The Haunted Tourist with Southern Gothic Podcast

hey it's Javier and it's that time of year you know it's October things are starting to feel a little spooky and every now and then I'd like to do a pretend Halloween episode and so I started talking with my friend Brandon shneider with the Southern Gothic podcast which by the way you should check out super creepy awesome best audio production in podcasting in general and this guy lives and breeds Halloween I mean is like his Christmas right so so Brandon welcome to pretend we are going to talk about you know ghost stories ghost tours dark tourism haunted tourism is it is it real is baloney you know let's talk about it and and hopefully we don't ruin this stuff for for everybody I don't think we're going to ruin it but I certainly I it's wonderful coming on here on pretend because you know we can have a conversation about ghost stories and stuff in a way that's different than I get to have on a lot of other shows and and and something from being on the inside of haunted tourism and and and giving tour guides out on the or being a tour guide out on the street and doing these things and researching all ghost stories there's so many inaccuracies there there's so many things there and it's the kind of stuff that I you dive into all the time so I think this this is gonna be a good episode I think oh yeah man yeah cuz I you know I live in North Carolina and so I'm I'm in driving distance away from mington North Carolina Charleston Savannah I've been to New Orleans been to Key West and we've all most of us have probably done a ghost tour you know we we I've been in a in a hearse you one of the hearse tours yeah yeah yeah and I always wonder I was like how much of this is [ __ ] I mean like is this real like is are these real stories and and are the people who are delivering these stories do they even know what they're talking about so so that's why I I I don't don't even know what we're talking about today but I want to talk to you because you have the most historically accurate you know ghost story podcast out there I mean it it is like well you think I do right t-shirt dud yeah no you're you're right you know and it's it's a question that I have all the time so you know I was born and raised in New Orleans right so I grew up down there hearing stories all the time you know it was it was just so that City so steeped in this stuff like you're saying Charleston Savannah right of course New Orleans way better but that's a whole other podcast so going down there you know we you go in the French Quarter and you know there's just full of Tours you want a vampire tour you want a cemetery tour whatever spooky ghost tour you want right but as you walk by there if you actually know the history it kind of bothers you what some of the folks are saying right and you realize that it's certainly when we were making Southern Gothic that was something when I initially started the podcast that was part of it here's these stories that you might have heard growing up from your mama right you might have heard like all right you know here's this scary thing down the road and then you know maybe the kid on the street corner something told you something it was like what's really under there right what really is this and so you know I make the show with my sister who is an archist at the Louisiana State Museum so she actually works in the French Quarter regularly calls me annoyed because she goes to get lunch and she hears some tour guide saying something right all right and I and I told you I would start you off with with a really good story to really set the tone here you know one that's the the the epitome of it it's the one that really we've sunk our teeth into um it's from down in New Orleans okay so if you head West out of New Orleans and you you go towards Baton Rouge you end up on these long concrete Bridges okay and they just go over swamp land all right you spend about an hour and a half getting to Baton Rouge and about halfway between Baton Rouge in New Orleans you're out in the middle it's called the manshack swamp and there's this little place there it's called Fier it used to be this town that was there right but all that's left there where this town is they now have a swamp tour okay so obviously this is a company they make money off tourists coming out on swamp tours well you go get on the tour you go you take the tour you know you pull up they got flat boats they're taking you out through the swamp and as you're going through the swamp they have there on the side on the bank there this little Cemetery okay this little Cemetery it's got like a rod iron gate in front of it and it's got a bunch of head a bunch of like like gravestones it's really wooden crosses and stuff back there and they're all up there and there's this kind of gate over the gate it says 1915 above and that's when this town of frer was destroyed and over on the other side away from the rest is this other little crossover here you know and they they tell you the story right about how this is where this is Fier this is the people who died here from this this awful hurricane that back in 1915 destroyed this town this is a mass grave but they have that one one over on the side that's of someone else who was buried there and that person is a Woman by the name of Julia Brown who's supposedly the voodoo priestess who cursed the town she's the one that caused this hurricane to come in and destroy everything right so so of course you hear this on the tour and all it makes it's interesting right like okay it's it's a crazy story what time what time of day is the tour usually is it like usually during the day not really at night right you know I was picturing at dusk it could be it might be really cool if you go down there but uh alligator it was during the day at least there's alligators everywhere it's a fun tour it's not just about the ghost at that point right but this is just one of the selling points and of course the company has used this this story to promote itself in tour in in excuse me in TV and things right so there' have been some TV shows come out there over the years they show the cemetery they tell the story and this is how the story goes okay story is is that this small town of Fier it was once this this this town of German immigrants out there in the swamp in manshack swamp and they were uh harvesting cabbage and uh and um Timber okay they were cutting down all the cypress trees at that point in time they're out there in the swamp and this particular swamp out there there's no way in or out really except for boat or train it is a very isolated community at the turn of the 20th century uh but there's this one individual that lives out on the edge of town a Woman by The name of Julia Brown she lived there with with her husband ceston and she was born enslaved her husband selston actually got the land we know from records he got the land because he fought in the US Army during the Civil War and this was