Re- Release of The Legend of the Hodag & Haunted Rogers Theater

Welcome back to Dairyland Frights! Join hosts John, Megan, and Brooke as they kick off their spooky Wisconsin series with two of the state’s most chilling legends — The Hodag of Rhinelander and The Haunted Rogers Theater of Wausau.

First, Brooke dives into the strange, hilarious, and surprisingly heartfelt history of the Hodag, the bizarre horned cryptid that began as a lumberjack tall tale and ended up becoming the mascot of Rhinelander High School. You’ll learn how prankster Eugene Shepard created the hoax that fooled the Smithsonian, why lumberjacks told stories of vengeful oxen spirits, and how a fake monster brought an entire town back to life.

Then, Megan takes us deep into the dark basement of the Rogers Theater, where unseen hands push workers, projectors flicker off, and rows of empty seats start rocking violently on their own. Could the building’s strange past — once a funeral home, brothel, and furniture shop — have cursed it forever?

🕯️ Highlights

• The hilarious feud between Brooke and Zak Bagans of Ghost Adventures (and why he blocked her on Twitter!)

• The real history of the Peshtigo Fire and how it shaped Wisconsin’s spooky folklore

• The Hodag’s rise from logging camp myth to pop-culture icon

• Inside the Rogers Theater hauntings — “Bob,” the ghost in the black suit, and the day construction workers ran for their lives

• Why Wisconsin’s small towns are hotbeds of supernatural lore

🏚️ Locations Covered

• Rhinelander, WI – Home of the Hodag and its legendary prankster, Eugene Shepard

• Wausau, WI – Site of the haunted Rogers Theater and its mysterious past

💀 About the Show

Hosted by John Radtke, Dairyland Frights explores ghosts, cryptids, hauntings, and all things eerie across the Midwest. Each episode blends storytelling, folklore, and humor — proving the Midwest is just as haunted as it is heartland.

🔗 Listen & Follow

🎧 Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and everywhere you get your chills. 💬 Follow us on X, Instagram, and Facebook @DairylandFrights for photos, ghost stories, and behind-the-scenes laughs. 👻 Support the show on Patreon for exclusive bonus stories and early access to episodes!

Episode Transcript

Speaker A (00:00):
Foreign.

Speaker B (00:12):
Hello, my spooky friends.
I'm John, and welcome to Dairyland Frights,
the paranormal podcast that covers everythingspooky, creepy and mysterious.
I'm joined by my two co hosts, Megan andBrooke.
So let's get right into it.
Why did we start this podcast?

(00:32):
Well, we all love the paranormal,
and we're not only here to scare you, but toentertain you.
And we may even convince you that that cryptiddemon or ghost in your yard, cubicle or house
is real.
So we're just going to take you along on thisparanormal journey, no matter where it goes.

(00:56):
And I have to thank Megan and Brooke forpossessing me to do this.

Speaker A (01:02):
Oh.

Speaker B (01:04):
So I'm gonna tell you why I love the paranormal.

Speaker C (01:08):
Okay.

Speaker B (01:09):
And then we'll get to Megan and Brooke and they'll tell us why they love the
paranormal.
So I love the paranormal for its mystery andalso the understanding of why spirits exist.
Now, I'm gonna be honest with you.
I've never seen a ghost, but if I do,
I would scream like a little girl and.

(01:31):
But seriously,
I've been on a number of paranormal Adventurestours and shut ins.
I've seen and heard things,
but nothing really conclusive.
But with this podcast, Dairyland Frights, wehopefully we can prove the existence of ghosts
and make believers out of people.

(01:52):
So I look forward to sharing and we lookforward to sharing stories and my love of the
paranormal and our love of the paranormal.
And here is one of my paranormal fiends, Imean, friends,
co host Brooke.
And she's going to tell you why she loves the
paranormal.
But before that,

(02:12):
Brooke, you have to tell your story about ZachBaggins and the guy from Ghost Adventures fame
if you don't know him and why he blocked youon Twitter.
If you want to talk that story,
appreciate it.

Speaker C (02:26):
Oh, absolutely.
So Zach Baggins and I go way back.
Well, not.
Not really.
Not personally.
I. In high school, I became like obsessed withthe show Ghost Adventures.
Like, my best friend and I would watch itevery Friday night.
We'd watch it on Travel Channel.
We had to see it.
I even made a blog on Tumblr.

