The Confessionals - 121: Sasquatch, Spirits and Psychos

Episode Date: April 9, 2019

For episode 121 we have Josh coming on to share when he came across a bigfoot as a teenager and at first glance he thought it was a gorilla. He then shares how he experienced some paranormal activity including a time when he experienced a ghostly entity go right through his body!Subscribe to our YouTube: https://bit.ly/2TlREaISubscribe to the Newsletter: https://www.theconfessionalspodcast.com/the-newsletterPatreon: www.patreon.com/TheConfessionalsWebsite: www.theconfessionalspodcast.comEmail: [e-mail]: www.facebook.com/TheConfessionalsPodcastTwitter: @TConfessionalsTony's Twitter: @tony_merkelShow Intro INSTRUMENTAL: www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyub39AXxUwShow Intro FREE DOWNLOAD: https://bit.ly/2HxNcw3

This was all circulating around the base that a giant had to kill, but no one was supposed to talk about it. I saw three long, bony fingers reach up underneath the door, curl up to grab it, and then disappear. When he came over to me, dude, he slithered over to me. And this giant comes out of the cave and they're all frozen. And he starts running and firing up this giant. But the giant moves, he's got a... spear in one hand and he's running really fast and spears Dan holds them up like this somebody else shoot him in the face shoot him in the face they basically decapitated

when he got about feel something pulling at my leg and I look over and there are two small gray entities and they're literally I'm getting pulled off the bed I reached my hand into this bush and I touch air couldn't breathe and I couldn't move because I know I'm seeing a monster Yep. Welcome to the show, everybody. You're listening to The Confessionals. I am your host, Tony Merkel. Thank you for being here.

If you've had an encounter or story you'd like to share with me on the show, go ahead and shoot me an email. My email address is The Confessionalspodcast at gmail.com. That's The Confessionalspodcast at gmail.com. Or go to the website, Theconfessionalspodcast.com. Hit the connection section and you can reach me that way as well. Either way works for me, just get a hold of me. If you guys have not done so already, I would love for you to go. go to YouTube and hit subscribe and also check out on the website, the newsletter and subscribe to that

as well because there's going to be some really cool, important things you're going to want to know ahead of time and the people subscribe to the newsletter are going to hear about it first. So go ahead and do that. Let's get into the R-Bell iTunes 5-star ratings and reviews. This is for people go to iTunes and leave a 5-star rating and review. They get a shout out on the following week's show. And this week we have Dental Guy 71, Pika Poocher, Spider-Man 13, Mr. Brister, Gort's buddy, D.G. Franklin, Rick 1%er, who actually gave me a really nice,

really nice review, but he also gave me a one star. I'm thinking Rick, you might have done that by accident because the review was really kind. So I just, I figured I'd give you a shout out anyways. Next up, we have Tony Loves Wes Forever, which is true. Wes from Sasquatch Chronicles is like a brother to me, and I will. I will love him forever. Next up we have May Thora and Joe Telfer. Thanks so much, everybody, for going to iTunes and leaving the five-star rating and review. It means a lot to me, and it helps the show out on iTunes as well. Next up, we have the Patreon shoutouts, and this is for people who go to Patreon.

com forward slash the confessionals to sign up to become a patron to help support the show on a monthly basis. And this week, we have Letty L, Cole S, Jonathan P, and Isaac L. Thanks so much, everybody, for going to Patreon and checking it out and signing up to become a patron. It means a lot to me that you're willing to support. the show. Now let's get into this week's episode. We have David Halevi from the Jew and Gentile Radio. He's going to be narrating a blog post that my wife wrote called Opera Ghost, Echoes of the Rhodes Opera House Fire. It is a great blog, and he narrated for us. So we are going to play that first. And then we're going to get into Josh, who comes on to share his

big foot encounter and also some paranormal experiences he's had. So sit back and relax and let's get to it. Opera Ghosts Echoes of the Rhodes Opera House Fire. On the corner of South Washington Street in East Philadelphia Avenue in Boyertown, Pennsylvania, is a red brick building. Three stories tall and largely unadorned. It doesn't stand out from its neighbors, blending into the blocks of similarly styled buildings without a second glance. Small shops rotate through the ground floor, while apartment dwellers come and go through its top two tiers. Except for a commemorative plaque hung on the front of the building, one would never know that on this particular site,

171 people died in a single night. Although the history of deadly disasters in the United States seemed to widely overlook this small town horror, Boyertown itself has never forgotten the shocking tragedy that was the Rhodes Opera House fire. On the evening of January 13, 1908, over 300 theater goers and 50 actors gathered at the Rhodes Opera House for the opening night of a production called The Scottish Reformation.

The term opera house was a bit of a misnomer, as the theater was only comprised of the second floor of the commercial roads building in which it was located. Though the venue was in fact small compared to its grand name, the play was eagerly attended by the hundreds and featured the latest slide projection technology and dramatic stage effects. Through an unintended tragedy of errors, it is this new technology that served as a catalyst for the catastrophe.

to come. While the rapt audience waited for the play's third act to begin, an inexperienced projectionist, with only two days of training, mistakenly turned a wrong valve on the projector, which then hissed and startled a few theater goers seated nearby. Hearing a commotion in the audience, several actors raised the curtain to see what was the matter. When they did, they tipped over a kerosene lamp that had been set on the stage for extra lighting. The overturned lamp immediately started a small fire, but the theater personnel quickly responded to tamp down the flames. With the fire nearly extinguished, some of the men in the front row decided to move another kerosene tank kept under the stage that filled the theater of footlights as a safety

precaution. The decision proved deadly when the tank's framework broke, dumping the tank kerosene across the stage and igniting the small fire into an inferno. In seconds, the stage became a virtual tinderbox. Its curtains burst into flames, quickly followed by the wainscotting of the 12-foot ceiling until the entire auditorium was a little. engulfed in waves of fire. Frantic audience members scrambled towards the main exit only to find themselves trapped inside the panicked crush of people trying to push against the doors that opened inward. Although the second floor contained two window fire escapes, they were unmarked and located three feet off the ground, nearly unidentifiable amidst the chaos. Chairs, debris, and bodies made the

auditorium a maze of obstacles that blocked exits and cost precious time getting to safety. when one of the main exit doors was finally broken open, some victims were trampled to death, as the crowd stampeded forward while others fell to their deaths down the building staircase. Still others jumped from windows to the ground below, and not everyone survived the attempt. But most of all, trapped theater goers burned alive. While many people did manage to escape outside, nearly 200 men, women, and children, perished while the fire raged. hours later, when the very literal smoke finally cleared, the full scale of the fiery tragedy was revealed,

with a death toll of 171 people, 170 who had attended the play, and one firefighter. The little community of Boyertown had shockingly lost one-tenth of its population. In a few cases, entire families, husbands, wives, children, had died in the opera house blaze. Two-thirds of the dead victims were women and children, leading some to surmise, that the men in attendance had abandoned them to fend for safety by themselves. When rescue workers entered the burned-out building, they discovered bodies piled six feet deep at the top of the stairway, where the surging crowd had bottlenecked and trapped themselves inside.

Because of the overwhelming number of bodies, three makeshift morgues had to be set up in surrounding buildings, while the remaining town worked to identify the victims and cope with the sudden shocking loss of life. In the days that followed, the disaster, faster. 15,000 people converged on Boyertown to attend dozens upon dozens of funerals. The renowned Boyertown Burial Casket Company, which was to become one of the world's largest casket manufacturers, was hard-pressed to meet the sudden demand for its products, its grave-diggers,

and had also lost a few of its own workers who had attended that doomed performance of the Scottish Reformation. In an unfunny twist of fate, those workers had unknowingly crafted the coffins they would be buried in. Over 100 new graves were dug in Boyer Town's already large Fairview Cemetery, including a common grave for 25 victims whose remains were so badly charred they could not be individually identified. While the town mourned in earnest, theater fire made headlines across the country and spurred new legislation for fire safety laws in Pennsylvania.

