July 20, 2022 • 38 mins
A mansion in Little Rock, Arkansas, with what many believe to be a cursed past. Family scandal, death, accidents and suicide have followed this structure for decades. Special Guest: Drew Counsell-Short.
Visit amy-bruni.net for details of my fall speaking tour, plus strange-escapes.com if you're ready to take a spooky vacation with us.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Haunted Road, a production of I Heart Radio
and Grim and Mild from Aaron Minky. Listener discretion is advised.
Imagine when you die you become a ghost, and then
(00:24):
entertain the idea that you may haunt your family home,
a place so familiar you could close your eyes and
glide your hand on the walls and find your way
from place to place, completely on instinct and memory. According
to what we've always thought, if someone else passed who
was attached to that home, they may also somehow end
up haunting it, and you would know they were there
(00:45):
right Their presence would be as indelible as the walls
you knew so well and the memories you created within them.
What if that person was your mother or your daughter,
Surely you would together haunt your family home, completely aware
of the other, staying in the space for whatever reason
kept you but together. But what if that isn't the case.
(01:08):
What if you could go decades, if not more, haunting
the same place with someone you knew and loved incredibly
in day to day life, but not knowing they were there.
You would tread the same steps, see the same living folks,
watch the same sunsets from the same windows, but think
you were alone. I never considered this a possibility in
(01:30):
all my experiences with the spirit world, and yet our
next location had me questioning everything I thought I knew.
Come with me to Little Rock, Arkansas. As we explore
the Fee House. I'm Amy Brunie, and this is haunted road.
(01:59):
Today the Fee House sits empty, its owners living in
the property's carriage house while they renovate the historic home
in Little Rock, Arkansas. But put more accurately, the home,
which is sat empty for more than two decades, is
only empty of living people. Evidence of the dead fills
the halls of the Fee House. Unexplained noises and disembodied
footsteps come from afar. Voices echo from empty rooms saying
(02:22):
hello and welcome in some places and others the messages
are darker. He's in the attic, investigators have heard others
have picked up voices saying help us, we are lost.
But who is lost and how did they get there?
The answer could very well be in the fee Houses
one thirty year history, which includes public scandal, traumatic injuries
(02:42):
and deaths, an allegedly cursed family, and nowadays, reports of
faces appearing in the windows of a home where no
one lives. It wasn't always this way. Well, the Fee
House wasn't always haunted as far as we know, but
it has, it seems, always had its share of strange
and unusual stories. Built in eighteen ninety, the Fee House
(03:03):
is a Victorian style home in the Governor's Mansion district
of Little Rock, what was in its day the most
fashionable and desirable part of town to live in. From
the eighteen eighties to the nineteen twenties, the city's most
affluent residents built homes in the neighborhood. Though the house
is known today as the Fee House, it was actually
built for the Hayfer family, though not much is known
about those owners or the owners who followed immediately after.
(03:26):
The Fee House is a two story Victorian plus an attic.
It has six bedrooms and three bathrooms, with nearly four
thousand square feet inside, including a kitchen, library, parlor, and
a great foyer with a large open staircase with a
carved wooden banister wrapping around a landing that looks down
into the first floor. The Fees were actually the third
(03:47):
family to own the building, purchasing the house in nineteen
o seven. At the time they moved into the home
at nineteen hundred Broadway Street in Little Rock. They had
already seen their fair share of scandal. Frank Ffee bought
the Fee House for himself, his wife, Mamie, whose real
name was Mary Rose, and their three children, five year
old Frank Jr. Three year old Catherine, and infant son Edward.
(04:09):
Frank was a prominent businessman in Little Rock who was
a thirty second degree Mason and a member of many
elite social clubs in the city. Fee's father was a
Civil War soldier and his mother was the granddaughter of
a famed Revolutionary War general. Frank showed talent at an
early age, graduating from high school at just thirteen and
from Oberlin College at eighteen, then being admitted to the
(04:30):
bar at only twenty one years old. He quickly made
a fortune in the lumber industry, parlaying his love of
nature into work in forestry and then in the manufacture
of hardwood lumber, eventually becoming president of the Phee Creighton
Lumber Company. Frank had been married to Mamie for seven
years when they moved into what became known as the
Fee House, but he had been married previously. Frank and
(04:53):
his first wife, Nellie, eloped in October eighteen eighty two
when her parents disapproved of the match, saying that at eighteen,
she was too young to get married. The pair had
at least two children, Laura was born in eighteen eighty
four and Herbert was born in eighteen eighty eight, though
some sources say they had at least one, if not two,
more daughters. Frank became close to Mamie Cone while he
(05:15):
was still married to Nellie and while Mamie was married
to a lumber merchant in Chicago. Nellie filed for divorce
in eighteen ninety nine, receiving what the Fort Wayne News
described at the time as heavy alimony and the custody
of her children. Mamie and her husband also divorced at
the same time. That article, published in April nineteen hundred
on the occasion of Frank and Mamie's wedding, which immediately
(05:37):
followed their divorce from their previous spouses, noted that the news,
although of a sensational character, will not surprise Fort Wayne's
social circles. Despite these salasious for the time gossip, the
Fees enjoyed active prominent roles in society while living in Ohio,
then in Texas, and finally in Little Rock. Contemporary newspaper
(05:58):
reports show them hosting an attending various social events. A
fourth birthday party for Edward in June nineteen ten included
fifty children as guests. According to the Daily Arkansas Gazette,
the lawn was beautifully arranged, games were played, and a
delicious birthday luncheon was served in the late afternoon, when
a large frosted birthday cake was cut. The paper noted
(06:18):
that the lawn of the Fee residence nine hundred Broadway
is an ideal spot for an entertainment of this nature.
Numerous garden swings, the ice cream cone vendor, and dainty
lunches and paper napkins will add to the enjoyment of
the little guests. In January nineteen twelve, Frank and Maymie
hosted a dinner party where there were six tables and
guests would change tables as each course was presented. In
(06:40):
nine December, the family presented a Christmas church play called
Castle Christmas, which The Arkansas Democrat described as a most
charming affair. The three feet children who appeared in it
played the King of Christmas a bottle of ink. The
Spirit of Christmas, and one half of a pair of mittens, respectively.
During this time Frank and may you welcome two more children,
(07:01):
Thomas born in nineteen ten and Patricia born in nineteen fifteen.
According to the website Abandoned Arkansas, there were rumors that
Thomas may have been fathered by a caretaker and groundskeeper
for the Fees, who lived in the property's carriage house.
As the site describes, Thomas was the only child of
the five five children, whose room wasn't a large upstairs bedroom,
(07:23):
but was instead behind the library on the sun porch.
Even more telling was that he was sent to California
to live prior to enrolling in high school, where he
remained after graduation and into adulthood. More unusual circumstances surrounded
the Fee family, especially when it came to death and loss.
Frank Sr. Was only sixty two when he died of
(07:44):
a heart attack in Battle Creek, Michigan, in January nine.
His death was announced in an obituary in the Arkansas
Democrat titled Nationally known Lumberman Dies, and Frank's body was
brought to the Fee house before his burial. Eight years later,
Mamie died at age fifty eight, from injuries sustained in
a horrific accident. She was drying her hair over the
(08:07):
stove one night when her night gown caught fire. A
maid attempted to put the flames out with a blanket,
but Mamie was badly burned. An account from her granddaughter
Patricia describes what followed Mamie's injury. According to her granddaughter
Patricia Tucker, after being burned, Mamie would tell no one.
Edward was to be married at that time, and she
did not want to spoil his marriage plans, so she
(08:28):
kept her plight to herself. After the wedding, she got
so bad she did go to a hospital for the burns,
but it was too late. From these injuries, she died.
Though this account came from a family member, the dates
don't exactly line up. Edward married Geraldine Miller in May,
over a year before Mamie's death. Another piece of Patricia's account, though,
(08:49):
might explain why Mamie was hesitant to seek medical care.
