous occasions, people have. I've seen a soldier dressed in Revolutionary War attire who, according to these accounts, has spoken to them and spoken at length about what the battle was like, what it was like to be here during the battle.

People will thank this person, walk out and tell whoever's in the gift shop. That reenactor did a great job, but of course there's no reenactor there that day. And one of my co-workers, Mary, had a picture taken of her in that gunpowder magazine. And standing behind her in this picture is a man dressed in Revolutionary War attire who nobody at the fort recognizes, smiling and looking at the camera. Isn't that crazy? you not only have to worry about AI taking your job, and I have to worry about a dead guy taking a job? This is well before AI, yeah.

Yeah, there's got to be a small piece of you. It's like, I studied really hard for this. I don't want this guy coming here taking my job. Get there, L.A. You kind of ruined my whole setting. I would be pretty peeved if I were you, dude. I mean, that guy knows, that guy can actually draw on experiences a lot more than you can. It's true.

I kind of do hope when we see the tour later that we kind of run into it. It would be nice if you stepped in as a tour guy, be like, let me correct you real quick, ghost. Actually, so this didn't go. Yeah, of course, sure, sure, sure. that'd be great man yeah fight back that would be all the time yeah the union's got a union eyes just taking your jobs I appreciate that that's very nice

oh man what are some of the most well-known ghost stories or ghost sightings here who are some of the people who kind of maybe in this casemate right here or around the ground well one of the ghosts we talk about here in casemate number one is the man by the fire it's a man dressed in revolutionary war attire that's been seen simply sitting by the fireplace over there on numerous occasions by people staying over here at the fort 10 feet that way right over there yep whenever the fire is lit

On numerous occasions, people have seen a Revolutionary War soldier either sitting or standing next to the fireplace and just staring into the flames. It's crazy. On one occasion, there was a Civil War reenactment here and one of the guys woke up in the middle of the night and saw this guy wearing the tricorn hat looking into the fire and turned back over

and then thought, wait a minute, this is a Civil War reenactment. That's a Revolutionary War soldier. So he flipped back over and the guy was gone. Wow. That's probably one of the more tame spirits. I love that person that was just like playing semantics. Like, that's... Technically, it's in America.

He doesn't really belong here. That's a union soldier. That's a guy fighting back. He's like, I'm sick of these tour guys coming, and he's not even dressed correctly, yeah. I mean, dude, that's union. We're doing Confederate today. Yeah.

We're doing union. No, that's revolutionary. We're doing union today. We're doing union today. Also, I like the names of the spirits. I feel like we could be a little more creative. You see a man by the fire, and we landed on man by the fire. What about Derek?

We could probably do a little bit better. Derek, we do have some spirits that we've associated names with. For example, you know, if they record a name pretty often in a certain area, and it's associated with a spirit, we typically apply that name to the spirit. So, for example, Michael is one of the spirits. that's known to roam up and down the halls of the casemates. He's reportedly a soldier wearing a bagged union coat. He might have been one of the soldiers whose duty it was to bring food and water to

his prisoners or also empty those buckets I mentioned earlier. He wouldn't have had a great job. Yes, yeah. He's still seen him wandering up and down. So we've heard that there's really, it seems like the spirits for the most part are not nefarious in any way. They seem somehow kind of like we just want you to know we're here. Can you give me a better understanding of that if they're not kind of,

of coming at you in like a kind of scary way what do you what is the idea of what they're doing not necessarily i mean there have been some helpful spirits even um we have had some reports from paranormal investigators who say that they get they've been cursed at or yelled at um on one occasion though in regards to the helpful thing my co-worker mary was making her way down into casemate 11 which is the solitary confinement casemate uh when she slipped on the steps oh but she felt an icy cold hand grab her shoulder and prevent her from falling when she turned around to thank the gentleman that had helped her. Of course, no one was there.

That's nice. Not all bad, of course. Sure. You know, some can be kind of spooky. He's like, learn to walk, bitch. Okay. Ten to two. It was like, oh, damn, we had the...

Lock in. We had such a good report. The ghost is on life alert. Yeah, how about that? The irony. You shout to that ghost. That was a good ghost. That was a good ghost.

What's the ghosts that are, like, cursing that people and stuff? Some say that he's the judge, and I don't know too much about him, but he's been reported to curse on numerous occasions. I don't think that's allowed in... Is he hitting, like, modern curses? Well, they have all the same curses we have. Not that I can repeat any of them. They don't have skivety toilet.

That's a new one that kids came out with. Probably wouldn't have had that one. That's what my younger cousin called me the other day, and I had to Google it. I don't know if you've ever been insulted and had to Google what the insult means, but that was a tough day. We do tours sometimes at another side I work at and here, and the kids just saying all sorts of stuff. I think there was one time where a kid just looked at me and said, this fort is so skivety and they hit the gritty. And he hit the gritty. He hit the gritty right afterwards.

I felt really, really, really. And then you looked around and you're like, did anybody see that? And they're like, we didn't see anything. It's the ghost of Gritty. It's the Gritty, 6-7 kid. He was a young boy, emptying the buckets here. Honestly, that's what the Revolution, that's what the Continental Army

fall for. I think that's exactly right. For us to do 6-7 and Gritty all over the case, makes. There was a huge TikTok trend back in the day. A little buckle my shoe thing. Do you remember that? No. Yes, yeah.

Yeah, we did, I've made a bunch of TikToks for the fort. A lot of them historical, some of them little funny ones. And the one that blew every other one out of the water. It's got like nearly a million views on it, of course, is the one I put the least effort into, and it's me just pointing at the buckle shoes and my Revolutionary War attire going with the song, and of course that one gets all of these. Yeah, that's awesome. It's always how it goes.

That's great, yeah, of course. It really is. It doesn't take a lot nowadays. No, no. Yeah. We were just, I mean, even the brain rot, I mean, I wonder if, like, the Revolutionary War guys kind of an army or, like, the Civil War guys ever, like, what was their brain rot back in the day? I think it was actual brain rot.

I think they were dealing with some tough times. I think that was, yeah, I would imagine. It was the disintering the ill fear. The circumstances were not necessarily ideal, yeah. The trench foot. didn't do a, you know, did a number. Sure. Shout up Benny Frank.

