Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Noel.
Speaker 3: They call me Ben.
Speaker 4: We're joined as always with our super producer Paul, Mission
Speaker 4: Control decand most importantly, you are here. That makes this
Speaker 4: the stuff they don't want you to know, coming to
Speaker 4: you live from various places, emphasis on live, which will
Speaker 4: be important later in the show. One of the most
Speaker 4: amazing things about our imperfect country, the United States, is
Speaker 4: no fooling, it's national parks. It's a huge, huge country,
Speaker 4: and a lot of it is dedicated to wildlife. And
Speaker 4: I think we've all had that experience when you talk
Speaker 4: to someone who's not from the US and they're like, Hey,
Speaker 4: we're gonna land in New York. What are you doing
Speaker 4: this weekend? Oh, we thought we'd drive over to Chicago.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's so many amazing national parks in the western
Speaker 2: side of the contiguous United States. I've not done extensive
Speaker 2: traveling over there, but man, it makes me want to
Speaker 2: just exist on that side of the country for a
Speaker 2: while just to see the parks.
Speaker 5: Well, I'll tell you who has done that to a
Speaker 5: great degree is a friend of the show, Alex Williams,
Speaker 5: who has posted up in many a national park in
Speaker 5: that and other parts of the country.
Speaker 6: He is a bit of an outdoorsman.
Speaker 4: I love it, I love it and a huge fan
Speaker 4: of maps as well. Check out his show Ephemeral, which
Speaker 4: in my mind proves what podcast can be and can do.
Speaker 4: You also, a spoiler, might hear some familiar voices in
Speaker 4: those episodes. Now we have been fortunate to explore some,
Speaker 4: but by no means all, of the US national parks
Speaker 4: in person, and they're absolutely worth it. The US is
Speaker 4: vast to a degree, it's still filled with wild country,
Speaker 4: and it's home to so much amazing flora and fauna.
Speaker 4: Yet depending upon whom you ask, these national parks may
Speaker 4: also be home to something else ghost. Let's begin the tour.
Speaker 4: Here are the facts. We won't spend too much time
Speaker 4: on this, but it's important to know the history of
Speaker 4: national parks.
Speaker 6: That's right.
Speaker 5: The story of the National parks system officially begins back
Speaker 5: in March of eighteen hundred and seventy one, when Congress
Speaker 5: created the Yellowstone National Park and the what was then
Speaker 5: territories of Montana and Wyoming under the control of the
Speaker 5: Secretary of the Interior. So I've always found to be
Speaker 5: a bit of a perplexing concept, the interior of what
Speaker 5: like everything within the United States.
Speaker 6: I don't know, it's a weird one, but what are
Speaker 6: you gonna do?
Speaker 5: And this was as a benefit for the public, the
Speaker 5: idea of you know, having green spaces where people can
Speaker 5: hang out and maintaining them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, son, gone are the days of you know, the
Speaker 4: European royal reserves. Right, Like back in Europe, under various monarchies,
Speaker 4: the king or the crown would have their own hunting
Speaker 4: lands and peasants could be executed for venturing onto these grounds.
Speaker 4: So it's a big step to say, hey, we were
Speaker 4: keeping this green space for everyone.
Speaker 2: Well except for the indigenous peoples prior to that, right,
Speaker 2: and even some homeowners that you know, people who had
Speaker 2: moved west especially and kind of staked their own land.
Speaker 2: And then somebody came through and said, actually, this is
Speaker 2: part of our thing now, so you've got to go, you.
Speaker 5: Guys, I was about to say, I recently kind of
Speaker 5: started thinking about the idea of how much we take
Speaker 5: for granted, the idea of land, you know, owning land,
Speaker 5: who does the land belong to? Luckily, I guess through
Speaker 5: a lot of convoluted legal practices and documents and things
Speaker 5: like that, we've more or less sorted that out. People
Speaker 5: can't just come and plant a flag in your yard,
Speaker 5: but there was a time where that would come and
Speaker 5: you would pay the blood price.
Speaker 4: And litigation continues today with various Native American communities who
Speaker 4: are regaining control of land that was repeatedly stolen from them.
Speaker 4: This is simply an historical fact, and I think it's
Speaker 4: also very American for there to be these beautiful ideas
Speaker 4: and writing and concept with ugly real world practices behind them.
Speaker 4: I mean, what happened, as imperfect and at times evil
Speaker 4: as it was, is that the creation of Yellowstone led
Speaker 4: to a global movement to create, maintain, and if needed,
Speaker 4: protect national parks. And that protection clause becomes ever more
Speaker 4: important as industry starts coming in and saying things like, hey,
Speaker 4: we'll sponsor this park, and all we want in exchange
Speaker 4: is the mineral rights you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, or a little chunk of we want to
Speaker 2: have access to a little chunk of land to do
Speaker 2: our thing, and you can you all keep the rest.
Speaker 2: We don't want that. We just need this one area
Speaker 2: because there's lots of copper.
Speaker 4: Over here, so we'd all us Yeah, we'd also like
Speaker 4: a right to renegotiate this based on what we find.
Speaker 3: You know, every two to five years.
Speaker 2: Well we still see stuff. We talked about it pretty
Speaker 2: recently with when huge car manufacturers are trying to expand
Speaker 2: or something, and that practice of just deciding, well, actually
Speaker 2: we kind of need where we need the stuff that
Speaker 2: you're occupying right now, Like that whole thing, we need that,
Speaker 2: so we're going to use the laws to take it.
Speaker 3: Our domain is imminent. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And Ben, I don't think this. I really like
Speaker 2: where you're going here with the positive side of national
Speaker 2: parks because I think for me personally, national parks are
Speaker 2: on the whole a majorly positive thing. I just I
Speaker 2: think you're right to say that there's like this this
Speaker 2: side to it, right that like everything is a little
Speaker 2: darker than we we'd like to think about it.
Speaker 5: Well, look at what we've got, look at all this
Speaker 5: natural splendor you know that exists under our purview.
Speaker 6: But let's not talk about the ugly way.
Speaker 3: We got it right right.
Speaker 4: People stumble into places like Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon
Speaker 4: or glaciers and they say this is amazing, and then
Speaker 4: millennia old cultures say, yeah, we know we live here.
Speaker 6: We were there, so we were there, dude, we're there.
Speaker 4: The whole time. One more step in history we owe
Speaker 4: to President Theodore Roosevelt, most famous of course for inspiring
Speaker 4: the stuffed teddy bear he creates. He's like the famous
Speaker 4: amateur wrestler Abraham Lincoln. He creates the National Parks movement,
Speaker 4: the big one, because he's inspired by a naturalist and
Speaker 4: very eccentric convenor named John Muir.
Speaker 5: Wasn't Roosevelt also like a big game hunter. He liked
Speaker 5: the sale stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, conservationist meant a different thing back then.
Speaker 6: I guess it did.
Speaker 5: It's sort of like Darwin eating every example of a
Speaker 5: species that he discovered.
Speaker 3: Yep, just so true story.
Speaker 4: And shout out to our pal Jack O'Brien who hits
Speaker 4: us to that one a while back. So Mure stood
Speaker 4: tall against the dominant sort of zeitgeist of America at
Speaker 4: the time, which said, look, progress is what we're about.
Speaker 4: We're manifesting destiny. That means the land is here to
Speaker 4: be used, it's just resources to extract, and he would say, no,
Speaker 4: we've got to protect this, and luckily his argument won
Speaker 4: the day he pushed for the eighteen ninety Act that
Speaker 4: created Yosemite National Park, and then he was also instrumental
Speaker 4: in the creation of multiple other parks. That's why he's
Speaker 4: called the father of the National Park System.
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, if there are no kind of base
Speaker 5: level rules around what's like on the table to develop,
Speaker 5: you know, to destroy and kind of like piece together
Speaker 5: other stuff out of, then everything's on the table. So
Speaker 5: it's very important that this was established when it was,
Speaker 5: or else you wouldn't have any of that stuff.
Speaker 4: No, No, we pave the we would pave the world.
Speaker 4: And now the National Park System covers four hundred different areas.
Speaker 6: We're talking about.
Speaker 4: More than eighty four million acres across all fifty US
Speaker 4: states and then the territories and commonwealths including Saipan. Weirdly enough,
Speaker 4: huge Marine Reserve. The service employees over twenty thousand people,
Speaker 4: and that's a lot, but it's nowhere near enough to
Speaker 4: have a single person monitoring every single acre of land.
Speaker 4: The wildlife is dangerous at times. That means that if
Speaker 4: you visit national parks, you are responsible for your interactions
Speaker 4: with the wild adam. It also means that some unscrupulous
Speaker 4: visitors can get away with breaking the rules, polluting, littering,
Speaker 4: starting forest fires and you know, murdering folks well.
Speaker 5: And the people that maintain and you know, watch over
Speaker 5: these parks do it out of passion.
Speaker 6: You know, they love it.
Speaker 5: They're not like highly paid, and oftentimes there's a skeleton.
Speaker 6: Crew kind of situation.
Speaker 5: If there's ever a government shut down or funding gets scarce,
Speaker 5: park maintenance is kind of one of the first things
Speaker 5: to go, as we saw with Joshua Tree and there
Speaker 5: was like a government shutdown and so many people you know,
Speaker 5: vandalized and destroyed a lot of the titular Joshua trees.
Speaker 4: And perhaps most controversially, there is to date, as we record,
Speaker 4: no official tallly of just how many people go missing
Speaker 4: on public land in the United States, and there's there's
Speaker 4: not a great way to fix that either. And we've
Speaker 4: had episodes with experts in this such as Professor Brian
Speaker 4: Colt who talked about the Zone of Death and yellow
Speaker 4: Stone and David Politis from missing for one one, But
Speaker 4: there's another conversation, one that sends a shiver up the
Speaker 4: spine of true believers, and every year, to be honest,
Speaker 4: delivers piles of cash to the park system. Guys, there
Speaker 4: are so many stories of ghost in these public parks.