payment was to have this land out here in the swamp and so they lived out there for years and years and as The Story Goes is is that Julia practiced Voodoo she was like a root worker or something like that right and uh so they were so isolated out there if folks got sick and you know it might take them a week for the train to come to get them in New Orleans they might go see Julia Brown for healing for some help right something would happen and of course at the same time she became like the local Midwife and you she delivered babies and things like that and they say for a long time the relationship with the community was beautiful she's a beloved member of the community everybody she was taking care of them delivering them as children she's you know up in years at this point in time like guess said she's born enslaved this is early 20th century So eventually though her husband passes away they say sometime after he passes away her relationship with the town starts to sour I don't know why they say you know maybe it's they started taking her for granted they didn't you know they they thought that she just they were entitled to her help maybe they just didn't understand what she was doing uh didn't understand her religion things of that nature maybe it was race but for whatever the reason she starts to sour with the community and so people started saying when they'd go out to her cabin out there in the swamp out on the edge of town to go visit her they would always find her sitting on her porch in a rocking chair kind of hanging out back and forth singing this one song when I die I'll take the whole town with me when I die I'll take the whole town with me so I mean look you know here guys more is it's I know there's this song you can imagine these guys are scared right they live in this dark swamp outside of the city here's this Voodoo practitioner that they don't understand you know I bring it I say this was a German immigrant community so it was called schlasser at one point so I joke these are people who look like me okay blonde hair blue eye last names okay you know this is this what all these people like that and then you have this woman that is entirely different from the community right they said race religion all those things factored in so they're scared to death what's going to happen well eventually she passes away from old age she's human doesn't matter what religion she practices right so she passes away September 28th 1915 and so two days later they have a funeral for Julia now this funeral of course this is a small town out in the swamp they have it in one of the homes there have her laid out in the casket up front and they say there's only standing room only at the funeral every everyone came everyone was there whether or not that's because she was this beloved member of the community who delivered babies or you know and she was the one who took care of them or I mean they were all scared of that song right this like last chance let's appease her spirit because we don't know what's gonna happen but while they're there at her funeral you say that the walls started to shake and the wind started to pick up and a rain started to come down and a storm started and they didn't realize cuz they were so all the way out there that a hurricane was making landfall in Louisiana at this point massive hurricane this hurricane is the largest storm recorded prior to named hurricanes okay 1915 storm so these people the walls are shaking you can imagine they're thinking remember that song that Julia was singing all those years when I died that a whole town with me so they're scrambling around they don't I mean they're going everywhere some of them they go get on the they run out they get on the train and they make the train goes about maybe about a mile down the road it gets stopped on the tracks because you got the storm surch from the waters coming up the rain coming down the winds are over 100 miles per hour people are getting boats trying to scramble some people are so trying to get away from the waters they climb trees to try and get away from drowning which I mean a much more horrific death even because they could hear their family and friends drowning below them so absolutely horrific scene and then of course the day passed and over 200 people died in Southeastern Louisiana that day and Fier has just been non-existent ever since all that's left is this little swamp tour today there's a little restaurant down the road as well and that's all in Fier so did she curse the town or not right did she curse the town the timing is impeccable right absolutely here you have this this woman who everyone in town knows obviously it's not a big town but she she's kind of like the center of the town and here she is people are hearing her rocking singing this song and almost immediately after she dies the town yeah literally goes away I mean all that that you mentioned was it's kind of chilling right yeah yeah and and and these are documented things right well and that's where I'll go with it and I love the story I was just thinking about it as I was love story going through you did I remember your series you did a while back Santa yeahia okay I remember that and I I remember thinking about this one as I was listening yeah vo you know yeah because I didn't have much exposure to that growing up obviously Voodoo was everywhere but so down so in this in the the historic record and all these things right what we've done with with kind of looking back at the records and everything is we know that that storm started to make landfall and that storm started in frenier at her funeral that that is a true fact there was an obituary two days later that talked about the folks in the community were there when the wind started to pick up documented fact okay she's on Census records we have found the land we know exactly which plot of land she owned we know she had some children we know about her husband uh we haven't been able to obtain his his military records um but we know they exist right like we we we've seen the if you understand records like we've seen the the indexes knowing we just I haven't gotten them but um anyway so so you have all these facts Lin up but the question then becomes is well was she actually practicing Voodoo and was this curse and so what we've found over the years and the way we study is that stories evolve it's oral history right you know even if she wasn't in that obituary it never mentioned her practicing Voodoo but you know look maybe they just left that part out like maybe not we don't even know if she sang that song exactly you know so so we don't we really pin that down you know as we we Trace through records and stuff we see in the 70s we find out that you know there was a newspaper article in the 70s where a girl who had survived she was like 12 years old when this storm hit and her and her family were able to get out she was interviewed in the 70s and she said no no no Julia Brown She everybody loved her