Well There‘s Your Problem - Episode 86: Winchester Mystery House

Episode Date: October 27, 2021

it's spoopy jake in gainesville: https://thefestfl.com/comedy/jake-flores check out pod damn america: https://soundcloud.com/poddamnamerica and why you mad pod: https://soundcloud.com/whyyoumadpod Our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/wtyppod/ Our Merch: https://www.solidaritysuperstore.com/wtypp Send us stuff! our address: Well There's Your Podcasting Company PO Box 40178 Philadelphia, PA 19106 DO NOT SEND US LETTER BOMBS thanks in advance

Let's do a popo popo podcast. That that is what we're here to do today. Thank you, I have a I have a spooky sound effect for us. Today's subject is podcasting. Yeah, don't ever do it. Don't be on more than one. I especially don't try and do three. Yeah, don't try and do three.

I am now also up to three. Mm hmm. It's a good place to be exhausted. Jesus, dude. Oh, this is a bad idea. Mm hmm. Welcome to the Bad Idea Factory, starring Jake Flores as himself. The corpse of Jake Flores.

Oh, Halloween. Yeah. Yeah, you're not going to need to put that in as a sound effect in a second. No, we're going to die. So I think it's weird that you guys choose to podcast while clinging to lightning rods on the top of your roofs. We don't really know any other way.

So this is kind of how we have to do it. Banging off the castles together. Usually, usually what happens is this is a little bit of extra silliness. I stand on his shoulders. Oh, man. And then we, you know, get the lightning rod out. Sometimes the porch umbrella and we and we try to curry

the favor of the lightning gods. Yes. Yeah, that's how Brough Frankenstein was created in the original Mary Shelley novel. That's right. Just two dudes hanging out. Do you know Frankenstein was actually the name of the doctor and not the monster?

Yeah, the monster's name was Adam. Yes. Yes. Yes, congratulations. We've we've done it. We've been 2012 Tumblr. Yes. You want to do a podcast or what?

That was the spooky fact of the day on this. Well, there's your problem podcast, a podcast about spooky engineering disasters with slides. I'm Justin Rosnack, but with a spooky pun in there. Well, I'm frightened. My pronouns are boo and God damn it. I was going to do that fucking God damn it, dude. Oh, God, I am fucking malice called Skull Skellington

and my pronouns are fucking she and her. All right. I can't think of another like one that is poor. That is poor for me to fuck up. I am Scream Anderson. No, pronounce that way. It's not unless people pronounce it like a lie. I am like it's Liam.

It's not that uncommon of a name, motherfucker. Like the whole nation of Ireland demands an apology. A whole bunch of ghosts going boo, but in a displeased way. Not in the usual ghost way. Ah, yes. Well, you know, I displease a lot of people talk to my mother. Do I love very dearly? Hi, mom.

Hope the move goes well. Do I go now? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we have a guest guest. Hi, Jake O Lantern Flores and my pronouns are all in the past tense because I'm dead. So that's good. Fuck. That's good. Yeah.

Shit, you look like a professional comedian or something. Wow. Wow. Not according to Twitter dot com. But sometimes don't go on Twitter. Never, never log on. No, never. Never tweet. Yeah.

So anyway, I'm here to announce beyond the grave. I'm here to I'm here from beyond the grave. Yes, to announce our pivot to podcasting about supernatural occurrences, maybe some true crime, too. I don't know. Yeah, those BuzzFeed freaks can do it. We can do it. Stay sexy and don't get in an engineering disaster.

I really actually want to do an episode, a bonus episode about like the true crime industry. But I'd be good. But I just like don't have the stomach for it because I just I don't like don't be a pussy, right? The episode I don't like hate writing episodes. That's why I make Roz do it. Speaking of stomachs, it's time for the goddamn nose.

Oh, she's dead. She's dead. That's 100 percent dead. The queen, the queen spent the night in the hospital. Yeah, because she's dead. No, she was admitted with a case of death on arrival and was kept in overnight because she was dead because she she her life has like expired.

She is, you know, her life is brought to a close because she's not alive anymore. She's dead. If she if they actually announced that she died in between us recording this and it coming out, this will be the funniest shit that has ever happened. I love that we're not like podcasting as praxis and we're not hosted.

Thank God in England so we can just say whatever stupid things we want about the queen being dead. Yeah, like she's dead. She died of like a shock at how much it would cost to pay off all of Prince Andrews accusers. Is it really liable to say someone is dead when they're actually alive? I don't know.

Is it like against it would harm their reputation to say that someone was dead? No, no, in fact, it would only boost her because then they get a weebee TV special. I was about to say if you if you had a reputation for being in a line of business that would be where it's crucial for you to be in lie alive to perform your duties. That would be an issue, but the queen is not in such an

occupation. I don't know. You could say that being alive is like the only responsibility she has. That is true. Do you think that it's possible that she would get a benefit in the media from being dead or like dying for like a minute and then coming back to life?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, like near death experience. Totally. Oh, oh, absolutely. I think that would because it would be like, oh, they can take our farms and ship, but they'll never take our queen. Yeah, we just taken the deadly Bufo toxin from the African tree frog is faking her own death right now.

Like David Blaine. Oh, yeah, it is weird that they suspended the holy fucking palace owns this crane over the Thames. Now, they actually thought she was faking her own death, but what it turned out to be was a sort of weekend at Bernie's situation with everyone was unconsciously but willingly participating in. They're definitely doing some weekend at Bernie's shit.

She's been dead since 2005, man. I still believe Gibbo. You remember Gibbo? No, what? Yes, I remember Gibbo. Gibbo was a member of a British Army group. Yes, yes, yes, yes, along with along with guys named shit like ricey and cheeks who inadvertently announced the death

of Her Majesty the Queen. It was thought falsely, but I believe him still. Justice for Justice for Gibby. Yeah. Yeah, Gabbo. Gabbo, whatever. What a fucking thing. I don't care.