Speaker 4: Let's gather around the campfire, maybe spins some spooky tales.
Speaker 2: And it's every one. It's every single one. By the way,
Speaker 2: it's not just a couple of parks are haunted. Every
Speaker 2: single one that we've looked at has at least one
Speaker 2: ghost story, whether it's directly tied to, you know, one
Speaker 2: of the most sought after places in the park or
Speaker 2: one of the most sought after inns that is immediately
Speaker 2: on the park, you know, property, or of right like
Speaker 2: adjacent to it.
Speaker 6: Scooby and the gang really have their hands full.
Speaker 4: Everybody gets one Spider Man rules. Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 4: We're not kidding conspiracy realist. Now, sure, some of the
Speaker 4: more skeptical amongst us may automatically roll our eyes or
Speaker 4: tentacles or algorithms, I guess at the thought, but you
Speaker 4: still can't deny millions of visitors appear to at least
Speaker 4: believe they encountered something in as you said, Matt, every
Speaker 4: single National park covered by the Park Service. I mean
Speaker 4: we can start with more notorious examples. The Grand Canyon, dude. Honestly,
Speaker 4: people think the Grand Canyon is haunted. If you've ever
Speaker 4: been there, it looks haunted. It lives up to the hype.
Speaker 4: It is indeed grand.
Speaker 2: There's stuff in them cracks.
Speaker 4: It's probably ghosts or agent civilizations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Ben, what do you what do you think is
Speaker 2: accomplished by the tentacle rolling? Is it the same? Is
Speaker 2: it the same kind of thing with it? It just
Speaker 2: lets just lets people know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, have you I mean, have you ever bored an octopus?
Speaker 3: It's very apparent.
Speaker 6: They do this.
Speaker 2: No, do they find me fascinating.
Speaker 5: When I hear roll tentacles? I'm picturing like it doing
Speaker 5: sort of like a breakdancing move, you.
Speaker 4: Know, nice, nice and h And I also wonder this
Speaker 4: is unrelated, but this is fascinating. We know the octopus dreams.
Speaker 4: I wonder if the octopus encounters ghost or one it
Speaker 4: thinks of the afterlife, that'd be cool story idea octagosts.
Speaker 5: Have you seen the vampire squid? I mean, that thing's
Speaker 5: a demon from hell.
Speaker 4: There's some new pictures of I think it's the glass octopus,
Speaker 4: which is so cool. It's been making the rounds on
Speaker 4: the nature nerd stuff.
Speaker 2: But enough about octopus is let's get to Eldovar Hotel.
Speaker 4: Yes, known for its octopus ghost We're kidding, but it
Speaker 4: is known for ghosts.
Speaker 2: It's uh exclamation marks.
Speaker 3: Oh gosh.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And a lot of the reporting met you and
Speaker 4: I were talking about this off air, and we made
Speaker 4: a little joke about it in the notes because a
Speaker 4: lot of places would copy and paste for lack of
Speaker 4: better work some of the stories and things that come
Speaker 4: directly from the Grand Canyon's official website. And you can
Speaker 4: tell because a lot of them.
Speaker 3: And how'd you put it that? I like the way
Speaker 3: you put it.
Speaker 2: Well, it's ending a sentence as though like all of
Speaker 2: this was happening at the or or you may think
Speaker 2: that was spooky, but what wait until you hear about
Speaker 2: the Eldovar Hotel.
Speaker 4: And it's almost as if the narrator is turning around
Speaker 4: dramatically as soon as they say elov our hotel.
Speaker 2: But yeah, the writing about this hotel, as well as
Speaker 2: a lot of the other stories we're going to be
Speaker 2: talking about today. Do seem to be stories that would
Speaker 2: be easily retold by like a guide, let's say, or
Speaker 2: a bus driver or somebody working at a hotel that's
Speaker 2: going to tell you about the stories that are occurring
Speaker 2: within this specific hotel or this national park.
Speaker 3: Ring ring. Hello, it's me folklore. Yes, because I'm also
Speaker 3: doing the telephone game.
Speaker 2: That's what it feels like, and maybe that's why it's
Speaker 2: a little frustrating as we're you know, researching this topic
Speaker 2: in general. But it's also it does send tingles up
Speaker 2: your spine if any of us to believe. So, I
Speaker 2: guess that's what we're on that journey today.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and if you don't have, I mean to exercise empathy,
Speaker 4: right and understand the perspective. A lot of these people
Speaker 4: who hear these stories and maybe take them at face value,
Speaker 4: they've never heard them before, they don't know how often
Speaker 4: they've been retold. They're hearing them from one person and
Speaker 4: that is key, right.
Speaker 2: And they're just rolling through for a couple of nights, probably.
Speaker 4: Right, exactly exactly they want an experience, right.
Speaker 6: So expectations a hell of a drug.
Speaker 4: Right, Yes, Actually you nailed it. This place, the Eltovar
Speaker 4: hotel is located in a very dramatic spot. It's like
Speaker 4: about twenty feet from the south d of the Grand Canyon.
Speaker 4: It opened in nineteen oh five, so before the Grand
Speaker 4: Canyon National Park was really a thing. And when it opened,
Speaker 4: it was seen as the absolute peak of luxury pun
Speaker 4: very much intended. And I didn't know this, but it
Speaker 4: was part of a chain, a hospitality chain of restaurants
Speaker 4: and lodgings owned by a guy named Fred Harvey. It
Speaker 4: was one of the most famous Harvey hotels of the day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I didn't know what that meant. I had
Speaker 2: no idea what that meant. The Harvey Company's mister Fred Harvey.
Speaker 2: But this guy was apparently one of the most what
Speaker 2: would you call, I don't know, Like I imagine someone
Speaker 2: who owns a hotel that's really excited that you're at
Speaker 2: his hotel, And that is what I see when I
Speaker 2: imagine Fred Harvey.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and he came up along with the age of
Speaker 4: rail you know, and so he would purposely build stuff
Speaker 4: to service passengers on various important railway intersections or passages
Speaker 4: or stops. And yeah, he was an absolute nut about
Speaker 4: it because he was very good at promoting tourism in
Speaker 4: the American Southwest.
Speaker 5: Looks to have also made a stand in Vegas with
Speaker 5: things like the Nevada Lake Tahoe Harvey's Resort, hotel and casino,
Speaker 5: which comes up if you're googling, like crazy Neon signs nice.
Speaker 4: He also got a One of the other things he'll
Speaker 4: be remembered for is being one of the forces that
Speaker 4: kind of tamed the wild West, which was a very
Speaker 4: short period of American history. But he's the one who
Speaker 4: was like, let's bring some sit down restaurants where you know,
Speaker 4: Harvey hotel restaurants, you can eat here without being shot.
Speaker 5: Well sort of the almost like fantasy of the wild
Speaker 5: West that was more sanitized. Like that's a big part
Speaker 5: of what Vegas was was giving people some way to
Speaker 5: feel like they were participating in that kind of like legacy,
Speaker 5: but it was all very you know, kind of buttoned
Speaker 5: up in like disneylandish.
Speaker 4: And this all leads us to El Tovar because obviously.
Speaker 6: He's sounds so cool and sinister.
Speaker 4: Because you have to say it like you've just turned
Speaker 4: around to announce it to the camera exactly, we should
Speaker 4: do a commercial for Altovar. So if it's if you're
Speaker 4: listening Fred from the Afterlife. So okay, this thing's been
Speaker 4: around for more than a century. As the ghost stories start,
Speaker 4: and over time it gets this reputation for bizarre experiences.
Speaker 3: The things you'll read.
Speaker 4: Most often in sort of the copypasta tour guide notes
Speaker 4: are a ghostly figure wandering through the front entrance, a
Speaker 4: painting whose subject appears to like track you wherever you move,
Speaker 4: and so much more.
Speaker 3: We'll get to it, but like.
Speaker 4: First, not to be too much of a MythBuster, but
Speaker 4: we all know what's up with a painting whose eyes
Speaker 4: seem to follow you wherever you go, because we've all
Speaker 4: seen that, Uncle Sam, I want you for the US
Speaker 4: Army picture. It's just perspective that you can paint that
Speaker 4: does not imply a ghost, That implies a pretty talented
Speaker 4: artist at best. But it doesn't answer the questions about
Speaker 4: the You guys saw the thing about the gravestone, right right, So.
Speaker 5: A lot of these stories around, some of these alleged
Speaker 5: hauntings at the hotel hinge on this mysterious gravestone hidden
Speaker 5: and mixed the foliage. The foliage to the left across
Speaker 5: the drive from the front entrance. It's humble small and
Speaker 5: flat on the ground, bearing the very humble, small and
Speaker 5: flat inscription Pearl A Ward eighteen seventy eight nineteen thirty four.
Speaker 3: P I rl Right, I've never seen that spelling before. Pearl.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and a shout out to anybody who just heard
Speaker 4: the ghostly squelches there as we're talking. That is indeed
Speaker 4: my stomach, My stomach is now haunted.
Speaker 6: We'll keep it in.
Speaker 3: Get a meat pie, some fish and chips.
Speaker 6: Is somebody guess where Ben is?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 4: Gosh uh so in in in the red lodge apparently,
Speaker 4: so this is this is weird to me because you
Speaker 4: can we can paint such backstories off such small things.
Speaker 3: Is Pearl p I r L?
Speaker 4: Were Pearl's parents perhaps not very literate, and wanted to
Speaker 4: name their kid after something precious? You know it always yeah,
Speaker 4: breaks your heart. But we won't know because no one
Speaker 4: is exactly sure who Ward Pearl Ward is or was well?
Speaker 5: And is the hidden nature of the stone more a
Speaker 5: product of if things were built around it, or was
Speaker 5: it like obscured for a reason, you know, like the
Speaker 5: questions do come up.
Speaker 3: That is a great question.
