The Tape Library - Archive of the Paranormal & the Unexplained - The Disturbing Case of the Tallman Haunting

Episode Date: October 31, 2025

In 1987, a quiet family in Horicon, Wisconsin, became the center of one of the most disturbing hauntings ever investigated. It all began with a family moving into their dream home. But what followed was a nightmare that would terrify the Tallman family for months… strange sounds, unexplained visions and a phenomena that threatened to drive the family crazy, until the haunting reached a violent and terrifying peak. In this deep dive, The Tape Library explores the true story of the Tallman Family Haunting, a case that drew national media attention, appearing on Unsolved Mysteries and shocking people all across the country. But one that still very much remains a true paranormal mystery. 🔔 Subscribe for more paranormal documentaries 👍 Like | 💬 Comment | 📢 Share with anyone who loves real ghost stories Support the channel with Patreon - www.patreon.com/thetapelibrary Do you have a supernatural story to share? Drop me an email at [e-mail] You can check out The Tape Library in audio form on all of your favourite podcast providers. Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thetapelibrary Tiktok - https://www.tiktok.com/@thetapelibrary Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/people/The-Tape-Library/100094332411836/ Archive of the Paranormal, the strange and the unexplained. Additional footage and audio from Evanto, Artgrid, Epidemic Sounds, Singularity, Midjourney and Pexels. Music includes Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio and the youtube audio library. All other footage used under fair use. #Paranormal #TrueGhostStories #HauntedHouse #TallmanHaunting #HauntedBunkBed #TheTapeLibrary #UnsolvedMysteries #RealHaunting #GhostDocumentary #horrordocumentary Chapters 00:00 Nightmare 03:57 Welcome to The Tape Library05:04 The Perfect Home12:41 The Bunkbeds18:34 The Downward Spiral22:29 House on Fire30:35 A New Target39:52 The Last Day44:21 The Fallout50:38 What Really Happened?1:00:22 Wrapping Up SpectreVision Radio is a bespoke podcast network at the intersection between the arts and the uncanny, featuring a tapestry of shows exploring creativity, the esoteric, and the unknown. We’re a community for creators and fans vibrating around common curiosities, shared interests and persistent passions. spectrevisionradio.com linktr.ee/spectrevisionsocial Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Spectre Vision Radio I invite you to be a tourist and step into the minds of those people lost to the unknown. When I was five years old, I became terrified of something in my room. There was a disembodied voice sighing, and I moved around the room, and the boys moved with me. When I was a little kid, I used to see, like, the medicine men have to go outside and chase away skin walkers. Clairvoyance is seeing mental images, symbols. Why is it that so many DMT experiencers report being pulled into it? alien realms. We have hundreds and hundreds of people who have seen these UFOs. I am desperately

afraid of being seen as crazy. The weird borderline between dream and reality. We're at the cemetery. There's something moving through the woods that stand right outside of our lights. From behind the fridge door comes a big, dark figure, and I could just see the small red beady eyes. He got really close to my face, and he said, stay away from things you don't understand. The paranormal consciousness, folklore, the occult, quantum physics, UFOs, hauntings, psychedelics, nightmares, creativity, philosophy, ghost doors, mysticism, epistemology, synchronicism, high strangeness, the cosmic joke, strange and haunted off, human potential, intelligence, the other.

Spectorision Radio, a strange podcast network for strange times. Well, yeah, it was our dream house because, you know, it was something that we figured we were going to be there for a long time. I was afraid for my life. I also was very afraid for my family. I would still I wouldn't accept that my house was haunted. I believe that my initial analysis of the entity being in the spiritual realm, the occult realm, the demonic if you will, was accurate and I still believe it's accurate. The banging was coming from the basement. Deborah froze.

Her family was sitting in the living room watching TV but they didn't seem to really. react. Could they not hear it? Was she going crazy? But before she had a chance to shout out to her husband, she heard it again. This time it was more pronounced, more violent. It was the sound of footsteps, racing up the basement stairs. This was different. They had been hearing strange sounds around their home, but nothing like this. The basement door swung open, smashing hard against the wall as it did. Her children screamed. Deborah's husband jumped up from his seat.

She saw enough to know that this was serious, but the sudden surge in adrenaline made everything seem confused and chaotic. There were now several men standing in her living room. She didn't get a good look at them. It was like her eyes couldn't focus on them, but they began barking orders in a loud, vicious tone. She saw her husband responding to them, doing as they said, turning away from them. For a moment, she didn't understand why, but that was when she noticed the guns.

The men lined up the entire family against the living room wall. Deborah, her husband Alan, their seven-year-old son and their two younger daughters. Deborah was crying, screaming, begging to know what these men wanted. They didn't respond to the young mother's pleas. They raised their guns and opened fire on the entire family. Deborah shot up in her bed, drenched in sweat, tears streaming down her face. Alan was jolted awake by his wife's son's scream.

It was just a nightmare, he said gently, as he tried to comfort her. Just a nightmare. But this wasn't a one-off occurrence. Deborah had been having nightmares every single night over the last one-year. few months. She was run down, exhausted, scared to fall asleep. With each passing week, the nightmares were growing darker and more violent, and this one was just so real. It would stay with her for the rest of her life, burned into her memory, as though the events actually happened. Deborah continued to cry in Alan's arms. It was just a nightmare. That's what he kept repeating. And sure,

Or maybe it was, but both of them knew something else was going on here. Something neither one of them was talking about. There was something in this new home. Her children had been the first to notice it. But now Deborah was beginning to wonder whether maybe they weren't just nightmares. Maybe something was toying with her, with her family, something that she couldn't quite put into words. something evil. Good evening.