Yeah, we appreciate. Electricity, by the way. Of course. Yeah, so back to another one of the ghosts. I wrote a couple here that I wanted to talk to you about. Jacob the Blacksmith, going back to the bad names, that's a cool name. Well, yeah, that's because we know that there was a blacksmith here named Jacob Sauer. And we believe he might be a spirit that's quite fond of opening and closing,

sorry, well, just opening, the Blacksmith door, which is the Blacksmith building, built in 1778. And numerous tour guides here at the fort, myself included, have closed that door at the end of a long day, only to turn around and find it open again. On windless days, people have seen that door open on its own. On one occasion, it was actually not only open, but blown off its hinges and sent a foot back.

It had to be repaired and nailed up after that. People have also seen tools moving back and forth in the blacksmith shop. They've seen a man wearing an apron, sometimes just from the waist up in the blacksmith shop. So he's the blacksmith ghost. Did he pants on? I don't know. I mean, if he's from the waist up, you can't really tell.

Presumably, I would hope he had... That really, that almost feels like the world that we're living in now, we're all around the same age. We're never going to get to retire. And it's going to get so bad that they're going to be like, in the afterlife, you still have to do your job. So that poor blacksmith is like, I can't even collect my pension until three eons from now. That poor guy, man. Sheesh. The judge senses him to four life sentences.

Oh, gosh, man. So the blacksmith. Did anyone ever be like, walk into the blacksmith place and just be like, knock it off, Jacob, all right? We're just trying to do our jobs here. Well, sometimes even when I've been working. year where it's just, you know, the end of a long day. And, for example, at the end of the ghost tours, right? We have, everything's candle lit here. We turn out all

the lights and we light everything by candle. It's my job to blow out all the candles a lot of the time and all the torches. So, complete darkness when I do it, just the flashlight. It's crazy. And sometimes, even though, you know, I'm not sure, I go in there and I say, listen, if there's anything here that wants to bother me, just please, I've had a long day, then I can go and blow them

all out. And fortunately, nothing is... They're not hazing you? They're not hazing. Just in case. But just in case, you know, it just... You can tell us. Blink twice. That's how I talked to my girlfriend at the end of the day. I'm like, if anybody here is going to bother me, I swear to God, I'll be out of your hair in two seconds. I'll blow the candles out, leave it alone. Just want to take a bath.

Yeah, sure. Dan, so what other jobs do you do? You got a candle blowing out? What other kind of jobs do they make you down? Oh, I mean, you do a little bit everything here. We have to deal with all sorts of stuff from just, you know, gift shop to sometimes there's animals we have to deal with. It's a really jack-of-all-trades job here at the fort. What kind of animals?

Well, we have deer and geese and stuff here all the time. you got haunted animals I don't think so good question some people have heard dogs barking here okay I've been paranormal investigators and that does line up so back in the day we've had guard dogs here at the fort

and officers staying here at the fort would have been allowed to live here with their pets and their families and stuff like that but yeah I've done a little bit of everything you know what kind of dogs I just don't want to be like some like shits though or something like that I can't imagine they had

shih Tzu's on the premise back then yeah I just want to make sure I just was like a nice little German shepherd maybe a Rotweiler? Yeah, German Sheppers. That was World War II. We deal with a lot of German Shepherds. That's true. So going back to, you know, like working here, what's the process like to, you obviously have to study a ton and, like, be very well versed in this area? Like, what's that look like? Oh, well, I mean, you typically go on a few tours, just kind of shadow them and listen to what the tour guide's saying. But then, of course, you're kind of like supervised

for your first tour, first or a couple tours to make sure you're repeating all the correct stuff. And then afterwards, you kind of set loose to give your own tours. And I've done a a lot of research on this place. I'm very, very attached to it. This book's fantastic. I call it, like the Bible of Fort Smith. It's called Fort Worth. It's called Fort Worth in Philadelphia and illustrated history by Jeffrey Dorwart. It's not even in print anymore, but it's, it's a shame because it's got the best info on everything here at the fort. Can't get it on an audio book? You might be able to, but I think it's a little too old for that. Sure. And it's just an incredible place with so much history. Yeah. So this was like a, so you had an initial interest

in here, you're going through the process. So you're watching tours and your actual training and to be able to take people on the tours. Is it just watching a couple tours and then you're kind of good to go or it's just really kind of going off that book? How long does it take? Is it a couple months period, a year period? I would say it took me probably a couple months

to get the tour down Pat. And then afterwards, kind of through the years, I've been able to kind of give, one of the things that I've learned to do is depending on, for example, how long people have, I can give a 30 second, a 30 minute or an hour-long tour about the fort.

Sometimes you have to go quick, sometimes you have to go slow. It depends on what you're dealing with. And yeah, you just basically, you shadow some tours, and then you're supervised on a couple tours, and then you're set free, so to speak. There's got to be some interpersonal skills.

Like, you're dealing with just total different walks of life, families, a couple guys that are just here, just check out the thing. Like, is there any kind of thing they train you on, like, dealing with those dynamics? Or it's kind of just... Oh, sure, sure. So, for example, you know, especially on the ghost tours,

when I see that it's all adults, I can get into the really nitty, gritty, grueling things. But when I'm dealing with second graders, I, you know, don't tell them about the decapitations I can't. Yeah, sure, sure. Stuff like that, yeah. I can watch this podcast.

Yeah. When the kids are gritty, do you put them in prison? It's tempting, but no, I get to do that. I would, if I ever worked here, I would, it just made me feel very old. I put so many kids in prison. 100%. I'd lock these doors fast as hell. It's the parking lot.

Kids go stand to the parking lot. We're going to talk about the capitations. No, 100%. One thing that I think is really interesting about this place is, obviously, like, it's so much history, so much people have died here, but, like, it's stretched over, like, centuries, too. Like, I was watching something on this where it was, like, before the Philadelphia International Airport, which if you hear in this, you'll probably hear some planes that are flying

over this case, mate. This used to be a dumping ground for the mob. There are, I have heard occasions of that happening, and the marches around the airport. I mean, we are pretty secluded out here. Yeah. I don't know all the details on that, but there have been on occasion some instances of that I've heard of that. That's crazy. So there is like a really kind of persistent aura of death that is drawn across

decade, I mean, not decades, centuries at this point. Certainly, like I said, you know, we had the battle, we had disease, we had execution. We had numerous people die here. This was actually, the fort was used to store explosives for a very long time. After the Civil War in World War I and World War II, they were storing thousands of tons of bombs here. And on a couple occasions, they blew up and killed a lot of people.

