October 24, 2025 • 22 mins
Holly and Tracy talk about ghost experiences in their lives. Tracy thanks all the listeners who suggested ghost towns for this week's episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class a production
of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Holly Frye and
I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and we talked about ghosts of
Drury Lane, which I love very much because they're just
(00:23):
super fun. I really really liked the quote that we
included at the end about how theater is kind of
inherently given to yeah, ghost sighting, Yeah, because of its nature.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
There was one article I read by an actor. It
was from some time back, who was due in the
middle of a play run there, and he took the
ghost tour on one of his days off, and he
was talking about how, you know, he had never seen
a ghost and some of the stories are very like
me whatever, and he was like, ah, but then when
I got down lower where apparently some of the old
(00:59):
foundation can be seen of the third theater or second theater,
one of the two, he was like, I see where
this could be spooky and make people think they saw things,
because it's just an inherently, you know, scary dark place
where there's lots of everything's blacked out because those theaters
are painted black. In the back end, you could see
some of the old beams from previous versions of the theater.
(01:20):
There was apparently, I want to say it was in
nineteen thirty nine, and I did not include it because
of this a story that an entire cast saw the
man in gray at the same time. Wow, and that like,
clearly this was evidence that he was real. But that's
been chocked up by a lot of people to a
(01:42):
publicity stunt on the part of the theater manager to
kind of you know, bolster ticket sales, and that really
there aren't a lot of actual accounts from that cast
saying yes, we all saw the same thing. The other
thing that I loved that I kept turning up no
matter what I was looking for, even if I was
trying to look.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
At very old things.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
It was article after article of Patrick Stewart talking about
the many ghosts he has seen in his life. Yeah,
and I just loved it. He was doing, you know,
famously a while back, he and Ian McKellen did Waiting
for Goodod together at Theater Royal Haymarket. But like, one
(02:26):
of the big stories that came out during that was
that he kept saying that he was seeing a ghost
in the theater, and I just sort of loved it.
There were also many discussions of articles that I would
not include because they mentioned the play whose name I
am still too superstitious to say aloud. Yeah, I wrote
(02:48):
it into a podcast one time, not knowing that you're
superstition about it extended beyond the walls of a theater.
Oh yeah, no, we don't ever, No, thank you. It's
very silly. I know that's silly, and yet there's a
part of my brain that just refuses. It will shut
down unless you are in situ in the middle of
(03:09):
that play having to say the name. You don't say
that name. Can you say the name historically about people
with the name? I guess, but it would be I wouldn't.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
I wouldn't look for that. Okay, I'll tell you that.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Like if it were on my list of topics to cover,
I would scratch it out and move on.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Yeah, which I know again, I know this is silly.
No one needs to tell me, right, you're being a
ding dong that is not having a rational reaction.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Yeah, I know. It's one of my things.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
I'm just about. I had always understood it as a
superstition about things that should not be said in a theater,
and it had never occurred to me that it could
be extended beyond to the theater of life. I don't know.
Maybe it's one of those things, right, Like my degree
is in theater and film study. Yeah, and so I
feel like maybe it's just I will never ever say
(04:01):
it anywhere ever, in case you don't know, maybe where
you're standing used to be a theater at one time.
We don't know all the stuff that's been there. You
got to be safe. Theater of life says no. Yeah,
I've had many friends who just to taught me would
just like say it over and over and get out,
(04:21):
get out of my house, get out of my party,
whatever you do.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
We're not no, not, haven't it No? Not for me?
Speaker 1 (04:27):
I will say. Also, I want to do an episode
and there probably will be one in the not too
distant future on Dan Leno, because I loved reading about
his life. Yeah, particularly I mean, as tragic as it
becomes in the end, just how much work he did
to take care of other people with his fame. Like
he's one of those people who found himself with an
(04:48):
extraordinary amount of privilege financially and a platform that he
could use to help other people, and he did it
and I want to talk about those kind of people
all day, every day, especially lately. This seems like a
good time to ask you. I know we've done this
at live shows before. Have you ever seen a ghost?
