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Speaker 1: You're listening to Unexplained Season four, episode twenty one, The Underweight,

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Speaker 1: Part two. The rain pelted the windows as thunder cracked

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Speaker 1: and rattled ferociously about the sky. Tossing in their bed,

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Speaker 1: Judith and Sam Haney tried their best to ignore it.

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Speaker 1: Another heavy storm had hit Section eight of the Newport's subdivision,

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Speaker 1: but it wasn't just the storm that was keeping them awake.

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Speaker 1: Ever since they'd uncovered the bones in their garden, the

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Speaker 1: pair had been racked with guilt for having desecrated the grave,

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Speaker 1: but also with shame for having, albeit unwittingly, moved into

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Speaker 1: a house that had quite possibly been built on top

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Speaker 1: of a graveyard. Having finally dozed off, who wasn't long

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Speaker 1: until Sam was snapping awake again. In the dark, he

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Speaker 1: lay for a moment, just listening to the sound of

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Speaker 1: the wind and the rain lashing down against the house,

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Speaker 1: when slowly he became aware of something else, voices. Thinking

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Speaker 1: that he might still be dreaming, a sudden flash of

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Speaker 1: lightning brought him to his senses. Hearing the voices again,

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Speaker 1: Sam realized they were coming from the TV in the

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Speaker 1: living room. Stepping quietly from the bed, he made his

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Speaker 1: way into the hall at the bottom of which a

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Speaker 1: gentle light was flickering against the walls. Turning into the

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Speaker 1: living room, Sam stood for a moment, mesmerized by the

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Speaker 1: silent images playing out on the TV screen, confused as

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Speaker 1: to how on earth it had somehow turned itself on

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Speaker 1: in the middle of the night, who switched it off

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Speaker 1: at the wall and made his way back to bed.

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Speaker 1: The following morning, Judith searched everywhere for her work shoes,

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Speaker 1: but couldn't find them anywhere. Asking Sam in the kitchen

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Speaker 1: if he'd seen them, she was suddenly drawn to something

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Speaker 1: out in the garden. The couple had had the grave

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Speaker 1: filled in again as soon as the bones had been

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Speaker 1: collected by the coroner, and had planted some flowers on

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Speaker 1: top as a sign of respect, But now there was

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Speaker 1: something else placed there too, Judith's missing shoes, and that

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Speaker 1: was only the beginning. Over the next few days, the

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Speaker 1: couple were beset by a series of strange occurrences, from

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Speaker 1: lights flashing on and off, to unaccountable noises, and that

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Speaker 1: sinister sensation that, unbeknownst to them, had also been plaguing

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Speaker 1: their neighbors, Jean and Ben Williams. The feeling that they

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Speaker 1: weren't quite alone in their house. When the bone analysis

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Speaker 1: came back from the coroner's office, it was discovered that

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Speaker 1: there were, in fact two skeletons buried side by side.

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Speaker 1: Wedding rings found on their fingers suggested that they'd been

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Speaker 1: a married couple. Both were determined to have died of

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Speaker 1: natural causes sometime in the nineteen thirties. The bones were

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Speaker 1: eventually delivered back to the Hanes at their request. The

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Speaker 1: request had been made primarily because the couple believed it

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Speaker 1: important that the bones be returned to where they had

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Speaker 1: come from out of respect. However, it also hadn't been

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Speaker 1: lost on them that those peculiar disturbances had only begun

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Speaker 1: after the grave had been disturbed. The couple placed the

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Speaker 1: bones inside a specially made pine wood box alongside a

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Speaker 1: single rose, and buried them back in the spot where

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Speaker 1: they'd originally been found. A few weeks later, after a

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Speaker 1: period of calm, Judith was woken by flashes of electric

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Speaker 1: blue light coming from the alarm clock at the back

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Speaker 1: of the bedroom. She looked aghast at the digital clock

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Speaker 1: as electric sparks shot out at the top of it,

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Speaker 1: hurrying to switch it off. She was confused to find

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Speaker 1: that it wasn't even plugged in. Moments later, the clock

