February 24, 2023 • 50 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
And you're here. Thanks for choosing the iHeartRadio and Coast
to Coast AM Paranormal podcast network. Your quest for podcasts
of the paranormal, supernatural, and the unexplained ends here. We
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this network, and right now, let's start with Strange Things
with Joshua P. Warren. Welcome to our podcast. Please be
(00:27):
aware the thoughts and opinions expressed by the host are
their thoughts and opinions only and do not reflect those
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or their sponsors and associates. We would like to encourage
you to do your own research and discover the subject
(00:48):
matter for yourself. Got ready to find a wizard of weird.
(01:14):
This is Strange Things with Joshua Pee Warren. I am
Joshua Pee Warren, and each week on this show, I'll
be bringing you brand new mind blowing content, news exercises,
and weird experiments you can do at home, and a
(01:36):
lot more. On this edition of the show. My new
Haunted object, my new possessed possession, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's
haunted wheelchair, This, I believe, is one of the most
(02:00):
interesting and amazing and exciting stories that I have told
on this show. I have been dying to tell it
for a long time now, and it is a lengthy story,
but well worth it. This is, I think, the kind
of story that you would like to hear on a
show called Strange Things. And it should be no surprise
(02:25):
to you that I am a collector of all kinds
of unusual objects. For many years, I even had a museum,
and soon I am going to be putting some of
my collection on public display. Again. I will get to
that later in the podcast, but let me tell you
about how I attained this sort of mind boggling item.
(02:51):
The story really begins back in two thousand and nine,
because that is when one of my favorite TV shows
of all time debuted, the show Pawn Stars on the
History Channel. I've been hooked ever since. And I always
(03:12):
assume that when I say Palm Stars, you've seen it,
you know, like I think everybody, like, surely everybody has
seen this, But it turns out that's not the case.
So if you've never seen Pond Stars, let me just
give you a general overview of this show. Here in
Las Vegas. There is a real pawn shop called the
(03:34):
Gold and Silver Pawn Shop that's been around since I
think nineteen eighty eight, and it is run by a
man named Rick Harrison, and he operates it with his
son Corey and Corey's lifelong friend Chum Lee, who offers
a lot of comic relief. And the show started out,
(03:58):
I mean, most of the show's run also had the
patriarch of the family, which is Rick's father, Richard Harrison.
They called him the Old Man, but he died in
I believe twenty eighteen. So the setup for the show
is you see one of the guys at the counter,
like Rick, one of the employees, and a customer comes
(04:21):
in with some type of usually a slightly unusual item,
and they really nowadays, they just say I want to
sell it. They don't really mess with the pawn thing
too much. They just say I want to sell this.
And so the formula is like, huh, well, I don't
know what it's worth, you know, So let's get some
(04:42):
history expert in here to tell us the story behind
this thing, and then we'll get an appraiser and then
if they want the item, then it moves onto negotiation.
And now, granted, like most quote unquote reality shows, certain
parts of this are staged for dramatic purposes and entertainment.
(05:02):
But I've always loved the show because, you know, it's
a lot like an antiques road show, but it's such
much more condensed and commercialized. And what you get to
see are you know, real objects that come in the door,
even though it's planned in advance for television, of course,
but I know plenty of people who've been on the
show and who brought objects in. So they bring in
(05:24):
a real object and you get to hear the history
of it, and I love those kinds of stories, of course,
and then they really do get an appraisal, and then
they really do talk about how much this is actually
worth in today's commercial marketplace, and all that's just interesting
to me. So that show Pawn Stars is one of
(05:46):
the most successful shows in the history of cable TV,
and I, like I said, I've been watching it constantly
since two thousand and nine. At that time, I was
living in North Carolina, and every time I would travel
to Vegas, I would go and I would visit the
pawn shop. It's like one of the biggest tourist attractions
(06:08):
in Vegas now because you know, it's so famous due
to this show, and because of that, the property has expanded,
and now across the parking lot from the Pond Shop
is this sort of like complex that has Rick Harrison's
barbecue restaurant, and it's got a bar on top, you know,
(06:30):
full bar upstairs, and then Chumley has a candy store there,
and I can't remember all the stuff that's in this
kind of little shopping center, but there's you know, they
built their own little their own little Disney World there
for Pond stars, and you know, they're great, great business people.
All of them aren't quite wealthy. So like I said,
(06:53):
I would start, you know, I would, I would go
there and visit. And then, of course now I live
in Las Vegas, and so I kind of have run
ins with people in the circles of the show. Uh No,
pretty pretty often. In fact, I don't know if he
still does this, but for a long time, Rick Harrison
he would actually personally go and be the bartender for
(07:15):
like a couple hours on the weekends at his bar
there above the barbecue restaurant. That shows you how much
he enjoys interacting with fans. I mean I would find
that to be a little scary when you are as
famous as he is to just throw yourself out there
and you don't know who's going to walk into the
door and they're getting liquored up. So but he's fine
(07:39):
with it. And so if you if you time it
out right, if you're a fan of the show, you
can go you can find out when Rick's going to
be bartending, you can go in there. And that's how
I met him for the first time, and which was great.
You know, he was We had some really cool conversations
and he was a nice enough to actually give me
and Lauren some free shots of fine whiskey, and he
(08:00):
did not do that for everybody, so that was really cool.
And actually the first time I met him, I uh,
I really struck it rich, so to speak, because, um,
I looked over and this was it was a packed house.
I looked over and sitting at the bar eating was
(08:23):
Murray the Magician. And of course, you know I talk
about Murray often. Murray is uh, you know, he's one
of the biggest magicians in the world. He's been all
over TV. He has a show on the Vegas Strip.
I mean, if you drive down the Vegas strip. You're
gonna see gigantic signs with Murray's face all over it.
And he's very memorable because he has this big shock
(08:44):
of you know, blonde hair, and he wears stick glasses
and and he uh, he's always a very um, lighthearted guy,
you know. He he's one of these magicians who also
is like a comic magician. You know, he has a
lot of comedy in his and his routine. So, but
he is the guy they would always bring in on
(09:05):
the show when they had some kind of like a
magical item. You know, here in Vegas should get props
that might come in, say, somebody might have a pair
of what they claim are Houdini's handcuffs or you know
that kind of thing, and so they would call Murray
in to sort of authenticate it and to try to
value it. So anybody who watches the show knows Murray
(09:27):
the Magician. So that is how I ended up that
night talking to Murray the Magician, and we became friends,
and we even ended up, because of our developing friendship,
producing a sizzle reel together for a television series that
he and I would co star in. And the basic
(09:49):
idea is that we would go out and investigate paranormal stuff,
and I'm the paranormal investigator guy, and he's the magician
guy who's trying to debunk everything. Right, And a real
is what you that's like maybe a five minute video
that you shoot if you have an idea for a
TV show, and then you send that to networks and
you use that to pitch the show. And and we got,
(10:12):
you know, like a big company working with us. This
was a top notch sizzle real, and yet it did
not get picked up, which is what often happens. That's
what usually happens, I should say in the TV business,
which is one of the reasons that I don't mess
with TV that much anymore, because, gosh, you put so
(10:34):
much time into it. It's very time consuming planning out
a potential TV show, and then most of the time
it doesn't work out. You've just wasted all that time.
So I don't do much of that anymore. And I
think that, you know, I used to do TV all
the time, and now I'm very selective about what I do.
I think that nowadays it might even be harder to
get into TV than it was, say, like I don't know,
(10:56):
ten or fifteen years ago, because that we've reached a
point where nobody's even sure exactly what TV is anymore,
because we have all these streaming channels and people aren't
even going to the movies anymore. And now you see
movie stars on TV, but they're not really on TV.
They're on streaming channel. It's just it's a it's a
(11:18):
very confusing landscape right now. Everybody's trying to figure out,
like what is entertainment. It's being reinvented and so it's
even more complicated to navigate. But when we come back
from this break, I promise you this is leading up
to a haunted Franklin D. Roosevelt wheelchair. Okay, just bear
with me, because I found out about this because I'm
(11:45):
a fan of Pond Stars, right and I also have
another kind of funny Pond Stars story for you. I'm
going to tell you first real quick when we come back,
just in case that's of interest to you. And when
I'm done recording this podcast, I'm heading straight to my
workshop because I am working on a new product that
(12:09):
is quite fascinating and I don't think I'll be talking
about it on this show. I'll only be talking about
it at least revealing it primarily through my free E newsletter,
and if you want to know what it is, go
to Joshua peewarn dot com and sign up for the
free E newsletter. It takes you about two seconds. Put
(12:30):
your email address in there, hit the submit button. You'll
instantly receive an automated email from me with some links
to some free online gifts that will start helping you
manifest some magical things in your life immediately. You just
have to do it. Try it out. It cost you nothing.