And if you're listening to this when it comes out, a happy Halloween to you all. If you're new here, we're getting really close to hitting 400,000 subscribers on YouTube. And I would love to hit that goal before the end of the year. So please help me out if you can and click subscribe if you love creepy cases like this. This is a case that a lot of you have requested I cover. And I'm so pleased you did because this turned out to be a fascinating paranormal camera. case. This is a story that a whole generation of Unsolved Mystery fans were seemingly traumatized by it back in the day, with many referring to it as the scariest segment in the show's history.

But the short retelling on that show really doesn't do this case justice. This one feels like a perfect Halloween story. So get yourself a warm drink, dim the lights and get comfortable. It's time to delve into the disturbing case of the torment haunting. Welcome to the tape library. 1986, Horicon, Wisconsin was a quiet town of only a couple of thousand people, surrounded on all sides by fields and marshlands. Just 40-odd miles from the shores of Lake Michigan, a place we have spoken about before, filled with its own tales of high strangeness and the unbelievable.

But stuff like that didn't happen in Horacom. Sure, some of the locals may have reported seeing odd things in the sky at night once in a blue moon, but for the most part this was just a normal place. It was the perfect little slice of what many imagine when they think of small town America, somewhere quiet, peaceful, a place where everyone knows everyone, a place where a young family could plant their roots, and that is exactly what Deborah and Alan Tallman planned to do when they moved into a lovely three-bedroom house on South Larrabee Street. The house had no dark history to speak of.

It was one of ten newly built properties that had been completed two years prior. Before the house stood there, it had simply been a marshy field that teenagers liked to hang out and drinking. Although the Tallman's were not the first residence of the home, a family had moved in shortly after the place was built. only remained there for 18 months. The Tallman didn't know why their ownership of the place had been so short, but their loss was the Tallman's gain in their eyes.

Deborah and Allen had two children that are referred to in most retellings of this story, as Kenny, who was seven years old, and Mary Ann, who was around one. The actual names of the family have been kept to closely guarded secret, as we will discuss in more detail later. The family needed the extra space though, because Deborah was pregnant again. But it soon became apparent, not everything was idyllic in this new setting. For the first few months of living there, everyone kept getting sick. The Tallman's weren't prone to this prior to the move, but something had changed since

they arrived in Horicon. Deborah was having to take the children to the doctors multiple times a week. Mary Ann even ended up in hospital on two occasions. with viral infections and chicken pox. Alan was increasingly having issues with his back. It was like their health had taken a sudden nose dive ever since moving in. So their first step was actually a rarity in these kinds of stories.

They got their new home inspected. Various people were brought in to check the home for asbestos, mould, gas leaks. Anything that could explain the sudden issues the toolmen were having. But nothing could be found. It wasn't just their health though, it seemed to be affecting their mood. Alan in particular was becoming increasingly irritable and angry. Interestingly, this would most often begin to happen when the sunset. As night descended upon the home, his mood would also take a dark turn.

But it became easy to pass a lot of this off as just the difficulties of a new place. Their immune systems weren't used to the new town. to the new town. The stress of the move and his job as a foreman at a local factory was getting to Alan, but it wasn't just them that was affected. Deborah was having some complications with her pregnancy. As a result, the doctor said she should rest more, which saw Deborah's mother visiting the home daily for nearly three months to help her daughter out. Deborah's mother wouldn't say anything until months later, but every time she was in the house she said it felt, suffocating. She felt attention all throughout her body that seemed to lessen the further

she got from the property on her drive home each day. Deborah's sister would later say much the same, that she had headaches and felt stressed every time she was in the house. They both admitted it was a beautiful home but something about it made them feel uneasy and they could see that it seemed to be draining the life out of the Tormond family. But still, No practical explanation could be found in the house. It wasn't just the people in the house though. At one point the family purchased the kitten. Every time the sun would set, the cat would start acting erratically.

Running out of the room screeching, trying to climb the walls. It would meow loudly all night. But as soon as the sun rose it would start acting normally again. It was keeping them up at night so soon they found a new home for the cat. cat, apparently as soon as it arrived in its new home. The cat's strange behavior stopped. Then things took a weird turn. Deborah and Alan went out for dinner one night, hiring a young girl to babysit the children. When they returned home later that night, the babysitter came rushing up to them, almost hysterical as she tried to explain what had happened that night.

The babysitter and their son Kenny had been in the kitchen. Mary Ann had already gone to bed and the pair were playing a board game at the kitchen table. When the babysitter heard a slight scraping sound. She paused the game to listen. She knew the family had a cat but she thought they had given it away. Then she heard it again. That was when she realised it was in the kitchen. Then in the corner of her eye she saw it.

The chair on the far side of the kitchen table appeared to be moving. She quickly glanced under the table to see if Kenny was doing it. But the boy couldn't reach from where he was sitting. The chair was still moving, rocking back and forth in place, as though someone was sitting in it, moving it. Then it began to move more violently, bouncing up and down, before suddenly stopping. The babysitter and the boy sat there in stunned silence, not sure what they were. had just witnessed. This was much the same reaction that Alan and Deborah had, as the

babysitter recounted what she saw. How do you respond to someone claiming that they saw a chair moving? The following morning when Kenny woke up, Deborah asked him about it and he repeated the events the same as the babysitter had. He seemed genuinely quite upset about it. But the couple had bigger issues going on than a teenager and a child, potentially making up stories. Further stress would soon come when their baby daughter Sarah was born in November. Alan's mood took another sharp turn. He suddenly was overcome with a desire to abandon his family.

