Episode Transcript
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Speaker A (00:00):
Foreign.
Hello my spooky friends.
This is John, your host of Dairyland Frights
in the spookier podcast Nightland Frights.
(00:20):
And I wanted to thank all my spooky friends
out there for listening.
I truly appreciate it.
Please like and subscribe and rate us 5 stars.
It helps you make this a better podcast and
make sure you comment what guests you wouldlike me to have on what topics you would like
me to talk about.
It only going to make this podcast better.
(00:41):
So again, thank you so much for listening andplease go to my patreon, check that out.
Become a Parasconi for only $3.
A spooky friend for a dollar.
And remember,
stay spooky.
Welcome to Dairyland Frights, the paranormalpodcast that covers everything spooky, creepy
and mysterious in the Midwest and beyond.
(01:04):
And today I have on the podcast two, two of myfavorite people,
Brandon and Mitch from Haunted Us.
Thank you guys for coming back again.
I missed you guys.
We had a great time,
you know, last year talking about some thingsor earlier on and I just love that I can have
you back on again.
Speaker B (01:24):
Yeah. Thank you so much for having
us.
We're excited to be back.
Speaker A (01:27):
Absolutely.
Speaker C (01:28):
Great to be here.
Speaker A (01:29):
Thank you.
Thank you.
So the reason I have them back is not only
because I love having them back, obviously andtalking about the paranormal and all that
great stuff, but they put out a book,
tada People called 30 haunted nights inWisconsin, A haunted travel guide by Mitch
(01:51):
King, Goth, Brandon Rugsy.
Speaker B (01:54):
Rugsy.
Speaker A (01:54):
Aha. I got is.
So folks, I just got today.
So I just, I've been paging through it, but
it's, it's been awesome so far.
What's really funny about this before we kindof talk about the book is I had Tammy from
Hollywood, weird paranormal.
She's in la,
okay.
And she, you know,
(02:17):
came here, Chicago to the, the Windy City parafest.
This first time she's been in the Midwest.
And you gotta remember, guys, she's from la.
Well, you know, it's la.
They have the greatest.
The ghost and.
Yeah, right.
And she was just right, she was just blown
away about the stories, the ghost, everything.
(02:38):
I said, yeah, Tammy, this isn't just a flyover
state.
We have some of the greatest legends andgreatest stories and obviously it's in this
book.
So I, you know,
obviously I'm going to, you know, do my bestto help you sell this book because not only
it's a great book, but also,
you know, one guy's my spooky friends.
(03:00):
First of all, Halloween's around the corner,
so come On.
Let's get this book.
Let's get this book for your Halloween spookyfriends.
And guess what guys?Christmas is coming too, right?
That will be here before you know it.
So this is a double whammy, as I would say,
you know, give your spooky friends, right?Give to a Christmas present.
(03:22):
Give them as many books as you want.
Hey, give your friends three of these books.
One they can put in the car when they can put,you know, in their cabinet at home, one they
can put at work.
Go and buy this book.
Like I said, I'm blown away by it.
But let's start out is what inspired you guysto do this because this is not an easy feat.
This is not like, hey, let's do this.
(03:43):
We'll have it done a week later.
Woo.
This is fun,
right?So what inspired you guys?
Speaker B (03:48):
Well, to start out, I just want to
say we will have your check in the mail next
week for that endorsement.
It was really good.
And as, as a lot of the people.
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
As a lot of the people listening to this and
who have heard us on your show before willprobably know, we produce articles on haunted
places all the time.
(04:09):
We put out one a week.
They're deep dive.
These really kind of gorgeously put together,if I do say so myself,
articles and a book was the natural evolutionfor us.
One thing that we, we found, well, actually acouple of things.
The first is for our website we have to cutthings for content,
for length, for readability.
(04:30):
This book allowed us to delve even deeper intothose stories and really give Mitch the
ability to really explore the ideas and theresearch and write to his fullest, I'm gonna
say the fullest of his powers of writing.
And the other thing is we wanted to give ourreaders something more cohesive.
(04:51):
As you go around the website, you are gettingone article at a time based on what you find
on the website.
This is a compendium of 30 locations at once.
And we can say, hey, these fit really well
together based on the state and based on anadventure you might want to take in our state.
Speaker A (05:10):
Yeah, I couldn't have said it
better.
What I love about is broken down to each partof the state.
So you know, like southeastern Wisconsin,south southern central,
central Wisconsin and everything.
So it's broken down.
So if you live in those areas,
maybe you didn't even know.
I didn't know that bar was haunted.
I go to that bar all the time.
Or that restaurant or,
(05:30):
or that, that house.
And the greatest thing about,
if you like, like I Said if you live in thatarea, you can just grab this book and be like,
okay, what do you mean about this?Oh, that's really interesting.
I didn't know that.
Or you might talk to like I did, and I'll get
right to it.
So I live in Spring Green, so that's.
Whatever.
My direction is pretty bad.
(05:52):
But anyway, so a lot of the different thingsin here, I was looking at that.
I know, because I'm just into the paranormaland, you know, whatever.
But one of my favorite ones is there'sdifferent locations that you don't even think
are haunted.
Right.
And my favorite one is there's a hauntedsubway.
Yes, Subway, the restaurant where you go inall the time and give me a sub.
(06:13):
You know what?And you don't even think about it.
In Dodgeville, Wisconsin, that is 20 minutesaway from me.
So I was telling.
You know, I was talking to him,
Mitch and Brandon, a little bit earlier.
That's where we got on.
So here's my experience with it.
Well, not my experience, but an experiencewhere I just wanted to find out.
So I went in there and I was able to talk tothe manager and stuff.
(06:33):
And. And really, if you read about it,
there's some ghost of an older woman thatbelieves.
If I'm correct, guys, correct me if I'm wronghere.
Just step in.
I'm not gonna hurt my feelings.
Supposedly that haunts this place.
And there's some things that go on that theyreport.
So when I went in there, I said to themanager, hey, you know, is this true?
Have you seen anything?You know, what's going on?
(06:55):
And she was like, well, no, but my assistantmanager did.
And I'm like, oh, cool.
So what'd they see?
So the assistant manager, I guess, was drivingup one day, you know, had to get into work a
little bit early to clean up, corporate, blah,blah, blah.
Well, she looks through,
you know, before she goes in, and she seesthis woman kind of like gliding along,
(07:16):
you know, well, probably 5:30 in the morning,wherever the heck, you know, it was early.
She said, you're just gonna think somebody'sjust walking along, you know, and what?
You know, who would be in there other than themanager, right?
You know, to help do this stuff.
So she's like, whoa, the manager beat me here.
I thought I would have beat her here, youknow, beat Shelly or whatever.
(07:36):
So I'm like, okay, fine.
Goes in the system.
Manager goes in,
and she walks in and she goes, hey, you know,Shelly, you know, hey, I thought I'd beat you
here.
And everything.
And then she turns around and in here comesShelly, the manager, pulling up,
and she's like,
oh, wait, wait a minute.
(07:58):
And then, you know, Shelly, the manager comes
in, and she's like, hey, you.
You beat me here and everything.
I thought I'd beat you here.
She goes, no, no, no, you.
You were just here.
I thought I saw a woman, and I thought thatwas you.
And she goes, oh, the manager.
Shelly goes, oh, you saw the ghost?
Well, that's all the assistant manager needed.
She quit.
She's out of there.
The manager told me a couple other stories.
(08:19):
Some other people quit, too, who have been,like,
after hours, you know, cleaning up andeverything, and.
And they see this apparition of the corner oftheir eye, and they're like, the manager
showed up.
You know, we better.
Better get this done.
Stop goofing around.
And then they're like, oh, hey, Shelley.
And then nobody's there.
So. Yes,
what's interesting about it is people have sawstuff.
(08:42):
I guess some paranormal investigators, too,have.
Local ones have come in.
I don't.
I haven't heard,
you know, if they found anything or whatever,but I tried to look into the history,
and I didn't really find much.
Maybe you guys found something or have
something to add.
But it's.
Again,
it's just so weird because you see the subwayup close.
(09:03):
It's.
It's.
Right, guys, it's nothing.
Speaker B (09:05):
It's a subway.
Speaker A (09:06):
Yeah, it's a subway.
You know, you expect, like.
Speaker B (09:12):
We were really lucky.
It was, like, gray and rainy the day we went
there.
Otherwise, it would have been very much just a
picture of the front of a sub.
Speaker C (09:20):
Yeah.
And the history there, of course, is as murkyas you can usually get with your average, you
know, chain restaurant.
It was just kind of not there.
And then one day it was there.
You know, there.
There are some well established ghost stories
and.
And lore as to where exactly these hauntings
came from.
You know, they.
They didn't come out of a sandwich one day.
(09:42):
The story there,
the story there is before,
and many a ghost story starts this way.
Before that building was there,
there was something else there.
And apparently in Dodgeville,
on this site where the subway is,
there used to be an old dealership, an oldmotorcycle dealership, particularly Harley.
Harley Davidson.
And it was owned by.
(10:03):
Owned and franchised by a couple, a man and awoman who, legend has it, died in a motorcycle
accident not far from town, not far fromDodgeville.
And after they died, of course, dealershipwent under and closed, and they tore the
building down and the subway replaced it.
And now the spirits of the man and the woman
supposedly haunt the building.
(10:23):
And when we were, when we were on our waythrough that part of the state, of course we
had to stop and get photos.
And it was a dreary, dreary, cloudy morning.
You know, I wanted to take my opportunity toalso go in and ask the poor, unsuspecting
staff of this chain restaurant whether or notit was haunted.
And so we pulled in there at like 10:30amwhich had to be minutes after they had opened.
(10:48):
So there were, there were two people on staffand we had just pulled in and that was it.
So we were the only people who were there.
The rain was just starting.
This freezing, freezing November rain was
starting.
Speaker A (10:59):
God, yeah, great.
Speaker C (11:02):
And so I'm pretty sure Brandon was
de icing the vehicle or something similar.
Speaker B (11:09):
I was taking photos out in the
freezing rain.
Speaker C (11:12):
Yeah.
Speaker B (11:12):
Mitch was inside the nice warm
restaurant.
Speaker A (11:16):
Oh, of course, talking about
ghosts.
Speaker B (11:18):
And I was being exposed to the
elements.