(12:51):
Go to Joshua Peewarren dot com on the homepage sign
up for the free E newsletter. I am Joshua Pere
and you are listening to Strange Things on the iHeart
Radio and Coast to Coast, a am para normal podcast network,
and I will be right back. Welcome back to Strange
(13:45):
Things on the iHeart Radio and Coast to Coast a
m para normal podcast network. I'm your host, the Wizard
of Weird, Joshua Pee Warren, beaming into your wormhole brain
from my studio in Sin City, Las Vegas, Nevada, where
every day is golden and every night is silver. One
(14:09):
of the most notable experts if not. The most notable
expert on the Pond Stars TV show is Mark Hall Patton.
They call him the Beard of Knowledge, and because he
has this impressive gray beard and he wears an amish
(14:34):
style hat, often black. He's just a very memorable looking guy.
And he is one of those guys who's just like
a walking encyclopedia. He knows everything, and it's true. I mean,
he is the administrator for the Clark County Museum, so
Las Vegas is in Clark County, which is a huge county,
and I mean, he's the real deal. And I mentioned
(14:57):
him just because that I did see him in person
one day. I was over there and I look over
and there's Mark Hall Patton, and I would have loved
to have gone up and talk to him, but they
were filming that day, so I you know, I didn't
want to bother him. And by the way, I've heard
some people say, you know, they don't even really film
(15:19):
that show in that shop. They have another set somewhere
that looks like that shop. And I'm sure that they
do have another set somewhere for all kinds of extra
special shots and stuff, but they do film some right
there in the actual real pawn shop. I know because
(15:39):
I've seen them do it. That's neither here nor there.
But if you're curious and you're a fan of the show,
maybe you'd like to know that. But no, I didn't
get to talk to Mark Hall Patton. I will make
a point to do that one day. Hopefully he will.
He will want to talk to me as well. I
don't think he's into a ghost stories and stuff like
I am, but who knows. But one more sort of
(15:59):
see chronistic side story I just have to squeeze in
here before I continue, is that when I was growing
up in Asheville, North Carolina, I was I was relatively
close to Disney World in Orlando. By relatively close, I
mean a nine hour drive. So whenever the family would
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go to Disney World, talk about the longest nine hours
of a kid's life waiting on that are we there yet?
Are we there yet? You know, for days to get
to Disney World. So I never ever in my life
growing up with to Disneyland, which is in California in Anaheim.
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And then my wife Lauren had a similar situation. She
grew up in Katie, Texas outside of Houston, so that's
an even longer drive for her family. You're talking like
fourteen hours or whatever to drive to disney World, but
still closer than California. So she and I would growing
up if our parents decided to take a big trip,
then you know it would be disney World. So now
(17:05):
that we live here in Vegas, you can drive from
Vegas to disney Land in California, which was the original
Disney theme park, in like four hours. So so once
we moved here a few years ago, one day we said,
you know what, let's go see Disneyland. Let's see you know,
(17:25):
we're adults now and that kind of sucks, but you
know it'll be interesting. This was Walt Disney's original paradise
that he imagined. And also, if you're a real amusement
park geek, there are some interesting differences in the rides
in some cases very subtle, but definitely different in the
(17:47):
rides between the rides and disney World and Disneyland, even
though it's the same ride. So like you might have
a slightly different setup for like the Haunted Mansion at
disney World than Disneyland because of the way that the
grounds are constructed, did, etc. But anyway, that said, we
go to Disneyland, and this was in the middle of summer.
(18:07):
And if you've ever been to Disneyland or Disney World,
I mean you know that on a normal day, the
crowd is unbelievable. It may be the biggest crowd, the
biggest number of people you've ever seen anywhere in your life.
There's no telling. People from all over the world are
crammed into to these places, and you walk and walk
(18:28):
and walk, often in the heat forever, and you stand
in line. You're prepared to stand in line, you know,
over an hour. You just expect that to get into
some of these rides that last two minutes. As a
matter of fact, I'm at a point in my life
now I don't even think I'm willing to go stand
in lines and do that kind of stuff anymore. I'm
(18:48):
getting too old for that now. I've seen it, been there,
done that. So anyway, my point is here, we are
at Disneyland with a gazillion people, and of course we
have to go right everybody's favorite ride. I think Pirates
of the Caribbean. You have to do that. So we
go over to Pirates at the Caribbean. And since it's
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such a popular ride, I mean the line is just
it's one of those lines just winding back and forth
and back and forth, and you just like go to
the bathroom and you prepare yourself. So I don't even
know how long we stood in this line. And at
one point when the line was sort of doubled up
so that we were standing next to other people who
were somewhere in the line, you know, best separate from
(19:30):
us a little bit, Laurence says, Josh, look there's chum Lee.
And I'm like what And I turned and sure enough,
standing there in this line is Chum Lee from Palm Stars.
That was the first time I'd ever seen him in person,
and I just couldn't believe it. I was like, huh,
that is a while that he's here at this ride
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the same time we're taking this ride. And I could
have said something to him at that time, but I knew, like, oh,
this dude's on his vacation away. I don't want to
bother him. I've never been roll a big at like
bugging celebrities. I've seen a lot of them living around here, especially,
and I just, you know, I'm not going to go
up and mess with them. What do I have to say?
But the weirdest thing is we stand in line forever
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and then finally when it comes your turn to take
this ride, a boat comes up and there's only so
many people that can fit on this little boat, and
then it goes on and the next one comes up,
and we ended up on the same boat as chum Lee.
I don't know how many people each boat holds. I'm
thinking like twenty or something like that. But I thought,
(20:32):
what are the odds of all these people in Disney
World at Disneyland we would end up on the same
boat as chum Lee for this Pirates of the Caribbean ride.
Just like, what does that kind of thing mean? I
don't know. Well, we have talked a lot about synchronicity.
You make up your own mind on that. But I
have some kind of an odd connection with these guys
(20:56):
and this show and now we're in the same town. Okay,
Now let's move on to the real meat of the story,
showing you know that I own the Haunted Boulder City
Ghost and UFO tour and Boulder City, Nevada is a
thirty minute drive from Las Vegas. I've talked about it
(21:18):
a lot, and it's the newest walking tour that I've created.
It's the only paranormal tour and Boulder City. It's been
a huge success, and we have friends and business partners
all over the town of Boulder City. Okay, they've been
so warm and welcoming to us there, and we just
(21:39):
love Boulder City. And you know, I've got a bunch
of really cool items that I used to have on
display in Asheville, But when my museum there got flooded
and I moved out here, I shipped a lot of
that stuff out here to Las Vegas, and a lot
of it's been in storage, and thankfully, you know, none
(22:01):
of it got stolen. It's now in a more secure
location than it was. But I've been looking for an
opportunity to put some of it back on public display.
And so it's still a little too early for me
to give you all the details, but there is a
very prominent, esteemed place in Boulder City that wants to
(22:24):
put some of my stuff on display. And for example,
I have a crystal skull, an alien crystal skull that
will be on display. I have some charred rocks from
an actual UFO crash site in the Bermuda Triangle in
Puerto Rico that I picked up with my own hands
out in the middle of nowhere. I've got some cool
(22:47):
stuff like that. B See. The funny thing is it's
hard to find an artifact sometimes that has a connection
to a particular place. And I kind of put this
idea out there to the world and to Lauren. I
am looking for some kind of an object that has
(23:09):
a mystery attached to it, but would also somehow connect
to to Boulder City. And I didn't know what that
could possibly be. Of course, Boulder City was created to
house the workers for the Hoover Dam, so I thought,
you know, maybe something to do with the dam. But
I know what, you know, So I just wasn't sure
(23:31):
what it was going to be. But I put the
thought out there, all right, because I figured, you know,
this would be like maybe a centerpiece for this new display.
So now within days of me doing this, we're watching
television and after all these years, the Pawn Stars TV
show decided to have this spin off show called Pawn
(23:55):
Stars Do America. So what that means is, instead of
the guys staying in Vegas as they usually do and
people coming to them, they decided to hit the road
and to tour the country. And visit different cities and
be there for like three days and open up, you know,
(24:16):
like a big tent or something and then let the community,
the locals in that area come to them and present stuff.