there's no way she cursed the town but you know she's probably warning us okay and that's what that was the take then so you knew the history at some point in those 50 60 years had picked Pi up and then you get the TV shows like I was saying and so now we fast forward and we have this swamp tour okay that relies on tourism income and they have this really creepy little Cemetery there okay and that really creepy Cemetery has no one buried under it it is an absolute little Disneyland spectacle what so that that Cemetery that you saw there in the swamp that was off it's a prop it's a prop crazy enough no joke this did not see that coming by the way I did not see it's a I know I know I know look you're this is the only podcast I have said that on okay because I know your listeners you know appreciate what this this is so yeah it's a total prop now this land that they do the swamp tour on we found it really is her land this actually part of that swamp tourist part of the land that her and her husband owned uh you know so it is very accurate that way but they do this is a prop there you can go look at pictures on the internet and everything of it it's a great prop man but no it's not where those people were buried at all but if you were to take this tour they would pass it off they would pass it up yeah now now depending on who your tour guide is how much they play it up you know that's up to him again this one isn't a ghost tour spot however here's the thing over the years television has played a very good role in in in promoting this tour because they've been on sever shows they've been on early on there was an early MTV show gosh I can't remember now it was one of these early reality TV shows where people would go to a haunted place and of course they came here they were at that cemetery and stayed there at night right is it haunted so very much played up this uh it's been on a again that Weather Channel show recently there was something called atlas of cursed places they came out they did that so so obviously this is a promotional tool for them now as a prop this is where we get in ethics and and anything else you might want to talk about about capitalism right are they what are they doing here is that is that a method for them to tell the story it's a good way to tell the story and remind this or is it just meant to be a kind of tourist trap spot you know well and then as a consumer of these things you know how much stock do you put into these tours that that obviously they are it's a tourism company right you know and a good story sells right so if if the real Cemetery let's say was I don't know like 100 yards deep into the swamp but it's not accessible by that boat you it's like oh well we'll just bring the cemetery to the edge of the swamp you know it sounds like how a horror movie starts let's bring the cemetery on down yeah yeah and so it's like as a consumer you have to have a a little skepticism you know but but we want to be scared right we want that's why we're paying 30 bucks a pop 40 bucks a pop because we want you know to be freaked out a little bit it's kind of like going to a magic show we want to be fooled but what's interesting is that these are real events like there's a kernel of truth to all these stories but it just depends on the delivery of the person telling the story how much are they embellishing it you know what what are are some other examples of some ghost stories that maybe were embellished or exaggerated a bit I couldn't believe the fake cator well you know it's it runs the gamut right and it runs you know and I think that this this story about Julia Brown it's it's fairly innocent in the grand scheme of things right I don't think they're really you know doing too much they're making a little money off it but you know there's there's ones that are more Le let's we can call them innocent in a way of it's just you know it's kind of GFF so so we have you know I do tours in a town called Franklin it's a Franklin Tennessee old Civil War Town lots of Civil War history if there's a place that's haunted it could be here right and and go to this one building so I started doing these tours a few years back a friend of mine she owns a tour company uh obviously I tell ghost stories for a living right so and she just asked me can you cover one of the nights and so I went and learned her stories and all and started doing I've loved it it's been fascinating obviously it's something I've been fascinated with and you know she had been telling this one story probably for almost 20 years she had gotten it from someone else another tour guide when she started and she's a total history nerd that is in the county archives the county historian knows her by name she checks everything but I learned this one story and and and it made me question it so it's this little building and they and I'll give you I'll give you the the story of how you would deliver it here so building it's built in 1821 beautiful magnificent Federal style home right here right outside of this small beautiful Southern Main Street town right and the the man who built it is a man named Edward Clauson he was the local pharmacist here in Franklin he immigrated here from Scotland and he had properties all over he had a big farm out on the edge of town where his family lived and Edward was so rich that what he did was he built this beautiful place right here in town as like an after church brunch spot okay like this gorgeous property here you know his politically connected invited a lot of folks in to come they say all three presidents with Tennessee ties have dined and danced on this hardwood floor okay so rich dude Rich property right but according to the legend in the ghost story they say that they say that Edward he was in a rush to get this property done because he had a special event that was going to happen here his oldest daughter was going to get married and so he of course was going to have a big wedding invited all these people in as he would do wants all the dignitaries to see everything and the night before the wedding everybody's in town the church is beautiful done up ready to go and everybody is going to go to sleep in this building he he just built in town they call it Clon hall now so they all go to bed that night and in the middle of the night Edward and his wife were woken up by a sound out in the foyer and they walk out on the landing they look down they realize that their daughter the bride to be had hung herself the night before the wedding just awful despicable now they said for years all the people here in Franklin they had this Legend they said that you know look it must have been shoes in love with the boy down the road right it's Romeo and juliad story and this was an arranged marriage but in reality what we know now looking at records and everything was was that this young woman was 17 years old and the groom was 48 so of course everybody in the audience now groans oh I see right yeah yeah well here's the thing