Trillbilly Worker's Party - Bonus: Halloween Special 2022

Episode Date: October 30, 2022

Halloween Special 2022

mystery in the air great stories of the strange and unusual of dark and compelling masterpieces in the dream you are fallen lost in the listening distance as dark locks in. I fear nothing other than living or the dead. They crave the red wick, sir, that they lack. Grave in me is poured blood upon the ground, and the ghosts rush from the other world, moaning and crying for it. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? Dedicated to the supernatural, the unusual, and the unknown.

Come with me, my friends. We shall descend to the world of the unknown and forbidden. Down to the depths where the veil of time is lifted, and the supernatural reigns as king. She'll kill him. She'll kill him. She'll kill him. David!

David! She is here. The devil I hunt is here. Where? Surely, where is she? Master! Master in death as in life, come to us, we implore you. By the wounds of the earth, by the little spirit, come to the virgin blood we pour for you.

Let me out of here! Let me out of here! I'm changing the steps of the desperate-looking house. and blood we pour for you. Let me out of here. Let me out of here. How changing. Steps of the desperate looking house. An eerie feeling began to overcome both of them. A feeling of apprehension that all was not right. It was so dark.

So very, very dark. Now, anybody that knows me knows I spend much of the year asking people to tell me scary stories like some kind of crazy person. Don't care. It's one of my favorite things. And this year in particular, there's a lot of good stuff in this vein to check out out there. Not only from us, but other folks like friend of the show, Jack Wagner's new series, Otherworld, which is required listening. As well as some old standbys like Spooked and the Faces in the Corner series we put out last year. Now, we'll be back soon with a new project, but to whet your appetite a little in the meantime, we'll give you a little sampler of some of our favorite submissions from friends of the show.

Tonight, you'll hear from my Trillbillies co-conspirator, Mr. Aaron Thorpe, talking about one of Johnny Cash's more sinister muses, and Ms. Joanna Nielsen of the Chronically Fully Sick pod beaming in all the way from Australia to tell us a little bit about the local lore, and Mr. Joe Schroeder, my dear friend and veteran organizer, telling me about a honeymoon that ended not so good. Anyway, I'll shut up now, but if you like what you hear, let us know. Email us at trueabilityworkersparty at gmail.com if you've got a good scary story for future consideration.

Thanks, y'all. Happy Halloween. I'm from Queensland in Australia. Most people who aren't Australians have a lot of ideas about what Australia's like. Some of the time, they're wrong. But I guess a large portion of those ideas are applicable to the place of my birth. I was born in a town where they grow and process sugarcane. The air smells sickly sweet and thick like molasses, and the sky is very often black and hot with smoke from controlled burn-offs and rain clouds heralding the arrival of regular torrential tropical storms. In the hills you'll find spiders the size of your hand, tiger snakes, hippy-dippy wellness retreats, temples, cults, meth labs and

drug rehabilitation centers where you brush the manes of horses and grow tomatoes in the volcanically rich red soil. Of course, Queensland becomes more cosmopolitan as you move towards its capital city, Brisbane, or Meeinjin as the Aboriginal people called it before all the convicts arrived here. It's searingly humid, sports-obsessed, dangerously alcoholic, conservative, but also deeply weird like many conservative places are, and more than a little bit haunted. Sometimes when I think about Queensland,

I think about a song by one of Australia's greatest exports, The Scientists, which goes in part, Nobody knows, so they never think to visit, Where the atmosphere's so thick that you could kiss it. In my heart, there's a place called Swampland, Nine parts water, one part sand. And indeed, much of Brisbane is built on and amongst mangrove forests. A kind of salty tropical swamp sat beside a vast, winding river that locals commonly refer to as the Brown Snake.

One of Brisbane's most significant constructions is the University of Queensland, a huge sandstone structure consisting of purple, lavender, cream and brown colours that look especially beautiful after the rain. It too was built on swampland nearly a century and a half ago and is frequented by large mud puddles and swarms of mosquitoes. It may not surprise you to know that the university was not only built on swamp but blood too. I went to the university for about seven years of a three-year degree. Always kind of gave me the creeps walking around after a late tutorial in the sultry stinking night air, sinking into the sodden grass of the great court with nothing but bubbling mud, gurgling toads and a screeching chorus of crickets for company.