So it's very much like the Antiques road Show. So
it's the same concept as the regular show, except they're
just doing it, you know, in different places, and I'm
it's fun. It mixes it up a little bit. So there,
(24:37):
I think it was. It might have been their first one,
first or second one. They decided to go to Yorktown, Pennsylvania,
And of course there's a lot of especially in a
military and colonial history there in Yorktown, Pennsylvania. So I
was watching this episode of pond Stars do America, and
(25:01):
I saw something that immediately caught my eye. Can you
guess what it may have been? And where this story
is going to go next when we return. So funny
how these things you look back and you see how
they fall into place. I'm Joshua pe Warren. You're listening
(25:23):
to Strange Things on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast.
I am heir a normal podcast network. I'll be back
after these important messages. Welcome back to Strange Things on
(26:11):
the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast sam Parinormal Podcast Network.
I'm your host, Joshua wa Pete Warren, and this is
the show where the unusual becomes usual. Here we are
watching pond Stars do America. And at one point in
the show, Chum Lee, of all people, decides to take
(26:37):
a little sort of side trip within the episode with
one of his Picker friends to go to this small
town in Pennsylvania called Sellersville and visit this antique store,
which I believe was called Pickers Junction. And so he
(27:01):
goes in there to presumably, you know, to try to
find something that they can resell, which is actually not
that realistic, I don't think, because I think a lot
of times people who buy and sell things like that
for a living, they prefer to buy from individuals because
(27:22):
they can get a better deal. You know, if you
deal with another dealer, then it's everybody. Everybody kind of
knows the game here, and it's a little harder to
negotiate perhaps, but anyway, that's just my opinion. So anyway,
they're walking around and they're looking at stuff, and of
course I'm very interested in what they're gonna show on TV.
(27:43):
What kind of items they're finding. And at one point
they stop next to this old fashioned wheelchair and Chumley
he flips over a tag or something like that and
it says used by Franklin D. Roosevelt for the nineteen
(28:05):
thirty two Democratic Convention. Okay, like something to that effect,
and they have a little um conversation about it, and
but then Chumley he just moves on to other stuff.
And I was like, well, that's amazing. I would buy that.
(28:25):
That's I mean, to me, anything presidential is something I
would like to have in my collection, unless it's a
president I really didn't like, you know, been a historical
president where we're kind of removed from from some of
the emotions. Um. You know, I'm always interested in that.
(28:46):
And I just thought that is a really intriguing item
to pass up, because, you know, here's the thing about
President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was notable for a number
of reasons. For one thing, he was the only president
to serve four terms. He was in there around twelve years,
(29:09):
and before he was president, there was no law restricting
someone for running for president as many times as he
or she wanted. The tradition was just to do it
for two terms, and nobody had ever won more than
two terms. But after he won four terms because of that,
(29:30):
that was when politicians got together and said, you know what,
maybe we don't want that to happen again. That could
lead to somebody becoming like the permanent president of this country.
And so they passed the twenty second Amendment, which said
that you cannot be elected president more than twice. So
he was the only president to serve four terms. He
(29:51):
also was the president who led us through the Great
Depression and then through most of World War Two. I mean,
huge challenges, and to this day there's debate over, you know,
how he handled those things, if he should have done
things differently. But what made it even more amazing is
(30:12):
that when he was an adult, he got polio, and
so he spent much of his adulthood in a wheelchair.
Occasionally they would give him some braces so he could
stand up for photo ops, but he was usually in
a wheelchair, and they didn't want him photographed so much
in a wheelchair, So the wheelchair thing was kind of
kept like a more secretive part of the culture around him.
(30:36):
And you know what, I didn't realize this. I was
looking it up the other day. He died when he
was only sixty three years old. I believe he looked
a lot older, but I'm sure that's what being going
through all that will do to you best. I recall
he was posing. This was nineteen forty five. He was
posing for a portrait and he said all of as said,
(31:01):
I have a terrific headache. And then a long after
that he slumped over and turns out he'd had like
a massive brain hemorrhage, and he died, you know, shortly thereafter.
But yeah, sixty three. But nonetheless, you know, he was
(31:21):
just a very, like I said, a significant part of
world history. And that kind of stuck in my head,
and I thought, what an interesting thing. You know, I
would have probably bought that, you know, But then you know,
the show moved on and I kind of forgot about
it a little bit. So later that evening, I mean
(31:42):
like maybe an hour and a half after that, Lauren said, hey, Josh, look,
she was just clicking through the channels. I think I'd
gone to the kitchen for something, and I came back
and there was a local TV channel and it was
showing footage, old black and white footage from the dedication
(32:04):
of the Hoover Dam and guests who is standing there
speaking President Franklin D. Roosevelt. And I found this old
newspaper clipping and it says that he dedicated the dam
on September thirtieth of nineteen thirty five, with an estimated
twenty thousand people witnessing and millions hearing his remarks broadcast
(32:29):
all over the great radio networks in the country. Said
the presidential party left the special train at Boulder City
promptly at nine thirty in the morning and sped out
the highway leading to the top of the dam. So
and I said, by golly, that's it. I wonder if
(32:50):
there's some energy attached to that wheelchair. And I thought
there's no way though, that I'm going to be able
to get that wheelchair, because it was just on the
History channel. How many people saw that wheelchair, you know.
So I was like, don't get your hopes up, mister Warren, right,
But it just felt like I'm supposed to have this wheelchair.
(33:11):
So the next morning, bright and early, I called this
shop and I got the owner on the phone and
I said, I don't suppose you still have that wheelchair,
do you? And she said well, yeah, as a matter
of fact, we do still have it. And my jaw
(33:31):
hit the floor and I said, how much is it now?
I'm not going to tell you what she told me,
but I thought, you know what, I want it. It's perfect.
I feel drawn to it. I said, you know, i'll
take it. I'll take it. And I don't even think
(33:52):
I negotiated with her. I just said I'll take it.
And so she goes, I said, can I buy it
over the phone? She goes, yeah, but you know, how
are you going to get it? Because I told her
I was in Vegas And I said, well, can you
ship it to me? And she goes no, And I
was like, well, um, you know, what do you mean,
like I can pay for shipping. She goes, we don't.
(34:15):
We We've we've done that kind of thing before. And
she said, it's just when it comes to stuff that's
big and kind of bulky and awkward like this, especially
since it's old and delicate. She goes, we just don't
take the time and the effort to pack up stuff
like this and ship it. We just don't do that.
So she wasn't even open to, like, you know, give
(34:38):
me a million dollars and I'll do it. You know.
She was just like, no, we don't do that. And
I said, all right, fine, I will figure out how
to get the thing here. So I would have had
at least bought it over the phone. And I said, um,
can you, you know, can you hang onto it for
me for a certain amount of time while I figure
(34:59):
out how I'm want to get it? And she said sure. Yeah.
She was real nice about everything. So I got off
the phone. I'm sitting there, I'm like racking my brains.
First off, I'm excited that I have this thing. And
we talked about the provenance and as a matter of fact,
it has a label on it that says um presented
(35:21):
by the Tonton Kiwanis Club and again used to transport
President FDR during the nineteen thirty two Democratic Convention in Chicago.
I know you're thinking, like, what, Josh, how do you
know that this is real? Look, I I've already got
that thing that I have some of the best historians
that are working on all the provenance. I've been in
(35:41):
touch with the Kiwanis. I mean, trust me, things things
are looking good in that department, all right. I don't
have a picture of him sitting in the chair. I
don't think, but you know, it's it's hard. We're still
looking there. It's hard to find pictures of him in wheelchairs.
But anyway, I feel very good about it. And the
(36:03):
person she got it from has a good track record.
So back to my challenge, how do I get this thing?
And I started racking my brain and then it's like
a light bulb went off and I thought, Dean Worsing,
my buddy, Dean Worsing. How often do I bring up
his name on this show all the time? I said, Dean,
(36:26):
I bet kind of sort of lives in that direction,
because Dean lives in Maryland. And so I got on
Maryland and I got online and I looked it up
and I saw that it was like an hour and
a half from Dean's house. So I called up Dean.
This is like a Saturday morning, and I explained to
him what was going on. And I said, Dean, old buddy, opal,
(36:52):
what are the chances that you could go and get
this thing for me and then we'll figure out, you know,
how you can get it to me? And he was
like done, dude. He's like this sounds fun. He's a
big fan of Palm Stars as well. But he's also
just a history buff and he's he loves old things,
and this is like right up his alley. He said,
(37:12):
he's talking about his wife and he goes Ann and
I we've been needing a good road trip anyway. That's
beautiful country. And he was just like totally psyched to
do this. And I could not have had a better person.