I heard this story and I've done so many stories all over the South and I just looked at my friend one day I was like I don't think this is real there is so many Hallmark stereotypes here so we went down to the county archives and we found out when Edward built this house wasn't even married yet so we went further and looked at Census records Edward didn't have any child until about 10 15 years after this building was built when he sold the house to the next to the next family he kept it for like 20 years I believe I don't remember the exact dates but uh when he sold the house most of his children were under 10 so we asked the county historian who's gotten very well used to us with weird questions yeah you know like you we asked the county historian and he just looked at us he's like where did you hear that mess well hundreds and thousands of tourists have walked past this building with ghost tourists here hearing this story year after year and so it I guess it's just an honest mistake that's been passed down and do you think that it was uh like a story that just snowballed out out of control or do you think that somebody just like made it up well okay so part of it is you know and I I I know we're podcast so I don't know if we'll be able to show a pictures there's this one picture we'll YouTube this yeah all right all right all right anytime I have Brandon shnider I'm gonna YouTube this thing people need to see this I didn't do my hair very nice today Javier um he has a much better background than m all right so they got so what we do is we say you know of course as the way it went all right the way the story you know we don't tell this story anymore because it's inaccurate right but it was told for years you know this picture that was taken and you know we we we talk about this this bride okay this is the way that like you know we're kind of instructed as like an like what it was um was you talk about this and and you somehow slip in there that you know they walk down the stairs and there's their daughter the bride to be she'd hung herself and she's wearing her beautiful blue night gown you know and then of course later you you know we talk more about the history of the building then we Circle back after the history and we say okay you know now about about six or seven years ago and and about six or seven years ago a a a young man was he came to the building it's now an art gallery his mother was purchasing a painting here in the building here okay and she had heard the story before and she decide she's going to snap a picture of where that that woman had hung herself because it is well known Legend through and it really is a well-known legend by the way people ask about it all the time but she decided to snap a picture of the spot because she wanted to take it home and scare her brother like any good you know sibling teenage sibling right so she gets in the car and she realizes oh my gosh she's thumbing through a picture it's like oh my gosh and do y'all remember what color night gown she was wearing that night it was blue right so all right so we I don't know how well we could we can see here but you know so there's this like image that that we show people or or would show people like I said we don't do this anymore of this kind of like what looks like a night gown okay or oh yeah I see it yeah I at first okay so like for the people listening there's a staircase and you're taking the picture from the bottom of the staircase it's one of those staircases that turns and and and has like a landing in the middle fancy Southern Foy and it's not a very good picture you know it's it's kind of uh like somebody just snapped it but if you look closely there's like it it appears to be a lens flare from the light yeah but but in coming downward yeah yeah it it's not coming the same direction as a light and it's it has this bluish hologramm Hue to it right absolutely yeah you know I I don't know how this story started I haven't dug too much deeper you know obviously you know my friend was horrified that she had been telling this story because she you know she she's so interested horrified oh my God it story right it's the story Franklin still well it was one of like there's one of three so like you know when people come on a tour I mean there's if you were especially a local teenager that's one that they'll ask for so I mean I will tell it sometimes and kind of you know rearrange how you know yeah I will tell people what you know what it is and all and you know it might have started you know there was somebody on the tour a few weeks ago and and she said that she knew who it was that took the she knew the gentleman who took this you know um a few years back and the woman who took this and anyway you know so it's who knows it's just like a local Legend it built up that way I I say a very innocent mistake in the grand scheme of things right now now now as we're throwing props around when you talk about Haunted Tours and this is not something Mike Brown would do Mike Brown would not have not put up with this he would have had all the research it would have been yeah so yeah let's give a little love to Mike Brown because Mike Brown for those of you who don't know he's the host of the pleasing terrorist podcast completely different style than Southern Gothic you know with Brandon but uh Mike Brown if it weren't for Mike Brown pretend podcast this podcast you're listening to would not be a thing because that guy I don't know how he found my podcast and it was like six years ago you know people don't realize when you start a podcast you have like zero listeners you know and somehow somehow you get from 10 from zero to 10 to 50 you know and and Mike Brown was probably one of those 50 and he goes hey I just listened to this great podcast on Facebook you know on a Facebook group and he's said you should check it out and from that moment on my show took off seriously the guy is amazing and I've had the privilege and you have had the privilege of going to his Charleston South Carolina goes to it which I want to promote what what's it called I I don't have it called pleasing pleasing Terrors well podcast is called he call the tours as well you can go pleasing Terrace tours in Charleston yeah and it's fantastic I mean it is fantastic and and the thing is that and we were talking about this Brandon earlier that I don't know I did not fact check everything that Mike Brown said in his tour in Charleston but it to me it sounded like he was just telling us factual things had happened but it was the delivery that made it spooky okay and and actually can we take we're going to go on a little side we're going to get back to the me and back out in the swamp for a little while I'm actually going to ask you about one of the stories that Mike Brown told me okay and my family and you're going to fact check okay and you're going to tell me how accurate the story is All right so and so we were walking around Charleston my with my daughters and this