iNTO THE FRAY 522: Dark Side of the Smoky Mountains-Part Three

Mark Muncy and Erika Lance of the Eerie Travels podcast are back for the last round of story-telling for their book, 'The Dark Side of the Smoky Mountains: A Travel Guide for Your Next Spooky Journey.' 

We talk about The Church of the Redeemer, the very haunted Highland Hospital, a creature known as the Boojum, The Jarrett House Vampire, and more.

Get your copy of The Dark Side of the Smoky Mountains: A Travel Guide for Your Next Spooky Journey here- https://a.co/d/b1ts03J

Listen to Part One-HERE  and part two- HERE

Find Mark and Erika on:
Their Website- https://eerietravels.com/
Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/eerietravelsshow
YouTube- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzlHEBGihwMhK48uNeSM8Dw
Spotify- https://open.spotify.com/show/62kHAWbtMnTTpjMVt3SOdV
Apple Podcasts- https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/eerie-travels/id1669145793

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The infinite complaces people went to and pro fears about
their little affairs, serene in the assurance of their dominion
over this small binning fragment of solar driftwood, which, by
chance or design, man has inherited out of the dark
mystery of time and face.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
On this episode of Into the Fray, I welcome back
on with me, Mark Munsey and Erica Lance, and they
are of course with the podcast Eerie Travels. And this
is part trees of our coverage of their newly released book,
The Dark Side of the Smoky Mountains. Toda, welcome back guys.

(01:25):
So Part one, of course was episode five hundred. Part
two was episode five oh seven. If you want to
go back, And I'll go ahead and say again that
each one of these episodes really just covers a tiny
little grab bag of what is in this book. These
guys really took the time to go down the line
and essentially go to every one of these places. Yeah,

(01:47):
it's a big in. It's a big in, folks, So
so much we do not even cover, even in a
three part series with the Dark Side of the Smoky Mountains.
So I did say hello to you, and I said,
my goodness, you guys have been busy. You've been going
to conferences, signing books, taking photos with the folks. So

(02:07):
and I know that it is essentially conference season. So
anything else coming up that folks could go to, you.

Speaker 3 (02:14):
Got to go to our events page on Erie Travels
dot com because this is what me and Mark liked
to call We're never home season. So full of many,
many things, including the Mothman Festival which is coming up,
Dragon Con. We are actually going to be doing a
couple of live podcasts from dragon Cons, so that's super exciting.

(02:35):
In some of the ballrooms, we have the Tennessee Bigfoot Conference, right.

Speaker 4 (02:42):
We just just had that, just had that. We out
the new book there, so we have to get more
on order. And uh, we've got the yah the North
Carolina it was North Carolina Bigfoot. That's probably by the
time there's airs, that's probably already gone. Uh, but yeah,
just gotta Eerie Travels dot com. You can see where
we're gonna be. It's we had a huge book launch.

(03:05):
We've had so much fun with this, it's crazy and
it just keeps getting wilder and weirder, which you know,
nothing wrong with that, that's part of the fun. And
I think also to go back to you know, we
were the first to do this firstue that I think
way back when we were the first on your Patreon chats.
I think that was me and Carrie if I recall.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
Yes, it was way way back and Carrie was doing
I mean live drawings and stuff. It was it was awesome.
Every time she'd be on, we would be chatting, covering
the stories, and then she would just be I mean
she calls them probably she I know, she's one of
these like, oh, I'm just sketching away, and I'm going
not in ten years of practicing, could I just draw
what you call a sketch?

Speaker 4 (03:45):
Yeah, And she does that in all the books when
people buy them and wear it, events and stuff, she
sketches in them for everybody, if you're there with her
or if you order off the website or whatever. Well,
she always puts the talent in it. And I just
write some gobbledygook words. Oh sure, it's great.

Speaker 3 (04:06):
And I signed the books. I write some too, but
I don't consider the winds gobbily goook.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
No, somebody keep marking yeah, a little bit too much
of the humble pie on mark send there. We are
not called any of your books, Gobbly goook. All right, guys.
Well I went through the last essentially the last half
of the book. There was still so much left that
I had to choose from, and again it was a

(04:33):
little difficult, but hey, I made it happen and whittled
it down. And I would like to start with Church
of the Redeemer.

Speaker 3 (04:42):
Oh yes, this has one of my favorite kind of
ghosts in and Thendriver.

Speaker 4 (04:48):
So that's that was. Now this is in Ashville, and
this is way up high. This almost got flooded, but
it's high enough that it wasn't really in danger during Halleen.
So thankfully Erica and I went to this one on
our actional trip that we did post a lean to
make sure everything was still operational and all that, and

(05:10):
we'd already done the trip before everything. And so it's
built in eighteen eighty six. It's this just beautiful Episcopal church,
very Roman rational, absolutely still it is still operational. It's
kind of in the wood fin area, and it's got

(05:32):
like tiffany glass windows. It's beautiful.

Speaker 3 (05:35):
It's absolutely breathtaking.

Speaker 4 (05:37):
Yeah, there was a big mansion in the area and
this was the the church for it. And then you know,
the mansion burned down, but the church is still there
and it's got beautiful graveyard out back and these big
stairs going down right Erica. That's the ones that go
all the way down to the road.

Speaker 3 (05:56):
Almost it is walk up the marks like we should
walk up the stairs. And I'm like, you can walk
up the stairs.

Speaker 2 (06:03):
Are you guys thinking of the Exorcist? You know, you're like,
you're not. But don't go near those stairs that are
long and dangerous.

Speaker 4 (06:10):
They're into the hill, so it's not quite that clusterrophobic
you get at the edge of the stairs. But that's me.
I wanted to go up the stairs because that's where
the ghost is seen. We've got a lady in white.

Speaker 3 (06:20):
Yes, yes?

Speaker 4 (06:22):
And how many ladies in white have we covered between
the podcast the books?