He is a character from I Carly, I think. I think I think it was nice of the Queen to die just in time for spooky season. What if she what if she rezzes and makes it to Halloween and then dies? Oh, that's yeah, unspeakable dark power spends Halloween as a zombie. No one talks about this is my girlfriend who has a fascination

with the Royals I have not managed her to divest herself of is going to be like, well, she was so important. I'm going to be like, I don't she's she's dead. I don't care. She's just like, you don't want to watch the crown. I'm like, fuck, no, I know what happened. She's still a lot of Ireland still divided. Like, yeah, that episode was she has Princess Diana

murdered, which she did do. We should be clear on that. Oh, absolutely. Whatever, send us to the Hague. I don't care. She would make a good undead because she has that giant like hat thing going on. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That would be pretty fascinating. They are called fascinating. I don't know why I know that. I think maybe just the the incredibly intricate ones are but huh. Speaking of the zombie pose already going on. You know, she kind of walks a bit like a zombie already. She's 90 something.

She could translate pretty easily into like a Baron Samedi type with the Easter Bond. Very scary. Thank you. And in other news. Well, yeah, Alex Baldwin used non union labour folks out because if you do, Alec Baldwin will suddenly know how it feels to take a human life, which is fucking grim.

Yeah, yeah. The don't fuck around with guns. If you don't know how to use them don't have don't hire a 24 year old armourer and don't hire a first A.D. Who rolls his eyes at doing safety checks. Yeah, this is why we have safety checks. I don't want to it's not it's not all that amusing just because yeah, it's fresh and shit.

But yeah, fucking don't skip out safety checks are there for a reason union labour is there for a reason like yeah. And so you don't pull an Alec Baldwin. I feel for once in my life bad for Alec Baldwin. Right. I should never have to feel. No. And ergo, I take your safety seriously, please.

So are we sure that this is the first life he's ever taken? No, I I I yeah, speculation. I kind of I felt bad for him to at first and then I thought about this for a while and I was like, actually, he's probably he's probably killed a couple people. But maybe so so we all like that's not huge. That's not a deal breaker. Personally, though, that's the real question.

Yeah, was it more of a like a VIP is from squid game type situation or like, oh, we're indirectly responsible for that. Yeah, I feel like if Alec Baldwin has killed anyone before it's been in sort of like a more of a sort of capital movement way. Yeah. Yeah.

Supervisory killing. Yeah, I mean, this may be the first time he's accidentally killed someone though. That's definitely true. Yeah. But yeah, so the way you could phrase that in the most defamatory possible way. It's the first time he's accidentally killed someone

technically true. Wildly libelous. So yeah, Hanya Hutchins was behind the camera and I guess it was a scene where they had the point the gun at the camera which you shouldn't fucking be doing anyway. No, you can do that post it turns. Well, it turns out a prop gun is very similar to a real gun in that it can shoot someone dead.

Yes. You know, as far as I know, though, using a revolver, which is like there's no like kind of like blank firing adapter for that. You don't need one. So it can just load like a live round very easily. So the question then becomes what the fuck is a live round doing on set on a set exactly as particular guns seem to have

misfired several times like during the filming and some people had walked off the set earlier that day. Yeah, I had a situation was unsafe. Both the armorer and the assistant director who are ultimately responsible for the safety of all of this shit were like kind of notoriously lax. Some of the crew had like caught the armorer handing a gun to like a loaded gun to an to an 11 year old child actor

without checking it. Oh my God, that doesn't Jesus. And of course, the other fun thing about this is that Trump people think that God is punishing Alec Baldwin for making fun of Donald Trump. No, shut the fuck up. Well, I think a better punishment would be for Alec Baldwin to get shot as opposed to one would think right of the

cinematographer. Yeah. Well now in this case, it's because like he hired SJW labor because the the armorer had like dyed hair and shit and ticked. Oh my God. So you know, I don't trust that guy to be an armorer either. And give me give me some guy.

Give me some guy. It is late 70s. He can always see on my he's got car hearts and he's got Oakley's on, you know, the fun thing is there was a little bit of nepotism because the armorer was was one of those guys daughters. So like her dad was like was like sort of very famous armorer and then I guess that talent did not really run in the family.

Damn. It's not hereditary. Yeah. No one had to handle guns. I thought I saw a tweet of some politician earlier, like some dumbass low level guy in America somewhere demanding like Trump be able to tweet about this. I might be talking about my ass here, but there's like a palpable

like everyone misses Trump on Twitter right now. He would have fired off the perfect tweets about this. Yeah. It's so good. I fired off. Ah, huh. Yeah. He's really relevant.

Dispatching these long form letters about Megan McCain and people like that all week. So maybe we'll get one. Yeah, I'm not sure about his long form work. I really like that. I admired the sort of like purity of the form of Twitter. Well, speaking of guns, our story begins today with guns. Yes.

I don't think we I don't think we mentioned what the topic was, which is the Winchester. Where'd it go, Ross? No. The Winchester House of Mystery. Yes. All right. So now here is a question for everyone.

Who technically founded the Winchester Repeating Arms Company? The guy named Winchester, who was like nicknamed that because of his repeating arms. I don't know. No, it was fucking Smith and Wesson. Yeah. Horace Smith, Daniel Wesson of Norwich, Connecticut, incorporated what they then called the Smith and Wesson Company in 1855 to

build lever action rifles and pistols, right? And the lever action means that, you know, I'm not a gun expert. So if I'm get this wrong, you crank the thing to chamber another round and recock the hammer. Yeah, you crank the thing, which is down here. You can also like flip it around over your arm, which is insanely dangerous, but look cool and terminator too. It does look cool.

You know, you always you do have the balance gun safety with looking cool. Absolutely. Every once in a while you can hold the gun sideways. I don't know if you can hold these sideways too effectively. I feel like they'll just kick the shit out of your shoulder. But like. I feel like they'll just kick the shit out of your shoulder. Always have a union cool guy on set.

He's got to explain the proper procedure for being cool. We have a union chat. Yeah, yeah. Goes up, yells at your manager because people aren't smoking enough. I see local 420. Yeah, hell yeah. So now they they started building these rifles, but they weren't that great to start out with, right?