Speaker C (11:21):
Yes. And, you know, it is kind of a
strange situation to walk into a place like a
subway, trying to ask them about theirhauntings.
But it's something, you know, what I like tocall cold calling locations just walking in
when they have open hours and just asking themif they have paranormal claims or have ever
experienced anything.
Speaker B (11:39):
Mitch, in this case, was it cold
cutting, perhaps?
Speaker C (11:41):
I didn't have to, I didn't have to
cut the line, though.
Speaker A (11:45):
That's, that's it, Brandon, that.
Give him the hawk.
Give him the hawk.
Speaker C (11:50):
And you know, so this was our first
stop of many that day.
And so it was like, it's, it's a good thingto, to prime on, you know, get, get the most
awkward conversation out of the way first.
And so I walk up to the, the,
the guy at the front and, you know, I justkind of order.
First of all, I, I order like a normal personat Subway does.
And then I ask him as he's kind of, you know,sandwich artisting, art artisaning, you know,
(12:13):
sandwich artist ing my, my sandwich.
Have you ever experienced anything, you know,spooky paranormal here?
And then he's like, yeah, are you Mitch Goth?
And I'm like, what, huh?I'd like, okay, I'm the one who asks the throw
off questions here.
You know, you.
We've got this backwards Mr. Subway guy.
Speaker A (12:31):
Yeah, Subway guy, yeah.
Speaker C (12:34):
And I'm like, yeah.
He's like, yeah, uh, we went to, we went to
high school together.
And then, then, then his face suddenly just
snaps and snaps into my memories.
Like, oh, yeah, we did.
And so, you know, we got to.
To reminiscing there for a minute, and then I
asked.
Softened them up a little bit with.
With memories of.
Of high school.
Who.
Who, you know, who doesn't have fun in highschool.
Speaker A (12:55):
Yeah, who doesn't have fun?
It's not awkward at all.
Speaker C (12:58):
No.
You know, sure enough, he and the other staffmember there both had experiences, both had
stories to tell me.
When I asked him, you know, he had a very
common experience, which is basement things inthe basement of this building where they store
stuff would often, you know, be shifted on ashelf or knocked off a shelf.
And so, you know, he mentioned that he wasalways,
(13:21):
you know, having to pick stuff up, that he waslike, you know, I put this pretty far back on
the shelf.
You know, what is this doing on the floor?
And then the other sandwich artist on staff atthe time had had to close the building, had
to, you know, close up for the night.
One night.
And of course, all of that involves shuttingoff all the lights and then heading for the
door.
And they had opened up the door and they wereheading out, and they turn around, and one of
(13:43):
the lights in the far end of, like, the diningroom was on.
So it was, you know, one of the first flightsthey had shut off on their traverse through
the building, hitting all the light switches,and they're like, okay, do I go through this
dark and spooky building, you know, or do Ijust come back tomorrow and say, oops, I
forgot?
And, you know, she said, I. I came backtomorrow and said, oops, I forgot.
(14:04):
I wasn't about to go all the way through thatdark building to flip off that light switch.
Speaker A (14:08):
Mitch, I love it.
Subway.
Dark and spooky.
I. I love it.
Right?You know?
Speaker C (14:14):
Yeah, yeah.
There.
There's there's only one subway like it, andit's in Dodgeville, Wisconsin, the spookiest
subway in America.
Spooky subway.
Speaker B (14:21):
It exists in two places.
Dodgeville, Wisconsin, and our book.
Speaker A (14:25):
Yes, yes.
Or an alternate universe.
Speaker B (14:30):
I mean, at that point, it exists in
an infinite number of places.
It is the infinite subway.
Speaker A (14:39):
Mitch,
when you guys were.
And Brandon, when you guys were there, did
you.
Did you get any vibes at all,
or did you just like the subway?You know what I'm saying?
Anything kind of throw you off?Maybe a little bit.
Speaker B (14:53):
I mean, I'll be real from my side,
I didn't actually go in.
So my experience had much more to do withfreezing rain than subway.
Speaker A (15:01):
Yeah.
Speaker C (15:02):
And truly, I'll be honest with you,
not at all it is.
Speaker A (15:07):
Yeah. Right.
Speaker C (15:08):
It's subway.
It is a subway restaurant.
And, you know, maybe the basement isdifferent.
Maybe the basement is, you know, 300 years oldand there's just a new building pasted on top
of it.
I didn't see the basement.
Maybe it is super eerie and spooky down there,
but upstairs, the space you see as a customeris just as subway as any other place.
Speaker A (15:27):
Yeah, yeah, I've eaten in there.
Me and the family has eaten in there many
times.
Yeah, that's what I love about places.
Right like that, which is totally
inconspicuous.
It's just like there.
And you're like,
okay, all right,
so moving on.
Just stayed in my area then, guys.
I'll obviously let you guys talk about some ofyour highlights and maybe some lowlights if
(15:49):
you guys want to talk about some fun stuff.
Speaker B (15:50):
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
Speaker A (15:52):
So Taliesin,
that is haunted.
And one of the biggest things with that is
they're very.
Because I've had paranormal investigators
reach out to me, you know, from differentstates, and they're like, hey, John, could you
contact them?
So we, you know, give me information so I cancall them and set up a time to investigate.
(16:12):
I don't know what.
You guys hear this and correct me if I'm
wrong, but they're kind of very guarded aboutdoing that because there is.
Obviously it's very historical.
You know, you got to trust the people comingin.
You.
You might, I don't know, bump something or
break something that you know,
so I understand that.
But one of the biggest things about thatlocation is,
(16:34):
is people were murdered on that location.
Some people died.
And I don't know if you guys want to gothrough it, you can do a highlight view of it
because it's a huge place.
A lot of people don't understand.
I mean,
Frank Lloyd Wright wanted to have that to beself sufficient,
meaning he wanted his staff to eat there,sleep there, live there.
(16:58):
You know, it's a city within a city,basically.
You know, grow your own food and all thisother stuff.
And then, you know,
it just unfortunately was very.
Some very tragedy that kind of left to some
paranormal experiences.
So I don't know if you guys want to elaborate
that a little bit to my audience about whathappened,
that would be great.
Speaker B (17:17):
Yeah, Mitch, feel free.
Speaker C (17:18):
Yeah. So as far as that location
goes, it's featured briefly in the book
because we actually didn't get the opportunityto tour it.
It was closed due to adverse weatherconditions that particular day.
But we absolutely did hear the stories of theparanormal reports but you are absolutely
(17:40):
right.
They are very, very guarded about that sort of
thing.
Speaker A (17:43):
Yes.
Speaker C (17:44):
And, you know, that's something we
encounter a lot, not just in Wisconsin, but
all over the United States particularly.
I find that the, the bigger the name
associated with a location, the more guardedthey tend to be kind of like similar, you
know, down in Tennessee, Graceland.
You know, lots of people see Elvis's ghost andElvis's apparition around Graceland, but
(18:05):
they're not letting in paranormal researchersevery day.
You know, they've got, they have their ownnarrative, their own thing they want to
present.
And, you know, particularly, you know, whenyou're the kind of investigators that we are,
the kind of researchers that we are, when youlet paranormal researchers into a space,
they're going to get their own content.
They're going to collect photos, videos,research that, you know, it's, it's easier to
(18:30):
control a narrative for whatever purpose youhave it when, you know, you, you do that as
few times as possible.
And so, you know, Frank Lloyd Wright wasobviously a very eccentric guy when, when he
was alive, he had some very big ideas andsome, some, you know, wild and interesting
attempts to, to realize those ideas.
And, you know, the people who administrate hisestate and essentially control the way his
(18:54):
life is perceived at this point are of course,very guarded about that because he was a big
name who did a lot of interesting stuff.
And so they keep those cards close to theirchest and, and I don't, I don't blame them for
that at all.
Anyone or anything with a big reputation hasthat responsibility.
And so we were just happy to, to feature it atall because it is a very interesting place
(19:15):
with a grisly chapter in its history and a tonof very oddball chapters as well.
And we love stuff like that.
Speaker A (19:22):
Yeah. And so just so for you
listening, my spooky friends listening, say
what happened?Go online, look at it.
There's actually a newspaper article.
This is not made up.
This is an urban legend.
Supposedly Frank Lloyd's ride.
Just really a highlight here is having an
affair with one of the groundskeepers, Ibelieve, or one of the staff.
Well, she broke it off.
(19:43):
They were inside this one building eatinglunch.
He didn't take it very well.
Long story short, he poured gasoline all over
or, you know, whatever he poured all over thebuilding, nailed everyone in,
lit the thing on fire.
Luckily, there were people who did escape, Ibelieve,
if I remember correctly, the children.
(20:05):
I'm not sure if his.
Franklin's wife's escape.
I believe she did.
I'm a little fuzzy on that.
In other words, it was her for the time.
This is talking in the, I believe the 30s or
40s or something to that effect.
Pretty crazy, you know what I mean?I mean, you did not think about that, that
someone would take being jilted.
(20:28):
You know, today we hear that we're like, oh,
boy, here we go again, right?
Crazy people out there.
But back then you wouldn't think someone would
go to that extreme.
I mean, the families were in there other in
this building having lunch and this guy just,I don't like you anymore, so I'm gonna burn
you alive.
And, and you.
Like I said, I'll probably do a feature on it.
(20:48):
I haven't done it yet.
Just because it's a very short, very
horrendous kind of story to talk about.
I'm not really into true crime.
This would be a constitute under true crime.
But it's.
Yeah, it's bad.
And a lot of people have seen Frank Lloyd'swife.
Supposedly they call her the White lady, oreverybody calls him the White lady nowadays or
somebody.
White lady ghost kind of just floating aroundthere.
(21:11):
But no one has.
Again, let me stress, folks, no one has
evidence of this at all because again,
like Mitch said and Brandon said, it'sstrictly guarded.
You, you know, if you sneak up on that, if youtry to.
I. I've heard kids sneaking in aroundHalloween and all this stuff, you know, and
they're caught right away and they, you know,get into big trouble because it is private
(21:34):
property.
So please, I stress for all your paranormalinvestigators out there, this is private
property.
If you're in the area and you want to sneak in
and try something, do not do that.
You will be arrested and you'll be sent tojail.
Speaker B (21:45):
Yeah.