The granddaughter went on to explain she was a good
Christian scientist. Many of the time she would call someone
to pray that I would get well. Maybe that too
was a reason she didn't go to the hospital sooner.
Christian Science or the Church of Christ Scientists, is a
belief system founded in eighteen seventy nine in Boston. At
(09:11):
the time of Mamie's death, just about half a century later,
it was the fastest growing religion, with nearly two hundred
seventy thousand members. One of the religion's core tenants is
that malady and disease should be treated through prayer, not
through medicine. Whatever her reasons for not immediately seeking treatment
for her burns, maybe passed away from her injuries sustained
(09:33):
in the accident. Less than a year later, in October
nineteen thirty two, twenty eight year old Catherine died after
drinking poison in the Fee House. Though she drank poison
acid to be precise, Catherine's death was ruled accidental, is
it was believed that she unintentionally drank poison, believing that
she was picking up a bottle of headache medicine. In
her obituary in the Arkansaga Sette, it's noted that physicians
(09:57):
said she died from effects of an acid, which relatives
she evidently picked up by mistake in her haste to
obtain relief from the headache. Patricia was nine at the
time of her mother's death, and she remembers what happened
that day very differently. According to Abandoned Arkansas, she remembers
her mother and uncle's arguing about who was to blame
for the recent death of their mother. Catherine blamed her
(10:19):
brother and claimed he had lost the faith. In the
midst of this argument, Catherine deliberately went upstairs and found
the acid and drank it intentionally as she was standing
above the family on the staircase, causing her almost immediate
and horrific death. Though the family immediately drove her to
the hospital after seeing her drink the poison, she died
within ten minutes of arrival. A decade later, another of
(10:41):
the feed children would meet an untimely end. In October
nineteen thirty, six year old Edward died in a plane
crash in Dallas, Texas during his Army service. The bomber
in which he and five other service members were flying.
According to the St. Louis Star in Times, struck a
radio station and Tenna guy wire. Edward's cause of death
was Liz did As crushed in an aeroplane wreck. The
(11:03):
Fee family sold the home in nineteen thirty nine or
nineteen forty to Audrea Hart, a widow who lived there
with her two widowed sisters and their mother, Virginia Frehley,
who passed away in the home in May nineteen sixty
six at age one two. Audrea lived in the home
until her death in nine but she was also attached
to a terrible accident in the home. According to Abandoned Arkansas,
(11:27):
Audria had an extremely unlucky visitor while in the home.
The woman somehow fell over backward from the top staircase
landing and landed in the foyer, breaking her neck and
dying instantly. This account, though isn't substantiated by other sources.
The Fee House sat abandoned and decaying from Audrea's death
until the current owners, Drew and Mark, purchased it in
(11:48):
twenty nineteen. They currently live in the carriage house while
they renovate the main house, which they intend to turn
into a nonprofit that provides accommodations for post operative transplant
patients while they received care from a nearby hospital when
Drew and Mark bought the house, though they didn't know
it was haunted and the Fee House you might not
be surprised to learn is very haunted. The pair began
(12:10):
to suspect something paranormal was happening in the home when
they started sensing unusual happenings. They would hear unexplained sounds
like boxes being dropped in other rooms and feeling the
presence of a man around the house and unsurprisingly, the
presence of a woman on the stairs. Doors on the
second floor of the house are said to move on
their own, often shutting themselves when left open. Now, paranormal
(12:31):
researchers investigate the space, sometimes offering ghost tours. Investigators have
captured e vps of someone saying welcome in the house
and of an unseen man in the library saying I'm
right behind you. One ghost hunter, Tyra Clark of the
Arkansas X Files, claims to have seen a child's ghost
by the house's main staircase, which identified itself to her
(12:52):
as Edward Fee. She has also picked up voices saying
he's in the attic and help us we are lost.
Another investig itater claims to have heard mysterious footsteps in
the house, while two others reported feeling extremely short of
breath in the attic as well. As experiencing cold sensations,
lack of feeling in their legs, and being touched or
pinched by something unseen. To dive deeper into these hauntings,
(13:16):
I thought it best to talk to one of the
owners himself. Drew counsel Short is joining us next and
he's going to tell us all about the wild experiences
he's had since purchasing the fee House and why the
heck he wanted to buy a Rundown haunted house anyway,
that is coming up after the break. I am sitting
(13:45):
here with none other than Drew counsel Short, who is
the owner of the Fee House and has had many
an experience, and figured, hey, you are probably the best
person to speak with about what goes on in the
house now. So thank you for joining me. Sure, thanks
for having me. It's nice to hear your voice again.
You know. We spent multiple days at the house filming
(14:06):
Kindred Spirits Gosh last summer, and it was remarkably hot.
I remember being very sweaty, very much. So, yeah, I
watched that episode. We're kind of chatting about this. Before
I watched that episode, I'm always like, oh gosh, this
was not my finest moment. On television. But it was
a really cool investigation, so that was worth it. There
(14:27):
was one moment where I was like, wow, the hair
is like social with sweat stuck to my forehead, and
it's like, that is a bad shot. I feel like
I've learned that whenever we are shooting television, it's either
remarkably hot or like sub zero temperatures. It can never
just be like a comfortable sixty eight degree day. It's like,
(14:50):
it never is. It's always one of it has to
be drastic to be fair. I literally told the production
manager and everything, it's like, do not send them here
in June and July or August because there is no
air conditioning. And what were they there, Like, hey, we're
gonna send them in the dead heat of summer. They
don't actually care about us. It's fine, It's totally fine.
(15:12):
So I love the Fee House because it's not like
a super well known location, but the history, and I
think it's becoming more well known for sure. The history
is so fascinating to me. And we've been through that already,
so I need to ask you, like why did you
buy that house? So we came here because my husband's
(15:33):
family is from this area, and so I was like,
you know, we lived in Nashville, Tennessee at the time,
and I was like, I could live in an area
like this, you know where the house is located in
the historic Governor's Mansion area. And then I saw this
house and the yard was not mode, the trees were
not trimmed. It was a disaster of a house. And
(15:53):
we pulled in the driveway because I saw the first
sales sign. We pulled in the driveway and It's like,
I will move to a little rock, Arkansas if I
can have this house. And so I had not been inside.
I had no idea what the inside looked like. I
had no idea of what the carriage house inside of
that looked like. So he was like really, and I
was like yes, really. So we came back like a
week later to meet with a real estate agent and
(16:16):
to tour the house. And we toured like, I don't know,
like fifteen eighteen houses in like two days, and this
was the last house that we stopped at, although this
was the first house I wanted to see, So we
thought that this one was like almost like I was
being deterred from this house, and I was like, now
this is the one I want. When I went inside,
it just felt like the home kind of gets you
a hug and like an embrace and like a warm welcome, like, oh,
(16:39):
your home, you know that kind of feeling. And so
I walked in it and that's what I felt, and
I was like, this is it, this is the one
I want now. Mind you, the house was completely filled
with junk. I mean, like sixty yards of debris is
what came out of that house. As you saw. There's
still the one room upstairs that's got a lot just
(17:00):
because that floor is not stable and we haven't gotten
to get all that taken care of yet. But other
than that, the house has obviously cleaned out, and it
just felt like home to me. You know. I hear
that a lot from people who buy houses like that,
like they'll go in and it doesn't matter what kind
of shape it's in. You know what deters many other
(17:21):
people kind of attracts them, like it's almost like you
are there to save it. There's just some reason it's faded.
You're supposed to be there and nothing can take that
away at that point. And so I think that's interesting.
You saw so many houses before, and I feel that
it is a gorgeous, gorgeous home, and I totally get that.
I feel like, at some point that's going to happen
(17:42):
to me. Now, when did you find out that it
was haunted? Though? So I had this recurring dream after
we had put the offer in on the house, we
went back to Tennessee to wrap up the sale of
our house, so on and so forth, and I kept
having this reoccurring dream about the stairwell in the house
and there was this woman that was like on the stairwell.