So I've had a couple of unexplained experiences. The creepiest
(05:15):
one when I was in massage school, some family friends
generously allowed me to rent a small cabin that had
been passed down in their family that was up in
the mountains.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
And the first night that I was there.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
I went into it had an old part that was
well over, like over a century old, like made of logs,
no original plumbing or electricity that had all been added
much later. And then it had this like mother in
law addition that had been built out of a kit
And I was staying in the kit part and I
walked into the old part after dark the first night
(05:54):
that I was there, and immediately was like, something malevolent
is in this place. And I left and shut the
door behind me and never went back into there after
dark ever again. And I also like, I didn't want
to look at it after dark because I was afraid
(06:14):
something was going to look back at me out the window,
and then what would I do, Like I was in
the woods with no one around to help. I would
not be in this position to begin with. Yeah, So
one night I heard something very strange outside that frightened
me and I couldn't figure out what it was. And
(06:36):
I realized the next day it was Apple's falling out
of the tree. And I was like, okay, well that
explains that one part, but not how when I walked
in there the all the hair on the back of
my neck stood up. I would say, all of the
theaters that I was in as like a participant in
(06:57):
the play or the or the musical, they were all creepy.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Yeah, like all of them.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
I mean their big, open, cavernous spaces that until you
actually do the performance, is empty aside from the people
participating in the play and the crew and the director
and all of that. Like right, you're just in this big,
echoey dark space with a lot of shadows and a
lot of corners, and they were all creepy. When I
(07:27):
was a massage therapist at the Grove park In, there
are lots of stories about the ghosts at the Grove
park In and the most direct experience I ever had
there was we were in the spa and I was
talking to a couple of the staff that like arranged
appointments and stuff, and a spoon from the counter where
(07:48):
we made drinks for people just launched itself onto the
ground and we were all like, what did that quaw?
Speaker 2 (07:59):
No one was near by, No one was near.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
It, No one was nearby, Like it wasn't like it
was precariously on the edge of the counter. I don't
know what caused that. It did not scare me nearly
as much as the old cabin that I stayed in
in massage school. Yeah, I wouldn't have been in an
old cabin in the woods to begin with. No. No,
(08:23):
there was also the very first day that Patrick and
I spent in this house. We did not have any
cats at this time, but we had had the you know,
the long grueling day of moving our stuff from the
one place to the new place. Uh, And we had
put sheets on the bed and we got into bed,
and I think Patrick was like in the bathroom. Patrick
(08:44):
hadn't come to bed yet, and I had the distinct
sensation of a cat jumping onto the bed. And we
had no cats at that time, And I was not
frightened by this. I was just like, there's a ghost
cat in the house, and the ghost cat has not
made any other visit.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
We had a ghost cat.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Yeah, I know I've told this one during a live show,
but I don't remember if I've.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Ever said it on the recorded podcast. Before.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
There was time we were in our old apartment where
I had been seeing out of the corner of my
eye a cat that wasn't there. And then I discovered
when I finally mentioned it one day, that Brian had
also been seeing a cat out of the corner of
his eye that was not there. And we had cats
at the time, but it was not one of our cats.
Like we would think, oh, that's gg or whatever. We'd
(09:42):
look over and there was no cat there.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
And then there was a night where we were sitting
in the living room of our dinky little apartment watching
TV and we both clear as a bell heard my
dead mother's voice. Oh wow, And it was weird. I
don't know if there was just someone in an adjacent
apartment that sounded just like her and the sound traveled
exactly right, but we like looked at each other like,
did you just hear that? It was weird? And then
(10:05):
the next day the cat was real, but he had
a brother, and we kept them, both of them. So
I've always joked because my relationship with my mom was
not amazing, right, But she is exactly the kind of
person that would dump a stray cat on me, I'm sure,
And she was like that was probably her way to
try to reach out if if in fact there was
a ghost involved that. She was like, you like kitties,
(10:26):
here's kitties. Oh, breat great kitties that you wanted. And
we had those cats for twenty years.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
We loved them.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
I used to work in a college library that was
very old and castle like, and for a while Brian
was working for a Dutch weather company, so he worked
Dutch hours, right, and they let me work the same
hours as him, so our lives matched up. Because I
was down in acquisitions, I was not like working the
desk and stuff, and so I would get there sometimes
(10:53):
that like I would be there in the middle of
the night or get there or start my shift at
four in the morning, like it shifted, but I would
be there alone in the dark. And similar to how
you described that cabin, there were just parts of that
building that felt weird. Yeah, I was like not interesting
going in them. So there was like, if I had
to go to the bathroom, I had to walk through
(11:15):
part of it and it always scared the heck out.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Of me, but I did it.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
And then the one real what just happened to me
moment that I have ever had was in San Francisco
at a hotel that is reportedly haunted, and we had
been joking like, hey, I wonder if we'll hear ghosts,
and at first we heard this weird ringing noise and
(11:40):
we finally realized that there was like inside the wall
a loosish plumbing washer that was jingling, and we were like, oh,
fully explained. And then later in that same trip, Brian
was taking a shower and I was like, I'm going
to just lie down on the bed for a minute,
take a nap. And I felt clear as any actual
(12:04):
physical thing I have ever felt the feeling of, like
finger scratching lightly on my back, and I just said, no,
thank you, And that was the hand of that. I mean,
I don't know, I may have just been having some
weird Listen, we are both women of science in our hearts, yes, yeah,
(12:25):
but sometimes weird stuff happens. I don't know where it was.