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Speaker 1: shut itself off. It wasn't long before news of the

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Speaker 1: hans gruesome discovery, not just the grave, but the possibility

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Speaker 1: that it might be only one of many in the

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Speaker 1: neighborhood reached the other residents of Poppits Way, having been

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Speaker 1: one of the first to hear about it. The next day,

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Speaker 1: Jean and Ben Williams wandered out into their garden and

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Speaker 1: stared long and hard at the numerous six foot long

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Speaker 1: depressions in the soil that were dotted all around, and

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Speaker 1: at those strange markings carved into the bark of the

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Speaker 1: great oak at the corner of their home that Jean

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Speaker 1: had grown so fond of. It was as if they

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Speaker 1: were seeing them, only then for the first time, an

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Speaker 1: arrow pointing down and two small lines scratched in underneath.

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Speaker 1: Since the death of Jean's brother the previous year, there

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Speaker 1: had been little let up in the misery that seemed

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Speaker 1: to have engulfed the family since Jean and Ben had

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Speaker 1: moved to Newport barely two years ago. Not long after

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Speaker 1: Glen died, Jean's father was diagnosed with cancer, too, becoming

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Speaker 1: the fifth family member to be diagnosed with a life

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Speaker 1: threatening illness since they moved into their new home. One night,

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Speaker 1: Carly's cat, Smoky, disappeared into the woods at the back

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Speaker 1: of the garden, only to reappear out of the blue

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Speaker 1: a week later, seeming somehow changed. After he tore apart

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Speaker 1: a bedspread and then tat Carlie unexpectedly, one night, the

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Speaker 1: family took him to the vet. It wasn't clear exactly

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Speaker 1: what ailment had worked its way inside him, but whatever

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Speaker 1: it was, it was killing him, causing him great pain

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Speaker 1: and distress in the process. Faced with an impossible choice,

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Speaker 1: the family elected to have Smokey put down or the

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Speaker 1: while the family continued to hear what they took to

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Speaker 1: be footsteps moving about at night, and labored under the

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Speaker 1: continual sense that they were being watched by things unseen.

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Speaker 1: Some relief had arrived toward the end of nineteen eighty two,

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Speaker 1: when Tina was given the all clear from Hodgkins lymphoma,

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Speaker 1: but before long, the now familiar dark clouds of misery

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Speaker 1: had drifted back into view. In March nineteen eighty three,

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Speaker 1: on the exact same day as her brother the year before,

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Speaker 1: Jean's father Robert died. It was an unusual coincidence, to

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Speaker 1: say the least, and one that only exacerbated the impact

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Speaker 1: of an already traumatic event, with the hanes gruesome discovery

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Speaker 1: and all that that might entail coming only a few

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Speaker 1: months later. At first, it merely compounded everything else. Soon, however,

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Speaker 1: for Jean, at least, finally, it seemed there might be

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Speaker 1: an answer to it. All. The grave's discovery, the strange activity,

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Speaker 1: the illnesses, deaths, and even their daughters Marcia, Anne's broken

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Speaker 1: marriage and Judith having to give up custody of Carly.

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Speaker 1: Might all of it be connected? With Jean, now convinced

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Speaker 1: more than ever that something about the location was bringing

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Speaker 1: so much tragedy to the family, her and Ben's thoughts

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Speaker 1: once again turned to escape. However, not long after finding

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Speaker 1: the bones, the Hanes began a lawsuit against the developers

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Speaker 1: of the Newport subdivision, accusing them of knowingly building on

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Speaker 1: top of graves and failing to disclose that information to

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Speaker 1: their clients. And when the case hit the news, the

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Speaker 1: Williamses struggled to find anyone willing to pay a suitable

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Speaker 1: price for their home. The next eighty months, however, proved

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Speaker 1: relatively calm for the family, who, although they couldn't yet move,

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Speaker 1: had found the perfect place in Montana to at least

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Speaker 1: give them something positive to focus on. Tina had also

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Speaker 1: continued to thrive since getting the all clear from Hodgkins's disease,