Speaker A (21:45):
So please be very careful with
that.
Speaker B (21:47):
Be respectful of.
Of historical places.
And this one specifically is a UNESCO WorldHeritage Site.
So definitely, definitely not this one.
Speaker A (21:56):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Last but not least, the House on the Rock.
Did.
Were you guys able to spend any time in there?
Because I.
You said it was bad weather and some otherthings.
Were you able to at least get a little bit ofthe history from the House on the Rock?
Speaker B (22:10):
I've spent time there previously
just as a. As a tourist period.
That is a wild building.
That is a whole experience going through
there.
Speaker A (22:20):
Wow. I highly suggest,
by the way, not to get off on this tangent,but American Gods filmed there and I totally
missed being an extra because, you know,
I was busy that day.
But they did film there.
If you watch American Gods, that's by NeilGaiman or Guyman, however you want to be it.
(22:41):
Supposedly the portal of these old gods isthrough the carousel in the House on the Rock.
So what is crazy about it, folks, is you walkthrough this tunnel and then there's this huge
carousel just in the, like, middle of thebuilding.
Why?I don't know, some guy said, let's get a
carousel, throw it right in the middle.
But that's considered a Neil Gaiman.
(23:03):
A net.
Gaiman, whatever.
His book, in his comic book and everything.
Graphic novel.
That's where the gods come through, the oldgods.
That's their portal and stuff.
And like I said, I missed a stupid extra call
where I could have just walked around a bit inthat episode.
There is an episode, American God, season oneor two.
(23:23):
I think it's season two where they do.
They were filming inside there.
Yeah, they did.
They filmed inside House on the Rock and
everything.
And Neil loved Spring Green, by the way.
He came here several times.
He absolutely loved it.
That's why in his graphic novels he talks
about Spring Green as the gods.
(23:43):
Like this is one of their portals to comethrough.
And I'm just like, you guys totally live here.
Where are you?
Neil, let's talk.
But yeah, so that place, if that's going to be
haunted, has to be haunted, because it has allthese different artifacts as just.
Right, guys, you just walk in there, here'sguns, here's a bunch of dolls, here's a
carousel.
So what did you guys find out of there?And what did you guys think of that?
Speaker B (24:06):
I mean, speaking from personal
experience, having been there, I can again
reiterate that is a spooky place.
Speaker A (24:12):
It is.
Speaker B (24:13):
It has that like 1970s fever dream
sort of thing going on while you're going
through it, because every room is kind of adifferent VI vibe and all of it feels just
spooky.
Speaker A (24:26):
Yeah. Yes, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Mitch, did you have something to add?
Speaker C (24:30):
Yeah, it certainly has the spooky
vibe.
But while it's actually a great comparison tomake with the subway,
because the subway does not have a spooky vibeat all, but there are ghost stories there.
The House on the Rock definitely has a spookyvibe to it.
There are no really strong and confirmedparanormal claims there.
And, you know, there.
(24:51):
There is still a very good reason why it's
included in the book.
Because the.
The book is obviously 30 Haunted Nights in
Wisconsin.
It's.
It's 30 dedicated chapters to 30,
you know, notably haunted locations.
But Wisconsin is.
Is full of one of a kind strange out there and
wonderful Places.
(25:12):
And so we also.
In. In each of our geographic sections in the
book,
we include lists of oddities.
So, you know, things that might be haunted,
like.
Like roads and other roadside kind of
artifacts, as well as just one of a kindthings that if you're here exploring the
hauntings of Wisconsin, that we think youmight want to see, too, that you're never
good,
that you're never going to see anyplace else.
(25:33):
And House on the Rock is absolutely one of
those places.
It is truly a one in a trillion kind of
invention that someone could conjure this.
This wild place up on top of this.
This really steep, practically mountainous
hill.
And. Yeah, so we just had to mention it.
We just had to include it.
Speaker A (25:53):
Absolutely.
And there is a. There's a thing.
I don't know if they caught the infinity roomor whatever, but basically you walk out and
it.
I don't know, it's still stable.
And you walk out and basically you're
overhanging the forest.
And then there's like a little skylight or
whatever, and you can kind of look down andstuff like that.
(26:15):
But you.
You guys are right.
If I would give anything to spend the nightthere, just right alone and just check it out.
And you got to remember, some of thoseobjects, they might be cursed.
How do you know?You know, the dolls.
The doll room is freaky.
I hate creepy dolls.
It's crazy.
I'm like, ah, just get me out of here.
(26:36):
So, yeah, so those are some of the interestsin my area.
But let's get to what you were talking about,the oddities and things like that.
So, Mitch, or Brandon, whoever, like to answerthis.
What surprised you the most when you starteddoing this book?
Like what?You know, maybe a house, maybe a road, maybe
whatever that you went.
Huh. Didn't really think that would be hauntedor.
(26:57):
Wow, that's a crazy story.
Speaker B (26:59):
Yeah, absolutely.
So I would say the most shocking story in my
opinion, and I think Mitch and I sort ofagreed on this at one point, but of course,
our feelings about the book sort of changewith the day.
But Berlin Tannery in Berlin, Wisconsin, hasone of the wildest stories, is supposedly when
their ghost story started.
So tannery is a place where leather is made,skin goes in, and leather.
Speaker A (27:23):
Comes out, not human skin.
Speaker B (27:27):
Well,
well,
so the story goes that at one point in the.
I think it was late 70s, early 80s, right,
Mitch?
Yeah, right around there, this skin comes in,and it is intact, fully intact, like, very
meticulously handled.
But it is a human skin that comes in.
And the person who Sent it in, was neverfound.
Speaker A (27:48):
Oh. So, you know, a little
shocking.
Speaker B (27:52):
They do attribute that to when the
place started being haunted.
We actually know.
We know the group that runs the tours there,
and I know they've had some pretty wildexperiences since then, but,
yeah, that was the most shocking for me.
I remember making.
Making Mitch repeat himself a couple of timesas he told me that story.
Speaker A (28:10):
Unbelievable.
It wasn't like Jeffrey Dahmer was just hanging
out, like, drove up one day and said, hey,here's a package.
Speaker B (28:19):
No.
Speaker C (28:19):
And.
Speaker B (28:20):
And it was after Ed Gein's time,
too, so.
Speaker A (28:23):
After Ed Gein.
Okay.
Yeah, that was my next guess, but here you go.
So what are some of the wild experiences there
with people who, you know, have had them?
Speaker B (28:34):
Yeah, I know that the.
The group that is currently running their
tours, they've received some pretty wild stuffon.
On their various different ITC devices,
specifically Zach, who's running those.
Got a. Or, I'm sorry, Blaine.
Blaine Rezak.
Sorry.
He got a message come through that saidsomething about pushing him to kill him at one
(28:56):
point.
So there.
There are some spooky things happen in there.
In our experience while we were there, wedidn't experience anything negative.
Just a big spooky building that we had a lotof fun in.
Speaker A (29:08):
How about you, Mitch?
What do you think?
Speaker C (29:10):
Yeah. At the.
The tannery, people will frequently reportthat the spirits, if they encounter them, if
they're lucky enough to encounter them, theywill tend to follow folks around the building
basically the entire night or timeframe thatthey're there.
So people will report kind of footsteps andthe feeling of someone, you know, walking
like, one inch behind you.
(29:30):
And so, you know, if you ever stop, they might
run into you.
That kind of, you know, uneasy sensation of,you know, somebody just constantly.
You might not actually feel them physicallypushing you, but you feel this sense of
something is constantly pushing you forward,pushing you to keep moving.
And if you're.
If you're ever in there,
it almost kind of makes sense because a lot ofthe spaces are wide open and empty now, but
(29:54):
you can still very much see where themachinery and factory floor areas were.
And there were just thin little corridors,thin little corridors through this maze of
machinery that people would.
Had to.
Had to go through.
You know, during the tannery days, it was
probably pretty often that people were stackedup on each other, moving from place to place.
You know, if you're.
(30:14):
If you're traversing this area, you.
You pretty much have to move.
This is an active factory full of meat hooks
and ovens and and very, very dangerousmachinery.
So you get where you're going and you know,you, you don't really lollygag.
Speaker A (30:28):
In these kind of places.
Speaker C (30:29):
And you get that kind of sense,
like there's some, some factory manager still
there overseeing things and watching you.
And they'll be on you if you're, if you're out
of, out of line.
And yeah, so anyone who, who goes there andstays there for long enough tends to have that
kind of, that eerie feeling.
Speaker A (30:47):
Yeah. And next to hospitals and
asylums, I think factories kind of fall in
there because there was no osha, right, guys?There was no.
I mean, if you're not, if you don't get yourhead on a swivel, you fall into one of those
vats full, the worst of the worst chemicals,you're not coming out.
Yeah. You're drowned.
(31:07):
And there are numerous, numerous, numerous
stories of them happening.
And maybe kids were there, you know, back in
the day, who knows?Right?
I mean, that vibe, right.
And you got to remember too, like you saidwith the manager, they didn't have management
courses.
It was like, get your *** to work, shut your
mouth and oh, you cut your hand off, bandageit up and get back to work.
Speaker B (31:29):
You know, dirt on it.
Speaker A (31:31):
Yeah. Right.
So that's full of that negative energy which,you know, I've talked about numerous times on
this podcast, Stone Tape theory, where thingsabsorb the energy, positive or negative, into
an object, into an area,
into wherever,
and it just stays there.
Right.
And you just kind of get that feeling.
(31:53):
So let me ask you this, Mitch.
When,
when you were traveling, was there anywhere?Because you told me this last time, and
correct me, you were trying to get into like aplace for like 11 years and you kept bugging
them and they finally got you and stuff.
What places were you or place or places wouldyou guys.
With this book that you said, I got to getthat in.
(32:14):
And we, Brandon, we got to get that in here,you know,
come bribes or whatever we need to do.
Speaker C (32:19):
Yeah. So it wasn't Quite a full 12
year slog to, to get them on the telephone,
but it was kind of a long term.
Well, one location was, that was the, the
Lincoln Tallman house.
That, that one, you know, we investigated thatfor an article and it is, it's featured in the
book as well.
One of the South Central locations simply, youknow, we, we cat.
(32:41):
We cataloged a lot of stories there.
We had a lot of experiences there.