Damn. Jeez. Yeah. Did the paranormal investigators that have been here a few times, have they kind of come in and said that this place has like a kind of a push-you-off aura, like it is kind of like a darker place, or they have a different read on it? Have you gotten any kind of information on that? I think it's all dependent on the,

different paranormal investigators I've talked to. Some of them certainly feel a lot more negative than others, like negative aura to the place with you. Oh, man, I'm using one of those brain rotter. It's all good. It's a lot more of a negative aura to the plane. Yeah. Let's go. We have the union. You've got to do six, seven. That's huge. Where's the man at the fire? Six seven. We won the Civil War in 18, six, seven. Which are, go back to your R. The aura that surrounds this place. Some people say it's negative. Some people say it's negative. Some people have had more of a positive interaction. But pretty much every paranormal investigation group that's come here has said that there is a lot of activity here.

It's why I think we recently just ranked sixth most haunted place in the United States, which is pretty high achievement when you think about it. Yeah, right down the street is like Eastern State Penitentiaries. Do you really? My sister actually works there in the hall. Hell yeah. Really? So you get a little bit of an ongoing thing.

Is she like a character tour guide herself or she just works there? She does both. She does the history and the character tour guide stuff. She has a lot of fun. Did she do the haunted house? Oh, I did the haunted house. The haunted house is great. By the way, we always beat them on those polls.

I like that. I love the robbery. I love it. I love it. No, it's funny because I never really knew about Fort Mifflin. I knew about Fort Mifflin. The Battle, but I didn't know how close it was to not only Philadelphia, but the airport and everything. And when I read about it, it just feels like there's so much history and there's so much, it has equal parts history and equal parts death. I don't have a question. I just kind of want to gas up so that the spirits don't haunt me. No, certainly. We love you guys and we think you're doing better work than the Eastern State. I mean, it's so. Oh, wow. No, we do. No. We said that, not you guys, but I put that on use. No, Connor, I need you for this podcast. I need you to say it so they don't come near us. I felt someone tickle my Achilles. What are the kind of ghosts do you know that you can tell us? Because we do a podcast, obviously the men at work,

what do you do for a living is kind of the tagline and everything? Are there any other kind of ghosts that have a story that you want to tell or what they did for a job here? Well, there's one called the Lamplight, and it's, again, one of the more tame ghost stories that we have. Now, back in the day, it was the duty of a guy called the lamplighter to light all the oil lamps around the fort. Now it's Connor.

Yeah. To just blow them all out. I light him and I blow him out. You're the enemy of the lamplighter. You're taking his job. The lamplighter probably haunts your ass all the time. Lamp lighter, I'm coming here to blow out the candles. Like, please don't be neat.

I'm sorry. Yeah. So, yeah, before you had lights, which is somebody literally had to come along and light every single one. And to this day, people have seen just a flickering flame hovering throughout the fort, most associated with the barracks building. So it's been seen floating on the porch in front of the barracks associated with the sound of bootsteps on gravel, which is kind of interesting because nowadays the porch is paved with stone,

but back then it would have been paved with crushed up seashells. So they're hearing the sound of what was there then and not what's there today. Oh, right. Wow. What about William Howe? I did a little bit digging. There was a guy named William Howe, who was the only person that was ever executed at Fort Mifflin? He's not necessarily the only person executed. We do know that there were some executions by firing squad in the War of 1812. But Private Howe was hanged here at Fort Miflin, yes.

He was a deserterterer who was hanged here. Oh, wow. So Howe had deserted the Union Army, and they sent two officers after him. A gunfight broke out in the middle of the night. One of those officers was dead. There's conflicts about the story. There are a lot of people who think that he was railroaded. But either way, he was convicted and sentenced to death.

An appeal went all the way to President Lincoln, who just shot it down. Really? So he was held here at Fort Miflin, held here in casemate number five for a brief period. of time, tried to escape, held in the solitary confinement casemate, then he was actually brought to Eastern State Penitentiary. So we do actually have a lot of connections with them. He was brought to Eastern State Penitentiary for a brief period of time while he was undergoing his trial, where of course they sentenced him to death and brought him here to be hanged. Wow. And then he's the faceless ghost, a lot of people, a lot of people think, right? Yes. So there's one of two people

we think might be the faceless man. He's seen in casemate number five. How we speculate might have had a sackcloth drawn over his head when he was hanged, which was kind of standard practice for the time. So maybe he shows himself as a faceless man to show how his identity was taken from him at death. The other theory for who the faceless man is, should I explain who the faceless man is? Yeah, go ahead. Please, yeah. So faceless man is a man dressed in period attire

that's been seen in casemate number five on numerous occasions. When people enter the casemate, this man is usually standing facing away from them and looking at the wall adjacent to them. It's terrifying. When they try to get closer to him, he doesn't do anything. When they try to call out to him, he doesn't respond. But if they get a little too close, the man turns around to reveal that he has

no face. Now, Some people have said this means he has no eyebrows, no nose, no mouth, just simply a blank slate where a face should be. And others, perhaps more frighteningly, say that there is simply a gaping hole in his head where his face once was. Either way, pretty creepy. I bet you William Howe wishes that it was no face, no case back on that. It's William Hole at that point. Poor guy. The other theory for who it could be is Nathan Stoddard, who was a revolutionary war soldier who was decapitated by a cannonball during the battle.

A lot of modern names. Yeah, yeah, there's quite a few modern names. There's no, like, Cornelius finger-licking good, like... Okay, well, what is that? That's the Union War General. Let's talk about that. Cornelius Finger-Licking Good. I think you're thinking about Colonel Sanders.

Oh, that's about that. Of course, yes. But, yeah, there's all, like, a Nathan's and mics and Williams and stuff. It's like, that sounds like my eighth-grade graduating class. Sounds like some very white ghosts. Was it just, I guess, a predominantly white ghost kind of... Well, I guess you guys can't really... There's not a census, I guess, for, like...