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Speaker 1: and by the end of nineteen eighty four she was

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Speaker 1: married and pregnant. In February the following year, Jean noticed

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Speaker 1: the Hanes escorting an elderly man around the neighborhood, but

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Speaker 1: soon realized it was he that was escorting them, stopping

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Speaker 1: every so often to point something out to them. The man,

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Speaker 1: as she later found out, was Jasper Norton, an eighty

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Speaker 1: year old resident of Bared Station, a small township located

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Speaker 1: at the other side of the woods that backed onto

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Speaker 1: Jean and Ben's property. The area had once been part

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Speaker 1: of the McKinney plantation. Some time after the abolition of

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Speaker 1: slavery in eighteen sixty five, a three acre section of

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Speaker 1: it had supposedly been deeded by the McKinneys to their

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Speaker 1: former slaves. Many of those who still lived there were

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Speaker 1: descendants of those people, Jasper with one of them. As

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Speaker 1: Jasper went on to explain to the Haynes, the land

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Speaker 1: had once been home to a church, a school, and

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Speaker 1: a graveyard known locally as Black Hope Cemetery, a final

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Speaker 1: resting place for the community that had grown up around it.

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Speaker 1: According to Jasper, who'd been helping to bury people there

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Speaker 1: since the age of fourteen, much of Section eight had

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Speaker 1: been built on top of the graveyard, and Jean and

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Speaker 1: Ben Williams's home was right in the middle of it.

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Speaker 1: Are you always taking care of your family? Do you

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Speaker 1: often take care of others and not yourself? Now it's

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Speaker 1: time to take care of yourself, to make time for you.

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Speaker 1: Download the app or visit teledoc dot com forward slash

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Speaker 1: Unexplained podcast today to get started. That's t e ladoc

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Speaker 1: dot com slash Unexplained podcast. The neighbors were understandably shocked

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Speaker 1: by Jasper's story. It would be one thing to have

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Speaker 1: unknowingly built a housing development over a grave site, quite

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Speaker 1: another to have built it over an entire graveyard. But

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Speaker 1: that was the thing. Just how much had the development

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Speaker 1: company known about it. As the Haneys legal suit rattled on,

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Speaker 1: Gene and Ben drove out to bed Station to speak

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Speaker 1: with some of the local residents to learn more about

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Speaker 1: the cemetery for themselves. Their meetings were documented, along with

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Speaker 1: the rest of the Williams's experiences living in Newport, in

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Speaker 1: their nineteen ninety one book Black Hope Horror, written in

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Speaker 1: collaboration with John Bruce shoemaker. Ninety year old Elbert Pritchard

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Speaker 1: came to the area from Louisiana with his mother and

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Speaker 1: stepfather in nineteen hundred and recalled that even then they

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Speaker 1: were burying bodies in the local area. His own stepfather

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Speaker 1: was buried there too. He also confirmed that the Williams's

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Speaker 1: home was placed directly in the middle of the site.

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Speaker 1: Will Freeman, his name a stark testament to his family's past,

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Speaker 1: was blind, and in his nineties when the Williams has

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Speaker 1: met with him, Freeman explained that bodies would often be

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Speaker 1: buried haphazardly because the land that had been granted to

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Speaker 1: the freed people was either too boggy to do anything with,

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Speaker 1: otherwise it was too rocky or wooded. Most of his neighbors,

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Speaker 1: having been so institutionally crippled by slavery, who were unable

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Speaker 1: to afford formal burials or even headstones for their loved ones.

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Speaker 1: Will Freeman also remembered the difficulty of trying to find

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Speaker 1: a suitable place to bury his two sisters, eventually settling

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Speaker 1: on a spot right next to an old oak tree.

