Ghosts of History: A Haunted House Tour

Whether or not you believe in ghosts, the tragic histories behind some homes are enough to send a chill down your spine. In this episode, we look into the real stories behind five historic houses that are believed to be haunted. Tune in to learn more.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from houst
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Deblie a chalk reboarding and I'm scared out. And we
recently did an episode on Delphine Lallie and her former
mansion at eleven forty Royal Street in New Orleans and

(00:23):
French Quarter, which some call the most haunted house in America,
and we talked about some of the spooky things that
people have seen and experience there. But of course, there
are many haunted houses throughout the country, in the world
that are historically haunted, so to speak, so we thought
it would be fun to cover a few more of
them in our own little Halloween Haunted House Tour. Now,

(00:46):
before you start emailing us already, we do realize that
talking about ghosts and hauntings on a history podcast maybe
a little bit controversial, since we did normally, of course,
try to focus on things that are indisputably based on
fact or at least theories. But we think that whether
you believe in ghosts or not, you can appreciate the

(01:07):
history behind some of these homes, regardless some of the
history that's even led to them being regarded as haunted.
It's pretty fun stuff in a lot of cases, or
at least spooky for Halloween. And in cases where history
does amount to little more than legend, we are going
to try to do our best to point that out,
as we did with the Laalaure episode of separating the

(01:29):
fact from the fiction. So with that, let's go ahead
and get started. The first haunted house on our list
has a backstory that's actually very similar to that of
the Lollay Mansion in that the creepy legend that's linked
to it has to do within this treatment of slaves
and is quite possibly largely embellished or even entirely made up.

(01:50):
The legend we're referring to is the legend of Antie Palmer,
also known as the White Witch, and that's not the
White Witch meaning the good Witch either, not at all,
not at all, so, as the story goes, Annie was
born in either England or Ireland sometime in about eighteen
o two, and when she was still a very young girl,
she moved to Haiti with her parents, and it was

(02:11):
in Haiti that she was said to have learned all
about voodoo from her Haitian nanny, who was supposedly a
voodoo priestess, and eventually Annie's parents were said to have
died while living in Haiti, and some believe that at
that point Annie was raised to adulthood by this voodoo priestess,

(02:32):
so steeped in voodoo from an earth heavily influenced by it. Yes,
and Annie wanted wealth, and the way for her to
get that was to marry a rich guy. So at
about seventeen or eighteen years of age, she moved to
Jamaica to find herself a well to do husband. She
met John Palmer, owner of the Rose Hall Plantation, and

(02:52):
according to an article in Canadian Travel Press by Ian Stalker,
about two thousand slaves that lived on that plantation as well,
and John and Annie married in about eighteen twenty or so.
But Annie soon grew bored of her marriage, and a
few years in she was having affairs with slaves, perhaps
because they clashed about her indiscretions, or maybe just because

(03:14):
she didn't want to wait to inherit his fortune, Annie
killed John Palmer by poisoning his wine. According to The
Rough Guy to Jamaica. After that first marriage, she's also
said to have married three other guys and killed them
as well, something that really reminded me of Delphine's legend
as well. Meanwhile, though, she just kept having affairs and

(03:36):
and not just with slaves on the plantation, but also
with other employees there. Just because she was seducing all
of these folks, though, didn't mean that she was being
nice to them. Descriptions of Annie Palmer as a extremely
cruel slave owner rival descriptions of Delphine La Laurie like
I just meant that they seemed kind of like twins almost.

