55: Local Folklore And Strange Encounters With The Paranormal w/ Eric Freeman

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On today's episode Dylan and Laura are joined by Podcaster and Aspiring Author Eric Freeman to discuss local folklore stories and strange encounters with the paranormal.

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Episode Transcript

(00:02):
So I'll walk out to the teamin the hallway, and I looked to
my left. I'll walk down therejust to check on the patients, and
at the end of the hall Isee this tall, skinny guy, young
guy in the all black suit,standing at the end of the hallway staring
at me, and then he justsmiles and turns and left and walks into
the space ground. Thanks for joiningus on this episode of Creepy Unsolved.

(00:34):
Tonight we have Eric Freeman on fromthe Unseen Paranormal podcast. He's had a
lifetime of paranormal experiences and he livesin the central of Appalachia. So tonight
we get into some of the folklorestories and hometown legends. All right,
guys, before we begin, Iwant to invite you to visit our website,

(00:55):
Creepy Unsolved dot com. It's yourone stop shop for all our podcast
episod so, YouTube videos, andCreepy Unsolved blog. Would you like to
support the show, You can doso for just two dollars a month,
less than a price a cup ofcoffee. Visit our Patreon link in the
show notes. Oh and I shouldalso mention that we now have a five

(01:17):
dollar tier on Patreon, where youwill get ad free content and bonus content,
so be sure to look for that. And one last thing. If
you have a story you want toshare with us, to be featured on
the show, or just want toshare it in general, reach out to
us. Our email is Creepy UnsolvedMedia at gmail dot com. Now,

(01:38):
with that all out of the way, let's begin. Hey, what is
up? Eric? Welcome to CreepyUnsolved. We're happy to have you on
here tonight and to learn all aboutTennessee and some folklore that's local there.
How are you doing, man,I'm good. Thanks for having me on.
Eric. Hey, Laura, Now, you guys at a podcast episode

(01:59):
together before too, didn't you.Yeah, I'm just yet. Sorry,
go ahead, No, I wasjust gonna say that. Yeah, I
recorded with Laura a little while back, but I don't think the episodes out
yet. No, I've totally beenslacking on that. I've been doing all
this the Creepy Unsolved first. Oh, I see, sorry for holding you
down. It's getting tough here.I'm sure that'll be a great listen when

(02:23):
that does come out. So Ilook forward to listen to that. I'm
sure everybody else will too. Now, one of the stories that I'm familiar
with. I'm not not too familiar, I guess, but one that you
hear when you think about Tennessee.Besides like all the Dennis Martin stories and
all like the Missing Person and theSmoky Mountains and all that stuff, you

(02:44):
hear the story of the Bell Witch. And I'm sure you know, growing
up in Tennessee, you've heard everydifferent angle, every different detail about this
story. So I thought that'd bea great spot to start off with if
you want to share that. Yeah, there's been so many movies made of
the Bellwitch. And the Bell Witchis Adams, Tennessee, which was a

(03:04):
little bit north of where I livein Middle Tennessee, probably about forty five
minutes down where I live. It'san interesting place because they have the Bell
Witch Cave. Now, the Bellfamily home is long gone, and there's
the Bell John Bell and his wife. They're still buried on their property,
but the graves are hard to find, so nobody's really keeping them up.
And kind of the cave now.They used to be able for tours all

(03:25):
the time when a different owner ownedthe property, and now it's been closed
for like COVID for the past fewyears, and I don't know if the
owners is gonna open it back up. They have a Bellwitch Fall Festival coming
in September of this year where theydo a play that re enacts the story
of what happens to the Bell familysupposedly, and for anybody that doesn't know,
just a refresher. The Bell family, they moved on this land and

(03:46):
they kind of settled this area ofMiddle Tennessee, and they're one of the
founding families of Middle Tennessee. Buttheir daughter became possessed, is what they
thought. She was having convulsions andspeaking in tongues and changing her voice,
supposedly, and so the focalore,I think is kind of it's encompassed all
this stuff over the years, andof course Hollywood hasn't help that, but

(04:10):
um, and it supposedly came fromJohn Bell, the father. He had
a disagreement over land and like theproperty marker with a lady and people thought
that she was a witch. Andso the thinking is that she cursed the
family, and so the daughter washaving all of these possession type things happened

(04:32):
because of this curse. And there'sno real evidence to back in eat this
up. Yeah, Also, yougot to think back in the eighteen hundreds
when this supposedly happened, they didn'tknow, you know, what mental illness
was, like bipolar and things likethat, schizophrenia, and so a lot
of things just sound like when youget down to it, it sounds like
the daughter was schizophrenia. And youknow, schizophrenia typically doesn't show up until

(04:56):
later in teenage years, early adulthood, and so that's about the time that
this all started happening to this girl. And but Hollywood has made it to
where you know, she levitated andall this other stuff that really doesn't show
up in the focal but it's kindof evolved like a lot of other stories
because it's kind of like the telephonegame. And the one piece of evidence
supposed evidence, and I say thatwith air quotes, is that people want

(05:18):
to back it up and say thatAndrew Jackson went and saw the bells during
this time, but there's no historicalrecord at all to back that up.
And actually, one of my friends, Brendan schuck Snyder, he's the host
of Southern Gothic, He actually meand him were talking about the Soja.
He actually talked to an expert who'san expert on Andrew Jackson, and he

(05:38):
asked them that specific question, didAndrew Jackson ever go to the Bell Farm?
And this guy who's dedicating his life, he's a he has a PhD
in history, he straight up saidthere's nothing in any Andrew Jackson literature to
say that he ever went to theBell Farm or had anything to do with
the Bell So it's one of thosethings that it's just it's become folklore.
One of the things that I dobelieve about the cave that is in Adams,

(05:59):
the Bell would Cave that was onthat property, they found, uh,
there's box stone box graves in therefrom Native Americans. And one of
the things I've heard my whole lifeabout the cave is that if you take
a rock out of the cave oranything out of the cave, it brings
you bad luck. So the ownersof the cave, and this is this
is completely true. The owners ofthe cave receive have received over the years