I honestly I did not like the fact that when
I walked into this old cabin that it made me
feel like something malevolent was there. Because the people who
loaned it to me were so nice. They were great people.
It was a cabin that had been handed down through
(12:46):
the family, and there was just stuff in it that
was so interesting, and a lot of it was really beautiful,
and I would have just explored all through it, happy
as a clam. But even though it had, like the
first day that I had gone up and they had
sort of shown me you, like, here's how you have
to turn the water off from the outside, and like
this kind of stuff, I was like, Man, this is
(13:07):
gonna be so great. I'm gonna be up here two
or three nights a week. This is such a great space.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
I love it. And then after the first night, I.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Was like, m mmmmmmmm, Nope, I there's nothing in that
house that I need to see and I never need
to lie in a hammock on the porch again, because
what I had been doing when I went in there
after dark was to put the hammock away because it
was a fabric hammock that they didn't want to be
left out because it would get mildew right.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
And I was like, well, Nope, no more of that
for me.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Ever, Great we talked about ghost towns this week, sure did.
I didn't put in my normal introduction about six impossible
(14:01):
episodes and how it's when I round up six things
that are related usually somehow and for some reason or another, can't.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Really be a whole episode.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
And if we did a full on history of some
of these, it would probably be possible to do a
whole episode. But I thought they were fun together as
a whole collection of ghost towns, something I cannot take
any kind of credit for, but that I really liked
because this was one hundred percent listener suggestions, so they
(14:33):
were the topics that listeners asked for. I liked that
these were six towns that were all with the exception
of Jerome abandoned, but it wasn't the same story all
six times, Like all of them I felt like had
very different nuances, and even the ones that were like
this was a boomtown and then it disappeared like those
(14:55):
also were not identical in terms of exactly what happened.
Because when I uh kind of went through and wrote
down all the ghost town suggestions, I was like, is
this going to be six of the same story and
it wasn't. So thanks everyone who contributed one of these ideas.
(15:16):
I had a semimnal retraction after something I said during recording, Okay,
because when we were talking about Centralia and I was like,
this seems surprising to me that people would stay there
for a decade while this burned out their town. Uh huh.
And then I was like, Holly, how much do you
love your house and how unwilling would you be to
(15:37):
leave it? And the answer is, yeah, quite a lot? Actually, yeah, yeah,
I think I also framed it as like people dealing
with it for a decade, and it was like when
the fire first started and it was more contained, it
wasn't that big of a deal, so like people were
just dealing with it for more than a decade. The
fire had been burning for more than a decade at
(15:58):
that point, but it was like more than a decade,
but really affecting life in the town.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
On a day to day level.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Yeah, it's also like most people can't just afford to
pick up and leave right and sign a new place
to live. That is as a refrain so many times
in so many contexts historically and today. Yeah, there will
be the well, why don't people just move if it's
so bad, And it's like a lot of people don't
(16:26):
have the money to just move, or they have family
ties to a place, or like you just said, they
love their house and that's their house and it's their
home and they don't want to leave their home. I
similarly have trouble imagining living in a place where there
are toxic gases sweeping out of the ground and possibly
(16:47):
a sinkhole just opening up in your backyard one day
or under your house or whatever. Sinkholes being one of
my weird fears. Oh really one day my house. Yeah,
I'm just like, what if one day my house suddenly
falls into a sinkhole?