was our first ghost who they were terrified and it's at night and we're walking around and and there's this uh this little Street and you know there's this twostory old house it's a restaurant yeah it's called pugin's porch you know and Mike Brown and we're looking at it from the side right we're not looking at it up front we're looking at it from far away and there's a window up on the Second Story and Mike Brown was telling me that there were these two women that lived there yeah and they were sisters I think and when they died the house caught on fire afterwards and they renovated it and turned it into a restaurant right and since then the police police have been called because they I guess the buildings from next door they see what appears to be a woman outside the window and there's all these mysterious things that happen right and that that creeped us out so much that that's the singular story that's stuck with us did you go eat there that's the real yes you did yes this is where the story comes in because you're going to I'll learn how bad of a parent I am so um so we're like this was Saturday night we were leaving Sunday morning but I was like we have to get we have to go to this restaurant so we we were the first one's there on Sunday morning for brunch we get there and the moment you walk in you see a picture of the two old ladies that used to be there like they have it like right there where where the hostess is and so I snapped a picture of the two old ladies this will come into play later so so they take us they take us around to one of the back rooms and and we have you know brunch or whatever and it was great and so we I asked the waitress I said so where you know supposedly the legend and you're going to fact check this right but supposedly the legend is that if you go to this one bathroom okay and you look into the mirror you will see one of the old ladies behind you okay so and I asked her I said where is this bathroom and she said oh it's upstairs and you guys should go check it out and so we ate our lunch our brunch and we got up and we went up the stairs and we went into the bathroom and I went to the bathroom I didn't see anything but then my daughter she really wanted to see this ghost right so she goes into the bathroom I take a picture of her looking oh no no no she takes a picture of herself but because we're all under the same iCloud yeah her picture go her picture shows up in my phone I'm outside the bathroom and I quickly photosho with a Photoshop app uh shout out to photoshop for this I quickly photoshopped the picture that I took from downstairs of the old lady and I like really roughly put her in the background with and turn down the opacity and when she came out of the bathroom she was just looking at all the pictures and there was like maybe like 50 pictures that she took of herself oh and one of them had the old lady and she dropped the phone and she was so freaked out and I didn't tell her the truth until like we actually got home but oh my gosh it was the best Halloween ever oh yeah yeah yeah you know all right so how much of that story yeah how much of that story was real fortunately you know that story you know I did I did a little mini episode on it you know recently I love that I just listen to yeah yeah because that's what I I I I stole some of Mike's stories after visiting using this Halloween but that particular one I don't think there's anything inaccurate there you know really that house just a little bit about what what is it's beautiful house it's beautiful a neighborhood right uh you know they did lived there Zoe she was a teacher and all and all that right and uh lived at the property the sister they they were they were you know what they called spinsters right there just two unmarried women live in the house right and of course passed away and Zoe lived there and she didn't actually die in the house um I believe she had gone to a nursing home and passed away there but you know the the the big the point is when the spirits came back was at some point I believe it was in 76 is when they opened the restaurant buan porch and when they were remodeling in the 7s they say that's when it stirred up the activity it was those remodels the folks who owned it now but you know the one that I the reason why I went okay was uh the um my girlfriend is way into animals and there's a ghost dog there too oh yeah I didn't I didn't know that part yeah she's like oh no we're going to I want I want to play with the ghost dog but uh you know there's there's a little tune there's a a little barrial plot for the local dog is pugan which was the the dog it was a local stray that they kind of took in and was off the porch and all people say the dog still runs around between tables but you know you can't really fact check it you know I guess we could call the police department to see if some of those are true about the stories of that you know that's kind of the local lore there you know it is it is a hotel across the street now it was once a neighborhood but I mean it just expanded so much and um you know so the hotel so that's the story is that visitors to the hotel will see a woman on the second floor and so that you could fact check that or not but the history sound but the history yeah that that's the thing that makes a good ghost story is that you have like actual events that happened they documented events and it guys like you Brandon or guys like Mike Brown who who really are just great storytellers yeah you know you want a good story and sometimes you don't need to embellish right history much it it that story of the voodoo lady down in New Orleans was creepy before they added all the other stuff yeah like I thought I thought it was creepy by itself you know let's get back to yeah let's get back to what pretend is all about okay that's right all right so you guys have probably heard of this place it is called the my Myrtles Plantation okay it is considered America's Most Haunted home that's what people always you know it is the it's on all the TV shows it is a plantation in St Francisville Louisiana it's right outside of Baton Rouge okay and of course this Plantation and being America's Most Haunted home they say that over 10 murders maybe just 10 10 murders happened in the building some of those are documented some of them are absolutely documented okay but there's this one story that has gotten really popular there okay remember this is a plantation as well so very Southern ghost story all right and so The Story Goes is this gentleman by the name of Clark Woodruff he uh starts running the plantation his father-in-law actually established this Plantation back in 17 94 996 somewhere around there when when the Spain actually owned this part of Louisiana okay and uh so he establishes this Plantation Clark Woodruff is now running it he married the daughter Sarah Matilda running the plantation just doing all the all the awful things plantation owners do right but they say that there's a