But another place that, you know, I wasn'treally expecting to be as open with their
claims as they were with us becausehistorically they hadn't been.
But that, that was the Fairlawn Mansion inSuperior, Wisconsin.
Yeah,
the Superior Public Museums operates that anda few other locations in the Superior area.
(33:04):
And they do a fantastic job maintaining andkeeping up their museums and showing off some
of the most one of a kind spaces that you canfind.
They have like an old whaleback ship that'sone of our oddities.
It's the last one ever in existence and it'sjust a weird looking ship with a strange
story, some ghost stories, but they,
(33:25):
they are very used to once again holding thosecards very close to their chest.
So we had heard it, heard some whispers ofghost stories at Fairlawn Mansion for, for a
very long time.
I want to say it was almost 10 years I'd beenhearing about it and it was just one of those
places that it's obviously a very photogenicmansion and it's got ghost stories, it's got
that, it's got the history.
(33:46):
The person who built it, Martin Patterson was,was very involved in Superior and even Duluth,
just, just developing that whole region far,far north in Wisconsin.
And so I just wanted to include it.
And so we headed up to Superior on the sametrip as, as we did the, the subway.
The subway was our first stop.
Fairlawn was largely the last stop on that one
(34:08):
long, long journey.
And so it's still this ice storm this dayslong ice storm at this point.
And we are in Superior, Wisconsin, thefarthest north you can go and find a city in
Wisconsin.
Basically.
Speaker A (34:19):
Yeah.
Speaker C (34:21):
And we pull into Fairlawn Mansion
two minutes after they open on that day.
And so we're the only vehicle in the parkinglot.
We are confident we're going to be the onlypeople here the entire time because there's
nobody, there's nobody on the road, there'snobody anywhere.
There's.
And we have like an eight hour drive home
after this.
But anyway, so we're just,
(34:42):
we get into the, the main tourist center whichis a small building right off the main mansion
and there are two, two tour guides on staff.
And we introduced ourselves and you know, we
had booked a tour so we want the history tour,but also we're haunted us.
So here's, here's the, here's the ulteriormotive we have here.
We're, we're very interested in the historybut if you've got ghost stories, we are, we
(35:04):
are dying for some ghost stories too.
And these two tour guides just lit up.
They were just so, so excited to have an
opportunity to Tell us all about the thingsthey had experienced in this building and all
of the ghost stories they had collected.
And they.
They had only wished that their executive
director was there because their executivedirector had their ghost stories.
And so it was.
It was just a wild change of what I had
(35:28):
expected from.
From what we had gotten, because previously I
tried to speak with them years.
Years prior about their claims, and they were
very uncertain.
They were very kind of.
We don't know if we want to highlight that
kind of.
That side of our history.
It's a big house with a big history.
They had a very wealthy lumber family lived
there for.
For decades, and then it was an orphanage for
(35:50):
generations.
So they have a lot of history to share there.
But with a history like that comes lots ofpotential for hauntings.
And we got so many reports and stories fromthe tour guides there that we were able to
make a full and complete chapter in our book.
And I believe it's the very last one.
Speaker B (36:07):
It is.
Speaker C (36:07):
It ends the whole book on a high
note.
Speaker B (36:09):
Definitely.
Speaker A (36:10):
Nice. What is your favorite story,
guys, that you heard that day?
Speaker B (36:13):
Good question.
There's.
We heard about a young child who used to rollsmall toy cars down the banisters.
And they had been in trouble for this a numberof different times.
And one of the tour guides had found.
There's.
There's backup.
There's a spooky little door.
And by little door, I mean like mouse height,a 3 inch, 3 inch tall, maybe 5 inch tall door
(36:40):
in one of the molding spaces by the bottom ofthe wall.
Why can't I think of the name for that?Either way.
So at one point they opened this door up andfully expecting nothing to be in there, it
actually had one of those cars in it.
Now, is it guaranteed to be paranormal?Definitely not.
But is it spooky?Absolutely.
(37:01):
And those are the kind of stories that welove.
Speaker A (37:03):
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, that.
That reminds me of.
Let's keep on the topic of spooky houses.
So you haven't heard the Pabst Mansion.
I've been to that.
Yeah, Broomedur Mansion.
I've been to that.
The Pabst Mansion vibe I got was.
Yeah, it's spooky.
It's creepy because you walk up these stepsand everything.
Creek, Creek, Creek.
(37:24):
You know, it's this old Victorian or whatever
you want to call it, kind of mansion.
And it's kind of like three.
I think it was like three levels or whatever.
I'm trying to think back,
but it was, you know,
just going in there and seeing creepy dollsand stuff.
I, I did talk to a couple of the guides andthey, they, they were like, yeah, you know, we
(37:45):
don't put out that it's haunted, but it'shaunted.
Yeah. Kind of attitude.
What did you guys, what do you guys hear that
when you guys were there, were you able tohave some discussions and figure out maybe
it's a little haunted?
Speaker B (37:56):
So when I visited there, it was
mostly tour based.
So the guides there were not really interestedin discussing the hauntings, which is totally
fine.
And I'll be honest, walking through the wholebuilding, as much as we see that and think,
wow, that's a really impressive old spookylooking building.
It really was just gorgeous and quiet in thereand taking photos throughout was serene and
(38:22):
wonderful.
Speaker A (38:23):
Yeah.
Speaker B (38:24):
So, you know, I didn't get a spooky
vibe in there at all.
I just enjoyed my time so much.
Speaker A (38:29):
Yeah. Mitch, anything to add about
that one?
Speaker C (38:31):
No. You know, I'm honestly kind of
at this point a bad judge of how spooky old
houses are.
Because it's one of.
It's one of the more common locations that weend up visiting is a historic house museum
like Habst Mansion is.
And so it, they, they don't.
Obviously they don't end up all looking alike.
And that's, that's something I love aboutthem.
Speaker A (38:51):
Right.
Speaker C (38:51):
But you know, we live in houses.
We get used to the vibe that that houses give
off.
And you know, I've lived in a lot of old
houses growing up.
And so the creaky steps, the dark, kind ofsmelly basement, it's just kind of like that
reminds me of growing up.
It's not like I'm spooky scared of it.
So an old house has to work overtime for me tobe creeped out by it.
Speaker A (39:14):
Yeah. Well, there you go.
Speaker B (39:15):
Yeah, I think same for me there.
It's so like, you know, you've been in an
asylum's basement at some point and it's like,oh, yeah, this old mansion is just pretty.
Speaker A (39:25):
Yeah, it's just, oh, look at this.
I'm not frightened for my life and want torun.
What did you guys think of the Brumdormansion?
Because that is.
I think it's still an active bed and
breakfast.
It is, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I know I did a episode on it and peoplehave had some experiences there.
(39:45):
So you guys want to share that with myaudience?
Speaker B (39:48):
Yeah. So I, I've actually been
there quite a lot.
I was there.
I was previously in a paranormal group that
ran public investigations.
There was.
Okay.
And so I've spent time like intimately
familiarizing myself with that place.
And there was one night that I hadn'texperienced there.
So having been there, you know that the thirdfloor used to be servants quarters and then
(40:11):
kind of apartments for a little while.
And there's only one entrance to the thirdfloor.
Third floor is a long hallway with two roomsat the end of it or three rooms at the end of
it.
Sorry.
And this night we had just wrapped up a public
investigation.
We had just kind of ushered everybody out and
we were packing up.
It's about 2am and I'm going up there to grab
equipment and I turn the corner to look downthe hallway to go to the rooms and I see
(40:36):
someone pass between these two rooms.
Clearly, clearly a woman.
But I didn't really make out any more than
that.
Just kind of clocked like, oh, there's a
person here.
Somebody forgot a wallet or a purse or a
phone.
I'm going to go help them find that and thenhelp them out of the building so that, you
know, they don't end up lurking in here orsomething, you know,
get lost or hurt.
So I go to the room that they walked into and
(40:59):
there's no one in there.
And the only other exit from this room other
than walking past me was like a three storywindow.
So,
yeah, it's a, it's a really, really coolplace.
It was supposedly one of Al Capone stops whenhe was running rum.
There was a speakeasy in the basement whereone of the bouncers was killed and his spirit
(41:21):
is supposedly down there.
And there is an old tunnel for running thatrum that has been since sealed, but is down
there and is one of the kind of star locationsfor activity in the building.
Speaker A (41:34):
Wow, okay.
Yeah, it's so much history in there and people
having experiences.
That's what makes it so interesting.
Mitch, anything to add about that mansion?
Speaker C (41:44):
Yeah,
because I was also with the team doing publicevents there for a little while.
And you know,
probably the most notable thing comes from thebasement speakeasy area because when we were
hosting the public events, you know, thedownstairs area of Rumder Mansion is almost
entirely taken up by this kind of stagepresentation area.
(42:06):
But obviously it's a basement.
There are utility areas that need to be had
and it kind of runs a snake serpentine patternaround the backstage area of this,
this kind of downstairs theater.
And so when you're setting up for, you know, a
dozen people in a space like that, we wouldset up chairs and it would snake all the way
(42:26):
through this utility area and just kind of goaround the outside of the basement.
And I ended up at one far end of thisessential snake of people that.
That ran all the way through the basement.
And where I ended up is right behind the.
The stage curtain.
And you could see a bit of light through aboutan inch underneath the stage curtain.
And so we started an EVP session, introducedfolks to what EVP was and how you do it.
(42:49):
And so we started asking questions.
The.
The people on the tour, the event startedasking questions.
And through that process.
So nothing really started out happening at
first, but as people ask more questions, Iwatch the.
The. Oh, gosh, what do you call it?
Speaker A (43:02):
The meter or the Mel.
Rem.
Speaker C (43:06):
Oh, not.
Not the meter at all.
The thing I was sitting in front of.
Curtain.
There we go.
Stay.
Speaker A (43:10):
Okay. Oh, okay.
There we go.
Speaker C (43:13):
Yeah. It looked like a wall to me,
but then the wall started moving.
The curtain started to sway.
And at first I didn't.
I didn't give much credence to that because,
you know, air can shift, and it's a curtain.
It'll start shifting back and forth, but it
started to do it pretty significantly.
And then it would slow down between people'squestions, and then it would start up again
after they asked their questions.
(43:34):
So it seemed kind of shifting on its own
volition.