He didn't, instead simply going on an extended drinking binge, until he seemed to come to his senses. But this was apparently extremely uncharacteristic for Alan. After this, things seemed to temporarily settle down. Kenny was now attending the local school, Alan was working long hours at his job. Deborah had a newborn baby and a toddler to take care of. For six months, time passed without any further incidents. Or if there were any, the family was simply too distracted to notice.

But in mid-1987, a change in the sleeping arrangements in the home seemed to seriously kick things off. The two young girls would take the larger bedroom, with Kenny moving into the smaller bedroom. The girls were given a bunk bed that the toolmen had purchased from a secondhand shop. In retellings of the story, a lot of attention is given to these bunk beds, but based on what actually seems to have taken place, I don't really understand why. They had been having some issues getting Kenny to go to bed at night. He was constantly complaining of hearing strange noises at night in his bedroom, so they hoped this change would be good for him as well. But it was Kenny again who would witness something odd.

As part of redecorating his new room, Alan had given the boy his old clock radio. Kenny planned to use the sleep function on it so he could drift off while listening to his favourite station. On the first night in his new room, however, something strange would happen with the radio. Alan and Deborah were sitting in the living room when Kenny walked in, complaining that the station had changed and he couldn't change it back. Deborah went in to check. Sure enough, the frequency had been changed. She assumed the boy had simply been messing with it. She told him not to touch it, set it back to the station, and then tucked him in. Just a few minutes later, Kenny came running into the living room again. This time he wasn't sleepy and confused.

He seemed terrified. The couple asked what was wrong and Kenny explained the radio had changed stations again. But this time he had seen it happen. The dial had moved on its own, shuffling through stations. He seemed so frightened by this that he wouldn't go to sleep until Deborah removed the radio and put it into the wardrobe. Just a few days later, Kenny would make another wild claim. He had again refused to go to bed, screaming that he didn't want to go to sleep,

but his parents forced him to go to his room. But yet again, Kenny came running back out a short while later. There was a suitcase that was stored under his bed. He told his parents that while he was laying in his bed, the suitcase had shot out from under his bed and across the floor, as though someone had shoved it, but then, even more curiously, it had zipped back under his bed again moments later. Obviously, his parents didn't believe this and sent him back to his room.

Moments later, Kenny was complaining that it was happening again. Alan threw the suitcase in the same wardrobe. The couple were getting extremely tired of Kenny's wild stories. Kenny would continue to complain about noises even in his new room. Alan began laying in his son's room as he fell asleep, and he admitted that he heard them too. Initially he passed it off as the sound of water pipes. But over time he became convinced it could actually be mice, but again, when he would search the house, the foundations, the basement, the attic, he could find no source for the sounds, no evidence of an infestation.

But it wasn't just Kenny who was having issues. The girls would also frequently wake up in the middle of the night. They seemed to be constantly having an issue getting them to settle down in the evenings. But weirdly, the children never seemed to wake each other up. It was like they would take it in turns to be awake while the other children slept. This kept happening in odd little waves. Multiple nights in a row of disturbed sleep, before everything would return to normal again for a few weeks. Then it would all begin again.

Often Alan and Deborah would be woken up partway through the night by the sound of giggling and whispering. They would find Mary-Anne sat on her bed, talking to someone. An imaginary friend they assumed, but while sometimes she seemed to enjoy talking to this friend at night, other times the young girl would come into their room a little more concerned, asking if her parents could hear it. The voice, the voice that kept waking her up. Soon, Alan would find himself having to stay in the girl's room until they fell asleep as

well. His presence seemed to be the only thing that would calm the children. One afternoon Deborah was in her kitchen when she suddenly heard something. The unmistakable sound of her garage door opening and closing. Rather than immediately phoning the police, she decided to peek her head inside to see if someone had broken in. She first called up her neighbour and asked her if she had seen anyone skulking around the property. When the neighbour said she hadn't, She asked her to stay on the phone while Deborah went to investigate. Terrified, Deborah crept through the side door that led into the garage. But there was no one there, and no sign that anything had been taken.

This became a semi-regular event that would take place over the next few months. Then, the dream started. Deborah began being plagued by violent dreams on a nightly basis. dreams of her family dying, then being shot in their home by men who came rushing up from the basement, of her children drowning. The entire family were now completely frazzled and sleep deprived. Deborah could see the stress was eating away at them. They were exhausted. They were imagining things that weren't really there. Events started to get a little harder to pass off her stress though, one autumn evening when Alan was in the basement painting.

Deborah called out to him to come upstairs. It was time for the girls to go to sleep and it had become routine that Alan would have to sit and read to them until they fell asleep. Or else they would start complaining about the sounds. Alan placed his paintbrush down in the tray and went upstairs. About 45 minutes later, he was walking back down the basement stairs. When he reached a decorating table, he noticed his brush wasn't in the tray where he had left it. He looked around and suddenly saw it. The brush was in the paint pot, sticking up. Its handle immersed in the paint. Alan shouted out for Deborah to hand him down some towels to clean the brush, claiming he had just accidentally knocked it into the pot, but Alan knew he hadn't. The

paint pot was on the other end of the table. It felt like someone had placed it there, deliberately. It was then he became convinced he saw a shadow, moving across the basement in the corner of his eye, but it was just the headlights of a passing car, somehow coming through the basement window. He was sure that's all it was. Shortly after this, Alan opened the basement door one morning and felt a strong chill hit him as soon as he did. Curious, he headed downstairs to find one of the basement windows, was missing. But it wasn't just broken. It had been totally removed and placed on the floor.