(03:58):
She would keep bear traps out in the woods to
discourage slaves from running away. She apparently liked to stand
out on a second floor balcony and watched slaves being
mistreated as if it were some sort of show down
at at the Colosseum, and she had her slaves kill
people for her too, and then had those slaves killed

(04:19):
by other slaves so that they couldn't talk and tell. Eventually, though,
as the legend goes, all this violence did come back
to her. She was strangled in her bed by the
grandfather of a pretty servant girl that she killed because
the girl happened to catch the eye of Annie's lover.
Annie was entombed in an above ground coffin in the

(04:40):
east garden of the house, which apparently is still there.
People tried to cast spells to confine her to the tomb,
but many believed that it didn't work, and that her
ghost still haunts Rose Hall, along with the ghosts of
all the people that she killed. So fast forward in
a few years and the family bought the home in
nineteen o i've according to a book called World's Most

(05:02):
Haunted Places by Jeff Bellinger, but they quickly moved out
when their maid died a mysterious death there. She apparently
fell from a balcony. She was pushed, they believed, by
some unknown force, and this was the same balcony that
you mentioned that Annie used to stand out on and
watch people get mistreated. So in nineteen then a couple

(05:27):
of entrepreneurs from the United States, John and Michelle Rawlins,
bought the place and restored it turned it into a museum,
a pub, gift shop, banquet hall. The bathrooms and gift
shop are apparently located in the dungeon of the house
um and today visitors and employees claimed that they can
hear our doors slamming, screaming, sometimes windows closed, and can't

(05:50):
be opened no matter how hard the staff try. I
don't know if that's a kind of a symptom of
being in the Jamaican climate. I'm guessing if it's anything
like Georgia, but or ghosts, you never know. According to
Bellinger's book, to some staff members have even seen specters,
although it happens to be male employees who see them

(06:12):
more than women for some reason. Yeah, I'm not sure
what's going on there, except for maybe just that she
used to pick on guys a little more since that's
who she had her affairs with. But those who have
looked into the actual documented history of Annie Palmer, though,
have come up empty handed. It seems like she never
really even existed, at least not in the way people
think that she did. According to Polly Thomas's Rough Guide

(06:34):
to Jamaica that we mentioned, there was an Annie Palmer.
There's even a concrete grave for her if you take
a tour, But she doesn't seem to have any real
connection to this legend that we just recounted for you.
She might have been confused with Rosa Palmer, who was
the original mistress of Rose Hall. Rosa also had four husbands,

(06:55):
but she's remembered as being quite virtuous. Still many continue
to have these spooky experiences at the house and over
the years, mediums claimed to have sent something here. So
who knows what's going on. Maybe there's more to Rosa,
perhaps than the historical counts tell us. Now that would
be interesting, wouldn't it if some research went into Rosa's

(07:16):
life because of the supposed haunting. Yeah, if there's anything
to find, who knows. Okay, So that was a that
was a good spooky start to this, But we're gonna
get even more historical, I think for the next one.
The next entry, which is Blickling Hall, is got some
familiar some familiar names in it, people who popped up

(07:39):
on the podcast before. Yeah, someone that I think a
lot of listeners will be familiar with, and that's Anne
Boleyn Henry the eighth second wife and mother of Elizabeth
the first And how she said to haunt is Blickling Hall,
as you mentioned in Norfolk, England, and that's her childhood home.
So just a little background on boln. She was born
about fifteen o seven, the daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn,

(08:03):
and she was introduced to the English court in fifty
two of course, King Henry the Eighth had already had
an affair with Anne's older sister, but when he met Anne,
he fell in love with her and however, refused to
become his mistress. So Henry started the process of divorcing
Catherine of Aragon, and ultimately, after many many years went

(08:25):
by and became pregnant with Elizabeth the First, and at
that point it really sped the divorce up with Catherine
and we're secretly married by June of fifteen thirty three
and was crowned Queen. But I mean, everybody knows where
this story goes. After miscarrying a son and wasn't able
to produce a male heir, that was of course what

(08:47):
Henry the eighth really wanted, and so with various political
intrigues going on, he ultimately had her charged with adultery
and incest and she was beheaded for this May nineteen,
fifteen thirty six. So good grounds, i'd say for a haunting, yes,
And every year on the anniversary of her death, Anne's

(09:08):
headless ghost is said to visit Blickling Hall in a
carriage driven by a horse with a headless rider. She
supposedly holds her head on her lap during these visits,
so pretty spooky. Some other ghosts are said to haunt
the place to Anne's father, Sir Thomas, who, according to
an article by Nick McDermott in The Daily Mail, is