And. And as soon as the EVP session stopped,it calmed right down.
So that.
That was a peculiar happening there at
Cromdier Mansion, that's for sure.
Speaker A (43:45):
Yeah, that definitely sounds like
it.
Yeah.
And, you know, speaking with Al Capone, a lot
of people, you know, associate Al Capone withChicago stuff, and that's very true.
However, he was in Wisconsin quite a bit,right?
Oh, yeah, Brumder Mansion.
So let's go on to the other one, Little
Bohemia.
That was,
you know, where he.
(44:05):
Where they had the famous shootout and stuff.
And if you watch Public Enemy with good old
Johnny Depp,
a Michael Mann film, it's pretty good film.
You know, supposedly there's still bullet
holes.
I have never been to it.
There's still bullet holes.
Yeah. So talk about a little bit about that.
Speaker C (44:21):
Yeah.
So Little Bohemia is.
So the story there is.
It is.
Was a small,
kind of rustic motor lodge, basically a motelwith some hotel upstairs for largely hunters.
Because with the area where it is.
Is far, far northern Wisconsin.
It's called Manitouish Waters.
(44:41):
It's very woodsy, very rustic.
And still today, it's the.
Its biggest industry is deer hunting season.
And so this.
This lodge is largely for hunters, but it is
and was in the early 90s, extremely secluded.
And so right after John Dillinger escaped fromjail in the 90s, he and his gang of Chicago
(45:03):
ne' er do well, some rum runners, criminals.
They decided Chicago is a little too cop
filled for us right now.
So they're we're, we're going to go as farnorth as we can get.
And they had a tip that the owner of LittleBohemia was a cool guy.
He wouldn't mind some gangsters in that.
So, so they all head up there.
I want to say it's about half dozen people,
(45:23):
John Dillinger and five other guys.
I want to say they, they head up to Little
Bohemia and they slide the owner of the, theend a big wad of money and say we're not here,
ignore us.
And so they, they try their that.
But these are gangsters, these are Chicagoboys, these are city boys who just want to
make trouble.
And trouble they do make,
(45:43):
they, they get into all sorts of things.
They start, you know, just shooting guns in
the air in the middle of the night because youknow, they, they get drunk and hammered in the
middle of the Wisconsin woods.
What are you supposed to do?
Speaker A (45:55):
Right?
Speaker C (45:55):
And eventually the owner of this
place gets really sick of, of these people
being here and so he heads down the street andcalls the FBI.
And the FBI is, it has been searching Chicagolike mad dogs for John Dellinger.
So to hear he's 300 miles away, you know, kindof miffed him a little bit.
But they get on a plane and they rush in therewith no plan at all.
(46:18):
They, they drive up to Little Bohemia and theyjust walk through the woods towards this, this
lit up lodge and people come out, people spillout in front of them and the FBI opens fire on
these people.
These people were deer hunters and one of themwas killed in the crossfire.
And of course this massive firefight alertsJohn Dillinger and his gang who are not at the
(46:40):
front of the building at all.
They are in the back and they say ****, let'sget out of here.
And so they slip out the back and out and outthe side.
They, they take some shots at the FBI to keephim at bay and get away.
They John Dillinger and his men kill an FBIagent.
The FBI killed an innocent bystander and everysingle criminal got away scot free.
(47:03):
It was a massive, massive embarrassment forlaw enforcement.
A huge boon to the, to the criminals of theworld and a massive tourist draw to manitouish
waters every year since then.
And Little Bohemia no longer has overnightstays, but their, their restaurant still
operates.
They Have a museum dedicated to John
Dillinger.
And yes.
In the trees around the building and in thebuilding itself, the bullet holes that the FBI
(47:29):
shot through the building are still there, andthey're.
They're their own exhibit, basically.
Speaker A (47:34):
Yeah.
Speaker C (47:35):
And now, of course, there are
reports of the spirit of the FBI agent and the
spirit of the poor bystander still lingeringaround Little Bohemia.
Speaker A (47:45):
Yeah. Did you guys have a chance to
investigate it all, or were you just there
again to take pictures and get a little bit ofhistory?
Speaker B (47:52):
Yeah, much more the latter,
unfortunately,
when we.
When we got there, it was during their service
hours, and we were.
I believe that was the last location on a long
trip, so we had to kind of, like, fit it in.
And unfortunately, we couldn't, like, spendthe night there.
Speaker C (48:06):
Yeah.
Still has all the spaces where you could havespent the night in the 1930s and 40s, you
know, but they're well past that era.
But, you know, they.
They keep up very regular business hours, andthey're very open about their stories if you
happen in to stop in when they're open.
But, you know, they're.
I don't think they presently do any overnight
(48:27):
investigations at any point.
Speaker A (48:29):
Oh, okay, okay.
Yeah, that.
That probably makes sense.
Again, similar to certain other buildings,
very well guarded about certain things.
Totally get that.
Speaker C (48:37):
Yeah.
Speaker A (48:37):
So we cannot talk Wisconsin without
talking bars.
Right.
And.
And haunted bars and stuff, right?
Speaker C (48:45):
Yes.
Speaker A (48:45):
So I don't think.
Boy, I'm a little bit fuzzy on this one, but Iremember going to Shaker's cigar bar and stuff
like that, but it's changed or something.
So correct me if I'm wrong, but that was kindof gangster hangout, too.
As long as we're staying with that theme, theystill have, I guess, some gangster,
I would say,
(49:06):
residual, whether it be, you know, ghost, orjust areas where people were on the lookout
for the cops when they were doing.
And prohibition and stuff.
So what did you guys think of that?
And talk a little bit about the history of it.
Speaker B (49:18):
Yeah. So, I mean, Shakers has a
bunch of very, very interesting claims, from
gangsters that were poured into the concretein the basement to a very, very brutal murder
that took place on the third floor.
Shakers really has a lot of that gangsterhistory.
And we're, again, talking about Al Caponerunning alcohol and running a speakeasy
(49:41):
through there during a time when that was amuch simpler area of the state.
It wasn't the.
The first ward like it is now, where it's, youknow, built up and there's a lot of stuff
there.
It was much more port town sort of thing going
on.
And one of the more interesting claims therehas to do with a very large and very heavy
(50:03):
safe in their basement.
Now they have not been able to open this safe.
It was there when the current owner bought thebuilding and it weighs genuinely hundreds of
pounds.
Now every once in a while when the staff come
in, they will find this safe has been draggedacross the floor and repositioned with no
(50:24):
explanation and nobody will own up to doingit.
So that's, that's one of the more interestingclaims we've ever heard.
Like just, huh, ghost trying to get in a safe.
Why not?
Speaker A (50:33):
Yeah,
that's interesting to me because why would youwant to do that?
But okay,
maybe, you know, that would be probably athing they would do to people, you know, put
them in a safe and then, oh, they're dead now,and then take them out again.
And that was just terrible.
What other bars in Wisconsin in this book that
you guys have that are just pretty hauntedtoo?
Speaker C (50:55):
Yeah, there's a, there's one
further north from Shakers that also once
again has a mob connection.
Another, Another surprising thing that wefound doing the, the research and the work for
this book is how many places do have Chicagomob connections.
You know, because you, you would anticipateplaces in Milwaukee like Shakers being so
close to Chicago would kind of have thatconnection.
(51:17):
But you know, even, even far, far north andin, in odd areas of Wisconsin, you find that,
you know, Al Capone may have been here, or atleast his operation was.
And a place further north up in Door county,the peninsula of Wisconsin, a place called
Shipwrecked Brew Pub,
that's another place with a pretty wellestablished mob connection from, you know, its
(51:38):
time supposedly as a speakeasy because itopened in the early 1880s.
As you know, at that point, logging was thebig industry up there.
So it was a, a rough and tumble kind of loggerbar.
And that held all the way to prohibition.
And then it sort of became a restaurant, but
you know, a restaurant.
You know, there were, there were.
The basement was, was the most productive area
(52:00):
in that time.
The, the area where they could produce bootleg
alcohol and store molasses.
And Al Capone was supposedly the ringleader of
that operation.
It was central to his supply chain down inChicago,
bringing things from Canada to make liquorwholesale with.
And of course crime followed wherever hisoperation went.
(52:22):
And so in the 1920s there was a story thatsome IRS or really kind of pre.
IRS, very early IRS agents at this time,Federal agents, Federal Tax collectors came a
knocking at the door of Shipwrecked Brew Pubon the belief that Al Capone himself was
there.
Because that's a super, super smart idea.
(52:44):
We're going to, we're going to go find the ElChapo of our era and going to give them a,
we're going to hand them a tax bill and thenwe're going to live to see tomorrow.
That's what's going to happen.
That is not what happened.
These tax collectors vanished off the face of
the earth.
And the story goes that they are buried in the
basement of Shipwrecked Brew Pub.
And what a strange place for prohibition era
(53:06):
law enforcers to be.
But the basement of a bomb.
Speaker A (53:09):
Yeah, that's perfect irony.
What?
Irony?
Speaker C (53:14):
Yes.
Yeah, that's not even the, the only spirit AlCapone supposedly left behind.
Because Al Capone doesn't supposedly hauntthis place.
There's, there's a lot of doubt that he everactually visited it himself.
But it will, but it's, it's kind of, well,well assumed that it was definitely a part of
his operation.
And probably even more famous than theunfortunate tax collectors is the story of Al
(53:37):
Capone's illegitimate son.
And Al Capone did visit the Door county areaand you know, enjoyed himself quite thoroughly
in the, in the area.
And the end result is a, a son he supposedly
had with a woman in the area.
And as his operation went on, his son grew uparound Shipwrecked group and kind of lived
(54:00):
part of his life around this cornerstone ofhis father's operation.
Even though he probably very rarely if eversaw this man who was his dad.
But the story goes that, and there are twodistinct versions of this.
Either the kid was a teenager around 17 or ayoung child around 7.
(54:21):
Either way, in both versions of this story, AlCapone gets suspicious of this, of his child
and, and puts a hit out on him and has himkilled at Shipwrecked through pub.
And once again,
in either case, this is outlandishly, youknow, off, off, off the wall.
But in one version of the story, this is a 7year old child that Al Capone is getting so
(54:43):
paranoid that this child is going to go to thecops and rat him out that he has him killed.
