The Stratford Poltergeist

Astonishing Legends is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible, financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things that people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Because Progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home, and more. Plus, you can count on their great customer service to help you when you need it, so your dollar goes a long way. Visit Progressive.com to see if you can save on car insurance. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. At CVS, it matters that we're not just in your community, but that we're part of it. It matters that we're here for you when you need us, day or night. And we want everyone to feel welcomed and rewarded. It matters that CVS is here to fill your prescriptions. And here to fill your craving for a tasty and, yeah, healthy snack. At CVS, we're proud to serve your community. Because we believe where you get your medicine matters. So visit us at CVS.com or just come by our store. We can't wait to meet you. Store hours vary by location. Astonishing Legends. Astonishing Legends. We'd like to thank Squarespace, Mint Mobile, Smalls, Factor, CarGurus, our contributors at Patreon.com, and you, our listeners, for making tonight's show possible. In 1850, in the quiet town of Stratford, Connecticut, a stately mansion on Elm Street became the epicenter of a paranormal storm that made news all over the world. The Reverend Eliakim Phelps, a respected Presbyterian minister, found his life turned upside down by inexplicable events in his home. Objects would materialize out of thin air, sometimes falling from the ceiling, and bizarre messages would spontaneously appear written in strange characters on previously blank pieces of paper. Terrifying, mysterious effigies would be found around the home, grafted from household items. The Phelps family, along with a parade of witnesses, found themselves at the heart of a phenomenon that captivated the nation. Was this the work of mischievous spirits, invited through an ill-fated seance, or perhaps the manifestation of hidden psychic energies, as some theorized? The line between the natural and supernatural blurred, leaving even the most skeptical observers questioning their beliefs. As the news spread of the astonishing events, the Phelps home became a magnet for the curious and the convinced alike. Reporters, clergymen, and self-proclaimed experts flocked to Stratford, each offering their own interpretation of what was unfolding within those walls. The haunting eventually took a sinister turn, with family members reportedly assaulted by invisible forces. Young Anna and Henry Phelps, stepchildren to the Reverend, bore the brunt of these attacks, their experiences as terrifying as they were unexplainable. Despite exhaustive investigations, no conclusive explanation has ever emerged. The Stratford poltergeist case remains an enigma, with details. Echoing earlier episodes of Astonishing Legends, like the Bell Witch or the Siren Call of the Hungry Ghost series. Tonight, we'll explore the theories, examine the evidence, and attempt to unravel the mystery that has endured for over 170 years. Was the Stratford poltergeist an elaborate hoax? A genuine supernatural event? Or something else entirely? Join us as we open the door to one of the most perplexing cases in paranormal history. Welcome back to Astonishing Legends. I'm Scott Philbrook, and this is Forrest Burgess. Finally, Phelps asked why the spirit was causing such a disturbance in the house, and the spirit replied, for fun. From Troy Taylor's book, American Hauntings, The Rise of the Spirit World, and the Birth of the Modern Ghost Hunter. Join us tonight for a look into the fascinating case of the Stratford poltergeist. And we're back. That we are, folks, and it's good to be back. Some very quick housekeeping here. We recently did a guest spot on Perplexity, a mystery podcast, talking about the Tetris murder. So check that out wherever you get your podcast if you'd like to hear us outside of our natural habitat. Which is Tetris. No, it was a fascinating case. So yeah, we had a blast doing that with Kadra. And it turns out there's a lot more of the history of Tetris than you thought. That's right. And folks, we're doing a live AMA on June 29th for our patrons at patreon.com slash Astonishing Legends at 7 p.m. Eastern and 4 p.m. Pacific. And Forrest, to be clear, that's an AMA. I'm going to put another A in there. That would be an AMAA. I'm going to add that other A for me. You can answer anything, but I almost might be everything. So well, we're already getting excellent question submissions. So if you've not joined our Patreon yet, now would be an excellent time to do so. Yes, we're very much looking forward to doing that. So if you want to watch it, get over to patreon.com slash Astonishing Legends and get signed up and we'll see you there. And finally, for tonight's episode, we were able to lean on a prior guest of the show, prolific author, skilled investigator, and researcher, our good friend, Troy Taylor. Yes, Troy has been on the show a few times because he is the original Boots on the Ground Deep Dive researcher, and he's covered so many of the kinds of stories we like to talk about. And no surprise, he's done some background on this case and graciously offered to let us use it in our own research. It was timely because June 26th and 29th of this year, right around the corner, he will be at the 28th annual Haunted America Conference in Alton, Illinois. This is a legendary conference, folks. So if you can get there to it, do it. Visit ghostconference.net for details. All very super cool. All right, well, let's dive into the story. Yeah, and you know what, Forrest, I did not know this story. I hadn't heard of this, like, even a little bit, and Tess and I were chatting, and she mentioned that she thought it'd be a good one to cover. She posted about it on the Astonishing Legends blog last year in October or so at our website and said a ton of people had asked if we'd ever covered it, and once I started looking into it, I was like, wow, this story is crazy. We have got to do this. Yeah, I'm so glad we did, finally. And, you know, some elements were vaguely familiar, but I don't think I fully knew the story either. If you asked me about Stratford, like, I wouldn't have put this together, but going over, I kind of love when this happens as well. You start digging into a story and you find out it's as mind-blowing as some of the other major stories everyone's heard of. Just the breadth and the depth of strangeness and the amount of witness reports and documentation and just the setting, too, the background and backdrop of it. Yeah, it's all very entertaining to me and a lot to think about. Again, as we'll talk about this in the show, I just wonder, how does this stuff happen? I mean, what are the physics of this kind of haunting or spirit interaction or what's really going on where the other side can affect this much activity on this side? Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I had a lot of fun digging into this, and I think you guys are really going to enjoy it. So let's talk a little bit about the backstory here. Let's set the stage for this. So folks, as you heard in the Cold Open, this all took place in March of 1850. There were, at that time, less than two U.S. citizens per square mile living west of Missouri, not including the West Coast. And Los Angeles was actually incorporated that year, and the first parts of the Pacific Coast Highway were being built. There were 31 states, with California being added in September. And in a little over 40 years, the first silent films would begin to be produced in what would later become Hollywood. Yeah, that's hard to imagine that at that time, there weren't 50 states. There were territories. You don't really think about it. You're like, oh yeah, 1850, and it's like, no, that wasn't happening. No, it was still pretty early in American history. But just four months after the spooky events at the Phelps Mansion would take place, President Zachary Taylor, in office only a year, would fall ill and die suddenly of what was reported to be morbid cholera after consuming copious amounts of cherries and iced milk at a fundraiser that took place at the Washington Monument, which was then still under construction. Imagine that too. That's pretty wild. And imagine like, that's your treat, iced milk and cherries. And it's going to kill you. Yeah, it was a different time. I know. They didn't have Yoo-Hoo back then. Well, many thought Taylor, who had been a slave owner but was more interested in unifying the country than supporting slavery, had been killed by a pro-slavery assassin. But an exhumation showed no evidence that he was either assassinated or not assassinated. That's right. And Taylor's vice president, Millard Fillmore, would take his place. And while the Civil War wouldn't start for 11 more years, Fillmore's bill, the Fugitive Slave Act, which is a very controversial bill historically, was passed by Congress in September of 1850. It made it illegal for authorities to not arrest a fleeing slave if they were aware of the circumstances. And Blacks of the North were actually encouraged to avoid authorities for the danger of being kidnapped and shipped to the South as fugitive slaves, whether they were or not. Yeah. And right in the middle of it all, a minister named Reverend Eliakim Phelps. In 1848, he bought a house on Elm Street in Stratford, Connecticut. When we first heard the title pitch, I, of course, thought it was Stratford, England. But no, there was one in Connecticut. Well, it's named for that. Well, of course, yes. No, no. As many U.S. towns and cities and areas are. But, you know, this was a house with a bit of history that we'll touch on shortly. But for now, it has become the Phelps Mansion. And Phelps was no ordinary minister because besides his religious calling, he had an interest in some unusual things that we've talked about on the show before, including spiritualism, mysticism, and mesmerism. But a healing mesmerism, like a healing hypnosis, which it sounds, it was a little more accepted then in a way, also controversial. And then there's a huge stretch where it was like, that's ridiculous. And now we're back to maybe there's something to it. And with him came his new, much younger wife and her three children, one of whom suffered from what they called a nervous condition. His first wife of 29 years, Sarah Adams, had died five years earlier after a fever, and they had had three children together, which were all grown and living on their own by that time. Yeah, and one of those older children was noted congregational minister and educator, Austin Phelps, who personally witnessed the hauntings at his father's house. And the haunting is where this legend really takes off. Like a lot of hauntings, it's a lot about the house and the space. Well, on March 10th, 1850, the Phelps family returned from church to a really, truly bizarre scene. Yeah, the house was ransacked. Doors were flung open that had been left locked. Furniture was overturned and their belongings were scattered everywhere. Yeah, and they, of course, thought it was a robbery or a burglary, but nothing was stolen. You know, the money, jewelry, everything was left untouched that was a valuable there. There was no clear motive for whatever had happened other than maybe just vandalism. Yeah, and that was just the beginning. Upstairs, they found something even more unsettling. On a bed in the nursery was his second wife's nightgown. Her name was also Sarah, by the way, his first wife and second wife, both Sarah's, just so everybody knows, maiden name Sarah Nicholson. Here's the weird thing. It's not just clothes strewn about the bed. The clothes were laid out in such a way that it resembled a body being prepared for a funeral or a coffin. The arms of the clothing were folded across the chest and there were even stockings on the floor to imitate feet. So you can kind of picture that, right? It's laid out like the outlet of a person here. It's her nightgown too, yeah. Right. So it was deliberate, not just a bunch of clothes thrown on a bed. And this was just the first makeshift effigy that they'd find in the house or a sculpture made from household items, yeah. Yes, indeed. And the entire family was, of course, rattled after that. But Reverend Phelps decided he was going to catch whoever did this. So Sarah and their young kids went back to the church for afternoon