(06:23):
all of these rocks back in themail that people have taken, and people
taken arrowheads, and they've sent themback in the mail because they believed as
soon as they took it they hada car wreck or somebody died or you
know, something bad happened to them, so they sent them back in the
mail, and so that's become itsown kind of folklore. Yeah. Yeah,
I've heard a couple of different placessimilar stories like that. Like they

(06:43):
would go out hiking, whether itbe on a you know, a national
park or land like that, andthey'd pick up something that they were told
clearly not to touch, and thenyou know, events like this, like
dramatic events happened afterwards that scared theliving shit out of them, and they're
they're as quick as I can tosend the thing back to where it came
from, hoping that that alleviates anybad juju that they absorbed. Now,

(07:06):
I wanted to ask about the cave. Is this cave connected to like one
of the mass underground cave systems thatstretch across the United States, You know
anything about that. The bell WitchCave is not a really deep cave.
It's pretty shallow. When you goin to take a tour of it,
they have all like old iron barsacross it to keep you out. But
when they're not done tours. Butwhen you go in there, the cave

(07:27):
is not it's not like and itis a you know, North Middle Tennessee
kind of towards the Mammoth Cave system, which is one of the biggest,
if not it maybe be the biggestcase system in the world, but it's
not connected to any of them.Yeah, it's it's a pretty shallow cave.
It's it's kind of something you wouldsee in a movie, like when
they just build a cave in theside the hillside, you know, and
the people walk down and it's reallyshallow in the floor flat. That's kind
of how it is in the BellWitch Cave. But yeah, it's just

(07:48):
kind of become in the in thetown of Atoms, it's just kind of
become their tourist trap, their touristattraction. And I think there's something to
the cave itself being haunted, butI don't think it has anything to do
with the Belle Witch or the Bellfamily. I think it's if anything's haunting
it, it's the Native Americans thattheir graves were disturbed and continue to be
just everybody do tours and stuff,and there people taking arrowheads and things like,

(08:11):
Oh, you can only imagine justmessing with the resting the spirits that
are trying to rest. Yeah,we got a couple of different tourist traps
from you know, my hometown,and you know, one of them was
a local folklore until it was discovered, and it was like, it's called
the ice mine. And I know, when I first started talking to Laura,
she sent me no video of oneof the podcasters we follow when he

(08:35):
visited the place. I'm like,oh shit, that's right down the road
for me. I'm like, honestly, it's it's nothing special. Like this
guy probably drove five hours to comesee it, and if he was as
disappointed as I was when I sawit, I feel really bad for him
because what it is, it's calledthe ice mine, and there's there's a

(08:56):
whole story behind it. You know. Me and my brother were reading about
it the other day. But essentiallywhat is interesting about this ice mine is
in the wintertime, the ice meltsand in the summertime it's frozen solid,
and like when you hear about this, it sounds fascinating, so like it's
something you have to see. Yougo out Ice Mine Road, but you
drive out there and it's like aback road through the woods, and you

(09:20):
drive up a little like dirt drivewayalmost, and you come up to this.
It's pretty much a shed. It'slike a four by eight shed,
and then there you go inside andyou're like, from the outside, you
think you're gonna go down in thismine shaft and there should be like freaking
ice crystals hanging from the ceiling andship and a big ice block. But
you go in this shed and ithas like a like a gate around the

(09:41):
hole in the floor, and youlook down in it's like a big ice
cube. I'm like, what,like, you pay like some ridiculous like
twenty bucks tickets. No, Iwish ask you if they charge tickets,
And I'm blown away by twenty dollars. I don't know if it's twenty dollars
might be, but it wasn't worthit to me. I mean, I'm

(10:03):
sure to some people it is.It is a cool thing to see,
but like the build up is whatreally draws you in. Yeah, when
I went, they had like ateenage kid like giving the tour. Like
you almost feel bad for him becausehe's like he's talking it off. You're
standing outside, You're ready to goin, You're ready to see this thing.
And then you go inside and hestill has to talk all about and

(10:24):
you have to look at him witha straight face, and you're looking into
he's cube in the ground. I'mlike, holy shit, but yeah,
I can see the build up.Like you said, the road is even
named that. Yeah, And soeven driving there, you're like, oh,
it must be something grand because theroad is named after it, after
it, you know. Yeah.But what me and my brother, we

(10:46):
were getting into our local folklore andwe visited a couple different spots last weekend
with their spirit box. We're messingaround with that, trying that thing out.
But we were reading through like newspapri articles and old accounts of local
folklore, and it talks about theice mine and it talks about like our

(11:07):
areas really populated with Native Americans onetime. So it tells stories about natives
going out into the woods and comingback with silver and ore and different stuff
like this, and speaking of thesedifferent ice mines like in the mountain side,
and I guess this isn't the onlyone. There's like different ones spread

(11:28):
out through you know the four systemaround here. These natives would come into
town and tell these great stories toall the you know, the white folk
about these different ice mines and thesedifferent caches of silver and stuff, and
they weren't able to find it untilmany years later than they turned into a
tourist attraction. But then we havethere's another local folklore legend about a native

(11:50):
girl named white Lily. And there'sa lake up a place called Andrew Settlement,
it's called Rose Lake. And inthe middle of this lake, every
year there grows a patch of whitelilies. And the story behind that is
it's it's it's pretty in death thingand to tell the whole thing, but
pretty much, she got chased outby you know, a group of men.

(12:13):
They came to her home. Theyslaughtered her husband and her child,
and they pretty much wanted to marryher off or whatever, and she ran
out. She was known for beingone of the best swimmers around and she
swam out into the middle of thelake and she drowned herself. And where
she drowned, every year it growsa patch of white lilies. So that's
on my bucket list of place tovisit coming up. Like I've I've always

(12:33):
you know, fished this lake grownup, but I've never heard that story,
so I want to check and seeif that's actually there. And there's
a there's another place it's called Devil'sDen where we went last weekend. It's
not it's not associated with Gettysburg oranything. It's just a local place called
Devil's Den and that's up in Ellisburg. I just got a book today,
actually got two books. It's ait's two different volume. It's called Forbidden

(12:56):
Land, Stories of the Black Forestand then talks about the family, the
Ellis family who founded Ellisburg and thehusband and wife they had. Like I
just read the story today. Thisis the first time I actually came across
this, and it ties into whathappened last weekend. But this family kept
having mute children. They couldn't speak. They're you know, they're born mute.