Speaker 3 (06:27):
Yeah, so many. And I really do feel that the
lady in white is something more than just a specific ghost.
I think it's a kind of entity of some kind,
because every culture in the world has them, and they
usually try to attribute them to this is Sally or
this is this person. But they usually are wearing the

(06:48):
white dress, darker hair. Sometimes they're wet and they're near water.
Now here's the thing. There's a river that runs right
near this church. Show it's near the water, like it
ticks every single box, so that anyway that I could
go on a deep dive on the ladies in white.
But yes, she is a lady in white. But I

(07:10):
love this story from the uber driver who saw her,
which is very funny because it's not like well in
nineteen forty six, because she's been seen for years and
years and years. But an uber driver showed up to
pick up a passenger and.

Speaker 4 (07:29):
Yeah, he's sitting there and he sees this bride coming
down the stairs as he thought just and his quote was,
at first I thought there's just some wedding at the
church that day, but you know, it was a warm
March morning, flowers in bloom and where's it? He said, Oh, yeah,
I'd arrived. No one had left the church just yet.

(07:51):
And I looked up I saw her. She looked like
she was just walking and looking at the flowers as
she strolled right down in front of me and then
right across the road to the French Broad River. He's like,
I was glad nobody was driving by, because he rolled
down the windows see if she's okay, And so she
crossed acrossed the river Gone and his quote freaked out,

(08:15):
and you know, then his writer shows up and he's
just like, ah, ah, don't want you talk about you
know so and then he didn't talk about it for
years until he started hearing more about oh, people have
seen her, this lady in white, this figure. And then

(08:36):
he's like, oh, okay, you know he actually heard her
on a ghost tour. And there are a few great
ghost tours in Nashville, and you know, can't go wrong
with that. That's how we share the stories, We keep
them alive. We doing this these podcasts. It's what it's
all about. If otherwise they disappear, and then somebody sees
it and goes, oh, I don't want to talk about it,
but now maybe they'll come forward and we'll get more data,

(08:59):
more chance to investigate these things.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
So that's pretty cool. So he happened to be Gone
on a ghost tour and he hears this story and
he goes, oh, my gosh, I saw her. I saw
that woman. That's incredible.

Speaker 3 (09:15):
It helps because I think it's really easy for people
to discount experiences like that because there's some part of
your brain that can't kind of register that this event
happened to you. And then when you go to tell people,
if the first reaction is like, ah, yeah, you're imagining things,
you don't ever want to say it again because then

(09:35):
you sound like a crazy person. I'm like me and Mark,
who devoted her lives to sounding like crazy.

Speaker 2 (09:39):
People amen to that. Well, And you know what's funny
is that story almost turned into a vanishing hitchhiker situation
if she actually ended up getting into the uber is
the thought that when she's seen, is it more of
a residual type of a haunting where that's her path
each time?

Speaker 4 (09:57):
Yeah, the only difference is that sometimes she's looking at
flowers and sometimes she just walks down the hill. If
there's no flowers in bloom, just walks down the hill.
So I think there's something there where it's a little
more some cognition of what's going on, but it still
seems more like a stone tape residual. There's stone steps, so
you know, maybe that's part of it, but I'm not sure.

(10:17):
I'm not sure. That's another one I think needs more investigation,
and now that we have it documented, even recently, it's
I think some paranormal teams are going to get out
there in no time just to look into that.

Speaker 2 (10:29):
So how much of her story do we do?

Speaker 5 (10:31):
We know?

Speaker 4 (10:32):
That's the problem. There is no recorded deaths there. There
are no I mean that area, all of Ashville has
got lots of crazy history and all that, but that
particular church, nothing untoward as far as we can tell now.
The mansion there might have hid some things, you know,
it's common, you know, we don't always want to broadcast Oh,

(10:54):
such and such fell down the stairs, or such and
such ran away from a wedding. It sounds like an
emotional thing there. It's not necessarily a ghost a person
died there. This is definitely someone who fled the church
or just left the church, possibly on their wedding day
or something like that. There are tons of weddings, and
there were some reports of you know, whether they got

(11:17):
runaway brides, but just a couple of times.

Speaker 3 (11:20):
She's kind of casual about it. She's not running, just meandering.
And that's why I said, I think the woman in
White is some kind of manifestation of like what Mark said,
like a particular emotion tied to something that creates this
lady in White manifestation. Because people always like I said,

(11:41):
they want to attribute it to a specific person, but
who knows. It could be somebody who's buried there because
a lot of times women were buried in their wedding
dresses and stuff like that in different time periods depending
on when they died and things.

Speaker 4 (11:54):
So you know a lot of people who talk to
us about spotting ghosts and spotting paranormal including one of
my experiences. It was very much like looking at a
black and white photo. And so maybe that's why they're white.
It's just because they're standing out against the thing. It
just they're faded color. It's it's interesting, we don't know
the human perception of this stuff. That's part of why

(12:15):
we want this studied exactly.

Speaker 2 (12:18):
I just love that the it sums up so many
of these types of experiences, the uber drivers just like
I freaked out and an end scene like we all
get that, right. It's just your brain is just trying
to process this, like you were saying earlier, Eric, and
it's just sometimes the synapses are going I can't really
put this into a quote unquote normal box.

Speaker 3 (12:40):
Yeah, well this is one of those ones where Mark
also went, Okay, let's walk up the stairs and we
start walking up and then midway up he goes, so
the ghost is seen on the stairs and I was like, no,
thank you, I'm going to go get back in the car.
You are welcome.

Speaker 2 (12:55):
Yeah, you're like, I need to go and look into
one of Erica's eats and eric To sleeps that we're
putting in the book.

Speaker 3 (13:01):
See you, Yeah, I'll go be there. You let me
know when you're done with the staircase ghost Bill.

Speaker 4 (13:08):
Where's that pub with the new drink that I want
to try?

Speaker 2 (13:10):
Yeah, okay, amen to that.

Speaker 4 (13:14):
I think that's exactly what you said.

Speaker 3 (13:18):
And I'm out. See he tricks me this way.

Speaker 4 (13:20):
So there's beautiful church. It's historical. Let's go.