services and Phelps waited at home with a pistol in his study to catch whoever was breaking into the house. He sat in there hiding for hours, listening intently for anything he could hear. Yeah, because obviously there's a rational explanation for all this, right? Well, during that time, he heard nothing but the natural sounds of the wind outside and an old house creaking. But eventually he gives up and decides to have a look around. And this is where it turns into one of the most bizarre hauntings we've ever heard of. So he exits the study and begins looking around the house. And as he enters the dining room, he's greeted by a room full of homemade people. Yeah, this is insane. Like there's not even words that describe it. When you read about this, everybody's like, there were 11 people in the room, but they're not people, really. No, this is what we're trying to explain here. So you have to really picture this. And I had a little trouble when I first read the line. Like, what do you mean people made out of stuff? So, okay, picture this in your mind. At the time, there are 11 effigies of women in the room or things made to represent women. And these are life-size human beings sculptures, but they're made up of different items around the house. So the family's clothes, clothes stuffed with other clothes. And picture this, like a kid, you know, when you were a kid and like Ferris Bueller, you're trying to get away with your parents thinking, or- Right, right. Put the fake body in the bed. Frank and, yeah, Escape from Alcatraz. Frank and his two brother buddies, they're making dummy effigies to stuff under the bed. It's something like that. So these are like sculptures made of, you know, rags, coats, dresses, hand muffs, whatever they could find, just articles around the house shaped to resemble people. And several of them had Bibles in their hands. Some of the figures are kneeling, but they are kneeling so far down that their foreheads are almost touching the floor. Yeah. And crazier still, some of them are described as actually standing. How do you make it stand? Yeah, that's right, but I'm trying to picture now, just a little side thought here, just imagine that loose items, right? It's not Legos. Some of it's kind of loose stuff propped up. And then it made me think of our old Halloween story from our friends over at IDAHistory, Jeff, remember he was a prison guard there in Idaho, and he said they came into the room and a loose stack or a ream of printer paper was standing on edge, just standing straight up, no support. It's like, well, how does that happen? Well, it's magic, folks. It's paranormal. So that's kind of what made me picture this. How are the clothes standing? How are these figures standing up when they're made with a cobble together with just loose items? Yeah. And on top of that, how do you get some of them to hold a Bible or seem to appear to be holding a Bible? Okay. So that's the part when you read it, like I'm not clear how that was accomplished or the physics of it, let's say. Is there a wire frame inserted into some of it where there's solid objects and clothing around it and stacked in such a way that, listen, just keep in mind, it's very elaborate for the few moments that this took to occur. But even stranger still, the items used to create these things were, again, gathered from all different parts of the house. And all of it was done while Reverend Phelps sat in his study with a pistol standing guard and he heard nothing. And that's all freaky enough. But one of the most frightening things is that even though these women, in air quotes, were all in various states of devotion, they were seemingly focused on what Troy Taylor calls a small central figure in the middle of the room. There are some other folks on the internet that have written, well, it was demonic or maybe it was hanging by a cord or something like that. But I actually reached out to Troy specifically about this. And I was like, have you heard that as well? And he said he couldn't find any additional description of it other than the effigies were focused on it and it was a small, quote, central figure. So I didn't want to introduce the demon word if you weren't really sure. You know, I didn't want to get into the carcosa or any of that stuff yet. No, no, no. Well, listen, that's a, yeah, I might as well talk about this right now. I mean, I know it's fashionable now with a lot of researchers and ghost hunters to kind of roll their eyes. It's like, it's not a demon. Don't play the demon card right off the bat. Right, right. But who knows? Let's say, I don't think anyone knows. But the sense that the first witnesses got of this was that it was like a mock religious ceremony of some kind. Obviously, it just seemed to be there. Focused on something. In the center. What is, you know, a small central figure could be anything. Could be a child. It could be like, and why is there a being at all that's at the center of this, whatever it is that they're praying to? Well, it's kind of a message. I, it's like a mock. And when I say it could be mockery, but also reverent, but as we'll learn, perhaps more mocking some kind of religious ceremony. So, I don't know if you believe in any of this at all. In any case, these effigies of 11 women are all focused on whatever this small central figure is. This little clothing household item sculpture in the middle. And on top of that, they appear to be either praying to it or praying because of it and doing so with the Bible as a source of inspiration. Well, you know, obviously the Bible was a central item in most every home, as people would know, learning from history. So, there's got to be one there. I'm trying to point out the significance of that item as a major household central focus point or item. Astonishing Legends is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible, financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things that people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Because Progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home, and more. Plus, you can count on their great customer service to help you when you need it. So, your dollar goes a long way. Visit Progressive.com to see if you could save on car insurance. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. Exploring the unknown is what makes Astonishing Legends so much fun. But when it comes to dinner, nobody wants surprises. Marley's Spoon helps you eat well without overthinking it. Each meal is chef-designed, made with quality ingredients, and balanced so you feel good about what you're eating. With over 100 recipes to pick from every week, there's always something new to try, whether you're in the mood for a comforting classic, or something a little more adventurous. Marley's Spoon adapts to your life, from breakfast to dinner, and even those in-between snack moments. The subscription is simple and flexible, so it fits your schedule, no matter how busy things get. Go to MarleySpoon.com slash offer slash pod45 for 45% off your first order and free delivery. That's right, 45% off your first order and free delivery. That's MarleySpoon.com slash offer slash P-O-D-4-5. Hello, hello, I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. I recently spoke with IBM's new director of research, Jake M. Bata. We discussed his vision for the future of quantum computing. At IBM Research, what we always do is answer what is the future of computing, whether it's coming up with new algorithms, coming up with better AI, coming up with quantum, or coming up with just how do different accelerators go together. It's our DNA to answer the question of what is the future. Isn't it a perfect problem for IBM because you kind of need to have a legacy of building stuff? Yes. Building actual physical machines. Yeah, it's why I came to IBM. I wanted the experience, the culture of building hard things that others have not done before. Where do you imagine we are in the timeline of this technology? There will come a point when it will mature, right? Yeah. My cell phone is a mature technology at this point. How far are we from that point with quantum? By 2029, we'll build the first fault-tolerant quantum computer. That is one that can run a very, very large, large problem. To learn how IBM is building the future of computing, visit ibm.com slash quantum. This is Aaron Lillis, and thank you for listening to Astonishing Legends. Let's get back to the show. Well, another character in this story and a major backdrop element is spiritualism, which we've talked about. Yes. Which is slightly different than spiritism and the other isms and isalisms and mesmerisms and yeah, the other isms. And it was bigger. It was bigger, too, than spiritism. Yeah, slightly different, but the idea, though, is that this was a national craze. And just a thought that popped in my head is this rich time for all this stuff, the Fox sisters, the electric girls, which we'll talk about, I think, in a bit, just what was going on nationally. Now, as a backdrop, as we've said, this is predating the Civil War, but for the whole half of the century here, is a keen interest in the world beyond. And are you creating or kicking up some of this psychic energy? Because it just made me think, like, wow, why don't we get this these days? Well, it wasn't frowned on, perhaps, as much. Now, people did give it a side eye, if you're into this stuff, especially ministers, and like we said before, Phelps' interest in mesmeric healing, psychic healing, let's say, and hypnotism, was a curious nod for folks back then. But otherwise, he was a very respectable minister in the day, and nobody really questioned what he did. But everybody, as I'm saying here, is that had perhaps an interest in metaphysical things, so it was very common. It was a national craze of sorts, especially, that's why it also got very popular. Nowadays, I'm sure this might be a post that generates a lot of clicks, perhaps, but maybe that's the end of it. But it specifically relates to this time period, spiritualism. The core idea is that the spirits of the dead can and do communicate with the living, more frequently and in greater dosages, as we've seen here. Well, that's what we're talking about. It's like, because you think about Houdini, too. We're talking about seances, mediumship, and our new best friend lately, table tipping. Table tipping seems to be working its way into everything. Have you done it yet? Have we talked about it on a DLO? Okay, we've got to get you on board with that, maybe perhaps literally on the board. Hey, I'd love to try it out. Well, you know, in this story, there were six-foot marble tables on four legs that came up off the ground onto two legs with no one standing anywhere near them, according to eyewitnesses. Right. Crashing down, making a clatter for folks to see what was the matter. But in this case, what we're seeing here, as I read through the cases, and it starts to ramp up, as these cases often do, we're going to look at similarities as well with other historical instances and reporting. But this is very powerful. Whatever this is, has a lot of energy and a lot of power to it to expend and lift heavy objects. Now, you know, as a kid, I thought like, well, is Yoda like limitless? Like, what can he lift with his little prefigured hand outstretch? Like, is there a limit? Well, like a giant water tank, sure, he can throw or lift an X-wing fighter out of the swamp. But there is a limit to that. So all curious things to wonder about and control of the elements. So again, yeah, table tipping, I've now witnessed it myself. It's a very strange sensation, although I didn't feel anything internally. It's just odd that it moves. I'm just doing it at that for the moment. But yeah, so all of the above, everything that we're talking about was a big deal during this era. And it was a big deal, enough of a big deal that attracted people from all walks of life who are curious, not just debunkers, but investigators and celebrities, even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who you may know as the author of the Sherlock Holmes character and series of fantastic books. And by the way, on PBS, there's a great Holmes versus Doyle, Lucy Whirlsley special on detailing about his life and how he felt about the books. And yeah, it's very fascinating, but he had an interest in this as well. And we all know about him and the fairy photos. Yes. But again, well, that ties into this too. The fairy photos that circulated, he thought they were real and perpetuated by two