(13:18):
But there I guess their parents arereally spiritual before spiritualism was a thing
around here, and their children apparentlyat psychic abilities and they could talk to
angels. And it goes on aboutthese different encounters with you know, spiritual
beings and stuff they had up inthis area. And the father of the
family, Ruben, he actually wentmissing in the wood just randomly one day.

(13:43):
So it's really cool. I justdiscovered that, and I really want
to dig into what happened, youknow, last week and with the spirit
box, we went up there andwe're using that and we parked at Devil's
Den, and my brothers had differentexperiences up here too. When he was
working up their fracking and stuff watchingor I guess him and one of his
friends watched like a they said,a girl in white run through there.

(14:03):
They there's a spot up there's abunch of piles of rocks up there,
and there's a little cave within theserocks, and there's like a bedspring like
tucked down in this cave. They'veseen different orbs, different you know what,
looked like glowing eyes and stuff outhere. And when we went up
there with our spirit box last weekend, we parked at the entrance because it
is, you know, posted land. I didn't want to drive out there

(14:26):
with my wife's vehicle, but wesat there with our spirit box and we
kept picking up voices on there tellingus to come forward, come to us,
drive down this road, and thenwe had other voices warning us to
back away, leave, get outof here. And at one point we
were talking back and forth and Iwas asking, you know, where are

(14:46):
you from? It said Sesquehannah,which would be part of our four system
around here, which is is fuckingmind blowing. But like, this is
all tied together, and I reallywant to sit down and dissect what we
picked up in the spirit box andwhat we picked up from these stories and
see how many different stories we cantie together. But yeah, I sent
Laura this earlier today. It's it'scool to see how all this local folklore

(15:09):
may line up with paranormal investigations andstuff like that. Yeah. Yeah,
and like and talking about the billWitch here in Tennessee. I mean you've
had I think ger and some ofthe other places and some of the other
TV shows have been there. Butyeah, I think for the bill Wich,
it's definitely paranorum activity going on there. I just think the bill Witch
story is a croc a shit.Yeah, I could. I could see

(15:33):
how it would be. You know, it started out and probably some minute
story, some you know, likeyou said, it could be a story
of someone suffering from mental illness andthe Hollywood Eyes did over time, or
you know, just local gossip andstuff like that just thrown together and build
it into a big snowball effect,into something a lot bigger than what it
actually was. Yeah. Yeah,but I also think it's interesting, like

(15:56):
you were talking about, how youknow it leads you into the anormal.
Even these stories, these folklore stories, whether they're true or not, there's
there's always some truth in there,especially with the paranormal connected in There's always
some truth and so to go there. And it might not be the exact
story that you've heard causing the hauntingor whatever, but people probably really have

(16:17):
experienced stuff. Yeah, I'm sureof it. Now. What kind of
other stories do you have, youknow, growing up in Tennessee, maybe
some more local teth we have thestory of the White Bluff Screamer. White
Bluff is a little bit of townabout twenty minutes from me, and I
actually have some family that live liveon the road where the legend started and
there it's it's one of those weirdfocalore stories where there's like five different stories

(16:38):
that are attributed as the White BluffScreamer. The main one is that on
this certain road in this town ofWhite Bluff, that if you you drive
past this white lady walking like alady in white walking down the road,
when you pass her, you'll chaseyour car screaming at you. And that's
the biggest one. And then butthere's also been stories of like a white

(16:59):
big foot type creature that screams ofpeople. And then the other big major
story was that this family had movedinto that they had built this cabin back
in the eighteen hundreds and the cabinis still there actual you can actually go
to this cabin. And they kepthearing the screaming in the woods. And
it was the mother, father,and two or three kids, and they
kept hearing the screaming in the woodsevery night and it was kind of driving

(17:21):
them crazy, keeping them up allnight. So the father finally got tired
of it, so he decided togo in the middle of the night with
his dog hunting dogs and with hisgun. He's gonna go find out whatever
this is and he's gonna take careof it, because he was driving a
family and saying they're not getting thesleep, you know, nothing like that.
So he goes out in search ofwhatever this is that screaming keeping in
the family and doesn't find anything.Kind of his dogs sniff it around.

(17:45):
They kind of take him around inthe circles and he comes back to the
house a few hours later and hefinds that his entire family had been slaughtered
by what would look like an animal, so like they're animal blights and scratches,
and the screaming still continues. Youcan still hear the screaming on some
knights in White Bluff. So Ihad a feeling it was going to end
like that when you said he cameback hours later. Yeah, So what

(18:07):
they think the derivation of the WhiteBluff screamer is one of the explanations that
I heard is back in the nineteenI think it's nineteen twenties and thirties,
a circus train. Actually, thisis real history. Your circus train actually
derailed in the town of White Bluffright outside of the town, and a
bunch of the animals got loose,and so they think it was actually like
a white lama or an alpaca thatpeople were seeing because they kind of screamed

(18:30):
like that too. They can makethat screaming noise, and so they think
that's kind of where the story camefrom, and it got mashed up with
this other story from Hall Springs,but that people also call Werewolf Springs because
of this werewolf creature story killing thisfamily. So there's also another story that
when the train, the circus traincrashed, the wolfman who was in the
freak show for the circus got looseand killed a bunch of kids. Oh

(18:53):
my goodness. There's all these differentdifferent folklore around this one story, and
it depends on who you talk towhat the White Bluff Screamer is. Um
even ore of familiar with Ken Gerhart, the Cryptozooghart. I talked to Ken
about this when I had him onmy show, because I found it in
one of his books, and I'mlike, oh, yeah, it surprised
me that he had that story inhis one of his books. But the

(19:17):
story that he had gotten from alady, it was an eyewitness encounter.
She's the one that encountered the whitebig Foot. And but yeah, but
I found it crazy because you know, Ken is from Texas, so he
does lots of his cryptos all thesestuff in Texas and kind of out west,
and so I was surprised to findthe white White Bluff Screamer story in
one of his books. Yeah,it was a white bigfoot. She uh,

(19:37):
the lady If I remember the storycorrectly, The lady fell asleep in
her car at this um this popularswimming hole that I've been to when I
was a kid, and I guessshe got too drunk or something like that,
because there's a party spot too,and it's this creek and stuff you
know that run you can swim,And so she stopped in her car and
she woke up the middle of thenight with this big white creature in front
of her car like screaming at her, and uh, needless to say,