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Speaker 1: And if he wasn't mistaken, as he went on to

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Speaker 1: explain to Jean and Ben, you might still be able

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Speaker 1: to find it due to the markings he'd made in

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Speaker 1: the bark of the tree, a large arrow pointing downwards

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Speaker 1: and two straight lines underneath. Jean felt a sudden lurch

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Speaker 1: in her stomach when he said it recognizing those symbols

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Speaker 1: immediately as the ones on the tree at the corner

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Speaker 1: of her home. There was no question now that Jean

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Speaker 1: and Ben had to find a way out for their

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Speaker 1: family's sake as well as theirs. Though Jean didn't know

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Speaker 1: who or what it was exactly, she was convinced that

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Speaker 1: something had been ruptured by the act of desecrating so

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Speaker 1: many graves, and whatever had materialized as a consequence had

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Speaker 1: focused its attention on them. With property values declining as

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Speaker 1: much as seventy percent. Now that the cemetery's existence had

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Speaker 1: become more widely known, their only hope was to seek

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Speaker 1: legal compensation. But despite testimony from bed Station Residence that

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Speaker 1: the McKinneys had once needed the land where the cemetery

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Speaker 1: was located to their former slaves and their descendants, this

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Speaker 1: arrangement had never been officially recognized as such when the

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Speaker 1: housing development company later bought it from the McKinney family. Legally,

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Speaker 1: they hadn't done anything wrong. Had they known about the

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Speaker 1: cemetery before building on top of it and not disclosed

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Speaker 1: this information to future buyers, the might have been reasonable

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Speaker 1: grounds to sue. However, since the state hadn't formally recognized

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Speaker 1: the symmetry either, there was no way to prove that

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Speaker 1: the company had any prior knowledge of its existence. After

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Speaker 1: seeking advice from their lawyer, it was decided that the

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Speaker 1: next best option for the Williamses was to seek compensation

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Speaker 1: from the title company for the loss of value. Only

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Speaker 1: there was one big catch. Even if they succeeded in

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Speaker 1: convincing a jury that compensation was justified, they would ultimately

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Speaker 1: need physical evidence of the semmetry for a judge to

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Speaker 1: award it to them. In order to do this, however,

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Speaker 1: would mean deliberately digging up a grave, which, even if

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Speaker 1: the grave is not formally recognized, could in itself be

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Speaker 1: deemed an illegal act, effectively avoiding their claim. After a

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Speaker 1: period of relative calm in the fall of nineteen eighty six,

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Speaker 1: Jean and Ben were woken one night by what sounded

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Speaker 1: like heavy footsteps padding up the corridor toward their bedroom.

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Speaker 1: Remembering all that had come before, the couple lay paralyzed

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Speaker 1: in fear as the steps drew closer and closer, with

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Speaker 1: their eyes fixed on the open doorway. For a moment,

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Speaker 1: a shadow seemed to fall across it, only to slip

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Speaker 1: away again as the sound of footsteps continued on, now

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Speaker 1: heading toward Carly's room. The couple leapt from their bed

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Speaker 1: and darted into the hall. Jean gasped at the sight

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Speaker 1: of Carly's closed bedroom door at the end of the

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Speaker 1: corridor and the sliver of light peeking out from underneath it.

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Speaker 1: She always left it open at night. The couple later

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Speaker 1: claimed to have found Carly sat bolt upright in bed

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Speaker 1: but fast asleep, with what appeared to be a number

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Speaker 1: of transparent shapes crowded around the bed. Clutching the crucifix

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Speaker 1: around her neck, Jeanne had then proceeded to pray loudly

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Speaker 1: until the figures had apparently slowly dissolved away. The following morning,

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Speaker 1: jean knew exactly what to do. It would be wrong

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Speaker 1: to say it felt good ramming the spade into the

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Speaker 1: dirt at the base of the large oak tree, but

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Speaker 1: there was little denying the sense of relief that jean

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Speaker 1: felt now she'd finally taken matters into her own hands.

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Speaker 1: After almost an hour, however, with the ground full of

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Speaker 1: stones and roots, Jeanne had barely got more than a

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Speaker 1: foot down when she was forced to call it a day.