or three sisters. And also, I think later on, they claimed that like, well, he faked some, but not all of them. Some of them are real. So there you go. And in any case, folks embraced it. It gives you a bit of comfort, some guidance about the unknown spiritual world, or maybe just plain proof of an afterlife, life after death. So on top of this, this was the exact same time it was really taking off. Thanks to the Fox sisters. They were known for always being around when spirit wrapping or Norse's would be heard. And that, we're going to have to cover them one day. They're their own astonishing legend. Yeah, sooner or later. Yeah, I haven't specifically covered them yet, but they were becoming famous just two or three years before this happened. So they were in the news, you could say. But the thing is, in this case, we have a preceding event that might tie things together. The seance. That's exactly right, sir. Yeah. So that happened on March 4th, just six days before all this hullabaloo and chaos erupted. And an old friend of Reverend Phelps had visited the Phelps home, and the two men had engaged in a seance. It wasn't so weird. It was more family entertainment. It's a little strange for me for a reverend to be engaging in this. But again, it wasn't that big of a deal then. And they just reported hearing some faint knocking sounds at the time, but just kind of brushed it off, dismissed it as insignificant. They've been discussing spiritualism recently. And the idea that contacting the spirit world was possible and maybe even fun. And they decided to try a seance to test the legitimacy of the Fox sisters and the practice itself. And so what they did was they sat across from each other in a dark room in the home, lit only by candlelight, because it's really a mood killer to have all the lights up. So it was going to answer the spoopiness. And then they attempted to summon someone and ask questions. During this time, they heard some, quote, intermittent, disorganized wrappings, end quote, but nothing else, really. They received no answers to their questions, and they found the experience wholly unremarkable at the time. So they eventually gave up. Yeah. And like with a lot of legends like this one and others we've covered over the years, there are a bunch of conflated details out there. And some folks say that the friend that Phelps conducted this first seance with was a Reverend Mitchell, who we'll talk about in a minute. But other sources say that's actually not clear, right? Right. But it's like all these cases we cover from the 19th century. Well, even modern ones. The facts are kind of murky about who said what. And ironically, I don't trust anything I read now about who said what. Yeah, I know. I know. That's what I've learned from our show. Yeah. And especially, you know, celebrity stuff, especially like this. Like, I never said that. Somebody's just trying to make a headline here. And now a click. So this would be clickbait for the 1850s. And we can't say for sure then that Reverend Mitchell was part of a seance, but we can say that Phelps called him in after the haunting started, for sure. That's right. And he's definitely part of a second seance, which we'll talk about in a minute. But I mean, here's my question for you, Forrest. How many episodes of the show have we done where someone did something like a seance or played around with a Ouija board, thought not much happened, and only later realized that all hell was breaking loose? Well, okay. You have to define and refine your questions here, because are you talking about times that we've discussed in actual episodes? Because that might be, I don't know, 10 episodes where something like that happened. But if you count all of our letters that we've received, both for the Halloween show and now the dead letter office, it might be in the hundreds. Yeah. People said, I just started messing around with blank, and then this happened. And so you're definitely poking the paranormal bear here. You are kicking the supernatural hornet's nest, and I'm being a little bit flip, but actually the idea is that you are getting a reaction. You're yelling into the void, and the void is yelling back in a way in that, well, this is what was wondered by the Phelps in that, did they invite something because of the seance? And so that's a question we're going to ask ourselves here. But are you, again, opening some kind of channel where you're welcoming communication and interaction? So by March 10th now, the March 4th seance was probably kind of a remarkable memory from six days earlier. I don't think they even thought about it much or made a connection. And it was kind of overshadowed by the chaos of the ransacked house and the eerie effigies. Now, keep in mind here, Minister Phelps, Reverend Phelps, is not fully buying the whole like, oh my gosh, it's the devil. He's thinking there must be some kind of logical explanation still. And to his credit, yeah, well, to his credit, it's like, because you don't want to go over there. It's like, okay, somebody's playing a prank. That can be solved right away. So in this case, you don't want to go there and you're thinking, okay, what's causing this? And he's looking for some rational answers. Now, Troy Taylor thinks it was probably forgotten that seance, and that kind of makes sense. But the following days, there's a dramatic escalation. This is when objects began to move on their own. Yeah. So our listeners might be thinking, how do you forget a seance? But that's because today it's an extremely rare thing. But during the heyday of spiritualism, they were really in the zeitgeist and people were conducting them for entertainment. But coming back to what you just said about things moving on their own in the house, now we're getting into potentially a poltergeist territory. Yeah. So just a quick side thought, because I just happened to be recently thinking about this before we dove into the research here, is that I was thinking about ghost hunting and table tipping and all the things that modern ghost hunters do. And you can relay that to people who are kind of curious, or maybe they're skeptical, or maybe they're just outright, you know, don't believe anything at all about that. And you can have video of you being there. And I think it's probably because of the EVP. I was thinking about that at the Canton Theater and all these, the little cat toy balls going off by themselves. You could have an unlimited number of REM pods whooping and whirring and going off and EVPs and all that. And none of that will convince anybody, unless you were there and you believe in that, unless you were there and you see something move. That is next level. Yeah. Okay. I don't care what kind of devices are going off or, or shadows you see that, you know, on infrared video, once you're there and something moves on its own and it shouldn't have, that's an attention getter. And now it's different. And so that's, what's happening here. You start to have large objects. Some of the more dramatic ones, a, an umbrella flew across the room and now we have forks, knives, books, pens, all sorts of household items, forks, twisting. Itself, uh, into shapes and patterns. Things are coming out from seeming thin air from nowhere. Pillows, sheets, blankets were all pulled from the beds and fluttering through the air. The classic sign. So things are getting progressively worse. What's the family doing at this point? That's the real question. I wonder what any family would do. And they all seem to kind of do the same thing. Also reminds me, of course, before we get to this, the Polish poltergeist case. Oh yeah. The elusive force, uh, that we covered in, uh, that's in our archives folks. Episode 281, the Gajewski family, Andre and, uh, Eva Gajewski's 13 year old daughter. And that's more of a modern thing. Very dramatic, but not quite like this. This has sentience perhaps. In any case. So at this point, Sarah, this is Reverend Phillips, his second wife. Uh, she was actually just eight years older than his oldest child with his first wife. That was a little bit of a, not scandalous, but, uh, eyebrow raising. When the family wasn't happy about it. No, they weren't happy. It was a little bit of eyebrow raising even for that. But, uh, uh, but she was pretty upset about what was going on and wanted something done about it. It's like any mom, like, okay, you got to stop this. Uh, I want this to be over with. Also, it's a huge mess constantly that needs to be cleaned up. So yes. And expensive. That's right. And it's at this point that Reverend Phelps definitely contacted Reverend John Mitchell. And he was a retired minister and friend. Mitchell was initially skeptical and then suspected, of course, trickery by the children or the maid who was actually gone. I think that first day that this happened, the first instance. So, but he thought, well, maybe the maid. And so he even takes the children away from the house, but then the activity continues unabated. Yeah. So Mitchell's trying to debunk it. He's trying to get to the bottom. Well, yeah, exactly. You know, it wasn't until Mitchell himself witnessed the objects moving that he became convinced something was actually going on that couldn't be explained. And that's what I'm talking about. It's like, it's all, someone's playing a prank or pulling one over. And then you see something fly across the room, which is obviously not a fishing line. And now you have to readjust your thinking. So then on March 14th, a potato fell out of thin air from some unknown point high above them. And this is inside the house and this landed on the breakfast table. So it's not like there is a potato hole above the breakfast table that the potato fell through or a vent. It just came out of nowhere and falls. And I do wonder, would that be a good potato? Is it edible? Is it large? I'm probably not eating it. Russet, you know, red. What are we talking about here? Well, over the course of that day, Phelps, his wife, and Mitchell watched 46 objects appear and then drop from the air in the locked parlor, including clothes that were kept in closets upstairs. So they're just appearing in the parlor there, out of thin air. Yeah, we're talking classic apportation, apportation, manifestation. Things are just materializing. We've heard about that time and time again. All your famous cases here, you've got notes on. The Sally House, the Rainmaker, remember that one? That's water appearing. Again, control over the elements. Objects defying the rules of physics, not only to be transported instantly from one place to another, but also to be moved or rearranged in an impossible amount of time. Like just a few seconds or instantaneously. And another thing about the Sally House, we're going to talk about fire. Again, part of the elements, water, fire, air, material objects. That's a lot of power in my estimation. Yeah. And just a quick question, going back to the magically appearing potato, that's the thing I wonder is like, you were asking, what kind of potato is it? That gets me to thinking like, was it a pre-existing potato that was transported there? Or was it a potato created out of nothingness to appear? Well, that's a big question. Did it have to come from another place? Did it disappear from another place? And then that makes you wonder, it's like somebody has got a basket full of potatoes and they look down and one's gone. Or do they think, well, where did my potato go? And then, well, oh, I know where it went. It went to the Phelps house. I think it depends. And we may have some answers depending on what you believe. And you've now just- Or did it come from the market up the street? How far can the potato go? Right. Or does it come from somewhere else? Now, there's an anecdote, which may or may not explain this, but now you have forced my hand, sir, and I have to relay this tangent. There could be no other option but this remedy. I've talked about him quite a bit. I think he's a fascinating character. I would love to eventually one day do an episode on him if you're willing. But it's Dr. Alexander Cannon who practiced in the 1930s in London, England. He's no slouch. He was like head of the London Physicist Society, something like that. Anyway, he gave a series of lectures called the Mayfair Lectures. And in one anecdote, it's just a fascinating life that he led and claimed to have powers. Talking about mesmerism and hypnosis, he was into that. But he traveled all over into India, of course, and the Himalayas. And one anecdote is that he and a traveling