There seemed to be no one in the town that had not been in some way affected by the road's Opera House Fire. Opera Ghosts Even after 111 years, traces of the tragedy have always remained. To many in the local area, Boyer Town is considered one of the most haunted small towns in America. Between its historic buildings dating back to the 1700s, the looming specter of the Boyertown Burial Casket Company, which operated until 1988, and the imposing Fairview Cemetery with its approximately 7,000 graves, there is little doubt that the town is home to all kinds of paranormal activity. There is also no doubt that a significant amount of the paranormal activity has been attributed to the horrific theater tragedy that claimed so many lives.

From nearly the very night of the deathly fire, the Rhodes Opera House ghost stories began. Following the fire, while the ruins of the building still smoked, police were called to a scene to remove an elderly man from the wreckage. He told the responding officers that his dead wife's ghosts had called him to that specific spot on site to talk to her a final time. Officers were further called out to the ruins on multiple occasions for weeks following the event because residents and passers-by claimed they could hear screams and cries coming from inside the building's hull. A woman who lived nearby also claimed that spirits of the dead victims had taken over her house, though details of her paranormal experiences have not merged. The sound of an on-site screaming has continued to reoccur for years,

along with investigations of moaning and strange noises coming from inside Fairview Cemetery. Although the remnants of the Rhodes Opera House building were torn down and built a few years after the fire, the haunting experiences live on. A present resident who lived across the street from the old opera house shared, quote, I lived here my entire life and have heard so many ghost stories about the building. One old resident of the apartments there swore that every year around the same time, a woman dressed in fine clothes would walk through the apartment proclaiming to be late for the play." Still another reported that when the new building housed a dance studio sometime after the fire, the younger girls refused to use one of the dance rooms because it was, quote,

full of ghosts, unquote. Even the area surrounded the fire site bears invisible traces of tragedy, with some believing that the victims who were placed in the makeshift morgues never truly left. The most notoriously haunted of these morgue is probably Durango Saloon. A present-day bar located one block from the fire site in what was full. formerly the Mansion House Hotel. It was in the basement of the Mansion House Hotel where rescue workers laid out corpses pulled from the Opera House rubble.

Today, Durango Saloon still seems to be rife with paranormal activity, from shadowy figures glimpsed out of corner of eyes, to items being moved or pushed over, to strange mists appearing in photographs. The bar's owner once even found himself locked in his walk-in freezer when its large, heavy door,

inexplicably slammed close behind him. When local paranormal investigator started, Wiley conducted his own investigation in Durango Saloon. He reportedly captured some compelling EVPs during the three nights in the bar. During one session, Wiley asked out loud, who's there? And he says he caught the whispery but distinct reply of Bender. Research of the area uncovered that Henry Bender was in fact the proprietor of the Old Mansion House Hotel in the early 1900s until he was killed in the Rhodes Opera House fire. Bender's body was buried up the street in the Fairview Cemetery, but his spirit, it seems, lingered behind.

With the horror of the Opera House fire impacting so many people for so many years, there is probably no shortage of those who can share a ghostly story about the theater fire or about haunted Boyertown itself. I have a few of my own. Listeners of the Confessionals may recall the very early episode 3, Hatman and Ghostly Interactions, where I, Lindsay, shared with Tony a number of spooky and paranormal occurrences, I experience while living in several different homes. The home where I had the majority of the Erie experiences was an old Victorian built in 1900, located on the same road as the Opera House

Firesight, 0.4 miles away to be exact. An even closer proximity was the huge somber Fairview cemetery barely 400 feet away and visible from the house. My elementary school bus stop was actually directly in front of the cemetery entrance, not exactly the most inviting of places to hang around when you are five to ten years old. I remember walking through the cemetery on some occasions and being confounded by the side of old ornate gravestones, marking the burial places of children who were my own age and even younger. How could they have lost their lives so early? Though I was too little at the time to be familiar with Boyertown's history, the ghostly impression that Victorian house left on me has drawn me to learn more about the home, hoping to uncover

a possible reason behind what to me was its pervading sense of spookiness, punctuated by unexplained events in fearful feelings. One experience in particular which gives episode three its name was the very brief but distinct siding of a hated shadowed figure watching me from a doorway. Though the glimpse was quick, the figure was clear. A featureless shadow man bearing the silhouette of a tailcoat, higher collar and top hat. He never appeared again, but I have always wondered about what I saw. That wonder has led my amateur research to uncovering a tenuous but tangible connection between my old home and the Rhodes Opera House. fire. Through archive newspaper articles, I recently discovered that a man named Leon E. Mayor

lived in the same house that I did in at least the late 1930s and early 1940s. Further records revealed that around 15 years of age, Mr. Mayor, lost both his father and his sister in the 1908 disaster. Dr. Charles Eugene Mayer and his 18-year-old daughter, Gwendolyn, were in attendance at the Scottish Reformation when the fire broke out. According to a Reading Eagle article published on the 100th anniversary of the fire, Mayor fought off smoke and flamed. to reach his wife and carry her to safety outside the building. Then he went back in to rescue his daughter. It's not known whether Mayor found his daughter amid the smoke and flames, but neither made it out.

After their deaths, Dr. Mayor and Gwendolyn were buried in Fairview Cemetery. As of yet, I haven't found the key detail that I'd like to know. Who lived in my creepy old house at the time of the fire? But this little revelation about the Mayor family is still intriguing. Leon Mayer and his family, like so many families in Boyertown in 1908, suffered a tragic loss that would forever be attached to those left behind with their grief. Did Leon Mayer carry a piece of his grief with him while he resided in the home where I used to live? Did it manifest in the strange activity that I experienced?

Was it his likeness that appeared in shadow form in my living room doorway? Or does the figure date back even further? Was it an echo of Dr. Charles Mayer lost to the Opera House fire just down the road? I can't say with any certainty whether Leon Mayer moved into my former home well after the fire or if it was his family home where he had once also lived with his father and sister. I can only speculate and theorize while I continue to dig into small town history. But even if my paranormal experiences in the Boyo Town House are not all related to the former mayor family residence, there was still the fact that the town lost a tenth of its inhabitants

in the Rhodes Opera House fire and touched nearly every family with its devastation. There is a strong possibility that whoever did live in my home in 1908 bore their own personal connection to the fire and perhaps left a residual force behind them. Again, this is pure speculation based on a few thinly related facts. But one other thing that stands out to me now is the appearance of the shadow figure in the doorway. Reports from the night of January 13, 1908 record that the Voyertown's theater goers were dressed in their Sunday best. Sunday best for a man in the early 1900s was unquestionably a tailcoat, collar and top hat. An uncanny match for the Shadowman who appeared in my circa 1900 home only blocks away from the Rhodes Opera House. With only the

few historical facts I've found so far, and my own experiences to consider, I can't help, but wonder. While looking into my previous home's history, I found one more story that caught my attention, not only because it further involves the mayor family, but because it also reveals how quickly after Boyertown fire its ghostly legacy seems to have begun. The story comes from Dr. Charles Mayer's grandson, not from Leon Mayer, but from the child of his younger son, and was published on his blog in 2012. In it, he recounts how his father woke on the night of the fire to the sound of the hall clock. Strangely, he says, the clock chimed not 12, but 13 times. The next morning, he was confronted with the terrible truth that his father, Dr. Mayer, and his sister, Gwendolyn,

would not be coming home again. Although details in the full story differ from other records, something to be expected as more and more years separate us from the original inciting event. It is clear that the tragedy of 1908 is still leaving its mark. Generations later, families are still affected by who was lost, and a town is forever different because of what transpired. Today, the side of the Rhodes Opera House fire is occupied by offices, apartments, and a cozy second-hand bookshop. The fire and the death it brought are over 100 years in the past, but for anyone who has heard the echoes of the screams from the Boyertown building on the corner of Philadelphia Avenue and Washington Street, the dead may not be altogether gone.