Speaker 3 (13:24):
It is gorgeous. I won't say, honestly, I didn't get
any like truly negative vibes or anything like. It's very peaceful.
Like it is a very serene, peaceful church. It's it's
not creepy or weird, and it's it's beautifully kept and
they have the original staircase. So I think that's part
of it too, is it's not trying to go through

(13:47):
whatever pattern it goes through on something that was moved,
and I think we run into that a lot of
times when people have redone things in places is it's
weird and the ghost can be seen blah, but that
actually used to be something else right where. This scarecase
still perfectly stone and intact, probably from when they originally

(14:07):
built it.

Speaker 2 (14:09):
Yeah, and open, which is cool. We don't hear that
a lot of times. A lot of times it's just
this dilapidated building.

Speaker 4 (14:16):
And those tiffany glass windows are just stunning. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:20):
Pictures of all of this have been taken by these
guys while they were on their travels for the research
for this book. So you're gonna see photos of all
of these places when when possible, because they don't go
trapesing around and trespassing in areas or anything like that.
So Eric is showing it off.

Speaker 4 (14:38):
At shot from Carrie and then the hardcover they're in color.

Speaker 3 (14:42):
They're in color. Yeah, if you get the hardcover, the
entire inside of the book is in cover.

Speaker 2 (14:47):
Color color b E A beautiful Okay, Next up, guys,
Highland Hospital.

Speaker 4 (14:53):
Yeah, oh wow, I'm good.

Speaker 3 (14:55):
I can hard pass on this one. No, just kidding.

Speaker 4 (14:59):
This is of our producer from our podcast bo. This
is like her favorite thing in the world is the
great Gatsby. Yes, if you ever want to make Bo happy,
send her a copy of The Great Gatsby. She collects.
It's got a bookshelf of nothing but different versions of
The Great Gatsby. So so we're going to tie into
Great Gatsby here. So, yeah, this was originally founded as

(15:21):
Doctor Carroll's Sanatorium in nineteen oh four and doctor Carroll
there he had moved to Asheville and it was the
Highland Hospital suddenly in nineteen oh nine and that's you know,
was renamed to that and he was he gave Duke
University his hospital and his treatment program for addiction and

(15:45):
mental illness and you know, just other disorders like that,
and it got people from all over the world to
come to this place. It was internationally famous.

Speaker 3 (15:55):
And there's a lot of what's interesting about North Carolina
is there's a lot of sand panetariums and stuff like
that have been like this has been. And we mentioned
some others in the book where this seemed to be
the area and like the way the eastern part of
Tennessee to create this, and I think it's because the
weather's amazing.

Speaker 4 (16:14):
Yeah, No, North Carolina, Yeah, Eastern Tennessee. Uh, North Carolina
and western North Carolina. There's a lot of hot springs.
There's a lot of sulfur springs, and everybody thought, Oh,
that's gonna heal you of all your tuberculosis and all
your other problems. And so all these wellness centers open,
these sanitariums, all that all over the mountains. Now their

(16:35):
most famous guests. Nineteen thirty six, Zelda Fitzgerald. She checks
herself in because she's had exhaustion, and her husband have
Scott Fitzgerald, and he also checked her in a couple
of times because of nervous exhaustion, and she'd been hearing voices.

(16:56):
She wrote a novel, What Saved Me the Waltz, and
that was kind of autobiographical of her. And she was
and was their state at a couple of clinics just
outside Baltimore. But now she's here. What happened in Uh.

Speaker 3 (17:11):
There was a fun storry with how they decided to
staff this hospital. Yeah, they made very poor choices.

Speaker 4 (17:21):
Yeah, doctor Carroll, he had some very questionable practices.

Speaker 3 (17:25):
He did. Didn't also staff it with patients.

Speaker 4 (17:29):
Yeah, he hired cured patients, ones that were you know,
they turned him into staff members. I'm assuming it was
just a cost effective strategy. But this guy also did
like electro shock, the insulin therapy, all the terrible things.
But now his staff it's the most The infamous Willie

(17:51):
May Hall, she was a Knight supervisor at the hospital.
She would the ones she didn't like. She would give
a double set it if too because they were the problem.
People don't want to deal with this one. Let's give
it a double sedative and then lock them in their room, which,
as we will know, is not a good thing. So

(18:16):
March tenth, she has a break in many ways. Oh
she's cured, well apparently not. She cut all the phone
lines in the building, then went down to the kitchen
and starts a fire because it's the dumb waiter and everything.
It spreads instantly to the rest of the hospital. It's insane.

(18:42):
And many were locked in their rooms because the one
she didn't like, so they couldn't get them out. So
nine female patients totally sedated, probably slept through a big
chunk of it, but yeah, they died. They were only
able to identify Zelda because her slipper were her famous

(19:04):
slippers that she wore there, and they figured out it
was Zelda Man it was just bad. So Duke University
they kept the property. They rebuilt a big junk of it.
Kept until the nineteen eighties and now it is a
recovery home for teens and young adults. So now only

(19:24):
direct family members are allowed to go there. You cannot
go ghost hunting in this place, but the neighborhood is
still there and you can go out to the park
outside it, and that's where Zelda is seen, and she

(19:45):
is out walking her dressed in a robe. She looks
like some just lost elderly lady. Had people go up
to her, and this is the thing. When they go
up to her, she's kind of like talking to somebody
not there, and so people think, oh, she's, you know,
got an issue, some sort of you know, mental health issue.

(20:07):
But then she just she'll look at him and she'll
try to talk to you like she's trying to remember
you or something, and then just gone fades away, like
literally tunes out. Nobody says just a blank. Like most
these stories we hear they blink an eye and they're
just gone vanish. This is a fade away.

Speaker 3 (20:29):
Well, she's going to leave in dramatic fashion, as she'd
agree it with her Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
So obviously when she's talking to these folks, she is,
she's quite solid. She's not see through or anything to
indicate there's anything strange going on until she starts to
fade out.

Speaker 4 (20:49):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (20:49):
Yeah, wow, that's like that.