Speaker 2 (17:00):
I had no idea. Wouldn't that be terrible and terrifying?
Speaker 1 (17:03):
It would? But like, yeah, if that were actually my
house that I had bought and that I had put
love and work into and had raised a family in
or whatever, like, I might not want to leave it either.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
So yeah, yeah, the Centralia story being associated with the
Silent Hill franchise, I didn't realize until doing this that
that really was about the movie and not the original
video game, because I have not seen the movie or
played the video game, but I knew that there was
a connection. Boy, it's been a million years since I
(17:38):
played the video game. I don't think I could conjure
many details from it.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Yeah, the photos of a lot of these places, regardless
of whether they are rumored to have some kind of
ghost story attached, the photos of a lot of these
places are really eerie. I mean because body looks like
the like the pro what a typical ghost town that
you know, with buildings they're kind of falling apart, and
(18:06):
the remaining chimneys and smoke stacks and old khaba that
kind of come up out of the ground, out of nowhere.
That's its own level of eeriness. Having a place where
the one thing remaining is the cemetery, that's not that uncommon,
but it's also so remote that it's sort of like,
(18:28):
here is a cemetery with really nothing around it now, right,
So yeah, I feel like all of these are kind
of eerie in their own way. And then of course Jerome,
which is like, from my understanding at least a cute
little town where tourists can go and have ghost tours
and look at a bunch of art and have some wine.
(18:49):
And I would do that. That would be a great,
great little trip. In my opinion, it sounds amazing. Although
then when we had the statistic in there that like
four hundred and fifty people live there.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Like, no, that is very small.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
No, yeah, that's too many people knowing all my business.
I don't Yeah, nope. I was scrolling through somebody's blog
post of photos from their trip they took to Jerome,
and one of the pictures was of an artomat And
every time I see an artomac, I get excited. And
(19:23):
so I don't know if I've told the artomat story
on the podcast before, but I'm going to now. So,
once upon a time you could buy cigarettes from vending
machines in the United States. You know this, of course, Holly,
but our our younger audience members may not know this,
that you could just put money into a vending machine
(19:43):
and get a pack of cigarettes. And when those machines
eventually were outlawed, there a lot of them were still around,
and so an artist converted one into an art vending
machine with little works of art the size and shape
of a pack of cigarettes. And the first one of
these machines was at a coffee shop called Penny University,
(20:07):
which is in Winston Salem, North Carolina, which is one
of the coffee shops that I spent some time at
when I was freshly out of college. And so now
anytime I am anywhere and I see an arto Matt,
I buy something out of it.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Yeah. I love it. I think it's great, and.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
I feel like there used to be one in the
Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, but I may be
misremembering that when I looked at the map of where
they are located, because there's a big map showing where
they are, and they're all over the world, at this point,
there was not one. Well at the MFA. It's possible
it was. There was one there and elsewhere, because they
(20:49):
do move sometimes. Yeah, so yeah, I love I love
the art of Matt and I love getting a little
thing that pops out of it and being surprised by
whatever little piece of art I have found.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
It's the best. So yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
I think this was my final October contribution to this
year's October episodes, and it only kind of skirted the
world of the eerie and ghostly, but it was fun.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
I know.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
I feel like this year I haven't been as spooky
uky yuky as I usually am. Yes, sorry, well I
had a werewolf episode, so very in skeptical village anymore.