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Speaker 1: The next day was more of the same as Jean

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Speaker 1: continued to work away at the pit, but no matter

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Speaker 1: how hard she tried, she seemed barely to make a

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Speaker 1: dent in it. By lunch time, with some help from Ben,

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Speaker 1: she was about three feet down when Tina arrived with

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Speaker 1: her new baby to look after Jeanne's mother for the afternoon.

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Speaker 1: Angered to find Jean attempting to dig up the grave,

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Speaker 1: Tina suggested that they just forget the whole thing and

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Speaker 1: move on, as surely, if disturbing the graves had been

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Speaker 1: the cause of all their misery, what good could possibly

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Speaker 1: come out of disturbing another one. That evening, with Ben

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Speaker 1: and Jean returned, Tina's husband joined the rest of the

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Speaker 1: family for dinner. Later, with the family gathered together in

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Speaker 1: the living room, Tina suddenly doubled over in pain. Ben

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Speaker 1: yelled for some one to call an ambulance as he

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Speaker 1: tried his best to comfort his daughter, who knew instantly

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Speaker 1: that something was deeply wrong. Tina, who was judged to

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Speaker 1: have suffered a massive heart attack, lost consciousness on the

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Speaker 1: way to hospital and would never regain it. After spending

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Speaker 1: three days on life's support, the family agreed to turn

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Speaker 1: it off, with Tina's untimely death. A final line had

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Speaker 1: been crossed. After seven years of cumulative grief and terror,

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Speaker 1: Jean and Ben simply packed their bags and left, canceling

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Speaker 1: all future payments on their mortgage until finally the lender

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Speaker 1: had no choice but to foreclose on the house, taking

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Speaker 1: their eighteen thousand dollars deposit with it. Like their neighbors,

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Speaker 1: the Marshals and Andersons, who had also been driven out

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Speaker 1: at the neighborhood under similar circumstances, the Williamses, who resettled

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Speaker 1: in Bitter Root, Montana, lost their whole investment. In total,

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Speaker 1: seven of the area's eight original homes would eventually be

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Speaker 1: abandoned by their owners. In May nineteen eighty seven, the

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Speaker 1: Haines lawsuit against the housing development company finally came to

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Speaker 1: an end. Although at first having convinced a jury to

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Speaker 1: find in their favor, with the couple being awarded one

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Speaker 1: hundred and forty two thousand dollars in compensation, this was

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Speaker 1: ultimately overruled on appeal. The judge presiding over the case

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Speaker 1: concluded that there was no evidence to confirm the company

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Speaker 1: had been intentionally negligent. The remains of the married couple

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Speaker 1: found in the Hanes garden were eventually removed and reburied

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Speaker 1: in the nearest Perpetual Care cemetery. The couple were later

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Speaker 1: identified as most likely being Betty and Charlie Thomas, who'd

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Speaker 1: both been born in the mid nineteenth century. For many years,

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Speaker 1: the Hanes visited the Thomas's new grave to leave flowers

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Speaker 1: and pay their respects. Other individuals thought to have been

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Speaker 1: buried in Black Hope Cemetery and unmarked graves are Becky Thornton,

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Speaker 1: Tom Fawced, Billy Cash, Rosy Booth, Joseph Freeman, D. J. Bradley,

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Speaker 1: Ella Freeman, Maude Holmes, John Frejoy, Louise Childress, Roy Childress,

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Speaker 1: Mary Francis, Terence Brossard, Charlie Bates, Ben Hubley, Many Booths,

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Speaker 1: Bob Hunter, Joe Turner, Nancy Turner, and Billy Parrish. Unexplained.

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Speaker 1: The book and audio book, featuring ten stories that have

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00:21:36,600 --> 00:21:39,520
Speaker 1: never before been covered on the show, is now available

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Speaker 1: to buy worldwide. You can purchase through Amazon, Barnes and Noble,

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Speaker 1: and Waterstones, among other bookstores. All elements of Unexplained, including

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Speaker 1: the show's music, are produced by me Richard McClane smith.

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Speaker 1: podcasts and feel free to get in touch with any

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Speaker 1: thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show.

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Speaker 1: dot com, or Twitter at Unexplained Pod and Facebook at

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