Speaker 4 (20:50):
Everybody walks right up to her, not realizing anything amiss.
They're just worried about this lady walking around. And now
Asheville has a strong population ofeople and of issues and
you know, financially, physically, mentally because we had the hurricane
destroyed a lot of businesses, so there are a lot

(21:10):
of displaced peace yeah, trying to find new homes and
trying to just make ends meet. This was part of
the opioid epidemic right in this area too, so there's
a lot of issues with that, and that's why it's
so nice that Highland Hospital is now Highland Park and
the area to help these people. But that also means

(21:31):
there's a lot of people just wandering around, so that's
what they just think, Oh, this is just some lady
that you know, might need help. I'll give her a
few bucks, I'll bring her a sandwich or a drink.
And then she's just not quite And part of me
is wondering if there's some temporal displacement here, like she's
having conversations with somebody in the past and trying to
figure out what's going on in the future. That might

(21:52):
be part of her problems from back then, is that
she was slipping through time a little bit. I like
to think that's my little theory on it, but you know,
no science on that. That's just my Again. I think
it's literally well and worry about.

Speaker 3 (22:12):
You know, she was such a prolific figure and it's
a horrific tragedy to have something like this happened to
somebody like that. But I think it's fascinating when you
encounter something multiple people have encountered her, and like I said,
kind of like hitchhiking ghost it appear very solid until
they disappear and we've wet stains and cars and stuff

(22:34):
like that. She very much seems like she's having a conversation,
and then it's almost like she thinks you're somebody that
she should know, like maybe a nerve or something like
that that would normally help her back to the hospital
to treat or exhaustion. One thing I will throw in
here is the the they do no longer do the

(22:55):
electric shock and all the other treatments that we're not
really good treatments for anybody. They view modern help for
people with addiction. But if if you want a little
piece of The Great Gatsby, you can find it there
in Aashville.

Speaker 4 (23:13):
There's a lot of Scott Fitzgerald stuff in Asheville. The
Jackson Building has the memorial to him, and even his
father's stuff's there too.

Speaker 2 (23:22):
So I wonder if it's at the point when she
asks for something or is offered something physical, if she's
ever tried to reach out and take that, or you know,
if that's the point when the whole thing just just
fades out of out of reality or at least perception
that the person is seeing right wherever.

Speaker 3 (23:45):
Samp out, because she'll do that. Bo our producer will
go camp out Great Gatsby. See if you can get
it signed by her bow. I think that would be great.
Any of the copies you want to bring.

Speaker 2 (23:55):
Like, imagine that signed by ghost That would be pretty
incres That would be another first that you guys should
definitely try and tackle. Go Bo All right, Eric, so Erica,
you're up. This is one of yours, and we've done
this every episode, I've picked a sleep or an eat.
There's Erica Sleeps, Erica's Eads. Where each one of these

(24:15):
locations either has an amazing food or drink item that
might be tied to something strange, or the location, the
land or the building itself is haunted, or it has
a creature something along those lines. So the one that
I chose in this edition is in Waynesville, North Carolina,
and is the Scotsman Public House.

Speaker 3 (24:34):
Oh, I love the Scotsman. Give me some Irish food
every day of the week, Irish Scottish food. Huge fan.
What is amazing about this place is that it's in
an old bank building. So this was an original bank
building in Waynesville, and they take up the bottom floor.
But I will say this, they have left this building

(24:56):
so in the way it was the original old floors,
the original walls, Like yes, they're updated bathrooms and stuff,
but even the layout, like when you go in you
can see where the offices were and where the tellers
were and stuff like that. It is amazing. They have
fantastic food and drinks, but there are also some visitors

(25:19):
there and they don't necessarily attribute it to a specific thing,
but you can absolutely tell you're not just dining with
humans when you're there. And I will say this is
somebody who's had you venture into the ladies' restroom. There's
definitely somebody there waiting for you as well.

Speaker 5 (25:39):
That's it.

Speaker 4 (25:40):
I highly recommend the Shepherd's pie and the fish and
chips there. Oh my gosh. And the ghost we heard
about was like a Mason, like you have the ceremonial
Mason robes and we'll walk through. But there are no
records of this ever being a Masonic hall or anything
to do with the Masons. But we all know that
Amazons would come around to buildings, especially big, big buildings

(26:05):
with lots of solid foundations, like a bank like that,
and so maybe there was some ceremony or something attributed there. Again,
no idea who this guy is. There's no documented history
of anything like strange happening in the building itself. Again,
records are kind of spotty in the area. But it's cool.

(26:28):
It's an amazing place and it really the way they've
themed it. You really do for like your overseas in
the UK and having a great time.

Speaker 2 (26:39):
Hey, that was pretty good.

Speaker 3 (26:41):
Pretend you didn't do that anyway.

Speaker 2 (26:45):
So Erica, would you mind sharing what happened in the bathroom.

Speaker 3 (26:49):
So when I went to the bathroom, there are I
think three two or three stalls that you go into.
A lot of the bathrooms you'll find in North Carolina
are like family bathrooms or stalled bathrooms or you know,
single bathrooms. So when you go into this bathroom, I
was sitting there. I'm not going to describe that part.

(27:11):
Nobody needs to know. But I heard somebody talking and
I was like, oh, okay, maybe, and then I went
nobody opened the door. It was empty when I walked in,
and you could hear the doors open, and nobody opened
the door.

Speaker 4 (27:25):
So I heard.

Speaker 3 (27:26):
Talking and then you know, finished up. But before I
flushed the toilet, I opened the door and nobody was
there and there was talking and it stopped when I
opened the door.

Speaker 2 (27:38):
That's cool. Yeah, Well did you think it was cool
at the time? Probably not.

Speaker 3 (27:42):
You're like, it was not ominous. My biggest thing is, like,
I don't like a lot of Unfortunately, a lot of
hauntings have a lot of tragedy, a lot of heavy
emotions attached to them, a lot of negativity. Like when
you talk about places like the hospital where people were
sedated and electro shocked and locked up, and you know,

(28:04):
you get a lot of heaviness. There's just a residual
left over negative emotion, and you don't get that in
this place. I mean you can tell other things are there,
but I didn't get that. But it was very interesting
hearing this, like little chatty conversation. I couldn't make out
what they were saying, but I was like, wait a minute,
the door didn't open. Oh cool, cool, cool, this is awesome.