And you think it's crazy,
but Al Capone was kind of really a crazy guy.
He was, he was eccentric, he was insane, hehad syphilis of the brain throughout,
throughout much of his criminal life.
And the end result is he was a very, very,very paranoid man.
(55:07):
And you know, we, we like to Romanticize andlook at the.
The 1920s gangster era as these kind ofantihero characters.
But,
you know, these were criminals at the end ofthe day.
And that story really kind of highlights that.
That, you know, the law.
The lore is, anyway, that he murdered his ownyoung son just to keep away from the cops.
(55:30):
You know, that it really puts him in adifferent light and a far truer light in my
mind.
And of course, the.
The son supposedly remains at shipwrecked brewpub up in the attic, where he supposedly was
made to live for much of his life.
And so now he still apparently playing, makinghimself known, making noise up there, stomping
(55:50):
around in the attic when nobody should be inthe attic of a bar at any point in time.
And they're.
A very popular story is that his apparition
will appear on the roof in the middle of thenight, and the police will get calls.
There's a small.
There's a little.
There's a little kid on the roof of this bar,two stories tall.
He's gonna fall off and die.
And so police rush over there, and there's
never.
Speaker A (56:09):
Yeah,
that.
That's awesome.
I love stories like that, you know, wherepeople say, I saw.
You know, he's a little boy.
You know, he's in the middle of the street or
something.
You got to.
And then cops.
My.
Yeah.
What are you talking about?
Speaker C (56:20):
Yeah.
Speaker A (56:21):
So one of my favorite stories out
of all of these,
just because it's kind of funny and it also isscary,
is like, hotels in Wisconsin obviously arehaunted, and the most famous one is the
Pfister Hotel.
That is where not typically, but sometimes theopposing team who are playing the Milwaukee
(56:43):
brewers will stay.
And there's been numerous stories.
I just got one from Holly.
Weird paranormal, from my friend Tammy, who
talks about when the Dodgers were there.
There's a player called Mookie Betts, and whenhe was there, he had an experience.
So, you know, you guys talk about yourexperience, but I thought this was a fun one
where he, you know, Mookie Betts was, like,sitting there getting ready to go to bed and
(57:07):
everything.
And then all of a sudden, his TV would turnon, and he'd be like, well, this is weird.
What's going on?Okay, I turn it off again.
And then, like, a faucet would turn on or,like, clothes that go missing, or there's all
these different things that would happen.
And, you know, that happened numerous times toplayers.
And I know some players will not stay there.
(57:27):
They're like, no, it's not happening.
Or they'll leave in the middle of the nightand be like, I'm getting a place over here.
So what stories have you guys heard regardingnot only like major league baseball players
who are like, you know, you think, ah, theseare big guys, you know, they paid a lot of
money.
How could they get stooped?And they wound up running like little kids.
(57:48):
Any other stories you want to share about thathotel because it's so rich in history?
Speaker B (57:52):
Yeah, we do often hear kind of the
standard stories you expect.
Footsteps in the hallways that can't beexplained, the sounds of running, children
that sound kind of the classic one.
Having visitors.
Again, like you were saying, leave in the
middle of the night.
There is a woman's apparition there who tends
to sit at the end of your bed, supposedly ifyou're in one of the fifth floor rooms.
(58:15):
So, yeah, it's definitely an interesting one.
Unfortunately, the Pfister is very sort of
locked off about speaking about their ghoststories.
Speaker A (58:22):
Yeah.
And again, it's the same thing too.
You know, the.
A lot they know it's haunted.
Like, if you go in there,
the staff is like, yeah, it is, but they don'treally bring it out.
But people have had numerous experiences inthere.
The owner, supposedly, Mr. Pfister, supposedlywalks along and he.
He's supposed to be a friendly guy and stufflike that.
(58:45):
No one, excuse me, has ever reported like anapparition coming in and destroying and, you
know, killing people or something like that.
Similar to like the Congress Plaza Hotel,
where people who have killed themselves havejumped out of like the 14th floor window.
13th floor window and everything.
Just some horrific stuff.
But it was really interesting with the hotelsand stuff.
(59:07):
So any other hotels you guys want to bring upthat might surprise you or surprise our
audience, that I didn't know that was haunted.
Speaker C (59:16):
Yeah.
So obviously the Fister Hotel is just steepedin history and it's got hauntings pretty much
because it's just lived its life for so longin Milwaukee.
But we.
We had the opportunity to stay at another
hotel that is kind of the opposite.
It was only built in 2004,
though it's about 21 years old right now.
Speaker A (59:38):
Wow.
Speaker C (59:38):
And yet it has its more than its
fair share of ghost stories.
And that's St. Brendan's Inn up in Green Bay.
And the story behind St. Brendan's is.
Well, most of the story is that that thatwhole area of Green Bay is largely.
Is largely new.
There are some historic structures, some.
Some contributing properties that surviveddevelopment,
(59:59):
but most of that area was residential space.
Early on in the city's life, but a huge swath
of it was supposedly the city's one cemetery.
And of course, when development came in, they
moved the cemetery and built all of this stuffon top of it.
And St. Brendan's is one of the.
One of the buildings that is built directly on
top of what is said to be basically deadcenter city cemetery.
(01:00:23):
And so a lot of these claims come from, youknow, the.
The land that was here before was hauntedbefore.
So, of course, you built something on top ofit.
That building is going to be haunted, too.
Along with that, they've got so many reportsthat stem from the graveyard upstairs in the
guest rooms, where people will report thingslike the faucets turning on, lights coming on
(01:00:44):
and off,
footsteps, voices.
But down in the dining room,
there's actually already a ghost story fromSt. Brendan's itself, related to St. Brendan's
itself.
So from shortly after it opened to.
Till the late 2000s, there was a fellow whoworked as the janitor, the main janitorial
(01:01:05):
staff for the restaurant and the main lobbyfloor.
And that guy was well known as a veryimpassioned worker and a.
Someone who cared very deeply for St.
Brendan's as an institution.
And so when he passed away, he essentiallyworked until the day he passed away.
Ever since then, people have reported hisspirit coming back and, you know, keeping tabs
(01:01:26):
on things.
He wasn't the guy running the restaurant, buthe knew how the restaurant was supposed to be.
And so the story goes that if ever, you know,a cup is not set the right way,
he'll set it the right way.
If at the end of the day, chairs are still,
you know, not pushed in, he will come by andhe will push them all in.
And there are.
(01:01:46):
There are staff members who have said they've
come in and literally watched a chair push inby itself in the.
In the restaurant.
So they've got.
They've got a very helpful haunting down onthe first floor, helping.
Helping keep things in shipshape condition.
Speaker A (01:02:00):
Yeah, keeping everything together
and stuff like that.
That's always nice to have a helpful ghost,but it'd be kind of annoying.
You know, it'd be like you set your glass downand it move, moves, and you're like, oh,
send it back.
Oh, come on.
You know, this is ridiculous.
So a lot of these places, like I said, you
know, they keep a little guarded, and you gotto make sure you get permission to get in and
(01:02:20):
so on and so forth.
But there are places that are in this bookthat you can go to Right now, that's probably
in your area, or you can drive to.
And that is roads.
So Wisconsin has numerous roads.
For example, ****** Bride Bridge Bridge, whichis fascinating.
Highway 12 Phantom,
(01:02:42):
Boy Scout Lane,
among others.
There's another bridge.
You guys helped me out with it, wheresupposedly a mother and a child drowned in
the.
Went off the bridge and drowned in the river.
And I can't remember the name of that right
now.
It's escaping me.
I gotta grab your book here and read about.
But what is your famous,
(01:03:03):
like or most infamous road that you guys arelike, you guys gotta check this out.
Like, check this out and see what you think.
Speaker B (01:03:12):
I personally think the Highway 12
Phantom is easily the most interesting of the
haunted roads in there.
I think Mitch is probably gonna say it's
Paradise Road, but we agree to disagree onthat one.
But the Highway 12 Phantom is reallyinteresting.
Just outside of Baraboo, there's this stretchof highway and it really goes through some
(01:03:33):
fairly desolate areas.
I shouldn't say desolate, just not built up alot of fields out there.
And they say if you're driving at night, youwill see a hitchhiker on the side of the road
walking.
And anybody who tries to stop and pick thishitchhiker up, usually he's in a green jacket.
He looks like he's from about the 60s or 70s.
(01:03:54):
And when you stop to pick him up, he
disappears.
And you go, whoa, that's weird.
And you get back on the road and another mile
or two down the road you see the same guy.
And it keeps happening.
And it is such an interesting story.
I don't think anyone has any evidence of thisguy, like, getting in the car or any stories
of, like, what happens if you actually get himin the car.
(01:04:15):
But yeah, it's.
That is.
That's one of the wilder hitchhiking ghost
stories that I've ever.
Speaker A (01:04:20):
Yeah, and I know the ****** Bride
Bridge.
Supposedly you go over this bridge.
I believe it's in Stevens Point.
You go over and the ****** bride will be inyour back seat.
So that's pretty unnerving to look at yourrear view.
There is in that story.
May you guys mention in here.
Like I said, I haven't read the whole book.
I'll be doing that tonight.
One of the.
One of the things is a police officer,
(01:04:43):
you know, similar to, you know, with AlCapone's son.
Hey, there's whatever was supposedly goingover the bridge and saw this,
which is.
If you saw a ****** bride in a wedding dress,
like, wouldn't it be like, like something.
How did that happen?
Right.
You know, that's.
Speaker C (01:04:59):
If you're a police officer, that's
busty.
U turn and figure out what's going on.
Speaker A (01:05:03):
Yeah, right.
Speaker C (01:05:04):
Let's not pull that in and call it
a night.
That's, you know.
Speaker A (01:05:08):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.
So, right.
And then suppose the story is, you know, thepolice officer went to hell.
Get her.
Get her in the car.
If you get this bride in the car, she doesn'tsay anything.
You know, you're like, oh, my God, we got toget you to the hospital.
You know, you're probably going crazy andflipping out.
Right?Because a bride and ******.
That's,
you know, come on.
(01:05:29):
And then when you get over the bridge, poof.
Gone.
Similar to the Highway 12, Phantom Boy Scout
Lane is really interesting to me because thatis an urban legend, guys.
Would you classify that as an urban legend?