Nothing had been taken, but it certainly appeared that someone had been in the basement, removed the window and snuck out afterwards. This was the moment that Alan and Deborah became convinced they knew what was going on. Someone was tormenting them. Someone was breaking into their house and trying to drive them insane. But why? Both Alan and Deborah were becoming increasingly paranoid. They would keep their doors locked at all times and purchase the dog to help protect the family.

But much like the cat as soon as the night hit, the dog's behaviour would change. It began barking and would frequently mess in the house despite being house trained. But it wasn't the only one. Alan began to notice that when his neighbours would walk their own dogs past the house at night, would begin to bark as they got close. The random bouts of sickness were continuing and one night in October, Alan was rushed to hospital with a particularly nasty sinus infection. Alan's mother had come to the house to look after the children. But when Deborah returned home from the hospital that night, Alan's mother was standing by the door, keys in hand and

coat already on. She couldn't get out of the place quick enough. She had always been hesitant to spend time in the home. But this night she had witnessed something that genuinely shook her to her core. The children had all gone to bed, and not knowing when Anna and Deborah would be home, she laid down on the sofa and drifted off to sleep herself. She awoke with a jolt. The room was now darkened, empty, but she felt the strong sensation that someone had just woken her up.

She sat up and froze when she saw it. She couldn't believe her eyes. At the window was what looked like two red dots. She rubbed her eyes and that's when she became convinced this wasn't a light. It was eyes. A set of red eyes, peering in at her from the darkness. Then suddenly they were just gone. Deborah explained this away as her simply seeing car headlights through the window.

increasingly these strange events were piling up and they could not wrap their heads around what was happening. Alan, a keen deer hunter, had a trip planned for November of 1987 with his father and brother. Understandably Deborah didn't want to be alone with everything that was going on so her sister agreed to come and stay for the week and help look after the children but nothing happened while he was gone. The following weekend though, while Deborah's mother had been babysitting, the woman had been flicking through television channels late at night, when a few moments of what appeared to be a horror film came through. Unfortunately, Mary-Anne was sitting with her at this moment. The young girl

would later describe what she saw as a clip of a big bonfire, when a man wearing a pig mask came running through the flames. The name of the film that traumatized her so much seemingly has not been recorded in any retellings of this case. My best guess is that this was Motel Hell, although I don't recall a specific scene with a bonfire. Either way, this image terrified the young girl, but this imagery seemed to integrate itself into the ongoing phenomena, something that would affect not just Mary Ann, but the entire family. Mary Ann became terrified of the idea of fires. She would claim to see fires outside the windows, in doorways. What's more, she would be convinced that there was something hiding behind her bedroom door,

who would come out when her parents would leave the room. On one occasion, jumping out of her bed with such fear that she smacked her head. But on some occasions, they would still hear her late at night talking to someone, giggling. But then at times that laughed. and playful conversations would switch. She would go from laughing to screaming, rushing to her parents' bedroom, crying and screeching that something was coming. When they asked her what was after her, she would just refer to it as it. They blamed this newfound fear on the movie she had seen, but a small part of the Tallman's couldn't help but wonder about all these

other strange happenings. For the most part, Kenny was unaware of his sister's claims. As they had stated before, it seemed like only one of their children would be acting up at any one time while the other slept, which felt odd, but it was hard to really grab hold of what this could mean in terms of the events that were taking place. Just a few weeks later, though, Kenny would begin with another strange claim. It was the Sunday before Christmas when Deborah saw her son standing in her bedroom doorway, his face pale, he looked terrified. When she asked him what was wrong, he said he had just woken up, and when he did he saw someone in his room. He described her as a tiny, elderly woman, no taller than three foot in height.

Her face twisted and grotesque, with long black hair and a strange glow around her, that he described, was like fire. Again Deborah took him to bed and could find nothing amiss in his room. But just five minutes later, he was up again, claiming that the woman was back. Deborah tried to comfort him by claiming that she was an angel, come to look over the children and protect them. But Kenny didn't believe this. He didn't think she looked like an angel at all. She was trying to keep calm to not add to the fear.

not add to the fear. But Deborah was beginning to take this all a little more seriously. Interestingly, it was one specific detail that shook Alan and Deborah about Kenny's latest story. The glow. The fiery glow. As far as they knew, Kenny had no idea about Mary Ann's late-night claims of fire in the house. It was almost like the girl's new fear was somehow manifesting into the strange visions that the children were seeing, Deborah was the first one to suggest it. Could there be a ghost? Allen didn't dismiss Deborah's theory as she suspected he might. Instead, he revealed that when he got home late at night from work, he was growing increasingly reluctant to step through the front door.

When he would pull his car into the driveway, he always got the feeling that something was in there, watching him. And on one occasion he was convinced he felt something tug on the lunch pail that he carried. The family were religious. They believed in an afterlife of some kind, but they weren't regular church-going people. It seemed silly to even be suggesting this. But after a long conversation, they thought it couldn't hurt to talk to some kind of spiritual advisor. So they approached their pastor, Reverend de Bratz. Reverend de Bratz arrived the next day and began asking the tourmen a series of questions about what they were experiencing.