companion, I think we're walking along this really remote ridge, I think in the Himalayas. And they round this corner and there's like a yogi sitting on a blanket. So they got to talking to this guy like, well, what are you doing here? And there's other things that he relayed to them which he could not possibly know. They'd never seen him before, but he invited them to a snack, like a lunch. And so they sat down and he claims, Dr. Cannon, that this yogi manifested fruit out of the air for them to eat. Right, right. And they're, of course, blowing away. They had studied this kind of thing, but they were seeing it up close. And another thing that he, again, shedding light on this, he said, I think he produced a small painting, you know, from under a blanket or something like that. And Cannon recognized it as belonging to a friend of his. And he's like, that's remarkable. They were like blown away. Like, where did you get that? It's like, well, it's from the office of your friend, the yogi says. He's like, but the rule is it has to be returned by midnight. I will return it by midnight. I cannot hang on to this forever. It's like, okay, whatever. And so they go on their travels. They come back to England, London, you know, a few days or a week's time. And they said, the yogi said, well, talk to your friend and ask him what happens. Well, they did. And they said, hey, did you have that painting that's over, you know, your desk in your office? Like, yeah, that was gone for like a half a day. Right. So it was the same painting. He transported, a ported from London to. That's some David Blaine stuff right there. So it's pretty remarkable. But there was rules to it. He had to return it by, you could not hang on to it. I don't know if that's a maintaining of energy that he has to do. And it can't be sustained. Kind of like Luke Skywalker having a double of himself. You do it too long, you're going to pass out. Right. Is there some rule? But they could eat the fruit that he produced, that he just manifested out of thin air. So that was pretty amazing. But in the book, I do remember Dr. Kennan saying, well, if you don't believe me, here's the address to my friend who is like some official in the government. He said, write to him. You can ask him. He'll tell you it's true. And he lists the guy's name and his address. Right, right. So it's like, I don't believe me, ask him. So that can happen. And apparently, if you believe that. So anyway, sorry about that. But it had to be told. Love it. And then for now, for our critical thinkers, okay, so now we've got Phelps, who is clearly interested in spiritualism, like a lot of people at the time and still do. And maybe Mitchell is too, but he's a bit more incredulous, you could say. And maybe they want to believe too much or find a reason for all this stuff because what do you do with this? You know, like where do you put that in your brain bank? Or maybe their confirmation bias is influenced by popular culture at the time. And it's convincing them things are more related to a haunting than some other mundane explanation. But it's really hard to figure out how you misinterpret a potato materializing out of thin air and hitting you and hitting the table. Because you also get some bacon bits and sour cream and some chives. Right, right. Well, so maybe one of the kids threw it or one of the servants that worked in the house threw it from the edge of the room and just nobody noticed? I don't know. Okay, so you have to realize the situation here. It's several people now in this house of a very well-respected family. Yeah. Are they all in on it? And you might think that, okay, it's a gag. Somebody threw it. You know, again, there was a secret potato hole. Somebody threw a potato through. Right, right. It's just a part of a big gag. But this was described as happening in a locked room. The parlor was locked and there were adults listed as witnesses. You know, one would think the kids were probably present for the breakfast. So, you know, they would have been right there. Like everybody's there. Everybody in the household's there. Right, right. And they're in front of the adults. And it's a very sophisticated special effects prank if it is. But even if a random potato could be palmed some sleight of hand and you toss it, you're not in the right position, right? I know this trick from a kid where you could take a piece of like tissue paper, keep stuffing it into your hand. And if you're standing over the shoulder of the person, there's a way to flick it behind them. Yeah, yeah. And they think it's disappeared because their eye doesn't catch it. And then the gag is you have them turn around and there's a pile of wadded up tissues behind them. Like, how did you do that? It's like, well, you just didn't see me flick it over the back of your head. Right, right, right. Well, that's not the case here. Even if a potato could be sleight of handed, you know, this went on with clothes that were somehow appearing spontaneously from upstairs. And it's just really hard to imagine that the kids are going to like, you know, sneak garments into the room, stuff them, arrange them, throw them up in the air without the adults noticing. And there's also cases where eyewitnesses said they frequently saw things flying around the house. And, you know, get this. This is interesting, too. They would move unnaturally slowly, very slowly, almost stop as if being placed on the floor, very gently, or change direction midair. That's your favorite, right? Non-ballistic motion. Non-ballistic motion, a sign of intelligence or control of flight. So word begins to spread. Friends, observers, curiosity seekers, and the skeptical all came to witness the events at the Phelps house. Reverend Phelps actually welcomed them all, even reporters, hoping to find an explanation for the chaos. So this is when one of his grown kids from his first marriage, Austin Phelps, a noted and respected minister himself, and fully grown now, he gets wind of things and becomes interested in investigating it, right? So, yes, he was interested in getting to the bottom of this for his dad, and also just intensely curious, I'm sure. This is his own family. You can go have a chance to go check this out. Although, as you said, Dr. Phelps was very open to everybody. He invited people, like, if you don't believe me, come and take a look for it. And, unlike a lot of cases, this thing paid off like a slot machine, and people saw stuff, and they left scratching their heads. Austin's uncle, though, Dr. Abner Phelps, who was a prominent Boston doctor. Also showed up, right? Yeah, he did. And then, that's what we were mentioning before. They were both unhappy with all this attention, because, again, this is a prominent family. You know, we're all respected, and they're getting all this wacky world news, weekly world news and inquire attention. Actually established papers, a newspaper, and reporters are coming by, too. So, anyway, they're kind of unhappy about this. They want to get to the bottom of this and knock it off. And then, they arrived in Stratford. They were determined to expose all this as a hoax. And as we kind of hinted at before, neither of them approved of Elia Keem's second marriage to a much younger wife. And now, they're getting all this attention, and they're not having it. Yeah, so, family drama enters the chat. Right. So, on the first night that they arrived, they heard this loud knocking at the front door. And they thought, like, oh, it's got to be the door knocker. But each time they investigated, they ran out of the door, and nobody was there. It was deserted. Then, they traced the rapping sounds to young Anna's room upstairs. And they suddenly opened the door as soon as they heard the knocking and found nothing, except that there were dents in the door panel. However, Anna was in bed, and she was nowhere near the door. And according to Troy Taylor, Austin Phelps later wrote, quote, The young lady was in bed, covered up, and out of reach of the door. We examined the panel and found dents where it had been struck. I wonder how, you know, knocking, of course, that old chestnut, the old hat, is that, how are those sounds produced? Is it actual force of some kind of energy or something solid hitting the wood? Is it just in your ears? How is it being made? And here, it looked like something was actually hitting the door. Yeah. So, Anna, who, by the way, would have been Austin's young stepsister, was about 16 at this time. And she was described as having a, quote, nervous condition, unquote, which in the 1850s could have meant a lot of things. But eventually, this kind of thing, if it was a thing at all, came to be called neurasthenia, which I'm almost certain is a term that Wes Anderson has baked into the dialogue of the Grand Budapest Hotel. Oh, boy. But anyway, it was a really popular but also kind of vague diagnosis back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Well, they had very limited knowledge on this. This, you know, psychiatry and psychology was a nascent, still developing science. Yeah. They had limited information and limited definitions on this. That's true. And I'll bet you're very excited that the, is it the Phoenician scheme? Oh, yeah. I want to see that. Yeah, it looks interesting. I love me some Benicio del Toro. But yeah, so they didn't have many scientific avenues to pursue with this stuff or diagnose. But what were the symptoms? It essentially was a catch-all term for a wide range of things, fatigue, anxiety, headaches, insomnia, basically feeling run down and emotionally fragile, which I think a lot of people feel these days. It was often attributed to the stresses of modern life, especially in industrialized societies. And some cultures even called it Americanitis because it appeared to mostly happen to Americans. Yes, I totally down with that. I totally believe that. And I do wonder, as I read this, read over the research, was the phenomena causing this condition or was her condition a bit of an amplifier for this or a doorway or a portal? You know, that's never made clear. I mean, there's an implication that it was something that was a permanent part of her disposition. Yes, yeah. So I think before, so then I do wonder, does it make you more vulnerable to this type of thing or a combination of both? So anyway, a bit of a wastebasket diagnosis or a kitchen sink diagnosis? Yeah, I mean, pretty much. Yeah, it's not a recognized medical condition today. But it's helpful to understand what people meant when they used that term back then. It suggests a combination of physical and mental exhaustion, sometimes even from just being bored. But to restate here, we got two pronounced skeptical folks here in the home investigating these events. And not only can they not figure out the source of some of the sounds emanating from the house, they're having a hard time connecting any real-world perpetrator to them. But for me, man, I have to wonder, like, if you look at Anna making those sounds coming from her room, even if she was seemingly in bed, covered up, and a long way from the door. Because we know the Fox sisters later were like, well, we faked a bunch of that. So, like, maybe she was making sounds that seemed like they were coming from the front door, too. Right. Yeah, throwing your knocking, throwing your voice. And then also, like, the Fox sisters, that was pretty mild stuff compared to this. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, with knocking, it's harder to tell where it's coming from, you know, as opposed to an object flying through the air. Right. So, folks, remember, you know, knocking is one small, it's a gateway parable activity to the rest of this stuff. Yeah, you know, with the Fox sisters, I think what was admitted, or at least before it was retracted, that, oh, I can crack my toes and it makes that sound. I dropped an apple on the floor and it makes that kind of weird sound. Right, right. I mean, it's all a good question. You know, is it from the front door? Is she doing it, is she able to affect these noises on her own across a distance and across the house? And so it's a good question. It would be great if we had a floor plan of the house, but we don't. I don't think you found one, right? Well, actually, I did find a floor plan of the house. Well, okay, because the house was demolished in the early 1970s, right? Yes. I'm going to get into this later. I want to focus, I have a special little section on the house. Let's come back to that. Okay. For what it's worth, there was a small bedroom directly above the front door. Right. But we have no way of knowing if that was the room that Anna slept in. Right. There were other options up there on the second floor that could have been hers. Yeah. But the bottom line is here, unless Anna is up to some tricky business, Reverend Austin Phelps and Dr. Abner Phelps, the lawyer, and also he was a Massachusetts legislator. Right. They could not find a readily available rational explanation. That was their take on it. Well, exactly. So, you know, so in the end, they left convinced, though, that something was genuine and that something was extraordinary and it was definitely taking place. They witnessed it. That's right. So, things are now getting stranger and stranger. Right. And so, as you mentioned before, and we all know, things just continue to escalate and the haunting becomes both physical and psychological. That's another aspect, like the bell witch of fear, exhaustion, just mental torment as well. And so, you know, imagine folks think, well, that'd be cool. I wish it happened here. Well, imagine not getting any sleep, all your stuff being broken. The nights were filled with raps, knocks, voices, inhuman screams, bizarre sounds. Your silverware is now bad. Your favorite spoon you eat your cold cereal with is now unusable. Windows are broken. Papers scattered everywhere. All your important papers, your tax returns. Furniture dances across the floor. And, of course, these strange effigies kept appearing. And I guarantee you, look, if somebody, if you had a locked attic room and it was fine, you locked it, you came back five minutes later. I'm talking about normal, rational people now who don't believe in this stuff. And you go back into that room and now there's a figure made out of your stuff from your household and it looks like you. It's like a compromising position. You're not going to dismiss this. You're going to start wondering what's going on and be a little scared, I would imagine. I know I would be. According to the New Haven Journal, the sheer number of figures and the speed with which they were constructed, it would have been impossible for a team of women working for hours to do this. I think they said, like, maybe six women working steadily. You'd have to – these things would have to be built and planned. Yeah. And then somehow propped up, which, again, I'm wondering how they were – what's rigid enough to keep these things in place and shape them? Anyway, before it was all over, the total count of effigies was over 40. Right. That is a lot of scarecrows in your house. That's right, yes. But it almost sounds humorous at this point, like a movie or something. I'm kind of surprised it hasn't been made into a movie, actually. Well, that's a good point, man. Well, let's pitch it to some of your highfalutin Hollywood friends. Or we could make one. But no, the idea is, like, it's dramatic effect. And one of our favorite shots or scenes from the movie Poltergeist was when Jo Beth Williams is in the kitchen and she turns around and the chairs are all stacked. Yep. Remember? Like a pyramid. Yeah, yeah. Like, that's the kind of feeling of, like, how is that possible? That is impossible. I turned around for a second and you turn her back and that's the kind of astonishment and wonder and fear that I'm sure these people were feeling. That's right. Now, that's a movie, of course, but this is similar to what they're experiencing. Like, suddenly these things just appear. And again, the other thing is that it's kind of interesting. The attacks, they're not limited to objects. Coming back to Anna, you know, this is the daughter with the, quote, unquote, nervous condition. She became a target. But, again, like Betsy Bell, she was pinched, slapped, nearly strangled by unseen hands. So it got violent. I'm not just talking about slaps and pinches, like evading death, kind of. So, and this is the thing. Folks would be in the room and they'd see Anna with her head jerking suddenly and nothing would be there. They wouldn't see anything except for her head reacting. And then they would hear what they described like a slap. And according to Troy Taylor, at one point she yelled out, I am pinched, and then rolled up her sleeve to reveal a fresh hand mark or finger mark pinched area on her arm. Well, I mean, she could have done that herself, right? Under the covers, maybe? Yeah, again, it's like you could do that. And you could jerk your head, sure. And I guess maybe you could throw your voice to make the slap sound or slap your, you know, yeah, somehow. But whoops! 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Dana Mahar, transmitting from Mellon Mountain, saying, gathering at astonishing legends with your hosts. I like these ones that are this old because you can laugh at them and not feel guilty. Well, you can't, right. And also, it didn't happen to you. Because if you told me seriously, honestly, that this was happening to you, I'd be very upset. Yeah, of course. Nobody should be going through this because you cannot imagine the torment. Life's hard enough, okay? This guy and I have a lot of trouble just getting through the week as it is. And you don't need this. You and I see this a lot as people will focus on one thing like, oh, the wrapping. Well, that's a speaker out of the floorboards. Right. Okay, but how does that explain the chair floating through the air? Well, that's something else. We're just going to look at the haunting of the chains and the spooky noises coming from behind the wall. And that is used to debunk all of it. So, yeah, I guess she could have, in a way, done that to her. But also, again, take the context and the totality of all this. So, yeah, maybe. But her younger brother, Henry, he suffered even more brutal attacks. He was beaten, pinched, struck, and then he was abducted. Abducted? This is also kind of fascinating because now you're A-porting people. Oh, yeah. So, one day he disappears from the house, much like your kitty Biscuit, I think. Yeah. We just talked about that suddenly Biscuit disappeared and you tore through the whole house. Yes, he did. He did. Well, what happens to Henry is that, yeah, so he disappears from the house. They go looking for him. And then they find him suspended from a tree and tied up outside. And he has no memory how he got there. He's just now dangling from a tree branch. And again, this is from Troy's book, American Hauntings, and the chapter on this case. Henry was also pelted with small stones out of nowhere one day when a newspaper reporter was in the room and testified to that. Yeah. At another point, he was levitated so far up into the air that his hair brushed the ceiling and several witnesses saw this happen. On another occasion, he went missing again and was found in a closet on a shelf with a rope around his neck. Again, this didn't happen, or this wasn't relayed as just some anecdote from the family or tall tale. If you believe the reporter, they saw that as well. And a reporter also referred to as Mr. Beach. He watched as a box of matches, a metal box, fly off the mantelpiece, and it slid across the floor and under Henry's bed. And then Henry suddenly yelled that he was burning, and then Beach goes over there. He rushes over there. He finds a piece of paper on fire, presumably lit by the matches under the bed. Yeah. So I have to point out one thing here that's in our research, and I don't think it's been indicated in other stories or postings about this, but I think it's super fascinating. The New York Sun, a very prominent and successful newspaper in New York City, not too far away, was founded by a man named Moses Yale Beach. Moses had a son named Alfred Eli Beach, a kind of genius guy, actually, known for his prowess with patents. He worked with Edison a lot and created a bunch of his own inventions, including a typewriter for the blind. Wow. But he is also known to have worked for his dad's paper, The New York Sun, when he was younger. So I'm thinking that the reporter that Troy refers to as Mr. Beach in his book, and I'm not sure. I didn't find that original article that Troy's citing. I certainly probably could have. But if it just says Mr. Beach, I think that's probably Alfred Eli Beach, and he's probably the one who reported on this story for his dad's paper when it was happening. Okay. Yeah, that is pretty interesting. I love these kind of connections. Well, wait, this is just getting started. Here's the other thing. Alfred Eli Beach would later become the owner of this house. Oh, really? Yeah. So I'll save it here for theories here in a bit and some more discussion about the house. But in the mundane explanations category, you could argue that the crazier things were at the house, the more newspapers it sold, and the better it was for the New York Sun. Okay, well, that's one angle, surely. But as we were saying, take the whole breadth of the gestalt of the whole experience in that it wasn't just newspaper reporters seeing this and reporting it. It was seen by a wide variety of people. So that's one thing. Again, we're back to that argument of it's a Joseph Mulhatton story. Right. They're all fake then, or anything having to do with that is all just to sell papers. Or it was Gray Barker's kooky story. So all UFO stories are fake. So here, though, we have a bunch of other people who have testified publicly about what they saw. But you're right. That is one angle. Could it have been exaggerated? Well, perhaps in some cases. But I have to say, to a counterpoint to my own statement, Alfred Beach did not seem like the kind of guy prone to exaggeration. In fact, he and a friend of his, obviously very wealthy, bought Scientific American magazine from the original creator of it, Rufus Porter, when it was just 10 months old, and turned it into what is now the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States. Scientific American. Aha. Yeah. Right. I'm impressed. But that's not a sensationalistic publication. No, no. It's a publication about science. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, back to all the awful stuff that happened to young Henry. Keep in mind, he was only 11 years old when this was all going down. Right. And this is way beyond just harmless poltergeist activity. Even if it is a hoax, it's rough. No, it is. Definitely. And painful, it sounds like. And then how do you tie yourself up? Is it your sister ties you up and hangs you from a tree? Yeah. The whole family finds you? Yeah. I mean, but why would you, again, they all have to be in on this, and it sounds painful and a little dangerous. Yeah, yeah. And now we have, you know, the theories abounded about what's going on here. You know, some believe that the house was infested with spirits. In fact, I think a modern ghost hunter thing would be some kind of infestation or one very powerful spirit that has, well, I don't know from what or when, but definitely it takes a lot of energy to do this if you believe that's what's happening. Yeah. And whatever the case, it's determined to torment the family. One theory is perhaps it's the ghost of a woman hanging for witchcraft in the area in 1651. And what did that remind us of again here? The Conjuring story. Yes, that's right. The Conjuring house. I can't remember that supposed witch's name, but hanged close by. That would have been a good wife for Goody Bassett, who was hanged for alleged witchcraft in 1651. You can read what little is known about her in most of the Massachusetts witch trial books. And it's not a lot. In fact, the only reason we know about her is because later another woman sued, I think, the government or whatever for being slandered as a witch in the course of the Bassett case. Oh, interesting. But the Bassett case itself isn't well documented. So, however, it's probably not related to her because, you know, witch trials was really just not generally witches. I believe in witches. We count many witches as friends. Right, right. But that was not the folks that were getting strung up back here in Massachusetts. No, but as I always remember, it was in the last productions of the X-Files, something that they were looking into that, into something Fox Mulder said, just because the witch trials were bogus doesn't mean there weren't witches. Yeah, right. So, right. It's a, right. Lack of evidence, blah, blah, blah. But no, in this case, that was awful. And I would sue too. You have to, you know, it's nothing light to be accused of here. Anyway, others about those phenomena, they suggested that it was the unconscious work of Anna. Now, that's interesting. Again, now we're back to a more modern, perhaps, take on poltergeist activity and young people. And now, perhaps, again, similar to the Polish, a poltergeist, the Gajuski case. Her name is spelled J-O-A-S-I-A. And the pronunciation has slipped my mind at the moment. So, I don't want to bungle it. But yeah, same thing where maybe she was causing it subconsciously and didn't mean to because she's ruining a lot of stuff. She was also exhausted, tormented, and all these things. Yeah. Along with the family and really put a burden financially on the family. All your stuff is ruined now. Yeah, that's true. That's true. So, yeah, now people are wondering, is it the people unconsciously or subconsciously lashing out in some way? Right. Not meaning to, but their cause of it. Yeah. But as we've learned from doing our show, there's a tendency to blame women or young girls, especially for anything supernatural during this time. Well, yeah. The only thing is that one of the things that we've learned from doing our show, mostly from people that wrote in and talked to us after the fact, psychologists and stuff like that, there was a tendency to blame women or more specifically young girls for anything supernatural going on, which thus the witch trials, and also in some cases, poltergeists and teen girls, there's like this idea that those are generally connected to teen girls rather than teen boys. And that might be a leap. There's no statistical indications on that, you know, if you believe that poltergeists are real in the first place. There's a very little technical data on any of this stuff. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. The thing is mostly, uh, you can consider anecdotal and, uh, uh, if you're a very straight up scientist, maybe just all fanciful, but no, I think generally what you can say is that even anecdotally, you could point to a connection to younger people. Yeah. Yes. Young girls. It does seem to be, well, I mean, just the stories we've covered, the Watsika wonder. Yeah. The elusive Polish poltergeist, the Gajuskis. Yeah. But it's a chicken and the egg thing there in terms of, or is the story framed that way because these are women involved, you know, especially with the, like with the Watsika wonder that's back at the exact same kind of time period. And that's, well, yeah, there's a lot of, there's a lot of maybe assumptions going on. Well, either you believe the story happened or you didn't or just parts of it and it was falsely attributed, but it's not always the case, but younger people, I do remember this one account from a fairly reputable source who was trying to study this, maybe even in a really old Jim Harrell's campfire about somebody talking about poltergeist activity and just trying to record it from a, more of a scientific journalistic thing, just recording what's happened and when and where and the conditions. And I, one story that I found fascinating is that because of the location, I think it was like a Toys R Us, remember those? And the employees were used mostly younger. They got freaked out because somebody was tossing like toys and board games and all that stuff off the storeroom shelves in the back, the backroom shelves. Oh, yes, yes, yes. They restock it and they come like, oh, man, who's messing this up? You know, they're like, is this a ghost or somebody messing with us? And then what they realized is that it usually only happened when this one younger guy employee who's in his late teens, I think, would go into the stock room in the back. And they described him as like, yeah, he was a little troubled or just, you know, emotionally just kind of, you know, I mean, a nice guy or generally a decent guy, but just kind of emotionally unstable a little bit. And it only happened when he entered and they figured like when he left, it stopped. So it's not generally a tie to the sexes, but more so perhaps the age. And then a lot of times these younger people, they grow out of it. Right. That's true. Just as like a young, you know, toddler seeing ghosts and, or having past life experiences. And then when they turn to be about eight to 12, that fades away. So I don't know. Anyway, so here Mitchell, let's get back to him. He's a retired minister. He attempted to communicate with the spirits using a code of raps and replies, spirit Morse code of sorts. But the answers he received were disturbing, or you could even say demonic. Yeah, it was, it was kind of intense. So this is where we get to the messages that are written on paper. And at one point, Reverend Phelps was alone in his study with a blank piece of paper on his desk. And he turned away from a moment, turned around in his chair to do something else. And when he turned back around, there was a bunch of mysterious writing on the paper. Symbols or mysterious writing, some kind of indecipherable language. Yeah. So, and Phelps was alone when that happened, which of course, some people are like, well, this is a hoax and he's in on it. He made this up. But yeah, you're going to have to go on his word here. Yeah. But other eyewitnesses claim to have seen strange messages on paper as well. And sometimes the paper, like the potato, would just spontaneously appear in the air and slowly float down until it landed, say, on the dinner table. Yeah. No, other people had messages float down or appear in locked containers or in a lock box or locked cabinets, locked rooms. It just spontaneously appeared. And it was kind of gibberish. And one interesting thing, again, and I'm always looking at the mechanics of this stuff. According to Reverend Phelps, he's doing some writing. He turns around and there's this writing, indecipherable writing, appears on a blank piece of paper and the ink is still wet. That's right. Yeah. Because you do wonder how this happens. Yeah. These are all anecdotes, but I try to make some sense of this and the mechanics and how does this happen? Yeah. And what are the rules about this? And so he didn't see like a pen, you know, we always joke about the My Favorite Martian or, you know, it goes to Mr. Chicken. The pen is like scribbling on its own or many movies. It's just kind of like writing on its own and held by an invisible hand. This isn't the case. The ink appears, but it may have come out of his ink well. Yeah. And just kind of manifested itself onto the paper and it's still wet. And so that's fascinating. But what's curious to me is, okay, perhaps one of the rules is he had to turn away from this for it to happen. He didn't see the letters just kind of fade in and the ink's wet. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. They just burn themselves magically into the paper. I mean, it's all kind of magical, but he turns around and it happens. And it reminds me, it makes me think of this other case. And again, you have to believe this woman, but she had a spirit communication, something in her home. And I don't think this was a demonic or anything like that, but it was something with a bit of power, a spirit with a bit of power. And she claimed it would leave messages on her bathroom mirror written in lipstick. Right. Just words. And so she was asking it questions. And I think one time she got a message. I can't remember how the instructions came to her, but she knew she had to leave the lipstick in the bathroom and leave the bathroom. They would not appear as she watched it happen. Right. For some reason, you know, Miriam, don't look at the ark. You cannot look at this as it's happening. Right. Or it won't happen. Well, stuff moves as you're looking at it, but maybe not the writing. Some stuff, you have to not be looking at it or can't. Right. Is that part of the rules? I don't know. That's a good question. Well, some of these notes, they're pretty freaky, what they supposedly said. One of them said, it is all a lie. Don't believe what he says. They had profane language in them, occasionally obscene. There were nasty notes about Dr. Phelps' fellow clergymen. There were notes signed with names like Beelzebub, Sam Slick, or H.P. Devil, or be the names of dead acquaintances of Dr. Phelps. One note found on his desk read, very nice paper and very nice ink for the devil. A pencil note to Dr. Phelps actually read, if you promise not to write that I told you, I will not throw anything all this week. Oh. I mean, they just kept going on. There was bad things written about clergymen having affairs, and there were sentimental notes that were addressed to the daughter, Anna. There was just a lot going on. But it was scary stuff. There was another one where they asked, why cause trouble? Mm-hmm. This is one of the communications. I think this was done with rapping the word, but the spirit replied for fun. Yeah. Now you believe. That tracks for me. Yeah, it's very trickstery. Yeah. I mean, we're talking about the greatest magic show of all time here, if any of this stuff really happened. But the bummer is Phelps felt the writings were evil, and why wouldn't he? So the ones on paper that were spontaneously appearing and all of that, what do you think happened? Well, now that we've learned what the papers said and the nature of them and the profanities and the gossip, I really, really want to see these papers. I know. Me too. But I'm going to take a guess. He destroyed them. Yeah, exactly. Like, how cool would it be to have any of that? Especially something if it was like in, you know, of course, was it in Aramaic? Yeah, who knows? I don't know. Right. Should have kept it. Would we now be able to, well, now with the use of AI, like the magic Peruvian flying ball, the Peruvian bet sphere with the writing on it, you saw that they, with the use of AI, they thought they have an interpretation of the symbols on it. Oh, no, I haven't seen that. Really? I didn't know that they had translated anything on it, so. So, yes, apparently they have, but through the use of AI, which I find fascinating, like how do you do that? But I guess it's like, was it Michael Fassbender in Prometheus? Yeah. He's a robot. He's AI, and he's able to figure out the ancient human language through Sumerian, studying Sumerian. So, yeah, maybe it's possible. Uh, but anyways, I would love to have seen those notes and maybe they could be deciphered nowadays, but I also understand, like, I don't want this in my house because you're kind of a guy like that. I don't want this in my house. Yeah. That's why the DR-60 is at your house. That's right. Yeah. It's fine. Guess what? You just let the batteries run out and it's hard. Yeah. So, yeah. Right. It's like our friend who collects Ouija boards is like, well, I don't play with them. Right. I'm fine. I've never had a problem with them. I don't goof around with them. I know better. Yeah. It would be cool to have those. But again, are they haunted? Is that a gateway? What happens if you burn them? Do you have to keep them in a jar underwater? I don't know, but it's another case of, you know, there's no evidence being available to corroborate the story, you know, beyond the hearsay. So, but in this case, Phelps reluctantly agrees to try another seance to see if they can communicate with whatever's going on here. And this is where it gets, uh, you know, like I said earlier, a little bell witchy, but you don't have to understand too. They want answers. You get just like, I don't care. Yeah. I don't care. Like, let's just, I gotta, I gotta get to the bottom of this. This is horrible. Yeah. But the other thing that this particular event also reminds me, Siren Call, the Hungry Ghost, where you're being lied to by whatever you're communicating with, if you believe any of this at all. Like, what is it on the other side? It has all this knowledge that seems omniscient, but there are huge mistakes embedded in it as well, which again, it's like you said, comes down to the rules. It's like, why are you making mistakes? Are you being forced to make the mistakes so that you can't be like God or the idea of God? Interesting. I don't, not to get to the theories yet, but I, you know, my thinking is it's like the Philip experiment and the Siren Call of Hungry Ghost and Joe Fisher's experience. And I do wonder, first of all, are you talking to one entity or multiples and they all have different points of view? Are they goofing with each other? Is it 2109? And boy, I'm pulling out all the titles now. What was that show, Scott? The plane, the vertical plane. Oh, the vertical plane. And the entity 2109, and he's arguing this spectral entity through the computers arguing with another one. Yes. It's