spirit that came from this time of this young enslaved woman who walks around the property or appears on the property and she's got a green turban on her head okay and people have said that they have seen her different spots there's a classic photo of we believe this girl named Chloe is even over on the property this photo they put on all their stuff and everything so people visit they hear the story of Khloe and who Khloe was was Clark Clark Woodruff supposedly Khloe was one of the domestic enslaved women so she basically was the nanny in the house she was somebody who worked in the big house and of course as stereotypes go and everything the way they tell the story is the perone love right but well again this is awful Plantation story so this obviously it was described as a light-skinned enslaved woman Pro possibly of mixed race and uh you know he clearly coerced her into a relationship right she was a she wanted to stay in the big house this was easier living for her there than out in the fields right as The Story Goes so she has this relationship with the man in the house this secret relationship and of course at some point point in time he gets bored with her he kind of his interest moves on he's no longer worried about her and say she's just brokenhearted right she's you oh man he's not interested anymore and one day you know she's she's getting really paranoid she decides to go and listen on the door when he's doing business in his office and he catches her and catches her ease dropping on him so he cuts off her ear for doing that she vicious so so she wears this turban on her head to hide this awful Scar and that's how people see her today but it continues to go on that she is so afraid of getting sent back out to the fields that she concocts this plan to try and have Woodruff fall back in love with her and what she's going to do is it's the kids's birthday it's one of the kids' birthday and so she's gonna bake a cake for the kid but she's going to be sneaky about it and she's going to sneak a little bit of Oleander in there which is poisonous right she's just enough to maybe make him a little sick she's gonna nurse the family back to health and then of course the he's gonna fall back in love with her right you know you took care of my you saved my children right well you know she does this and you know where this is going right she puts way too much Oleander in that cake the kids and the wife and all oh die after this occasion well knowing what she did she of course decides she's going to get out of the house she rushes out she goes out to the fields and everything and she asks all the other folks out all the other enslaved people out there to help her to help her get away because he's gonna find out and he's going to come for her and of course they don't want anything to do with her right in fact they know that if they Harbor her they're going to be in trouble so they take her out to the levy out there and they hang her for her crime because they want to make sure that he knows they don't you know they're on his side they did not yeah exactly so this story is told at the myrtles all the time time with this famous ghost this this woman named Chloe okay this this this enslaved woman who had a relationship and and had this horrendous murder but this one in and of itself there's absolutely zero evidence or truth whatsoever to it to the point of even the stereotypes in the story have become perturbing okay because was Chloe even a real person Chloe no no unfortunately I don't think he's real at all but I mean just down to the fact we know some of the things about the story that we can prove I know let's let's talk about the the provable thing Sarah Matilda the the wife she passed away from yellow fever she wasn't poisoned the kids actually they passed away separate times they the two youngest CH I don't know if they're the youngest or the oldest uh but two of the three children they did pass away within a year of each other but it was months apart likely yellow fever something like that the third child lived into her old age had her own family and everything none of those things line up with this part of the story right very which is really the the the the essence St the heart of the story yeah yeah you know so a lot of people have broken this down a lot of people go out to the myrtles uh there's this this uh a a Harvard Pro Professor Dr tyia Miles uh she's studies African-American history and she actually wrote a book called Dark tourism it's a fascinating book she came down to Savannah she uh was going to write a fiction a period piece so she was visiting Savannah and as went down there she went on a couple ghost tours and goes what the hell like like this is not what is this right so she went to a couple of these places she went to the myrtles and she really broke down a a really eviscerated this the racial stereotypes involved what this was you know the Jezebel character you know that they portray Khloe as you know and what that is and what what sex and stereotypes there and and the mamy character that that would come just these awful stere stereotypes and you know and what what we know now when looking at it is this story developed likely back in the 70s a Woman by the name of Francis kerine kerine Meyer she purchased the property made it an airb not an Airbnb this is this was the 80s right she made it a BNB an actual b0s BNB yeah yeah like a an analog BNB um so you know so she of course wanted heads and beds right and how do you do that you got stories and all you know maybe she learned some of these stories from the previous owner maybe not who knows but she wrote a book and everything and this story just took off it was in you know like timed magazine and everything they called it America's Most Haunted home you know and so this story that really we don't even know where it came from it's got this this awful kind of racial stereotyping that was just so Pro you know prototypical for this this Plantation culture to begin with and it's gone on and these folks still continue I I went and took the tour about two years ago they're still telling the story still telling the story like you said it puts it puts heads in beds you know yeah and that's the whole thing with dark tourism and we're just like you know ghost stories it's just the most um the most innocent ways of being a dark tourist I'm sure there's a lot more like creepy things that people do right to get well you know a place like the myrtles it it fascinates me that we have a story like that that that that can be so false and and problematic at the same time because explo as I said you know there's there actually were murders in the building one a man by the name of William Winter lived there uh someone came up these were affin people okay so I mean they had money they were very they were in the community and everything and one day he goes answers the door the front of the house a gentleman shoots him runs away no idea who has shot him he died