Then he went on to make a claim that surely did not reassure the young couple. He said he believed that there was a spirit in their house and suggested that someone may have set it on the family, that someone had been in their house and placed a curse on them, attracting whatever this entity was, that seemed hell-bent on tormenting them. He encouraged the family to begin reading passages from the Bible out loud in the house and to start attending church regularly. He returned again to bless the house, which seemed to calm things down, at least initially.

It was just a couple of nights before Christmas now. Kenny, too frightened to sleep in his bedroom, had begun falling asleep on the sofa in the living room. living room, something his parents had decided to allow in the wake of their own fears growing. At 3.30 in the morning, they were awoken by Kenny's screams. He had seen the woman again, standing by the Christmas tree. But Kenny claimed that she vanished, just as his parents entered the room. They all settled down, but just 20 minutes later, it happened again, and then again. The last time the couple were awoken by their son, they heard him shouting from the living room. Why don't you just go away and leave us alone?

Kenny said the woman didn't respond. She just stood there, staring at him, not moving an inch. Another strange detail was that Kenny claimed, each time she appeared, the woman seemed to grow bigger and bigger. This time, Deborah completely believed her son. From this point on, the activity grew more intense. Every single night the sun would set, and their children would become terrified, claiming to hear things, to see things. Deborah kept trying to reassure the children that what they were seeing wasn't anything bad.

She told them they were guardian angels, there to protect them. She began telling Mary Ann that it was simply Baby Jesus, there to look after her. A fact that the young girl seemed to latch onto, and seemed to calm her slightly, but every time her daughter would tell her mother that she had seen baby Jesus last night, Deborah would shiver with fright, desperately trying to not let her daughter see how scared she was. At his breaking point, Alan came home from work one night to be bombarded with a whole bunch of claims from Deborah.

which led to him growing extremely angry, shouting out loud to whatever was in his home, to leave his children alone, and to come at him instead, this was a mistake. The nightmares that Deborah was having seemed to instantly transition to Alan after this. They were dark, violent and strange, the most memorable of which featured Alan rushing home to save his children from a coming tornado, only to arrive at the house to find it totally empty, with the wind funnel headed straight towards him. Then came the moment that fully convinced Alan that what his children had been seeing wasn't in their imagination. January 7th, 1988, Alan arrived at home around 1am. Everyone in the house was fast asleep. He went to go and unlock the front

door, when he heard something, an odd whistling sound, followed by a sudden gust of wind that seemed to come out of nowhere. His mind briefly shot back to his dream. Alan looked around and then he heard it, a whispered voice saying, come here. Immediately Alan ran to the side of his garage, where he was sure he heard the voice come from, convinced that someone was out there. But there was no one. He searched everywhere, but couldn't find another soul outside this late.

He went to go and lock the door again when the wind hit him. This time the sound that accompanied it was an intense howl. And then he heard it again, the voice saying come here. But much louder this time. As he turned, he saw the glow. The garage had a window on the side and as clear as day he could see a yellowy, fiery glow coming from it. He went to step towards it when he noticed something else.

There was a smaller window just above the garage door. There, peering down at him, where what appeared to be a set of glowing eyes, they were green with red pupils. Alan couldn't believe what he was seeing. His initial instinct was to get away from it as quickly as possible. He rushed into the house, slamming the door shut behind him and placing his lunch pail down on the kitchen floor. After a few moments of catching his breath, his more logical mind took over, and he realized

that there was a very real chance that his garage was on fire. He rushed back outside but was just greeted by the dark cool night. No wind, no fire, no glowing red eyes. Everything was dark, everything was normal. He stepped back into the kitchen, convinced he was losing his mind. All these stories were getting to him. This wasn't real. But as he went to go and pick up his lunch pail from the floor, it shot across the room,

crashing into a table as if thrown by an invisible presence. Deborah was awoken by the crash. Then Alan came rushing into the bedroom, rambling about a howling, asking Deborah if she could hear it. She couldn't. Alan spent the rest of the night pacing the house, telling it, whatever it was, to leave his family alone. Deborah was terrified.

She had never seen her husband so scared before. His experiences grew stronger and stronger after this incident. It was hard to really explain. More often than not, it was just a strong feeling. A feeling that something was in their home. A feeling that something didn't want him in the house. It got so bad that late one night he ended up loading his rifle, intent on shooting the entity. But Deborah luckily broke through to him and made him realize it was not a good idea.

to begin firing his gun at an unseen force. The paranoia grew. The family would often keep all the lights on in the evening. Alan wanted to attach bars to their windows. They barricaded the basement and garage doors because in the evenings, they kept hearing the handles rattling, like someone was trying to get in, but of course there was never anyone there. The night after Alan's fiery encounter at the garage. A relative of Adam's, 16-year-old Jonathan, came to stay. The pair were planning to go ice fishing that weekend, so he was staying on this Friday night so that they could head off early, a plan that was put in place before the latest event, but one Alan didn't want to cancel because he wasn't quite ready to start telling other people

that he was worried his house was haunted. That morning as they set off, Jonathan mentioned that he had got up in the middle of the night and found the refrigerator door wide open in the kitchen. This was especially odd because the back legs of the fridge were broken, causing it to lean backwards slightly, meaning the door would shut on its own, if left open. After their fishing trip, the pair were back at the Tallman's house. Alan was loading Jonathan's belongings into the car to take him back home. When Jonathan made what to him would have been a simple passing question, he asked Alan if he had left a light on in the garage.