I mean, talk about all the little pieces falling in
into place. Dean drives out there like the next day
(37:33):
or two, gets this thing, takes it back to his house.
When we come back from this break, I'll tell you
what happened that lets me know it's haunted. I'm Joshua
Pee Warren. You're listening to Strange Things on the I
Heart Radio and Coast to Coast damn pamin Normal Podcast Network.
(37:54):
I will be all right back and welcome back to
(38:32):
the final segment of this edition of Strange Things on
the iHeart Radio and Coast to Coast am PARA Normal
podcast Network. I am your host, Joshua Pee Warren, and
Dean Warsing is the most personable person on the planet.
(38:53):
Dean and his wife and both are just so nice
and charming and wonderful and reliable. Their whole families like that,
they're kids. And Dean was just like, yeah, I will
go get that thing for you. He was excited about it.
So he and Anne they took their road trip. They
went to Sellersville. They enjoyed themselves. I think they even
(39:15):
bought some goodies for themselves, loaded up this wheelchair without
a problem, and took it right back to the safety
of his home. And Dean is also an artist. I
guess he's okay with me saying. He does a lot
of things right now. He's especially focusing on pottery, but
(39:38):
he takes a lot of care when it comes to
you know, just items that craftsmanship, and like he's the
kind of guy that you want to be the caretaker
of something historic like this. So this was back, I guess,
around the holidays, and so everybody was kind of busy,
and so he just kind of kept it for a
(39:59):
little while and finally we figured out the best way
for him to for him to ship it to me.
You know, it can be done, and so, uh, he
actually took the wheels off of it. He did just
some a very slight disassembly to make it easier to ship.
But anyway, and it was expensive to ship, but hey,
(40:22):
it was worth it. So he got it out here
to Las Vegas safe and sound. This gigantic box arrived
and I opened it up and there it was, and
it just it was so weird to have, you know,
seen this thing on the History Channel, and I've even
got the still of it, you know, from the TV,
(40:43):
and now here it is in my house. It's just like,
it's crazy, how that can happen. It was meant to be.
Thank you, Deane and An. I'm telling you that was
just you guys. Were you saved the day you were.
You were perfectly poised to get that thing in my hands.
All right. So Lauren, she actually she's the one who's
(41:04):
good with her hands in the Warren family, and so
she reassembled it, Okay, she put the wheels back on it,
and it is now sitting in my living room where
my Christmas tree was last year. All right. So I'm
sort of in awe as I sit there and I
(41:24):
see this wheelchair, and again all the historical research is
happening as I speak. But I have no doubt, no
doubt about its history. And I'll tell you why. We
had had it for about oh, three days, I guess.
And one evening we were getting ready for bed, and
(41:50):
but I still had some lights on in the house,
so the lights were not super bright. They were kind
of dim, but I mean you could see things fine. Lauren.
I wasn't sure where she was in the house at
this point, you know, yeah, we're kind of running around
getting everything prepared. So I came down the stairs and
I glanced over, and what do I see, to my shock,
(42:15):
Lauren sitting in this antique wheelchair, which you should never do.
And then I realized And of course, at first it
freaked me out. I was like, what Lauren, get out
of that? And then I realized that's not Lauren. I
jumped to the conclusion that it was Lauren because it
(42:36):
was just, you know, a form of a person sitting
in the wheelchair. And that's why immediately I thought, well,
Lauren's the only other person in this house. Lauren's in
the wheelchair. She's gonna damage this wheelchair. And I see
this person and it's just a figure, kind of a
hazy figure as my eyes sort of like focus in
(43:00):
and then it disappears, and that's when I go, oh, my,
and there it is, folks, the goose bumps, the hair
stands up on the arms, and I say, WHOA, I
just saw what I believe to be a ghost. And
(43:21):
maybe it's my imagination, but once I realized that wasn't Lauren,
it sure seemed a lot like the profile cut by
one Franklin D. Roosevelt. Now can I I won't swear
to that that it was him, but oh boy, was
(43:44):
there a form sitting in that wheelchair. And that's when
I was like, Lauren. Lauren, she was in a whole
separate part of the house. And when she came over,
she was like, what, why you know? And I told her,
I was like, why, just keep your eye on this wheelchair, right,
And we waited. We waited, and we waited, and nothing reappeared.
(44:07):
So now I have cameras all over my house. But
I'll get back to that in a minute. Okay, I
don't have cameras like inside every room. It's all My
cameras are like on the periphery. They're security cameras. So anyway,
I'm running out of time, so let me just tell
(44:29):
you that. Oh maybe about a week after we had it,
I came downstairs one day and Lauren, I looked over,
and Lauren goes, look at the wheelchair, and I look,
I turned over, turned my head in that direction, and
as I told you, the wheelchair right now it is
(44:49):
sitting where the Christmas tree was, and so everything is
positioned just so you know, in our house. Lauren's very
good at that, like the fung shui being balanced. The
wheelchair had moved, I would say, I believe I measured
it and it was like between ten and thirteen inches
is what we figured. It had rolled somehow. Now I
(45:14):
have a lot of delicate, fragile stuff in my house
and nothing else had moved. Nothing else has ever moved,
and on at least two or three occasions, this wheelchair
has rolled to a different spot on its own. And
Laurence says, Josh, get the emf meters. Let's put a
(45:36):
camera on this thing. And she's like, what are you know?
What are you waiting for? And I told her, I said, look,
I want to get this captured just as much as anybody,
but I have to give you a cautionary till because
when I got Carvill the alien Art Bell's Alien, everybody
said that Carvill would move on his own, especially at night.
(46:02):
And the first night I got Carville. He apparently moved
because I went into the room the next day and
this is, you know, you're talking about like a five
foot tall, hundred pound wooden statue had shifted positions. It
was pretty astounding, and at that point I thought, Wow,
(46:23):
this thing really does move, and so immediately I started
putting cameras on him, and he never moved again. So
I know that sounds silly to be like some of
these things are camera shy, but it reminds me of
like the Heisenberg uncertainty principle that once you start observing something,
(46:43):
the thing changes because it's being observed. It's similar to
what we see when we look at like the double
slit experiment and quantum physics, that a particle behaves either
as or an energy behaves as a particle or a
wave depending on how it's being observed. And I was
afraid that I would I would repeat the mistake with
(47:07):
the wheelchair that I did with Carvill. I said, look,
let's just let it do its thing for a while
and then I'll finally, you know, we'll record as much
as that as we can, and then I'll put the
cameras and the instruments on it and then we'll see
what happens. And you know, it's not going anywhere. We
(47:28):
have all the time in the world, so right now
we're just not messing with it. We're letting it sit there.
We're not doing any special scientific work studying it. Right now,
we're just having our own human experiences with it. But
very soon I'm going to switch over to phase two,
(47:50):
which is where I'm going to put the camera on it.
I'm going to break out all the instrumentation. It's going
to totally change the whole vibe around it. And then
I'm going to do that because I want to say
that I have experienced it in all these different ways before. Finally,
this thing is going to go on display on public
display in Boulder City, Nevada, with all the information attached
(48:15):
to it, and thousands of people from all over the
world are going to see it and my other stuff,
and I will keep you updated on how that process proceeds.
That is where we are right now. And I told
you I didn't know this was the story would take
up the whole podcast, but I think you can see
it was worth it. And that is how I have
(48:37):
obtained my newest, most amazing item Franklin d Roosevelt's Haunted Wheelchair. Okay,
Tim to end the show. You know what happens. Now,
take a deep breath, relax if you can, and close
your eyes. Ah. Yes, let's all meditate on the good
(49:01):
fortune tone. That's it for this edition of the show.
(49:28):
Follow me on Twitter at Joshua pee Warren, plus visit
Joshua Peewarren dot com to sign up from my free
e newsletter to receive a free instant gift, and check
out the cool stuff and the Curiosity shop all at
Joshua Peewarren dot com. I have a fun one lined
up for you next time, I promise. So please tell
(49:51):
all your friends to subscribe to this show and to
always remember the Golden Rule. Thank you for listening, Thank you,
thank you for your interest in support, thank you for
staying curious, and I We'll talk to you again soon.