on the stairwell crawling up the stairs to go get his wife you know this is a real real part of the story you know so so there's stuff there there are things there not to mention if you're looking for ghosts I'm not telling you ghosts aren't real okay as I was saying earlier you know I'm not saying that I I absolutely and when I talk to some of my ghost friends that really get into the Paranormal you know they'll talk about is all kinds of theories and you know whatever but if there's a place that's haunted it's gonna be a plantation think about the trauma that happened at this there's so much there that could could actually cause a haunting if if you believe in that the Paranormal in that way so much trauma but yet we stick to this really stereotypical story here to try and convince people and they've stuck with it that that's what kind of the myrtles can can give this kind of kind of thing of course the Ghost Adventures have been there and you know all the TV shows and just flying in so so I say that's that's kind of you know as as we go down this spectrum of good to bad I I always feel like Myrtle's really cap capitalized it's a private owner it's not a they're not trying to save the house it's not about preservation it's not about anything like that I mean obviously they've done a great job keeping the house uh I don't believe that they have a historian on staff from what I could tell it didn't really seem like a lot of the stuff was really uh very well docu I could be wrong so so please don't come after me um but you know there there's a lot of inaccuracies there it's a wonderful property to visit even maybe I'm covering my butt for for you know for kicking their tour or whatever but it it's fascinating it's again it absolutely could be haunted Chloe's not real right that's that's interesting because like you're talking about like you know this is not just a little bit in accurate like the the whole the the main character in the story is not even real and you know um before we started recording you mentioned the Winchester House and that be my interest do you have time for One More Story no totally yeah no I could talk about this forever unfortunately you're listening uh you know Winchester that that really that that really is the third element that I'd bring about here you know going from Julia Brown and kind of the just minor inaccuracies and all you know the Winchester House it's it it's interesting because as most folks might know this was Sarah Winchester she married into the Winchester family right and so she was the Widow of the Winchester rifle you know so of course you know obviously this is a big deal so they say that you know that the family was cursed by all the folks who had been killed by the Winchester rifle right and she was widowed and basically the heir to this giant Fortune so you know out in California of course she has this house that you know in her life what she did was she constantly was adding on to in the CEST of ways she had an unlimited budget unlimited budget she was always building she never stopped construction and there are in this building there's like stairwells into nothing doors just everything Giant proper just wild I mean it is the things nightmares are made of type thing right well you know well the actual legends about her started while she was alive so it isn't it it isn't really necessarily something that happened after the fact folks thought she was crazy they believe that she thought that the only way to keep the curse off and and I'm not totally brushed up all the way on it but was to continue building that as soon as she stopped building that's when that you know that's when it would come back and haunt her or something of that nature so so she just perpetually was building onto the house over and over and over again she's in the newspapers they say she was involved in spiritualism and all these things this was all while she was alive well let's see it was about within a year after her death it was 1922 uh she passes away within a year after her death it gets opened as a tourist attraction okay because of course you know what do you do with this property now right like what do you like she died she has no heirs really you know they're going to the city if you go there today my understand I haven't I haven't visited so my understanding is that the city is built up all around her and then out of the blue there's this this little property now that seems small in comparison but um you know so it's it's it was a a circus um a circus owner that purchased the building immediately became a tourist attraction right so uh it's still a tourist attraction there's a big marketing budget with them they do all kinds of events they do stuff um they were involved in helping make that that Winchester horror movie which was horrifically historically inaccurate right I was total leaning into the whole thing and all and you know but um two Halloweens ago I B very briefly I flirt I'm not like you I'm not a Serial podcaster but I tried to be at one point okay I I tried to come out I did a show called ghost tour serial podcaster serial podcast like that it's gonna be on your Tombstone that sounds like a t-shirt I better make a t-shirt sorry I know didn't mean to interrupt your creepy what what does your wife call it because I'm sure it's more negative right yeah yeah exactly it's so funny yeah you know I tried to I tried to make this little podcast I called it ghost tour and we were interviewing ghost tour guides from all the it was a lot of fun because it was like collecting stories from places I really you know and they all had different spins on things it was fascinating it it was it was a good time it was a it was a laugh it wasn't like a horror thing we actually for one of our final episodes is U the historian from Winchester Mystery House came on the show which was this huge get it was wonderful right and um she came on and we got to chat with her and she talked about a lot about these things if anyone knew about you know Sarah winchest this she even started working there as a teenager and then you know she been at this house for like 40 years and read all the personal letters and knew everything and you know she you know is it telling us you know a lot of this was this buildup it was this air around her it was even when she's alive and and the reality is even is that she probably was doing this she had she had the people there the the folks who did construction at families they lived on the property there and it was probably more she was just so loyal to these people she wanted to make sure that they continue to have work and that's kind of you know was kind of this she's a very kind-hearted woman and and and that's what the historian that's so interesting that it turned Sinister when when another way of looking at it was she was just giving people work or I thought I I don't know too much about the story but I when you were telling me that story I thought maybe the real story