That's when I wasn't chasing boys or rock and roll or shitty ecstasy or any combination of those three. Anyway, let's rewind a bit further back. Well, more than a bit. To the year 1848. To another sweltering night of muck and mud in Brisbane town. To a crowded and vicious establishment in Kangaroo Point called Sutton's Bush Inn.

Brisbane was a new settlement back then, and like it is now, was a busy port town. Kangaroo Point in the city's south had recently become a hub of industry, with a new wharf bringing a large amount of trade to the area. Men would gather at the Bush Inn, waving promissory notes, all mostly Irish immigrants hoping for a better life, most clothed in cabbage palm hats and sweaty, stiff red and blue flannel shirts to protect them from the piercing horrors of the Australian sun. One of the primary employers in the area was the boiling down works, where many men worked amongst stinking effluent, butchering carcasses. A typical day involved the same monotonous bloody tasks. Slaughter men would stun a sheep with a swift axe to the skull, position

it over a blood gutter and cut off its head. They'd then butcher down the body into edible cuts of meat, break the animals bones which were then jammed into colossal steam boilers to cook down before tallow was scraped off the top and siphoned off into heavy wooden casks to be used to power lights and grease machinery. Whatever was left was fed to a filthy, heaving mass of screaming pigs, who were then dragged off to their own cruel fates when the time came. Blood, dung and decaying animal parts were thrown into the putrid river constantly, attracting the attention of sharks and scavenging birds. It was hard work, but Brisbane's opportunities felt boundless when you had money in your pocket.

Robert Cox was a sawyer and ex-convict who'd been drinking at the Bush Inn on and off for about three days. He'd come north after cutting and selling 16 or 17,000 feet of cedar to a boatyard in the Tweed River Shire, with no plans to return. And according to many, was drunkenly boasting about the 350 pounds he'd bought with him to Brisbane, a fortune you could start a new life with. The next morning, the people of Brisbane awoke to find that a horrific crime had taken place. Just after dawn, a boatman and his family were shocked to find the severed legs and buttocks of a human body in the shallow, tepid waters of the riverbank. A hastily conducted search made the grim discovery of arms and a torso in the long grass just

a couple of metres away. The town constable, still groggy with sleep, followed a labourer's dog to Robert Cox's still bleeding head, propped between two joists of a half-constructed house, expertly severed from the body and staring unblinkingly at the sky. There was also a large amount of blood in the inn's backyard, particularly near the well, which in addition to water was also typically used to keep small portions of butter and meat cool.

In this instance, however, the well's bucket was filled with blood and the well itself was found to contain the Sawyer's intestines, three bloodied shirts and a carving knife. A surgeon was quickly roused to perform a makeshift autopsy on Cox's reassembled body, splayed out on one of the tables of the Bush Inn. He reported that the abdomen had been cut open with a large knife and the spine divided with an axe or similar blunt instrument.

The chest had been sliced open from top to bottom, and rib cartilage severed from the sternum. Due to the extent of the mutilation, the surgeon had said, it was impossible to determine the exact cause of death. It goes without saying that all of the dead man's money was long gone. After an extensive search of the bush inn, the finger was eventually pointed at the hotel cook, a man named Fife, largely because a bloody towel was found in his room. He'd had bleeding

lips that night, but hung for the crime anyway. Patrick Mayne had visited the Bush Inn twice on the Sunday of the murder. Plenty of time to hear the drunken Sawyer, Robert Cox, boasting about his earnings. He'd sat at the bar with two other men who, like him, were employed in the slaughterhouse at the Boiling Down Works. The Irish immigrant already cut an imposing figure, tall with dark, almost black eyes. His gruelling job had made him physically strong as well. For some reason, the police didn't question Patrick Mayne like they did the many other men at the Bush Inn that night. But maybe they should have questioned why the drunken butcher could then afford

to marry the following year and purchase and stock a butcher's business as well as a brand new home. But Patrick Maine could never keep his temper under wraps, nor his little regard for the laws of the colony. Assaults on his neighbours were rife, as were unsolved robberies occurring within Maine's proximity, physical fights over livestock,