(19:59):
she started a car and lest.Yeah, but yeah, Ken Gerhard,
that was an eyewitness account of thewhite bluck screamer. Oh my god,
that's amazing how far these these storiestravel. And I wasn't going to ask
if his version was from Texas,but it sounds like it was in Tennessee.
Yeah, white bluf Tennessee. BecauseI know a lot of a lot
of these stories you hear, likethe Lady in White, the cry baby

(20:22):
Bridges, the suicide bridges, differentcovered bridges stories, a lot of them.
Like they'll have the same theme,but people will tie them to like
a local spot that everyone's familiar withand kind of turned it into their own
local folklore. Yeah. Another bigone, another big one that I've heard
that all over Tennessee, not justTennessee, but kind of all over the

(20:44):
country. And I've even seen iton TV reenacted on some of the Haunted
TV shows is the if you parkyour car on the train tracks, these
kids that were killed, but whenthis bus got hit by the train will
push your car over. That folkloreis everywhere and people claim, oh,
that really happened here, when youwill find no evidence that any busload of

(21:04):
kids ever got killed all those traintracks. Dude, I remember, yeah,
I remember playing sports and every timeyou went across railroad tracks until you
look your feet and you're supposed totouch the screws like on the side with
your something. I don't know.I played field hockey for like a hot
second and we would do that.But anyways, peristitions that tie into that

(21:26):
and how you protect yourself against likestories like that your car getting pushed off
the track or onto the tracks orwhatever. Yeah, the ghosts of the
kids who get hit by the train. I remember listening to old art bell
stuff from like the nineties where peoplewould call in and they would tell those
stories and it was just meat listeningto art learn about it. But oh

(21:48):
no, go ahead. The Ladyand White stories are all over the world.
They're everywhere. Yeah, yeah,and I don't know, I wonder
if it's just that's the way thatwe see that spirits. Yeah, yeah,
I don't know, because, yeah, the Lady in White is pervasive.
I mean, there's so many places, even in England and Ireland,

(22:08):
like some of the really like oldcastles thousands of years old, to have
lady in white, famous lady inWhite stories and haunting and then to go
back to the stories that have likemore than one what am I trying to
say, like more than one origin? Yeah, thank you. The Bunnyman
Bridge in Virginia. I was goingto do an Easter special for my podcast

(22:32):
with my friend Aaron. We didthe whole thing and it came out really
good, and then stupidly I listenedto it afterwards and his audio was terrible.
I couldn't save it. I hadsomeone else look at it. They
couldn't. They're like, you justgotta scratch it. But anyways, that
that story has like five different thingskind of reminds me of Airs on Halloween,
where transporting people from this asylum thatwas in the woods by bunny Man

(22:56):
Bridge that apparently there actually was noinsane asylum, and one of the prisoners
got out and they went in theforest and like slaughtered all these rabbits and
skinned them and hung them up bythe bridge. And then there's another one
where there was a couple in thecar, you know, doing what young
kids do, and he like skinnedthem or something and hung them up by

(23:19):
the bridge. A crazy story,some more gruesome than others. Yeah,
And there's always like like the bunnyMan Bridge, Like there's all across the
United States, they are these differentfolk tales of train trestles, like the
train bridge. There's always like there'sa goat man legend about train trestles here
in Tennessee, out towards Memphis inWest Tennessee, there's a pig man legend.

(23:44):
And the guy was supposedly really lived, and he had something happened to
him that caused his face to bedisfigured, and he lost his nose and
so he looked like a pig theway that his nose was gone. So
you know, it's just like andso they called him a pig man.
And now he's supposedly haunted the MerrimanShelby Fourth out towards Memphis in Westenessea.
And but he supposedly really lived,and then he also guess people made fun

(24:07):
of that, he become a reclusein the woods. He would also kill
you know, teenagers out making outin cars and things, and so like
it's just turned into this big thing. And the guy probably really did live
and probably had this horrible accident thatdisfigured him. But now this whole folklore
of him haunting these woods and doingthese terrible things to people when he probably
wasn't a terrible person. Yeah,we have a similar one. Yeah,

(24:30):
you're going to the green Man,is what you're gonna say, right,
Pittsburgh. And I can't remember ifhe was a factor your work or whatever
he might have been, but hehis face got disfigured, right. It
was something like that they were climbingon um I think like telephone poles or
there was like electric wires, andhe like fell down and I think he

(24:51):
got electrocuted. I should look thisup before I keep rambling on. But
it was something like that. Likehe was young when it happened, and
nobody wanted to be around him,so he was horribly disfigured. And he'd
go out at night and he'd walkbecause then he could be outside and nobody
would make fun of him, whichis really sad, and apparently he was
like a nice guy yea. Andyeah, like you said, you'd walk

(25:15):
at night, so it probably hecould walk around and show his face,
you know, yeah, he's gettingmade fun of. I doubt he even
left his house. I don't know. But like you hear all these because
this is a good example because we'refrom different parts of Pennsylvania, but we've
both heard of this story, andwe both heard different you know, background
information about it. Like I couldhave remembered that he was disfigured, like

(25:38):
a factory accident something where his facewas burnt. You know, I thought
this was later in his life,but you know, some people here it's
earlier in his life with the electrocutionor something like that. But yeah,
the whole idea was he would walkaround, and they made him into like
a monster, like he was stalkingpeople on the streets of Pittsburgh at night.
But he's really just this, youknow, probably this mental giant who

(26:00):
you know it was, you know, castadelt from the rest of society just
because of his disfigurement. And youhear a lot of different stories like that,
you know, the pig man,like you're saying, and you know,
they make these people in the monstersjust based off their appearance. Yeah,
there's a there's another legend that Iresearched, like we were talking about
before we started recording that I'm workingon a book small Town Haunts and Legends,

(26:21):
Tennessee, and there's a legend ofthe lady named Sadie Baker, and
she was supposedly a witch. Andthe story goes that she came into town
and she was like really beautiful womanyoung well it's probably in her twenties,
I guess, kind of the storylike she was younger but really beautiful,
and this family took her in becauseshe was poor, and they took her
in and the one of the daughterswas set up to marry this wealthy guy.