I'm like, it's not real. I don't know if this
is my age speaking or what, but yeah, yeah, Well,
whatever's happening on your weekends. If you want a chance
(21:42):
to go out and look at some art, I hope
you get to look at some art. If there is
an arto Matt and you get a little, little cigarette
package sized piece of art, I hope it is something
that surprises and delight to you. Whatever's happening in your world,
boy do I hope it is going as smoothly as
is absolutely possible. I know there's a lot going on
and a lot of it's not going smoothly. So whatever's happening,
(22:05):
I hope it is as easy as as possible. We
will be back with a Saturday Classic tomorrow. We will
have something brand new on Monday. Stuff you Missed in
History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
(22:30):
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class a production
of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Holly Frye and
I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and we talked about ghosts of
Drury Lane, which I love very much because they're just
(00:23):
super fun. I really really liked the quote that we
included at the end about how theater is kind of
inherently given to yeah, ghost sighting, Yeah, because of its nature.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
There was one article I read by an actor. It
was from some time back, who was due in the
middle of a play run there, and he took the
ghost tour on one of his days off, and he
was talking about how, you know, he had never seen
a ghost and some of the stories are very like
me whatever, and he was like, ah, but then when
I got down lower where apparently some of the old
(00:59):
foundation can be seen of the third theater or second theater,
one of the two, he was like, I see where
this could be spooky and make people think they saw things,
because it's just an inherently, you know, scary dark place
where there's lots of everything's blacked out because those theaters
are painted black. In the back end, you could see
some of the old beams from previous versions of the theater.
(01:20):
There was apparently, I want to say it was in
nineteen thirty nine, and I did not include it because
of this a story that an entire cast saw the
man in gray at the same time. Wow, and that like,
clearly this was evidence that he was real. But that's
been chocked up by a lot of people to a
(01:42):
publicity stunt on the part of the theater manager to
kind of you know, bolster ticket sales, and that really
there aren't a lot of actual accounts from that cast
saying yes, we all saw the same thing. The other
thing that I loved that I kept turning up no
matter what I was looking for, even if I was
trying to look.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
At very old things.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
It was article after article of Patrick Stewart talking about
the many ghosts he has seen in his life. Yeah,
and I just loved it. He was doing, you know,
famously a while back, he and Ian McKellen did Waiting
for Goodod together at Theater Royal Haymarket. But like, one
(02:26):
of the big stories that came out during that was
that he kept saying that he was seeing a ghost
in the theater, and I just sort of loved it.
There were also many discussions of articles that I would
not include because they mentioned the play whose name I
am still too superstitious to say aloud. Yeah, I wrote
(02:48):
it into a podcast one time, not knowing that you're
superstition about it extended beyond the walls of a theater.
Oh yeah, no, we don't ever, No, thank you. It's
very silly. I know that's silly, and yet there's a
part of my brain that just refuses. It will shut
down unless you are in situ in the middle of
(03:09):
that play having to say the name. You don't say
that name. Can you say the name historically about people
with the name? I guess, but it would be I wouldn't.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
I wouldn't look for that. Okay, I'll tell you that.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Like if it were on my list of topics to cover,
I would scratch it out and move on.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Yeah, which I know again, I know this is silly.
No one needs to tell me, right, you're being a
ding dong that is not having a rational reaction.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Yeah, I know. It's one of my things.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
I'm just about. I had always understood it as a
superstition about things that should not be said in a theater,
and it had never occurred to me that it could
be extended beyond to the theater of life. I don't know.
Maybe it's one of those things, right, Like my degree
is in theater and film study. Yeah, and so I
feel like maybe it's just I will never ever say
(04:01):
it anywhere ever, in case you don't know, maybe where
you're standing used to be a theater at one time.
We don't know all the stuff that's been there. You
got to be safe. Theater of life says no. Yeah,
I've had many friends who just to taught me would
just like say it over and over and get out,
(04:21):
get out of my house, get out of my party,
whatever you do.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
We're not no, not, haven't it No? Not for me?
Speaker 1 (04:27):
I will say. Also, I want to do an episode
and there probably will be one in the not too
distant future on Dan Leno, because I loved reading about
his life. Yeah, particularly I mean, as tragic as it
becomes in the end, just how much work he did
to take care of other people with his fame. Like
he's one of those people who found himself with an
(04:48):
extraordinary amount of privilege financially and a platform that he
could use to help other people, and he did it
and I want to talk about those kind of people
all day, every day, especially lately. This seems like a
good time to ask you. I know we've done this
at live shows before. Have you ever seen a ghost?