Yeah, I haven't really seen this. What was the senseman? case made one. Yeah, we haven't really got the demographics on them. Yeah, I imagine that's tough to do. Tough to do, yeah. I mean, so growing up, I mean, did you have any kind of like hesitance towards being near the paranormal or you were always interested in it? I mean, I kind of always found it really interesting, especially from like a historical standpoint, because I do consider ghost being part of folklore. I think they're part of the stories that we tell about places and the legends that we tell, and they're a part of history. And it's, for example, I've loved going

to Gettysburg since I was a little kid, so I always loved to. going on the ghost stores there. And it's part of, like I said, I come back here just through the ghost stores because I love them just that much. And people really like them. And it's also kind of, not going to lie, it's a good avenue to kind of sneak in lessons about history while talking about the ghosts, kind of, kind of adjutainment type thing. So, you know, when you tell the stories here, we always do tie them back to the history

of the fort. All of these stories aren't simply just made up to tell on the ghost stores. We do tie them always back to actual events and actual people here. Gattiesbury, that's a tough place to be a tour guy. I've heard, yeah. We've heard that that is like one of the most difficult places to get past. as a tour guide. Are you familiar with that at all? Oh, absolutely. I mean, the test there is incredibly rigorous. To be licensed to be a tour guide on the field there, it's like a, I think

like 90% fail rate. I will admit that that is an ultimate career goal for me someday. Hopefully, we'll see. Really? Yeah, yeah, we'll see. So what, I mean, if you can give us some more specifics about that, because we've seen the same kind of like, there's like a news broadcast that talked about that there's like a 95 fail rate. What is the difficulty? Is it like you need to know down to the very minutia of it? Like, why is it so challenging? Well, they want the tour guides at Gettysburg to be telling the most accurate depictions of the battle and what happened there is possible. They don't want any misinformation being spread. So they want people to be the best of the best for those things. And it is really, really tough. So like I said, we'll see if someday

I can get to that point, but it is a goal. I bet you they got a census. Yeah, they definitely got a census. A lot of loss. A lot of loss over there. I'd imagine that's kind of like the growing theme that happens over there. So I think little children. I think, I think, children ghosts are so much scarier than adult ghosts. Yeah. Are there any children ghosts here? Right. So, um, there was once a family that lived here called the Pratt family. They just moved out. They just moved out. They got evicted. Yeah. Rent's going crazy no matter where you're at these days. It's unbelievable. I can't keep up with it myself. See, a little over 120, 23 years ago. She lived here, um, 1803,02 and 1803. Now, yellow fever was pretty much

rife in Philadelphia by this point. It was tapering down from the epidemic. There was still plenty of but the yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia killed thousands. It's a terrible disease, which literally turns your skin yellow. Terrible way to die. Living here in the early 1800s was the Pratt family. Now I mentioned earlier, officers could live here with their families, their wives, their children, their servants, their pets. Elizabeth Pratt lived here with her two children

and her husband, Sergeant Pratt. In June of 1802, she lost one of her children to yellow fever. December of 1802, she lost the other. Both of her children gone. A few months after that, in 1803, Elizabeth Pratt herself died from the disease. Oh. Now, we do know that the Pratt were actually buried on site. Reason being, there's a newspaper article that mentions how they were exhumed and brought to a cemetery in Philadelphia.

The problem with that is if you go to that cemetery in Philadelphia and you look at Elizabeth Pratt's grave, it says Elizabeth Pratt and child. One child. Oh. So either the grave maker made a mistake or there is a child buried here at Fort Miflin. Wow. And we don't know. We know where they were buried, but there's never been a dig as far as... We need a census. We definitely... I think the census kind of thing is starting to grow. We really should have gotten a sense. Is there any potential for, like, a historical inaccuracy? Maybe there was only one child, or it's pretty concrete?

It's pretty concrete. We have the records that they were buried here, and we have the records that they died here. We're Sarge buried? The sergeant didn't die from the other people. I'm not sure what happened to him. So he just lost his entire family. Now, on numerous occasions, paranormal investigators have heard the sounds of children laugh. thing. You've heard a child saying mommy. You've heard a child saying Emma or Emily. And then perhaps most frighteningly, I've heard on one occasion there was somebody here who heard a child say, whisper into their ear, yellow is a bad color. Oh my God. Okay. Honestly, you know what? I agree.

It's going to be in the nightmares tonight. That's a pretty good one. Never been a yellow guy. Oh, blue. Blue green, purple. Yeah. I didn't find a blue myself. Yellow. That's a tough one. Hearing that phrase is pretty easy. I had a nightmare literally last night for the first time. So I'm to redo it tonight. That's going to be a little scary. If I hear yellow is a scary color in my ear tonight, I'm going to, me and my girlfriend are going to have a talk. It's going to be something to talk about. Yellow is a scary color. Wow. That's nuts. Yeah, I mean, that's like why I said, I'm very glad that I haven't had that many paranormal experiences here because I probably would have quit pretty early on or something like that happened. Yeah. Are they ever funny?

Funny. They play jokes? Well, I mean, you got like Jacob Sauer who likes opening the door all the time. I don't know that's funny. That's a dickhead move. Yeah, yeah. So I'm trying to get out of here. to my family. Yeah, you know, drive home after a long day and he's just constantly old. Eight hours,

kids are grittying all over the case, mate. Like, Jacob's hours is playing games. Yeah. You know what?

Mary, I want to see him later on and we're going to have talking. We're going to have talking. No, we're not. No, we're not. That's okay.

Don't worry about that. Yeah. Knock it all. Still worse. Are they ever funny? I haven't heard of too many instances of them being funny,

but I mean, maybe they got a sense of humor if they like doing, that's one thing I thought. If I was a ghost, I'd probably want to just kind of mess with people. I'd kind of be bored. If you sit in the same place for so long, you kind of play some little pranks on them. Maybe that ghost thought it was funny to do those boot steps while I was trying to sleep.

I mean, yeah, we may think it's a jerk move, but maybe they think it's funny. Who knows? That's a good point, yeah. If you were a ghost, where do you think you would linger? Where would be your go-to spot? Here at the fort? No, just anywhere in your life. In Conner's life, if Connor became a ghost.

Oh, that's a good question. I don't know. Where do you think? There are probably some fun places you could be a ghost. Yeah. The fort, I don't know. I don't think the fort would be too fun. I think it'd get pretty drab after a while.