(28:25):
And then checked and anyway, I was alone. I use
that term very loosely, using quotation marks because I didn't
think I was very alone. And then I was like, okay,
I'm done, wash my hands, go to sit down. My
husband's like, are you okay, and I'm like, yeah, just
hoping whatever's in the bathroom doesn't come home with us.
Chatty Kathy there.

Speaker 2 (28:46):
I mean, you guys, that's a good point, you know.
I mean, I mean, Mark for years has gone to
really strange locations and as far as taking things home
and trying to avoid doing that, has that ever happened
to you?

Speaker 5 (29:03):
Erica?

Speaker 3 (29:04):
Oh oh yeah, no. See unlike Mark, who behind him,
if you're looking at the video, is a doll that's
sitting on the chair. Yeah, that's more than a doll
right there. We spotted it when we both went to
this antique store. He did rescue that doll. It has
a whole separate story. However, he will bring these things

(29:25):
like clem over there that's left over from his haunted house.
He uh, yeah, So Mark is totally willing to bring
these things home. I think he relied a lot on
the fact that Carrie used to be sort of a
loadstone and things wouldn't happen around her. That has since changed.
I have an iron necklace that I wear all the time.

(29:46):
I have different you know, rocks and gems and stuff
like that that I take with me. I'm very very
careful because it's very easy for things that come home,
and I had a lot of experiences with that when
I was younger. So now I'm like, nope, and if
it gets too negative, I don't want to go anywhere
near it because I don't want it to come home.
And I also just don't want to absorb that energy.

Speaker 2 (30:08):
Yeah, yeah, I can understand that. I mean, it sounds
like another book, huh, Erica Erica's Younger Years.

Speaker 3 (30:17):
How to be Terrified as a child in the sixth sense,
be real life.

Speaker 2 (30:20):
Oh gollies, Yeah, you're probably enough of that, like to sleep. Thanks?

Speaker 3 (30:26):
Yeah, No, I remember when the first time I heard
I See Dead People and I was like, yeah, no,
I don't mean to watch that movie.

Speaker 4 (30:32):
That is my life.

Speaker 2 (30:33):
I know, the whole thing.

Speaker 5 (30:34):
Thanks bye.

Speaker 2 (30:38):
I'm I don't know if I'm going to butcher this boojem.

Speaker 3 (30:43):
Boojum oujim.

Speaker 4 (30:47):
Oh my favorite, my spirit animal, that's the Barton Booger.
Have I been so happy with a critter?

Speaker 3 (30:59):
Erica?

Speaker 4 (30:59):
Do you want tell? Which version do you want to tell?

Speaker 3 (31:01):
I want? I want to I'm going to tell him
that whot nanny do you want to tell? So what?
There are so many stories up here when you talk
to the Cherokee about them trading with the Old Man
of the Woods and Bigfoot and stuff. They didn't call
him that, they called him the Old Man of the Woods.
But there's a lot of stories about trading and stuff

(31:25):
like that. So we happened upon a story where both
the Cherokee and the settlers agree with this story, and
it is about a big foot and old Man of
the Wood to Sasquatch whatever you want to call him,
And there was a lot of gem mining up in
North Carolina. A lot of people might not realize, but
that ruby. There are a lot of ruby mines and

(31:47):
stuff like that up in North Carolina. This particular bigfoot
would trade with the miners and they gave him a
straw hat so people wouldn't shoot at him, thinking he
was a bear something coming out of the woods. So
it was like a floppy sort of hat. He would
bring moonshine for the miners. Now after he got them drunk, though,

(32:10):
he would then slip gems into his moonshine jugs and
take them away, so you know, payment acquisition very clever.
I give this guy massive credit. But he had a
girlfriend and one of the stories, one of the legends
is he had a girlfriend named Annie who worked at

(32:32):
a local hotel that's actually was near what's called the
Balsam Inn now, but that hotel that Annie worked at
burned down. And what they would do is he would
come and come into the basement part of this hotel
and she would call to him by hooting to call

(32:53):
to let him note it's safe to come in. They
believe that this is where the term hooton Nannie came from.
So he was amazing, and he did that. He also
traded with the Cherokee, but I'm going to let Mark
tell that part of the story.

Speaker 4 (33:12):
So the Cherokee also not wanting to shoot this wise
man of the woods, the furry traveler. I like that
term for him. I'm not going to even attempt the
Cherokee words. That's why we have Kathy Little John help
us out, and a few other Cherokee elders help us
with that in the book. Make sure we spelled him
right and did him right. Yeah, and the Boojum they

(33:37):
gave him a medicine bag so that way they would
note that he was a safe man to travel and
could go into the Cherokee lands, especially there were so
many tribes and they didn't want him to. Oh this
tribe's not happy with this tribe, but he can go.
He's allowed. So he was allowed traveler. Now, the thing
about him is the story with them was that it

(34:00):
wasn't Annie that he was into. It was a princess,
a Cherokee princess from one of the tribes, and they
told him he could only come when he had enough
gems to court the lady. They didn't want to mess
with that, so the princess of this tribe though, had
either white man descended or something because she had white
hair or blonde hair, depending on the story. So again

(34:24):
he got the gems. The story goes he stole them
from the miners again, or actually he traded with the
miners because they were going down to town to get
the moonshine. So still got the moonshine element, which I
love and saw as the settler element. So these two
stories have mished a little bit, the only difference being
the girl being a Cherokee and Annie. Now, the Annie

(34:45):
story has kind of a sad ending in some of
the stories where the hotel manager got tired of this
creature under their house and the visitors were upset, the
guests were upset, so he went down and took care
of business, and that's what ended the boojum. And that's
why Annie still goes out hooting to try to find him.