Speaker 4: Yeah, can can the altovar somehow not afford landscaping. I mean,
Speaker 4: is that just not in their budget? Do they want
Speaker 4: it to seem like it's in disrepair. In some stories,
Speaker 4: Pearl Ward is a cowboy who dies sort of drifting
Speaker 4: through the area and no one knew their name, this
Speaker 4: person's name when they buried him, and other stories, Pearl
Speaker 4: is a she Pearls a female who is one of
Speaker 4: the hostesses from the Harvey Hotel. They were called Harvey
Speaker 4: Girls at the time, and according to that legend, she lived, worked,
Speaker 4: and died.
Speaker 3: Under unknown circumstances on the property those tours, Ben, it'd
Speaker 3: be great.
Speaker 2: Well, I just you should, Ben, But come on, Usually,
Speaker 2: if this is someone who worked at the hotel, there's
Speaker 2: no record of their passing in the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 4: Right exactly at that point, they would have had to
Speaker 4: have something because it becomes increasingly suspicious, right, especially if
Speaker 4: you're living on the property, you're working with tons of
Speaker 4: other people in this big operation.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I mean, you know, entrepreneurs of that scale
Speaker 5: in that era.
Speaker 6: I would have wanted to cover their butts.
Speaker 2: Okay, there's one scenario where I see it working. Hit
Speaker 2: The gravestone was created by somebody who knew the truth
Speaker 2: about what happened to Pearl ward this person that's not
Speaker 2: actually where Pearl is buried. That has nothing to do
Speaker 2: with that. It's to remind whoever did it, who works
Speaker 2: and or owns the hotel, that of what they did.
Speaker 6: Do we know what you did last summer and.
Speaker 2: Every time you leave the property, you got to see
Speaker 2: your gravestone.
Speaker 4: We could also I mean maybe maybe that birth and
Speaker 4: death date. Maybe it's some sort of code. Oh at
Speaker 4: webs we weave?
Speaker 5: And did they plant the hedge around it? Why didn't
Speaker 5: they just dig it up?
Speaker 3: You know what I mean? Like just no one's exhumed
Speaker 3: it exactly.
Speaker 4: So is it all smoke and mirrors or we should
Speaker 4: say stone and dirt.
Speaker 2: Let don't have some shovels.
Speaker 3: Boys, let's do it.
Speaker 4: And you know what, when we're digging, what we need
Speaker 4: to do is have two of us dig a one
Speaker 4: of us be on the look I call look out. Okay,
Speaker 4: the for the caped figure that is often reported to
Speaker 4: exit the hotel's front stairs and entrance rocket a black
Speaker 4: cape by the way, and then go over two pearls grave,
Speaker 4: hang out there as if in contemplation for a minute,
Speaker 4: and then wander off behind a nearby building called the
Speaker 4: Hope House before disappearing.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and this is my favorite part about Eltovar Hotel.
Speaker 2: There is an elderly gentleman that has been seen walking around.
Speaker 2: He appears sometimes when there's a big party going on,
Speaker 2: sometimes when there's no hardy at.
Speaker 6: All, walking the grounds, you say.
Speaker 2: Walking the grounds and or the house itself, the hotel,
Speaker 2: and he's often giving you a little like if you
Speaker 2: walk up to him as a guest or walk past him,
Speaker 2: he's just kind of there for a moment. He's like, hey,
Speaker 2: oh hey, make sure you head up to the ballroom.
Speaker 2: We got the big gathering to get together. It's gonna
Speaker 2: be a swell time. Head on up there. And guess
Speaker 2: who people think that is?
Speaker 3: Is it Fred Harvey?
Speaker 2: Old Fred Harvey? But there is it is. It does
Speaker 2: get a little weirder because the people see him all
Speaker 2: over the place, right or somebody that they attribute to
Speaker 2: Fred Harvey, but the timeline maybe doesn't match up so good.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the profiling is a little weird too, because old
Speaker 4: Man is not you know, the most specific thing, and
Speaker 4: you know, the spooky, dooky part is when they show
Speaker 4: up at this party, there's no record of them being invited.
Speaker 4: They're like, this old man told me, and they're like,
Speaker 4: what old.
Speaker 5: Man, you've always been the caretakers exact, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: There, or there's no party at all. The hotel staff
Speaker 2: is like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 3: You know, we don't have a holiday party for Arbor Day,
Speaker 3: my friends.
Speaker 5: I've always thought it was so interesting that Stanley Kubrick,
Speaker 5: being such a snob, glombed onto the Shining, because it
Speaker 5: is a bit of a broad you know, Stephen King
Speaker 5: is a bit of a broad rider. But the Shining
Speaker 5: there's something about it that does capitalize on all of
Speaker 5: this stuff we're talking about, the idea of haunted places,
Speaker 5: the idea of like what is the history the tortured
Speaker 5: kind of legacy of a place or whatever it might be.
Speaker 5: And a hotel is the perfect kind of like location
Speaker 5: for stuff like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's e liminal space exactly.
Speaker 2: Think about how difficult it would have been to create
Speaker 2: a giant hotel at the edge of the Grand Canyon
Speaker 2: in the early nineteen hundreds, right late eighteen hundreds to
Speaker 2: the like brand new nineteen hundreds. You're having that stuff
Speaker 2: built and people are probably getting maimed and injured. Really
Speaker 2: badly because you're so far from civilization, right there's you
Speaker 2: can't can't send them on over to the local doctor
Speaker 2: because there's no local doctor, you know, for a couple
Speaker 2: hundred miles or whatever, right Like, that's insane, first of all.
Speaker 2: And also I think this is for me the reasoning
Speaker 2: behind the Fred Harvey sightings. If you were able to
Speaker 2: achieve that feat of creating a giant building out in
Speaker 2: the wilderness like that, you would be massively proud of it,
Speaker 2: right or you, I think likely you'd be massively proud
Speaker 2: of it, and it would be not only an achievement
Speaker 2: of human ingenuity, but placing it where it is to
Speaker 2: be able to look from from within that place you
Speaker 2: built looking out upon the Grand Canyon must be I
Speaker 2: don't know, very close to religious.
Speaker 4: It's ozmendious look upon my works, he mighty. And there's
Speaker 4: one catch though, As as much as I agree with
Speaker 4: you there, Matt on that on that excellent observation, Fred
Speaker 4: never got to see this particular feat because he himself
Speaker 4: passed away in nineteen oh one, four years before the
Speaker 4: completion of.
Speaker 2: That's why he's there, Ben. He never got to see
Speaker 2: it in real life. So now he's got to hang
Speaker 2: out there for just give people, like be their personal
Speaker 2: concierge and.
Speaker 3: Lie at them about when the party's going.
Speaker 2: In his timeline, there as a party and he's super
Speaker 2: excited about it, and he liked.
Speaker 6: Yeah, exactly. It's like a superimposed reality.
Speaker 3: And I love it.
Speaker 4: I'm a huge propos I actually kind of believe in
Speaker 4: some of that stuff, but our beliefs or our own.
Speaker 4: This is one of the most famous stories, but there
Speaker 4: are two other incidents. You can find them reported in
Speaker 4: the local newspapers usually around Halloween. To be honest with you,
Speaker 4: there's a couple from New Jersey and in the story
Speaker 4: no timeline attributed. This is the Griffiths couple and they
Speaker 4: they woke up in the night. The wife woke up
Speaker 4: because an unseen presence was quote pulling on her clothing
Speaker 4: in the middle of the night. I don't know about
Speaker 4: you guys, but when I first read that, I immediately
Speaker 4: thought there was a ghost who was like, get dressed, lady,
Speaker 4: and started like throwing her dress on her slacks or whatever.
Speaker 4: But no, it was just like tugging at her PJS.
Speaker 5: I saw this meme the other day where it was
Speaker 5: like every HP Lovecraft story. It's like I saw a
Speaker 5: monsters what was it like?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I can't describe it, but let me spend four
Speaker 4: pages doing just that.
Speaker 3: Shout out Lovecraft. I like Lovecraft, but yeah I.
Speaker 6: Had some problematic views. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: But as for the clothes pulling, that's that's weird. I
Speaker 2: would not enjoy that. But you know, maybe your maybe
Speaker 2: your clothes got stuck, or maybe I would enjoy it.
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't know situation. I guess it depends you guys.
Speaker 4: Seeing that that film from back in the day called
Speaker 4: High Spirits starring Liam Neeson, it's.
Speaker 5: Not when he was in his rom com era kind of.
Speaker 4: It's a nineteen eighty eight fantasy comedy about uh oh
Speaker 4: wait it's is it Liam Neeson? Yeah, it is Liam Neeson.
Speaker 4: It's about a haunted castle that is being turned into
Speaker 4: a tourist destination and the ghosts have you know, lovable
Speaker 4: high jinks, Beetlejuice esque with the with a visiting couple
Speaker 4: played by Daryl Hannah and Steve Gutenberg.
Speaker 6: Oh, Daryl Hannah was such a babe.
Speaker 4: There's a close pulling scene in there that may not
Speaker 4: have aged well.
Speaker 5: Steve, I cannot believe Steve Gutenberg was ever like a
Speaker 5: leading man.
Speaker 6: He is.
Speaker 5: Late Daryl Hannah is so above Steve Gutenberg's pay grade
Speaker 5: it's not even funny.
Speaker 3: Well, you know Hollywood magic, right.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 4: Speaking of Hollywood magic, there's a couple from Los Angeles
Speaker 4: who said the following At the Alto var they walked
Speaker 4: past their television and stopped because when they looked at
Speaker 4: the screen there was the face of a bearded old
Speaker 4: man peering back at them. And I was trying to
Speaker 4: figure out more about this tale, which gets just tossed
Speaker 4: around so often. It doesn't seem that any investigator asked them, Well,
Speaker 4: was the television on? I feel like that might explain it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was the duck was a duck show with
Speaker 2: all the big bearded guys, duck hunters.
Speaker 6: Duck show. Wow, I got there? Or you know?
Speaker 2: Or could it? Was it a reflection in the black mirror?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 2: Was the person actually in the room.
Speaker 5: Perhaps the guy just needed a shave and didn't realize
Speaker 5: how how much he'd let himself go.