Yeah. Like a ball pit. Ball pit. A ball pit. Really? Why do you... That's kind of a good time. Or else of a six-year-old's forehead.

Oh. No case. Ball pit is certainly the leader in the category as of now. But anywhere, you saw growing up that you're like, man, I wish I could just bother folks in the afterlife here. Nothing you've ever seen? I think a haunted house would actually be a fantastic place to be a ghost if you think about it. Isn't that a little on the nose, though? He is a little on the news, but that's why it'd be so fun.

Connor, that's a good point because, like, again, I'm not, I've never been, I've never had an experience with paranormal before. I don't know if you have, you can tell it after, but, like, I love haunted houses because I can disassociate myself from it being, like, this is all just temple kids who are, like, working on their acting degree, and they just want to, you know, they just want to do this and stuff. and haunted houses have never freaked me out but I always think it's crazy that no one's ever done a movie on this unless I've never seen it before but like how does no one ever sneak on those haunted houses

that's just like some deranged maniac from like a psych ward and like pretend to be the guy you ever been on a corn maze and the guy with a chainsaw comes out and puts it on your knee? I've never done one of those you've never done one of those crazy

I've done easy plenty of times wait that's what you're scared of you're scared of the corn maze and you work here too you know that's something where I know somebody's going to jump out and scare me, but here it's like most of the time they haven't bothered me. You're not a haunted house guy.

You're a little haunted house guy. Yeah. I guess you could put it that way. Yeah, I mean, like I just, I can't stand being scared like that. Now, I mean, like I said, I support my sister over at Eastern State, and she's worked to haunted us there plenty of time. Shout out to Alexa. And I just can't do that very much, though, because it freaks me the heck out. Here, though, it's a little more

calm. Just the jumping out? Just the jumping out kind of scary thing. And that's why I like the ghost tours that we do here, the candlelight ghost tours, because we, are just you, the lantern, the candle, and the ghost. That's it. Sure. You know, it's, we don't jump out and scare people. We don't have any actors. We just tell you the stories and we tell you the history

and we let you decide and that you experience this. I'll be honest, I mean, is there any been ever, I know you guys have good security here, so I don't want anyone doing this or anything, but has there ever been, like, some nefarious beings that you guys have found in one of the casemates, maybe like a homeless guy or someone who was just, maybe a little drunk found themselves and like boo! No, no,

no, nothing like that's ever happened. We've always had to make sure that people from our tours don't leave them, though, because you want to make sure that somebody's not wandering off in the fort. I like, for example, I always say, you know, one of the ghosts we talk about is the centuries. Centries, the centuries, so, like a century on duty.

Okay, yeah. What's that? A guard. Oh, like the garment? Yeah. Well, kind of, kind of. So the tanks? Yeah, one of these big dogs. Basically, we have a rule that nobody's allowed on top of the walls after dark. Reason being is, it's just too dangerous up there. If you fall off, you're going to break your leg, no doubt. But

on numerous occasions, at night, people have seen ghosts carrying muskets walking along the walls on sentry duty, which is what they would have done back then. In the battle, for example, they would have been keeping people out. When it was a Civil War prison, they probably would have been keeping people in. And people still see these sentries on duty to this day, it seems. So I always say on my tour is, if you see anybody on top of the walls, let me know, because if they're not a ghost, I need to yell at them. Okay, it's fair. I lost that you. That's very, I mean, I think there's a, there's an opportunity to kind of meld these two experiences together between a haunted house, like what your sister does,

And what you do, where if you're in the middle of a haunted house, you're in the Eastern State Penitentiary, you get somebody popping out three times in a row, and then you pop out and you're like, this place was condemned back in 1604. Then you kind of keep it in, like it's like you said. Yeah, a little bit of both. I've seen places do that.

There's some places in Gettysburg to do that, for example. It's an intriguing thought. Also, I'll wear the necklaces that you can touch me and take me away. Yes. Oh, God. Yeah, I did that once. No. Oh, that's the best experience of all time.

Not for me. Yeah, I don't like that stuff either. It's all fake. This is real. This is real. free movie idea or maybe I'm giving some crazy I don't want anyone to do this but like somebody breaks out of the psych ward goes right to a haunted house that's never been a friend that's crazy it has to have been a horror movie that's a great idea I think it has to have been a movie I think there's a

movie called I wish I could think what's called they've made like three or four of them there's a new one coming out but I think it's something to that effect where they start a haunted house and then there's somebody from like a psych ward that breaks in and they kind of you know do their own thing not quite a Michael Myers but something to that effect I don't know dude I think I got shit It's definitely something to keep with a wheel ass. I've got to patent that. Yeah, right, exactly. I'm trying to figure out, oh, screaming lady.

Right, so the screaming lady is probably one of the more famous haunts here at the fort. It is, as the name suggests, the sound of a woman screaming loudly in pain, echoing throughout the walls of the fort. Now, one of the things that people have put online about this lady all the time is that it was some woman who hanged herself, which is, well, there's two problems with that. If she hanged herself, how is she screaming? Sure. It's kind of hard to do that with a rope around your neck.

And also, no woman ever hanged yourself. There's no records of that here at the fort. But there is records of a woman named Elizabeth Bunker, who was here during the Civil War, and she suffered from a disease known as gastritis, which is an inflammation of the stomach lining. It's something very curable today. It's not going to kill you today.

We've got modern medicine. Joel Embed has it every couple weeks. If you look it up, there's a guy on the Sixers who's had gastritis, I think, four or five times throughout a season. Works to the Sixers every year. Yeah, literally runs. Yep. Go figure.

Well, I mean, in most of mere cases of gastritis, if untreated, the stomach landing can erode, and then your stomach acid starts to attack the stomach itself. So you're just digesting yourself from the inside out. Really horrible way to die. And we know Elizabeth Bunker would have suffered for this disease for days or weeks on end here at the fort before succumbing to it, right on the fort's grounds.

She either died in the hospital building, which is across the way over there, or in the officer's quarters. And the officers quarters is where people have heard the screaming lady almost every time it has been heard. People have seen a woman up there on the porch as well of the officers quarters. And on two occasions, the Philadelphia Police Department and have actually been called for Mifflin for the sound of this screaming lady. The officers themselves heard it as well.

They wandered around. They'd heard the sound of the screaming lady. They couldn't find anything. And left. Wow. What's your favorite story? What's your favorite good story? From here.