including an incident where Patrick's wife, Mary, lunged at a publican's wife with a fence post, while Patrick dragged the woman's terrified servant around by the hair. His growing status as a wealthy landowner and alderman didn't seem to change Patrick Maine's behaviour. Ten months after his election to office, he was charged with the brutal horse whipping of a drunk who'd entered his butcher shop. Patrick liked to flog people. But Maine's trade in meat, tallow and hides was hugely successful. He also owned large swathes of land and could pay any fine the court wanted to throw at him. In fact, Patrick Maine would go on to own half of Brisbane. He was also a belligerent and cruel employer, taunting and chastising a herdsman after a suicide attempt.

The man was later found drowned in Main's Dam, with froth about the mouth and eyes, exhibiting signs of a struggle. Patrick's effort to become more well-respected in the burgeoning town only resulted in animosity from the townsfolk. His political machinations and appointment to the Board of Education resulted in public ridicule. Patrick Mayne, an illiterate and violent upstart, had become too big for his boots. He was also becoming increasingly infirm, both in mind and body, unable to juggle his responsibilities as a father of five, landowner, successful businessman and local

politician. In 1863, when he became a member of council in the burgeoning Fortitude Valley, his unravelling became more and more obvious to the people around him. Maine would miss council meetings for weeks at a time without apology or reason. He'd get confused when voting. He'd get bored and frustrated easily and frequently produce a leather ring the size of a monocle, glaring imperiously and angrily get confused when voting. He'd get bored and frustrated easily and frequently produce a leather ring the size of a monocle, glaring imperiously and angrily throughout his council colleagues, although this just sounds pretty funny to me. Soon, though, he'd need a full-time nurse and it was obvious to all the illness was wreaking havoc on his once strong and imposing form.

We really don't know what was killing Patrick Mayne. Some say it was cancer or syphilis or both. His medical records are missing some important pages. But the man knew he was dying, and he knew it was going to happen quickly. Under the care of his wife Mary and the town priest, the 41-year-old Main contemplated his eternal fate as his body and mind continued to deteriorate over a matter of weeks, it was time for the mad butcher of Brisbane to confess. It's unknown just how the townspeople

of Brisbane heard about Patrick Mayne's deathbed confession to the robbery, brutal murder and dismemberment of the Sawyer Robert Cox all those years ago at the Bush Inn, but there's no doubt that they did. Maybe a servant overheard it, or someone stole a peek at the priest's journal. But the swarms of people, 4,000 at an estimate, who gathered stony-faced outside the Maine's house and up the road to view the funeral procession certainly knew. Maine's Irish countrymen waited for confirmation from the horses during the hearse. Folklore indicated that when a murderer died, the horses would refuse to move.

And sure enough, they stood still until Roundley whipped and balked again at the entrance to the local Roman Catholic cemetery. The Maines had never been socially accepted. Gossip had swirled constantly around the family for years and was now justified by the confirmation of Patrick's mortal sin. His five children would bear the brunt. Patrick's will allowed for the financial possibility that his offspring could marry, but the result of his devastating confession and discussions about his mental stability

caused the family to agree in a pact that none of them would. The locals avoided the family nearly totally, and the neighbourhood children were warned against playing near the house, or even looking at it for decades. The sprawling still standing riverside mansion known as Moorlands. The Maine children was smart and wily just like their father but the combination of social isolation and genetic mental illness took their toll. Rosanna Maine chose a religious life as a nun but was unable to discharge many of her duties

she spent a large portion of her life in a straitjacket. Mary Amelia kept house for the Morland was rarely seen outside of Morland's, regularly locked in her room by her siblings. William was a nervous shut-in. Isaac Mayne, a successful solicitor for a time, gradually descended into uncontrollable psychopathy. In 1904, he murdered a Japanese man, mangling and dumping the body near the Orkinflower train station. He hung himself in a mental asylum, not long afterwards at the age of 53. James Main, however, was a well-dressed doctor