They got a couple of investors, including one guy named Oliver Winchester, right? And once Oliver is on the company, they rename it the Volcanic Repeating Arms Company. Oh, hell of a name. Cool. This guy, it's made from vulcanized rubber. That's why I couldn't shoot so good. No, no, they did. No, that's why that's what I heard.

Volcanized rubber hadn't been invented yet. Yes, it had. Shut up. Well, they named it that in anticipation. They were patent trolling. Well, it's both volcanic like a volcano, not like Vulcan. They made these cool. Volcanic made these cool pistols that had like a sort of like a ring finger lever.

So like you would fire it and each time you fired it, you would have to like stick your ring finger out to re-cock it. Got to fire fancy. You got to have the pinky out. Exactly. Exactly. But volcanic didn't do very well financially because of, you know, sort of the primitive state of the lever action mechanism.

And also the guns were very small caliber. So even though they were a little superior technically than other guns available at the time, the other guns had bigger bullets. And, you know, your 1850s guys were like, no, give me the bigger bullets. Yeah. I got to be walking around with like a Walker Colt that can like, you know, turn a guy into paste from 50 paces away.

Yes. Oliver Winchester saw some opportunity here and he actually forced the company into receivership, right? Oh, big Galaxy bread. Nice. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He drove the company under and that meant as there as its biggest

creditor, he now had complete control of the company. I love this old-timey corporate Raider shit. This is just not like wildly illegal now. It's illegal, but you can get away with it. Yeah. Okay, cool. This is like a 1800s succession. Someone bear hugged to someone.

He's yelling. They're yelling varmint at each other instead of the cocksucker idea of dueling your cousin Archibald or whatever for majority control. The succession theme on banjo. Even people who are friends with each other are just randomly shooting warning shots at each other. I mean, bear in mind like radio and shit wasn't invented yet. The the greatest form of entertainment you could have at this

point was to fire a revolver at someone's feet and tell them to dance. That's true. That's true. It was either that or hoop and stick. Yeah, revolver dancing. I wish we're involved. Fast time. So in 1857, he took over the company.

He renamed it the New Haven Arms Company, right? Winchester owned it. Smith and Wesson said, fuck this shit and they went to go start their own company, right? I'll never catch on. And New Haven Arms produced the Henry rifle, which was like the first sort of successful mass produced lever action rifle. It was good enough for the Union Army to order thousands of them.

Though it wasn't the main service rifle, right? Most of the rifles were still, you know, sort of musket, muzzle loading things, you know. But Confederates hated it because it was very good at killing them. Oh, the hell. They refer to that as that damn Yankee rifle. They reload on Sunday and shoot all week. Oh, jealous.

Yeah, jealous. That's cool. Because I think I think the tube magazine could handle like, I don't know, 17 bullets. Oh, Jesus. But yeah, they sold a bunch of these to the army after the war. They renamed a company to Winchester, repeating rifle company. Its products became very popular with civilians, right?

And that, of course, includes farmers and cowboys and outlaws, vigilantes, you know, the entire Wild Wild West crew, you know, they weren't getting these rifles. 1873 was the really popular model, right? And the gun that won the West. Yes. And so Oliver Winchester made a whole bunch of money off of this, right? But it wasn't enough money to save him from dying of tuberculosis.

What a loser. Yeah. You can't shoot tuberculosis in self-defense. Yeah, as he died, he was frantically working on a miniaturized rifle that would shoot each and every tuberculosis. Well, you could, you could, you could deploy that against the coronavirus today. It's unfortunate.

He died so early. So he died December of 1880 and he left his company to his son, William Wirt Winchester. Pick another initial, Jesus. Or excuse me. Oliver died of heart failure, not tuberculosis. Oh, come on, Roz. Now, William Wirt Winchester, after inheriting the company, proceeded to

almost immediately die of tuberculosis. Oh, there we go. Well, I got my TV dress. That's what I love. I love some 19th century medicine. Yes. Love that shit. So he left the fortune to his wife, Sarah Winchester, right?

Hmm. You can see her here. She has a very round head. Nature without an H. That's how you got to know if she's crazy or not. Thank you for the visual aid. It's very round. Cromwell, you son of a bitch.

So William and Sarah had had one daughter back in 1866, who almost immediately 1866. 1866. Yeah. Well, that's how you that's how you make a baby. Right. That was the joke. Thank you.

Yes. 1866. They had one daughter who died almost immediately of morasmus. Oh, that's not tuberculosis. What the hell is morasmus? Morasmus is what? It's sort of a disease that's caused by malnutrition. Oh, I left money in you.

Okay. Live in the 19th century and die of some fucking like egg, you know, or like red fever or the bloody flux. The fact that humanity has made it to the year 2021. How the fuck do we do that, man? How? Lot of fucking. Yeah.

Born in the mountain, born on the mountain, raised in a cave. Yeah, fucking dying of morasmus. It wasn't called trucking back then. It was called caravanic conistoga wagging. I don't know. Good enough. It's called the Oregon Trail. All right.

So in 1881, you know, she had lost, she lost her husband and her father-in-law and I think also her mother died that year, right? And she was very depressed and started, you know, searching for answers. Why is these terrible tragedies befallen me? Late 19th century, your answers are either weird form of like cult, like Christian science or spiritualism. Ghosts with cocaine in them. The story goes, she went to a medium in Boston.

Right? Oh, who told her she was being haunted by the ghosts of everyone killed by Winchester rifles. Yeah, but they were confederates. Who cares? That's that's a fun ass thing for a medium to come up with to just psychically torch you just like, oh, I got a good one. Rolls dice.

Yeah, except in a strong Boston accent. None of us are going to try and do one, are we? I'm channeling your husband. He said the pocket car in Harvard. Yeah. It was kind of to Cuomo. That was like Andrew Cuomo is a medium. You got a bunch of fucking specters after you.

Those are the freaking rifle. I know. Not the guy there. All right. So this this this strange coalition of specters was after her, you know, because you got a lot of confederates, I would guess, but also a lot of Native Americans. Yeah, a lot of dead cowboys.

Bunch of outlaws, bank employees. Yes. Henry Clay Frick almost the real rainbow coalition. Yeah. Bunch of like striking minors and shit. Yeah, yeah, you had a motley crew in the afterlife. I guess everyone figured out how to settle their differences after they were dead.