Personally, the faceless man. I think the faceless man creeps me out the most. Just thinking about a man turning around to reveal that he has no face or simply a hole in his face. I've never been able to go in place without thinking about that. Sure. Just freaks me out. I don't want to laugh, but I think I'm not laugh. Well, you might say that at first, but then it gets a little...

The old school, good. I mean, since people have worked here, I mean, this has been running for how long is the... Since the 70s. So we became a museum in the 70s. The fort was decommissioned. So this was still part of an active army base all the way until 1954. So right in the Korean War, right next door, they still operate. They're called Fort Mifflin. They're still Fort. So basically, what they took is they took the old brick and mortar fort and said, this is way too old, we can't keep using this, but we'll keep using the rest of the base. And the rest of the base still operates. The national

Guard and Army Corps of Engineers are over there. We get their mail sometimes as well, actually, which isn't good. I think the USPS guy would be paying more attention, but now we get like Department of Defense mail like, no, no, no, no, over there, over there. Not to mention when guests ignore all the signs and wander onto an active military base, which, you know. And stuff's led in, yeah. Is there any, so I guess it's been decommission that started being a museum in the

70s. Are there any ghosts that have maybe popped up like an 80s or 90s ghost? I know, like a lot of, for the most part, there's a lot of people. Well, yeah, true, maybe so. Well, these stories go back decades. I mean, frankly, probably they originate sometime. If I were to guess, I haven't really done too much research into this. It's actually something I'm trying to do now is researching to when these stories start to emerge. I mean, the Victorians liked coming here.

In between wars, this fort was kind of desolate and empty. The Victorians like coming here, and they admire just how, like, peaceful and almost eerie it was to be here, and they talked about the battle and the deaths. But when the first ghost stories are here, I think they emerged probably in that time between 1954 and the 70s when it was abandoned for a period of time. people came on and just kind of explored urbexed around stuff like that we also had a lot of stuff stolen from here during that time

unfortunately as a consequence but yeah any ghost you have any beef with I don't have any beef with the ghost no not yet at least I mean if one interrupts my work I'd probably be kind of annoyed okay fortunately no beef with the ghosts no the blacksmith I know I understand

so I'm actually interested in like kind of like the tourism industry as a whole like what's the future of the tourism industry and the future of this fort look like I mean obviously talking about Eastern State they do an audio tourist Steve Buscemi, AI is coming and whatnot, Gen Z doesn't leave their house. Like what do you think apparently that like the future of kind of tourism and like your guys

forwards on what you do here, what do you think the future looks like for that? Ooh, it's a good question. I mean, it's difficult with budget cuts to a lot of historic sites and stuff that are happening as of late to kind of picture what the future might look like for some places. The fort, I would love to see a lot of money poured into this place.

We have some work that's gonna be done on the Slusi to help with the flooding. It certainly needs some work, and we do rely almost entirely on donations and our revenue from people coming here. So that's why we're so thankful for these ghost tours and for the regular tours that we do all the time, because that's how we keep this place running. I hope that this place can get a lot of the repairs and things like that, because certainly there are some things that need some repairs. The sluice gate, for example, the moat needs to be dredged.

There's some work that needs to be done. But I think that one day this place will be restored and look fantastic for the future. That's my hope, at least. And I know a lot of people can volunteer if they're like carpenters or they're electrician. Absolutely. Like I know. So we'll have an entire thing in the description of this podcast, everything that you can help. Donation links, volunteer links and stuff.

So we'll make sure we do all that. Electricians, plumbers, landscapers, everybody who might be able to let when they lend a hand here, we'd be happy for help. No sissies, though. Yeah. Maybe some sissies. We kind of, it doesn't sound like beggars, can be choosers, but we need everybody we get. So we briefly, because I think we're kind of getting close. to wrap in here. But so you said that Fort Mifflin is number six most haunted.

Yep, USA Today. Eastern State is, I imagine, in that? I actually don't know. I didn't check, but I know we constantly beat the most of years. Love that. Like I said, though, they're our friends. I don't be. Sure, sure. No, this is just, it's a nice friendly competition. They got their brochures over here. They got our brochures. We chat and stuff like that. They're good. They're cool. So who is, who's number one? Who is the across the country? Would you know offhand? I don't know. Gettysburg. I think Gettysburg might be up there. You guys.

Trans-Alagani. Oh, what's that? I don't know. I assume in the Algainis. In Kentucky. Trans-Alegany, lunatic asylum in Kentucky. That tracks.

Yeah, that makes complete sense. Okay. Okay. Solombs, I would say, are definitely very scary. Yeah, for sure, for sure. Pennhurst, you've been there? I've never been there, but I've heard a lot about it. Me too.

Now, Pennsylvania's got some great, haunted areas just in this, like, Philadelphia area. Oh, absolutely. I mean, Eastern State is one of them. It's incredibly spooky. We've got a lot of colonial history. this one is so much spooker and I'm not just gassing you up like we walked in here and I was like I called him on the way over here and I was just like I'm genuinely nervous yeah no like I said you always get that feeling that's one thing I can't shake what working here is that feeling

to be in watched especially when I'm here alone it doesn't really go away yeah I feel like there's no haunted places in like California they have it all good over there's too nice is there any places in California that are haunted is there is that right I was going to say the winchester murder house would probably be one of them okay in tate house i just watched something on that but i mean like florida could you imagine like with humidity it's just a 70 year old tan guy from new jersey who lives in florida now it's like it's not really worried about his snowboard i choked on a daffery the ghost of key west past yeah of course yeah yeah there were actually i was in key west uh last weekend there was a ghost guy in a striped pajamas

he apparently just roamed the halls guy in the striped pajamas roaming the halls in the hotel you stayed at yeah in the hotel i stayed at really it's part of the allure i guess yeah yeah yeah yeah Yeah, I would have saw that, I'd be like, dude, go to bed. Yeah. We were talking about before we had started, like, Ghost Hunter is a very popular show in, like, the early 2000s. Is there any, like, who's the big paranormal investigators now

that everyone's kind of tuning into? Ooh, I actually, well, I know Portals to Hell was one show that was recently here. They're pretty popular. There's Ghost Hunters did come here as well. Ghost Adventures came here. Pretty much every big-name ghost show has come here. I'm not sure what the most popular at the moment is. I remember watching those shows all the time as a kid.