who had trained in Britain but elected to take a low-salaried medical officer job at Brisbane General Hospital. He was a sensitive, humane man deeply troubled by his family history and was overly generous and charitable as a result. It was him that allocated 900 acres of swampy farmland near the winding Brisbane River to the growing University of Queensland, land that his murderous father, Patrick, had made his fortune on, land that had been bought with blood money, that James hoped would retrieve the family name. And indeed the sprawling campus' central space still bears the name Main Hall and holds all the school's

graduation ceremonies as well as the University Art Museum, watched over in perpetuity by the oil paintings of James and Mary Amelia Main. The Main legacy is apparent elsewhere in Brisbane too. Patrick Main's old butcher shop and tract of land in Queen Street was transformed by his son James into the Brisbane Arcade, a boutique European-style shopping mall with Baroque-style facades, stained-glass windows and gleaming gold and cold marble. Still open today for high tea and high fashion,

but the murderous memory of Patrick Main remains. Shop owners closing up for the night report spectral sightings of the violent patriarch marching silently up and down the empty halls, raging at invisible enemies with his ever-present bullwhip. Mary, his wife, often travels through the warm, sultry air, rustling her petticoats, tugging at the sleeves of the living and begging for the forgiveness of the Brisbane townsfolk. And over at the main residence, Morelands, down the river from the University, you can still go and see the magnificent internal staircase that has Patrick Main's initials carved into each balustrade panel. You can travel up the stairs to the stained glass window at the top which reads, Sursum Carta, a Latin cry of hope, meaning lift up your hearts,

alluding to the release of Patrick Mayne's soul. All right, let me set the scene a little bit. So this was 15 years ago or so, This was 15 years ago or so, and it happened way out in the middle of damn Africa, Kenya. You know, the spookiest part is that it was technically a honeymoon. I had gotten married, which was a scary thing, and have since corrected that. But I was invited on this honeymoon by my father-in-law, who wanted to go along, of course, and his wife. And he was a big African safari guy. So he wanted us to go spend two weeks with him out on this African safari. And so not having a lot of other options, I obliged.

So we're in Africa, a bunch of goofy ass white people from different parts of Eastern Kentucky. Nobody had ever been there before except said inviter. We got to the point where we kind of got on this tour, so we're in this car, we're in this Jeep and we're driving around. And we spent 10 hours a day just driving around. We're about a week and a half in at this point.

And, you know, I'd seen a lot of fucking wildebeests at that point. So I wasn't super excited about all the wildebeests. And, you know, dragging, just exhausted. We get to a point where we get out get on this big tour bus get off of these safari out of these safari keeps and get into this tour bus they had a big stretch i think we were going to just south of kenya and you had to go through you know customs and get on this big van and we're riding and it's supposed to be uh it's supposed to be like a six hour drive and we're riding through just the middle of nowhere and there is nothing but straight line road for six hours and we're we're probably four hours into

it and this is the most comfortable ride we've been in so far so kind of lazy kind of looking out the window you know it's just brush it's just dry dusty it wasn't to the point where we got into the lusher like a bowl yet but this was the grassland and so there were lions everywhere you know and I had seen so many damn animals at this point so I'm kind of half looking out the window half paying attention about the conversation is in the car I noticed that the driver's kind of slowing down a little bit. I look out the window and there's this man walking down the road. Nothing in front, nothing behind.

Hours and hours into this ride. No towns on either side. The tour bus guy, you know, I kind of sat next to him, chatted with him a little bit, you know, trying to have as many conversations as I can outside of present company. And he got really concerned, and he started to talk about this guy in the road, and he slowed down. We pull right up next to him, and he opens up the door. You know, he's speaking Swahili.

I don't know Swahili, so I don't know what the hell he's saying. But he's talking to him and he's saying, you know, you could tell he's really trying to persuade the guy into something. He's really getting frustrated. He's, like, really trying to convince him to do something. And then he asks the bus if we have water you know who's got water so we're all like handing the bottles of water and he's trying to hand this guy a bottle of water the guy first time i got a good look at him the man looked like a ghost the man looked not there you know he had ragged ragged clothes jeans that ripped halfway to the thighs and ripped all the way down, no shoes, ripped up shirt, and just looked disheveled as all hell.