(35:06):
And that's her spirit out there hooting. And I think
that's an explanation for bigfoot calls, the you know, the
whooping and all that, as the bigfoot hunters do that,
this is maybe they're still out there now. That again,
back to the Cherokee version, though they he was able
to woo the girl. He was able to bring enough gems,

(35:28):
and the Cherokee chieftain let him marry the priestess or
the princess, and then she and he have descendants. And
those are supposedly the white things, the gray back bigfoot
or the white haired bigfoot, and those are common in
this area. How many sightings do we get in North
Carolina the Smoky mountains? Now, the scientific people like to say, oh,

(35:53):
it's because they're developing the white hair. They've evolved the
white hair and the gray hair to blend in with
the smoky mountains, the smoke and the and the mists
that are so common here that the trees produce. That
would make sense, because we don't really get a lot
of snow in this area. We do up in the mountains,
but these guys are usually seen in the valleys and
stuff like that, around the river beds. Most recently, one

(36:15):
of the sightings was on the road to Highlands, which
is just about five minutes from my house, and the
not the hell of forest. We get a bunch of
sightings there, and again they're kind of the grayish or
silver back.

Speaker 2 (36:29):
It was.

Speaker 4 (36:29):
One guy described it as a silverback gorilla. He thought
I'd got loose from a circus and then people told
him that might be a big But he's like, I
didn't even put two and two together. So I love them.

Speaker 3 (36:42):
I love that animal Moonshine.

Speaker 4 (36:45):
Loves whiskey, and that's that's Erica's dream, and and I
just like, I'm just saying we might be a player.
There are a couple of parks near Waynesville, uh that.
There's the Boojum Brewery Ericas eats and drinks. Oh my gosh,
they're good food and all that. Yeah, Carrie drew the Boujum,

(37:09):
so we'll make sure we get you that illustration Shannon
for the for the episode. Man, it's just it's such
a cool story and all that, and then it tying
into the white things. I don't think we could get
better for that.

Speaker 3 (37:24):
Anybody who comes up with the Moonshine to get gems,
I don't care how we went about it. Just kudos
to them.

Speaker 4 (37:32):
Yeah. Yeah, black Rock Mountain is supposed to be his territory.
And there's claw marks on this one rock in your
Pinnacle Park that look like claw marks. It's just you know,
it's like a fissure down the side, and everybody says,
that's his mark, that's his trail, that's where the Boujum's
territory is. If you go up past that, you're in
Bujum territory. So you know, Boojum boogieyman, it's a term, but.

Speaker 3 (37:56):
Yeah, but he's our favorite and yeah, close close to
my heart JEMs.

Speaker 2 (38:04):
I knew I had to pick that one the second
I began reading it. I didn't know right off the
bat what it was about, but the second I realized,
I was like, well, this is one of my choices.
And this next one was actually really an easy choice
as well, because anything having to do with vampire and
vampire lore I am all about. Even on my last

(38:27):
Patreon live chat, we covered urban legends and there was
a specific vampire legend and a specific graveyard that I
talked about, and this one is called the Jarrett House Vampire.

Speaker 3 (38:42):
Yes, yes, And I just have to throw this out
there because I'm sure he's watching Stacy Brown Twilight Vampire's
Heart to Face. That's ongoing, okay, jareded House Jared Houses
in Dillsborough mean him have an ongoing battle, and I
like to call him out publicly whenever humanly pops. So
the Jarrett House is in Dillsborough, which Dillsborough is a

(39:05):
little small town that is a railway town. It was.
There's a lot of railway towns up here, and that
happens to be one of them. The Smoky Mountain Railroad.
We talk about that a little bit in this book
as well. You can ride the Smoky Mountain Railroad to Dillsborough.
Or it's right outside of Silva and outside of Cherokee,

(39:26):
which is an adorable town. But the Jarrett Inn has
been there how long? Mark, When did it first get built?

Speaker 4 (39:35):
Uh? Jeez, that's crazy of the eighteen eighties. I want
to say eighteen nineties. It's been there a long time.

Speaker 3 (39:46):
And it was absolutely a hotel along this railway line.
And it's right now, I will say this. New owners
have purchased it. They're redoing it. I think it's opening.
It's either open and are opening very very soon. But
they're doing some beautiful restoration jobs, so very soon this
will be an Erica Sleeps where you can go and

(40:08):
stay the night at the Jared Inn. But let's talk
about vampires. So there are many vampire lures, as you said, Shannon,
from everywhere New orleans'n Leans is one of the big places,
but it's you know, vampires were very much considered sort
of demons, demons, you know, as this creature of the night.

(40:29):
But Mark tell the story of how they decided there
was a vampire at this inn.

Speaker 4 (40:36):
Yeah, this is again we go urban legend territory, as
we like to say on our show. We go in
the way back machine to seventeen eighty eight. So the
Alfred family moves to Dillsborough. It's a doctor and he's
got his family there and they were apparently European royalty

(40:58):
and everybody like tiny town so happy to have a doctor.
That did not happen in the seventeen hundreds, even the
late seventeen hundreds, and not in rural North Carolina. And
they are just so happy we got a doctor. We
still were war with the Cherokee, we're war with everybody.

(41:18):
We don't we're still the British. Sure, still in the area.
War of eighteen twelves coming. They didn't know that, but
you know, and there were lots of outbreaks and stuff.
So they were just so happy that this guy there.
But the story goes that the minister's daughter in town
was very, very sick, and then she just dies instantly,
no like the lingering, not a lingering disease overnight, and

(41:41):
they find the classic puncture marks in her throat, so
we know what that means. And then the minister's wife
saw a shadow figure in her bedroom, so the posseesta
form we got to kill us a vampire, right, that's
just there's no other excuse for this. So the town

(42:06):
is now plagued by this darting shape and people dying
right and left, and one kid says, it's you know,
this one is attacking his family, and when the you know,
the grandfather is like, oh, it flew up over the mountain.
So now parents, sisters, families, kids, everybody's dying and the

(42:31):
black form is all over. But then somebody sees it
go into the Alford house. So now when they go
to chase into the Alfred house, Doc Alford steps up
the door and he's like, nope, nobody inside, and then
the Sheriff's like, no, we're we're investigating. We're pretty sure

(42:52):
somebody saw going here. You know, we're not going to
get a warrant, because before warrants were coming.