(26:45):
Well, they kept the the beautifulgirl, Sadie Baker hidden and wouldn't
let her girl out of their housebecause they were trying to marry off their
daughters and the mom was worried thatshe would take the attention away from her
her daughters, who weren't as prettyas this girl. Well, the rich
suitor of this one daughter I sawSadie Baker and fell in love with her,

(27:08):
so didn't want to marry the other, the younger daughter. So the
mom went to the preacher of thetown and told the preacher that she was
a witch. And the reason thatshe was so beautiful is because she had
cast a spell to make herself beautifulso that men couldn't resist her. And
so they drug her out of thepeople's house and buried her alive. And
to this day you can visit hergrave and it has her name Sadie Baker

(27:30):
on it. And I forget,forget she yelled out, only she didn't
say anything the whole time. Shejust yelled out one thing, and I
forget what it was. But Isupposedly buried her alive. The story has
been true, been proven by historiansto not be true. Whatsoever. Sadie
Baker like was the widow of likea World War One or a Civil War
soldier or something. You know,her husband got killed. But this whole

(27:51):
folklore about her being a witch,and this whole story has blown up around
this lady and it caused her death. Working wild is the power of voice,
dude, and you know, manipulationand what can happen? Like could
you imagine being buried alive because falseaccusations and she's like that, Holy shit,
that's like, that's like one ofmy worst nightmares. I got in

(28:11):
claustrophobic. Yeah, but also ifI mean for the mother to know that
she could go to the local preacher, you know, just just accuse this
girl of being a witch, andthey believed her in the whole town,
like you know, mob isn't drugger, you know, to bury her alive
or whatever. Yeah, we gotup here. We got a different tombs

(28:32):
with cages around them. I'm sureyou've seen them more. Yeah, I
heard about those. Just with thetombs to thought about. I think it
goes back to like vampire lore ormore of zombies and stuff like that,
just protecting, you know, peoplefrom the undead. I've heard a lot
of different stories, you know,even up the East Coast and stuff like

(28:55):
that about people being staked, Yeah, where they were buried just because of
it, like a vampire or scare. There's that. The first one happened,
was it Rhode Island. I believethe girl oh my gosh, I
know her name, but I can'tthink of it. They resumed her by
check to see if she was avampire, and they had her during the

(29:17):
winter. And the fact that herblood in her heart congeum thing because it
froze meant that she was a vampire. It was just like the dumbest thing
ever. Yeah, and like whenstuff like this happens, you got to
think of it before, like modernmedicine and understanding right anatomy and how the
body. You know, you dohave your well educated people, I'm sure,

(29:41):
but like for mass population, likethey don't. They don't know that,
you know, how the heart worksand blood and yeah, that's kind
of what I remember. The bodywas preserved because it was over the winter
and when they dug it up islike she was in pristine condition, so
you know, automatically they thought shewas going out at night as a vampire
her and doing whatever. So theytook it upon theirself to exhume her body

(30:06):
into steak her heart. Now,do you have any crazy stories like that
down in Tennessee. No, Tennesseekind of was founded after the you know,
witch trials and things like that.But up in New England, Tennessee
was found in seventeen ninety six,so it's a little it didn't share in
that scare in the Focalore. Alot of the settlers to Tennessee were Irish

(30:30):
and they're the ones that kind ofsettled in the Appalachian Mountains. That's kind
of where you get country music from. It originated Appalachian Mountains of these Irish
immigrants coming over and bringing their musicwith them, and that's where some of
the instruments evolved from, like thebanjo and things like that. But so,
you know, in Ireland you reallydon't hear stories about vampires and stuff
that that's typically like Mortin than Germanyand kind of down in that area.

(30:53):
So yeah, Tennessee kind of wasa little separate from the witch trials and
vampire stuff. I've never heard ofanything like that. There's a few,
like Frankenstein tight stories in a city. My buddy Allan Searcy actually read about
this one of his books. Butthere was a doctor who whenever they hung
people back in the eighteen hundreds andFranklinton to see he would actually try to
revive them. He would take them, he got permission to take the bodies,

(31:17):
Yeah, take the bodies back tohis office or whatever, and he
would electrocute the body and try tobring back to life. And one guy
he actually brought back to life aboutfive minutes. He got his heart back
beating and stuff referre they hung him, so I'm guessing they probably didn't break
his neck when they hung in.They probably you know, suffocated him to
death. But that's why he wasable to bring him back. But the

(31:38):
guy didn't live any anywhere past fiveminutes. But yeah, this doctor used
to be kind of like doctor Frankenstein, and it was kind of around the
time that like Mary Shelley Frankstein cameout in the eighteen hundred. Oh,
so I'm sure that's scaring the shitout of people, just that idea.
Now with it. You mentioned,you know, Irish people settling in Tennessee
and stuff like that. Is therea lot of like face story down there

(32:00):
for Irish folklore related stories um outin the Appalachian Mountains in East Tennessee.
There's definitely lots of faye and fairystory um, lots of that stuff.
There's also one of the big things, which is surprising me to when I
found this out, there are lotsof people in Appalachia that still uh worship
like Viking gods and some of theold gods of the old world, um

(32:22):
like Odin and things like that,and they kind of mix it in with
Christianity, but they worship yeah,Norse and Viking gods and they kind of
like Heathen Heathen r Yeah yeah,is that that's the religion, right,
Heathen or Yeah? Yeah, that'sinteresting. Now they see in like a
lot of will the whist fell therein the woods, a lot of hings

(32:45):
had and weirdwarbs and stuff. Yeah, there's all kinds of stuff in East
Tennessee and Appalachian Mountains, um,Appalachia, Appalachia in general, because Appleachian
Mountains run from New England alway downto northern Georgia, so you get lots
of stories. There's a stories ofblue people in Kentucky, which was interesting.
Um, yeah, I've heard aboutthem. Yeah, and they actually

(33:05):
just it's a genetic condition. Nowwe know with modern medicine, but back
when they were around, um,people didn't understand that they had this blood
disorder that caused them to look bluebecause they were missing a certain enzyme in
their blood and so the oxygen.The way that your your blood cells work
is that you know, you haveiron in your blood, so that auction
and connects to iron, basically makingrust and that's why your blood is red.