And in the dream, I was in the upstairs bedroom,
(18:05):
which has made me his master bedroom, which is the
front room once you get up the stairs. And when
I was in that room and I was doing something
like making the bed or I can't even remembering the
dream what I was doing. But when I was up
there doing this, I kept seeing this woman on the
stairwell and I was like, why is she looking at me?
(18:25):
And you know how the stairwell is like the banisters,
like they're short, but like you can kind of like
see from like when you come up the stairwell and
you get to the first landing and then you start
up the longer section of the stairwell, and she was
on there and she was looking at me in that
room and I was like, why is she staring at me?
This is so creepy. And I had this dream like
seven or eight times, and it's like something is going
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on in this house and I don't know what it is.
I can tell you what it is because at the
time I had not spent much time in the house
other than just walking into it to see it, you know,
And so I had this dream. I was like, something
is going on. What we closed on it? So I
first of two thousand nineteen, on July was when I
(19:10):
was seeing pictures of the family from a previous ownerhood
of it. And when I saw the picture of one
of the daughters, I was like, those are the eyes
that I remember seeing dream And she was like, well,
what dream? And so I told her about it, and
I was like, has anything weird or strange or you know,
happened to you in the house when you lived there?
(19:33):
So she was like, well, I wasn't gonna say anything,
but there was this one time and she they had
one like very small encounter, which I don't think that
they really processed or were really thinking about it, but
they most certainly didn't want to scare me. But I
was like, I already know something is here anyway, there's
something going on. I mean, it bothered me, but it
(19:55):
didn't really bother me. I just didn't know the entire
history of the house until I really started digging in
to some of the research that she had already done. Right, So, yeah,
the stairwell plays an integral part of the history of
that house. So that's so interesting. And I firmly believe
in the idea that sometimes we are visited in our dreams,
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because like I've had even relatives up here in my
dreams that have passed, and there's always something different about
those dreams. I always have that moment where I'm like,
I know I'm being visited by someone who was passed away.
And so she had a message for you, apparently, So
did that make you nervous at all? The idea of
buying a haunted house like that? So I'll tell you
(20:38):
after I met with the previous owner and learned some
more in the history. Like every time I walked into
the house and saw that something had been moved, I
would always run to my husband and like, baby, did
you move this? And like, yes, I moved it. And
just making sure. So like I think I was probably
more on edge about everything than I previously was even
(20:59):
before like knowing everything. I just knew something was going
on in there, but it didn't really like sink in
until I was like, oh my goodness, did he move this?
Did she moved this? Like? Who moved this? So that's
when I started to get a little bit nervous until
I could kind of figure out what was what, who
was what, and like really kind of dig into like
(21:21):
investigating it myself. Right, I do encounter um a lot
of people like that when I'm investigating locations who are
kind of on red alert because things have happened, and
then they start like, you know, analyzing everything. So you've
had the dream, you're now looking firmly for paranoral activity.
What was like your next major experience in the house.
(21:44):
So the next major experience was ginger Back, who you
got to me? She had reached out to me to
write an article about the house for Abandoned Arkansas. So
she was like, can I come over and like, you know,
you can give me a tour and I'm gonna take
some photos and write this article. And I was like
absolute len So she came over and that was Septimber
of two thousand nineteen, and we'll walk them through the
(22:05):
house and she was taking pictures of everything, and she
texts me later that day and said, hey, not one
of my pictures that I took came out. She's like,
it's like someone has just taken their hand to a
painting and smeared it. Yeah, that's bizarre. She took like
a hundred ptures. Yeah, very bizarre. That's a lot of pictures.
(22:28):
And it was like an hour and a half that
we spent in there. So I was like, that's really
strange because I took like five pictures in there that day.
So I went back and look at those five pictures
and share enough, every single one of mine were blurring.
That's weird. So that's really interesting, Like it could be
you know, equipment issues with one, but when you have
both doing the exact same thing, that seems very strange.
And so what's kind of just like the regular going on?
(22:51):
What happens there on a regular basis? Would you say,
after we filmed, you guys came and filmed Kindred Spirits.
Two months later, Mark and I were out in the
yard and we have all the trumpet vine that grows
like really close to the house, and so the only
way to get rid of this is to like burn
it with like a torch. So we were out there
and we were burning the trumpet vine, and we were
(23:14):
being super cautious because I was like, we have to
be because the house is all wood and it's a
tinder box and if it catches fire, it's just gonna
go up in flames. So we're out there and we're
burning this trumpet line. I've got the hose. I'm spraying
like where he's burned, to like make sure that we're
not setting the house on fire that day. And what
did we do? Yes, we did. And so this lady
(23:38):
pulls up and she says, hey, your house is smoking.
And the torch is so loud that I'm like, what
is she saying? Like I can't hear her? And so
I told my husband was like, Mark, turned that off,
and so he turns it off and I said, what
did you say? And she said your house is smoking?
And I turned around and sure enough, there's smoke coming
(23:58):
from the house. I said, maybe go inside and see
if it's on fire. And he runs out and he's like, yes,
it's on fire. So what do I do. I run
in there with the garden hose. It was just like
one wall between the front parlor and the dining room.
That's where the flames were. So I ripped into the wall.
Like we're like being like heroic fireman at this point,
(24:18):
and we're like ripping dry wall off the wall and
trim off the wall so I can get in there
and fight the fire with my garden hose. So I'm
doing all that, the fireman are coming. There's too much smoke.
I can't stay in there any longer because at the time,
I'm still in kidney failure and I've been stand there anymore.
So I wedge the hose in the wall, and the
(24:41):
fireman come in and like within seconds they put it out.
So there's not a lot of damage from the fire,
but there is damage. So after that is when obviously
activity really really picked up. I think that that probably
just unsettled everything, like everything had kind of did to
calm down, you know, all the spirits, as you say,
(25:03):
we're like in this place of learning how to communicate
with each other through s as people here on earth,
and so since then it's just been crazy. It's almost
like the fire made them revert back to like not
wanting to communicate again or something. So I'm not quite
(25:23):
sure if that has to do with like Mamie's gown
catching on fire, or if that kind of like made
them relive what happened to them. They need to probably
dig into that more and see if I can get
some responses from them. So, for those that don't know,
a spirit box is a device that sweeps radio waves
and creates white noise, and we believe that spirits can
(25:46):
manipulate that white noise to create words. And we used
to just listen to it, just kind of having it
sitting there. We'd say, hey, did that say red? Or
did that say you know, hello? But we felt like
we were kind of influencing what we thought the answer
were saying based on the situation we were in. So
we started using them by putting um a blindfold on
(26:06):
so we couldn't see the reaction of people in the
room and putting on noise canceling headphones, and then whoever
wasn't listening would ask questions, and so whoever is listening
has no idea what questions are being asked, and so
what Adam and I did in the fee House is
we both went under as we call it, where we
both put on blindfolds and noise canceling headphones and each
(26:27):
listened to a spirit box and just said whatever we heard.
And what happened was it really sounded like mother and
daughter started having a conversation, and we had no idea
if it was working. We looked the crew and like,
did that work? And they looked at us like their
jaws were just like hitting the floor. And in our estimation,
it sounds like those two were not aware of each
(26:50):
other in the house until that moment, and they had
this very strange conversation where I think Mamie said do
you remember and then her daughter finished the purple flowers
and she was like yes, Like it was the weirdest thing.
If you haven't seen the episode, I highly recommend you
go watch it. So we kind of felt like that
(27:10):
might be helping a bit. So you feel like, now
maybe the fire just kind of like switched that energy
back to where they were before. So I don't know
that it maybe just switched back immediately. I just know
that for a while there after you guys left, she
was not as present as she had been in the past,
(27:32):
and it didn't concern me because she's very attached to me.