(09:28):
supposedly cursed for doing nothing to save his daughter. Other
ghosts that tend to frequent Blickling Hall include Sir John Fastolf,
a fifteenth century night who sold the house to Sir Thomas,
and he was Shakespeare's false staff inspiration. Suddenly these hauntings
are starting to sound a little more fun to me.
I mean, if if the real life false staff is

(09:51):
hanging around, that sounds better than the headless rider in
the carriage and the head on the lap, that's true.
I see that like Marry Potter a little bit the
fun ghost, you know, I get it. I get it. Yeah,
I see where you're going. Another ghostly resident of Blickling
Hall is Sir Henry Hobart, who was killed in a
duel there in s so visitors reports seeing them, especially

(10:15):
close to May nineteen. So for some reason they all
kind of come around during the anniversary of and beheading.
Very interesting and then, according to a two thousand seven
article in the Telegraph, volunteers who work at Blickling Hall
have spotted some other unusual things going on at the house,
including a gray lady who sometimes comes through the wall

(10:36):
and then disappears again. And in two thousand and seven,
the National Trust actually named Blickling Hall number one on
its list of Britain's most haunted historic property. So clearly
some of these stories have gotten some some traction over
the year. Yeah, and according to Famous Ghosts and Haunted
Places by Gordon Jay Lynch, Diane Canwell and Jonathan Sutherland,

(10:58):
and Administrator the National Trust supposedly saw Ann's ghost there
in n wearing a long gray gown with a white
lace collar, and he spoke to her. He asked her
if he could help her, and she replied, quote that
for which I seek has long since gone. I feel

(11:19):
like I should say something serious there since that is
a quote, But I mean good move on Ann's part.
She knew the right people to talk to. She did
go app here before the administer for the National Trust,
not just some Joe Blow visiting the palace. Right, Okay,
So moving on the next entry on our list, We're
gonna head south for it. It's considered one of the

(11:40):
most haunted houses in Australia and it's located in June
in New South Wales, uh Of, an area of the
country we talked about quite a bit last year with
all of our Outlaws. It was built in the late
eighteen hundreds, around eighteen seventy six or so as the
home of the Crawley family. So Christopher Crawley had acquired

(12:00):
the land it was built on through the Robertson Land
Act of eighteen sixty one, and act that basically tried
to get rid of squatters in the area by allowing
free selectors to purchase land for a quarter of the
purchase price as long as the purchaser intended to live
on the land. This reminded me a lot of the
Outlaw episode. But Christopher and his wife Elizabeth, through this

(12:23):
process got a whole lot of land under the Act.
And even though they had a lot of land initially
they kind of struggled at trying to farm it. For
a couple of years. They lived in a little cottage
on the homestead, didn't have a whole lot of luck.
It wasn't until the Great Southern Railway started up in
about eighteen seventy eight that their fortunes finally began to

(12:43):
turn around. The Crawley's opened a hotel right across from
the railway station and became very wealthy and bought up
a lot more land in the area. They built a
grander house on their property as their wealth brought them
better standing in the community. I think it was about
eighteen eighty four so that that happened. But that old
saying that money can't buy you happiness, that old clich

(13:05):
saying it truly does apply here. Several unfortunate events happened
at the homestead and to the family that ultimately added
up to a rather troubled history. Yeah. The first one
is a true tragedy. A servant dropped the Crawley's daughter, Ethel,
who was only an infant at the time, down a staircase,
and the little girl was killed by the fall. Afterward,

(13:28):
the servant chocked up the fall to some sort of
unseen for she said that Ethel had been pushed out
of her arms by some power she she couldn't see
or know. They had seven other children who survived, but
in nine Christopher Crawley died at the age of sixty
nine from heart failure after getting an infection, and after