Speaker B (01:05:43):
Definitely, yes, because that is.
Speaker A (01:05:45):
Right.
A number of boy scouts were killed by a, like
a serial killer, I've heard, and then apedophile.
And then, like, all these different stories.
Yeah.
Speaker B (01:05:56):
There's a reason it isn't a full
entry in the book.
Speaker A (01:05:59):
Yeah, it's an interesting.
Speaker B (01:06:01):
I think we can agree the veracity
of that story is a bit in question.
Speaker A (01:06:07):
Yeah.
Speaker B (01:06:07):
It is definitely a place called Boy
Scout Lane.
But the story.
Story, frankly, is a little dubious.
Speaker A (01:06:14):
Right.
Speaker B (01:06:14):
It is something that we wanted to
cover in the book because it is an urban
legend that folks reading ghost stories mightwant to check out, might want to stop.
It is a.
It is a gorgeous road.
It would be a cool walk.
But, you know, as it stands, I don't thinkthat we're.
We're behind the story of kids getting choppedup.
Speaker A (01:06:33):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker C (01:06:34):
And that is.
That's the case with, you know, a lot of
haunted road stories, as it ultimately is a.
A piece of urban legend or something of thelike.
And one thing that we found is, you know, itkind of depends on the haunted road whether
you get that kind of eerie vibe from it or youget kind of the subway vibe from it.
And a subway vibe example is definitely theBray Road outside of Jefferson, Wisconsin,
(01:06:59):
famous for the.
The Beast of Bray Road werewolf legend.
It's mentioned in the book, but you go outthere and to say.
To say nothing of whether or not there's awerewolf out there.
There are farm fields out there.
You know, it's not.
It's not a road that's hugged by woods.
You know, you get out of your car and you can
see for miles in either direction.
You know, it's kind of wide open and there'snot much mystery out there.
(01:07:20):
You know, at night it's a little eerier.
But if you've got night vision or a thermal
camera, you can see once again for milesaround you.
There's the werewolf is not going to come outof nowhere at you so to speak.
But you know, probably the eeriest, creepiesthaunted road we encountered and quite possibly
at this point, the most eerie haunted road inthe state of Wisconsin.
(01:07:42):
Buffalo Ridge Road up up in Door County.
Again, Buffalo Ridge roads reports are just
creepy by themselves they will.
The ghosts only come out once the road turns
to gravel because it starts out paved and thenit turns to gravel and then a few miles down
the road it ends on a,
on a T intersection.
(01:08:02):
But the ghosts only come out in the gravelarea.
So you drive down this winding heavily woodedspace to where it just becomes gravel.
And the reports that, that, that come out isthat spirits will dart from, you know, side to
side on the road super fast and right in frontof your car as you're driving.
And then as you go further, they will sprintout of the woods on all fours like an animal.
(01:08:26):
And these are human forms but they are runningat you like a dog into your headlights,
directly at you.
And you know, when you get to it's it's eerieand strange by itself.
But when you get to the gravel area, the bendsand turns in the road become steep and sharp
and the woods get just clench around thevehicle.
(01:08:47):
And so you have almost no space to do anythingother than but, but continually move forward.
So once you start passing those bends, there'sno reversing.
So you are stuck going forward.
And if anything rushes out at you, you are
just subject to it.
Speaker A (01:09:02):
Yeah, my God, yeah.
Or screaming.
You can scream I guess if you want to.
Speaker B (01:09:08):
Screaming, urinating.
There are all sorts of things you can do, but
none of them are really going to help you.
Speaker A (01:09:12):
Absolutely.
So the fun part of the book before we wrap uphere is oddities.
Okay, so what's your favorite Wisconsinoddity?
There's the six pack.
There's like get all this other crazy stuff in
there.
What do you guys like the best?
Speaker B (01:09:26):
Mitch, why don't you take that one
first?
Speaker C (01:09:28):
Yeah.
So I'm not going to say the six pack is myfavorite, but I do have a great memory,
great memory of the six pack because.
So the world's largest six pack was a thingfor many years.
The old style, old style beer, they stoppedmaking that some time ago.
And for years the silos that stored that Beerwere the world's largest six pack.
(01:09:50):
They painted it like that.
Old style beer six.
Then, you know, when Old style went out ofbusiness,
they repainted all of that.
They, they erased the world's largest six
pack.
But the, the city of, of Lacrosse around it,
you know, kind of came together.
And as soon as Old Style, the brand was
reintroduced by the owning company, the citywas like, bring back the six pack.
(01:10:12):
Bring back the six pack.
So they, they repainted it and they, they
revitalized these storage silos into thisroadside attraction that once again is
refreshed and new.
But once again, they're making Old style at
this factory where this is.
So it was, it was middle of November when wewere there.
We pulled up and you get out and the, itdoesn't matter what, what time of year it is.
(01:10:35):
The air is thick and humid and it tastes likeOld style beer locks in either direction.
The air is just thick with beer flavor.
And so when you stop to see the world's
largest six pack, you get a little extra inthe air around you.
But probably my favorite, my favorite oddityis a place in Wisconsin that is truly one of a
(01:10:56):
kind in the whole world.
You're not going to find another place like
it.
And that's the, what I have, what I've takento call the corner of the world and what it
is, is it's in our book as the 4590geographical point.
Because that's, that's its technical name.
That's its, you know, that's its Christianname, 4590 geographical point.
And it is.
There are four points on the globe that are
(01:11:17):
halfway between the equator and the primemeridian and halfway between the international
date line and the Greenwich meridian.
So as close to corners as you can get on asphere.
And two of them, the two Southern hemispherecorners are in the middle of the ocean,
totally inaccessible.
One of them is in China,
far, far west.
(01:11:38):
So it's, it's days of mountain hiking just toget to it.
And only one person has ever recorded their,their trip out there because it's just so
arduous and dangerous to hike out there.
And there's nothing out there to mark thespot.
It's just, it's just a piece of mountain.
But the fourth corner of the world is a 20
minute drive west of Wausau, Wisconsin.
It's in a little cornfield.
(01:12:00):
They have a little parking lot built right
into this cornfield.
You pull up and you take about 150 foot hike
out down the side of this cornfield andthere's this big stone monument in the ground
with a.
There's.
There's a cross in the monument exactly where
the point is.
And you can walk out and you can stand right
on the corner.
Planet Earth.
Speaker A (01:12:19):
I love that.
Speaker C (01:12:21):
There's not another place in the
world where you can do that.
Speaker A (01:12:23):
Wow. I love that.
You definitely have to check that out.
I definitely have to check that out.
Brandon, how about you?
Speaker B (01:12:30):
So there was one that we, we had
very little expectation for.
It was a place we were stopping.
It was actually the, the night after we stayed
at St. Brendan's and we, we rolled NationalRailroad Museum in Green Bay.
And you know, we expected like, oh, yeah, it'sa, it's a modern building.
It's going to have some cool old railroadstuff.
(01:12:52):
And we're, we're going through and it's, youknow, it's ephemera from.
From various different eras of, of railtravel.
And then we get to their back room and this,this place looks like nothing from the front.
Highly recommend going.
We get to this back room and it opens into a
warehouse.
In this warehouse are trains upon trains upontrains.
(01:13:16):
It was so incredible.
We, we opened the door and Mitch and I looked
at each other and we were like, no, we onlyhave 30 minutes here scheduled.
We have to, we're gonna have to stay longer.
And you know, we, we ended up being late to
the next thing that we had planned justbecause this place was so fantastic and we're,
you know, exploring all these train cars.
(01:13:36):
I think I have a thousand photos from thatlocation.
We have one in the book if anybody'sinterested.
Reach out and I'll send you hundreds more.
Speaker A (01:13:46):
Love that.
Yeah, definitely, because that would be
something to see.
That's crazy, right?
Just to be like, yeah, what.
Speaker C (01:13:53):
And these trains are said to be
haunted?
Speaker B (01:13:56):
Yes.
Speaker C (01:13:56):
They've got, they've got the huge
engines.
They've got, I think, one of the biggest ofever built, if not one of the biggest, the
Union Pacific big boy engine, which is like,it's literally got big in the name, but.
But it can't be described.
You have to see how huge this thing is.
But along with that, they have so manypassenger cars and things where, where people
would be working, like radio station cars.
(01:14:18):
And these are supposedly, supposedly haunted.
And so when we were getting to.
Getting in the front to get our tickets, we
asked the ticket taker, you know, which.
Are any of these cars haunted?
Because we didn't know how close they keptthose cards to their chests.
So we just asked you Know, are.
Is there any one of these that stands out as
haunted?They're just all of them.
(01:14:39):
All of them.
So. And they said, you know, I can't.
I can't really pick one that's most haunted.
But, you know, if you talk to staff here,
everybody's got a story about those trains.
So the trains in the warehouse, you know, from
the.
From the mouths of the people who work there,every single one of them's got some ghost
story or another.
And so they are.
They are amazing pieces of history to see,
(01:15:00):
and if you happen to be lucky enough toinvestigate them in the night, you might see
that history.
Speaker A (01:15:05):
I love that.
I love that.
So we have to end this, because I don't.
I don't want to end this.
I talk to you guys for hours.
There's so much in this talk.
However,
we have to end it with my favorite crypto ofall Cryptids,
the Hodag.
So Mitch and Brandon, every time I've hadsomeone else on the show,
(01:15:29):
we're doing the subject of Cryptids, I talkabout this, and everybody loves it.
Like, everyone.
They're like, wait a minute.
It's a con man who's displays things like madeout of paper mache.
But you guys have, like, concerts and, like,museums and you.
And there's the high schools named after it.
What?
Like, they don't believe me.
(01:15:50):
And then they go on Google and they're like,
this is insane, John. This is absolutelyinsane.
So the Hodag.
Please,
please.
I mean, I've done a number of times, but doyou guys have a favorite about the Hodag?
Like, why did it just explode like this whenit's literally a con man going just making
this up?
(01:16:10):
And it's a great, crazy story that you have tolook at that just blew up.
Any explanation of why this doesn't make anysense.
Speaker B (01:16:19):
I think you nailed it.
It's a crazy story.
Speaker A (01:16:21):
Yeah.
Speaker B (01:16:22):
And it is one of those things
that's so much bigger than the sum of its
parts.