Speaker 4: Maybe it was a window and they didn't understand televisions.
Speaker 4: I don't know, dude, Maybe they were just I'm gonna
Speaker 4: say it, maybe they were high.
Speaker 5: High spirits. Indeed, by the way, I was just watching
Speaker 5: a trailer for that movie. I've never seen hide nor
Speaker 5: hear of this, and it looks like a delight.
Speaker 3: It's fine. I loved it. Yeah, it's it's a fun romp.
Speaker 2: Es.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, that it's of that era. It's of that era,
Speaker 3: but not of that caliber.
Speaker 2: So there are a couple other things in Grand Canyon.
Speaker 2: Really quickly. I just want to throw out here if
Speaker 2: anybody ends up going there, because I've not been and
Speaker 2: I want to go now. Of course, there's a place
Speaker 2: called the Phantom Ranch that exists there that allegedly there's
Speaker 2: this this thing called Phantom Ranch. There's a it's the property,
Speaker 2: I guess, that's called the Phantom Ranch. There's a place
Speaker 2: called Phantom Creek within the park that is in immediately
Speaker 2: adjacent to it. And according to the stories, the folklore,
Speaker 2: there's this guy named John Wesley Powell who set that
Speaker 2: thing up. All right, this is in the eighteen sixties
Speaker 2: eighteen seventies when all of this is happening, and he's
Speaker 2: this one armed person who was in the Civil War.
Speaker 2: He's considered a hero. He did not die there. According
Speaker 2: to the folklore. But again kind of like how we
Speaker 2: were joking around about mister Harvey. It's thought that this
Speaker 2: guy was proud of this achievement or he it was
Speaker 2: in some way impactful in his life. So his spirit
Speaker 2: haunts this Phantom Ranch, which is aptly named, I must say, but.
Speaker 6: It does and very Scooby Doo.
Speaker 5: Sorry, the Phantom Ranch, Scooby Doo, and the Phantom Ranch
Speaker 5: it does.
Speaker 2: But there's this the little twist thing to it, and
Speaker 2: that a lot of the folklore in the Grand Canyon,
Speaker 2: I feel like, has this kind of thing. There's another
Speaker 2: place within the Grand Canyon call Bright Angel Creek and
Speaker 2: there are there were huge stones from that creek bed
Speaker 2: in that area that were used to build a lot
Speaker 2: of the structures in Phantom Ranch. So you've got angels
Speaker 2: worked in there, right, and phantoms just in the names,
Speaker 2: which feels like a great way to sell sell people are.
Speaker 4: Going, and rumors of giants back in the days. There
Speaker 4: was also, of course, we're not joking about the ancient
Speaker 4: civilization thing. Check out our earlier episode on that. That
Speaker 4: was a weird comment on reporting of the time as well.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, and one other thing, guys, this story of
Speaker 2: we've we've heard so many tales like this when we've
Speaker 2: covered ghost stories. A crying woman right out in the
Speaker 2: woods somewhere that you can't really see this person, but
Speaker 2: you hear the whiling. Yeah, exactly that. But it's it's
Speaker 2: again a twist on that. Right, you can look up
Speaker 2: a place called Transsept Trail t R A N s
Speaker 2: e Pt Trail where I think it was again, I
Speaker 2: think it was the nineteen thirties. There's a place called
Speaker 2: the Grand Canyon Lodge that burned up and after that fire,
Speaker 2: it's thought that some spirit involved in some way haunts
Speaker 2: that area.
Speaker 4: To this day, in this very day, and here we
Speaker 4: can already see those common traits of folklore stories told repeatedly.
Speaker 4: Small changes over time give it a twist to make
Speaker 4: your lier on a different and then there's always a
Speaker 4: lack of certain specificity. It adds to the overall mystery
Speaker 4: and at the same time it makes it increasingly difficult
Speaker 4: to nail down some concrete facts. We'll see this in
Speaker 4: other ghost stories as well. What do you guys think,
Speaker 4: should we take a break and go to some more examples. Absolutely,
Speaker 4: and we have returned. Now we're traveling to Yellowstone And
Speaker 4: you know, we talked about this a little bit off air.
Speaker 4: You can find the history of Yellowstone Park, the history
Speaker 4: of all these parks. Really, we're not gonna spend too
Speaker 4: much time on them. We wanted to get to some
Speaker 4: of the juicy ghost stories speaking of haunted female figures,
Speaker 4: haunted women. Here's when Matt Nole we I think all
Speaker 4: read about this one, the Headless Bride of the Old
Speaker 4: Faithful in yet again another in with an interesting, unique
Speaker 4: experience of the paranormal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's an inn, but it's not in love. You
Speaker 2: know what I'm saying. Don't force others to marry people
Speaker 2: they don't want to marry. That's the story of the
Speaker 2: Old Faithful Inn.
Speaker 4: Just don't do it, even when you know it's not
Speaker 4: gonna work out, don't do it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: You gotta let people do what they want.
Speaker 4: And you can find this story of the Headless Bride
Speaker 4: all over the place, including the official website Yellowstone Park
Speaker 4: dot com.
Speaker 3: It goes like this.
Speaker 4: Back in nineteen fifteen, there's this guy in New York
Speaker 4: and he's sort of a blue blood. He's the one
Speaker 4: percenter of his day. He owns a shipping company country here.
Speaker 4: He owns a shipping company, and he's got a rebellious
Speaker 4: teenage daughter just full of hijinks, and he has arranged
Speaker 4: a marriage for her with a young guy from an
Speaker 4: equally wealthy New York family. But she says, no, you
Speaker 4: can't control me, old man. I'm in love with an
Speaker 4: unnamed household servant.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: So Dad's like, ah, this guy's got bad intentions, unnamed person.
Speaker 2: But you know, despite the father's let's say issues with
Speaker 2: the person that his daughter's going to marry, she went
Speaker 2: in and did it. She got hitched.
Speaker 3: She did.
Speaker 4: Indeed, she said, unnamed older household servant, I am in
Speaker 4: love with you. And the dad was bad about this,
Speaker 4: but she would brook no argument. He tried to talk
Speaker 4: her out of it, and he said, look, this is
Speaker 4: not just me being a stodgy, bossy old man. I
Speaker 4: am genuinely concerned that this dude's intentions for you are
Speaker 4: not romantic. I think he has an evil, sinister plan.
Speaker 4: And you know, in the modern day parlance, he thinks
Speaker 4: that this guy's a gold digger. And she says, I'm
Speaker 4: not going to hear it. She goes ahead, she gets married.
Speaker 4: The father tries to make a poison pill, as we
Speaker 4: would call it in corporate mergers and acquisitions. He says, Okay,
Speaker 4: if you guys want to get married, I will give
Speaker 4: you an extravagant dowry as your wedding gift. And as
Speaker 4: a condition of this dowry, you have to agree you
Speaker 4: as a couple, have to agree that you are getting
Speaker 4: no more additional support from our family. Ever, you're not
Speaker 4: getting an inherent and so you're not getting a share
Speaker 4: of the business fleetwood Max style, go your own way.
Speaker 4: As a matter of fact, you need to leave New
Speaker 4: York forever. According to the story, this was a bluff
Speaker 4: on the father's part. He thought this would force these
Speaker 4: people to call off the wedding because it would remove
Speaker 4: the servant's access to the larger fortune.
Speaker 3: His gamble was a failure. The couple said, okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: we agree. Because we're so much.
Speaker 4: In love, we're going to go have a baller honeymoon
Speaker 4: at Yellowstone and we're going to stay at the hottest
Speaker 4: inn for We're going to stay at the hottest in
Speaker 4: for honeymoons, the old faithful in. And there's a little
Speaker 4: specificity here because they were staying at Room one twenty seven.
Speaker 4: That doesn't always happen in these ghost stories. We know,
Speaker 4: the Old Faithful In was pretty new at the time.
Speaker 4: It was still less than ten years old. It was
Speaker 4: the scene and be seen place for family vacations. But
Speaker 4: as we heard from various versions of the legend, things
Speaker 4: went wrong for the couple very quickly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, why is it important that they were in room
Speaker 2: one twenty seven. Well, that's because there was a huge
Speaker 2: argument in that room that other people heard on let's say,
Speaker 2: The Faithful Night. And why were they arguing This is
Speaker 2: a happy new couple, they're on their honeymoon. Well, according
Speaker 2: to the story, it's because the new husband basically did
Speaker 2: kind of what the father was warning the daughter he
Speaker 2: was going to do, or what he was about. Allegedly,
Speaker 2: according to the stories, he was gambling a ton, and
Speaker 2: not just while hanging out somewhere at the Old Faithful Inn,
Speaker 2: while they were making their way to the end, right
Speaker 2: and hanging out in tavern, spending a ton of money
Speaker 2: on drinks and all that kind of stuff. And they
Speaker 2: were arguing because basically the guy blew through all the
Speaker 2: money they had and they couldn't even afford to pay
Speaker 2: the bill at the old, faithful.
Speaker 4: Right, which makes the staff a lot less helpful. And
Speaker 4: about a month into the honeymoon, you.
Speaker 2: Know there, squiches a long honeymoon.
Speaker 4: I was thinking that too, you know what I mean, Like,
Speaker 4: I get that they're wealthy, but I I read that
Speaker 4: with no small amount of envy. The idea, it's up
Speaker 4: there with the idea of people in this in that
Speaker 4: day and age saying oh, well, we're abroad to Europe
Speaker 4: for the summer. I do love the continent, not too
Speaker 4: long a stay, merely a third month or so. And
Speaker 4: it was just a different, different world, right, because it
Speaker 4: would it would take it would take a significant it
Speaker 4: would take a significant amount of work for us, any
Speaker 4: of us to figure out a way to not be
Speaker 4: at work for a month.
Speaker 3: But uh, but there we have it.