For more information about Boyertown and its haunted history, contact the Boyertown area historical society to hear Lindsay's own haunted experiences of Boyertown and other homes in Pennsylvania. Listen to the Confessionals podcast episode three, Hatman and Ghostly Interactions on your own favorite podcatcher. For more stories and intriguing blogs, visit the confessionalpodcast.com. Well, shout out to David Halevi from the Jew and Gentile podcast for doing that blog reading. And shout out to my wife, Lindsay, for writing and researching it. It means a lot to me, guys, that you're helping support the show through your talents. Now, let's get on to Josh and his Bigfoot encounters and paranormal experiences right now. This is in Massachusetts, just north of Boston.

And there's a river. We went down, we looked, just to see what's going on down there, and we just see right in front of us. It just didn't make any sense to me. And I just looked at her, and I was just like, Why is there a gorilla over there? It had its left leg up on the bank and the right one was still in the water. It was leaning over and it was like swooshing around, washing something.

So like I said to her, I'm just like, you want to get out of here? So I don't even know if it ever saw me. We didn't really stick around too wrong or saw it. Or maybe it did see us. Because now I think about like it had a, because we always played high-toseek and all kinds of games. It probably has been watching us forever. I don't know. It just freaks me out.

I'm not comfortable in the world. anymore. We didn't have any idea about that stuff. All right, tonight we got a guest coming on. Josh, how you doing, man? I'm well. I'm well, Tony. Thanks for having me on today. I'm honored to be part of the show. Absolutely, man. Absolutely. You're a patron of mine, and it's always nice to be able to talk to the patrons. So you have a couple different experiences here and stuff that you'd like to share. I mean, we're going to start off with the Bigfoot stuff. When you were a kid, about 12 to 14 years old, you actually saw one of these things, right? Yeah. It was right in front of me. It was literally like

50 feet away, no obstructions, just right there. Basically, I grew up north of Boston in a town, and at the end of our street, there's a river. It's brackish water, which means fresh water goes into the sea, so it kind of like has both kind of salt water and fresh water stuff. And me and a friend growing up, we went down to the river, and kind of went over the hill a little bit, and we looked, just, it was going on down there, and we just see right in front of us. It was gray.

It was about seven-ish feet tall. It was like, it was muscular, but lean. And I just looked at her, and I was just like, why is there a gorilla over there? It just didn't make any sense to me, you know, because at that time, you know, there was no really internet or anything like that. so I knew of Bigfoot

but it was kind of like Locknest Monster I thought there was one of them and on the West Coast you know it's just one of those things so like I said to her I'm just like you want to get out of here and she ran towards her house and I ran to my house

but the way what it looked like like the skin it had hair it was like a grayish whiteish hair to it and the skin under it was kind of like wet fire like like

the color of that, like you're in a campfire and you put water on it, like that kind of gray was the skin color. Big, like, the eyes were just black. And, uh,

excuse me. Um, the hands were, like huge. It reminded me of like, um, when you, like,

like the Halloween stores, when you see like the, like the monster hands. Yeah. That's the size of, it was a big hands. Um, and had like hair on the back of the hand and like,

um, on the fingers on the top of the fingers. And what it was doing, it had its left leg up on the bank and the right one was still in the water. And it was leaning over and it was like swooshing around, washing something. And I was from the backside, almost like in football, like a backward lateral. That was my angle. So I don't even know if it ever saw me because we didn't really stick around too long. But it, I think what it was washing was muscles because now I look back and remember we'd always see like

piles of muscles in the river. And we always thought it was like the river otters, but they wouldn't stack them up like that, you know? And then I thought it was this kid, Chris, but it was actually a sister that I saw it with. And I asked him back when I used to have social media, I got rid of all that. But he's like, no, I don't remember that,

but I do remember under the bridge, there was like a five-gallon bucket. And in it was like a goose or a swan half buried in the rocks. and it was just like, what is this? You know, we just did not make sense to us. And then also, like, in the area, there was, like, tall reeds, and there was, like, pathways through it. And we thought it was, like, older kids that did that.

So we would kind of, like, playing it and stuff like that. I mean, that could have been that, was it throughout through the area? We didn't know. We didn't have any idea about that stuff. But, yeah, I ran home, and my mom was cooking. It was about 4.30, because that's when she would cook, 435. And I go to her, I'm just like, mom, I'm just like, mom, I think I just saw a gorilla.

And she just kind of looked at me and said, okay. And then those people moved away. And I kind of forgot about it forever until about five, six years ago. It just was like, push, came back into my head. I'm like, holy cow. I remember that now. I think was it a couple episodes ago was his name Kyle from UK. I was kind of talking about how you can suppress things.

Yeah. Yeah. That hasn't aired yet, but yeah. Okay. A little spoiler for everyone But that was basically Like the gist of the gray bigfoot Like I said, it wasn't huge

And it was like a mixture between a gorilla and a chimp And like a human mix And it's like a gray It's hard to explain like the hair on it It was like a gray with the whitish Like I said before It wasn't quite like a squirrel or a fox It was just like

It was a weird gray But like said, remember the skin under it because when I was watching its hands and stuff like that, it was like that grayish, like fire ash that's wet,

like that kind of coloring. So, I mean, what, first of all, what state did this happen in again? This is in Massachusetts just north of Boston. It's called the North Shore. And what's the landscape look around like there? I mean, is it like a heavily wooded area?

Or is it kind of like something that kind of caught you off guard because it's out of place for the environment. A little caught me off guard. Now it's all built up with like condos in that area, but at the time it was like the river and there was like this like pit marshy area. And you know, people used to ride like dirt bikes and it was just an open, open area. But now that's all houses and it's all developed now. Okay. Yeah, it's really interesting, man. I mean, and you don't think it saw you, uh, but you got a good look at it. I mean, and you said you were what, 50 feet away from it? 50 feet.

I actually went on to Google Earth, and I kind of like took my position and then went to like, because it was right on the crest of like, the river, if I was standing at it, the river comes like from the left and then right at that area,

it curls and it goes straight up. It's like, it's a bend right there. And it was right in the bend on the opposite side. Like I said, with this left foot on the bank, right foot in the water.

And I don't think it's on me. I like, but I could kind of see its eye, but like from the side, you know, and I never saw it. like the front of it or I couldn't tell if it was male or female and most likely it was male. Just, you know, because I didn't see like breast or anything like that.

Or I was kind of young. I wouldn't even know to look at that, you know. So you saw it from the side. So I, how wide was it from like a side view? I mean, because people talk about how, you know, if it's like, say it's an eight footer, it's usually about four feet wide. But from the side view of it, how why would you say it was? I would probably say, yeah, I mean the shoulder, like I said, it was, it was big, but it wasn't huge. And I would say like three and a half, maybe shoulder width, maybe four, that's kind of cloudy to me right now. But like, it was big. Like I said, I remember, it was kind of like big and muscular, but lanky at the same time.

It's just, and it was leaning over, you know, messing with the, like washing something it looked like. And like I didn't stick around too long. We just looked at it and I'm like, why is there, like I said, a gorilla over there? And I was like, let's get out here. And she ran one way and I ran the other way. You know, it's where our houses were. And then like I said, they moved away not too long after that. And I just just forgot about it until recently when I started really getting into cryptids.

And I'm just like, wait a minute. It just flashed right back into my head and all this stuff. And like I said, I reached out to her brother and he said he didn't remember that. I'm like, oh, wait a minute. I think it was his sister. And then, like I said, I don't have the social media. And I looked her up there on the West Coast, but I don't want to just call someone. It's just, you know. Sure. You know what I mean? It's just, I don't want to do that. And so it's like, I'll leave it alone. Yeah, I know. I got it. So you see this thing out there. You just thought it was a gorilla. And so what you're saying is you didn't really connect the dots

that it could be a big foot until recently. Yeah, like four or five years ago, I put it together. I'm like, wait a minute. Because I didn't think gray, like, gray didn't make sense to me. Because, like, when you would see, like, pictures, there was always, you know, like, Patty. You'd see it in a book or whatever, you know, a picture, you know, like that kind of thing. So, like I said before, to me, I only, like, I thought there was just a big foot, you know, and it was just roaming around kind of like lock nest monster, you know, one, which is probably more than, there's probably a bunch of lockness monsters when it comes down to it. But, so yeah, it just didn't make sense to me. So I didn't know how to, like, file it away.

and I just, it just was like, blot, you know, as a kid, and I just forgot about it and just grew up and did my thing. Yeah, I mean, it might have been, like, I always say, when people say they saw these gray or white bigfoot, I always think that maybe it's just one of those things where it's an aged bigfoot where it's just, it's, you know, if these things are living creatures, you would think they would age, and along with age comes gray hair, white hair. Yeah, exactly. I wonder if that's what you saw, maybe just some kind of older Bigfoot that was on its last legs per se, you know, and didn't really.