Just looked like he needed rescuing. I'm watching the bus driver trying to convince him to take a water, and he won't take it. Bus driver stops and looks back at me, and he says, I don't know what to do. People aren't really paying attention, but I'm like cued in because I'm like, what the fuck is going on? So he looks back at the guy and says, you know, a few words in Swahili that I don't understand,

close the door and drives on. And the guy just keeps walking, but he's walking like stutter steps, just completely. Every step is like he's falling over and trying to pick himself up. I asked the bus driver, I was like, what was that about? And he said, well, sometimes out here you run into people who have had their souls taken. I was like, oh, that's what the deal was and uh he said yeah somebody had taken that that man's soul and what had happened was he was just lost and wandering around but he didn't have a soul anymore

so he wasn't really alive wasn't really dead he was just kind of like a zombie who didn't have control of himself because somebody else had control of his soul. Somebody else had, you know, somehow acquired this man's soul. You know, that fucked me up. So I was like, well, what's going to happen to him? You know, he's just walking this straight road in this grasslands. He's going to get eaten by a lion. You know, the guy said, yeah, he's not gonna make it. But he's already dead, you know. I was like, what do you mean he's already, well, when somebody takes your soul,

you're not living anymore. A lot of times when that happens, you just see people wandering around. And so I didn't quite understand what he was talking about, but my assumption was the poor guy was struggling with some kind of mental illness and wouldn't accept help, and this was going to be his fate. You know, that stuck with me.

Anyway, we keep going down the road, end up camping. It's in the middle of the grasslands. There's, like, these canvas tents. We set them up. You know, they're pretty nice. They make a dinner for you. uh you got your bed in there as we're kind of we had a little fire as we're putting out the fire i'm bullshitting with the guys the guides and stuff and i was like uh so what happens if uh if lions come up you know is uh these canvas tents they're pretty solid

is this a lion fear situation he was was like, oh, no, no, no. Well, when the lions come up, they basically just walk around the tent and kind of let you know they're there. And then they take off. And I was like, well, where are you all sleeping? And they're like, oh, we all sleep in the truck because we don't want to get fucked with my lions. We don't want to get fucked with by lions. I'm laying in bed and I'm hearing like little purrs, you know. They come out at one point and I see them walking around with flashlights, yelling and stuff. And I'm like, they're scaring off the fucking lions.

And I swear to God I heard a lion. I don't know if I heard a fucking lion, but I swear I got a lion. Obviously we make it and nobody gets hurt get back in the car at this point we had been dropped off by the big van and we were back in those uh those jeeps right so the next day we get up we go uh travel i think four or five hours deeper into the the national park um and it's, you know, it was July. It's hot as hell. These people have far outpaced

their anticipated tolerance. You know, it was a bunch of people in their 50s, 60s, and then, like, you know, two or three of us who were younger. They're all caught up in their own bullshit,

and they're bickering about some dumb shit. And I noticed that we were getting close to this little, looked like an old building, like an old school. We are coming up on one of those. It's probably 5 o'clock in the afternoon. I've got the window down. I've got, you know, my arm hanging out the window, kind of just looking at the sights.

And I see what looks like kind of a crowd outside of one of these buildings that were... And there were kind of... There were three buildings, two of them on the left side, one on the right. And there was nobody in either... Nobody in any of the buildings, but were like maybe 15 people all adults in this kind of uh this mob and they'd seen us coming and they were chasing after the car and we were going pretty slow

i noticed that uh yeah it just seems real strange. Like, there's nothing for people. How could they be eating? How could they have access to any of the life-supporting resources that you need? Because it's just nothing. And they look wild. They look wild in the eye. And they, as they're getting closer, they start reaching their arms out and they start sort of yelling for us.

They kind of surround the car. And they're like banging on the car, reaching into the car. And I've got my arm out the window and I'm like, putting my hand out to like greet them greet them or whatever, you know. I had my brand-new wedding ring on. I noticed a few people kind of run over to my side and grab onto my hand, and they were pulling my hand so hard that I was stuck in the window, like, with my neck kind of jacked to the side.