I would say, so I can feel her when she's
like nearor so I just noticed that after that happened,
but she kind of just went back to doing the
same things and maybe they're comfortable. And I've talked with
Chip Coffee about some of this as well, and so
(27:53):
like we've kind of I've talked with him about what
could be happening, and he said, you know, there are
a lot of aries about people having to relive spirits
after they pass, that they have to relive everything leading
up for like the day that they died as punishment
in the afterlife. And I was like, that's crazy. So
(28:13):
I'm thinking that sometimes Catherine gets stuck in the same routine.
She'll go up the stairs, she'll do whatever upstairs, She'll
come down the stairs, she'll walk into the foyer, into
the family parlor, over to the fireplace, and then she
does something and when she goes back upstairs. A lot
of people are just like when they investate it, they're like,
she's a residual, you know, spirit, She's not intelligent. But
(28:36):
the thing is is like you can break her cycle,
which I think you guys even experienced when you guys
were here filming. When you say she does her usual loop,
do you mean you hear her footsteps? Are you seeing
her up there? Like? What's that experience? I can actually
just feel the vibrations of like someone walking in the room.
I can feel bad. And on occasion you'll hear like
(28:57):
a tap like going up the stairs, well like why
she's going up? Or you'll hear a stair creek. So
there's just all these like little things that kind of happened. Yeah,
And as you know, I've told you guys to my
husband's the only one who's actually seen something with his
own eyes, which was in here in our carriage house
where we live. So I feel like eventually I'll be
(29:18):
able to probably convince the spirits that are there, Catherine Frank,
maybe to make themselves visible to us. Right, what does
your husband see exactly? So it was around Memorial Day
and we were sitting on the front porch and the
rockers out on the front porch of the carriage house
and we were sitting out there talking and he said, baby,
(29:41):
there's a woman standing in the window right behind you.
Now that's how I turned around to look he's like,
she's already gone. He basically described, maybe she looks sad,
and so she probably looks sad because it's a memorial
day and like her son Edward died in the military
plane crash and all that. So he saw that. And
(30:03):
then of course there's been some experiences in the house
because remember my husband is the one who's like, they're
not real unless I can see them, right, And so
I was like, don't say that, because like they're here
and they're going to hear that, and then they're gonna
mess with you. So you hear voices too sometimes, right, Yeah,
so I have heard audibly in my ear frank who
(30:25):
are at least who I believe is Frankly first moved
in and redid the carriage house. I was in the
big house, had some people here investigating, and there was
a news crew here, and that news crew was in
there and they were taking a picture from the foyer
through the family parlor into that black hallway, and so
(30:45):
I just jumped into the doorway of the kitchen just
to get out of the shot. So it's like, no
one needs to see this mess um, But I jumped
in the kitchen and as I walked back out of
the kitchen in that doorway into that back hallway. I
hear a male deep voice in my ear saying I
(31:06):
hate you. And I turned to where I hear the
voice and there's nothing, no one, And so I'm like
in a panic, I'm like, who hates me? Like what
is going on? So I literally searched the entire bottom
floor and there's there's nobody on There's no one in
the house. They're all upstairs. They're all on the second floor,
(31:27):
third floor. I walked outside and did someone just coming
the house and say something to me? Because there's people
outside out back, and I was like, did someone just
coming here and whisper in my ear? And what are
you talking about? That's disconcerting. I think a lot of
people would have been like, Okay, goodbye, I'm done with
this house. So did that make you feel unwelcome? At
that moment um? It made me concerned, But at the
(31:51):
same time, I was like, you know what, I was like,
I get that he's angry. This is all something new.
He's comfortable with. However, he's after life is and he
doesn't want anything to be changed or anything to happen
to this house or maybe he was thinking they're going
to come in and destroy the house. People have already
come in here and destroyed things. So I've continued to
(32:15):
to work with him and say, hey, we're not here
to harm the house. I said, you're a well known
person in your time, like, there's no reason why your
legacy can't continue into the future. We want to restore
this house the way that you remember it, or make
it more beautiful than it was. I think that is
our only goal. And so there was a time there
(32:37):
when all of that happened, when I'd be out in
the yard working and we started working on cleaning up
that patio off the kitchen, and I would come in
the house and I would say, Frank, get out here
and look up this window and watch how hard I'm
working to save this house. So everything had kind of
calm down eventually by mid I mean, that's what I
always tell people, you know, talk to them like you
(32:59):
would talk to a living person right in front of you.
You know, their understanding isn't different just because they're dead.
I think some people it's their instinct to talk to
ghosts like their three year olds, and it's like, no,
they're just a person, right, in front of you that
you cannot see, and sometimes you have to reason with them,
especially if they're doing things like that. So, what is
(33:20):
your ultimate plan for the house. The carriage house is beautiful,
you guys have done a wonderful job with it. What's
your plan for the actual main house? So, as you know,
and I told you if anyone was watching the episode
Kindred Spirits, we did talk about a bed and breakfast
in the episode. However, Frank got sick in nineteen twenty,
(33:41):
and when that happened, basically he was going into kidney failure.
He ultimately died of congestive heart failure because water built
up around his heart, and he died of a heart
attack in nineteen three. So kind of to honor, like
all of his life's work, his legacy, his everything. There
was no doubt such thing as dialysis back in nineteen
(34:04):
Dialysis came along nineteen forty six, if I'm not mistaken,
And so basically I want to make and now that
I went into kidney failure, which is kind of what
I was concerned about having you guys here anyways, Like
I went into kidney failure a hundred years after Frank.
This is really strange, what's going on. I want to
kind of honor him with making the fee House a
(34:27):
place where people with kidney failure that have gotten transplants
can come and stay here if they live further outside.
A little wrong, So make it more of like a
place where people have a free place to stay, a nonprofit,
a free place to stay. People can come here with
their care partners. They'll have a room, a bathroom, they'll
have clean sheets. It'll be just a nice place where
(34:49):
someone could come in for six weeks and recover. Oh yeah,
that's well, that's lovely. That's a really great idea. And
I think that is the perfect way to honor his
legacy and the family's history, um in addition to what
you've gone through and can relate to. So I think
that is such a great idea. Well thanks, I'm exciting. Yeah,
right now people can investigate it. Right you're scheduling private investigation.
(35:12):
So if people do want to come and investigate, if
they want to do that, how do they get in
touch with you? They can either email me directly at
Drew at the fee House dot com or if they
go to the website. Because now we've transferred from the
fee House dot com to a nonprofit website, so it's
the fee House dot org. That's where you can find
(35:32):
out more information about the house. You can book your
team investigations there if you want to do that. There's
also the phone number should be on the website for
the house. You can always call me on that number.
It will come to my cell phone and I'll be
happy to answer any questions that they may have. Just
there's a lot of information on the fee House dot org. Well,
that's awesome. It's really been lovely chatting with you. I'm
(35:54):
glad to hear that things are doing better with your
health and everything. And um, like I said, I love
hearing stories about the house and I love what your
plans are for the future. So thank you so much
for joining me today. I appreciate it. You're welcome, Thanks
for having me. The fee House is a location that
(36:18):
baffles me. It questions everything I assumed I knew about
the paranormal. How could the spirits of a mother and
daughter co exist in the same space yet have no
idea the other was there? What is it that we
do not know or understand about the afterlife? Sure, a
lot of self declared mediums tell me they have the answers,
but none of what they tell me corresponds with what
(36:41):
I've actually experienced as a mother, a sister, a daughter.
It's impossible to imagine being in such close proximity to
one of my closest family members for decades and not
know they were there. But this is yet another reason
why I do what I do, and why you listen
to accounts such as these. I don't expect to understand
(37:02):
how the afterlife works in this lifetime, but at some
point I will understand me all will understand. I'm Amy
Bruney and this was Haunted Road. Haunted Road is a
(37:33):
production of I Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild from
Aaron Mankey. Haunted Road is hosted and written by me
Amy Bruney, additional research by Taylor Haggerdorn. The show is
edited and produced by rema El Kali and supervising producer
Josh Thing and executive producers Aaron Mankey, Alex Williams, and
Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit
(37:55):
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite IT shows.