I got really, really mad at the manufacturer of the rifle that killed them. Hey, this is like a support group in hell. Yeah, I was shot by victims. Yeah. They've always shot by a gun with such tiny bullets. It's such a dignified way to die. It really is.

So so the solution was clearly to go West. And build a really big house for all the spirits, right? I smell a sitcom personally. Yes. And it's called too many cooks. So, you know, that's that's that's the one explanation for it. I understand that's what they tell you if you go to the house, right?

Another potential explanation. She was a depressed middle aged widow who needed to change a scenery in a hobby. You know, that could also be it. Hanging up a Winchester rifle with a big live love love sign engraved on it. Oh, that'd be good. I've been to the house and it's like a tourist trap kind of

thing now, like they're very into having a gift shop and doing nonstop tours. I think it makes them a lot of money. So the entire time they're telling you all the stuff, it's you got to take everything with a great assault because it's like a lot of us being very clearly played up. Or advertising. But then some stuff's being played down probably because of

like liability or something like that. It's very unclear what's actually happening. But probably the lore is is them having a bit of a laugh, you know? Yeah, that that seems likely to me. I was it was hard to find like super accurate information on like anything just because, you know, there's there's a there's a lot of most of the like information about Sarah Winchester

was like, you know, you seem the shape of this woman's head. So round. So she left New Haven. For always always a good decision, I will say. They had to have good pizza there. I know we've been to New Haven and then what happened, Roz? We missed the last train back, but that was in New York City.

Bastard city for bastard people. That's right. You're goddamn right. So she left New Haven for San Diego where she bought a farm house on a large track to land about three and a half miles southwest of downtown, right? And here's me stuck in my second decade of renting. Get your dead husband and dead son.

So yeah, I should I should I should get my husband to form a firearms company and then die of tuberculosis. Scared money. Don't make money Alice. Yeah, this is not your second lifetime of renting like all those guys. Oh, that's true. Yeah, I can imagine having to rent in the afterlife.

You only get a hat. You only get like a room at this crazy woman's house. So this is the house before she bought it. This was in 1884, right? You know, it's this nice, you know, Queen Anne style farmhouse. It looks all right. Yeah, it's a little fancy. Um, I can tell you're not the grieving one over us.

Well, no, I'm not. How did you know? You know, it's it's the farmhouse is on something like 160 acres, you know, so she buys the whole estate and starts starts construction on the house and construction begins immediately and doesn't end like ever. Like ever. Well, it did it did end eventually.

We'll get to that. So she she called this estate La Natta Villa. La Natta meeting. I have a name. Like I mean, I think it means it's just house on flat ground. Oh, okay. Yeah, terrible name. I guess kind of kind of crappy.

I don't like his name. Zero stars. That's where the curse came from. Yeah, just having bad taste. Can't even have dignity and death. All right. So they start building all kinds of she has contractors build all kinds of wild additions to the house.

Here's what it looked like in 1905 ish. Right. Yeah. Okay, that's taking a second turn. Yeah, she's doing the first game of Minecraft or fortnight or something. Bro just build just just keep building and she just kept building right.

So, you know, this is this is the part where you get the spiel about how, you know, I had the finest builders and the best craftsman, greatest materials, blah, blah, blah. You know, very well appointed house except where it wasn't because lots of places parts of it just stayed unfinished. Yeah, to trap the ghosts in exactly. Wait, really? Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's part of it. You know, Tiffany windows, you had like all kinds of mahogany nice quality materials in there. 161 rooms, 47 fireplaces, 10,000 windows and other statistics as well. I don't think it's all of the rest can just go like quietly insane.

That's cool. I'm just about to say back then $400 a month. You wouldn't believe it. Think about that cry. So I genuinely thought that this was like, uh, she thought that like the ghosts were driving her to build more houses, but you're telling me this was like a ghost fortress. This is a ghost defense mechanism.

This is this is designed as a labyrinth for ghosts. Couldn't really couldn't haunt her. Yeah. The legend is that they would get like lost because they're just so many winding hallways and stuff. And like, I hope I'm not jumping ahead through walls. You get you get fucking killed by a by a Winchester rifle like the battle of bull run and then in your afterlife,

you're just wandering around some old ladies corridors just like this sucks. Yeah, it's treating me like a fucking minotaur. Yeah, I hope I'm not jumping ahead. I don't know if you got the slide for this, but there's like, for example, like a staircase that just goes up into the ceiling, like no doorway or anything. That's that's frustrating.

It looks like when they tried to rebuild Ned Flanders house on the Simpsons after like the hurricane hit it and there's just twisty hallway that goes into a tiny door and stuff. That's that's your best defense against ghosts in the 18th century, apparently because ghosts can't float through walls. And we know we must have apparently ever seen Casper. No, they obey the rules of hallways. Yeah, clearly because they're bound by physics and shit.

I was like, you know, some features on the house here that aren't there anymore, like this big tower on top. That was seven stories tall. Jesus. Ghosts Gryffindor dorm. Yes. Yeah, we're there. Yeah, you bring the ghosts up there and you sort of toss them

out, you know, and they float away. That's how you haze the ghosts. Yes. My dad blew them over the edge. You know, so, so, you know, this was built primarily out of redwood, right? But apparently it didn't kill what the victims of the environment did.

Yeah, I was about to say haunted by the ghost of the trees. Fucking like a thousand years old tree to build your insanity house. Alice, they built a shitload of stuff out of redwood back then. There were so many of those trees. Alice, don't cater to the environment until like 1971. Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. The thing is, she didn't like the look of redwood.

So she had it all painted. Oh, what a waste. Yeah. So this, this, the house looked like this until 1906. And then the big earthquake happened in San Francisco. Yeah. San Francisco earthquake of 1906 when all of San Francisco fell over and then burned down.

Yep. It's the one where the insurance industry is invented. Yeah. Then the house stayed relatively intact because it was built on a floating foundation, but the tower did fall over right on top of the house. Yeah. Killed a bunch of ghosts.