And there were, like, three or four adults, like, not letting go of jacked to the side and there were like three or four adults like not letting go of my hand holding pulling my hand and one person is grabbing onto my ring and so i yank it back inside you know we start picking up speed a little bit and we pull a little bit further away and they're still chasing the car and And there's, you know, they looked pretty ragged. They had kind of like the guy on the road. They had, you know, just ripped up clothes and they looked like they'd been sleeping on the ground. And they looked like, how could these people be out here?

Who dropped them off there? Why are they here? And why are there no kids? And so I asked the driver about it and he said, oh, this is a project of the government. And they drop, basically they round up people from villages who have some kind of affliction, some kind of issue. And my assumption was that it was a mental illness and basically they were just creating these little shanty towns and dropping people off there and driving off and it was

just the coldest chill down my spine as he was explaining to me that basically all these people are just left there to themselves and there's no facilities and there's no resources there are no there's no water there's no food supplying and they survive essentially by people driving through and giving them food and giving them water. I was like, Jesus Christ, why didn't we give them some food or water? And he was like, well, it's too dangerous to stop the car because there had been some incidents when they'd stopped and had gotten into some whatever. He didn't really explain, but it was clear enough to me,

by the way they were trying to pull me out of the damn car, that it was a situation that he couldn't slow down for. So my sense was that all of those people were in the process of dying. All of them had been left for dead. We had just left this man for dead. had been left for dead. We had just left this man for dead. I asked the driver if he thought that the same thing happened to these people, that he said was the problem with the guy

before, and that they had all had their souls stolen. And he looked at me and he said, yeah, that's what happened. I have been haunted by these empty eyes and these attempts to figure out what the hell was happening with all these people and I was the only one paying attention besides the driver I was noticing this and the driver as he was explaining it to me started to get some interest from interest from some of the other people on the bus. And they came up and they were like, what, you know, trying to figure out what was happening. And he shut down really fast and he wouldn't tell them about it. You know, we were

probably four hours down the road and everybody else was kind of nuzzled up and sleeping in their little spot. And he opened back up to me and he said we don't we're not supposed to talk about these situations because the company doesn't like it the tour company doesn't like it if you tell people what's happening it was like but you and I we've talked and you know I know you're not the boss here blah blah basically he was telling me that every time he goes out there are all of these situations that he tries to avoid but because we had gotten these tips and we were trying to find specifically where these animals were we had to drive through this area and he was like don't talk about this and don't mention it to any of the people that we get

when we get back on the tour because we're not supposed to drive through this park if you if you do talk about it just tell them you saw some people on you know on the road but don't tell them everything I told you about you know the government program i just couldn't shake that the whole the whole trip and had gotten pretty convinced that my awareness and analysis of mental illness was not the same after that because you know who am i to claim some some kind of diagnostic position where I understood what people were struggling with more than this guy who drives through there and knows people and knows the situation. And essentially, it ended up living in my mind forever as a way to understand these afflictions differently. And I couldn't tell you if they had souls or not, but the fact that he and some of these other guides basically decided that we can't take white people through these areas where

people had lost their souls or where specific people had to be left for dead in the middle of the desert because it wasn't something that white people could deal with. You know, and maybe maybe that was our problem. And maybe that was, you know, deficiency in the way that mental health is dealt with in Africa. But either way, I don't know that I've ever gotten over it. When I came back, I did look into it. And there are listed programs, but the facilities that they show are not the same. And there weren't a lot of of in-depth news coverage pieces about abandoned communities of people. It didn't lead me to any peace, but I grew up right next to a state mental health facility,

a state hospital. And so I used to go riding my bikes around the state hospital, and I'd come across people who weren't quite in the right mind all the time and have conversations and talk to him right around my bike as a kid so I had a little bit of a harder edge also delivered papers in a nursing home so I was always in in and out of these

conversations with people who were just not quite right and themselves and uh you know having to collect my 140 dollars or whatever from me who were laying naked in bed trying to attack me when I walked in so it wasn't like I was uh totally green to the idea but it's a whole nother thing when there's 15 or 20 of them and dropped off in the middle of nowhere left to die and that didn't show up as a part of the program's function in my research it's fucked up i don't know i wish we would have like forced the guy to drink some water i wish we would have stopped and given out all our food and water and just taken off. But the guide was so nervous and didn't want anybody else to know. And I felt like I was putting him at stake, trying to raise some concern about it.