Alan said, no, why? Jonathan said he had spotted what looked like two small red lights in the garage window, just above the door, and he wondered what it was. A chill shot down Alan's spine. He changed the subject and drove the boy at home. Alan returned later that evening and set about the normal ritual of putting the girls to bed. He lay on their bedroom floor as he always did, but strangely, tonight the girls seemed to fall asleep, the second their heads hit the pillow.

Alan couldn't believe it, but just as he went to go and stand up, he heard something, a sort of high-pitched whistling sound. The sound immediately took him back to the incident outside, with the sound of the sound of the the howling wind. He couldn't believe what he was seeing. When it appeared a low fog came up from the carpet, rising up into the air around him. It moved quickly, before he could even process what was happening. It seemed to take on a fall. He backed away, trapped in the corner of the girl's bedroom. The fog almost looked like a person. He could make out shoulders, A head, then, where he thought the face should be.

Two small lights appeared, green lights. Then a red dot in the centre of each one appeared. The eyes. The eyes his mother had seen. The eyes Jonathan had seen, the eyes he had seen in the garage. It spoke. Simply whispering the words, you're dead. before the fog seemed to surround him, and then just vanished.

Alan didn't scream, he didn't run. Deborah saw him come walking back into the living room, shaking, stumbling about, tears streaming down his face. She asked him what was wrong, but he couldn't explain it. He just kept telling her to leave him alone. Deborah quickly got on the phone to Reverend de Bratz again, who came straight round, found Alan a blubbering mess and the children now all awake and terrified. They packed suitcases and left for a relative's home. As they drove away, Deborah was convinced that she

saw flames in the garage window. But when she looked back, there was nothing there. The next morning was Sunday. Reverend de Brats had urged them to come to the morning church service, but strangely their car wouldn't start. That was until 10.30 when the service, the service, service was over. The car sprung back into life as though nothing were wrong. That night the Reverend met the tourmans back at their home. He performed communion with them and handed them a stack of tapes of church hymns, encouraging them to play them all night. They did, and the tourmen said it was the first time the family had a good night's sleep in a long time, but it wouldn't last. The sun rose on Monday morning, and after a night of peace the family genuinely felt hopeful

that this could be coming to an end, that there was a way to stop it. Alan went to work, Kenny went to school. Jonathan had agreed to come around and spend the day with Deborah and the kids until Alan could get home that night. Alan called at around 6pm to see how things were going. The sun had set, but Deborah said nothing weird had happened. Deborah was still playing the hymns and Jonathan was playing with the kids down in the newly completed basement rumpus room. He called again at 7.30. Still, everything seemed normal.

The kids were getting ready for bed and Jonathan was going to read the girls a bedtime story. Alan said he would call back in a couple of hours but it seemed things were finally calming down. 45 minutes later, a car pulled up. at the factory that Alan worked at. It was the entire family. Jonathan had been in the back bedroom with the two girls. When Deborah had heard the terrifying screams of the young man, she rushed into the hall but something stopped her. She was paralysed with fear. She could hear him screaming. She could hear her daughters screaming. But for some reason she just couldn't step inside the room to see what was happening. Instead,

Instead, she rushed to the phone, desperately trying to call Reverend de Bratz, but no one would answer the phone. The whole time, Jonathan was screaming for Deborah to come into the bedroom, but she just couldn't. She was the only one now who hadn't seen it. She didn't want to see it. She couldn't. Instead, she convinced Kenny to go and see what was happening. Kenny came running back out of the room, screaming that it was in there. Mary Ann came rushing out after her brother, telling him to not be afraid, that it wouldn't hurt them. It was the baby Jesus. He loved them.

Jonathan came rushing out soon after, before realising he had left Sarah. He ran back inside, grabbing the baby. Deborah bundled them into the car and drove away. They had left the living room light and the bedroom light on. Other than that, the house was in total darkness as they left. As they drove down the street, Kenny said that it was in the window, it was watching them. Deborah refused to look back, she just drove, stared at the darkened road and drove. As they did, Jonathan explained to Deborah what had happened.

He had been nearly falling asleep himself when suddenly Sarah had sat up. and in her garbled infant voice said, Hello. She sounded happy. Jonathan assumed that Deborah had come into the room, but then he looked up and saw it. He hadn't heard the full story of what had happened to Alan at this point, but he said he saw a foggy figure standing in the room

with what appeared to be glowing eyes. The family initially retreated to the church, before deciding to spend the night at Alan's mother's house. Curiosity got the better of Alan though, and on the way back he wanted to drive past the house, paranoid that it could be on fire. Deborah refused to go near it, so instead Alan parked the car down the street and approached on foot.

Every light in the house, in the garage, in the garden outside, was switched on. The following morning, the toolmen's return to collect some belongings. Every light in the house was now switched off, except for the children's bedroom. It was strange, the house felt completely normal. It was almost like it was a totally different environment during the day. The family gathered up their essential items and left. They lasted 20 months in the property, two months longer than the previous residence. had. On January 21st, Alan got a rather unexpected phone call. It was the local police chief,

Douglas Glaman, who had some questions for him. They had been hearing rumors about a haunted house. Somehow, the Tallman's story had got out. Initially, Alan didn't want to talk about what had happened, but the chief pushed him and eventually was able to get a rough account of the events out of him. The Tallman's had been staying with family the last couple of weeks and had left the house empty. They had no idea that rumours had begun to swell within the local community, but the story had taken on a life of its own. People were claiming that the family had seen blood oozing from the walls, that a driverless snowblower had been seen clearing the house's drive, that a gateway to hell had opened up in the house. The Tallman soon found themselves in the police station, being interviewed about what was going on. Both seemed reluctant to talk.