Speaker 3 (42:57):
In, I was going to warrence. There were I'm coming
into your house.

Speaker 4 (43:01):
Like, yeah, an angry low what are you gonna do?
So so the docks tied to the tree, he's fighting
and all that. Go inside, and apparently the upstairs bedrooms
there's nothing there, none of the family's sleeping up there.
So then they go downstairs and the base you know,
the house level is empty, what you know, how's the doc?

(43:25):
Where are they sleep? And where's his family? But in
the basement they find the coffins and missus Alfred is
right there. So they're all vampires, right, Noah, And so
they according to this not staked through the heart because
predates all that. They hang them and then burned the house.

(43:49):
Now the story is the doctor's house is where the
Jarrett House was built on the remains of the burnt
down house. First, there's some issues with this. Dillsborough wasn't
a town in seventeen eighty eight. There was no railroad there,
there was no nothing. The railroad wasn't built. And the

(44:09):
holes in the neck, the whole sleeping in coffins that
didn't come out till much much later. There was no
There's just no way right that this is. This is
not oral stories of vampires at the time. This is
totally an urban legend. This has been made up so much.

(44:30):
The city wasn't even founded till eighteen eighty four. I
think the Jared House was just after that. So now
there are no records of any house being there before
the Jared House was built. There are no records. And
then the Jared House originally was the Mount Beulah Hotel
and it was for the railroad. That's it. I don't

(44:52):
know what else to say.

Speaker 3 (44:53):
Yeah, I will tell you if you when you go
to Dillsboro, because I heavily recommend it. They have amazing shops,
they have amazing area to eat, stuff like that. You
will see when you see the Jared House. Why we
say this isn't This isn't a place you go and
just build your house like it would need to be
part of something like this railroad thing. This is not

(45:14):
where you'd put a town like this was a railroad stop,
a training stop at depot. The train station is still
there and it's now a restaurant in a brewery. So
and the train where the tickets were taken and stuff
like that. There's a little restaurant in that place too.

(45:35):
So when you see it, it's amazed, but it's creepy
and there is absolutely something there, just probably not vampires.

Speaker 2 (45:45):
Okay, So last, but certainly not least, we have the
Leech Place. I hazarded to go the last, but not Leach,
the Leech Place.

Speaker 3 (45:55):
But last night, that would have been perfect. Last, but
not Leach.

Speaker 4 (46:00):
I see what you did there.

Speaker 5 (46:02):
Yes, you guys. I love that.

Speaker 3 (46:04):
So I'm just going to start off with you because
I mean, leeches, I get it, and the whole medical
thing and blah blah blah server purpose. You know, we're
on Channing Tatum's butt in that movie with Sandra Bullock.
But Mark talk about this ridiculously large, terrifying creature and

(46:26):
where we one can find it?

Speaker 4 (46:28):
Okay, Well, you go through the Smokies. As the book goes,
you know, we traveled up through Cherokee and all the
way around, and we're on our way back through North
Carolina heading back towards Tennessee, and you're deep in the Smokeys.
You're right in the Cherokee between the Cherokee National Force
and not the Halla National Forest. So generally you take

(46:49):
the chaerilhol Of Skyway, which is a combination of those two.
But you go through the town of Murphy. Murphy has
a lot of cool stuff. They have a great little
museum there, the Museum of the Cherokee, and that has
the statue of the moon eyed people that is infamous,
that looks like gray aliens and all that. But they

(47:11):
also have a riverwalk, this beautiful little riverwalk, and it's
it's a couple of miles and people are jogging it
and all that. But if you go this one spots
bend in the river, there is a sign that says
the Leech Place. I love obscure cryptids, as we know.
I love weird history as we know. So I was like,

(47:34):
what is this and digging into it. It was James
Mooney was this guy who was one of the first
documenters of these settler tales and Cherokee tales. He would
talk to these Cherokee storytellers and write down their stuff.
But well known, this guy like to embellish and make

(47:57):
them a little more, you know, give them that rip
like our old great friend, the late great Charlie Carlson
and all that. So who did weird Florida? One of
my mentors. But anyway, he did this and he wrote
about this tale about the Cherokee. There's this ledge in
the water, and when you're there you can see it.
It kind of just it's almost like a mini waterfall

(48:20):
in the river. It's like a break in the river.
And story goes that this is the area you could cross.
This is if you got across the river. This is
the ford because that break. So I just stay on
the right side of it. You're good. But what they
said was the Cherokey hunting party saw this just big
red thing laying in the river. It's kind of like

(48:40):
down a little bit of a hole there, and they
could see down in this deep hole and then the
thing just kind of like smoothed down into it. And
what happens is they get close, they realize it's unrolling,
it's becoming this big, long thing, and that's when it
sprays up foam or boiling water and it splashes right

(49:03):
where they were standing. Thankfully they had just gotten out
of the way. But they realized that's how this thing
washes people down and it could eat them. And they
realized it looked like a giant leech, and so that's
the term, you know, the leech place comes from that.
Supposedly several people fell victim to this. So then Mooney

(49:25):
sends people there to investigate because he's not gonna go
and then apparently they say, yeah, it's there, we saw
the thing, and apparently when they started reaching out started
asking people about it. There's a nearby town of Notley
and they have a leech place where this thing apparently

(49:45):
travels through some sort of underground river underground tunnel to it.
Now it's got that marker there. It's faded. You almost
don't see it when you walk by because it's been
scratched out so much, but it's there. Yeah, So if
you want.

Speaker 3 (50:02):
To go leech hunting on an epics today, this might
be the place for you. It's interesting to think because
it wasn't just one person running into it or something
like that. It's been so many people running into it
to the point they put a warning sign basically going
don't go here. This is a bad place to cross, right.

(50:24):
So it makes you wonder what that is because in
the past, you know, giant squids didn't exist. Giant squids exist,
so a giant leech could be a legitimate thing, unfortunately
for everyone involved.