So I've had a couple of unexplained experiences. The creepiest
(05:15):
one when I was in massage school, some family friends
generously allowed me to rent a small cabin that had
been passed down in their family that was up in
the mountains.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
And the first night that I was there.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
I went into it had an old part that was
well over, like over a century old, like made of logs,
no original plumbing or electricity that had all been added
much later. And then it had this like mother in
law addition that had been built out of a kit
And I was staying in the kit part and I
walked into the old part after dark the first night
(05:54):
that I was there, and immediately was like, something malevolent
is in this place. And I left and shut the
door behind me and never went back into there after
dark ever again. And I also like, I didn't want
to look at it after dark because I was afraid
(06:14):
something was going to look back at me out the window,
and then what would I do, Like I was in
the woods with no one around to help. I would
not be in this position to begin with. Yeah, So
one night I heard something very strange outside that frightened
me and I couldn't figure out what it was. And
(06:36):
I realized the next day it was Apple's falling out
of the tree. And I was like, okay, well that
explains that one part, but not how when I walked
in there the all the hair on the back of
my neck stood up. I would say, all of the
theaters that I was in as like a participant in
(06:57):
the play or the or the musical, they were all creepy.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Yeah, like all of them.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
I mean their big, open, cavernous spaces that until you
actually do the performance, is empty aside from the people
participating in the play and the crew and the director
and all of that. Like right, you're just in this big,
echoey dark space with a lot of shadows and a
lot of corners, and they were all creepy. When I
(07:27):
was a massage therapist at the Grove park In, there
are lots of stories about the ghosts at the Grove
park In and the most direct experience I ever had
there was we were in the spa and I was
talking to a couple of the staff that like arranged
appointments and stuff, and a spoon from the counter where
(07:48):
we made drinks for people just launched itself onto the
ground and we were all like, what did that quaw?
Speaker 2 (07:59):
No one was near by, No one was near.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
It, No one was nearby, Like it wasn't like it
was precariously on the edge of the counter. I don't
know what caused that. It did not scare me nearly
as much as the old cabin that I stayed in
in massage school. Yeah, I wouldn't have been in an
old cabin in the woods to begin with. No. No,
(08:23):
there was also the very first day that Patrick and
I spent in this house. We did not have any
cats at this time, but we had had the you know,
the long grueling day of moving our stuff from the
one place to the new place. Uh, And we had
put sheets on the bed and we got into bed,
and I think Patrick was like in the bathroom. Patrick
(08:44):
hadn't come to bed yet, and I had the distinct
sensation of a cat jumping onto the bed. And we
had no cats at that time, And I was not
frightened by this. I was just like, there's a ghost
cat in the house, and the ghost cat has not
made any other visit.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
We had a ghost cat.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Yeah, I know I've told this one during a live show,
but I don't remember if I've.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Ever said it on the recorded podcast. Before.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
There was time we were in our old apartment where
I had been seeing out of the corner of my
eye a cat that wasn't there. And then I discovered
when I finally mentioned it one day, that Brian had
also been seeing a cat out of the corner of
his eye that was not there. And we had cats
at the time, but it was not one of our cats.
Like we would think, oh, that's gg or whatever. We'd
(09:42):
look over and there was no cat there.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
And then there was a night where we were sitting
in the living room of our dinky little apartment watching
TV and we both clear as a bell heard my
dead mother's voice. Oh wow, And it was weird. I
don't know if there was just someone in an adjacent
apartment that sounded just like her and the sound traveled
exactly right, but we like looked at each other like,
did you just hear that? It was weird? And then
(10:05):
the next day the cat was real, but he had
a brother, and we kept them, both of them. So
I've always joked because my relationship with my mom was
not amazing, right, But she is exactly the kind of
person that would dump a stray cat on me, I'm sure,
And she was like that was probably her way to
try to reach out if if in fact there was
a ghost involved that. She was like, you like kitties,
(10:26):
here's kitties. Oh, breat great kitties that you wanted. And
we had those cats for twenty years.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
We loved them.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
I used to work in a college library that was
very old and castle like, and for a while Brian
was working for a Dutch weather company, so he worked
Dutch hours, right, and they let me work the same
hours as him, so our lives matched up. Because I
was down in acquisitions, I was not like working the
desk and stuff, and so I would get there sometimes
(10:53):
that like I would be there in the middle of
the night or get there or start my shift at
four in the morning, like it shifted, but I would
be there alone in the dark. And similar to how
you described that cabin, there were just parts of that
building that felt weird. Yeah, I was like not interesting
going in them. So there was like, if I had
to go to the bathroom, I had to walk through
(11:15):
part of it and it always scared the heck out.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Of me, but I did it.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
And then the one real what just happened to me
moment that I have ever had was in San Francisco
at a hotel that is reportedly haunted, and we had
been joking like, hey, I wonder if we'll hear ghosts,
and at first we heard this weird ringing noise and
(11:40):
we finally realized that there was like inside the wall
a loosish plumbing washer that was jingling, and we were like, oh,
fully explained. And then later in that same trip, Brian
was taking a shower and I was like, I'm going
to just lie down on the bed for a minute,
take a nap. And I felt clear as any actual
(12:04):
physical thing I have ever felt the feeling of, like
finger scratching lightly on my back, and I just said, no,
thank you, And that was the hand of that. I mean,
I don't know, I may have just been having some
weird Listen, we are both women of science in our hearts, yes, yeah,
(12:25):
but sometimes weird stuff happens. I don't know where it was.