Speaker 4: And it turns out that kind of privilege doesn't necessarily
Speaker 4: make people happy, Like you said, Matt, It goes to
Speaker 4: this one night the couple had already been arguing on
Speaker 4: a regular basis. It was the scandal of the hotel,
Speaker 4: and the daughter had called her father for help and
Speaker 4: he refused, kind of cold, but he set those terms
Speaker 4: and during this very violent, louder than usual shouting match.
Speaker 4: On this evening, the husband storms out, never to be
Speaker 4: seen again.
Speaker 3: The hotel staff gives the bride her privacy for a while,
Speaker 3: after about two days. It's a weird number. But after
Speaker 3: about two days they go to room one twenty seven
Speaker 3: to check on her. She's not going to be like,
Speaker 3: where is our money? Right?
Speaker 4: And also sorry about your loss. Also you owe us
Speaker 4: for this plus these other two days.
Speaker 3: Call your dad.
Speaker 4: And the maid who is looking around because you know
Speaker 4: how hotels are laid out. When you walk in, there
Speaker 4: might be a foyer or a hallway and you'll see
Speaker 4: like a maybe a living room, suite or a bedroom.
Speaker 4: First you have to walk in into the restroom. It's
Speaker 4: not clearly visible. So she walks into the restroom or
Speaker 4: the bathroom, and she screams because the bride's corpse is
Speaker 4: filling the bathtub. It's riddled with blood. It's a dexter
Speaker 4: level or animal level crime scene. It's got all the
Speaker 4: ingredients of true crime except one thing's missing.
Speaker 3: Her head.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, head's missing. Bodies in there, lots of blood.
Speaker 2: Not great, not great for the bathtub. For you know,
Speaker 2: the reputation of the hotel, especially for the new bride,
Speaker 2: probably not great for her, and they basically looked for
Speaker 2: the head. They didn't notice the husband carrying you know,
Speaker 2: a human head when he stormed out, which you know,
Speaker 2: obviously he is the suspect, right, the last person to
Speaker 2: be seen with this person. They were arguing a whole lot.
Speaker 2: What I think the tales say they searched the property
Speaker 2: for like a week or maybe even longer.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, they searched up and down across the hotel
Speaker 4: property for yeah, at least a week. The amount of
Speaker 4: time they's been searching varies depending on the version of
Speaker 4: the tail you hear, but it was definitely more than
Speaker 4: just like a one afternoon search. We know this because
Speaker 4: they did eventually find the head. They found it due
Speaker 4: to the smell emanating from an elevated area, the highest
Speaker 4: interior point of the hotel called the Crow's Nest, where
Speaker 4: the band would play and just to pause there. That's
Speaker 4: a really cool idea to have the band playing from
Speaker 4: that elevated area. But somebody, somebody got a bad width
Speaker 4: figured out something was rotten in the Crow's Nest and
Speaker 4: they went up there, and you guessed it, that's where
Speaker 4: they found the head rotting away. And ever since then,
Speaker 4: guests have reported seeing a ghostly woman walking down the
Speaker 4: stairs of the Crow's Nest in her white dress, carrying
Speaker 4: her head under her arm. This is brought to you
Speaker 4: by under Armour.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm sorry, no.
Speaker 2: Stally fine, but you know, this is one of those
Speaker 2: stories where it's on the official website.
Speaker 4: It very much is. It's on the official website. It's
Speaker 4: on numerous blogs about the area. You can find it
Speaker 4: published as fact in multiple like collection of paranormal Things
Speaker 4: paperbacks you know which we grew up loving. And you
Speaker 4: have to ask yourself, is this true? Is this false?
Speaker 4: Is this embellished?
Speaker 2: Well, it's got to be helping the hotel in some
Speaker 2: way to even be to have a place on their website,
Speaker 2: right exactly. If it hurt, you would just leave it off,
Speaker 2: and you could, you know, anyone who was interested could
Speaker 2: go to any other blog that's out there that writes
Speaker 2: about these things. But if you went to the official
Speaker 2: Yellowstone website, not there, leaving everybody who is you know,
Speaker 2: thinking about going, oh well maybe that's just a tall tale.
Speaker 2: When you put it on the website like that, I
Speaker 2: feel like it gives it such credence or it lends
Speaker 2: so much more credibility. Yeah, I guess it is credibility
Speaker 2: legitimacy here. It's just weird to do that unless unless
Speaker 2: gonna make some profit.
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker 4: It's what we kind of were setting up at the
Speaker 4: at the top and through all this, we can tell
Speaker 4: you the truth about this story for sure. It's this
Speaker 4: Ghosts are only real when someone was decapitate it. It's
Speaker 4: the only time scientifically proven that's a real headless horseman
Speaker 4: is a thing. Yeah, it's proven French Revolution. That's why
Speaker 4: they still have ghost or or we're funning with you,
Speaker 4: just like the assistant manager of the Old Faithful In
Speaker 4: George Borman, who made the whole thing up. He's got
Speaker 4: a nineteen ninety one interview with Desert News and he says, Okay,
Speaker 4: here's what happened. I was in the hotel one time
Speaker 4: when it was deserted overlook style, and I heard some
Speaker 4: footsteps down the hallway, and I walked out and looked
Speaker 4: because there was nobody there but me and one or
Speaker 4: two other employees, and I couldn't find anybody who could
Speaker 4: have run down that hallway at that time outside of
Speaker 4: my room. And so I went and looked again, and
Speaker 4: I saw nobody. He says, he went and looked three times,
Speaker 4: and he said later this got him thinking, huh, what
Speaker 4: if there was a ghost story for the Old Faithful
Speaker 4: in that would be interesting, that would add a hint
Speaker 4: of mystery to the inns vibes. And so he says
Speaker 4: he made the whole thing up in nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 4: and then ever since that moment, because he was still
Speaker 4: working there for a while, he says, people would come
Speaker 4: to him and repeat the fictitious story to him, and
Speaker 4: like even to the point of like man explaining his
Speaker 4: own story to him.
Speaker 2: Nice. Nice, There's more, there's more telephone details, sir, to
Speaker 2: this story. That's that's fascinating. It checks out to me.
Speaker 4: However, not all of the ghostly activities or alleged paranormal
Speaker 4: experiences of these different parts have such simple explanations. And
Speaker 4: you know, I think it's really important for us to
Speaker 4: point out as well that it goes into this expectation
Speaker 4: idea that Noel mentioned earlier, the idea that we have
Speaker 4: to the idea that people came into Old Faithful having
Speaker 4: heard that story, perhaps accepted it as fact, and we're
Speaker 4: therefore on some level primed to see or experience something. However,
Speaker 4: we we have other cases where the answer is not
Speaker 4: so clear cut. We got to go to a cool
Speaker 4: place next a place called Mammoth Cave. And you know
Speaker 4: we're talking about this off air Mammoth Cave. When you
Speaker 4: say we want to go to it, we don't just
Speaker 4: mean go to it in this conversation. We want to
Speaker 4: go as a crew.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, let's just go ahead and mention it at
Speaker 2: the top. We want to do this thing called the
Speaker 2: Violet City Lantern Tour. Yeah, where because this is okay,
Speaker 2: So Mammoth Cave. It's the longest known cave system in
Speaker 2: the world. It's got four hundred and twenty six miles
Speaker 2: worth of cave that you can kind of check out.
Speaker 2: Some of the areas you can't check out, and there
Speaker 2: are new areas being discovered still, which is my going.
Speaker 3: To the extent.
Speaker 4: Also, I love I love the worth of cave. Like,
Speaker 4: how many miles worth of cave is this before I
Speaker 4: pave for the tour?
Speaker 2: Four twenty six miles? And what they do with this,
Speaker 2: I was going to say, velvet With this Violet City
Speaker 2: Lantern Tour, they shut down all the lights because there's
Speaker 2: a ton of human made light that exists in the
Speaker 2: cave system so that when people go on tours they
Speaker 2: can see right, nobody gets hurt. There's illumination via electricity
Speaker 2: throughout the cave system. But in these tours they turn
Speaker 2: off those lights and they've got lanterns and they take
Speaker 2: you through the cave by a lantern light. I want
Speaker 2: to do that because it appears that there's more than
Speaker 2: just bats down in them caves. Oh there's coughing. Wait
Speaker 2: a second, I know this story. Bed.
Speaker 4: Also, we should mention this story scares our colleague Gnols
Speaker 4: so much that he has left the episode for today. Actually,
Speaker 4: we're kidding, is a little bit under the weather with
Speaker 4: the bit of a cough, and will be rejoining us soon,
Speaker 4: But for now, he gives us his blessing and wishes
Speaker 4: us to continue the subterranean exploration.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, So let's put our minds in the place
Speaker 2: of being inside a system that consists of four hundred
Speaker 2: twenty six miles of cave worth of cave worth of cave.
Speaker 2: Imagine being there, deep beneath within the earth, let's say,
Speaker 2: and just what your mind, the tricks your mind would
Speaker 2: play on you, and the other worldly things you might
Speaker 2: imagine could be down there.
Speaker 4: Oh sure, yeah, I mean it's true because subterranean flora
Speaker 4: and fauna are still being discovered. We don't know how
Speaker 4: far these cave systems go. We don't know what's living
Speaker 4: in there. There's some cave systems that are for all
Speaker 4: intents and purposes sealed off. They've become their own ecosystems,
Speaker 4: unreliant upon sunlight and all those things surface dwellers love.
Speaker 4: We can also we can also say that for most
Speaker 4: people who have never been in absolute darkness, and being
Speaker 4: an absolute darkness will lead you to hallucinate.
Speaker 2: Yes, Now, let's bring in the history of this cave system,
Speaker 2: or at least the the like American version, I guess,
Speaker 2: the the Anglo centric existence of this cave and the
Speaker 2: history of that, because it is, it gets dark pretty quickly.
Speaker 2: The wasn't it purchased for some I mean, I guess
Speaker 2: it was a fairly large sum back then, but like
Speaker 2: ten thousand dollars US.