Never saw Ghost, though. They never got, like, the actual ghosts on camera a lot of the time, but they got all sorts of spooky stuff, you know. Sometimes it was a little bit dramatic, I think. Thank you. They were playing things up quite a bit in my opinion. Come on, my guys, what the hell? I love those shows. Don't say it was dramatic.

It was a wonderful experience. At the end of the day, there's some executive and some boardroom up in this guy being like, I need more inconspicuous footsteps. Yeah, yeah. I don't doubt that for a person. If we don't add more inconspicuous footsteps, this 30-minute documentary, how are we going to sell this thing? God forbid they put a smile on nine-year-old. old me's face with some fake footsteps all right neat footsteps we gotta sell bleach double time

footsteps double time footsteps yeah well I'm amazed when the ghost hunters come here at the fort they will set up a I'm trying to remember the they'll set up a recorder EVP EVP recording like electro voice phenomenon they'll set those up in the case mates

and they'll sit around them for hours absolutely dead silent and they will do this in shifts they'll rotate so you know you're not actually just sitting there in silence forever but they will sit there as long as it takes to get some recordings or footage or any evidence that they can. And I admire the work ethic of them, to be honest. It's impressive because they'll do this at like 3 a.m.

They will be up all night when they rent this place out. It's incredible. Wow. Do you have a significant other? No, not at the moment. Do you ever try to maybe break out the Union Guard a little bit? It's kind of nice. I get your free admission of one.

Some nice reenactors on the market, perhaps. Okay. All right. There's some nice reenactors? Okay. You never know. All right. Okay.

We don't have to elaborate. The pond is getting a little. smaller, the only one reenactors, but that's fine, whatever. You gotta, you gotta, like, you gotta have some of interests. A lot of butter churner reenactors that are walking around here that are. If you're a trad wife on TikTok, not, not too bad looking. You like to go out to Gettysburg and maybe, you know, no, no Confederate soldier

reenact or stuff. Probably, you know, we don't have to work that out. Yeah, they want a rematch. They're like, let's do it again. We've learned from the air of our ways, yeah, sure. A quick, quick one last thing. So I'm kind of curious, and to the extent that you can talk about this, is there any kind of like trying to think the best way to ask this like religious kind of pushback or anything

from like people that come in here that are like you know practicing a certain creed that might not agree with the paranormal do you see that at all i personally have never seen it i know that of course when we do we try to keep the history and the paranormal separate on a lot of occasions so for example in groups of school kids come here we don't talk about the ghosts not only because it just doesn't seem appropriate for a history tour but also if you do that the kids never shut up about them yeah they can't concentrate on anything history if you're telling them about the ghost because they're just kind of scared the whole time yeah so I haven't really met anybody religious sensibilities offended per se but we do try to keep them separate when it applies okay

and we were talking to Rebecca earlier she said that the only place gazuntite that the ghost was that you okay they call him he walks the halls he's called the sneezer get some guy get that guy some clareton that ghost of clarendon um the ghost that sneeze just totally threw me off. I was just asking. The kids that come here, the religious... Oh, we were talking to Rebecca earlier. And she said, the only place that you guys

have not seen ghosts, I want to say, is the church? Could I be wrong, or is that right or wrong? The arsenal. Never mind. Okay. Cut that. I wonder why that might be. So there's no ghosts in the arsenal that have ever been seen. Is there any theories? That's why that is? Because they're talented fans.

That's the three soccer fans. They have that for our big MLB fan base. MLS, dude. Oh, yeah, great point. I'm so big of a fan I am, sure. Nice job, Sneezer, you threw me off. That's a good question. I mean, frankly, I'd be a little more suspicious

if literally everything around here actually had some sort of ghost associated with it. It could just be that there simply is no ghost associated with it or no ghost haunting it. I'm sure somebody has probably heard some whispers or there's been some activity by the arsenal, but it could just be that the arsenal, none of the spirits are interested in it.

It just happens, I suppose. You have any recommendations for anybody who want to get tour guides, what to do? Look at your local historic sites. There are plenty of volunteer positions available, and getting that experience in as a volunteer might be really helpful to then look into it as a job. Certainly here in the Philadelphia area, there's no shortage of history. There's plenty of places that are hiring. Yeah, I mean, get a, I have a bachelor's degree in history that helps, but you don't necessarily

need a degree for some places. Experience sometimes is welcome, though, so like I said, if you want to get in, volunteer first, and then looking to site that might be hiring. What jobs did you have before, Tour Guy? Oh, all sorts of stuff. I was working fast food. I was working fast food at. It was actually at Dairy Queen.

Nice. I like that. You guys are free blizzards? No, we don't do. Well, you know the thing, the upside down thing? You got to do with the blizzards? That's at participating locations. So we actually never did it.

And we weren't participating location. So when you flip it up, people would always be like, why didn't you flip it upside down? I get it free. And I'd have to say, nope. There's a little asylist there. You read the fine print. That's crazy.

At participating locations, they only do the flip. It's at participating locations. This is the last thing I expected to talk about. No, yeah. My stupid content brain, which just went right to us. Derry Queen. Wait, so Dary Queen only has participating locations because if you do the flip and it falls out, they get it for free, right?

I think something like that, or they have to do the flip before they hand it to you before it's free or something, but not at mine. We just didn't do it. Plus, it was really, really fast. So doing that over and over again would have taken freaking forever. I mean, like, hand it out, like, six, lizards to a whole family in a car and there's like 20 people behind him going okay hold on

if there's any haunted fast food place it's got to be dairy queen it's cold everywhere you don't know where there's a spirit or it's just like the refrigerator going off it kind of makes sense it feels like it's nice an environment they'd want to be in it's only a place where people go from like 6 p.m. to to like close yeah true late night there's some fake paranormal evisciators like oh you got to leave the machines on we're going to be here all night just eat a bunch of soft serve I can totally see that Fries are really good. Fries are good. Fries are good, yeah.

Not a bad burger. What's your favorite blizzard? I really liked the Reese's one. Rises, got to go through it. I was an Oreo with the marshmallow. Nice, nice. That's really good. I like an Oreo with the marshmallow, yeah.