I honestly I did not like the fact that when
I walked into this old cabin that it made me
feel like something malevolent was there. Because the people who
loaned it to me were so nice. They were great people.
It was a cabin that had been handed down through
(12:46):
the family, and there was just stuff in it that
was so interesting, and a lot of it was really beautiful,
and I would have just explored all through it, happy
as a clam. But even though it had, like the
first day that I had gone up and they had
sort of shown me you, like, here's how you have
to turn the water off from the outside, and like
this kind of stuff, I was like, Man, this is
(13:07):
gonna be so great. I'm gonna be up here two
or three nights a week. This is such a great space.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
I love it. And then after the first night, I.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Was like, m mmmmmmmm, Nope, I there's nothing in that
house that I need to see and I never need
to lie in a hammock on the porch again, because
what I had been doing when I went in there
after dark was to put the hammock away because it
was a fabric hammock that they didn't want to be
left out because it would get mildew right.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
And I was like, well, Nope, no more of that
for me.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Ever, Great we talked about ghost towns this week, sure did.
I didn't put in my normal introduction about six impossible
(14:01):
episodes and how it's when I round up six things
that are related usually somehow and for some reason or another, can't.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Really be a whole episode.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
And if we did a full on history of some
of these, it would probably be possible to do a
whole episode. But I thought they were fun together as
a whole collection of ghost towns, something I cannot take
any kind of credit for, but that I really liked
because this was one hundred percent listener suggestions, so they
(14:33):
were the topics that listeners asked for. I liked that
these were six towns that were all with the exception
of Jerome abandoned, but it wasn't the same story all
six times, Like all of them I felt like had
very different nuances, and even the ones that were like
this was a boomtown and then it disappeared like those
(14:55):
also were not identical in terms of exactly what happened.
Because when I uh kind of went through and wrote
down all the ghost town suggestions, I was like, is
this going to be six of the same story and
it wasn't. So thanks everyone who contributed one of these ideas.
(15:16):
I had a semimnal retraction after something I said during recording, Okay,
because when we were talking about Centralia and I was like,
this seems surprising to me that people would stay there
for a decade while this burned out their town. Uh huh.
And then I was like, Holly, how much do you
love your house and how unwilling would you be to
(15:37):
leave it? And the answer is, yeah, quite a lot? Actually, yeah, yeah,
I think I also framed it as like people dealing
with it for a decade, and it was like when
the fire first started and it was more contained, it
wasn't that big of a deal, so like people were
just dealing with it for more than a decade. The
fire had been burning for more than a decade at
(15:58):
that point, but it was like more than a decade,
but really affecting life in the town.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
On a day to day level.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Yeah, it's also like most people can't just afford to
pick up and leave right and sign a new place
to live. That is as a refrain so many times
in so many contexts historically and today. Yeah, there will
be the well, why don't people just move if it's
so bad, And it's like a lot of people don't
(16:26):
have the money to just move, or they have family
ties to a place, or like you just said, they
love their house and that's their house and it's their
home and they don't want to leave their home. I
similarly have trouble imagining living in a place where there
are toxic gases sweeping out of the ground and possibly
(16:47):
a sinkhole just opening up in your backyard one day
or under your house or whatever. Sinkholes being one of
my weird fears. Oh really one day my house. Yeah,
I'm just like, what if one day my house suddenly
falls into a sinkhole?