You've been listening to Strange Things on the iHeartRadio and
(50:13):
Coast to Coast Stay um Paranormal Podcast Network. Thanks for
listening to the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast and Paranormal
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(50:34):
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And you're here. Thanks for choosing the iHeartRadio and Coast
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(00:27):
aware the thoughts and opinions expressed by the host are
their thoughts and opinions only and do not reflect those
of iHeartMedia, iHeartRadio, Coast to Coast AM, employees of Premiere Networks,
or their sponsors and associates. We would like to encourage
you to do your own research and discover the subject
(00:48):
matter for yourself. Got ready to find a wizard of weird.
(01:14):
This is Strange Things with Joshua Pee Warren. I am
Joshua Pee Warren, and each week on this show, I'll
be bringing you brand new mind blowing content, news exercises,
and weird experiments you can do at home, and a
(01:36):
lot more. On this edition of the show. My new
Haunted object, my new possessed possession, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's
haunted wheelchair, This, I believe, is one of the most
(02:00):
interesting and amazing and exciting stories that I have told
on this show. I have been dying to tell it
for a long time now, and it is a lengthy story,
but well worth it. This is, I think, the kind
of story that you would like to hear on a
show called Strange Things. And it should be no surprise
(02:25):
to you that I am a collector of all kinds
of unusual objects. For many years, I even had a museum,
and soon I am going to be putting some of
my collection on public display. Again. I will get to
that later in the podcast, but let me tell you
about how I attained this sort of mind boggling item.
(02:51):
The story really begins back in two thousand and nine,
because that is when one of my favorite TV shows
of all time debuted, the show Pawn Stars on the
History Channel. I've been hooked ever since. And I always
(03:12):
assume that when I say Palm Stars, you've seen it,
you know, like I think everybody, like, surely everybody has
seen this, But it turns out that's not the case.
So if you've never seen Pond Stars, let me just
give you a general overview of this show. Here in
Las Vegas. There is a real pawn shop called the
(03:34):
Gold and Silver Pawn Shop that's been around since I
think nineteen eighty eight, and it is run by a
man named Rick Harrison, and he operates it with his
son Corey and Corey's lifelong friend Chum Lee, who offers
a lot of comic relief. And the show started out,
(03:58):
I mean, most of the show's run also had the
patriarch of the family, which is Rick's father, Richard Harrison.
They called him the Old Man, but he died in
I believe twenty eighteen. So the setup for the show
is you see one of the guys at the counter,
like Rick, one of the employees, and a customer comes
(04:21):
in with some type of usually a slightly unusual item,
and they really nowadays, they just say I want to
sell it. They don't really mess with the pawn thing
too much. They just say I want to sell this.
And so the formula is like, huh, well, I don't
know what it's worth, you know, So let's get some
(04:42):
history expert in here to tell us the story behind
this thing, and then we'll get an appraiser and then
if they want the item, then it moves onto negotiation.
And now, granted, like most quote unquote reality shows, certain
parts of this are staged for dramatic purposes and entertainment.
(05:02):
But I've always loved the show because, you know, it's
a lot like an antiques road show, but it's such
much more condensed and commercialized. And what you get to
see are you know, real objects that come in the door,
even though it's planned in advance for television, of course,
but I know plenty of people who've been on the
show and who brought objects in. So they bring in
(05:24):
a real object and you get to hear the history
of it, and I love those kinds of stories, of course,
and then they really do get an appraisal, and then
they really do talk about how much this is actually
worth in today's commercial marketplace, and all that's just interesting
to me. So that show Pawn Stars is one of
(05:46):
the most successful shows in the history of cable TV,
and I, like I said, I've been watching it constantly
since two thousand and nine. At that time, I was
living in North Carolina, and every time I would travel
to Vegas, I would go and I would visit the
pawn shop. It's like one of the biggest tourist attractions
(06:08):
in Vegas now because you know, it's so famous due
to this show, and because of that, the property has expanded,
and now across the parking lot from the Pond Shop
is this sort of like complex that has Rick Harrison's
barbecue restaurant, and it's got a bar on top, you know,
(06:30):
full bar upstairs, and then Chumley has a candy store there,
and I can't remember all the stuff that's in this
kind of little shopping center, but there's you know, they
built their own little their own little Disney World there
for Pond stars, and you know, they're great, great business people.
All of them aren't quite wealthy. So like I said,
(06:53):
I would start, you know, I would, I would go
there and visit. And then, of course now I live
in Las Vegas, and so I kind of have run
ins with people in the circles of the show. Uh No,
pretty pretty often. In fact, I don't know if he
still does this, but for a long time, Rick Harrison
he would actually personally go and be the bartender for
(07:15):
like a couple hours on the weekends at his bar
there above the barbecue restaurant. That shows you how much
he enjoys interacting with fans. I mean I would find
that to be a little scary when you are as
famous as he is to just throw yourself out there
and you don't know who's going to walk into the
door and they're getting liquored up. So but he's fine
(07:39):
with it. And so if you if you time it
out right, if you're a fan of the show, you
can go you can find out when Rick's going to
be bartending, you can go in there. And that's how
I met him for the first time, and which was great.
You know, he was We had some really cool conversations
and he was a nice enough to actually give me
and Lauren some free shots of fine whiskey, and he
(08:00):
did not do that for everybody, so that was really cool.
And actually the first time I met him, I uh,
I really struck it rich, so to speak, because, um,
I looked over and this was it was a packed house.
I looked over and sitting at the bar eating was
(08:23):
Murray the Magician. And of course, you know I talk
about Murray often. Murray is uh, you know, he's one
of the biggest magicians in the world. He's been all
over TV. He has a show on the Vegas Strip.
I mean, if you drive down the Vegas strip. You're
gonna see gigantic signs with Murray's face all over it.
And he's very memorable because he has this big shock
(08:44):
of you know, blonde hair, and he wears stick glasses
and and he uh, he's always a very um, lighthearted guy,
you know. He he's one of these magicians who also
is like a comic magician. You know, he has a
lot of comedy in his and his routine. So, but
he is the guy they would always bring in on
(09:05):
the show when they had some kind of like a
magical item. You know, here in Vegas should get props
that might come in, say, somebody might have a pair
of what they claim are Houdini's handcuffs or you know
that kind of thing, and so they would call Murray
in to sort of authenticate it and to try to
value it. So anybody who watches the show knows Murray
(09:27):
the Magician. So that is how I ended up that
night talking to Murray the Magician, and we became friends,
and we even ended up, because of our developing friendship,
producing a sizzle reel together for a television series that
he and I would co star in. And the basic
(09:49):
idea is that we would go out and investigate paranormal stuff,
and I'm the paranormal investigator guy, and he's the magician
guy who's trying to debunk everything. Right, And a real
is what you that's like maybe a five minute video
that you shoot if you have an idea for a
TV show, and then you send that to networks and
you use that to pitch the show. And and we got,
(10:12):
you know, like a big company working with us. This
was a top notch sizzle real, and yet it did
not get picked up, which is what often happens. That's
what usually happens, I should say in the TV business,
which is one of the reasons that I don't mess
with TV that much anymore, because, gosh, you put so
(10:34):
much time into it. It's very time consuming planning out
a potential TV show, and then most of the time
it doesn't work out. You've just wasted all that time.
So I don't do much of that anymore. And I
think that, you know, I used to do TV all
the time, and now I'm very selective about what I do.
I think that nowadays it might even be harder to
get into TV than it was, say, like I don't know,
(10:56):
ten or fifteen years ago, because that we've reached a
point where nobody's even sure exactly what TV is anymore,
because we have all these streaming channels and people aren't
even going to the movies anymore. And now you see
movie stars on TV, but they're not really on TV.
They're on streaming channel. It's just it's a it's a
(11:18):
very confusing landscape right now. Everybody's trying to figure out,
like what is entertainment. It's being reinvented and so it's
even more complicated to navigate. But when we come back
from this break, I promise you this is leading up
to a haunted Franklin D. Roosevelt wheelchair. Okay, just bear
with me, because I found out about this because I'm
(11:45):
a fan of Pond Stars, right and I also have
another kind of funny Pond Stars story for you. I'm
going to tell you first real quick when we come back,
just in case that's of interest to you. And when
I'm done recording this podcast, I'm heading straight to my
workshop because I am working on a new product that
(12:09):
is quite fascinating and I don't think I'll be talking
about it on this show. I'll only be talking about
it at least revealing it primarily through my free E newsletter,
and if you want to know what it is, go
to Joshua peewarn dot com and sign up for the
free E newsletter. It takes you about two seconds. Put
(12:30):
your email address in there, hit the submit button. You'll
instantly receive an automated email from me with some links
to some free online gifts that will start helping you
manifest some magical things in your life immediately. You just
have to do it. Try it out. It cost you nothing.