Speaker 4: Yes, ten thousand dollars in eighteen thirty nine, and we
Speaker 4: can borrow a bit from our handy inflation calculator, ten
Speaker 4: thousand dollars in eighteen thirty nine is the equivalent of
Speaker 4: three hundred and twenty nine eight hundred and thirty four
Speaker 4: dollars today, so very expensive. But still that's a lot
Speaker 4: cheaper than I thought a cave system would cost.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a huge cave system that was not again like
Speaker 2: it not its super early stages of mapping, but early. Right,
Speaker 2: A lot has been discovered since then. But he didn't
Speaker 2: just buy the cave system itself. In the property above
Speaker 2: the caves, he also bought humans.
Speaker 3: He did.
Speaker 4: The deal included you know, adjacent property, and they defined
Speaker 4: adjacent property as also enslaved human beings because again this
Speaker 4: was eighteen thirty nine, and one of the enslaved people
Speaker 4: that he took ownership of as part of this deal
Speaker 4: was a cave guide named Stefan Bishop. And at this point,
Speaker 4: Bishop probably knew the caverns better than any other person alive.
Speaker 4: And I really appreciate that you point out we're starting
Speaker 4: the story from the kind of Anglo central view, because
Speaker 4: native populations again knew about this cave for thousands, thousands
Speaker 4: and thousands of years.
Speaker 2: Bishops has a celebrated important places for those cultures. It's
Speaker 2: not yeah, it's not just a cave.
Speaker 4: It has immense cultural and spiritual significance. Doctor Krogan does
Speaker 4: not care about that. He doesn't give a damn about it.
Speaker 4: He immediately starts tours. And so Stephan Bishop is giving
Speaker 4: people these amazing tours. He's showing them Echo River where
Speaker 4: blind albino fish have evolved, miles of all these unique
Speaker 4: twisting passageways. Meanwhile, on the surface, doctor Krogan is busying
Speaker 4: himself brainstorming new ways to monetize this natural wonder, to
Speaker 4: turn it into a cash cow, to make his ten
Speaker 4: thousand back as soon as possible, and then just make
Speaker 4: more and more money. And you and I were talking
Speaker 4: off air about is more his strange idea, one of
Speaker 4: the strangest that he put into place. It was the
Speaker 4: idea that he could build a special camp inside the
Speaker 4: cave for people suffering from tuberculosis or consumption as it
Speaker 4: was called in the day.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I think it's a good idea for
Speaker 2: something to try.
Speaker 3: It's not trying, I agree, you know.
Speaker 2: Well, because a lot was there wasn't a lot known
Speaker 2: about what could actually like, what are the conditions that
Speaker 2: would help someone get over tuberculosis?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 2: And the thought came up, well, what if this the
Speaker 2: low relatively low temperatures of the cave system compared to
Speaker 2: the outside world at the time. What if those temperatures
Speaker 2: would be conducive to reducing the effects of tuberculosis on
Speaker 2: the human body. Maybe again worth a shot. So they
Speaker 2: actually built a fairly large area included. There are several
Speaker 2: they call them huts, but they're these like they look
Speaker 2: almost like it does look like a hut, I guess,
Speaker 2: but it's a mini little stone and wooden structure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they call the hut, call it a cabin somewhere
Speaker 3: in between.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're tiny, but it's enough for a human being
Speaker 2: to be in and not to live comfortably, but to survive, right,
Speaker 2: I think I don't know how many they built, but
Speaker 2: they built a bunch of them, and there are two
Speaker 2: that remain to this day that you can go visit.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think most of the reporting I read said
Speaker 4: that you originally had eleven huts built in there, and
Speaker 4: the idea was that you would get fifteen patients, which
Speaker 4: means some of the patients were couples, because that's you know,
Speaker 4: or maybe parent and child or siblings. But they say
Speaker 4: fifteen patients arrived, and honestly, folks, we don't know whether
Speaker 4: these patients genuinely believe this treatment would work. But we
Speaker 4: can only imagine, given what you described met at this time,
Speaker 4: that they were desperate enough to try anything.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 4: That's kind of it's like when we look at cancer
Speaker 4: cure conspiracies and the con artist involved in sort of
Speaker 4: bilking desperate people. As far as we can tell, doctor
Speaker 4: Krogan is not himself a con artist. He is actually
Speaker 4: trying to see whether this will assist people who are
Speaker 4: suffering from consumption. However, as history reprove, this treatment did
Speaker 4: not work, two patients died that same year. All fifteen
Speaker 4: of the patients got worse. Doctor Crogan himself would go
Speaker 4: on to die from tuberculosis in eighteen forty nine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, ten years after you buy the cave system. He
Speaker 2: does of tuberculosis too, So you might imagine, oh, there's
Speaker 2: been some death in this cave that we know of,
Speaker 2: and we can tribute tuberculosis to those deaths. That that
Speaker 2: disease comes with a lot of coughing. It would make
Speaker 2: sense right to hear coughing in the distance somewhere within
Speaker 2: the cave system, right as you're touring through it, especially
Speaker 2: by lantern.
Speaker 3: Light, especially by lantern.
Speaker 4: Yeah, if you elect to take the Violet City tour
Speaker 4: of the cave, the tour guides will take you to
Speaker 4: that blackout like you described, Matt, where you actually go
Speaker 4: down into the dark that most people have not experienced.
Speaker 4: And then they'll give you the tour with the oil
Speaker 4: lamp and they'll tell you the stories and you can
Speaker 4: actually see remnants of this tuberculosis camp experiment. That is
Speaker 4: a real thing, that's not a legend. And some rangers
Speaker 4: will tell you that they have experienced strange things down there,
Speaker 4: that they have seen shoves from unseen forces, They've heard
Speaker 4: inexplicable footsteps, or coughing in the distance, or even being
Speaker 4: grabbed or touched when they knew there were no other
Speaker 4: people around. I have a question for you, man, because
Speaker 4: you know I go to you for audio advice often.
Speaker 4: Is it possible with the acoustics of a cavern that
Speaker 4: you could frank someone with ghost coughing? Like could you
Speaker 4: be far enough away around a bend or something and
Speaker 4: cough and have the cough reflect off the stone to
Speaker 4: reach the person observing the camp.
Speaker 2: I don't know the science behind that, Ben. What I
Speaker 2: would do is get a really long tube that is
Speaker 2: highly flexible. I got set it up at one end
Speaker 2: of it higher up in the cave system, and then
Speaker 2: I would have it go all the way down to
Speaker 2: lower in the cave system, and I would do a
Speaker 2: little cough into the tube, okay, at one side or
Speaker 2: the other, and make everybody think the cough's coming from
Speaker 2: way up there or way down.
Speaker 4: There ever, Okay, because I was thinking, you might say,
Speaker 4: set up like a time delay motion sensor with w
Speaker 4: with a speaker, so that it doesn't start coughing right
Speaker 4: when you trip the wire, but or trip the light,
Speaker 4: but it starts coughing, you know, four minutes after.
Speaker 2: So I think, love it. I love the way you think.
Speaker 2: In his high tech I'm going to say the tube
Speaker 2: system is the way I'm going imagine the sound of
Speaker 2: dragging the tube back to your location after you've used it.
Speaker 3: How long is this tube? Wait? It's huge? Crazy, it awkward?
Speaker 3: You know what, Let's do both.
Speaker 2: Let's do both.
Speaker 3: Uh how much will they sell the caves for this? Is?
Speaker 4: We do have specific folks like one guide, Larry Purcell,
Speaker 4: had another story.
Speaker 3: He went on.
Speaker 4: Record and he said that he experienced something unrelated to
Speaker 4: the tuberculosis camp that terrified him.
Speaker 3: He said, he was.
Speaker 4: Giving in tour and during some part of this tour,
Speaker 4: it was the Violet City tour, he noticed an African
Speaker 4: American family standing behind the rest of the group and
Speaker 4: he was surprised to see them because he hadn't noticed
Speaker 4: any African American tourist in this particular group. And he said, huh,
Speaker 4: it's crazy. The father is wearing a white panama hat
Speaker 4: and he's watching with rapt attention as we're giving the
Speaker 4: oil lamp tour, right. And then when he reached the
Speaker 4: part where they turn off the oil lamp and turn
Speaker 4: the electric lights back on, he looks for this family
Speaker 4: and he can't find anybody. There were just extra people
Speaker 4: there when the oil lamp was on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, thanks, extra people while the oil lamp was on.
Speaker 2: Don't like that phrase. Don't like any of them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it reminds me when we went on our brief
Speaker 4: excursion to the Hoover Dam. I think that's a close
Speaker 4: recent comparison for US. Hoover Dam very much man made cavern.
Speaker 4: But what we saw is that the tour guides at regular,
Speaker 4: frequent intervals, we're counting the number of people in the group.
Speaker 2: That's why sometimes there are extra families.
Speaker 4: Oh man, I love that idea. Okay, so do octopus
Speaker 4: believe in ghosts? And then the extra extra tour guide members. Okay, gold, Jerry,
Speaker 4: we're making gold here, Rebel Stiltskin style, all right. Apparently
Speaker 4: the room where the rangers saw this family is called
Speaker 4: the Methodist Church because miners used to have religious services
Speaker 4: there when they were exploring resources in the cave, and
Speaker 4: during those days, because of the rampant racism, if an
Speaker 4: African American guide or his family attended the services, they
Speaker 4: would have to stand back at a distance. Wow, I
Speaker 4: know it's a bummer. And those two things aren't necessarily related.
Speaker 4: They're the kind of things that have just enough commonality
Speaker 4: for people to put some red string together, turn down
Speaker 4: the lights and tell you it's scary.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know what, Why don't we Why don't we
Speaker 2: pause here? We've got a few more parks to visit
Speaker 2: before we're done today. But we need to hear a
Speaker 2: word from our sponsor, so we'll be right back.
Speaker 3: And we have returned.
Speaker 4: Let's visit we don't if we don't do anything else,
Speaker 4: let's at least visit the Devil's Dead.
Speaker 3: We've got other places to go.