Not bad. Have you ever had a paranormal? We have to kill like five minutes here to get an hour. Yeah. Did you ever have any paranormal experiences? Not that I could think of, because I think a lot of times you can just very easily, if you're not involved in the world, you can kind of chalk it up. to like some made-up kind of phenomenon.

I was like, oh, you know, maybe the wind came through. Like, really, like the old cliches. But I do think there's some things that have happened. Like, I had the house that I grew up in. My dad also grew up in, and it was built from the time he was a kid, and both his parents kind of passed away in the house. So there was always rumblings as I grew up, that there was some lingering spirits of my grandparents,

and there was weird stuff that would happen. But I don't think anything personally to me. Matt, pick your socks up. Well, that was weird. Well, I won't get it. All right, I won't get into this. It's a little. Just being a young man growing up in a place where you think your grandparent ghosts are watching all the time is a weird thing to navigate.

I'll leave it at that and we'll see. That's fair. I've never, yeah, I've never had a paranormal experience. Have you ever had a paralysis experience? Like a paralysis demon? You ever heard about those? Sleep paralysis. No, I've never had it happen to me, but it freaks me out hearing about it.

Yeah. Like, just waking up, but you can't wake up, yeah, stuff like that. Do you have any bad dreams from here? Like, do any ghosts visit you in your dreams? I've woken up in the middle of the night just with this really uneasy feeling. I can't say it was a nightmare. Actually, you know what, no, I have. I've had, while staying here, a nightmare about being woken up by a ghost,

and it would just freak me the heck out. Any one of the ghosts that are here? I don't remember it too deeply. I just remember just something grabbing me. Like, and it was one of those dreams that you feel like is really real, because one of those dreams where you imagine yourself in your bed. So I imagine myself literally being woken up in my bed in the fort, grabbed by a ghost. And then I actually woke up for real and thought, was that real, that kind of thing.

Now, let me ask. It freaks me out. Is that an HR violation? Yeah, I mean, I, I mean, if it was. It was actually one of my co-workers waking me up in the middle of the night. Technically, all the ghost here are co-workers. Yeah, I guess so, yeah. Oh, one last, one last one last one.

The Black has a W, too. He does. Have you ever had a medium come out that tries to actually, like, communicate directly? I mean, I know that's kind of maybe similar to a paranormal investigator. Yeah, we've had mediums here. Okay. I wouldn't have no enough about to speak on it, but we have had mediums come here to the fort and communicate. We've had, I mean, every ghost hunting piece of equipment you can think of has been here from,

dousing rods to EMF detectors, mediums, Ouija boards, everything. Although I've heard wigi boards are really, really highly discouraged among... Yeah, because you can like, and I don't really believe in ghosts. I believe more in spirits. I think they're different. Sorry if or not.

You don't want to turn the spirits into demons because then those are bad spirits, is what I've been told. And that's why I've heard that Fort Mifflin is a good place for like ghosts and spirits and for people to come because they're not mean per se besides

the relax with who's an asshole. Well, yeah, I've never heard of a ghost here particularly mean. Like I said, I've heard people getting cursed or yelled at, but not too many Oh my gosh, yeah. We've got like drag racers we deal with every now and then outside the fort as well. Oh, yeah. Yeah, this is in the middle

of nowhere. Yeah, that's part of what's so freaky about it. We're in the middle of nowhere next to the airport all the same time. Yeah. So the Ouija Board, I guess just as briefly as you want to talk about it, it's just it invites things that maybe you don't want kind of deal? As far as I'm aware, paranormal investigators highly discourage them for that reason.

I don't know too much about it. I just know that, like, it's not a typical part of any ghost hunter's kit. Don't bring your freaking Ouija boards. No Ouija boards. Fort Mifflin. Yeah. Respect for the ghost.

No weed. No weed. Two things you can't bring to Fort Mifflin. That's right. That is one thing that bugs me, though, when ghost hunters do this whole, like, trying to deliberately annoy ghosts. No weed?

I don't know about the weed. Sorry. Sorry, okay, sorry. I don't think the weed might annoy the ghost, but we don't allow smoking at Fort Miflin. Yes, no, absolutely. Only fires. Yes.

But as we're saying, like, the investigators that, like, intentionally agitate, you've seen that happen? Well, I've seen it happen with some paranormal investigators here, and it always bugs me, you tell them to knock it off, because it's just, you know, if you really think there's a spirit there, why are you trying to annoy them? Yeah. What's the point? What are you getting out of that? Views?

I guess so. Yeah, that's the thing. You two pranksters. Yeah. What's the agitation, like, an actual, like, their... Saying their name. It's something you see on the ghost shows all the time. It's so, you know, they just try to piss off the ghosts to get them to, you know, get a rise up.

Oh, okay. Yeah. Why would you do that? I think we've done. Well, you have kind of played around with them a little bit. The blacksmiths, like, if the blacksmith gets me to go, blacksmith gets me at this point. That's clear as possible.

That was Kyle who did that. I totally did that. I got red hair, bad mustache. Its mustache is going. You fool. Last one for you, and we'll wrap it up. How many people apply to a job, get the job, come on site, and then quit within like 24 to 48 hours because it's just,

just too creepy. I'm not familiar of anybody who's quit because it's too creepy. I know that there are some people who prefer not to go to the ghost scores. We've had some people who prefer not to do the ghost tours, but I don't know anybody who's quit per se because of the ghosts. I know some people get frustrated by them or we've had some co-workers here who don't like them, but not quit per se. Yeah, Mary and Rebecca, you've been here for 20 and 18 years. The people come in and... Oh, really? They just came in and were just like... Really? Wow. Oh, never mind, we have had somebody quit.

A psychic came in, got the job, said she was a psychic, came in here, obviously didn't love the energy, and just left? Wow. Said beat it, get back to Dairy Queen. That's what you say. Well, dude, thank you so much. Yes, thank you very much, man. This is great.

Glad you enjoyed. Yeah, thank you very much for coming. And we really want to thank Fort Mifflin. Like I said, description about how you can donate. If you're one of the blue-collar babies out there and you want to help, you know, put the fort back together, volunteer and everything. It'll be down in the description. Check out the Patreon, and we'll be releasing this after a couple weeks later,

but we're about to go do a ghost tour, so check out that video. We will talk to you after that, and see you. Happy Halloween. Thank you.