Because, I mean, the fact that you think that you were about 50 feet away from it and you don't think it even knew you were there, that's an unusual thing a lot of times. Because a lot of times people, they talk about how it knew they were there. They look through, you know, you hear hunters talk about looking through their scope on their rifle and the thing looking back at them through the scope. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, no, I know. I didn't know if it was like the wind was just right. I know it was like an overcast day.

I remember that. It was kind of a cloudy overcast day. And the trickling of the river was kind of, you know, that noise, that white noise of the trickling. So I don't think it even heard us or so. Or maybe it did see us because now I think about like it had a, because we always used to play hide and go seek and all kinds of games. It probably has been watching us forever.

You know what I mean? It's just, and it's, I don't know, that kind of freaked me out when I thought about it. Like when I said the reads, all these pathways through the reeds, like, wow, look at these past, you know, we thought like older kids, they were making forts in there. But it could have been that travel routes from that, for them that. Yeah. Which kind of freaked me out a little bit when I thought about it after.

Yeah, of course. You go missing 4-1-1 on me. Yeah, exactly, yeah. Yeah, so that's interesting stuff, man. I mean, not a lot of people get to say they saw something like that. And, I mean, what was your mom's reaction when you came home, you said you saw a gorilla? was she just like, oh, you're just a kid and you're making stories up or what?

She didn't really know how to, she was just like, okay. You know what I mean? Like, when you kid comes to you and says, hey, I saw a gorilla, I'm like, okay, show you did. And it just was kind of forgotten because it was just, we didn't know how to, like, I didn't know how to, like, I didn't know how to, I just, yeah, I just, yeah, I kind of remember that, you know, to her it was just an average, you know, she didn't see anything. She just saw me come in, you know, I'm like, mom, I think I just saw a gorilla, you know. So she's like, okay. Yeah. Did that keep you out of the woods?

No. But what keeps me out of the woods is what I'll tell you later on, like, more recently. I haven't been back in the woods. My girlfriend's always like, because we always go hiking, and I just, I don't know, it just freaks me out. I just, I'm not comfortable in the woods anymore. Okay. You know, go camping and stuff like that. I just, I don't know.

So why did you walk us into that other experience then? like throwing the rocks and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah. Two different occasions. Now this was in Ashland State Forest or called the Kawasaki Woods. It's Ashland Framingham area of Massachusetts. And there was about six or eight of us the night before we all were hanging out, you know, a bunch of couples got together. And then in the morning we're like, oh, let's go for a hike.

So we're hiking in the woods. And I'm the lead person. it's kind of like a ridge, and we're walking down to this area where there's a bunch of rocks, and there's like a beat-up old rusty car in the middle of the woods. We're kind of like headed towards there, take pictures of and stuff. But as we're walking, I notice, well, first I hear like, you know, it was a rock coming through the tree line from the side of us. And I'm just like, at first, I'm like, all right, who's throwing rocks? You know what I mean?

But I'm just like, there's no possible way unless they have like boomerang rocks for it to come from that angle when everyone else is behind me. you know, because I saw it land. Like, I never touched the rocks. I've had many rocks thrown at me, and I just, something in me says, just leave it alone. Just don't, just, you can look at it, but just don't, don't pick it up. So that happened a few times there.

But more recently, in a state park, not west of Concord, New Hampshire, and this is last September. And every year, for about 15 years, a group friends of mine, we go camping. And what we do is sometimes we take a real, like, remote camp spot, and we kayak out to it, and there's like a portage, which where you get out of your kayak and you have to walk on land.

And then there's another ponds, depending on what site you take. You know, the furthest one you have to cross two ponds. There's one we were at last year. There's one pond, and that's the campsite right there. So I was unloading stuff, and we kind of, like, stagger, because I don't. like to leave a bunch of gear, like way over there while we're over here. I mean, there's really no one in the woods, but you never know. So we just kind of stagger it. So I go and drop things off, and I had to go to the bathroom. So I'm like, oh, just in the bushes right here. And as I did that,

like, a wild turkey was like, and flew away. So I walked back, and I'm like, tell him that. So I grab more stuff. And on my second trip, I'm walking down the trail with stuff my hand and literally right in front of my face, a rock, like a large marble size. just right in front of me. Like, what is going on? And looking at it, and I was telling the guys, I think it's set a rock throwing at me. And then, so never in the campsite,

we had any problems, but it's only when we were walking the trails. You can either, like I said, we took the kayak in, but there's also a trail that goes all the way up, and a lot of times we'll do that because we'll leave firewood in the truck, so it didn't get wet,

and we'll just walk up to the, you know, it's a little more than a half-mile walk. and all three of us, Ben and Jeff is the other person. And mostly Ben and I. Ben has like native blood, is the Abanaki is like the tribe that his family kind of comes from. So I don't know if that has something to do to it, do to it too. But every time we're walking on the trails, it would just be like rocks. And at first I'm like, all right, who's kicking rocks, you know?

But they come from the right side. if we're walking back to the trucks. They always came from the right side, and they would just be flying in at us. And there would be bigger ones, like softball sides, flying over our heads and landing on the other side of the trail and just being like, crash, boom, boom. We never saw anything, but it was just for the whole weekend,

every time we're on the trails, just rocks coming in us. And at first you think, like, ma, is it kids? But there's really no one up there. But the kicker was we, I got two like those corn cob pipes. I was going to smoke a pipe around the fire. It would be kind of fun. And so I gave one to Ben and he had when we were first walking up there.

And he had like a little loop on his jacket and he put it in the loop while he was carrying things. And then we forgot about it. Then late at that night, it was about 10.30 or so. I'm like, oh, Ben, you want to smoke the pipes? You know, sit by the fire and he's like, yeah. And he's like, oh, I don't know where it is. So like, oh, you probably lost it on the trail. So this, like I said, about 1030 or so.

So at night, he grabs his headlight. We both have headlights that are like 1,500 luminous. And I also have another flashlight that's 1,000 luminous. So we have a lot of power of light. And we're walking down the trail. It's lit up like a rock concert. And I see, you know, the Coen Cobb pipes that have like that yellowy orange like mouthpiece. And I just see that glowing up ahead.

And it is as I go to pick it up at night, rock. comes right in at me. And that freaked me out. And just, like I said, though, nothing ever happened in camp. They were probably watching us or whatever, but it was just when we were walking on the trails, a bunch of rocks would fly in. Yeah.

I mean, when it comes to the rocks flying in and stuff, I mean, I've talked to several people who have had that experience. And do you think that that's Bigfoot? Or do you think that there could be something else going on, like as far as like poltergeist activity within the woods? You know, it could be either. Like I said, you know, the year before, Jeff and I, we did see some big black mass just quickly run, like, or move through the forest.

And it's on the, we'll see, when you're on the trail, it's probably about 40 yards in this, there's the pond. So you can kind of see through it. And we saw this like, just big black mass go, I mean, maybe it's a bear, but a bear you're going to keep seeing. This is just there and it was gone. and this is during the day. One of the last rock thrones that I remember, too, Ben and I were walking past a big rock. And right in between us, he was probably about four feet behind me.

And a rock comes in and smashes the bigger rock, and it was just like, wow! And I just remember, like, too, I just yelled, enough! Just screamed in the wood. I was getting, like, I was getting pissed. I was like, enough of this. So, like, I screamed at it.