(13:50):
this Elizabeth Crawley became something of a recluse. Just as
an aside for you here, she's said to have been
shunned by locals because of her aboriginal hairriage. So maybe
this had something to do with her hiding out at
home to not just the fact that she was grieving
about her husband. We're not entirely sure they're but she

(14:10):
supposedly left the homestead only twice in her remaining twenty
three years of life. There's kind of a darker side
of this this these years alone though in the house.
A lot of sources say that Mrs Crawley started acting
very cruel towards her servants after her husband's death. There
are some sources, including Zanthi Kleinig's article in the Daily Telegraph,

(14:32):
that suggests that it was both Mr and Mrs Crawley
who were pretty tough on their servants, even saying they
quote ruled their home with an iron fist, but it
might have been Mrs Crawley. According to an article by
Dana Platter in The Sunday Mail, Mrs Crawley also always
wore black dresses, a lace cap with a cape, and
a beated collar. All things that sound to me like

(14:54):
distinctive ghost outfits. That's a very good point you have there,
But there were several other deaths and acts of cruelty
that occurred while Mrs Crawley was living in the house.
There was a maid who fell from a balcony and died.
According to Klining, the maid was said to be pregnant,
so it's unclear whether she was pushed or committed suicide

(15:16):
in this instance. There was also a mentally impaired man,
supposedly the housekeeper's son, who was chained up outside of
the main house and what used to be used as
a dairy room for almost forty years. In in in nineteen
sixty one, the caretaker of the homestead was shot dead,
also in that dairy room, by a local kid who

(15:36):
would watched the film Psycho three times before heading up there.
That's a creepy modern addition to the story. Elizabeth Crawley,
though died and the rest of the family left the
house by the late nineteen forties. But even though the
house was put up on the market, it failed to
sell for a very long time, which left it open

(15:57):
for looters and vandals who really took their toll on
what had once been considered a beautiful home, so the
house was in pretty bad shape when Reginald Ryan and
his wife Olive finally bought the place in nineteen sixty three,
and once they were there they started noticing some pretty
strange stuff too. For example, according to Platter's article, they

(16:19):
drove up the long driveway one night and saw that
basically all the lights in the house were on. But
by the time that they had pulled up to the house,
all the lights went off, and they heard sounds of kids, voices,
figures that weren't really there. But apparently this was not
a turn off for this new property they had bought.
They weren't too bothered by it, and instead they stayed.

(16:42):
They authentically restored the property, and eventually they opened the
house for ghost tours and they themselves acted as as
tour guides and still do. I think. In Plotter's article,
Ryan actually said quote it changed my life, meaning the
house changed his life from the day I saw it.
I love of this place. They'll have to take me
out feet first. I'm going to be the next ghost.

(17:06):
So I mean, I think if you're going to live
in a dream, yeah, yeah, that's the right attitude to
have their So all told, there are said to be
up to seven ghosts residing at the homestead. A man
in a brown suit with a long white beard has
been spotted, for example, and assumed to be Mr Crawley.
Mrs Crawley is thought to be hanging around as well,

(17:27):
and apparently makes her presence known in the homes drawing room.
In the past, she's done this by taking down a
giant tapestry there. I'm not sure that's what I mean
by her her distinctive outfit. Then that would be good
to establish that for a few years before you come
back as a ghost. Then people will know who you are, like, oh,
that's yep, that's her. So there are supposedly some other

(17:50):
spooky things that sort of tip people off to paranormal
activity in the house, and that's these random cold spots
as you walk through the house. Also, several visitors have
experienced strange asthma attacks and this kind of just feeling
like they are struggling to breathe in certain spots and

(18:11):
then all of a sudden it passes almost as quickly
as it came. On the corridor on the second floor.
I think is an example of one of the places
where this happens a lot to people. Some people also
hear piano music, but there's not a piano in the house,
And according to Clinix article, guests sometimes her kids playing
out back around four am, and the owner Ryan, he

(18:32):
says it's always around four am for some reason, but
he doesn't know why. It's those little things like that
that that seemed more disturbing than like there's false staff
walking through. Okay, so our our next entry is a
truly upsetting story. And as you've probably noticed by now,