They were worried they would look crazy. They just wanted this all to be over. And the longer they spent away from the house, the more absurd this all seemed. But back at the house, things were getting out of control. Huge crowds were beginning to show up at all hours of the day, with people desperate to get a look at the haunted house. Police had to be stationed on the street to keep the peace. Then the media got involved, which just drew more and more attention.

The Tallmans refused to give interviews to the press. A fact that just meant the more wild rumours about the events got more airtime. The locals, obviously annoyed by the chaos on the street, started accusing the Tallman's of faking the whole thing for attention. But seemingly this was the last thing the Tallmans wanted. They just wanted to be left alone. Police Chief Glaman seemed to take the Tallman's story seriously. While he wasn't willing to say this was a haunting,

he did seem to genuinely believe that this family had been through something, seriously traumatic. They seemed to believe that this had really happened. He didn't get the sense that a hoax was afoot. Even the children's recounting of events seemed to match up and sounded believable. He helped keep their identity. a secret, and did his best to dispel some of the more outlandish claims of paranormal activity. The police visited the house with the Reverend, late one evening, but couldn't find anything unusual

that could explain what the family were experiencing, but they also didn't experience any of the activity themselves, although Glaman did note one strange thing. While the police were in the home, the phone would ring several times. Every time they answered, there was no one on the other end. After this, Chief Glaman actually invited a trio of investigators to the home. They provided us with some of the only photographs of the house, but the trio of psychologists and parapsychologists were not able to find any possible explanation for what had happened to the Tallman family.

Speculation about the haunting grew, with some claiming in what was the style of the Tollman family. what was the style of the time, that the house had been built on a Native American burial ground. While Glaman did state that the area was a major Native American settlement centuries ago, no significant archaeological findings had ever been made in the marshy area that the homes were built upon, so there is nothing to suggest that this is true. A reporter for the Milwaukee Sentinel was able to discover the true identities of the Torben family. They agreed to give him an interview, as long as he could be able to discover the Milwaukee Sentinel, as he could be able to discover the true identities of the Torben family.

as long as he kept them anonymous, which he agreed to do, which led to more and more media outlets picking up the story. Ultimately, leading to a segment in the show Unsolved Mysteries, that the Tallman's agreed to be involved in under the condition that their identities and their children's identities were kept a secret. It seems the family saw this as a way to get their story out there and to crush the more outlandish rumours without damaging their personal. personal reputations. The investigators, Glaman and the family, made one major point to the people who doubted their story. This was their dream home. It was everything they had wanted, and was where they wanted to raise their family. They spent months getting it decorated, making it the place they would live in for years to come. If they were making up this story,

Why would they abandon it after 20 months? Numerous media outlets and TV shows have reached out to them. Book deals have been suggested. But the toolmans have no interest in any of that. They corrected the public story about them with the Unsolved Mysteries episode and have no desire to keep reliving the events, nor to push their family into the public eye. The family were able to sell the property back to the home administration they had

purchased it from, but they did so at a loss. The Tallman's didn't care though, they just wanted to move on with their lives. The family that moved in after them has seemingly not experienced any activity. The Tallman stayed in Wisconsin, but admitted that the events had a significant impact on them, leaving them traumatised and unable to understand what they went through. For years afterwards, they were scared. to leave their children alone, and all still became especially fearful after dark. But apparently their new home turned out to be a peaceful place that they lived in for a long time.

But, Mary Ann would still ask her mother, time and time again as she got ready for bed. Why doesn't Jesus visit me anymore? So what really happened? Because of the torment family, reluctancy to go public with their story, there is very little information to go on in this case. The most well-known source of this story is the aforementioned segment from Unsolved Mysteries, in I believe 1988, so this was recorded very soon after the events actually took place, and the reconstructions were actually shot with actors in the Tallman's property. Interestingly, this is sometimes referred to as a lost segment, as it was apparently edited

out of the streaming versions of the show, but it is available to view in full on YouTube. This version of the story seems to be where the narrative of the haunted bunk beds came from, a common theme that is present in many retellings of this case. I'm not sure why they went with this angle though. While the activity certainly seems to ramp up once the beds are introduced to the home, there were strange events prior to this, and the very first major event after the beds were introduced, happens in Kenny's bedroom, not the room with the bunk beds. It seems to suggest that these beds were somehow cursed or had some kind of energy attached

to them. But to me this just seems like a way to spice up the story and try to make it feel a little different from maybe some of the other haunted house cases the show covered. The other major source for this story comes from a book called Haunted America, written by Michael Norman and Beth Scott, and released in 1994. This is the main source I have used for this episode. And if you have seen any long-form videos or podcasts on this topic, this is very likely the book they referenced as well,

even if they don't mention it by name. I cannot rate this book highly enough. The Tourman case is just one chapter contained in it. I was initially put off by the slightly generic title, but this is a genuinely fantastic book. Assumingly, this book offers the most comprehensive overview of what's happened to the Tallman's, as well as featuring numerous quotes from the people involved. Beyond that, there's virtually no information out there to add any further weight to the case,