was that they were taking advantage of this rich woman but I don't know I don't know too much about the story but you know the thing about ghost stories is that the person telling the story is kind of forcing you in a maze right and they're not letting you see the other parts of the story right like they're taking you down this path and you could only see the story that one way and if you see it that way then of course there's a ghost story you know what I mean but how could there you know but then you start looking at the big picture and you realize that yeah it's real life life is complicated yeah you want the gas yeah yeah exactly you know but the what the historian said about this thing and about her and in that reality was you know we continue to lean into it because this is a historic home that needs saving and it costs a lot of money to keep this thing it is made of wood and this is this is a lot of work to maintain this historic property and so the way that we do this is is through that it's through visitors it's through visitors who who want to kind of you know to flirt with this this this stereotype and so it seems like you know I say that's much much more innocent and you know anyone who's ghost hunting okay we really go we go out of haunted tourism Ghost Hunters and things like that they actually they serve like an economic purpose in some regards you know a lot and a historical preservation that's why because a lot of these private places will open their doors up to ghost hunts and those Ghost Hunters they'll pay you know maybe hundred bucks ahead in some cases and it'll be a private historic property that doesn't have a nonprofit or benefactors you know and on a weekend they could make a few grand from Ghost Hunters coming in respecting the property and kind of helping take the case and so so there there's that you know we we that's that's our kind of our gamut on haunted tourism today you know that's that's super fascinating man then when you told me this idea that you had I I I was like let's do it and honestly before we press record I had no idea what we were going to talk about today so I'm glad as you said I have to weave you through Javier yeah exactly and I I I was just long for the ride just like you guys but you know Brandon next week I was going to play the pretend vampire episode I did a I don't know if you listened to it that one yeah of real vampires people especially like in New York in New Orleans that that actually some of them Feast on blood and and they consider that they identify as vampires and so I did this episode I was going to re-release it for Halloween but then you reminded me about the Santa episode which was like boy that's a deep cut that that's like way back earli yeah we didn't know what we were doing back then right we had no idea what we were doing I think I'm gonna play the Santa episode because I actually would like to listen I don't listen to my own podcast but that one's a very personal one for me right that's what I remember that's why I connected with it was you're you're because it's kind of what I try and do right it was like you you knew this growing up you knew what was like freak it would freak you out about it you didn't really know right right like this was actually something that I was afraid of personally you know like when I when I go on these ghost tours whatever I'm I'm not that afraid but this really freaked me out like even my kids they they see this stuff when they go down to Miami we could be walking to my grandmother's house and then there's a bag with a dead animal and it like laying in the sidewalk and I have to explain to them like they're like why is there like this dead chicken or a dead goat's head no it was a dead goat's head that weed oh my gosh W I did not see that with Voodoo growing up yeah yeah like this is stuff that we still encounter like to this day and and so I had to explain to them no it's like you know some people practice s but then there's some people that practice bruha and then I Tred to explain to them the differences you know once S I didn't even know much about it it's part of my culture and and like I know I know people in my family who practiced it but I just didn't know a lot about it and so this was like my exploration yeah trying to learn about my culture part of my culture that terrified me like I remember really well like I got chills just thinking about it because it's very scary but actually after I was done during that podcast episode I learned to really appreciate that religion and the historical aspects of that religion and and it's not so scary I think some people use it as right Voodoo as which you know like to to harm people but the vast majority of people are not it's just an AFR Cuban religion it's yeah they took they took Christianity and they mixed it with African beliefs and you had Sant so it's a cool episode thank you for reminding me I will play that because I think that would be a really cool Halloween episode but Brandon thank you so much man for for doing this this is totally years in the making because we needed to to do this at some point right I I know no kidding I I I I never thought I'd find a way on pretend that's right most people don't want to be on My Show by the way I know that's what I was going to say unless it's through the bars you know you collect calls I didn't think I'd actually make here maybe D everybody thinking that I'm into a I'm a successful podcaster of well you are and and seriously if you have not I mean this is the time of year okay if you're looking for a podcast and some really good ghost stories but not not only great historically accurate ghost stories but really well produced I mean you're going to listen to this thing and you're GNA be like this is an independent podcast well and you're you're gonna your mind's gonna be blown I'm in audio engineer by trade that's how I started with all this so I you know I was an audio guy and and I tell people I learned to storytelling song writers and country music and blueg grass so you know I kind of I came by this kind of honestly and so it's I I I hear awful things with the audio when I do it but I but I do know I was able to I was able to lean on that trade and in the same way and that's what's incredible about your show though you know you you have this incredible way of telling stories because of your trade and and that's what it's kind of cool that we both come from you know some sort of production background where we could make our stories better but uh dude you're an amazing ghost Storyteller or Storyteller in general uh I would some people tell me that they would they want me to read the phone book that they could listen to I I don't understand that but I would uh I would apply that to you the yeah all right man Brandon thank you so much for coming out pretend and happy Halloween right yeah happy Halloween everyone good luck out [Music] there

2023-11-02 22:52

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