(18:52):
a common theme with these historical haunted homes is tragedy
and and the next entry on this list is really
a prime example of that. So we'll start with the
sad event itself. On June nine, Joe and Sarah Moore
and their four kids head out to a service at
their Presbyterian church in Vliska, Iowa. Vliska at this point

(19:16):
is a quiet little town. People who live there, for example,
lither doors unlocked, that sort of thing. According to a
Salon dot com article by Nick kawal Chick, the Iowa
Touring Atlas had just named Valiska quote one of the
finest cities in the state. So it was thought of
as a nice little town, maybe even someplace you would
want to go visit. The Moor's return home that night,

(19:38):
oh changed all of that. They came home with two
other kids in tow, Lena and Iina Stillinger, who were
friends of the More kids. The Stillingers were going to
be sleeping over that night. No one's quite sure what
happened after that, but the next morning, a neighbor named
Mary Peckham, who is sixty three years old around that time,
notices that the More house is and usually quiet. Joe

(20:01):
Moore at that time ran a farm equipment store and
typically got up pretty early to do chores before heading
to work, and Sarah usually got the kids up early,
and since the eldest kid was only eleven, as you
would imagine, things get pretty noisy. It's not at all quiet,
so Mary Peckham goes over and knocks on the door.
After a while, when she doesn't hear anything, she thinks

(20:24):
this is weird, so she goes to check it out.
No one comes to the door, and she gets more concerned. Yeah,
so eventually Joe's brother and one of his employees come
over looking for him, come search the house and what
they find there when they go inside is truly horrifying.
Every person in the house is still in bed, but
they've all been bludgeoned to death, their skulls crushed by

(20:48):
an axe. And of course, a story like this became
national reinforcements were called in to investigate, but the killer
was never caught, even though some Baliska residents it become
suspects and their reputations never quite recovered from the questioning.
With the real story still shrouded in mystery, it's easy

(21:08):
to understand why people have continued to visit this house
over the years and continue to be interested in it.
Several paranormal investigators have visited as well and believe that
they've found proof of paranormal activity there. So you can
also check out this house. They have tours, they have sleepovers,
You can spend the night there if you want to.

(21:29):
Some things that people have experienced while their children's voices,
falling lamps, flying objects. In Kalchis article, he talks to
a couple of ghost hunters who say that they've actually
felt contact with the spirits of the victims. One had
been pushed, for example, into a door jam. Another said
when you wear shorts in the summer. You can feel

(21:52):
the kids playing with your legs kind of. There's another
side of this, though, the hauntings, and in the book
Haunted Houses by Dinah Williams, she suggests that the main
spirit who haunts the house isn't that of little kids
messing with your toes, it's that of the killer. And
she writes that some ghost hunters have seen a ghostly

(22:13):
fog moving from room to room, like the killer must
have done that night. Some have also heard the sound
of dripping blood. So it I think that was the
one of the stranger aspects of the haunting side of
this story that people seem to believe or experience so
different different kinds of things in this home. So to

(22:34):
end on a somewhat brighter note, because that last story
was pretty disturbing and a scary haunting also, and since
it's an election year here in the US, we're going
to finish off our Haunted House tour with one of
America's the most famous haunted houses, and that is the
White House. The White House, of course, has been the
residence of US presidents since eighteen hundred and during John

(22:58):
Adams term, the US capital moved from Philadelphia to Washington,
d C. And so President Adams and his wife Abigail
were actually the first to move into Pennsylvania Avenue, but
the home wasn't entirely finished when they got there. That's
where this haunting begin So, according to Haunted America by
Michael Norman and Best Scott, Ablicail Adams had a pretty

(23:20):
good attitude about living in this unfinished home. She still
continued to entertain to throw dinner parties even with the
construction going on all around her. She did have to
get pretty creative though, when it came to getting chores done,
especially the laundry, and that's because most of the rooms
at that time were just too cold or damp to

(23:41):
dry clothes in. So Mrs Adams decided that the east
room was the driest place in the house and therefore
the best place to hang her laundry. Her ghost is
said to be seen hurrying toward the east room wearing
her signature cap and lay shawl, with her arms outstretched
as if she's carrying laundry, so much like false staff.