(33:28):
Well, these people had were missingan enzyme for that, so they're
there. They didn't have the enzymefor the rust reaction and the iron,
so their bodies carried the auction alittle differently. Well, when the doctors
finally figured out that, okay,well this is what's going on, that
it's a recessive trait, and theywere kind of some inbreeding I think within
the family. And I'm not talkingabout like, yeah, yeah, I

(33:49):
don't think it was like brothers andsisters, but I think it was like
cousins because they're from like, youknow, Appalachia and Kentucky, and so
their gene pool wasn't really deep.And so since you know they're they're getting
with family members and having kids,then they already have this gene and so
then when the when the two familymembers get together and have a kid,
the gene becomes dominant stead of recessiveand caused them to take on a blue
appearance. But the story in thestory, the doctor who figured out finally

(34:14):
figured out what was going on withthem, whenever he gave them injections of
the proper enzyme, he said,they turned back to normal color right in
front of the face within ten second. That's amazing. Yeah, because they
were like they were like blue,like smurf blue. Like they were it
was very visible to see, likeyou could pick them out of a crowd.
Like it wasn't like like a hueof blue. It was like this

(34:36):
is this guy's blue. And thescience behind that just giving them the proper
enzyme and just you know, flushingright up. Yeah, but yeah,
people thought that there were some differentrace of humans or something. Of course
they were kind of outcast because theywere different than than other people. But
but yeah, as soon as theyfigured it out and they gave them the
proper stuff, they fixed them.I think it was back in the seventies

(34:58):
when they finally figured out what wasgoing on them, because it's not a
it's a rare genetic disorder. AndI'm sure they thought they're like some alien
race or something. Yeah, yeah, like it was probably really hard to
fathom why they looked like that.Now do you do you have a lot
of like UFO sightings down there?Do you have any good stories about that?
Not in my area that I've everreally heard. Um, I'm not

(35:21):
using UFOs kind of ghosts or myor my forte in the paranormal world and
that's where a lot of my researchhas gone into. Yeah we have we
have moufone in Tennessee, But yeah, I haven't heard of any really good
UFO sightings around here. Now,you mentioned you you do a lot of
research and the paranormal. Do youhave a lot of like experiences that drive
this paranormal research. Oh? Yeah, I've experienced my whole life. The

(35:43):
first experience I ever had when Iwas eight years old that I can remember.
When I was eight years old,what happened there? I was asleep,
um, and I was a weirdkid that always wanted my door shut
for some reason, that's always howit's comfortable. Most kids like with the
doorcraft or or opener, you know, but I always wanted my door shut.
And so I was laying in thefoot of my bed faced the door,

(36:04):
and I woke up in the middleof the night, satrap in the
bed and looked at the door,and the door was wide open, and
there was a glowing lady sent himand I jumped up and slimmed the door
and turn the lights on. Holyshit. Yeah, you know myself,
me and my brother grew up andwhat we would call a haunted house.
It was a Blue House when wegrew up in there, grew up in
and it's no longer blue, sowe keep referring to it as that.

(36:25):
It's like, dude, we reallyneed to go back with the spirit box
and see what we can pick up. You know, this is all new
to us. I ain't a practiceinvestigator. I don't have a lot of
background in and I had some experienceswith the paranormal besides that, Like,
it's all new to me. Butwhen we grew up there, we had
a lot of We had some disembodiedvoice experiences, some you know, your

(36:50):
your usual creaks and cracks. Hesaw some shadow people later in life there,
we messed around when I I hadto be around like twelve years old,
we messed around with calling the deador we either had a WEIGI board.
I can't remember at that time,because there's been different times where we
had AUGI board trying to communicate andthen just sitting around like almost like a

(37:15):
sand style. But was twelve yearolds. You know, helpever you figured
out how you watch TV and you'relike, oh, I'm gonna try this.
But I watched paint formulate on thewall when we did that. Before
I watched it fucking run down thewall. Uh. You know, I've
been up late at night, youknow, on the computer, and like
I've I've heard people say my namelike in my ear, like you almost

(37:37):
feel the breath in your ear,like shooting. When me and my brothers,
my grandfather were out at the movies, my mom heard someone come into
the house like probably half an hourbefore we got homed. So she's like
hollering downstairs, Yeah, I'm uphere, blah blah blah, how's the
movie? In silence like nothing,She's like, what the hell come downstairs
and there's no one here, Andyou know, she's like she told me

(37:58):
this later in life, you knowthis, you know, pre pro out.
Then we showed up a half anhour later and she's like, what
the fuck was that? Different?Stuff like that? Now, does your
paranormal experiences continue through your life?Then that's what you kind of alluded.
Yeah, Yeah, I was adoptedabout my grandparents, so I kind of
grew up taking care of my grandparentsas they got older. And when I
was fourteen, my grandfather passed away, and that kind of kicked me in

(38:22):
the ass to start investigating. Andthis is when this is before any of
the TV shows. I didn't knowthere was such thing as a ghost hunters
that people actually went out and didthat. Me and my friends just started
going because after my grandfather died,I wanted to know. I wanted to
prove to myself that there's something beyondus, that he went somewhere else and
it wasn't just the end. Andso we started going to some of the

(38:43):
local cemeteries and trying to see whatwe could see. And then there was
a there's a plantation in Franklinton thesea that we used to sneak into.
And I always say I don't getknown trespassing on, but I was a
teenager and me and some of myfriends would go there and we experienced lots
of at that plantation. This isactually haunted and it's it's even been called
the most haunted house in Tennessee.Unfortunately, they don't do any paranormal stuff

(39:05):
up there at all. They're strictlyhistorical. But it's a beautiful place called
Carton Plantation. It was actually aCivil War hospital during the Battle of Franklin,
and there's still these ginormous bloodstain thewood floors in the house. But
I saw a lady pull the curtainback and poke her head out the window,
and she was as solid as meand you and looking at us.
And I stared right at her forprobably ten fifteen seconds, and then she

(39:27):
curtain went back and she was gone. And there's nobody there. I mean,
it's a historical site. This islike three o'clock in the morning.
One of my friends was walking inthe garden area and they have pea gravel
in the pathway so you can hearsomebody walking behind you, and he thought
one of our friends was behind him, and he got to the end of
the path and turned around, andabout three foot from him was a Civil
Roial soldier that was reaching out tohim, and then he just disappeared.
And that friend refused to ever goback there after that. We were walking