It gets into the community, and everybody's
saying, like, oh, you know, these hunters cameback and they saw Hodag and they brought one
home with them.
And I think Mitch was telling a story at onepoint about the fact that someone had painted
a pug, and they were saying that this was aHodag.
You know, you find those stories and theybecome integral to a community.
(01:16:47):
They're things that tie people together in.
In sort of a shared folkloric space.
And it's an in joke.
It's an in joke for the entire group.
I, I don't think anyone in Rhinelander issaying like, oh, yeah, no, Odag's real.
I think most of them are looking at it andsaying like, this is, this is something that
really sets us apart from other cities.
This is something that's key to our identityand that's why it got so big.
(01:17:10):
Personally, I think it's hilarious and it issuch a good mascot.
I'd, I'd tip my hat to Rhine Lender for, forrunning with the joke.
Speaker A (01:17:18):
Right, right.
Mitch, anything to add to that?
Speaker C (01:17:20):
Yeah, yeah.
You know, the Hodag exists in kind of a veryinteresting cryptozoological space in that so
many stories of cryptids are still focused on.
It is a real thing, and we're going to find
it, you can hunt it, and we're going to be theones to prove that it exists.
There's not that onus on the Hodag shoulders.
The Hodag is a tongue in cheek hoax.
(01:17:43):
And it didn't, it didn't start that way.
It didn't begin that way.
Lots of people in the late 1800s did kind ofbelieve that Hodag was out there.
And, you know, part of what I think made itsuch a enduring story and so important to
Rhinelander is.
Rhinelander is another one of those northern
cities,
a very forested town that relies on huntingtourism.
(01:18:06):
And so in the 1880s,
you know, that was when the hoaxes were reallybeing driven by the belief that the Hodag is
really out there.
And so anything to draw hunters from any other
place in Wisconsin,
you know, you could go hunt deer anywhere, butRhinelander, you might be able to hunt the
Hodag.
And so that was probably a very early tourism
(01:18:26):
draw that even when, you know, we can't, wecan't, you know, shoulder our, our city's
tourism industry on a, on a hoax monster.
They still said,
you know, this, this, this being is,
is worth,
worth keeping around, you know, worthremembering.
It is.
Like I said, it exists in a unique space for
(01:18:47):
itself because it is an open hoax.
It's also a very unique hoax.
It's, it's, there are, there are a lot ofcryptids out there that are like human being,
but lizard human being, but extra hairy humanbeing, two heads, three heads, human being
with wings.
And it, you know, it's, they, they follow thiskind of humanoid but animal structure.
Speaker A (01:19:08):
Correct.
Speaker C (01:19:09):
And the Hodag is the Hodag.
You look at the Hodag and we've got a, we'vegot a great photo in the Book of the.
The statue that they have outside theRhinelander Chamber of Commerce.
And this is not a small statue.
They are very proud of this beast.
And it is, it's just a one of a kind creature.
You're, you're not gonna, it's, it's.
(01:19:30):
And, and in the, the lore, it's dog sized.
It's just got that big face of, of teeth, the
scales, the, the spikes.
But, but it looks kind of adorable.
It looks kind of a thing that if it did exist,
you might have it as a pet.
Speaker B (01:19:43):
Yeah.
Speaker C (01:19:43):
And it's, it's endearing.
It's endearing for a lot of reasons.
It's, it's, it's.
There's no, you know, dispute to have drama
over whether or not someone found evidence ofit or not,
because there isn't.
It's just a, it's just a fairy tale, but it's
a, It's a fun fairy tale.
It's a fun fairy tale with fun imagery that,you know, a whole town also decided was fun.
(01:20:07):
And sometimes that just happens.
And so it's on their water tower.
It's their high school mascot.
It's outside their chamber of commerce.
And, you know, it's a, it's a culturaltouchstone.
And what a, what a strange kind of scaly,cuddly touchstone it is.
Speaker A (01:20:23):
Exactly.
And you know, the only thing, the only two
that come close to it and they both have kindof,
I won't say negative, but they have somenegative stories is like Bigfoot.
That's the grandfather.
Right.
It's the OG Whatever you want to say.
And the Mothman.
Right.
I mean, Virginia adapts that.
They, you know, they have restaurants, theyhave all these different things, but like
(01:20:45):
both, I mean, the Mothmans, you know, thebridge that people died and supposedly the
Mothman came.
There's still stories of Mothman aroundChicago here in the Midwest and everything
like that.
Nobody,
nobody really knows what to make.
You know, is this evil, Is this good?
Is a combination of both.
But Hodag is just.
It's just fun, guys.
Let's have some fun.
(01:21:05):
Yeah, let's have a fun guy in the woods.
Yeah, this is a fun.
Let's just have some fun and have a good time.
And everybody has.
And that I love.
That is so great.
So as we wrap up here, you know, like I said,I could talk to you guys forever.
But when they get this book,
you know, my spooky friends, you know, get itfor you, get a bunch of copies,
(01:21:27):
throw it in your car and take a road Trip.
How would you recommend?
You know, not to put you guys on the spot, butlet's say someone's just bored, a couple's
bored, and they get their.
Get your book, and they're like, hey, I'm
gonna check out some of these areas,
depending where they are.
What would you recommend to start?
Would you say, why don't you go to.
If a road's in the area, try that, or go to a
(01:21:48):
bar, or go to this.
Or just go crazy and just go, hey, I'm justgonna try everything and see what I can.
See what I could do.
Speaker B (01:21:55):
I would absolutely say try
everything.
Start. Start in order.
Because I know the shaker or cigar bar offers
ghost tours.
They will welcome you in.
They will absolutely answer your questions.
I would say that any place you want to go,
just give them a shout.
Just let them know what you'd like to do, andthey'll.
They'll likely be pretty amenable to thatfact.
But, yeah,
(01:22:16):
I think any place is a good enough startingplace.
We divided the book into regions for thatexact reason.
Right.
So if you're in a specific geological area or
geographical area, you can say, hey, here are10 places right near me that I can go to.
And, John, that was exactly what you did whenyou opened the book.
You looked right at Spring Green.
You found your area, and you sort of looked at
(01:22:38):
those things.
So, yeah, hopefully that's how people are.
Are using them.
Speaker A (01:22:42):
Awesome.
Speaker C (01:22:42):
Yeah.
Speaker A (01:22:43):
Go ahead, Matt.
Speaker C (01:22:44):
Yeah, it's.
It's. We designed this very much to be kind of
a choose your own adventure sort of travelguide.
So if you're starting in Milwaukee, you've gota great place to start.
If you're starting in Superior, you've got agreat place to start.
If you're starting in Minnesota, Iowa,traveling into Wisconsin, you've also got a
great place to start, because you can reallystart anywhere.
And no matter where you're at, you can findthe region and start picking out places.
(01:23:09):
And like Brandon said, a lot of the locations,particularly the 30s haunted locations
themselves, are quite usually amenable tohearing from folks who want to talk about
their ghost stories and maybe explore them alittle deeper.
The travel guide is for folks to use prettymuch however they would like to use it.
And there's about a million different ways toexplore the spooky spots in Wisconsin.
Speaker A (01:23:33):
Absolutely.
And let's say my spooky friends or just anyone
listening to this picks up the book.
How can they find you?How can.
Like, if they have a question for you,
Mitch or Brandon, like, Hey, I went to thisand you said in the book, it was this.
Is there anything else associated with it?Like, you know, where could they find you?
Speaker B (01:23:53):
Sure. Yeah. So we are.
We are on social Hauntedus on just about every
platform.
We also have hauntedus.com that you can reach
out from and get a hold of us there.
The book itself is available on Amazon.
If you're having trouble finding it, just head
to hauntedus.com we have a nice link right inthe header that says book, and that will get
(01:24:13):
you right to it.
Yeah, other than that, you can send us anemail attheteam hauntedus.com and that would
be another great way to reach out.
Speaker A (01:24:22):
Awesome.
And again, like I said, this.
This book is great for not only spooky
friends, but, you know, if you just want to.
If you're not maybe not in the paranormal and
you want to do something for the weekend andyou're like, oh, let's get this book.
And then just check out some areas.
Or if you're in area,
like, like I said, you're like, I didn't knowthat was haunted.
I go to that bar all the time, you know, oryou know, that that's right down from my
(01:24:45):
street.
Just like with me, I have just three differentareas that basically within a half an hour of
me that are haunted or supposedly haunted.
So I love that.
And.
And that's what makes Wisconsin great.
I mean, we have so many.
By the way, folks, here's my pitch to you
guys.
You guys don't have cemeteries in here yet,
and you gotta do cryptids and cemeteries andyou gotta do some urban legends.
(01:25:09):
I'm pitching to you guys.
You know, I need a little bit of.
Little bit of residuals for that.
But if you guys do another book, like I said,
you know, this is a great book, but there'sjust so much else that's what's in.
Great, right?It's just so many.
Speaker B (01:25:23):
We found ourselves, even as we were
finishing up the book, saying, like, oh, there
are these two other places we were thinkingof.
We'd love to get in here.
Seth.
Yeah, absolutely.
There are.
There are more books in the future, I think.
Speaker A (01:25:34):
I love it.
I will look forward to it and definitely have
you guys back on to talk about it.
So, again,
thank you so much, guys.
We're going a little overtime on here because
I just had so many questions and I'm just soexcited about you guys put out this book.
It's great.
And just, you know, like I said, when I have
other people on from different states andeverything.
(01:25:54):
I'm like, just this tourism they show shouldpay me.
So I'm like, you got to see this and you gotto see it.
I've had people on from the UK and Australiaand the Netherlands and they're like, I got to
get to Wisconsin.
Like, I didn't, I didn't think you guys didn't
have that.
And yes, I mean, with so many different thingsand in the Midwest and everything in general,
there's so many great things.
(01:26:15):
So again, guys, thank you so much.
Really appreciate it.
Love to have you back on.
You know, maybe closer to Halloween we cankind of figure out some stories and stuff like
that.
Speaker B (01:26:24):
Sounds great.
Speaker A (01:26:25):
Back on the book and stuff.
So we can, you know, have people,
you know, obviously buy the book and enjoy itjust like I did.
So again, thank you guys.
Really appreciate.
Love you guys and stay spooky.
See you guys later.
Bye.