Speaker 4: Like you said, Matt, every single national park has some
Speaker 4: kind of ghost story, and we will tell you why
Speaker 4: by the way at the end. But the Devil's Dead
Speaker 4: is in Gettysburg National Military Park, Matt. Have you visited Gettysburg.
Speaker 2: I feel like I did as a kid, but I
Speaker 2: have no recollection of actually going through there. Yeah, because
Speaker 2: it's getting muddled with other Civil War parts I've been to.
Speaker 4: Right, because we've seen a lot of Civil War parks
Speaker 4: in our time. Yeah, this is a site commemorating one
Speaker 4: of the most historically significant and a very bloody battle
Speaker 4: of the US Civil War. There is a site in
Speaker 4: the park called the Devil's Den. It's world famous amid
Speaker 4: paranormal investigators, ghost hunters, psychics, you name it. And it's
Speaker 4: really interesting to look at pictures because it's like, imagine
Speaker 4: if you are if you are a Union or Confederate
Speaker 4: soldier and you are in the midst of you know,
Speaker 4: unreliable ammunition. You're probably not feeling great because you've been malnourished,
Speaker 4: you're probably suffering from some disease, and you're being forced
Speaker 4: to fight Napoleonic style, which means you're told to line
Speaker 4: up and then just sort of march at each other
Speaker 4: and hope you don't get shot. It's a really shy
Speaker 4: way to wage war, honestly. So if you're in that situation,
Speaker 4: you need to make friends with geography. So a place
Speaker 4: with a bunch of boulders is great. You can break
Speaker 4: up your death march line. You can hide behind rocks
Speaker 4: long enough to reload without getting shot. This also the
Speaker 4: same advantage carries on to the enemy forces. So it's
Speaker 4: no surprise that the Devil's Den became a bloodbath.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I did. I kind of want to describe it
Speaker 2: a little bit more. You found a great description from
Speaker 2: someone named Mark Nesbitt, and I guess we should just
Speaker 2: the quote is awesome, Ben, do you want to just
Speaker 2: do it?
Speaker 3: You should do it, You should do it?
Speaker 6: All right?
Speaker 2: Well, okay, this is what it looks like, according to
Speaker 2: Mark Nesbitt, who was a paranormal investigator and a former
Speaker 2: park ranger, which that is very important. Here's how he
Speaker 2: describes it quote, the Devil's Den looks like some giant
Speaker 2: just dropped these huge boulders the size of houses down
Speaker 2: onto this one spot on the battlefield. On a sunny day.
Speaker 2: It's not too bad on a cloudy day. It's kind
Speaker 2: of ominous at night. It's just ridiculous. Yeah, exactly. I
Speaker 2: love as in it's creepy, right, that's that's what he's implying.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I like to point out he is a
Speaker 4: former park ranger. He's also the owner of the Ghost
Speaker 4: of Gettysburg tours. Uh, he's coming there with experience, but
Speaker 4: also it's good for him if you go on a
Speaker 4: ghost tour.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the way. He said.
Speaker 4: He would often get the willies when he was just
Speaker 4: walking around the area at night doing security checks. And
Speaker 4: he spoke in depth with our pals at how stuff works,
Speaker 4: about this are alma matter, how SFT works. And he
Speaker 4: wrote a book or he wrote a book series I
Speaker 4: should say, called Go of Gettysburg, wherein he chronicles a
Speaker 4: lot of unexplained experiences at Devil's Den. And they have
Speaker 4: all the you know, all the usual stripes of folklore,
Speaker 4: right often unnamed people. The timeline is a little vague,
Speaker 4: but the experience itself is sobering. One lady said she
Speaker 4: was climbing around the boulders with a friend. She felt
Speaker 4: a hand grab her ankle. Could it be her friend?
Speaker 4: She looks down she sees a ghostly soldier grabbing for her.
Speaker 4: She screams for help. She looks up, Oh, and there's
Speaker 4: her friend. Her Friend's not touching her at all. She
Speaker 4: looks back down. The man's gone.
Speaker 3: Whoa stranger danger.
Speaker 2: Gotta love a good ankle grab.
Speaker 3: M let's take full Can we cut that? Keep it
Speaker 3: out of context. I'll never forget.
Speaker 4: Well, my good friend Matt told me all those years ago,
Speaker 4: you gotta love a good ankle grab.
Speaker 2: I don't know how that would be in a weird way,
Speaker 2: but that's that's to me. Just uh, that's one of
Speaker 2: the creepiest things that I remember having to me as
Speaker 2: a kid. My sister like, be under the bed and
Speaker 2: grab my ankle.
Speaker 3: Just frightening.
Speaker 4: Right, It's a very vulnerable part of your body. And
Speaker 4: then additionally, since you're laying down you're trying to go
Speaker 4: to sleep, that's terrifying. That's terrified to the point where
Speaker 4: even if you know how it happened, Yeah, like you
Speaker 4: see your sister, I would still be furious.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, it feels fun though. I think that's why
Speaker 2: I like horror movies. Now, I'm not sure.
Speaker 4: We enjoy the things that scarred us, right, I'm in
Speaker 4: a similar situation. Well there's there's the other one that's
Speaker 4: a little bit less weird, which is did you see
Speaker 4: this the helpful hippie story?
Speaker 2: Yeah, this one's This one's great. This one is like, oh, man,
Speaker 2: I'm lost, where do I go? I don't know what
Speaker 2: to do? And then an apparition appears out of nowhere
Speaker 2: and says, it's over.
Speaker 3: There, man, exactly that way.
Speaker 2: Look where you're looking for is over there.
Speaker 7: And then you look in that direction and then you
Speaker 7: look back and he's gone, wow, and he's like flower child,
Speaker 7: weird hat all like picture the hippie.
Speaker 4: It's the hippie stereotype. He's got a shoulder length hair,
Speaker 4: bare feet, you know. And Nesbit says this, we'll give
Speaker 4: you what Nesbit says. First, he says, I can't believe
Speaker 4: she's describing exactly what a Texan looked like at the
Speaker 4: Battle of Gettysburg. She would not have known that as
Speaker 4: a tourist. However, with great respect, mister Nesbit, we have
Speaker 4: a proposition for you here. A lot of people do
Speaker 4: live off the grid in national parks, you know, and
Speaker 4: there are people who wander from park to park or
Speaker 4: live in nomadic existence, like the people who follow rain
Speaker 4: bow gatherings things like that. You know what are oh gosh,
Speaker 4: what are they called? Rubber tramps? You know, train hoppers.
Speaker 4: People are living outside of the system. I think it's
Speaker 4: completely possible. A lot of those people, by the way,
Speaker 4: are very very cool. I think it's completely possible that
Speaker 4: there could just be a guy living out around that
Speaker 4: area who shows up and helps people.
Speaker 3: Amongst the stones, amongst the stones, stones, stones.
Speaker 2: I love it. By wait, speaking of stones, just before
Speaker 2: this is an interjection everyone, Ben, I was looking at
Speaker 2: Death Valley, and I know we looked at that one too,
Speaker 2: because there's a national park called the Death Valley National Park,
Speaker 2: and they've got this phenomenon that I think we've mentioned
Speaker 2: before but we haven't looked into it in detail. But
Speaker 2: it's these stones that are heavy and stone, and somehow,
Speaker 2: without any intervention by human hands or seenly animal hands,
Speaker 2: they move.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they sort of slide along.
Speaker 2: It's a dry lake bed where these stones are, and
Speaker 2: they move and you can see the trails of these
Speaker 2: stones having moved over time. No footprints, no any just
Speaker 2: explanation outside of oh, those stones move, I guess.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: And also when you see that you're already in death Valley,
Speaker 4: so your primary concern is, Man, I hope I get
Speaker 4: water before I die.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these But it's just really cool because there is
Speaker 2: there are like pretty good scientific concepts ideas about what
Speaker 2: could make those stones do that. It has a lot
Speaker 2: to do with ice forming when it gets super cold,
Speaker 2: but like small amounts of ice forming amidst all the
Speaker 2: particles already imagine of sand and dust and all that
Speaker 2: other stuff that's out there. Somehow, when there's enough lubric
Speaker 2: lubrication right at the front facing part of that stone,
Speaker 2: and then there's a strong enough wind and then all
Speaker 2: these other factors could potentially make it happen.
Speaker 4: It removes the friction maybe, Yeah, I mean that's the idea. Also,
Speaker 4: because that area is so it is so dry, so arid. Uh,
Speaker 4: there's the idea that like the flash floods that occasionally
Speaker 4: or the rain that occasionally encurage plays apart. I think
Speaker 4: there is a scientific explanation. I'm with you though, as
Speaker 4: to my knowledge, and this may be incorrect, there is
Speaker 4: no documented like video footage of them moving.
Speaker 3: It's just point A and then point B.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: Not to cut you off, Ben, I'm not kidding, not
Speaker 2: hidting anyone out there that's listening right now. I'm sitting
Speaker 2: in my house. My son and my mother are downstairs
Speaker 2: hanging out. My dogs are both asleep behind me, well
Speaker 2: behind me. Yeah, as you were talking, Ben, I felt
Speaker 2: something touch my leg and then my shoulder and that
Speaker 2: was it. And there's nobody around me. I'm not kidding.
Speaker 4: I can confirm by the way that we saw. We
Speaker 4: saw Matt look down first at his left leg.
Speaker 3: And then it is right, and then look behind him.
Speaker 4: And because he was so crazy polite, you were like, hey,
Speaker 4: not to cut you off, but.
Speaker 2: I'm just kind of sitting with the feeling in this moment.
Speaker 2: But okay, Harvey.
Speaker 7: Hovey, Hovey, you heard you were talking Sack about ELTIV.
Speaker 2: There's so much more to learn about all of these parts. Again,
Speaker 2: we mentioned there's not a single park I think that
Speaker 2: you can look up that doesn't have something haunted. Look
Speaker 2: up the twice hanged man. Also in Death Valley, story
Speaker 2: of a guy who allegedly killed a banker, got convicted,
Speaker 2: got hanged, then he was cut down, then he was
Speaker 2: put back up hanged again for like a press opportunity.