Yeah. Oh, that's tragic. Must must kill killed twice. You go to you go to double hell. You got to like Winchester Mystery Hell House. Yes. You imagined that you got shot by a Winchester rifle and then smashed by a Winchester tower.

I just wanted to be a brown and goats. Yeah. The brown at Browning's probably cut a deal. Although that was actually, I think Winchester manufactured the Browning rifle. Huh. I don't know. I don't know.

So there's a bunch of like dead, dead World War One Prussian infantry in this house too. Yeah. We just assume. I don't know what the successor company to Winchester is right now. If they're all like folded in, then it's just accumulating more and more ghosts all the time and we're not still expanding it.

So it hasn't kept pace. It must be fucking stuff for a ghost in there. Yeah, they're all just crammed in. There's like 50,000 Prussian guys arguing with Confederates. This is like our last line of ghost defense against the firearm ghosts and we've been neglecting it as a critical piece of national infrastructure. I think you would probably, I think possibly all of them being

crammed in there and arguing with each other is what's keeping them from coming out and haunting the rest of us. Yeah, but at some point we'll reach critical ghost mass and then they'll just start leaking out and there'll be gun ghosts everywhere. Just explodes with that liquid from Ghostbusters too. Oh, lots of bad vibes here. So the tower fell down.

Sarah Winchester brought in carpenters to fix the house. They did not put the tower back up though. I guess because it was more important to like bolster that her ghost defenses immediately. Yeah, you gotta patch up the hole on the roof so the ghosts don't escape that way. This was like the Chernobyl sarcophagus of its generation. I'm genuinely confused of the purpose of this house to keep

ghosts in or keep them out. But why not both, you know? Yeah. Yeah, you gotta, it's like age fact, but for ghosts, you gotta have ghosts ducked. I think that she thought the ghosts would just follow her anywhere she went. And so the other thing was that she slept in a different room

every night. So it was a constant sort of, I mean, it literally is just fortnight when you're like just building shit that someone is pursuing you to sort of just keep them guessing at any given point. Cause I think the idea is that she left, they would see her. I can't, I don't know if ghosts could see in this woman's mind or what the deal is.

But there's a method to it in her brain. Yeah. And it's interesting that she was able to, you know, just get builders to just do things. I mean, it seems like she only had a vague idea of what she wanted built. She had a lot of money, lots of money. Yeah.

I mean, she's an ideal client, right? Cause she'll pay for fucking anything. That's true. You can just do whatever you want. You can practice your little architectural flourishes here. You can be like, oh, I'll do some fucking cornicing on this bit. Cause like he's going to appreciate it.

The ghosts, maybe the ghosts are really harsh critics and they're just like taunting the builders like, haha. Yeah. That doesn't, that doesn't look very, very, very well placed. Oh, that sucks. You're getting bullied by ghosts. Yeah.

Well, one of the interesting things is on this house, there are some, there's some distinct, um, you know, hand of the artist there where there's some more East Coast Queen Anne details as opposed to West Coast Queen Anne details. I couldn't tell you offhand what those are, but that's what something I read said. Like finials and shit. Yeah.

Here's some of the interior of the house, right? Here's a staircase that goes to nowhere. I'm looking at these very closely because I keep expecting to sneak a photo of Grover house in here. The original, the biggest Grover house. Yeah, mismatched vinyl siding destroyed by ghosts. Yeah, you have, uh, you know, some of these very richly appointed interiors.

You can see some of the roof lines here. There's a flying buttress here for some reason. No, no, you're going to need it. Yeah. Um, this stair detail is interesting. That's, uh, that's not code. Is that to create a trip hazard full ghosts? That's mostly floated.

Like that's the one that goes up into the ceiling. I think that they can go through walls, but in her mind, they respect infrastructure or something. Yeah, that makes sense. It's not, it's not wood. It's, it's not good. It's wood, I guess. It's, uh, yeah.

Yeah. You got to like, that's why you got to keep building it is because like, okay, it doesn't stop them, but it does inconvenience them. And so after a while, they're just like fine. I'll go to the ghost basement and play ghost foosball. Yeah. Uh, here's the front of the house.

You can see, you know, big Queen Anne thing. You got sort of this gable. You got, you got, you got like a weird Palladian balcony here. That's kind of fun. It's all fun. Like it would be great if she was just like a nicer kind of insane. I was about to say, yeah, if she was just like whimsical or

whatever, and she was just like, Oh, I love to spend my gun money on, you know, just letting architects use my house as a sketch pad. Yeah, that's cool. That's, you know, I don't think any architects actually worked on this building at any point. They might be in league with the ghosts. I was about to say, uh, to go sympathetic.

Can't trust the, uh, professional managerial class. That's right. I'm always saying this. But yeah, so as she, as she gets older, she kind of gets more insane, you know, as they, she gets a bunch of weird secret passes ways put in. You get more and more haphazard additions. Windows inside the building, right?

You got rooms that are inside rooms. I'll kind of be honest. I wouldn't mind. I'd like to have like a secret passageway. You know, I think that we all do. Yeah. The only problem is like a bookcase that's a door or something.

The only problem is, as I'm, as I'm saying, I'm entering my second decade of renting and, uh, you know, I, I go to my landlord like, Hey, could I, you know, get like a dog or something? He's like, no, I don't think the conversation for, can I put in a secret passageway is going to be very fruitful? You know, might go, well, you might be like, wow, holy shit, a dog.

I mean, a secret passageway. Are you going to, then you could just do Scooby-Doo crew adventures, Alice? That would be cool. You could have us guest on them. I guess, I guess the worst he can say is no or evict me. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, when my parents were 24, they were putting in their first secret passageway. Slowly downhill for me. They had, they had like a data that, you know, today you can barely afford a rotating bookcase. Back in the day, your parents could just go, you know, walk off the street and buy a telephone booth that dropped you through the floor, you know.