like, they can't agree on anything. It's like, shut up. You know what you're talking about? Will you shut up? It's like, please, fellas or whoever, you're supposed to be a higher life form. Can we sort this out? And I do wonder though, about all these conflicting messages, is there just a fluidity of realities on this other side, but also overlapping ours. And there is some omniscience where they can see the truth and know the real stories about what people are, even the thinking and what has happened in the future and the past and quantumly across distance. So time and space are available for information, but the information is either flawed to their knowledge. Because if you remember the Siren Call of Hungry Ghost, like the entity was like, hey, what are you getting on my case for? I'm just relaying what I know. Right, right, right. I can't help if this is wrong. And so is there different points of view of reality or is their reality different? Is another timeline? Is it another universe? I don't know. But in one case here, and you can explain the rest of the explanations of this, whatever this thing is, they asked the spirit to identify itself during a second seance. And I think the first claim, if I'm not incorrect, was that it was a, it claimed to be a soul that was in hell and being tormented. That's correct. Okay, and then another possible identity, it said it was a law clerk who formally worked for Mrs. Phelps, but had committed fraud against her. Yeah, that's exactly right. And he claimed, the spirit did, that this fraud was serious enough to warrant prosecution had he lived, and stated he'd been sent to hell when he died because of his sins. But he didn't explain why he was haunting the Phelps' home. And so Dr. Phelps later visited the Philadelphia law firm, where the spirit claimed to have worked, examined papers there, and found that a fraud had indeed been committed. But then later, he changed his mind and said he felt he'd been tricked about the fraudulent papers. And he stated that he was convinced the communications were wholly worthless because they were frequently false, contradictory, and nonsensical. And so this about switch to me says a couple of things. And it's funny, because when you mention the vertical plane, we talk about the siren call, the hungry ghost. These are all topics that we've done in the past, folks. Look them up if you haven't heard those episodes, or some of my favorites, actually. The idea that you're communicating with something that seems to be screwing with you a lot. And this also comes up in Richard Haddam, our dear friend Richard Haddam's movie, The Mothman Prophecies. Just this idea of messing with you, giving you just enough information to keep you on the line, to hook you and trick you. Same thing happens at Skinwalker Ranch. It happens everywhere. It happens with UFOs, it happens with aliens, it happens with ghosts, it happens across the board. And so I do wonder if Reverend Phelps was like, I have suddenly realized that I am being messed with here. Or is this recantation because, hey, whoever it was that committed the fraud, that person's family came forward and said, this isn't what happened, why are you doing this? And maybe he became convinced that the person was framed from beyond, which is another kind of thing that might happen. So just like the whole idea that these spirits are lying to you, it's kind of spooky, but it's one of those details. Again, if you believe me in this story at all, that detail makes this story feel more real to me because this happens to a lot of people that experience this sort of thing. The patterns seem to be the same. And a lot of things line up. Or is it just everybody now knows to repeat the same things when they make up a story like this? Well, I don't think so. No, I don't either. Well, this is what's interesting here. I think, as you said, the communications were determined by Dr. Phelps eventually as wholly worthless, frequently false, contradictory, nonsensical. He was tricked. But here's the thing. There was fraud. There was a law clerk that did exist. Exactly. It's just enough information that's right. And he thought there was fraud, but it's not really clear whether or not. It seemed like he was recanting that there was fraud. So I'm not sure. It seems kind of vague. It's kind of vague, but there is enough there that it seems like it wasn't totally bogus, the information. Like, oh no, there was a case or there was a law clerk. So, you know what I'm saying? Like you said, a kernel of truth in that. Right, right. Then how would this thing know? Right. Well, there is some omniscience there, again, like the bell witch. Yeah. But my favorite out of all this, though, is when it first identified itself as a tormented soul in hell, I think Phelps and Mitchell asked him what he wanted or how could they help. He said, I'd like a slice of pumpkin pie. Right. And then he said, I'm sorry, we thought we misunderstood you. And then he said, how about a glass of gin? Yeah. Which are two things. That's exactly what I would ask for. A cold, cold gin. Right. Now, I mean, it's humorous, but again, that's also part of the trickstery part, but why not? Yeah. A slice of pumpkin pie. I don't know if there was any in the house. It doesn't seem to say, but, and being a minister's house, I don't know if they had gin. Yeah. But yeah, why not? A little gin, a little pumpkin pie. I'm burning in the eternal hellfires with brimstone and, but some pie would be nice. A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer in your pants. Astonishing Legends is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible, financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things that people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Because Progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home, and more. Plus, you can count on their great customer service to help you when you need it. So your dollar goes a long way. 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That's right, 45% off your first order and free delivery. That's marleyspoon.com slash offer slash P-O-D-4-5. Hello, hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Smart Talks with IBM. I recently sat down with IBM's chairman and CEO, Arvind Krishna. And I asked him, how can companies use AI to its fullest potential to create smarter business? My one advice to them, pick areas you can scale. Don't pick the shiny little toys on the side. For example? If anybody has more than 10% of what they had for customer service 10 years ago, they're already five years behind. If anybody is not using AI to make their developers who write software 30% more productive today, with the goal of being 70% more productive. Yeah. Wow. So we are not asking our clients to be the first experiment on it. We say, you can leverage what we did. We're happy to bring out all our learnings, including what needs to change in the process. Because the biggest change is not technology, it's getting people to accept that there's a different way to do things. To listen to the full conversation, visit IBM.com slash Smart Talks. What's up, my fellow humans and others? I'm Sean Nelson, and this is Astonishing Legends. Now let's get back to the show. Whatever the case here, you know, the family has had enough. And they decide they need to go back home to Philadelphia just to get away from this, you know, where they moved from. And they seriously need some peace and quiet. And so they're considering this. And during that time, Reverend Phelps is in his study again. And yet another piece of paper slides or flies through the air and lands on his desk right in front of him. Shut the front door. Oh, yeah. Well, but it's got a question on it. Yeah. And the question is, how soon will the Phelps family be leaving the house or something like that? And he grabs a pen and he writes October 1st on another piece of paper nearby. Okay, geez. So now whatever it is, is literally like, so when are you leaving? And on top of that, Dr. Phelps is like, okay, yeah, I'll answer this. Can I have some people over? Yeah. Can you send movers? It's interesting. So, well, that would also indicate not total omniscience. It can't totally read the future. But it also knows, it can see. Well, it's listening to them. Yeah, talking about leaving. It can see, yeah, it's like your cat can see you, or your dog sees you get out the suitcase. It knows what's happening. Yeah, yeah. It just doesn't know when. So anyway, well, so he sends his family back to Philly and he stays behind to get everything handled for them so they could all be gone. And I think he also just wanted to see what was going to happen. Yeah. And he said that, you know, once his family was out of the house, everything stopped. Okay, interesting. Okay, yeah. And then they all went back to Philly and they were gone for eight or nine months. And then when they came back, everything was fine. Nothing else ever happened. All the same people, right? Yes, all the same people. And that's the end of it. Well, you know, that appears to be the end of it, of course. Is it ever really the end of it? Hey, these things are ancient and eternal, right? Yeah, that's right. Listen, before we get into the theories and conclusions here, you had some background on this house, right? Yes, I do. I actually had a lot of fun drilling down on that. You always have to be curious about where things like this are taking place. And there's a million posts about this story online. They all use the same one or two pictures of the house, the main one being an interior showing this unusual stairway. It's really strange, beautiful, but strange. So I started digging around on this and it wound up taking me hours, but here's the gist of it. So Dr. Eliakim Phelps did not build the house, even though some people refer to it as like the Phelps Mansion, which by the way, there's another Phelps Mansion that's unrelated to this, but it became the Phelps' house. It was actually built by the wife of Captain George Robert Dowdle, D-O-W-D-A-L-L. That name is frequently misspelled in reference to this story as Dowell, but it was D-O-W-D-A-L-L. Now, Captain Dowdle was born in Ireland and came to the U.S. sometime prior to 1805, where he married Eliza Hopkins Nickel in 1808. Thirteen years after they got married, Eliza and her husband, Captain Dowdle, were apparently able to build this house at 1738 Elm Street in Stratford with the help of Eliza's father, General Matthias Nickel, of the prominent Nickel family. Still prominent to this day. Now, the house appears to have been maybe a gift from him to his daughter and her captain husband. Now, at the time of construction, Captain Dowdle was at sea, primarily in the Pacific, commanding a ship called Superior, which carried goods back and forth from China. And some sources say the house was to be for his retirement. Eliza, however, was worried that in his retirement, he would long for the sea. So she designed the house in this very eccentric way. It had a 70-foot-long hallway that was 12 feet wide with a double staircase along one side of it. This isn't like where you're thinking of a house like the house in Big or some big grand mansion. Right, right, right. You've got two stairs coming down. There's just one as you walk in the front door that goes up. Yeah. And then when it gets to the top landing, it comes back down, way down at the other end of the hallway. Okay? Yeah. And this thing was on the left side of the house, running from the very front door to the back door as you faced it. So when you came in the front door, you would be at the bottom of one of the staircases, and then this long hallway, and the other staircase is on the same wall coming down in the back. The rest of the house and the rooms were all on the right side of this hallway, if you're coming in to the front. So it was almost like a cross-section of a large ship. And that's what she wanted. She wanted him to feel comfortable, that it would remind him of his days at sea, and when he's retired, and if he wants to walk around or get exercise, he could do the same things he would do when he was at sea. However, unfortunately, three years after the Dowdles built the house, Captain Dowdle died after contracting the plague while commanding another ship called the Ajax, which he died aboard in 1829. On top of that tragedy, Eliza's brother, Edward Nickel, the son of Captain Nickel, who helped them build the house, was also the first officer of the Ajax, and he too caught the plague and died the same week in China. So the Phelps family comes along, buys the house from Eliza later. The date's not exactly. People aren't certain about it, but they know that's what happened. And the Phelps family kept it, we think, until 1859 before selling it to the aforementioned Moses Beach, the founder of the New York Sun newspaper, who in turn left it to his son as inheritance, Alfred Eli Beach, who may have been the reporter who originally covered the story of the haunting on behalf of the son when the Phelps were in there. So very curious about what the circumstances were that got this home from the Phelps family to Moses Beach, the publisher of the New York Sun. Obviously, Moses maybe didn't care about the haunting if he bought that house from them, because he, whether his son was the reporter or not, or it was him or some other beach relative, he obviously knew that everything happened, but he still bought that house. Well, hey, you know, Zach, a lot of people buy houses. If you're fascinated with this kind of stuff, if you got the means, you buy the house. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Because it's like securing a good fishing hole that pays off. Alfred eventually turned the home into a private school and actually took some walls out on the first floor so they could have a classroom. And in the 1940s, according to author and researcher Jude McLaughlin's website, it became the Restmore Convalescent Home until it was purchased by another company in the 1960s whose plans for it fell through and it was boarded up and fell into disrepair and became vandalized before finally being torn down completely, either in 1972 or 1974, depending on what you look. Whatever the case, you only ever see usually the one picture of the stairway or maybe sometimes one blurry exterior photo of it. And I wanted to source that stairway picture and confirm it was in fact the house. And I was able to do that when after a fair amount of digging, I found an entire article on the house in an archive of a magazine called American Homes and Gardens from April of 1908. This would be the volume five, number four, the titled The Country Seat of M.P. Slade Esquire at Mount Kisco, New York, which is the illustration on the cover. It has various homes in it. So it's kind of like your old Architectural Digest or Solo Gone Wild, what have you. So when you look at this, I did find a print copy of it on a books that I wanted, but it was $500, so I didn't get it. But thanks to the article, though, being in the public domain, I was able to make a new PDF of it just from the pages of the article itself. And we're able to access not only the floor plan, but multiple images of the interior, which, as far as I know, are not readily available online and other posts about this story. So visit our webpage to see those or access the PDF that we made. But outside of that, American Homes and Gardens, the magazine it appeared in, belonged to Scientific American, the magazine co-founded by Alfred Beach, who, again, inherited the house sometime after his dad died in 1892. But you have to see these pictures. It was truly magnificent on the inside. And the staircase is amazing looking. It's really spectacular. And that's the prominence on the home. When I started digging into it, I was like, will I find anything? Mysterious murders, prior deaths, ghosts, whatever. There wasn't anything like that other than the horrible misfortune that befell the Dowdle family. But it's pretty typical of maritime culture in this day. There's nothing really unusual. I mean, it's bad what happened. But that's just the way the cookie crumbled back then. So there was a lot of unfortunate things connected to the home and why it was originally built. But I wouldn't necessarily, and as you and I have discussed, and I guess we can get into our theories now, I wouldn't necessarily connect those events to whatever befell the Phelps family. So in getting down to my theories on this story, it's one of those ones where, could this be a hoax? Of course it could be. But it would have to be a fairly well thought out one. It would take a ton of work. And then I guess the real question is, what would be the motive? What would be your reasoning for undertaking a destructive enterprise like this and drawing all this negative attention to your family and not really ever realizing any kind of financial profit or other kind of profit from it? No, nothing good comes of this. We all know that by now. And to take two obvious, ridiculous go-tos off the table, they weren't selling tickets and they didn't make a million bucks writing a book. No TV, no reality show, none of that. This is a prominent and well, again, well-respected minister's family, reverend's family, and they did not need this kind of attention and got nothing for it except torment and a lot of visitors poking around. And so this is not the kind of attention that you want. And yeah, no money was made as far as I know. So why do this? And here's the other thing is that everyone except for perhaps the mother who, I don't think anything really happened to her, but everybody else, four kids, an adult, the father, would all have to be in on this. Plus some other outside people to attest to what they saw. And again, the reports of what happened were so elaborate and complicated and weird. And this is with witnesses that, yeah, unless there's an elaborate Hollywood special effect, I don't see this happening. It doesn't make sense to me. Also what I love, as Troy said in this chapter, actually a supernatural haunting makes more sense than a hoax, as we often say, just like the rational explanation gets more ridiculous than the irrational explanation. So yeah, it just doesn't, again, we weren't there. I don't know. I mean, the other thing is that it doesn't make sense for this particular family, these types of people, their station in life, what they did before and what they did after. There was no gain for it. And it's just such a strange thing. And you can say like, well, they did it for the attention. It's like, eh, again, this is not the good kind of attention. Yeah. Because it's not like, you could understand the Fox sisters and that like, well, look, they got a lot of attention. They went on tour. So I just don't see this as a hoax. Now it could certainly be exaggerated in some aspects, I think. But again, the number of witnesses, the types of things that happened in another case of, obviously it reminds me of the wizard clip. Our good friend Kish wrote a good book about it, which is fascinating, but even more dramatic stuff than that happening. But again, that's a very specific thing of things being cut. Crescent shapes appearing everywhere. Lots of witnesses. This is, yeah, similar reachings from beyond, but totally different and maybe even more dramatic than most of the stories we've come from. Yeah. You know, folks, I've seen some comments from folks lately who are just like, well, lots of people hoax things and are, you know, that thing that we hear sometimes about us being too credulous. But so I think about that, but I think the other thing that I'd say to that end is that in this particular case, it's so unusual and so many people from different walks of life are involved. But do I believe also that you can have a mixture? Everything isn't black and white, I think, when it comes to these kinds of stories, whether it's UFO story or whatever. You can have a mixture of things that are actually happening mixed with people faking things. I think those can all be tied together, which can make it even harder to figure out. Right. Classic case, the Enfield poltergeist, right? The investigator, oh, I'm blanking on his name. He's famous though. Folks will know they're screaming at their audio player device. Basically, they found him with rocks in his pocket. Right. And it's like, okay, but does that discount everything else? So you faked one part of it, or it's just back to the Patterson-Gimlin film. It's like, you're going to go do a documentary and then you got Jose Chung. You know, you go to do a fake documentary in Bigfoot and an actual Bigfoot shows up. The fact that you were going to do the documentary and you had a camera, does that negate everything else? Well, in this case, yeah, it could be a combination. And yeah, people hoax stuff, but is that every time? So again, you have to back up. We always say this, but at least I do, is you have to back up and start at, do you believe any of this is possible? Yeah. If you don't, then it has to be a hoax, right? Or just as a totally made up story. Now, if you believe that some of this could be possible or that the phenomenon or phenomena is possible, then what did happen? And we can only go by the story presented to us. And then we make comments on that. And we try to relay the story and then we make a comment on it. We're often in a zippin comments for myself. And then you, you wonder like, okay, what can you deduce from all this? Well, okay. I believe these types of things are possible. So then if that's the case, like what sounds more likely or unlikely, and we've just described what was happening. And it's like, eh, it's like all these other cases, Pontefract, 30 Pontefract, the Mickey Mouse hands, the jug of milk pouring onto poor aunt so-and-so, all these similar kind of prankish things with other stuff mixed in. It's like, okay, if you believe it's possible, does it seem similar to these other cases? Yeah. Many of the things line up. And we've done a lot of these stories now and we see some patterns here perhaps. And so this being 1850, if it was relayed accurately, I'm going to say it one last time, tracks with all the other stories or many of them that we've heard. So it's not so outrageous. And like my baloney meter goes off when somebody tells me it's even more fantastical than this. And that's where it's like, okay, that takes a lot of energy. You know, somebody claiming some facility was destroyed or it sounds like it's too much. And to me, it's like, this is a lot, but this is within the realm or ballpark of other cases we've heard of that remain unsolved to this day. All the classic ones we just mentioned, the bell witch, the wizard clip, the siren call of hungry ghosts, the Polish poltergeist. It's all these things. It's like, yeah, I mean, start at the beginning. Is this possible or not? Go from there. And for Russ, it's like, okay, it's mid 19th century. Uh, we only have personal accounts to go by like so many of these other cases. So that's it. And going by that, it's like, nah, no less believable than Jeff, the talking mongoose or more believable, I guess. Well, I think for me, the strangest aspect of this case and the part of it that maybe is bell witchy, I'm not sure is probably the effigies, all just the, the scarecrows that were put into the house by this thing manufactured in absurdly quick amounts of time and left in different positions and posing. It's a very, very trickstery element to that. There is a catalyst that has to happen or is likely that's the people, it's the land, it's the building. And it's often the emotional state or the abilities you could say of the people in that place. And, uh, it's like the golden triangle you need for fire, fuel, oxygen, and ignition unit of spark. And when you have all those three, you get some fire. That's going to wrap up episode 313 of Astonishing Legends. A very special thanks to Troy Taylor for allowing us to lean heavily on the research from his book, American Hauntings, The Rise of the Spirit World and the Birth of the Modern Ghost Hunter. Links to all of his books and his website, American Hauntings, Inc., and that's I-N-K, are in our show notes. And if you can, do not miss the Haunted America Conference, now in its 28th year in Alton, Illinois, June 26th through the 29th of 2025. So coming up here very soon, Troy will be there. Visit ghostconference.net for details. Also remember, we have our live AMA coming up for patrons on Sunday, June 29th at astonishinglegends.com slash Patreon. So if you're not a Patreon yet and want to check that out, now is the time to sign up. Our main show is currently on a brief summer hiatus, but always look for new episodes of the Dead Letter Office weekly on Tuesdays. Astonishing Legends is edited by Sarah Voorhees-Wendell at VW Sound. Our co-producer is Tess Feifel, who also leads our research efforts and manages our social media. And we're grateful for the hard work of our technical producer, Ed Vakola, behind the scenes. 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