So I sat back in my chair. I didn't know what else to do. god joe's kid in your story is easily simultaneously one of the more terrifying and heartbreaking things it's so insane i don't even know what else to say about it but thank you joe for that and closing us out tonight be mr aaron thorpe taking us from jamaica to ghana and back again sit tight thanks everybody to Ghana and back again. Sit tight. Thanks, everybody. One of the first ghost stories that I ever heard was actually from my family, because my family's from Jamaica. There's the White Witch of Rose Hall,

and Rose Hall Estate is a manor, a plantation manor in Jamaica, still to this day regarded as one of the finest houses that's ever been built on the island. My mom and my dad would talk about the White Witch of Rose Hall. It was, it's kind of one of those things where it was a scary story that wasn't something that I heard from TV, but it was something that was like told to me ever since I was a kid. I actually got the opportunity to go there. I do think it's something that you see similar stories in the Caribbean, in the South, wherever there was slavery,

where you have a sadistic plantation owner who tortures their slaves and the slaves retaliate, but the plantation owner still haunts the plantation grounds today, which is a pretty, pretty apt metaphor for racism in america whatnot but anyway annie palmer who was uh born patterson she was born in 1802 to an english mother and an irish father the family moved to haiti when she was 10 but unfortunately her parents died a year later from yellow fever annie was then raised by her nanny a voodoo

priestess who taught her the dark arts. Then her nanny died when she was around 18 and Annie moved to Jamaica in search of a wealthy husband. There she met John Palmer, the owner of the Rose Hall estate plantation near Montego Bay, and she cast a spell on him to trap him in a marriage with her. But she also poisoned him to gain control of the plantation. It's also said that she actually poisoned other family members of John Palmer's family to consolidate her wealth. Annie can't stay single. She gets another husband to continue doing this, and she stabs him, another English planter.

A third man fell victim to her when she strangled him with the help of one of her many slave lovers, a man named Taku. After each man that she murdered, so there are three husbands now, after each man that she murdered, a little bit of their wealth would be added onto her own. She was brutal and sadistic. She whipped, tortured, executed anyone who disobeyed her orders. It was even said the basement was refurbished as a torture dungeon. When I went there, either the basement was under repair,

like it was being refurbished, re-refurbished, or we weren't able to go down there, which only added to the spookiness of the story. They're like, no, you're not allowed to go down there. Why not? Another thing she did, which is horrific, was she murdered black babies so she could harvest their bones to use in black magic. Like anyone who is brutal and sadistic, doesn't happen too often, but it should. But anyone like that, eventually she ended up meeting her fate when Taku, one of her many lovers, killed her in retaliation for the death of his granddaughter. His granddaughter was in love with another man who Annie loved, and out of jealousy, she kills the granddaughter.

Taku kills her in retaliation. Even beyond the grave though the slaves feared that she would use her powers to take revenge so they buried her in this stone tomb and sealed it with magic behind the house. I've been there again like I said it's at the back of the house and it's cemented into the ground and it looks like a crypt almost like something out of like the crypt keeper or something she was so strong having been taught in the dark arts having harvested baby bones to grow her magic that she was too powerful to be sealed by it the spell was incomplete and apparently to this day annie still haunts rose hall in the early 1900s a family moved in and abruptly moved out when their maid was thrown from the second floor balcony.

The same balcony which is said that you can see Annie at. You can also apparently hear her galloping on her horse through the plantation. The thing I thought was interesting is that Johnny Cash went there and he actually wrote a song about it. The first verse is, On the island of Jamaica, quite a long time ago, at Rose Hall Plantation, where the ocean breezes blow, lived a girl named Annie Palmer, the mistress of the place. And all the slaves lived in fear to see a frown on Annie's face. The legend of the White Witch of Rose Hall,

which has been disputed heavily since then. It wouldn't be a ghost story if it wasn't disputed. There are other relatives who say that it did happen, and there are historians who say, no, she's an amalgamation of different people. It serves historical narrative purpose, I think, for people like my parents' family, you know, people in Jamaica, people anywhere where it was like slave land. To me, it did happen. And to a lot of other people in my family, my father swears it happened. When I went there as a kid, you go inside and it's all this dark oak or whatever kind of wood paneling, very cool inside.