(39:51):
across this field. The way weused to get onto the property is would
we'd sneak in. There's a thereused to be a golf course right next
door, and so we would parkat this golf course clubhouse and we would
hop this little three foot fence intothe cemetery where a lot of the Civil
War soldiers that died there are buried. And then we go out through the
gate and that's how we got onthe property. And there's a field in
between the cemetery in the house.It's probably one hundred and fifty yards and

(40:15):
they hadn't mowed it, so thefield was about knee deep. And we're
walking back across there after walking aroundthe house and nothing really happened. The
nine two of my friends about tenthfoot behind and we hear this horse,
Winny to our left and here galloping, and you know, we can hear
their horses hoofs hit in the ground. And my friends are like, are
you hearing this? And I'm like, yeah, I hear it. Like
I said, they're tenthot behind me, and all of a sudden, I

(40:36):
feel this cold breeze, like sadelectricity go through me. And on my
right side you can see the grassmoving in a straight line, and still
hear the horse. So my friendscome running up to me and they're like,
did a ghost horse just run throughyou? Is that? What?
What the fuck just happened? AndI'm like, I don't know what to
tell you, Like we heard thehorse, saw it go out the other
you know, we didn't actually seethe horse, but we saw the grass
moving out the other side and keptthe in the you know hoof sounds and

(41:00):
the horse sounds just kind of fadedoff into nothing. That was a pretty
crazy experience. Yeah, I havehad similar experiences with you know, a
place as Historyed and Blood. Therewas a place that we used to go
growing up. You know, we'dall jump in my buddy's astro van.
We thought it was the coolest thingat the time. You have like a

(41:20):
it's like a mini house in there, you know what I mean. And
we would go up to this placeabout forty five minutes from us, and
it was called ski Wing, soback in like the seventies eighties, around
that era, you know, asthe ski resort. And sometime in that
time frame, I can't it's beenso long, I can't remember the exact
dates, but this group of robberswent up there and you know, they

(41:42):
shot up the place stealing money.I guess there's a big save with a
bunch of money thereafter, but they'reshooting people off ski lifts, out of
the lodge and all this stuff.They slaughtered a bunch of people up there,
and we'd go up there all thetime because we knew it was haunted.
Right, We've had a lot ofdifferent experience is there. One time
and went up there and we're sittingin the van, and you know when

(42:05):
you're sitting a vehicle, over time, like the windows fog up. We
watched the hands like formulate on theoutside of the window like someone was around
touching it. We've got out ofthere before and walked around and we've listened
to people like almost sound like they'rerunning, like scattering the woods. They're
fleeing from something. But other timeswhere like the or the vans sitting there

(42:28):
and like the car alarm goes off, we run back to what we get
in. We've had weird stuff happenedat the radio there, like all these
different weird stuff, so like stuffrooted in deep history like that. There
has to be something yeah, alsoup there at that plantation as as recently
as a few years ago. Iused to be a wedding DJ and I
used to DJ karaoke as a sidegig because I worked in MS for fifteen

(42:52):
So if you work in MS,you probably have moreland job. But in
anybody out there that's a metic theyknow that's true. And so my side
gig it was always DJ and weddingsand DJ Kurt. So anyway, I
dj the cousin's wedding at this plantationwhere when I was a teenager, you
sneak up there, and I've beentelling my aunt, I'm like, up
here at night, you can hearwhat sounds like cannon fire and gunfire and

(43:12):
people yelling. And it's in themiddle of a modern city, but it's
on the like historic side where theyroll the sidewalks up at eight o'clock,
you know. And we're there afterthe wedding and the reception and we're breaking
everything down. It's about ten thirtyat night. We had to be out
there, I think about eleven,and all of a sudden, bam off
in the distance. It just echoedand it sounds like cannon. My aunt
is like, did you hear that? And I'm like yeah, And then

(43:34):
you hear what sounds like gunshots.And this was in I think my cousin
got married in like September, soit's not like it was around fourth of
July or anything. And yeah,you just hear like all this commotion and
stuff and it comes and goes,and it's pretty crazy how it's you can
hear all the time. So Ithink it's one of those things that residual.
So it's kind of been printed onthe environment because the Battle of Franklin
happened on the front lawn and thehistorians who study the Civil War they called

(43:58):
the Battle of Franklin the five BloodyHours in the Civil War because so many
people have died in just five hours. And so but yeah, that place
is just steeped in history, andlike you're saying, it just leaves us
mark on this place. And thefact the house still has blood, you
know, blood stains in the floorfrom these people who had amputations and probably
died, and you know that hasto carry some sort of are Now you

(44:19):
mentioned being in the ms, Sohave you had any paranormal experiences there?
Not working on the ambulance really,because working the ambulance in the ear,
you're going to focus more. WhenI first started out in the medical field,
I was a nurse's aid and anursing home and had lots of experiences
at this place. The wing thatI worked in was a locked down Alzheimer's
gena. So what that means isyou have to have a code to getting
out of the doors. They staylocked so the patients don't wander off because

(44:43):
a lot of them, you know, with Alzheimer's dementia, a lot of
memory issues. And I worked overnight, and the wing that I worked in
was built in nineteen forties and hadalways been a nursing home, so you
can just imagine how many hundreds,if not thousands of people have died there
over the years. The rest ofthe nursing home was all water and building
like the eighties nineties. But um, one night and the only thing I

(45:04):
can call this, this is whatI've always called it every time I tell
the story, I call it thejest because I don't know anything else to
call it. The nurse and thenurse and the other tech had went on
lunch about three four in the morning, so I'm on the hall by myself,
and it's like you would think oflike a horror mood in a hospital.
There's one light on with the nursethe station. All the other lights
are off because the patients are inbed, and the only other light is

(45:24):
coming in through the end of thehallway because the double doors go out to
the parking lot. And so yougot like the part light shining man.
So I'll walk into the tea inthe hallway and I looked to my left
and I'll walk down there just tocheck on the patients. And at the
end of the hall I see thistall, skinny guy, young guy in
an all black suit, standing atthe end of the hallway staring at me.
And then he just smiles and turnsand left and walks into this patient