(24:01):
I would think that that would be kind of an
okay one to see. I wouldn't mind seeing how Gil
Adams doing her laundry, you know, maybe toss her my
hoodie or something to wash along with the rest of
her stuff. Don't mix it with the whites and colors, Abigail.
But it's funny, though, to imagine that she would spend
her her afterlife washing laundry. How many people do you

(24:21):
think would do that? I wonder I wouldn't. I don't
even spend my life doing laundry. Several other notable ghosts
that have been sited at the White House over the years,
among them President Andrew Jackson's ghost. He's supposedly still miffed
about losing that election to John Quincy Adams in four
and according to Norman and Scott's book, Mary Todd Lincoln

(24:44):
claimed that she could hear Jackson stomping around and swearing
in the corridors, and this was twenty years after Jackson's death.
And then the Rose Room, which was Jackson's bedroom, is
thought by many to be the most haunted room in
the White House. Lillian Rogers Part who was a seamstress
who worked in the White House for thirty years and
wrote a book about it in nineteen sixty one, claimed

(25:07):
that she had the super spooky experience in the Rose room.
She was in there hemming a bedspread, and she said
that she felt Jackson leaning over her. She ended up
being too scared to turn around and look. But another
setting you have to wonder too. If Jackson is hanging
around they're upset about losing to John Quincy Adams, what

(25:28):
happens when he runs into Jqu's mom doing laundry. That's
true awkward to say the least. Of course, there are
other people who are unrelated to this family that you
might see in a ghost like form, most notably President Lincoln.
He's another White House ghost and perhaps it's most famous.

(25:48):
People have spotted him walking around the halls and in
the Lincoln Bedroom, which used to be his office when
he was president. Some just say that they feel his presence,
especially during times of national cry sis. But according to
history dot com, Grace Coolidge, wife of President Calvin Coolidge,
was the first to say that she had actually seen
Lincoln's ghost standing and looking out a window of the

(26:10):
Oval office. And then Winston Churchill, And this has to
be the craziest detail in the show, the very famous
Lincoln siting Winston Churchill after staying in the White House
during World War two told the story of walking into
his room naked, smoking a cigar after his evening bath
and seeing Lincoln sitting there by the fireplace. I mean,

(26:36):
what a way to end this show. What a way
to meet President Lincoln. There have been other ghost sighted
in the White House as well, not just presidents and
not just first ladies. The ghost of Annie Sarat, whose
mother was executed for her involvement in the Lincoln assassination,
and the ghost of a British soldier who helps at
the White House on fire. In way more awkward encounters here,

(27:00):
Annie Sara and Lincoln. I mean, yeah, there's potential for
a lot of awkward momentoes have to work it out.
I mean, they might have problems with each other if
you consider they have, you know, all these possible relationships
in life and then connections beyond life. They just have
to deal with it. I guess, well, that's why they're ghosts,

(27:20):
right the people. Yeah, but there they have issues to
work out, so that's why they're still hanging around. So
maybe that's why they're all there together. They want to
work it out somehow, or maybe that's just too optimistic.
Who knows. Well, it's been fun talking about haunted houses.
I mean, we discussed the type that you tour for

(27:41):
a scare during Halloween in one of our recent episodes.
But there is some some neat history behind a lot
of these houses, and I just think it's cool that
they get saved too. You know. Sometimes it's this weird
story that saves a historic building, which for for preservation,
you know. So that's kind of neat to think about

(28:01):
a lot of houses like this, Um, the abandoned one
in Australia ends up with having a second life because
it can be turned into a tourist attraction. Yeah, and
it makes people interested in history, which is something we're
always for. It does. Actually, most of these are ones
that listeners have suggested to us before, and I think