And I was just, I was really pumped up. And I was like one of the last times because after that, I kayaked out of there. Like I was done with the trails. Like when we would go get wood, I would hold it like the wood, you know, when you get like the grocery store or whatever, you get the with the little handle, a bunch of wood. Right. I would carry that on my shoulder on the side facing where the rocks were coming from because I felt like I needed like my hockey helmet. You know what I mean? Like I just felt unsafe like rocks.

But like I said, they never hit us. But I would carry the, um, the, um, the, um, the, um, the, um, the, the, um, the, um, the. sack of wood on my shoulder so like I'd feel like I had protection. What's your friend think about all this? I mean, was your friend freaked out about it? Yeah, he was a little freaked out, yeah. The funny thing is Jeff, like, he would walk by himself.

He was like, nah, nothing happened. But Jeff or I, I mean, Ben or I, it would go, like, just go nuts. You know, it would happen when the three of us, but it would never happen when Jeff was by himself for some reason, which is weird because later on, I have a story that Jeff's involved with, and he didn't even see anything where everyone else saw it. So I don't know.

That's interesting. Yeah, he always just misses it. Wow. Yeah. I mean, so this happens to you guys and, you know, your friend's frustrated about it. You're frustrated about it. Is this what you were referring to earlier about why you're not going in the woods any time soon? Yeah.

It's just, it's just listen to all the stories, you know, because I have a lot of time to listen to a lot of podcasts. And it just kind of freaks me out. I just feel uneasy out there. Like, you know, it's just, I don't know. I feel like once you have interactions, you're always going to have interactions. I just feel like you open this door

and they know that you know, you know, if that makes sense to you. Yeah. It's weird. Like I said, I get this feeling like, don't touch the rocks. Like, don't pick them up. Don't just look at them. And I just feel like that kind of like eggs them on. I don't know.

I just, that's the feeling I get with that. that. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah, man. I've never experienced rock throwing myself. I've been out in the woods several times, obviously, and I've never seen Bigfoot myself. But I have a friend, Don, who I used to go hiking with a lot before I started the show. And I'm telling you, dude, the first time that he meets up with this one guy that reached out to us, I'm not there, and they have activity. And I'm like, dang it. Like, I don't get activity. Don, he sees, he actually saw a bigfoot. You know how Pennsylvania is known for that white bigfoot that's always around anywhere in the state. I mean, it's been seen all over the place. I don't know if there's

more than one or what, but he saw it. And that really kind of jumped him into looking for Bigfoot. Then I'm walking around with him for a while. We see nothing other than tree breaks and things like that. And then the very first time he goes out with these other guys and I'm not there, bang. They got some serious activity, like vocalizations and everything. everything. And it's just like, dang it. Like, what is it about me? You know, like, I feel like your friend where it's like, I, like, I've literally, I've come to the point now where I'm like, I'm never going to see anything. I'm just, I'm not, I know I'm not going to see anything. It's just not in my cards. I'm meant to talk about this stuff, but not see it. Like, that's the way I feel,

you know? Yeah, no, yeah, it's crazy. It's just, like I said, I think, like, once you, they know you know, then it's game on for some reason. I just have that feeling, like, like some people talk about like they can hear them in their heads and stuff like that. I don't know if I heard it like, but I did get that feeling like to leave things alone, you know. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think sometimes listening to that inner voice inside is what people need to do. And if you're like, you know, I just don't feel right touching these things, then just let it go. Don't touch it. You know what I mean? Yep. Yep. Have your buddy who hasn't seen anything touch it. Nothing will happen to him, you know?

Yeah, exactly. But so that's your, that's your, that's your Bigfoot slash wood stories that you experienced. And I mean, it's, I find it interesting that you saw this thing. And do you think, before we move on to topics, a different topic here, do you think that knowing that you saw a Bigfoot as a kid tends to sway your mindset as to what you're experiencing with the rock throwing? You know what I mean? Like sometimes, like, when people experience a certain thing, uh, later on,

in life, they'll lean towards attributing other characteristics to that one thing they saw when they're younger. Or do you think that you kind of try to keep an open mind with it? That's a hard one to answer. I mean, I try to keep an open mind, but I'm just like, what is throwing, I mean, what is throwing rocks? I mean, like, squirrels ain't doing it. You know what I mean? It's like, and like you said, it could be poltergeist or something like that. I never actually even thought of that angle. Yeah, I don't really not answer that because it's like, I never really thought about it that way. Yeah.

I just know, like, from talking with a lot of people and stuff and just knowing human nature, it's very easy to take your past experiences in life and attribute it to current events, such as, I mean, you're talking about, like, not even just paranormal stuff, but like, say you're a kid and you were abused, by your parents a lot and you were always beaten and stuff. Like that, that environment you were raised in sets you up for a certain mentality and mindset later on in life where maybe that person doesn't feel the need to have kids or get close with people because they know what happens when you're close with people. You know what I mean? So like things from the past attribute to your mindset in the future with other situations. And I wonder sometimes with Bigfoot sightings,

especially when it comes to kids having Bigfoot sightings. If when they grow up, knowing they saw what they saw, that's always in the forefront of their mind when they're in the woods that whatever they experience that they can't explain is Bigfoot, you know? True, true. Yeah, it could be that.

But like I said too, I think once you have that sighting, which made you say this, but like I think that you're acceptable to it. And like, like I said, I have this feeling like once they know that you know, like I said, it's like game on. And yeah, it's weird because it's like, this is nice to have a platform to actually talk about this stuff. Because most of the time, you know, you try to talk to friends and family and they're like, oh, okay, all right, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I mean?

So it's nice to actually have like a platform here that we can just discuss this stuff. And it's not like, oh, okay, buddy. You know, anyways, let's talk about the sports team, you know. Yeah. Let's talk about the Patriots. Yeah. But, no, I hear you, man. And, you know, when you, when you say things like once you experience it, that you're going to be, you could be susceptible to seeing something or experiencing other things, that kind of, when you say something like that, to me, it's like, one, I totally agree with you. I think it's definitely a plausible thought to have.

and if it is a plausible thought to have, and you do look at people's stories, I mean, look back at this show, you do see multiple people seem to have this prone life to seeing and experiencing crazy things. It does make you wonder, though, what Bigfoot is. I know we talk about it on the show sometimes, but to me, the more I hear about people straight up telling me they saw Bigfoot do supernatural things to what you just said where it's like once you experience something like that, you feel like you're prone to, like they know about you. You know what I mean? Like to me, that's, that doesn't seem like a natural animal. Like if I come across a mountain line out in the woods, mountain line everywhere aren't going to know to mess with me because I had one one experience

of the mountain line. You know what I mean? Yeah, exactly. With Bigfoot, if that's true with what you said, I mean, that's just a theory, you know, like we're not spitting facts here. But I mean, that was true, to me that would tell me that, okay, maybe these things are not just totally this, you know, gorilla out in the woods. I think that I absolutely think they're flesh and blood. Like, I absolutely do. I just, as somebody that comes from the background that I have when it comes to just believing in the supernatural, I believe that there are things that can be flesh and blood. They do seem very real, but also have supernatural attributes. And I always, I'm going to be in a documentary later this year, and they had me talk about the Nephilim

connection with Bigfoot. And I want to do any spoilers here and stuff, but I do talk about how these things, if they are a hybrid creature from what happened back then, they might have characteristics of angels, because their fathers were angels. Yeah, the fallen ones. Yeah. And so when you look at that aspect of things, if fallen angels did things with animals and the offspring is Bigfoot or dogman, these things might have supernatural, supernatural capabilities, but also be very physical at the same time. You know what I mean? And it would really, because when you look at the Bible, and here I am spoiling it, but oh, well, go watch a documentary. Yeah, that's exactly how I feel. Like, first off, I don't know what they are, but I do lean towards the Nephalom, the fallen ones,

Because it, I mean, it does say, like, everything was corrupted by them. So, you know what I mean? Like, what else could it be? So, and to have where people say, like, you know, it disappears or it floats or, you know, all these other strange crazy things that other sightings or interactions have had. So it just doesn't make a lot of sense. But, yeah, the closest thing that makes sense to me is a branch off of a fallen one's Nephilim, stuff like that, you know, in my study so far. I mean, it could change tomorrow,

you know, because it's for sure. Unknown. So I never thought that I would change my mind as it being just a straight up flesh and blood gorilla walking around out there that's just really, really smart and knows that it wants to avoid humans. That's what I used to think. And I never thought I'd change my mind on that. And yeah. And now just from being in the environment and thinking outside the box and just taking in what I believe to be fact when it comes to like scripture and things like that and applying it to these types of topics, all of a sudden your mindset starts taking puzzle pieces that you didn't even know you had and putting it on the puzzle. Like, oh, that fits.