(12:51):
Go to Joshua Peewarren dot com on the homepage sign
up for the free E newsletter. I am Joshua Pere
and you are listening to Strange Things on the iHeart
Radio and Coast to Coast, a am para normal podcast network,
and I will be right back. Welcome back to Strange
(13:45):
Things on the iHeart Radio and Coast to Coast a
m para normal podcast network. I'm your host, the Wizard
of Weird, Joshua Pee Warren, beaming into your wormhole brain
from my studio in Sin City, Las Vegas, Nevada, where
every day is golden and every night is silver. One
(14:09):
of the most notable experts if not. The most notable
expert on the Pond Stars TV show is Mark Hall Patton.
They call him the Beard of Knowledge, and because he
has this impressive gray beard and he wears an amish
(14:34):
style hat, often black. He's just a very memorable looking guy.
And he is one of those guys who's just like
a walking encyclopedia. He knows everything, and it's true. I mean,
he is the administrator for the Clark County Museum, so
Las Vegas is in Clark County, which is a huge county,
and I mean, he's the real deal. And I mentioned
(14:57):
him just because that I did see him in person
one day. I was over there and I look over
and there's Mark Hall Patton, and I would have loved
to have gone up and talk to him, but they
were filming that day, so I you know, I didn't
want to bother him. And by the way, I've heard
some people say, you know, they don't even really film
(15:19):
that show in that shop. They have another set somewhere
that looks like that shop. And I'm sure that they
do have another set somewhere for all kinds of extra
special shots and stuff, but they do film some right
there in the actual real pawn shop. I know because
(15:39):
I've seen them do it. That's neither here nor there.
But if you're curious and you're a fan of the show,
maybe you'd like to know that. But no, I didn't
get to talk to Mark Hall Patton. I will make
a point to do that one day. Hopefully he will.
He will want to talk to me as well. I
don't think he's into a ghost stories and stuff like
I am, but who knows. But one more sort of
(15:59):
see chronistic side story I just have to squeeze in
here before I continue, is that when I was growing
up in Asheville, North Carolina, I was I was relatively
close to Disney World in Orlando. By relatively close, I
mean a nine hour drive. So whenever the family would
(16:23):
go to Disney World, talk about the longest nine hours
of a kid's life waiting on that are we there yet?
Are we there yet? You know, for days to get
to Disney World. So I never ever in my life
growing up with to Disneyland, which is in California in Anaheim.
(16:43):
And then my wife Lauren had a similar situation. She
grew up in Katie, Texas outside of Houston, so that's
an even longer drive for her family. You're talking like
fourteen hours or whatever to drive to disney World, but
still closer than California. So she and I would growing
up if our parents decided to take a big trip,
then you know it would be disney World. So now
(17:05):
that we live here in Vegas, you can drive from
Vegas to disney Land in California, which was the original
Disney theme park, in like four hours. So so once
we moved here a few years ago, one day we said,
you know what, let's go see Disneyland. Let's see you know,
(17:25):
we're adults now and that kind of sucks, but you
know it'll be interesting. This was Walt Disney's original paradise
that he imagined. And also, if you're a real amusement
park geek, there are some interesting differences in the rides
in some cases very subtle, but definitely different in the
(17:47):
rides between the rides and disney World and Disneyland, even
though it's the same ride. So like you might have
a slightly different setup for like the Haunted Mansion at
disney World than Disneyland because of the way that the
grounds are constructed, did, etc. But anyway, that said, we
go to Disneyland, and this was in the middle of summer.
(18:07):
And if you've ever been to Disneyland or Disney World,
I mean you know that on a normal day, the
crowd is unbelievable. It may be the biggest crowd, the
biggest number of people you've ever seen anywhere in your life.
There's no telling. People from all over the world are
crammed into to these places, and you walk and walk
(18:28):
and walk, often in the heat forever, and you stand
in line. You're prepared to stand in line, you know,
over an hour. You just expect that to get into
some of these rides that last two minutes. As a
matter of fact, I'm at a point in my life
now I don't even think I'm willing to go stand
in lines and do that kind of stuff anymore. I'm
(18:48):
getting too old for that now. I've seen it, been there,
done that. So anyway, my point is here, we are
at Disneyland with a gazillion people, and of course we
have to go right everybody's favorite ride. I think Pirates
of the Caribbean. You have to do that. So we
go over to Pirates at the Caribbean. And since it's
(19:09):
such a popular ride, I mean the line is just
it's one of those lines just winding back and forth
and back and forth, and you just like go to
the bathroom and you prepare yourself. So I don't even
know how long we stood in this line. And at
one point when the line was sort of doubled up
so that we were standing next to other people who
were somewhere in the line, you know, best separate from
(19:30):
us a little bit, Laurence says, Josh, look there's chum Lee.
And I'm like what And I turned and sure enough,
standing there in this line is Chum Lee from Palm Stars.
That was the first time I'd ever seen him in person,
and I just couldn't believe it. I was like, huh,
that is a while that he's here at this ride
(19:51):
the same time we're taking this ride. And I could
have said something to him at that time, but I knew, like, oh,
this dude's on his vacation away. I don't want to
bother him. I've never been roll a big at like
bugging celebrities. I've seen a lot of them living around here, especially,
and I just, you know, I'm not going to go
up and mess with them. What do I have to say?
But the weirdest thing is we stand in line forever
(20:11):
and then finally when it comes your turn to take
this ride, a boat comes up and there's only so
many people that can fit on this little boat, and
then it goes on and the next one comes up,
and we ended up on the same boat as chum Lee.
I don't know how many people each boat holds. I'm
thinking like twenty or something like that. But I thought,
(20:32):
what are the odds of all these people in Disney
World at Disneyland we would end up on the same
boat as chum Lee for this Pirates of the Caribbean ride.
Just like, what does that kind of thing mean? I
don't know. Well, we have talked a lot about synchronicity.
You make up your own mind on that. But I
have some kind of an odd connection with these guys
(20:56):
and this show and now we're in the same town. Okay,
Now let's move on to the real meat of the story,
showing you know that I own the Haunted Boulder City
Ghost and UFO tour and Boulder City, Nevada is a
thirty minute drive from Las Vegas. I've talked about it
(21:18):
a lot, and it's the newest walking tour that I've created.
It's the only paranormal tour and Boulder City. It's been
a huge success, and we have friends and business partners
all over the town of Boulder City. Okay, they've been
so warm and welcoming to us there, and we just
(21:39):
love Boulder City. And you know, I've got a bunch
of really cool items that I used to have on
display in Asheville, But when my museum there got flooded
and I moved out here, I shipped a lot of
that stuff out here to Las Vegas, and a lot
of it's been in storage, and thankfully, you know, none
(22:01):
of it got stolen. It's now in a more secure
location than it was. But I've been looking for an
opportunity to put some of it back on public display.
And so it's still a little too early for me
to give you all the details, but there is a
very prominent, esteemed place in Boulder City that wants to
(22:24):
put some of my stuff on display. And for example,
I have a crystal skull, an alien crystal skull that
will be on display. I have some charred rocks from
an actual UFO crash site in the Bermuda Triangle in
Puerto Rico that I picked up with my own hands
out in the middle of nowhere. I've got some cool
(22:47):
stuff like that. B See. The funny thing is it's
hard to find an artifact sometimes that has a connection
to a particular place. And I kind of put this
idea out there to the world and to Lauren. I
am looking for some kind of an object that has
(23:09):
a mystery attached to it, but would also somehow connect
to to Boulder City. And I didn't know what that
could possibly be. Of course, Boulder City was created to
house the workers for the Hoover Dam, so I thought,
you know, maybe something to do with the dam. But
I know what, you know, So I just wasn't sure
(23:31):
what it was going to be. But I put the
thought out there, all right, because I figured, you know,
this would be like maybe a centerpiece for this new display.
So now within days of me doing this, we're watching
television and after all these years, the Pawn Stars TV
show decided to have this spin off show called Pawn
(23:55):
Stars Do America. So what that means is, instead of
the guys staying in Vegas as they usually do and
people coming to them, they decided to hit the road
and to tour the country. And visit different cities and
be there for like three days and open up, you know,
(24:16):
like a big tent or something and then let the community,
the locals in that area come to them and present stuff.