Now I'm down here. I'm the other Wojak meme guy. I bought a pizza and I'm worried about how much it costs. Wow, I bought a pizza and apparently there was a secret passage in the box for the pizza to leave. My mouth. Pizza goes. Yeah, the ghost of every pizza delivery guy who haven't got

killed on the job is following my pizza around. Apparently there are very few windows or mirrors in this house. Yeah. So you don't have to see a spooky ghost standing behind you. Wouldn't you want the mirrors to see the ghost? It would offend the, it would offend the good spirits apparently. There were good, okay. Yeah.

There's apparently some good spirits in this house as well. This is, this is a site of like spiritual warfare is going on in this house. It's a laser tag for ghosts. That's why she's making a maze. Yeah, I'm very confused about the internal rules governing how this, there's, there's some method to the madness you can see, but I have no clue.

Sort of like paintball, but with ectoplasm. Yes. What else? She has a couple of staircases in there with very small risers. These are like two inches each. That's not a ghost reason. It's because she had very severe arthritis later in her life. No, couldn't lift her foot a little higher than that.

Yeah, I walked up to them. They're very chill. It's, it's, in terms of going upstairs, it's like, wow, this is so easy, but also it takes like 15 minutes to get up a couple flights of stairs. There's just so many of the shit out of the ghosts though. Yeah. They notoriously hate short stairs.

Yeah, I'm feeling this way. Yeah. I mean, that's why that's why it ghosts, ghosts prefer to haunt older houses with like winder staircases because they're like very steep stairs. Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The angles are better for their tired ghost legs.

It's not easy haunting. And again, we've established that ghosts are found by the laws of physics somehow. Mm hmm. Yeah. What do ghosts think of elevators? Hey, Adam, they think they're cheering. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The ghost gets in the elevator, the elevator goes up and it just progresses without the ghost. He just goes through the floor. It's like this is blue collar ghosts. Those real lunch pail ghosts. Um, I think it has 13 bathrooms, but only one of them works. That's just rude, man. The rest of them were full of ghosts.

I'm, I'm trying to do a ghost shit. It's not fucking plumbed in. I really feel like I'm not the loser in that situation. It's her house. I will take that Duke where it needs to be taken. I don't really care. Yeah, it makes no sense because like with the way she slept, she slept in a different room every night so that, you know,

the changeup is what throws you off, but eventually the ghosts got to figure out out of 13 bathrooms. Yeah, she's coming back to the same place. The real bathroom. Maybe she's which one is getting pushed in the yard like a dog. Yeah. Yeah, this is like on this one to be like, this isn't an engineering disaster at all.

Like we got on the country music episode to which I say Halloween episode. I don't care. Yeah. Yeah. It's actually kind of an engineering feat. Yeah, absolutely. Very successful.

I mean, like did she did she like did the ghosts catch up with her is my question because that's the term. Well, there we go then. That's a success. She didn't get like eating my ghosts or whatever. Yeah, it didn't get didn't get, um, um, what I'm not even sure that fail condition is there. What are the ghosts do to you if they catch you?

So I'm something like in that, um, I forget what, you know, the horror movie, the one with the ghost, uh, you might need to narrow that one down. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Ross. Yeah.

Let me just think about this for a sec. Shining. Is it the shining team? Are you talking about the Netflix one with the like, if you see the ghost, they like show you something that makes you kill yourself or whatever. No, I was thinking, I was thinking of the one, the rather not, not that recent one, I guess the one where the couple

moves into the relatively new house that has no reason to be haunted and they get haunted and it's like a bunch of found footage stuff, right? You know, with like security camera in the bedroom. Oh, is that final destination? I want to say the others maybe. No, it's, it's not that. I think it's like, um, uh, I don't know.

You, I know you're talking about set us a pretty difficult task here in terms of remembering a movie that had a ghost in it. That's why we have the comments, Alice. You see, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't watch horror movies because I don't like being scared. I find it an unpleasant experience. Yep. Somebody, somebody in the comments is going to let us know

what movie you're thinking of. Anyway, they, they, they, but I think one of them gets like dragged away by the ghost one night and it's like, well, why do you, why do you fucking live in there in the first place? You keep describing things that happen in like 500. I don't know what happens. What did you see this movie? I didn't see it.

I saw commercials for it. Oh my God. God damn it. Cause you don't watch horror movies as well. Yeah. Hello. Welcome back to Rossville reviews. Yeah.

Have you ever seen this one horror movie where there's like a monster and there's like a shot of like somebody like backing around a room and then it cuts to a POV shot from the monster, but the camera's all fucked up and then like stalking them. You know that film with that guy who does that thing? Yes. This is Ross on movies.

I played this game with you. As good as it gets. Yeah. All right. So this house was continuously constructed until 1922. Right. That's when Sarah Winchester dies. Oh, ghosts.

Not of ghosts. How can we be sure? What does she die of? I forgot to put it in the notes. Damn you. It's probably ghosts. I don't think it's ghosts. Well, it might have been tuberculosis.

They all have tuberculosis. That's true kind of ghosts death heart failure. There you go. I mean, that's just sort of a generic, you know, like, oh, well, they died of maybe she was alive. And I could have could have had a heart attack from seeing a ghost. Yeah.

Left a will written in 13 sections, which she signed 13 times. That sounds insane. Reasonable bananas. Yeah. Yeah. She's obsessed with the number 13. She's a mentally ill person.

Cuckoo bananas. She had like a motif going where like you would be in a bathroom and then the little handles on the knobs on the sink that doesn't work has like a flower on it and the flower has 13 pedals on it because. Compulsive disorder rules. She she also, I'm told, kept a houseboat on San Francisco Bay as insurance against the fear of the second biblical

floods. Did she have a haunted houseboat? Too much haunted house. Some of the lesser ghosts have to go to the haunted houseboat as like a party. Yeah, it looks exactly like this house, but it's just a barge. They go and I go have like a cool, they have a cool ghost houseboat party, but you know, it sucks because they're all

like ex confederates and you know, other other like kids. Yeah, people. Yeah, they got holes in them so they can't swim. Exactly. Can't even sing that good either. Some of them go shot through the lungs and shit. Yeah. So, you know, okay, after she dies, they stop doing construction

on a house. I think another thing is she did a lot of a lot of the stained glass in here as like spider web motifs. It's it's done. It's done in like a vaguely creepy way, which I don't know if that's good or bad for the ghosts. Both. I don't know why if you're if you're, you know, you're

striving, you're striving to avoid being haunted. You decide I'm going to make the place extra creepy. But the ghosts use their own weapons against them. Ah, genius fighting fire with fire. The tools of the master used against him. Sure. You can't demolish the master's ghosts. The master's.