Welcome to Haunted Road, a production of I Heart Radio
and Grim and Mild from Aaron Minky. Listener discretion is advised.
Imagine when you die you become a ghost, and then
(00:24):
entertain the idea that you may haunt your family home,
a place so familiar you could close your eyes and
glide your hand on the walls and find your way
from place to place, completely on instinct and memory. According
to what we've always thought, if someone else passed who
was attached to that home, they may also somehow end
up haunting it, and you would know they were there
(00:45):
right Their presence would be as indelible as the walls
you knew so well and the memories you created within them.
What if that person was your mother or your daughter,
Surely you would together haunt your family home, completely aware
of the other, staying in the space for whatever reason
kept you but together. But what if that isn't the case.
(01:08):
What if you could go decades, if not more, haunting
the same place with someone you knew and loved incredibly
in day to day life, but not knowing they were there.
You would tread the same steps, see the same living folks,
watch the same sunsets from the same windows, but think
you were alone. I never considered this a possibility in
(01:30):
all my experiences with the spirit world, and yet our
next location had me questioning everything I thought I knew.
Come with me to Little Rock, Arkansas. As we explore
the Fee House. I'm Amy Brunie, and this is haunted road.
(01:59):
Today the Fee House sits empty, its owners living in
the property's carriage house while they renovate the historic home
in Little Rock, Arkansas. But put more accurately, the home,
which is sat empty for more than two decades, is
only empty of living people. Evidence of the dead fills
the halls of the Fee House. Unexplained noises and disembodied
footsteps come from afar. Voices echo from empty rooms saying
(02:22):
hello and welcome in some places and others the messages
are darker. He's in the attic, investigators have heard others
have picked up voices saying help us, we are lost.
But who is lost and how did they get there?
The answer could very well be in the fee Houses
one thirty year history, which includes public scandal, traumatic injuries
(02:42):
and deaths, an allegedly cursed family, and nowadays, reports of
faces appearing in the windows of a home where no
one lives. It wasn't always this way. Well, the Fee
House wasn't always haunted as far as we know, but
it has, it seems, always had its share of strange
and unusual stories. Built in eighteen ninety, the Fee House
(03:03):
is a Victorian style home in the Governor's Mansion district
of Little Rock, what was in its day the most
fashionable and desirable part of town to live in. From
the eighteen eighties to the nineteen twenties, the city's most
affluent residents built homes in the neighborhood. Though the house
is known today as the Fee House, it was actually
built for the Hayfer family, though not much is known
about those owners or the owners who followed immediately after.
(03:26):
The Fee House is a two story Victorian plus an attic.
It has six bedrooms and three bathrooms, with nearly four
thousand square feet inside, including a kitchen, library, parlor, and
a great foyer with a large open staircase with a
carved wooden banister wrapping around a landing that looks down
into the first floor. The Fees were actually the third
(03:47):
family to own the building, purchasing the house in nineteen
o seven. At the time they moved into the home
at nineteen hundred Broadway Street in Little Rock. They had
already seen their fair share of scandal. Frank Ffee bought
the Fee House for himself, his wife, Mamie, whose real
name was Mary Rose, and their three children, five year
old Frank Jr. Three year old Catherine, and infant son Edward.
(04:09):
Frank was a prominent businessman in Little Rock who was
a thirty second degree Mason and a member of many
elite social clubs in the city. Fee's father was a
Civil War soldier and his mother was the granddaughter of
a famed Revolutionary War general. Frank showed talent at an
early age, graduating from high school at just thirteen and
from Oberlin College at eighteen, then being admitted to the
(04:30):
bar at only twenty one years old. He quickly made
a fortune in the lumber industry, parlaying his love of
nature into work in forestry and then in the manufacture
of hardwood lumber, eventually becoming president of the Phee Creighton
Lumber Company. Frank had been married to Mamie for seven
years when they moved into what became known as the
Fee House, but he had been married previously. Frank and
(04:53):
his first wife, Nellie, eloped in October eighteen eighty two
when her parents disapproved of the match, saying that at eighteen,
she was too young to get married. The pair had
at least two children, Laura was born in eighteen eighty
four and Herbert was born in eighteen eighty eight, though
some sources say they had at least one, if not two,
more daughters. Frank became close to Mamie Cone while he
(05:15):
was still married to Nellie and while Mamie was married
to a lumber merchant in Chicago. Nellie filed for divorce
in eighteen ninety nine, receiving what the Fort Wayne News
described at the time as heavy alimony and the custody
of her children. Mamie and her husband also divorced at
the same time. That article, published in April nineteen hundred
on the occasion of Frank and Mamie's wedding, which immediately
(05:37):
followed their divorce from their previous spouses, noted that the news,
although of a sensational character, will not surprise Fort Wayne's
social circles. Despite these salasious for the time gossip, the
Fees enjoyed active prominent roles in society while living in Ohio,
then in Texas, and finally in Little Rock. Contemporary newspaper
(05:58):
reports show them hosting an attending various social events. A
fourth birthday party for Edward in June nineteen ten included
fifty children as guests. According to the Daily Arkansas Gazette,
the lawn was beautifully arranged, games were played, and a
delicious birthday luncheon was served in the late afternoon, when
a large frosted birthday cake was cut. The paper noted
(06:18):
that the lawn of the Fee residence nine hundred Broadway
is an ideal spot for an entertainment of this nature.
Numerous garden swings, the ice cream cone vendor, and dainty
lunches and paper napkins will add to the enjoyment of
the little guests. In January nineteen twelve, Frank and Maymie
hosted a dinner party where there were six tables and
guests would change tables as each course was presented. In
(06:40):
nine December, the family presented a Christmas church play called
Castle Christmas, which The Arkansas Democrat described as a most
charming affair. The three feet children who appeared in it
played the King of Christmas a bottle of ink. The
Spirit of Christmas, and one half of a pair of mittens, respectively.
During this time Frank and may you welcome two more children,
(07:01):
Thomas born in nineteen ten and Patricia born in nineteen fifteen.
According to the website Abandoned Arkansas, there were rumors that
Thomas may have been fathered by a caretaker and groundskeeper
for the Fees, who lived in the property's carriage house.
As the site describes, Thomas was the only child of
the five five children, whose room wasn't a large upstairs bedroom,
(07:23):
but was instead behind the library on the sun porch.
Even more telling was that he was sent to California
to live prior to enrolling in high school, where he
remained after graduation and into adulthood. More unusual circumstances surrounded
the Fee family, especially when it came to death and loss.
Frank Sr. Was only sixty two when he died of
(07:44):
a heart attack in Battle Creek, Michigan, in January nine.
His death was announced in an obituary in the Arkansas
Democrat titled Nationally known Lumberman Dies, and Frank's body was
brought to the Fee house before his burial. Eight years later,
Mamie died at age fifty eight, from injuries sustained in
a horrific accident. She was drying her hair over the
(08:07):
stove one night when her night gown caught fire. A
maid attempted to put the flames out with a blanket,
but Mamie was badly burned. An account from her granddaughter
Patricia describes what followed Mamie's injury. According to her granddaughter
Patricia Tucker, after being burned, Mamie would tell no one.
Edward was to be married at that time, and she
did not want to spoil his marriage plans, so she
(08:28):
kept her plight to herself. After the wedding, she got
so bad she did go to a hospital for the burns,
but it was too late. From these injuries, she died.
Though this account came from a family member, the dates
don't exactly line up. Edward married Geraldine Miller in May,
over a year before Mamie's death. Another piece of Patricia's account, though,
(08:49):
might explain why Mamie was hesitant to seek medical care.
The granddaughter went on to explain she was a good
Christian scientist. Many of the time she would call someone
to pray that I would get well. Maybe that too
was a reason she didn't go to the hospital sooner.