Speaker 2 (17:00):
I had no idea. Wouldn't that be terrible and terrifying?
Speaker 1 (17:03):
It would? But like, yeah, if that were actually my
house that I had bought and that I had put
love and work into and had raised a family in
or whatever, like, I might not want to leave it either.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
So yeah, yeah, the Centralia story being associated with the
Silent Hill franchise, I didn't realize until doing this that
that really was about the movie and not the original
video game, because I have not seen the movie or
played the video game, but I knew that there was
a connection. Boy, it's been a million years since I
(17:38):
played the video game. I don't think I could conjure
many details from it.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Yeah, the photos of a lot of these places, regardless
of whether they are rumored to have some kind of
ghost story attached, the photos of a lot of these
places are really eerie. I mean because body looks like
the like the pro what a typical ghost town that
you know, with buildings they're kind of falling apart, and
(18:06):
the remaining chimneys and smoke stacks and old khaba that
kind of come up out of the ground, out of nowhere.
That's its own level of eeriness. Having a place where
the one thing remaining is the cemetery, that's not that uncommon,
but it's also so remote that it's sort of like,
(18:28):
here is a cemetery with really nothing around it now, right,
So yeah, I feel like all of these are kind
of eerie in their own way. And then of course Jerome,
which is like, from my understanding at least a cute
little town where tourists can go and have ghost tours
and look at a bunch of art and have some wine.
(18:49):
And I would do that. That would be a great,
great little trip. In my opinion, it sounds amazing. Although
then when we had the statistic in there that like
four hundred and fifty people live there.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Like, no, that is very small.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
No, yeah, that's too many people knowing all my business.
I don't Yeah, nope. I was scrolling through somebody's blog
post of photos from their trip they took to Jerome,
and one of the pictures was of an artomat And
every time I see an artomac, I get excited. And
(19:23):
so I don't know if I've told the artomat story
on the podcast before, but I'm going to now. So,
once upon a time you could buy cigarettes from vending
machines in the United States. You know this, of course, Holly,
but our our younger audience members may not know this,
that you could just put money into a vending machine
(19:43):
and get a pack of cigarettes. And when those machines
eventually were outlawed, there a lot of them were still around,
and so an artist converted one into an art vending
machine with little works of art the size and shape
of a pack of cigarettes. And the first one of
these machines was at a coffee shop called Penny University,
(20:07):
which is in Winston Salem, North Carolina, which is one
of the coffee shops that I spent some time at
when I was freshly out of college. And so now
anytime I am anywhere and I see an arto Matt,
I buy something out of it.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Yeah. I love it. I think it's great, and.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
I feel like there used to be one in the
Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, but I may be
misremembering that when I looked at the map of where
they are located, because there's a big map showing where
they are, and they're all over the world, at this point,
there was not one. Well at the MFA. It's possible
it was. There was one there and elsewhere, because they
(20:49):
do move sometimes. Yeah, so yeah, I love I love
the art of Matt and I love getting a little
thing that pops out of it and being surprised by
whatever little piece of art I have found.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
It's the best. So yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
I think this was my final October contribution to this
year's October episodes, and it only kind of skirted the
world of the eerie and ghostly, but it was fun.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
I know.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
I feel like this year I haven't been as spooky
uky yuky as I usually am. Yes, sorry, well I
had a werewolf episode, so very in skeptical village anymore.
I'm like, it's not real. I don't know if this
is my age speaking or what, but yeah, yeah, Well,
whatever's happening on your weekends. If you want a chance
(21:42):
to go out and look at some art, I hope
you get to look at some art. If there is
an arto Matt and you get a little, little cigarette
package sized piece of art, I hope it is something
that surprises and delight to you. Whatever's happening in your world,
boy do I hope it is going as smoothly as
is absolutely possible. I know there's a lot going on
and a lot of it's not going smoothly. So whatever's happening,
(22:05):
I hope it is as easy as as possible. We
will be back with a Saturday Classic tomorrow. We will
have something brand new on Monday. Stuff you Missed in
History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
(22:30):
you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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