So she left the house and the property was she left it to her niece. Thanks. Yeah. Thanks for not taking. Yeah, thank you for this house full of ghosts. She just auctioned off most of the contents. Oh, that's rude.

And for her niece is a son, Piker. It's mad. Why does he need a home with 138 rooms in it? Really? This guy's so rich. Well, those bathrooms don't work. You get. Yeah.

Before you get mad at any leftist's income, ask how many ghosts are in the house? It's good point. That's right. It might be trying to outbuild the ghosts. So, you know, but the house's future was in question for a while, but a lot of the neighbors started asking, Hey, can we can we see inside this crazy lady's house?

And eventually it was opened up for tours for the public. Right. Well, the surrounding land was sold off for suburban development. Bummer. Yeah. And that's how we got the modern tourist trap. Yeah, from ghost trap to tourist trap. Exactly.

I mean, really, the tourist is a form of ghost. That's true. Okay. Just, just, just leave. Yeah. Just leave that. Winchester, Winchester, don't, don't like, you know, back me up on Casaville Ghosts.

That's working through it mentally and trying to figure out. Totally. It's like you're like wandering. It's like you're wandering. Yeah. And you're like, ontology is when you are a spooky ghost. That's, that's a different country. It's spending a lot of money.

Are they all white usually? That kind of works. Yeah. That's true. That's true. To pale people with like cameras. Yeah. No, I got up.

We tried. Tourists are ghosts. You heard it here. You heard it here first folks. That's why I'm not a tourist. I'm a traveler. Hope you get picked back in it. So, um, yeah, uh, you can now go visit the Winchester Mystery

House as Jake has and see things. Oh, that's almost as excited. How, how, how, how spooky is it? It's my question. It was cool. Me and my friend, Sara, I drank a bunch of tequila out of the trunk of her car before we went in and then we did. Just like loose in the trunk or.

Yeah. I just said, you know how it goes. We had some trunk tequila going and the thing is, if you try to drink before you go in, it's a very long tour because it's like a hundred rooms of a house, some lady built. And so if you have to, um, go to the bathroom, it really breaks the one in 13 shots. Well, it's no, there's actually like a tour guide that goes

like, all right. And then they take you and they like take you through, you know, it's kind of cool. We get to go through a secret passage. If you have to go to the bathroom because you drank too much tequila because they have to get you back to the gift shop as quick as possible. And so they, they all know how to get around in it.

It's fun. It's fine. It's, you know, the, you hear all the stories that we just talked about, but then like you also walk past a room and it's just got like, um, like spirit Halloween caution tape over it and like a plastic skeleton hanging in it. And you're like, what's that for? And they're like, that's for a high school Halloween party

we're having next week. Don't pay attention to that. It's really, really serious and spooky and yada, yada, yada. And the pretense of the place kind of falls apart because of all that, but it's still pretty cool. The stairs are cool. There's like a room where they say like she did some weird shit where she like dropped somebody through a trap door

or something. Yeah, I can't really exact story, but she would fuck with people because of she thought they were ghosts and stuff. Oh yeah. You would think that everyone you saw was a ghost. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It's pretty cool. You got, you know, mailman shows up. You just drop them through a trap door into your labyrinth. Ah, let's try a male ghost. Actually less complex than the house. These ghosts are getting fucking devious. Yeah. No, I highly recommend it though.

It's worth it. It's like 20 bucks or some shit. That's definitely, definitely haunted though. Definitely haunted. Yeah, for sure. Or haunted by all the tourists in it. Yeah. Yeah.

It's got a bunch of exactly. It's got a bunch of like architectural shit that's designed to like throw you off balance though, right? Like either or like or accidentally does like the fucking like short staircases or whatever. Yeah. Well, I mean like the short staircases like like we were talking about where they're not, they're actually not part

of that there because she had arthritis, but they are very disorienting and weird and like it. I don't know if the question of intention is always kind of hanging out of the air because we're talking about a crazy person, you know, but I think in the stuff that she did that was designed to intent to throw off ghosts. She did make a very weird space that is disorienting to be it. So it is cool because it feels maze like and it's kind of

like being in one of those optical illusion museum installations or something where it's off your sense of perspective and stuff. But there's also like a high school student who's explaining it all to you. That's kind of taking you out of the moment the whole time. It's also beautiful. Like the weird courtyards and stuff are cool.

You can see where the tower like fell and used to be. Oh, I think that's that's about all I remember. The gift shops cool. You can see a bunch of weird old Winchester stuff and read history about how they sold rifles to people and got rich off the war created all ghosts. Really is a ghost factory. If you think about it, yeah, it's a ghost refinery even.

Yeah. So I guess they're just they tried to make a film about this recently, like a spooky film about it. It's scary, which is a hot half remembered and then went. Hey, do you remember the? Remember the you remember the one that has the Winchester mystery house in it? That is more specific.

That is true. We see we we see what happens when a rich person takes advice from a medium or other similarly supernaturally inclined person. They create a weird house. Now, luckily this never happened again. Yeah, luckily this was never something that another very important and powerful person did. Such as say Ronald Reagan.

I mean, we don't know. Maybe the sort of like underlevel of the White House with the fucking situation room and shit is like an underground bunker version of the Winchester mystery house. Yeah, you gotta keep Lincoln's ghost confined down there. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's just how he was shot by a gun. Maybe he's in the house.

I don't know. I don't know what I don't know. Abraham Lincoln and a shitload of dead Confederates staring daggers at each other. Now that's a bad vibe right there. Yeah, can't even fight each other because they're all ghosts. They just pass through each other. You just do a symbolic fight.

Now, what did we learn? Big spooky house. Big spooky house. Grover, Grover a ghost. Always always try to outbuild ghosts. There's a kind of ghost. Therefore always try and outbuild tourists. Is is Grover house a kind of mystery house?