Christian Science or the Church of Christ Scientists, is a
belief system founded in eighteen seventy nine in Boston. At
(09:11):
the time of Mamie's death, just about half a century later,
it was the fastest growing religion, with nearly two hundred
seventy thousand members. One of the religion's core tenants is
that malady and disease should be treated through prayer, not
through medicine. Whatever her reasons for not immediately seeking treatment
for her burns, maybe passed away from her injuries sustained
(09:33):
in the accident. Less than a year later, in October
nineteen thirty two, twenty eight year old Catherine died after
drinking poison in the Fee House. Though she drank poison
acid to be precise, Catherine's death was ruled accidental, is
it was believed that she unintentionally drank poison, believing that
she was picking up a bottle of headache medicine. In
her obituary in the Arkansaga Sette, it's noted that physicians
(09:57):
said she died from effects of an acid, which relatives
she evidently picked up by mistake in her haste to
obtain relief from the headache. Patricia was nine at the
time of her mother's death, and she remembers what happened
that day very differently. According to Abandoned Arkansas, she remembers
her mother and uncle's arguing about who was to blame
for the recent death of their mother. Catherine blamed her
(10:19):
brother and claimed he had lost the faith. In the
midst of this argument, Catherine deliberately went upstairs and found
the acid and drank it intentionally as she was standing
above the family on the staircase, causing her almost immediate
and horrific death. Though the family immediately drove her to
the hospital after seeing her drink the poison, she died
within ten minutes of arrival. A decade later, another of
(10:41):
the feed children would meet an untimely end. In October
nineteen thirty, six year old Edward died in a plane
crash in Dallas, Texas during his Army service. The bomber
in which he and five other service members were flying.
According to the St. Louis Star in Times, struck a
radio station and Tenna guy wire. Edward's cause of death
was Liz did As crushed in an aeroplane wreck. The
(11:03):
Fee family sold the home in nineteen thirty nine or
nineteen forty to Audrea Hart, a widow who lived there
with her two widowed sisters and their mother, Virginia Frehley,
who passed away in the home in May nineteen sixty
six at age one two. Audrea lived in the home
until her death in nine but she was also attached
to a terrible accident in the home. According to Abandoned Arkansas,
(11:27):
Audria had an extremely unlucky visitor while in the home.
The woman somehow fell over backward from the top staircase
landing and landed in the foyer, breaking her neck and
dying instantly. This account, though isn't substantiated by other sources.
The Fee House sat abandoned and decaying from Audrea's death
until the current owners, Drew and Mark, purchased it in
(11:48):
twenty nineteen. They currently live in the carriage house while
they renovate the main house, which they intend to turn
into a nonprofit that provides accommodations for post operative transplant
patients while they received care from a nearby hospital when
Drew and Mark bought the house, though they didn't know
it was haunted and the Fee House you might not
be surprised to learn is very haunted. The pair began
(12:10):
to suspect something paranormal was happening in the home when
they started sensing unusual happenings. They would hear unexplained sounds
like boxes being dropped in other rooms and feeling the
presence of a man around the house and unsurprisingly, the
presence of a woman on the stairs. Doors on the
second floor of the house are said to move on
their own, often shutting themselves when left open. Now, paranormal
(12:31):
researchers investigate the space, sometimes offering ghost tours. Investigators have
captured e vps of someone saying welcome in the house
and of an unseen man in the library saying I'm
right behind you. One ghost hunter, Tyra Clark of the
Arkansas X Files, claims to have seen a child's ghost
by the house's main staircase, which identified itself to her
(12:52):
as Edward Fee. She has also picked up voices saying
he's in the attic and help us we are lost.
Another investig itater claims to have heard mysterious footsteps in
the house, while two others reported feeling extremely short of
breath in the attic as well. As experiencing cold sensations,
lack of feeling in their legs, and being touched or
pinched by something unseen. To dive deeper into these hauntings,
(13:16):
I thought it best to talk to one of the
owners himself. Drew counsel Short is joining us next and
he's going to tell us all about the wild experiences
he's had since purchasing the fee House and why the
heck he wanted to buy a Rundown haunted house anyway,
that is coming up after the break. I am sitting
(13:45):
here with none other than Drew counsel Short, who is
the owner of the Fee House and has had many
an experience, and figured, hey, you are probably the best
person to speak with about what goes on in the
house now. So thank you for joining me. Sure, thanks
for having me. It's nice to hear your voice again.
You know. We spent multiple days at the house filming
(14:06):
Kindred Spirits Gosh last summer, and it was remarkably hot.
I remember being very sweaty, very much. So, yeah, I
watched that episode. We're kind of chatting about this. Before
I watched that episode, I'm always like, oh gosh, this
was not my finest moment. On television. But it was
a really cool investigation, so that was worth it. There
(14:27):
was one moment where I was like, wow, the hair
is like social with sweat stuck to my forehead, and
it's like, that is a bad shot. I feel like
I've learned that whenever we are shooting television, it's either
remarkably hot or like sub zero temperatures. It can never
just be like a comfortable sixty eight degree day. It's like,
(14:50):
it never is. It's always one of it has to
be drastic to be fair. I literally told the production
manager and everything, it's like, do not send them here
in June and July or August because there is no
air conditioning. And what were they there, Like, hey, we're
gonna send them in the dead heat of summer. They
don't actually care about us. It's fine, It's totally fine.
(15:12):
So I love the Fee House because it's not like
a super well known location, but the history, and I
think it's becoming more well known for sure. The history
is so fascinating to me. And we've been through that already,
so I need to ask you, like why did you
buy that house? So we came here because my husband's
(15:33):
family is from this area, and so I was like,
you know, we lived in Nashville, Tennessee at the time,
and I was like, I could live in an area
like this, you know where the house is located in
the historic Governor's Mansion area. And then I saw this
house and the yard was not mode, the trees were
not trimmed. It was a disaster of a house. And
(15:53):
we pulled in the driveway because I saw the first
sales sign. We pulled in the driveway and It's like,
I will move to a little rock, Arkansas if I
can have this house. And so I had not been inside.
I had no idea what the inside looked like. I
had no idea of what the carriage house inside of
that looked like. So he was like really, and I
was like yes, really. So we came back like a
week later to meet with a real estate agent and
(16:16):
to tour the house. And we toured like, I don't know,
like fifteen eighteen houses in like two days, and this
was the last house that we stopped at, although this
was the first house I wanted to see, So we
thought that this one was like almost like I was
being deterred from this house, and I was like, now
this is the one I want. When I went inside,
it just felt like the home kind of gets you
a hug and like an embrace and like a warm welcome, like, oh,
(16:39):
your home, you know that kind of feeling. And so
I walked in it and that's what I felt, and
I was like, this is it, this is the one
I want now. Mind you, the house was completely filled
with junk. I mean, like sixty yards of debris is
what came out of that house. As you saw. There's
still the one room upstairs that's got a lot just
(17:00):
because that floor is not stable and we haven't gotten
to get all that taken care of yet. But other
than that, the house has obviously cleaned out, and it
just felt like home to me. You know. I hear
that a lot from people who buy houses like that,
like they'll go in and it doesn't matter what kind
of shape it's in. You know what deters many other
(17:21):
people kind of attracts them, like it's almost like you
are there to save it. There's just some reason it's faded.
You're supposed to be there and nothing can take that
away at that point. And so I think that's interesting.
You saw so many houses before, and I feel that
it is a gorgeous, gorgeous home, and I totally get that.
I feel like, at some point that's going to happen
(17:42):
to me. Now, when did you find out that it
was haunted? Though? So I had this recurring dream after
we had put the offer in on the house, we
went back to Tennessee to wrap up the sale of
our house, so on and so forth, and I kept
having this reoccurring dream about the stairwell in the house
and there was this woman that was like on the stairwell.