Exactly. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah. But yeah, man. So why don't you walk us into these other experiences that are more like haunting? Yeah. Just start us off with the one where the thing walks by. the door and there's multiple people that saw.

So this happened in Salem, Salem, Massachusetts. And, um, what's, Jeff will, I camp with. Jeff and this kid Paul moved into each,

uh, an apartment. It was like the first apartment for like our group, like, um, everyone else lived at home. They finally got an apartment. So that was like the hangout because we had a place to go.

So everyone was always there. And so, This is probably like, well, actually it was. It was 1998. The reason I know that, because we were all about to sit down on VHS, watch Swingers. When it first came out, we were like, oh, it's watched, you know, was Vince Vaughn's movie there? Yeah. So we're sitting there, and the TV's directly in front of us.

Paul's sitting to my left, and we're sitting on like this, like, kind of like lovesie couch. And then to the left more is Paul's bed, because we were like in his bedroom. and Jeff and this kid Lucas was sitting there and at the ends of the bed that's where the door opens up so it's like if I'm looking at the TV to the left now I look kind of like a diagonal and that's how you look

into the kitchen that's the doorway and the door opens up so basically they're kind of like behind the door so we're watching it and all of a sudden we just see this thing go floating by kind of like not because people have like kind of like a walk you know like people move this just kind of went by the door

door. And I saw it and Paul goes like, what the, you know, what the F? What was that? You know, and like, we thought it was a friend Barry come to scare us because it goes into, it goes past the door and it goes into the living room. So, like, he grabs a sword that he had. Someone else grabbed like a stool and they're all like running there to see what was going on. I kind of lag behind a little bit and like, all right. But nothing was there. But what it looked like was, um, it had, like no facial features, but a face. And it was a bluish red tinge to the whole thing. And it looked like it had a robe or like a comforter or something wrapped around it.

And it was like making its way to the front of the house from the back. And we saw it just kind of go right by the door. And it was probably 25 feet away, you know, the distance across the room. And that was pretty crazy that one. Also in the same house about a few weeks. later, we're sitting in the kitchen, and then we noticed going into Paul's room, an orb. It was, it was like an orangey, green, bluish, like, just like, wong, and it was like floating and kind of like bouncing around near the ceiling, kind of hugging the wall line, and then it went

up through the ceiling into his room. Size-wise, I would probably say like a baseball-ish, maybe a little bit bigger than a baseball. But it had, like, it, the way it glue, glowed was, uh, like, it was weird, because it was like all those colors and kind of like,

like, like, like, different. Like, there was no such thing as LED's back then. And it was just like, glow into the next kind of like color,

um, is really strange. And we all saw it. It all, it just went past us, like, like, and into the room.

Yeah. And that's in Salem, Massachusetts, right? This is in Salem. Yeah. Which I think this whole neighborhood, at one time burnt down. So in my head, I kind of pictured like this guy that was like trying to

avoid a fire, maybe had a blanket and just was heading towards trying to get out of the, towards the front of the house, maybe what the red and blue tinge to it was. That's just, that's just me speculating. But, yeah, I mean, when it comes to the details of what you see on an apparition of any kind, I think a lot of times we want to take what we saw. and apply it to something factual that we know. And so it's like, oh, I saw this guy and he was wearing, you know, Western clothing from the 1800s. So he must have been from that time period.

And I just, I don't know. Like, I think that there's too much that we don't know about how these things operate. And there's so many curve balls that get thrown at us throughout the process of seeing and experiencing these things that I can't, I personally don't feel like just because the person was wearing a certain type of clothes. or or certain had a certain look that we can peg down that it was from this era and since that I know if in that in that time frame this neighborhood had this happen or whatever you know I mean like it very well could could have had that you know correlation but I just I think there's just

so much that we don't know about these experiences that people have that it's just like it's hard to peg anything down you know it is it is yeah because the rope the rope thing I mean Does that make sense at all? I mean, at any point in time, were they wearing robes? I mean, maybe,

like you said, maybe he was trying to protect himself from, you know. Yeah, like I said, but it did, like I said, it had like some kind of robed thing on it.

And it had, I had a face, but you couldn't see any facial features. And it was kind of like this, it was glowing, like, had a light, light glow of those colors to it.

And it just sort of, it just kind of floated past the door. And I said, like floated, like I said, people have like, what is it like a gant or whatever it's called you know like how you kind of like sway a little bit when you walk it's just right past the door yeah you know i and i've heard that too

they're i actually heard a story when i was a little kid this lady she was in a i think it was a grocery store and she saw somebody in the back of the grocery store like on the other side of the aisle like kind of float across and this person apparently floated across like the aisle But it wasn't like an apparition, like the person just continued to float around in the store. And like, I don't know if it was a witch or if it was like a ghost. I don't know. I was a little kid when I heard the story. And I don't want to say the person's name because, you know, I have a feeling that listens to the show.

So in Salem, too, different house. I had a, I got at an apartment with my buddy John. And I remember, because I've listened to every one of your podcasts. I remember you and your friend were talking one time that he would see like stars or like there was like no ceiling and it would just be stars. And in my bedroom when it was dark in there, I didn't really see that. But what it was was kind of like swirling clouds. It was like an orangey purple. Kind of like if you look at like when the hurricane's coming, you know, like on a map or whatever you know, like how it has that swirling effect, that's what the ceiling looked like.

It wasn't super bright, but you could see it. And my girlfriend at the time, she could see it too. I'm like, you see that, right? And then John would actually, he kind of saw that, but he actually saw one time this face come down right at him and like it was screaming right, like right to his face while he was in bed, came down and it was like, but with no noise. And he told me that later on because we moved out of there. He's like, ah, you know, I want to move.

And I'm like, all right. So I moved back home for a short time. And then we found a new apartment. and he didn't really tell me this stuff until like after we moved out. But yeah, it was, when you were talking with your friend and said you saw, he saw like, do you remember what I'm talking about? I vaguely remember that. Was that the show where I had my friend from Onset, Massachusetts on?

I think it was, yeah. Okay. But I just remember it, and that just sparked. I'm like, yeah, I remember something just like that. Different, but like that. Like, the whole ceiling was like this swirling, like, vortex. kind of thing. And like I said, it was like orangey, purple-ish colors, like just very light. You could see it if you really, like if you look, it was really, really weird.

Yeah. If it was Onset Massachusetts one, that's episode 50. That's the only one I can think of right now. Because you said I had my friend on and I didn't have too many of my friends on. So that's the one I'm thinking of on the top of it. Yeah. It was a while ago. I would just like all day, just like one after another, one after another one. I've just kind of catching up. So those are the Salem ones. The other one is when, I guess you want to call it an entity, right? It like went through me. I can get into that sort if you want. Yeah, absolutely. I'm fascinated by this. Go ahead. So this happened in Burlington, Burlington Mass. And at the time, I was working security for this

office park. And I did the overnight. So that was 12 to 8. And I would have to, I had this little scanner thing and I'd have to walk around, do my rounds and there was these little things on the wall and I would have to run the scanner over it and that would register in there and then my supervisor in the morning would know how long it took me to get to each little

thing and if I skipped any or anything like that. So one of the buildings I would have to go to the top floor and that's because it's like all the generators were up there, the heating, HVAC, all that stuff. Like, you know, the raised platform

and a bunch of like machinery. So I go up the stairs and my normal route is just go up the stairs take a right and kind of like you know a 180 around and go down this hallway and then hit one of those little

scanner bar things to get the reading but as I was going up I looked to my left and I just see this like mass like I said it looked like ink in ink on water it was just floating in there

like I remember like kind of like skinny like weird eyes arms, but no legs that I could see. It was just this black mass and it was like, and then I saw it come towards me. So I kind of like brace for impact. I'm like, ah. And as, so I kind of like closed my eyes. And as I did that, I felt it go through me. And the feeling you get like, it's hard to explain, but it's just like you get sweaty. I go, it was like, um, I had like hot sweats, overheating, but then very cold shivers at the same time. if that makes any sense.