So it's very much like the Antiques road Show. So
it's the same concept as the regular show, except they're
just doing it, you know, in different places, and I'm
it's fun. It mixes it up a little bit. So there,
(24:37):
I think it was. It might have been their first one,
first or second one. They decided to go to Yorktown, Pennsylvania,
And of course there's a lot of especially in a
military and colonial history there in Yorktown, Pennsylvania. So I
was watching this episode of pond Stars do America, and
(25:01):
I saw something that immediately caught my eye. Can you
guess what it may have been? And where this story
is going to go next when we return. So funny
how these things you look back and you see how
they fall into place. I'm Joshua pe Warren. You're listening
(25:23):
to Strange Things on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast.
I am heir a normal podcast network. I'll be back
after these important messages. Welcome back to Strange Things on
(26:11):
the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast sam Parinormal Podcast Network.
I'm your host, Joshua wa Pete Warren, and this is
the show where the unusual becomes usual. Here we are
watching pond Stars do America. And at one point in
the show, Chum Lee, of all people, decides to take
(26:37):
a little sort of side trip within the episode with
one of his Picker friends to go to this small
town in Pennsylvania called Sellersville and visit this antique store,
which I believe was called Pickers Junction. And so he
(27:01):
goes in there to presumably, you know, to try to
find something that they can resell, which is actually not
that realistic, I don't think, because I think a lot
of times people who buy and sell things like that
for a living, they prefer to buy from individuals because
(27:22):
they can get a better deal. You know, if you
deal with another dealer, then it's everybody. Everybody kind of
knows the game here, and it's a little harder to
negotiate perhaps, but anyway, that's just my opinion. So anyway,
they're walking around and they're looking at stuff, and of
course I'm very interested in what they're gonna show on TV.
(27:43):
What kind of items they're finding. And at one point
they stop next to this old fashioned wheelchair and Chumley
he flips over a tag or something like that and
it says used by Franklin D. Roosevelt for the nineteen
(28:05):
thirty two Democratic Convention. Okay, like something to that effect,
and they have a little um conversation about it, and
but then Chumley he just moves on to other stuff.
And I was like, well, that's amazing. I would buy that.
(28:25):
That's I mean, to me, anything presidential is something I
would like to have in my collection, unless it's a
president I really didn't like, you know, been a historical
president where we're kind of removed from from some of
the emotions. Um. You know, I'm always interested in that.
(28:46):
And I just thought that is a really intriguing item
to pass up, because, you know, here's the thing about
President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was notable for a number
of reasons. For one thing, he was the only president
to serve four terms. He was in there around twelve years,
(29:09):
and before he was president, there was no law restricting
someone for running for president as many times as he
or she wanted. The tradition was just to do it
for two terms, and nobody had ever won more than
two terms. But after he won four terms because of that,
(29:30):
that was when politicians got together and said, you know what,
maybe we don't want that to happen again. That could
lead to somebody becoming like the permanent president of this country.
And so they passed the twenty second Amendment, which said
that you cannot be elected president more than twice. So
he was the only president to serve four terms. He
(29:51):
also was the president who led us through the Great
Depression and then through most of World War Two. I mean,
huge challenges, and to this day there's debate over, you know,
how he handled those things, if he should have done
things differently. But what made it even more amazing is
(30:12):
that when he was an adult, he got polio, and
so he spent much of his adulthood in a wheelchair.
Occasionally they would give him some braces so he could
stand up for photo ops, but he was usually in
a wheelchair, and they didn't want him photographed so much
in a wheelchair, So the wheelchair thing was kind of
kept like a more secretive part of the culture around him.
(30:36):
And you know what, I didn't realize this. I was
looking it up the other day. He died when he
was only sixty three years old. I believe he looked
a lot older, but I'm sure that's what being going
through all that will do to you best. I recall
he was posing. This was nineteen forty five. He was
posing for a portrait and he said all of as said,
(31:01):
I have a terrific headache. And then a long after
that he slumped over and turns out he'd had like
a massive brain hemorrhage, and he died, you know, shortly thereafter.
But yeah, sixty three. But nonetheless, you know, he was
(31:21):
just a very, like I said, a significant part of
world history. And that kind of stuck in my head,
and I thought, what an interesting thing. You know, I
would have probably bought that, you know, But then you know,
the show moved on and I kind of forgot about
it a little bit. So later that evening, I mean
(31:42):
like maybe an hour and a half after that, Lauren said, hey, Josh, look,
she was just clicking through the channels. I think I'd
gone to the kitchen for something, and I came back
and there was a local TV channel and it was
showing footage, old black and white footage from the dedication
(32:04):
of the Hoover Dam and guests who is standing there
speaking President Franklin D. Roosevelt. And I found this old
newspaper clipping and it says that he dedicated the dam
on September thirtieth of nineteen thirty five, with an estimated
twenty thousand people witnessing and millions hearing his remarks broadcast
(32:29):
all over the great radio networks in the country. Said
the presidential party left the special train at Boulder City
promptly at nine thirty in the morning and sped out
the highway leading to the top of the dam. So
and I said, by golly, that's it. I wonder if
(32:50):
there's some energy attached to that wheelchair. And I thought
there's no way though, that I'm going to be able
to get that wheelchair, because it was just on the
History channel. How many people saw that wheelchair, you know.
So I was like, don't get your hopes up, mister Warren, right,
But it just felt like I'm supposed to have this wheelchair.
(33:11):
So the next morning, bright and early, I called this
shop and I got the owner on the phone and
I said, I don't suppose you still have that wheelchair,
do you? And she said well, yeah, as a matter
of fact, we do still have it. And my jaw
(33:31):
hit the floor and I said, how much is it now?
I'm not going to tell you what she told me,
but I thought, you know what, I want it. It's perfect.
I feel drawn to it. I said, you know, i'll
take it. I'll take it. And I don't even think
(33:52):
I negotiated with her. I just said I'll take it.
And so she goes, I said, can I buy it
over the phone? She goes, yeah, but you know, how
are you going to get it? Because I told her
I was in Vegas And I said, well, can you
ship it to me? And she goes no, And I
was like, well, um, you know, what do you mean,
like I can pay for shipping. She goes, we don't.
(34:15):
We We've we've done that kind of thing before. And
she said, it's just when it comes to stuff that's
big and kind of bulky and awkward like this, especially
since it's old and delicate. She goes, we just don't
take the time and the effort to pack up stuff
like this and ship it. We just don't do that.
So she wasn't even open to, like, you know, give
(34:38):
me a million dollars and I'll do it. You know.
She was just like, no, we don't do that. And
I said, all right, fine, I will figure out how
to get the thing here. So I would have had
at least bought it over the phone. And I said, um,
can you, you know, can you hang onto it for
me for a certain amount of time while I figure
(34:59):
out how I'm want to get it? And she said sure. Yeah.
She was real nice about everything. So I got off
the phone. I'm sitting there, I'm like racking my brains.
First off, I'm excited that I have this thing. And
we talked about the provenance and as a matter of fact,
it has a label on it that says um presented
(35:21):
by the Tonton Kiwanis Club and again used to transport
President FDR during the nineteen thirty two Democratic Convention in Chicago.
I know you're thinking, like, what, Josh, how do you
know that this is real? Look, I I've already got
that thing that I have some of the best historians
that are working on all the provenance. I've been in
(35:41):
touch with the Kiwanis. I mean, trust me, things things
are looking good in that department, all right. I don't
have a picture of him sitting in the chair. I
don't think, but you know, it's it's hard. We're still
looking there. It's hard to find pictures of him in wheelchairs.
But anyway, I feel very good about it. And the
(36:03):
person she got it from has a good track record.
So back to my challenge, how do I get this thing?
And I started racking my brain and then it's like
a light bulb went off and I thought, Dean Worsing,
my buddy, Dean Worsing. How often do I bring up
his name on this show all the time? I said, Dean,
(36:26):
I bet kind of sort of lives in that direction,
because Dean lives in Maryland. And so I got on
Maryland and I got online and I looked it up
and I saw that it was like an hour and
a half from Dean's house. So I called up Dean.
This is like a Saturday morning, and I explained to
him what was going on. And I said, Dean, old buddy, opal,
(36:52):
what are the chances that you could go and get
this thing for me and then we'll figure out, you know,
how you can get it to me? And he was
like done, dude. He's like this sounds fun. He's a
big fan of Palm Stars as well. But he's also
just a history buff and he's he loves old things,
and this is like right up his alley. He said,
(37:12):
he's talking about his wife and he goes Ann and
I we've been needing a good road trip anyway. That's
beautiful country. And he was just like totally psyched to
do this. And I could not have had a better person.