Yes. That's what I think too. Yeah, unequivocally. Yes. It was cool when the tower fell down. That was kind of an engineering disaster. Yeah. That's your engineering.

That was the engineering disaster. Yeah. That was on brand. You know, what is the deal? It's like a free floating base. So when earthquakes happen, everything just shifts around. Yeah. It's built on like a raft basically.

Yeah. It's a floating foundation is where the foundation is, you know, like a concrete slab or something, which is equal to the weight of the building and on top of it. So it displaces an equivalent amount of soil and therefore it's basically buoyant in the ground. You know, it's floating on dirt. Oh, yes.

To the tune of walking on sunshine. Yes. Yeah. All right. Walking on the moon. Yes. All right. Well, we have a segment on this podcast called safety third.

Yes. Okay, this is a complicated one. Oh boy. Yeah. Good day. Well, there's your problem crew. Good day. Good day.

I used to work in telecommunications construction industry. I still do, but I used to as well. Hedberg. Nice. Yes. I was working as a telecom lineman for one of the big three telcos in Canada, but had just put in my two weeks of notice since I wanted to get out of Toronto, but was too low on the

seniority list to get transferred. We were asked to pull a dead copper cable out of a series of underground manholes to make room for a new high count fiber optic cable. Okay. Three pieces of equipment that are key to the safety third. First, a collapsible capstem. This is the yellow metal thing here that looks kind of spooky.

It does look kind of spooky. Capstads are used to multiply pulling force on the rope or cable. And in this particular one was driven by a hydraulic motor on a posey truck. I don't know what a posey truck is. Ozzy truck. P O S I.

Anyway, hold on. I'm going to Google this. Posse truck. What is Posse on a truck? It is a short and generic term for the GM branded. Posse traction differential. I see. The second thing is mule tape.

Mule tape is a deceptively strong woven flat tape mostly used in conduits. They come in many strengths. The two in this instance being 1800 and 2500 pounds. And finally the cable swivel. This little guy down here is a solid steel tool that attaches between the cable being pulled and the mule tape, which helps prevent the cable and rope from twisting.

However, if something were to snap with it close to the end, it would cause the swivel to fly out towards the pulling end with immense velocity like a bullet. Oh, good. Yes. Now I was paired with a senior line crew and had to pull the old copper out. There were three manholes all next to heavily trafficked

Toronto streets. And you can you can see how that's arranged here, right? Despite going through a diagram. Beautiful. Despite going through three manholes and at least two 90 degree terms, the very expect experienced crew elected to use the marginally cheaper 1800 pound mule tape. They also didn't use any sheaves or pulleys to make the rope

or cable flow or protection on the lip of the manhole, which causes a dish additional friction. My job was to take the end of the mule tape being pulled over the cap stain, maintain tension. So the cap stain does its job without being getting tangled and coil the excess. So he's he's at my job was to be the like red highlighted figure in a line handling prevention video.

My my my my job was to do the work. It seems like my job was to stand near the thing while the other two guys are just like they made the decisions about what to do and I did it. Fair enough. Fair enough. In my attached diagram, this puts me high vis orange circle down here in line with the cap stand and the manhole being

pulled from, which that's the manhole. And I guess that that's the thing here. Right. This diagram is not the scale. Now I like beer, but I'm not one third the size of a posi truck. Maybe you're not mode mode. The cable pulling was going well.

Then suddenly halfway through, I heard a loud crack. Before I could even react. I was struck by a big piece of the mule tape. A smooth criminal. Yes. I was very scary, but I was unheard. I told the guys, hey, we should switch over to the 2,500 pound mule tape.

But I was the junior guy. So what the fuck do I know? They pulled back enough to reattach the 1,800 pound tape and we carry on as before. Minutes later, I heard another crack and I was struck in the chest by the mule tape for a second time. This time I was pissed. I told them to pull the fucking cable back and do it again

with the 2,500 pound tape or I'm just going to take my truck and leave. And so they relented and we swapped to the 2,500 pound tape. I grit my teeth and continue. This correction went okay and we were able to finish the job. However, if those mule tape breaks were closer to the end, the swivel would have likely rocketed into my head, likely resulting in hospitalization.

Then he's written here. But I'm bad at I'm bum shake hands with danger. That's the McDonald's steam chain. That's not like shake hands. Well, I'm glad they didn't die. I was about to say it's always nice when people don't die. Um, unlike all of Mary Sarah Winchester's relatives. This guy would have had to have built an even weirder house

for guys who have been killed by the tape that he was describing. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He'd have to he'd have to build like I'd have to be full of just bad wiring. Shiloh the manholes. It's just knob and tube wiring. Maybe it's just a haunted posi truck that he just drives around

with the ghosts of that guy specifically. Some say dark and windless night. You can still see the fucking headless posi truck lineman. Well, that was safety third. The next episode is on the the common area. No, it isn't. No, it's not. No, it's not.

No, it isn't. I'm going to keep doing this. Molasses. Blood. Yes. Awesome. Alaska. Oh, man.

That's what that is. That's a good one. So much more asses. We're definitely going to do that next week when we do that. Mm hmm. Anyone have commercials before we go? Yeah. Jake Flores.

Where can people find more of you? When's this come out? Wednesday. Wednesday. Oh, cool. All right. Halloween weekend. I've been Gainesville, Florida at Fest, the punk festival doing

comedy on the comedy stage. And I've been Jacksonville on November 1st. Sorry. My oh yeah. People there. I'm doing stuff with her cool, but the rest of the city. You I have a podcast called Poddam America and another one called why you mad?

It's, you know, same old leftist bullshit. You're probably used to and a feral jokes on everything. It's an anagram for my name. That's it. End of flux. Oh yeah. All right. Excellent.

Liam and I have podcasts. You know, those podcasts are Justin tell you anyway. Yeah. Kill James Bond trash future. 10,000 losses. Lions led by donkeys. Yeah. That's it.

That's posts. That's podcasts. All right. Well, gee, that was podcast. It was through everyone. Yeah. Bye. All right.

Yeah, that was that was a nice quick one. We did it.