(45:47):
room. So immediately go down there. Yeah, when he was solid and
it wasn't what wasn't like a creepy, like you know, evil smile.
It was just a smile. Andhe was a younger guy in a suit,
you know, and he's probably helooked like he was seven foot tall
and you know, skinny, andyou know, so he didn't look threatening.
I'm like, what in the hell? There should be nobody here at
three four in the morning, andI'm I'm the only guy in the entire

(46:10):
building on staff. And so Iwalked down there and I go in the
patient room, turned the light on. Nobody's there but the four female patient.
We're in the beds. So Igo home the next morning at seven
o'clock. I go home seven o'clockthat morning, and I come back the
next night and they told me anhour after I left that morning, one
of the patients that were unexpectedly died, And so I think I saw the

(46:31):
angel of death. What are yougonna call it? You know a few
other things that I saw at thatsame nursing home. Some of the rooms
they had a night kind of likea nightlight in the bathroom that was shining
into the room through like a vent, and that was that be the only
light on the room. And wealways pushed the wheelchairs of the patients in
the bathroom, might just get himout of the way so we're not tripping
over in the dark, and thingslike that. And a couple of times

(46:52):
I walked in some rooms and Icould see the silhouette backlit of what looked
like a person sitting in the wheelchair, and turn the light on. There's
nobody there. We'd hear doors openand closing on their own footsteps. I
feel like somebody's watching you, likesomebody's walking behind you. Things like that.
But and at eighteen nineteen, likenow, you know, I'm pushing
forty and I've been, you know, asshole deep in the parallel of my

(47:14):
whole life. So now that's somethinglike that wouldn't scare me, But back
then scared the hell out of mebecause you know, footsteps behind me.
I'm like, you know, Itell the other tech like, now you're
going down there with me in thedark hallway. You know I'm not going
down there by myself. Yeah,dude. I I spent some time,
you know, working in the hospital. Right after high school, I worked
in environmental services, you know,housekeeping, and I remember, you know,

(47:37):
i'd go through I did trash andLyndon and I remember being in long
term care, and you know,a lot of the times it was weird.
You could tell when someone was goingto go. They would start talking
to people they knew that have passedaway, like they're there with them.
Yeah, Like it was almost likean earlier, early sign that they were
going to pass soon and there wassomeone greeting them to go to the after

(48:00):
life or whatever. I remember somany different stories like that, or you
know, people you know, vocalizingthat you know, I'm leaving soon and
they start telling them everyone by likeit's it's wild, Like, you know,
I don't, I don't know ifthey when you know it's time to
go, it's time to go.It's weird, man, I'm sure.
I'm sure. Just being in theenvironment you've experienced stuff like that too.

(48:21):
Yeah, we had a lady inthat particular nursing home that whenever she started
started talking about the men and thesomebody would die within twenty four hours every
time. And the first time theytold me this when I first went to
work there, I thought they werefull of shit, And so I saw
it multiple times for myself. Everytime she would talk about the men in
the corner, and she was definitelyafraid of the men in the corner.
And you're talking about a lady whohad really bad alzheimer, and she wasn't

(48:44):
very vocal. It's not like youcould have a conversation with her, but
she would be like screaming about themen in the corner and get him away
from me. But within twenty fourhours, Yeah, within twenty four hours,
somebody would die. And also inthe nursing home. One of the
other crazy things people they always diein threes every time, Yeah, sets
threes. So every time somebody dies, you know there's going to be at
least two more people die. Whatthe hell? Yeah, it's that's really

(49:08):
weird and creepy too, all right, Eric, Well that's about all we
have for this episodes. But Ido want to give you a chance before
we go to talk about your podcast, you know, to talk about your
upcoming book and where we can findall of your awesome content. Yeah,
the podcast. If you're listening toCoop you Unsolved. Here. You can
find my show anywhere you find musicor podcasts Apple, Spotify, Google,

(49:30):
Amazon, I Heart Radio, Pandora. It's called The Unseen Paranormal Podcast,
and I have a different guest oneach week. I talked to all different
kinds of people. Um. Italked to paranormal celebrities from TV. I
just had a Katrina Wideman on withHellnots Long Ago, and I've had Andrew
a Paranon from the Conjuring House.She was actually part of the family that
lived there. I talk a lotabout history as well, because I think

(49:51):
the history is very important to understandwhere the hauntings come from. And so,
um, yeah, we have adifferent guests each week. We have
different subjects. I just had oneof the guys from Alexander Pettikov from Small
Town Monsters. He's part of theirfilm crew and he's a big Foot researcher,
so we just had to get aconversation about big foot. But uh
yeah, I try to cover allfrom subjects and talk about aliens, ghost,

(50:12):
crypto, big Foot, all thatstuff, and I put an episode
out every Wednesday. I'm kind ofwinding season two down now. Um,
I've got a few more episodes ago. Once I hud one hundred episodes,
that'll be fifty for this season.Then I'll kind of take a little bit
of break off work on the book. Hopefully the book it will be out
September October this year. Yeah,dude, I was looking up your podcast
today. I listened to you know, your episode with Anna Maria Milano.
It's a milanoo, that's what hauntedheirlooms. And I was looking you have

(50:38):
like ninety seven episodes or something likethat, three right anything? Yeah,
uscording. Yeah, Yeah, Idid fifty. Yeah, I did fifty
the first season and then fifty thisseason. So yeah, once I hit
once I hit one hundred, i'llbe done for the season. Wow.
That's an amazing accomplishment right there.That's wild. Yeah, I can voal
just a really really good podcast.Ask you guy should go check it out.

(51:00):
It is. Yeah, I reallysuch a great conversation every time.
Well, thank you for coming onhere. Eric. Can we look forward
to your future our future conversations.Yeah, thank you so much for having
me. I've enjoyed the conversation.Yeah, thank you. Hey, guys,
that is it for this one.Thank you so much for joining us.

(51:22):
If you have questions about today's episode, or if you'd like to reach
out to us directly, you cando so by sending us an email at
Creepy Unsolved Media at gmail dot com. Until next time, be sure to
check out our awesome content by simplyvisiting Creepy Unsolved dot com. If you

(51:42):
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