Speaker 4 (50:39):
Now, the the debunk of that is when the water
is low, there is a mineral vein down there that's
kind of reddish red and white maybe, but I think
the Cherokee would know the difference between rocks and uh,
you know, and a giant leech.

Speaker 3 (50:54):
And our leech.

Speaker 4 (50:56):
Yeah. Storyteller, the two Jerkey story store retellers that we
checked with on this said oh, yeah, no, that's there.
That is the thing and it and the the you know,
and said just be careful of the cannibal spirits that
live in those waters too. So we we we didn't
dig into that too much, but we're like, okay.

Speaker 2 (51:14):
Is enough.

Speaker 3 (51:16):
Eric is staying out of the water completely in that area.

Speaker 4 (51:20):
And Eric Eric was like nope, nope, But I was like,
cannibal spirits. Yeah, I kind of draw the line there. Yeah,
I'm okay with open on this one.

Speaker 3 (51:28):
So yeah, Mark mad for a note.

Speaker 2 (51:31):
How many notes can you pack into one area?

Speaker 5 (51:34):
Right?

Speaker 2 (51:34):
And this whole up chuck situation, it reminds me a
lot of Jeff Goldbloom in the Fly, how he has
to prepare things before, you know.

Speaker 3 (51:44):
Okay, I think none of us good visuals.

Speaker 4 (51:52):
We're all like, good morning everyone. Anything that can burp
up boiling water is probably anyway, So no real need
for that either.

Speaker 2 (52:03):
So yeah, no, thanks, big big note on that one.
I agree Erica totally triple has triple stamp the double
stamp on that one. Yeah, we're gonna go and do that. Well, guys,
I mean that culminates all of our party talk with

(52:23):
this book, hopefully as it sounds like there's another one
coming and then another triple stack on this triple stack
for that book. So please let everyone know where to
find you guys, the podcast and you know, the book
and all of all of your books of course, Mark,
what you loveingly said yesterday was gobleygook, which is goblelygook

(52:45):
in and of itself to say that.

Speaker 3 (52:48):
Well, I will say you can find almost everything at
Erie travels dot com. We list all of our events
where we're going to be. There's links to buy the book.
You can buy it personalized off at each travels dot
com or go to the publisher's website, which is the
number four horsemen dot com. And my dogs just notified

(53:10):
us of a giant leach approaching. You can you can
find us the book at the number four horsemen dot com.
And you can find our podcast anywhere podcasts are listed,
including YouTube. You can see some of the videos. More
of those will be coming out from US and Mark's
books you can find at Cracker Barrels and Walgreens across

(53:32):
the entire Southeast region. Or you can go to your
local bookstores and your local anywhere books are sold or
libraries and request the Eerie Travels Books or the Mark
Munsey Eerie Florida, Creepy Florida, Freaky Florida, and Erie Appalachia.

Speaker 4 (53:53):
And yeah, that's that's you can find us just about anywhere. Gang,
that's the easy way to do it.

Speaker 3 (53:59):
So yeah, and uh we we we Shinnon always like
to say something as as we're wrapping our show. So
I don't know if Mark wants to throw that in
before you wrap.

Speaker 4 (54:12):
Oh yeah, no. We like to always just give a
little summary of things. And uh I usually do a
quick little you know, as you're traveling. Just be careful
when you're walking the roads and looking down to those
deep hollers, just keep your eyes open, you know, document
anything you see and as always, always be careful of leeches, vampires, ghosts, bigfoot,

(54:37):
dark aggy, so many monsters we talk about in this book.
And we'll see you on the other side.

Speaker 6 (54:48):
Well, I'm so and so I was given this name
by my parents business. I was under college and I've
done these things in my profession. I'm producing at the block.
That's something for story. That's all gone, that's all passed.
I want to see them, really you who are now?

Speaker 3 (55:07):
But nobody knows.

Speaker 6 (55:07):
Who learning is because we don't know ourselves except who
listening to oaracters and consulting our members. But then that's
a really And then again it's a spect this questions
who are you?

Speaker 3 (55:27):
That is?

Speaker 6 (55:27):
I mean, we shall see how they play with the success. Well,
buy the cots to get you to come out of
your show and find.

Speaker 7 (55:38):
Out it's gonna be really hard.

Speaker 5 (56:01):
It's it's it's.

Speaker 8 (56:14):
It's steps, it's it's put its aspects puts.

Speaker 7 (56:58):
People for example, are quite divided on us.

Speaker 6 (57:33):
They will say, no, we don't believe literally in reincarnation
that after your funeral you will suddenly become somebody different
living somewhere else. They will say, reincarnation means this that
if you're sitting here now, are really convinced that you're
the same person at the.

Speaker 5 (57:54):
Door half an hour ago, you will be recoming. If
you're liberating, does have a children.

Speaker 7 (58:02):
The past?

Speaker 5 (58:03):
That's an existence the future doesn't existence. There is alt
in the present.

Speaker 3 (58:09):
That's the wily Wanim of the.

Speaker 6 (58:11):
Ins send Master, don't get space in s.

Speaker 7 (58:16):
Spring does not become susse.

Speaker 6 (58:20):
Because there is some sense and then there is springs.

Speaker 5 (59:13):
It's that's.

Speaker 8 (59:24):
That's post.

Speaker 6 (01:00:14):
Ts has the same ideas four more Days, where he says,
when you settle down in the train, you can read
your newspaper. And so you're not the same person.

Speaker 4 (01:00:27):
That while I go to live in the platform.

Speaker 6 (01:00:30):
If you think you are, you are linking your moments
up in the check. And this is what buys to
the wheel of both when you know that every moment
which you are is the only moment. This counts in
deser and the Master will say from somebody, I can't.

Speaker 3 (01:00:49):
Have a walk across the rock.

Speaker 6 (01:00:51):
And he can't be back, and he says, where are
you up with me?

Speaker 5 (01:00:55):
They've gone?

Speaker 6 (01:00:57):
So where are you?

Speaker 3 (01:00:59):
Who are you?

Speaker 4 (01:01:00):
When we are asked wholly all, we usually

Speaker 6 (01:01:02):
Give a kind of recitation of an instrums ins