I mean, talk about all the little pieces falling in
into place. Dean drives out there like the next day
(37:33):
or two, gets this thing, takes it back to his house.
When we come back from this break, I'll tell you
what happened that lets me know it's haunted. I'm Joshua
Pee Warren. You're listening to Strange Things on the I
Heart Radio and Coast to Coast damn pamin Normal Podcast Network.
(37:54):
I will be all right back and welcome back to
(38:32):
the final segment of this edition of Strange Things on
the iHeart Radio and Coast to Coast am PARA Normal
podcast Network. I am your host, Joshua Pee Warren, and
Dean Warsing is the most personable person on the planet.
(38:53):
Dean and his wife and both are just so nice
and charming and wonderful and reliable. Their whole families like that,
they're kids. And Dean was just like, yeah, I will
go get that thing for you. He was excited about it.
So he and Anne they took their road trip. They
went to Sellersville. They enjoyed themselves. I think they even
(39:15):
bought some goodies for themselves, loaded up this wheelchair without
a problem, and took it right back to the safety
of his home. And Dean is also an artist. I
guess he's okay with me saying. He does a lot
of things right now. He's especially focusing on pottery, but
(39:38):
he takes a lot of care when it comes to
you know, just items that craftsmanship, and like he's the
kind of guy that you want to be the caretaker
of something historic like this. So this was back, I guess,
around the holidays, and so everybody was kind of busy,
and so he just kind of kept it for a
(39:59):
little while and finally we figured out the best way
for him to for him to ship it to me.
You know, it can be done, and so, uh, he
actually took the wheels off of it. He did just
some a very slight disassembly to make it easier to ship.
But anyway, and it was expensive to ship, but hey,
(40:22):
it was worth it. So he got it out here
to Las Vegas safe and sound. This gigantic box arrived
and I opened it up and there it was, and
it just it was so weird to have, you know,
seen this thing on the History Channel, and I've even
got the still of it, you know, from the TV,
(40:43):
and now here it is in my house. It's just like,
it's crazy, how that can happen. It was meant to be.
Thank you, Deane and An. I'm telling you that was
just you guys. Were you saved the day you were.
You were perfectly poised to get that thing in my hands.
All right. So Lauren, she actually she's the one who's
(41:04):
good with her hands in the Warren family, and so
she reassembled it, Okay, she put the wheels back on it,
and it is now sitting in my living room where
my Christmas tree was last year. All right. So I'm
sort of in awe as I sit there and I
(41:24):
see this wheelchair, and again all the historical research is
happening as I speak. But I have no doubt, no
doubt about its history. And I'll tell you why. We
had had it for about oh, three days, I guess.
And one evening we were getting ready for bed, and
(41:50):
but I still had some lights on in the house,
so the lights were not super bright. They were kind
of dim, but I mean you could see things fine. Lauren.
I wasn't sure where she was in the house at
this point, you know, yeah, we're kind of running around
getting everything prepared. So I came down the stairs and
I glanced over, and what do I see, to my shock,
(42:15):
Lauren sitting in this antique wheelchair, which you should never do.
And then I realized And of course, at first it
freaked me out. I was like, what Lauren, get out
of that? And then I realized that's not Lauren. I
jumped to the conclusion that it was Lauren because it
(42:36):
was just, you know, a form of a person sitting
in the wheelchair. And that's why immediately I thought, well,
Lauren's the only other person in this house. Lauren's in
the wheelchair. She's gonna damage this wheelchair. And I see
this person and it's just a figure, kind of a
hazy figure as my eyes sort of like focus in
(43:00):
and then it disappears, and that's when I go, oh, my,
and there it is, folks, the goose bumps, the hair
stands up on the arms, and I say, WHOA, I
just saw what I believe to be a ghost. And
(43:21):
maybe it's my imagination, but once I realized that wasn't Lauren,
it sure seemed a lot like the profile cut by
one Franklin D. Roosevelt. Now can I I won't swear
to that that it was him, but oh boy, was
(43:44):
there a form sitting in that wheelchair. And that's when
I was like, Lauren. Lauren, she was in a whole
separate part of the house. And when she came over,
she was like, what, why you know? And I told her,
I was like, why, just keep your eye on this wheelchair, right,
And we waited. We waited, and we waited, and nothing reappeared.
(44:07):
So now I have cameras all over my house. But
I'll get back to that in a minute. Okay, I
don't have cameras like inside every room. It's all My
cameras are like on the periphery. They're security cameras. So anyway,
I'm running out of time, so let me just tell
(44:29):
you that. Oh maybe about a week after we had it,
I came downstairs one day and Lauren, I looked over,
and Lauren goes, look at the wheelchair, and I look,
I turned over, turned my head in that direction, and
as I told you, the wheelchair right now it is
(44:49):
sitting where the Christmas tree was, and so everything is
positioned just so you know, in our house. Lauren's very
good at that, like the fung shui being balanced. The
wheelchair had moved, I would say, I believe I measured
it and it was like between ten and thirteen inches
is what we figured. It had rolled somehow. Now I
(45:14):
have a lot of delicate, fragile stuff in my house
and nothing else had moved. Nothing else has ever moved,
and on at least two or three occasions, this wheelchair
has rolled to a different spot on its own. And
Laurence says, Josh, get the emf meters. Let's put a
(45:36):
camera on this thing. And she's like, what are you know?
What are you waiting for? And I told her, I said, look,
I want to get this captured just as much as anybody,
but I have to give you a cautionary till because
when I got Carvill the alien Art Bell's Alien, everybody
said that Carvill would move on his own, especially at night.
(46:02):
And the first night I got Carville. He apparently moved
because I went into the room the next day and
this is, you know, you're talking about like a five
foot tall, hundred pound wooden statue had shifted positions. It
was pretty astounding, and at that point I thought, Wow,
(46:23):
this thing really does move, and so immediately I started
putting cameras on him, and he never moved again. So
I know that sounds silly to be like some of
these things are camera shy, but it reminds me of
like the Heisenberg uncertainty principle that once you start observing something,
(46:43):
the thing changes because it's being observed. It's similar to
what we see when we look at like the double
slit experiment and quantum physics, that a particle behaves either
as or an energy behaves as a particle or a
wave depending on how it's being observed. And I was
afraid that I would I would repeat the mistake with
(47:07):
the wheelchair that I did with Carvill. I said, look,
let's just let it do its thing for a while
and then I'll finally, you know, we'll record as much
as that as we can, and then I'll put the
cameras and the instruments on it and then we'll see
what happens. And you know, it's not going anywhere. We
(47:28):
have all the time in the world, so right now
we're just not messing with it. We're letting it sit there.
We're not doing any special scientific work studying it. Right now,
we're just having our own human experiences with it. But
very soon I'm going to switch over to phase two,
(47:50):
which is where I'm going to put the camera on it.
I'm going to break out all the instrumentation. It's going
to totally change the whole vibe around it. And then
I'm going to do that because I want to say
that I have experienced it in all these different ways before. Finally,
this thing is going to go on display on public
display in Boulder City, Nevada, with all the information attached
(48:15):
to it, and thousands of people from all over the
world are going to see it and my other stuff,
and I will keep you updated on how that process proceeds.
That is where we are right now. And I told
you I didn't know this was the story would take
up the whole podcast, but I think you can see
it was worth it. And that is how I have
(48:37):
obtained my newest, most amazing item Franklin d Roosevelt's Haunted Wheelchair. Okay,
Tim to end the show. You know what happens. Now,
take a deep breath, relax if you can, and close
your eyes. Ah. Yes, let's all meditate on the good
(49:01):
fortune tone. That's it for this edition of the show.
(49:28):
Follow me on Twitter at Joshua pee Warren, plus visit
Joshua Peewarren dot com to sign up from my free
e newsletter to receive a free instant gift, and check
out the cool stuff and the Curiosity shop all at
Joshua Peewarren dot com. I have a fun one lined
up for you next time, I promise. So please tell
(49:51):
all your friends to subscribe to this show and to
always remember the Golden Rule. Thank you for listening, Thank you,
thank you for your interest in support, thank you for
staying curious, and I We'll talk to you again soon.
You've been listening to Strange Things on the iHeartRadio and
(50:13):
Coast to Coast Stay um Paranormal Podcast Network. Thanks for
listening to the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast and Paranormal
Podcast Network. Make sure and check out all our shows
(50:34):
on the iHeartRadio app or by going to iHeartRadio dot com,
Host
Joshua P. Warren
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