I mean, obviously all the furniture there is like of the time. Red velvet or satin cushions where the arms are carved in this really extravagant, ornamental kind of thing. I remember trying to go around and break off the tour and trying to go around into rooms and to try to kind of fuck with the ghost or maybe summon Annie. So clearly, I didn't really take it that seriously as a kid I'm thinking about it now and I'm saying and I guess I felt this before but there was this eeriness not just because of the story and because she's haunting it but like the historical context of it you know what I mean it's like the same way when

I was looking at pictures it was like I saw weddings because of course you got the fucking wedding plan and wedding have oh you're wedding at a plantation thing and i was looking at pictures of people smiling i'm like bro why the would i want to have my wedding at like a plantation maybe one thing if it was like a historical site because it's one of the finest grandest like houses on the on the island but it's also like a profiteering kind of thing weddings tours and there's a gift store which is the weirdest thing it's like safety like down here when i moved to the American South, I would walk past these houses, these beautiful big homes, and I have to think about, I'm like, yo, that was probably a plantation, man. Like, we're literally, like, living on, like, haunted land, you know, and maybe

we are visited by these spirits, or in Jamaica, we call them duppy. That's what we call ghosts in Jamaica, duppy. Maybe we are being haunted by them as well another similar experience and probably even more poignant was when I went to the gold castle slave castle and the Gold Coast in Ghana my sister got married in Ghana a couple years ago you know there's one thing about going to a plantation like going to a Rose Hall you go there as a tourist attraction, right? But to go to the slave castle where you can't have a wedding there, you know, and people are not barbecuing there, it is kind of really supernatural sort of site where, for me at least, solidified

and I recognized, like, that my ancestors possibly might have gone through this port and being there you know uh feeling like these shackles that were worn you know by the slaves i don't know if i knew i was trying to manifest some shit some shitty kind of bullshit new agey type of like i'ma hold these and like feel my ancestors like flow through my face type of shit no that did not happen but i did feel this sense of like it was creepy it was it was uncanny and even more than that they took us to i mean this was a dungeon where they would keep a little bigger than the room that i'm in and it'd be like 200 people slaves in there they told us that the ground we're standing on the actual ground is a couple feet below because the ground we're standing on is the calcified excrement, vomit and shit and all of that because they were

kept there for so long that people just like either died or like shit themselves and that calcified to the point that that's the ground that you're walking on now. And when I learned that, that horrified, that was like something that was just like, I don't know if I wanna come back here if I'm ready for this. That was a terrifying sort of experience, which related to the Annie Palmer story. It's sort of this thread of American racism

and the sort of history that is scarier than any ghost story. If we're talking about these historical sites of atrocities and shit like that, and the kind of this like symbolic representation, like the signage in Stone Mountain in Georgia on the face of the mountain, you have the Confederacy carved into the face of the mountain. And every 4th of July, you have black people who go there to watch a laser show and fireworks under the fucking gaze of the Confederacy. And it is the most bizarre,

disassociating, like I'll never go back there i've been there one summer and i was like yo bro anytime it was my cousins like yo you want to go to stone mountain fireworks like bro thank you but don't invite me again that shit was some black mirror parallel universe it was just fucking weird man it was weird so people want to talk about like like i mean those kinds of symbols just exist in society every single fucking day and you walk past them you know the same way you do walk past a plantation and see people take wedding pictures you know Thank you. To be continued... listeners for continuing to tune in and be with us. This episode was mixed, edited, and produced by Mr. Matthew Carter and hosted by me, Mr. Tom Sexton. Before we sign off here, remind y'all

once again, if you got any scary stories of any kind that you'd like to share with us for future consideration on, you know, either a True Abies Halloween special or an ongoing scary story pod, something in the vein of what we've pulled off here, hit us up, trillbillyworkersparty at gmail.com. Thanks, y'all, and happy Halloween. Bye.