And in the dream, I was in the upstairs bedroom,
(18:05):
which has made me his master bedroom, which is the
front room once you get up the stairs. And when
I was in that room and I was doing something
like making the bed or I can't even remembering the
dream what I was doing. But when I was up
there doing this, I kept seeing this woman on the
stairwell and I was like, why is she looking at me?
(18:25):
And you know how the stairwell is like the banisters,
like they're short, but like you can kind of like
see from like when you come up the stairwell and
you get to the first landing and then you start
up the longer section of the stairwell, and she was
on there and she was looking at me in that
room and I was like, why is she staring at me?
This is so creepy. And I had this dream like
seven or eight times, and it's like something is going
(18:49):
on in this house and I don't know what it is.
I can tell you what it is because at the
time I had not spent much time in the house
other than just walking into it to see it, you know,
And so I had this dream. I was like, something
is going on. What we closed on it? So I
first of two thousand nineteen, on July was when I
(19:10):
was seeing pictures of the family from a previous ownerhood
of it. And when I saw the picture of one
of the daughters, I was like, those are the eyes
that I remember seeing dream And she was like, well,
what dream? And so I told her about it, and
I was like, has anything weird or strange or you know,
happened to you in the house when you lived there?
(19:33):
So she was like, well, I wasn't gonna say anything,
but there was this one time and she they had
one like very small encounter, which I don't think that
they really processed or were really thinking about it, but
they most certainly didn't want to scare me. But I
was like, I already know something is here anyway, there's
something going on. I mean, it bothered me, but it
(19:55):
didn't really bother me. I just didn't know the entire
history of the house until I really started digging in
to some of the research that she had already done. Right, So, yeah,
the stairwell plays an integral part of the history of
that house. So that's so interesting. And I firmly believe
in the idea that sometimes we are visited in our dreams,
(20:17):
because like I've had even relatives up here in my
dreams that have passed, and there's always something different about
those dreams. I always have that moment where I'm like,
I know I'm being visited by someone who was passed away.
And so she had a message for you, apparently, So
did that make you nervous at all? The idea of
buying a haunted house like that? So I'll tell you
(20:38):
after I met with the previous owner and learned some
more in the history. Like every time I walked into
the house and saw that something had been moved, I
would always run to my husband and like, baby, did
you move this? And like, yes, I moved it. And
just making sure. So like I think I was probably
more on edge about everything than I previously was even
(20:59):
before like knowing everything. I just knew something was going
on in there, but it didn't really like sink in
until I was like, oh my goodness, did he move this?
Did she moved this? Like? Who moved this? So that's
when I started to get a little bit nervous until
I could kind of figure out what was what, who
was what, and like really kind of dig into like
(21:21):
investigating it myself. Right, I do encounter um a lot
of people like that when I'm investigating locations who are
kind of on red alert because things have happened, and
then they start like, you know, analyzing everything. So you've
had the dream, you're now looking firmly for paranoral activity.
What was like your next major experience in the house.
(21:44):
So the next major experience was ginger Back, who you
got to me? She had reached out to me to
write an article about the house for Abandoned Arkansas. So
she was like, can I come over and like, you know,
you can give me a tour and I'm gonna take
some photos and write this article. And I was like
absolute len So she came over and that was Septimber
of two thousand nineteen, and we'll walk them through the
(22:05):
house and she was taking pictures of everything, and she
texts me later that day and said, hey, not one
of my pictures that I took came out. She's like,
it's like someone has just taken their hand to a
painting and smeared it. Yeah, that's bizarre. She took like
a hundred ptures. Yeah, very bizarre. That's a lot of pictures.
(22:28):
And it was like an hour and a half that
we spent in there. So I was like, that's really
strange because I took like five pictures in there that day.
So I went back and look at those five pictures
and share enough, every single one of mine were blurring.
That's weird. So that's really interesting, Like it could be
you know, equipment issues with one, but when you have
both doing the exact same thing, that seems very strange.
And so what's kind of just like the regular going on?
(22:51):
What happens there on a regular basis? Would you say,
after we filmed, you guys came and filmed Kindred Spirits.
Two months later, Mark and I were out in the
yard and we have all the trumpet vine that grows
like really close to the house, and so the only
way to get rid of this is to like burn
it with like a torch. So we were out there
and we were burning the trumpet vine, and we were
(23:14):
being super cautious because I was like, we have to
be because the house is all wood and it's a
tinder box and if it catches fire, it's just gonna
go up in flames. So we're out there and we're
burning this trumpet line. I've got the hose. I'm spraying
like where he's burned, to like make sure that we're
not setting the house on fire that day. And what
did we do? Yes, we did. And so this lady
(23:38):
pulls up and she says, hey, your house is smoking.
And the torch is so loud that I'm like, what
is she saying? Like I can't hear her? And so
I told my husband was like, Mark, turned that off,
and so he turns it off and I said, what
did you say? And she said your house is smoking?
And I turned around and sure enough, there's smoke coming
(23:58):
from the house. I said, maybe go inside and see
if it's on fire. And he runs out and he's like, yes,
it's on fire. So what do I do. I run
in there with the garden hose. It was just like
one wall between the front parlor and the dining room.
That's where the flames were. So I ripped into the wall.
Like we're like being like heroic fireman at this point,
(24:18):
and we're like ripping dry wall off the wall and
trim off the wall so I can get in there
and fight the fire with my garden hose. So I'm
doing all that, the fireman are coming. There's too much smoke.
I can't stay in there any longer because at the time,
I'm still in kidney failure and I've been stand there anymore.
So I wedge the hose in the wall, and the
(24:41):
fireman come in and like within seconds they put it out.
So there's not a lot of damage from the fire,
but there is damage. So after that is when obviously
activity really really picked up. I think that that probably
just unsettled everything, like everything had kind of did to
calm down, you know, all the spirits, as you say,
(25:03):
we're like in this place of learning how to communicate
with each other through s as people here on earth,
and so since then it's just been crazy. It's almost
like the fire made them revert back to like not
wanting to communicate again or something. So I'm not quite
(25:23):
sure if that has to do with like Mamie's gown
catching on fire, or if that kind of like made
them relive what happened to them. They need to probably
dig into that more and see if I can get
some responses from them. So, for those that don't know,
a spirit box is a device that sweeps radio waves
and creates white noise, and we believe that spirits can
(25:46):
manipulate that white noise to create words. And we used
to just listen to it, just kind of having it
sitting there. We'd say, hey, did that say red? Or
did that say you know, hello? But we felt like
we were kind of influencing what we thought the answer
were saying based on the situation we were in. So
we started using them by putting um a blindfold on
(26:06):
so we couldn't see the reaction of people in the
room and putting on noise canceling headphones, and then whoever
wasn't listening would ask questions, and so whoever is listening
has no idea what questions are being asked, and so
what Adam and I did in the fee House is
we both went under as we call it, where we
both put on blindfolds and noise canceling headphones and each
(26:27):
listened to a spirit box and just said whatever we heard.
And what happened was it really sounded like mother and
daughter started having a conversation, and we had no idea
if it was working. We looked the crew and like,
did that work? And they looked at us like their
jaws were just like hitting the floor. And in our estimation,
it sounds like those two were not aware of each
(26:50):
other in the house until that moment, and they had
this very strange conversation where I think Mamie said do
you remember and then her daughter finished the purple flowers
and she was like yes, Like it was the weirdest thing.
If you haven't seen the episode, I highly recommend you
go watch it. So we kind of felt like that
(27:10):
might be helping a bit. So you feel like, now
maybe the fire just kind of like switched that energy
back to where they were before. So I don't know
that it maybe just switched back immediately. I just know
that for a while there after you guys left, she
was not as present as she had been in the past,
(27:32):
and it didn't concern me because she's very attached to me.