Speaker 2: This is in nineteen oh eight in a place called Skidoo.
Speaker 2: Really it's called skid Do ski Doo. You can see
Speaker 2: remnants of the town that are still out there in
Speaker 2: Death Valley. There's so much to that story. But allegedly they,
Speaker 2: I guess the medical practitioners at the time cut his
Speaker 2: head off to see if he had syphilis or some
Speaker 2: other brain disease that would cause the his erratic behavior
Speaker 2: because he was like a I guess, he was a
Speaker 2: pretty well known businessman at the time. He was well
Speaker 2: known in the town, and he killed a beloved, allegedly
Speaker 2: beloved banker, and so they're like, what the heck caused
Speaker 2: him to do this? So they supposedly cut his head off,
Speaker 2: and now even now you can see basically this headless
Speaker 2: ghost that's walking around trying to find his head.
Speaker 4: Wild Again, like we said, it's scientifically proven that the
Speaker 4: only real ghost are people have been decapitated. They you know,
Speaker 4: don't get mad at us, folks, that's just science. And
Speaker 4: also don't fact check us on that one. But yeah,
Speaker 4: we might even return with more ghosts from national parks, because,
Speaker 4: like you said, Matt, there are so very many out there.
Speaker 4: If we did one for every national park, we'd be
Speaker 4: looking at over four hundred.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well over dude, the Indiana Dunes and look up
Speaker 2: Diana of the Dunes. That's a thing, Diana of the Dunes.
Speaker 2: It's a fascinating, great, actually wholesome ghost story. If you
Speaker 2: want to check that one out.
Speaker 4: Look up also all the myths surrounding mounds burial mounds
Speaker 4: which were around, you know, well before the idea of
Speaker 4: the United States, and indeed they were actively suppressed by
Speaker 4: the United States, in some cases destroyed. And also if
Speaker 4: you happen to live near any take the time to
Speaker 4: go visit them. It's a fascinating peak into the hidden
Speaker 4: history of this continent.
Speaker 3: Oh. Last one, ben, Yeah, last one.
Speaker 2: Last, if you have ever gone through it's the Smoky Mountains.
Speaker 2: What's that one called Great Smoky Mountain National Park, I
Speaker 2: think is the name of it. There's an area, Oh,
Speaker 2: let me see if I can find it. It's called
Speaker 2: the Thomas Divide Ridge where you can find Oh, you
Speaker 2: could find the Thomas Divide overlook that is on one
Speaker 2: of the one of the main roads there. If you
Speaker 2: look out at night at this Thomas Divide Ridge, allegedly
Speaker 2: you can see lights that flicker and shine in this
Speaker 2: area that is not populated. They call it ghost lights,
Speaker 2: smoky mountain ghost lights. I have seen video of these things,
Speaker 2: but I've never heard anyone give a better explanation. I
Speaker 2: guess for what possibly could be.
Speaker 3: Because it can't be swamp gas.
Speaker 2: I don't fit miss mountain gas.
Speaker 3: Maybe Mountain I've had Moore may too.
Speaker 4: Oh boy, Yes, we're talking about this off air, and
Speaker 4: we could. I think that one could be an entire
Speaker 4: episode because we can take what we learned from previous
Speaker 4: ghost light conversations and will of the Wisp things and
Speaker 4: kind of case test, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just want to go. I want to go
Speaker 2: spend a couple of nights out there in the wilderness
Speaker 2: on the ridge that you can view from the from
Speaker 2: the street there. Yeah, because I I you can get
Speaker 2: footage of it from a certain angle. I want to
Speaker 2: know if the angle of observation has anything to do
Speaker 2: with the way the light looks. Right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, you were saying, you were saying, we need
Speaker 4: to find the specific spot, right, And it could be
Speaker 4: a multi person operation too, where we find the specific
Speaker 4: spot and we have one person stay there and maintain that,
Speaker 4: and then we have somebody else try to move toward
Speaker 4: it and see what they can.
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 4: We could triangulate, we could do some interesting things, especially
Speaker 4: in the age of GPS.
Speaker 2: Dude, it's not that far from us. It's Tennessee, right,
Speaker 2: that's like me, it's ours. But we can make it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we can make it happen.
Speaker 4: We can also, you know what, let's tell the bosses
Speaker 4: this is valuable research. And then we don't have time
Speaker 4: to explain why we can't be in the meetings.
Speaker 2: Yeah, guys, we are exploring the wilderness.
Speaker 3: Let's just call into the meeting from there.
Speaker 6: Where are you would go?
Speaker 2: Great? They make satellite phones, still right.
Speaker 3: They do? They do?
Speaker 4: Okay, so we'll get with accounting first to get the
Speaker 4: sat phone, and then we will okay, Yeah, wheels are spinning.
Speaker 3: I think we got this.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: X thirty seven B still up there is gonna be
Speaker 2: there for a while. We'll be able to make contact.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, who knows what. We'll ring out there into
Speaker 4: the ink and we might get X thirty seven B.
Speaker 4: We might get the Chinese one. You know, we know
Speaker 4: how to say hello and all those languages. It'll work out.
Speaker 2: So why I'm sticking with you, buddy.
Speaker 4: Well, see that's why I'm sticking with you. That's why
Speaker 4: we hope you are sticking with us. We'd like to
Speaker 4: answer this question, folks, why would national parks in particular
Speaker 4: garner so many tales of ghostly activity. Well, without saying
Speaker 4: whether or not ghost or real, we can tell you
Speaker 4: expectation plays a big role. You were talking about this
Speaker 4: a little bit too, Matt. When people enter a place
Speaker 4: being told, perhaps numerous times that paranormal activity might be present,
Speaker 4: on some level of consciousness, even if you're a skeptic
Speaker 4: saying I'll disprove this, you are going to be more
Speaker 4: primed to look for unusual things. Some stuff that you
Speaker 4: might ignore otherwise become you know, takes on other implications,
Speaker 4: right like if you're if you're in a grocery store
Speaker 4: or in a crowded part of your city or town,
Speaker 4: there are a lot of things you ignore just to
Speaker 4: get by. You know other people are around, you know
Speaker 4: there's going to be other stimuli hitting hitting your wonderful
Speaker 4: sensory network. But if you're in a new environment where
Speaker 4: people have already told you look out for that headless person,
Speaker 4: then you have a higher likelihood of feeling like a
Speaker 4: visual movement you can't track in the distance, or something
Speaker 4: comes from somewhere beyond the mundane realm, and I think
Speaker 4: that's something we have to remember. Plus it makes for
Speaker 4: a heck of a story. And we did reach out
Speaker 4: to the National Park System. We went to the top
Speaker 4: of this one, folks, and what we found is that
Speaker 4: there's so many allegations of ghost in individual parks that
Speaker 4: the best way to learn more is to contact the
Speaker 4: parks directly and they'll answer you because they are awesome,
Speaker 4: tireless people. The rangers and other officials who maintain these
Speaker 4: resources are, in our opinion, heroes. And I don't know, man,
Speaker 4: something you said earlier, which I think is such a
Speaker 4: good point. We have to apply the willingness of the
Speaker 4: park system to say play along, or maybe, let's say,
Speaker 4: encourage interest in naturally human history. They've got a sense
Speaker 4: of humor as well as respect, and they're kind of
Speaker 4: leveraging the interest in the paranormal as a way of
Speaker 4: encouraging interest in the stunning, very real beauty of the
Speaker 4: world around us.
Speaker 6: Yes.
Speaker 3: Yes, so if it's a conspiracy, it's like a good conspiracy.
Speaker 2: It's a wholesome conspiracy. Again, it makes you want to do,
Speaker 2: like what I probably wouldn't want to travel to Chickamungo,
Speaker 2: which is another place in Tennessee. It's like it's an
Speaker 2: historic National Landmark, I guess kind of, and it's got
Speaker 2: a forest connected with a natural area. It's another Civil
Speaker 2: War related thing, and I would ever go there. But
Speaker 2: there's a thing there called Old Green Eyes that's allegedly
Speaker 2: this thing at night that you can see. Want to
Speaker 2: go see Old green Eyes way more than I want
Speaker 2: to see the Civil War history. The Civil War history
Speaker 2: then becomes a little cherry on top that I get
Speaker 2: for my green Eyes exploration.
Speaker 4: Mmm, like how they give you candy at the dentist.
Speaker 4: Also think about that one. Oh man, Yeah, I think
Speaker 4: that's a great point.
Speaker 2: That was. The timing was just so good.
Speaker 4: So folks, we know we went long on this. Thank
Speaker 4: you and apologies and condolences to our super producer Paul
Speaker 4: Mission Control decand for sticking with us.
Speaker 6: As we.
Speaker 3: And I'm in a weird place too, man.
Speaker 4: Probably we probably want to call it a day. We'll
Speaker 4: have no Old joining us for future adventure very soon.
Speaker 4: And for everyone who's hearing this, we would love to
Speaker 4: hear stories from the ghost in your neck of the
Speaker 4: Global Woods, your.
Speaker 3: Local national park.
Speaker 4: Even if you don't think there's a ghost story there,
Speaker 4: go check it out and help us learn more about
Speaker 4: it as well. As you're a fellow conspiracy realist. You
Speaker 4: can find us on Instagram, you can find us on Facebook,
Speaker 4: and can find us on x You check out our
Speaker 4: weird avant garde social media videos that we're doing, and
Speaker 4: if you don't want to do any of that, if
Speaker 4: you don't sip those social meds, then why not just
Speaker 4: give us a telephone call.
Speaker 2: Yes, our number is one eight three three st DWYTK.
Speaker 2: When you call in, give yourself a cool nickname, and
Speaker 2: you've got three minutes say whatever you'd like. Just please
Speaker 2: let us know if we can use your name and
Speaker 2: message on the air. If you've got more to say
Speaker 2: or links or attachments, why not instead shoot us an email.
Speaker 4: We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
Speaker 2: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.