And then I kind of look behind me and I saw it go around the corner and down the hall. And when it moves, it's kind of like jerky and moves on a dime. So, and then my boss is like,

hey, you're not going up to that, uh, top floor. What's going on? Like, yeah, he's like,

no, I ain't going up there. I'm not going up there. Because it was known to be haunted. Like other people have had experiences up there. I don't know if it walked through them like it did me, but like other people have seen that, uh,

that entity. So I wouldn't, I wouldn't call it like a ghost because it was like I said, it was more like when you pour ink and water and has that like floaty effect to it. What are you going to say? Well, no, I was just going to say, I mean, you do see things like that in movies, but I've never talked to anybody that said they actually had to go through them. You talk about people they see ghosts come through walls, doors, come down through the ceiling, up through the floor. But to go through you. Yeah, it charged me, went right through me.

Wow. I mean, do you think that it was charging you? Or do you think that you were just in its direct path and it wasn't going to go around you because it didn't need to? Well, when I came up, it was still and it was probably, I don't know, say like 20-ish feet away to my left. I'm like, oh, what is that? And then it's moving. And then it just kind of like moved a little bit. Then it was just like, wham, came right at me. And then it went down the hall, kind of like where I would have to go and scan that thing and I went around the machine and I just went downstairs down the stairs and I was like I'm done up there

because you got to remember it I'm doing this overnight by myself. You know what I mean? Like I have to go one of the things that I have to do two I don't know what I call it two rounds I would do that round and then I'd do another round closer to the morning where it unlocked all the doors in the office park

you know for the people to come in during the day but yeah there was a there was a painter he would, I'd like it. He used to go up there and paint at that time. He's like, oh, yeah, I see it all the time. He didn't care. But I used to love it when I go up there. I'm like, yes, he's up here.

Because I felt like, you know, safe when he was up there just doing some like overnight painting. But, yeah, I would just avoid it. And my supervisor was Jason was his name. And he's like, Josh, you're not doing that building up on the top floor. I'm just like, I can't do it. I get to the doorway. and I look up the stairs and like, nope, not happening.

And I turn around and I just continue on with my tour. Wow. Yeah, I mean, if I had that experience, I probably wouldn't want to go up there myself. Now, is that something that kind of could have cost you your job for not going up there? No, not so much. Like, I don't, yeah.

I did go back up there a few times. I don't, I didn't see anything, but it wasn't many more times. I kind of just skipped. I'm like, listen, I'm not going up there. You know what I mean? I'm just, it's not happening.

Now, what do you think that is the difference between your, your experience with that one time and the other guy's like, oh, yeah, I see them all the time? Do you think it's the fact that it went through you that scared you so bad? Or do you think that just by seeing it, it would have scared you just the same amount? Going through me helped me be scared of it. But, yeah, for me, you know, I was 20, 21 at the time. You know, it's kind of young. And it just, it scared me.

It just, I didn't want to. anything to do with it. I just by myself. I mean, people are pretty brave when, uh, during the day and talking about stuff. But when you're in the, like, same with the big foot. When you're in the middle of the woods, because where this campsite was, just going back for a second, it's like, it, it's like a bottleneck. And there's no way to run, but where they bottleneck you and I think, you have to get through that. So it's like, same thing with that. It's just like, you're kind of trapped. And I just don't like that feeling. So I just stay away from it. But, um, I don't know why, like, it didn't, he just was like, meh, I see it, you know, whatever.

So maybe he's had a bunch of experience and nothing really bad happened. So he's just like, whatever. Yeah, it's interesting, man. That's interesting. I think he was just painting, and he was always just high. You know what I mean? You said he was a painter, right? Yeah, he was like a maintenance guy there.

So he's been there forever. And the office park. Eh, it's nothing. It's just a little bit of the ink. I'll just smear it on the wall. It's nothing. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's weird. It's just in the middle, just like middle of the air. But it's just this floating thing.

It's like, shh, like kind of like black smoke, but like ink and water the way it moves. It's just, it's something to see. Wow. Yeah, I wish I would have been able to see it, man. Honestly, it's one of those things where I can imagine you see something, but it's like, how am I going to describe this to somebody else? Yep. So I got one more little section. kind of where I grew up in the area, there's a place called Danvers State Hospital. I don't know if you've ever heard of it before. No. So, yeah, it was built back in 1878. The original name for it was the state lunatic hospital at Danvers.

Wow. Okay. Yeah. So, yeah, it first opened May 1st. First patient was the 13th. And I looked it up. It wasn't a Friday because that would have been great. If it was Friday the 13th, first patient, but it was Monday. But in 1889, they started doing hydro therapy treatments was there.

They changed the name to Damestate Hospital in 2009. The first lobotomy ever was performed there in 48. They did electrical shock therapy, all this crazy, like insulin coma therapy, water treatment, all this crazy stuff up there. They actually shut it down in 1991 is when they shut it down. But after that, like, everybody, you know, in the area was just like, hey, let's go to Denver State and they would sneak in. It was like all these different ways to sneak in.

And so back, I'd probably say, like, 97-ish 2003, like in that time period, I took a few trips. up there. And one of the time, we'd be up there sometimes all night, no problem, just exploring, you know, just having, you know, urban exploring, I guess they call it, you know, it's a fun word for trespassing. Yeah. So one time we were up there, I was with my buddy Christian, and I think Lucas was the other person, yeah. And it was a weird night because it's like a movie. It was fog outside, all right? So all the windows on the first floor are all boarded up. So it is pitch, black inside. The place is huge. Absolutely. Look it up. Google it sometimes. It is, it was, well,

it's gone now, but it was huge. And the fog was just like, as you were walking down a hall, and it was like waist down with fog. All right. So we get, we get to the door in the hallway, and they're big, like, you know, psych war doors or kind of like a gym, you know, like a gym, you know, like a gym door, they have that push bar and then, like, all the little, like, um, latches. You know what I mean? Like, you know, like your front door, I only has that one latch, but like, these kind of doors have a bunch. Right. So it was one of those big doors like that.

And we go through it and we close it. We get like, like, halfway down the hall. And all of a sudden, that door starts going, gush, gush, gush, gush. And at the same time, we can hear, like, faintly down the hall in rooms. We can hear, like, people jumping on mattresses and, like, inaudible, like, voices. Wow. Wow. You know, like, all that kind of stuff.

And we just looked at each other. And we flew out of there that night. Flew. But it was really weird to have the fog and those big heavy doors behind us is just slamming, which we had to run through because, you know what I mean, to get back, we just flew through that. But to hear like it sounded like people laughing in audible voices and jumping on like mattresses, it was pretty shocking.

Like sometimes, like I said, there's other times up there. It's, you could hear a pin drop way down the, it's so quiet. in the another time too there's all these tunnels there's the main part and then these wings that branch off it but then there's all these other places

like the nurse's house and stuff like that but underground there's all kinds of tunnels so they don't have to take patients outside they can go through a tunnel to another building and then under those tunnels there's sub-tunnels but we were in a tunnel from the nurse's house going to the main building and it was probably about six of us or so.

And as we started going down the tunnels, we could hear like footsteps coming to us. We're like, oh man, we're trying to hide. We were like, you know, in the cartoons, when like people are trying to hide, they're like running around all which way bumping into each other. That's what we were kind of doing. You know, we had our flashlights and stuff.