so we have to go on the information provided by these two sources and very little else. With that in mind, let's go over the more skeptical theories first. At least in the initial stages of this haunting, some people, kind of environmental explanation seems the most likely. We see the family falling sick, their moods changing, paranoid feelings, even what appear to be auditory and visual hallucinations. And many of the people who experience these things say their symptoms got better once they left the house. This really does seem to point towards some sort of gas leak or some similar event that could be affecting the family, although it's worth pointing out it seems numerous people having

investigated this possibility, both soon after the family moved and after they left, and found no evidence of anything that could be causing it. Plus the family that moved in afterwards claimed to have experienced nothing. If they found some sort of possible explanation for what's happened after they moved in, that they subsequently fixed, it feels like they would have made this known to try and quickly kill off the public attention surrounding their new home. If this also was caused by gas or mould, it seemed to affect some people very quickly. There is also of course the idea of some kind of stress-induced shared psychosis.

The family was going through a lot of changes, new schools, new jobs, new homes, and even a new baby. It's hard not to notice that what they see seems to spread. The kids see a scary, fiery scene on TV. begin to become convinced that there are fires in their house. Alan's mother sees glowing lights in the window. Alan then starts to see them. Then Jonathan. It feels almost contagious. Like the stories are all playing on the minds of the other family members, causing them to see things that aren't really there. It's also not hard to notice the shift once the Reverend becomes

involved, much like we saw in the Warren's cases over the last few months. he seems to shift the narrative towards his own beliefs, and that in turn seems to affect what the family reports seeing. What begins as strange visions from the kids in a general sense of unease seems to take on a much more demonic undertone once he explains his thoughts. Speaking of the Warren's, one detail that was brought up in a few of their cases was the idea of the entity in a home being able to keep others asleep. to choose which member of a family to torment while the others were stuck in a deep sleep,

unable to hear what was going on, unable to help. And this detail seems to be present in this case too, although a little different. The torment make reference to how strange it was that the other children would often sleep right through, despite one of them being up, screaming and crying in the middle of the night. the next time it would be a different child, while the others slept peacefully. I think in this case an outright hoax feels unlikely but not impossible. While the fact that the torment seems so reluctant to go public, until pressure to do so by the rumour mill, seems to make this feel genuine, there is also of course the idea that they started

running the idea of a haunted house hoax to get attention or money, then decided this could have a negative impact on their children. They then decided against this plan, but by that point the story was already starting to get out there, and they were forced into attempting damage control. But the story the Tallman's tell doesn't necessarily paint them in a great light, which I think is an interesting detail when considering the idea of a hoax. Alan comes off as angry and distant, leaving his terrified families go fishing and hunting, going on a drinking binge when his wife had just given birth. They constantly downplay their children's fears, even when they begin to believe that something is really going on. Deborah is so terrified to see the entity on that last night,

that she instead sends her eight-year-old son to go and see what's going on. These are small details that could have easily been left out of the story, but it feels like they want to provide the account as detailed as they can remember, warts and all, which to me adds some level of believability. I mentioned it's a moment ago, but one idea I think that seems to straddle the barriers between this being real or fake is how the activity really seems responsive to what the family is putting out there. Their daughter sees the fire on TV. She is then plagued by visions of fire that slowly becomes visible to the entire family. Alan shouts for the entity to come after him and it does just that, switching its focus to him. They begin playing church music to keep

it away and it works, at least temporarily. Alan has nightmares about a tornado. He then begins to hear wind in the house. While reading this story, one thing kept coming to mind. Everyone keeps seeing different things. To Kenny it's a haggard old woman. To Alan and Jonathan it's a fog like figure. Mary Ann seems to be experiencing two very different entities, one that she would talk to and giggle with late at night, another that scared her deeply that she referred to as it. I wonder if to Mary Ann, when she saw the more friendly apparition, it really was taking on the form of Jesus, as her mother has suggested. It really seems to play on the ideas that the family expresses in the home.

Maybe this points towards this being some form of shared delusion. But you could also run with the theory that whatever this phenomenon was, it was interacting with the family, molding itself to their fears and worries, reacting to them, rather than just being an echo that happened to be playing out in their home. It just feels so much more interactive than I think we see in a lot of paranormal cases. There are so many similarities here to many other such cases. But at the same time, there's something about this one that feels unique in a lot of ways as well. I don't really know how to put it into words, much like the encounters the family were having.

It's hard to really get a hold of. I think, particularly because I have been talking about the Warrens a lot lately, I've become a lot more skeptical recently of these cases. But for some reason, something about this one just seems to be sticking in the back of my head. I know there is very likely a logical explanation to this case, but something about it just feels wrong. It doesn't feel neat and tidy. I don't know why, but this is one of those cases that I think is going to stay with me for a long time. That's all for this entry into the tape library.

I'm not quite sure why this one has affected me so much, but it really did get under my skin. Did you have a similar reaction to it? If so, I'd love to hear what you felt in the comments below. Or, if you think this has a more logical explanation, then please do let me know your thoughts on that too. If you enjoyed this episode, as always, please click like or leave us a rating on your podcast platform with choice. And of course, make sure you subscribe if you haven't done it.

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Once again, I hope you all have a fun Halloween, and I will see you all very soon, with another exploration into the darker realms. Until next time, my friends, pleasant dreams.