(28:22):
that's largely in part because they've visited these places and
they've heard these stories and ghost tours or even from
just regular tour guides who toss out a tale of
a ghost every now and then. Um, So it's clearly captivating. Yeah,
and even if you find out that the stories aren't
entirely true, maybe they have some holes in them, maybe
they have a huge hole in them, or the story

(28:43):
is completely false, it's still interesting. It's still fun to
learn the legend and it, you know, it creates an
opportunity to find out more about the real history that's there.
So we have some Halloween related mail here, listener Muriel,
and it has to do with a episode that actually

(29:04):
you and Kristen did. I wasn't in on this one,
the tricker treating one. Yeah, I missed out. I do
love trick or treating, but you guys got to cover that,
and Kristen did an excellent job. It was very fun
co hosting with Kristen and all the other folks too.
But it looks like I get to read the letter
from listener Muriel. She says, my husband and I enjoyed
listening to your brief history of tricker treating, especially on

(29:26):
how today's traditions have evolved from agent customs. In the podcast,
you mentioned a couple of times that poison and candy
is just an urban legend. We both instantly thought of
a time when it was, unfortunately not an urban legend.
We lived in Houston, Texas around the time in nineteen
seventy four when Ronald Clark O'Brien, a father in the
Houston suburb of Deer Park, was convicted of putting poison

(29:48):
in candy pixie sticks on Halloween and handing them out.
He was charged with killing his own eight year old
son in an effort to collect insurance money. Apparently, the
poison candy was handed out to at least four their children,
none of whom ate it before the police were able
to retrieve it. One boy was found asleep in bed
later that night cradling the poison pixie sticks in his arms.

(30:09):
He had been unable to pry it open before he
fell asleep. Oh goodness. Following that horrific incident, trick or
treating was not done anywhere around the Houston area. Schools
held Halloween carnivals instead, and some malls encourage little ones
to trick or treat store to store, O'Brien was dubbed
the man who killed Halloween. Wow. So that was a

(30:31):
very sad, interesting follow up to the trick or treating episode,
and especially since we've talked about poison in this episode.
Too scary to think about it is. I mean, it's
one of those things that even if you went through
your candy, would you have suspected that it was in there? Yeah,
now we're going to scare everyone. Sorry, now, we didn't

(30:52):
mean to do that, so yeah, anyway, it was just
the point we we did want to address since we
talked about that large being an urban legend and because
it is unfortunately a part of our trigger treating history
or should be. So thank you guys who wrote in
about that, and on a lighter note too, thank you
guys all of you who wrote in to tell us

(31:14):
about your uni suff boxes. Kristen and I were pondering
over whether that's still a thing and when it was
a thing, because we didn't really remember it from our
own trigger treating days, but we have heard from so
many people who talk about they did the unisef boxes
every year and always got a great response. So that's

(31:34):
a That's a nicer way to close out this Halloween
podcast get people in a celebratory mood, is go visit
a haunted house, have some fun trick or treat. Happy Halloween. Yeah,
and if you have some other Halloween stories that you'd
like to share with us, feel free to write to us.
We're at History Podcast at Discovery dot com. We're also
on Twitter at mist in history, and we're on Facebook

(31:56):
and we do have a great article on haunted houses.
I think we mentioned and it in our earlier episode,
but because some of these hauntings did remind us of
Bill Pheela Laurie so much, it seems appropriate to throw
it out there again, right. We have an article called
top ten Haunted Houses and it includes some of the
ones we mentioned today as well some other ones that

(32:17):
you might be interested in, so you should check that out.
We also have a whole article on the Winchester Mystery
House's article crazy House. Yeah, I think it's why does
the Winchester Mystery House have Stairs that lead Nowhere? By
Molly Edmund By Molly Edmunds our friend. So if you'd
like to check that out, you can look it up

(32:38):
on our homepage at www dot house stuff works dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Is it how stuff works dot com? Do do do

(33:04):
you me