And it sounded like this, we all got like 1940s-esque nurses' shoes, like that kind of like wooden soul. And you can even hear it like it rounded the corner, like the sound of like a person rounding the corner how they're like stepping changes a little bit and then it just disappeared we were freaking out we're all trying to hide we're like oh no someone's coming and then uh nothing wow yeah listen i'm what you're describing to me it's drawing a picture of my head of buildings that i know of around where i live uh before i get into that though uh when you had to run through those doors to get out of there were they still slamming

Uh, you know, I don't remember that. I just remembered like, we all looked at each other, like, you want to get out of here? And literally, I was in bed before I think they even got to their cars. I was just like, I flew so fast out of there. I was already home and in bed and half sleeping. I was like, I'm out of here. Like that back. You know what I mean? Later. Yeah. So the hospital you described here reminds me of a place around where I live. I used to live in a town called Spring City. And in Spring City is an old state hospital. Piddle that's shut down now called Penhurst. Oh, I know.

Yeah, I've heard of it. Yeah, it's world renown. Yeah. And I used to live right down the road from there. And I've never been inside of it because I was a married guy when I moved to Spring City and I don't want to get arrested and my wife get mad at me. So she kept me on lock. But I did all this stuff when I was younger myself too.

Right. But I also had a friend real quick. He had a security up, a security guy overnight when it was close. So we kind of had a little in. Oh, that's nice. Yeah. Yeah, there was no in for me. It's owned by the state and there's like, there's actually like some kind of, it's not, I don't think it's a barracks, but like some kind of national guard spot, I guess just like the offices or something right near there. So it's like people do sneak in there. People do sneak in there. But I just, I never had the guts to do it, I guess.

But now they're opening it up to the public and things like that for ghost tours during October. actually I'm thinking about doing a, the Confessionals podcast meet up there this year. We'll see what happens. But anyways, that place was a place that opened up years ago for the mentally challenged. And they wound up doing experiments on them and like electric shock therapy and all the same stuff. Yeah, a lot of the same stuff. And it actually got so bad. And nobody, see, what happened was people back in.

the day when they had a mentally challenged kid, they didn't know what to do with them. And a lot of people didn't even know what was going on. A lot of people thought it was a demonically possessed person at times. But they would drop these kids off at Pennhurst and they would live there. And Pennhurst had its own currency. It had its own town. It had its own little community. It was like a little town in the woods. And people would drop their kids off there. And a lot of times they wouldn't even come visit them. They would just, the kids would live there and that was it. Like, your family, that's it. You know what I mean?

Like, they're out of your life. And so nobody really knew what was going on at Pennhurst until like the 70s or 80s. Oh, man, like a mirror. Yeah. Like a news crew comes in and exposes it, does a big story on it, government shuts it down. And a lot of the people, from what I understand that were living at Pennhurst, the mentally challenged people, they were kind of just like let go. They weren't really sent anywhere. And I heard, from what I understand, I heard that for a long time in Spring City.

They had a, and I wouldn't call it in, maybe it was an issue, but they had a lot of homeless people that were mentally challenged living in Spring City because they were just let go from Penhurst and they just kind of migrated into town. It's exactly the same thing that happened. Everything you just said, exactly. Wow. What, Danvers State Hospital. You know, it's crazy.

They, when was it, about 2008. They opened, they demolished the majority of it, but they left the original building. It's called the Kirkbride building. They left the facade. They gutted it inside, but they left the brick facade of it, of the main building. But they took all the branches off, like there was wings on these side, like men's and women's. And they demolished all that, and they made condos up there. And when they opened, my girlfriend at the time, I'm like, oh, I want to live up there.

So we lived up there for a year, you know, it was like $1,600. like a month. It was expensive, but I wanted to experience up there. She wasn't big into ghosts and all that stuff, but she did one time because she would always take the stairs, not the elevator. She heard someone walking ahead of her and then there was nothing. And the reason what makes it weird is because it was kind of like, you know, the fire staircase. Every door, everything, it's just like reverberates and it's just very loud. And she never heard a door open, nothing. And there was no one ahead of her. Like, that kind of freaked her out. When we first moved in, too, we had two cats. And they kind of freaked out and they were just hiding under the bed for like a day and a half. So I'm in the living room. And then I, you know those little balls, they have like the bell in it for cats? They're like, and they kick them around.

So I could hear one of those going. I'm like, oh, cool, the cats are out, you know. But then I looked at my feet. One of the cats was, one of the cats were right next to my feet and I didn't even know it. And then the other one was in the home. hallway and they're both looking into the bedroom and you could still hear the bell we moved around. That was kind of freaky.

Yeah, yeah. I've been hearing like this a lot of people have ghost stories that have moved up there into the condos and apartments, like a lot of experience, you know, people having experiences up there. When they first made this, it was meant for like 600 patients, but they started to get into the thousands and thousands, like it was just, they had people. people like living in the attic, you know, like living in the basement, they would like, in the winter they would just bury people in the basement.

They actually, when they were doing all the construction, they found a bunch of unmarked graves, like just numbers. This is a huge field with all, it was overgrown and it was all these like just markers, like number 406, 83. And that's, there's really no records of who actually in there. Or it could be just like a mass grave at each site, you know, no one knows. Jeez, man. It's a weird place.

Yeah, it's something to Google. And there's actually, there's a lot of good YouTube clips of people walking around inside. So you can get a feel of, like, how massive it was and stuff like that. And they tore it down now? Yeah, they tore it down. Like I said, they kept the main building, just the facade. But everything else is torn down, and it's all condos. Would you feel comfortable living in a condo that was built on that property?

Now, no. But at the time, I was kind of like, you know, like 08. I was like, you know, all the go shows were first coming out and it's exciting, you know. I used to watch all. Now, I don't really watch. I haven't watched TV since.

Last time I watched TV was the last time the Bruins played. So. Yeah. I don't have cable. I just, I have cable during the NBA season so I can watch the Sixers. And that's it. When the NBA season's over, playoffs are over, I cancel my cable because I don't watch TV. I just watch.

I watch Netflix. in Hulu, but that's it. I don't need cable. Yeah, same thing are, you know, YouTube, just watching clips and just podcast. Yeah. I'm done with TV. It's really the system. You know what? I'm not even going to get into it. It's not I forget. Yeah, yeah.

But yeah, that's pretty much what I could muster up right now. There's a couple other things, but I don't really have like, like campground. There's a few things, but I I need to talk to my mom a little more about that. Okay. She's seen some things up there. So I'll leave that one for some other time or whatever.

Cool, man. Well, I really appreciate coming on and sharing these stories, man. Definitely fascinating stuff, definitely. Thank you. Thank you. And it's nice, like I said, to have a platform where I could tell these and not, like, just get laughed at it, like, okay, whatever. Because, like, after a while, you stop telling these stories.

Right. Like, at first, like, you're just excited and you want to, like, see who's who. and like, hey, have you ever experienced anything weird, but like, ever see a big foot? And then you just, you get to a point where you just like, you know what? I'm just going to keep my mouth shut. Yeah. You know, and so it's nice to have all these, like, like, West's show. Like, I love that show.

All these places where you can learn and listen, it's awesome, you know. Absolutely. And that's the whole point behind these shows is to give people a platform to come forward and share what they've experienced without feeling like somebody's going to say they're a lunatic or they're some kind of weirdo. go away, you know. So definitely, this is the safe space, you know. Yep. So definitely, man. Well, I really appreciate coming on and I'll keep in touch with you, man. All right. Thanks, Tony. See you. Well, that's the show, everybody. I really hope you enjoyed it. And if you did

enjoy it, there are three things you can do to help support the show. One, go to iTunes and leave a five-star rating and review. Two, go to patreon.com forward slash the confessionals and sign up to become a patron to help support the show. And three, go ahead and share the link to this show that you're listening to right now around social media. That will help out the show a great deal as well. And until next week, friends, stay safe, take care and remember. The truth will set you free, but first, it'll piss you off. Bye.