I would say, so I can feel her when she's
like nearor so I just noticed that after that happened,
but she kind of just went back to doing the
same things and maybe they're comfortable. And I've talked with
Chip Coffee about some of this as well, and so
(27:53):
like we've kind of I've talked with him about what
could be happening, and he said, you know, there are
a lot of aries about people having to relive spirits
after they pass, that they have to relive everything leading
up for like the day that they died as punishment
in the afterlife. And I was like, that's crazy. So
(28:13):
I'm thinking that sometimes Catherine gets stuck in the same routine.
She'll go up the stairs, she'll do whatever upstairs, She'll
come down the stairs, she'll walk into the foyer, into
the family parlor, over to the fireplace, and then she
does something and when she goes back upstairs. A lot
of people are just like when they investate it, they're like,
she's a residual, you know, spirit, She's not intelligent. But
(28:36):
the thing is is like you can break her cycle,
which I think you guys even experienced when you guys
were here filming. When you say she does her usual loop,
do you mean you hear her footsteps? Are you seeing
her up there? Like? What's that experience? I can actually
just feel the vibrations of like someone walking in the room.
I can feel bad. And on occasion you'll hear like
(28:57):
a tap like going up the stairs, well like why
she's going up? Or you'll hear a stair creek. So
there's just all these like little things that kind of happened. Yeah,
And as you know, I've told you guys to my
husband's the only one who's actually seen something with his
own eyes, which was in here in our carriage house
where we live. So I feel like eventually I'll be
(29:18):
able to probably convince the spirits that are there, Catherine Frank,
maybe to make themselves visible to us. Right, what does
your husband see exactly? So it was around Memorial Day
and we were sitting on the front porch and the
rockers out on the front porch of the carriage house
and we were sitting out there talking and he said, baby,
(29:41):
there's a woman standing in the window right behind you.
Now that's how I turned around to look he's like,
she's already gone. He basically described, maybe she looks sad,
and so she probably looks sad because it's a memorial
day and like her son Edward died in the military
plane crash and all that. So he saw that. And
(30:03):
then of course there's been some experiences in the house
because remember my husband is the one who's like, they're
not real unless I can see them, right, And so
I was like, don't say that, because like they're here
and they're going to hear that, and then they're gonna
mess with you. So you hear voices too sometimes, right, Yeah,
so I have heard audibly in my ear frank who
(30:25):
are at least who I believe is Frankly first moved
in and redid the carriage house. I was in the
big house, had some people here investigating, and there was
a news crew here, and that news crew was in
there and they were taking a picture from the foyer
through the family parlor into that black hallway, and so
(30:45):
I just jumped into the doorway of the kitchen just
to get out of the shot. So it's like, no
one needs to see this mess um, But I jumped
in the kitchen and as I walked back out of
the kitchen in that doorway into that back hallway. I
hear a male deep voice in my ear saying I
(31:06):
hate you. And I turned to where I hear the
voice and there's nothing, no one, And so I'm like
in a panic, I'm like, who hates me? Like what
is going on? So I literally searched the entire bottom
floor and there's there's nobody on There's no one in
the house. They're all upstairs. They're all on the second floor,
(31:27):
third floor. I walked outside and did someone just coming
the house and say something to me? Because there's people
outside out back, and I was like, did someone just
coming here and whisper in my ear? And what are
you talking about? That's disconcerting. I think a lot of
people would have been like, Okay, goodbye, I'm done with
this house. So did that make you feel unwelcome? At
that moment um? It made me concerned, But at the
(31:51):
same time, I was like, you know what, I was like,
I get that he's angry. This is all something new.
He's comfortable with. However, he's after life is and he
doesn't want anything to be changed or anything to happen
to this house or maybe he was thinking they're going
to come in and destroy the house. People have already
come in here and destroyed things. So I've continued to
(32:15):
to work with him and say, hey, we're not here
to harm the house. I said, you're a well known
person in your time, like, there's no reason why your
legacy can't continue into the future. We want to restore
this house the way that you remember it, or make
it more beautiful than it was. I think that is
our only goal. And so there was a time there
(32:37):
when all of that happened, when I'd be out in
the yard working and we started working on cleaning up
that patio off the kitchen, and I would come in
the house and I would say, Frank, get out here
and look up this window and watch how hard I'm
working to save this house. So everything had kind of
calm down eventually by mid I mean, that's what I
always tell people, you know, talk to them like you
(32:59):
would talk to a living person right in front of you.
You know, their understanding isn't different just because they're dead.
I think some people it's their instinct to talk to
ghosts like their three year olds, and it's like, no,
they're just a person, right, in front of you that
you cannot see, and sometimes you have to reason with them,
especially if they're doing things like that. So, what is
(33:20):
your ultimate plan for the house. The carriage house is beautiful,
you guys have done a wonderful job with it. What's
your plan for the actual main house? So, as you know,
and I told you if anyone was watching the episode
Kindred Spirits, we did talk about a bed and breakfast
in the episode. However, Frank got sick in nineteen twenty,
(33:41):
and when that happened, basically he was going into kidney failure.
He ultimately died of congestive heart failure because water built
up around his heart, and he died of a heart
attack in nineteen three. So kind of to honor, like
all of his life's work, his legacy, his everything. There
was no doubt such thing as dialysis back in nineteen
(34:04):
Dialysis came along nineteen forty six, if I'm not mistaken,
And so basically I want to make and now that
I went into kidney failure, which is kind of what
I was concerned about having you guys here anyways, Like
I went into kidney failure a hundred years after Frank.
This is really strange, what's going on. I want to
kind of honor him with making the fee House a
(34:27):
place where people with kidney failure that have gotten transplants
can come and stay here if they live further outside.
A little wrong, So make it more of like a
place where people have a free place to stay, a nonprofit,
a free place to stay. People can come here with
their care partners. They'll have a room, a bathroom, they'll
have clean sheets. It'll be just a nice place where
(34:49):
someone could come in for six weeks and recover. Oh yeah,
that's well, that's lovely. That's a really great idea. And
I think that is the perfect way to honor his
legacy and the family's history, um in addition to what
you've gone through and can relate to. So I think
that is such a great idea. Well thanks, I'm exciting. Yeah,
right now people can investigate it. Right you're scheduling private investigation.
(35:12):
So if people do want to come and investigate, if
they want to do that, how do they get in
touch with you? They can either email me directly at
Drew at the fee House dot com or if they
go to the website. Because now we've transferred from the
fee House dot com to a nonprofit website, so it's
the fee House dot org. That's where you can find
(35:32):
out more information about the house. You can book your
team investigations there if you want to do that. There's
also the phone number should be on the website for
the house. You can always call me on that number.
It will come to my cell phone and I'll be
happy to answer any questions that they may have. Just
there's a lot of information on the fee House dot org. Well,
that's awesome. It's really been lovely chatting with you. I'm
(35:54):
glad to hear that things are doing better with your
health and everything. And um, like I said, I love
hearing stories about the house and I love what your
plans are for the future. So thank you so much
for joining me today. I appreciate it. You're welcome, Thanks
for having me. The fee House is a location that
(36:18):
baffles me. It questions everything I assumed I knew about
the paranormal. How could the spirits of a mother and
daughter co exist in the same space yet have no
idea the other was there? What is it that we
do not know or understand about the afterlife? Sure, a
lot of self declared mediums tell me they have the answers,
but none of what they tell me corresponds with what
(36:41):
I've actually experienced as a mother, a sister, a daughter.
It's impossible to imagine being in such close proximity to
one of my closest family members for decades and not
know they were there. But this is yet another reason
why I do what I do, and why you listen
to accounts such as these. I don't expect to understand
(37:02):
how the afterlife works in this lifetime, but at some
point I will understand me all will understand. I'm Amy
Bruney and this was Haunted Road. Haunted Road is a
(37:33):
production of I Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild from
Aaron Mankey. Haunted Road is hosted and written by me
Amy Bruney, additional research by Taylor Haggerdorn. The show is
edited and produced by rema El Kali and supervising producer
Josh Thing and executive producers Aaron Mankey, Alex Williams, and
Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit
(37:55):
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite IT shows.
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