(02:46):
Back in the day, Tumblr was a big thing.
I even made one like, all about GhostAdventures.
It was just like a. Like a community wherefans of the show would kind of gather and make
memes and jokes and stuff and.
And I followed all the guys on Twitter andwould interact with them pretty frequently.
I'm actually followed by the official GhostAdventures Twitter account, which they don't

(03:08):
follow that many people, so that's a Pretty.

Speaker B (03:10):
Yeah, that's right.

Speaker C (03:11):
Yeah.
But then I went at one point,
Zach Baggins from.
Who's, like, the lead investigator on ghost
adventures, if you're not familiar.
He started a clothing line called Dungeon
Wear, and the clothes were really stupid,
like those old, like, affliction shirts that,like, people would wear back in, like, the

(03:34):
early 2000s.
And so I, like, I made fun of it.
I tweeted something like, wow, this DungeonWear thing is, like, pretty ugly.
That's all I said.
I didn't even tag him.
And then, like, within a couple hours, I wasblocked, and he's never unblocked me.
So,
Zach, if you're listening to this, I wouldappreciate it if you would unblock me on

(03:54):
Twitter, because I think we can get over ourdifferences.

Speaker B (03:56):
But, yeah, come on, Zach.

Speaker A (03:58):
I know.
Just told them how it was.

Speaker C (04:01):
I did.
And you know what?
Dungeonware did not last.
It does not exist anymore.
So I was right.

Speaker A (04:07):
Well, maybe it was true then.

Speaker C (04:09):
It was.

Speaker B (04:09):
There you go.

Speaker C (04:10):
I know you can't fault me for telling the truth, but we love you, Zach.

Speaker A (04:15):
Don't worry.

Speaker C (04:15):
Yeah, we love you, Zach Baggins.
We do.
But.
But, yeah, it's so.
I have always been very intrigued by the
paranormal and the supernatural.
Super. Oh, that's another thing.
Supernatural is, like, one of my all time
favorite shows.
I definitely, like, consider myself a littlebit of a scary skeptic still.
Like you, John, I've never had, like, adefinitive experience that I could.

(04:37):
I've had, you know, kind of weird thingshappen, which, you know, we'll cover over the
course of this podcast and future podcasts,but I've never had,
like, oh, I've witnessed a full bodyapparition or anything like that, but I think
just the idea of the possibility of it and theidea that we don't understand everything about

(04:58):
our world is I think, why I love theparanormal the most.
I love science, but I also love the idea that,like, there's some stuff out there that we
just don't understand yet, and hopefullysomeday we will.
So.

Speaker B (05:10):
Yeah, absolutely.
That. That's.
Yeah, that's kind of why I think, too, Brooke.
That's why I love it, too, because, again,it's that mysterious, like,
how can we define this?And some things in life, you can't.
Right, Right.
You know, it's like, why do you love your dog?

Speaker A (05:26):
You just.

Speaker C (05:26):
Exactly.

Speaker B (05:27):
Right.
There's no scientific way to prove you love
your dog other than you love your dog.

Speaker C (05:32):
Right.

Speaker B (05:33):
So.
And if you love your ghosts, which we'll coveranother podcast that then we'll cover that if
you really love a ghost.
We'll get into that later.
Okay, Brooke, anything else wanted to addabout your love of the paranormal?

Speaker C (05:49):
No, not right now.
I think, you know, it'll be on.
On covered over.
Over the next few episodes, I'm sure, so.

Speaker B (05:57):
Yes, it will.
Yes, it will.
So thanks, Brooke.
Now, my next paranormal friend fiend,
who loves the spooky as much as anyone.
Megan.
So, Megan, tell me about why you love theparanormal.

Speaker A (06:13):
All right, thanks, John.
I was thinking about that today,
and I was trying to think, what is theearliest memory that I have of loving spooky
things?And the first thing that came to my mind was I
loved reading the scary stories to tell in thedark books as a child.
And, you know, reading them now, it's like,oh, you know, it's not too scary, but when

(06:35):
you're a child, it's really scary, honestly.
You know, the illustrations that come with it,you know, it really just sparked my love for
all things spooky.
So even as a child,
I just really loved that feeling that you getwhen you see or learn something super scary.
So then I went on to start watching somehorror movies as a child.

(06:56):
One of the movies that I loved watching as akid was the Ring.
I thought that was a good movie to kind of.

Speaker B (07:04):
How old were you when you watched the Ring?

Speaker A (07:06):
I think I might have been in maybe fourth or fifth grade.
So that's pretty scary for a child, but, youknow, Yeah, I have some good memories of
watching some scary movies with my dad as akid.
It was a good way for us to bond, which isfunny because he actually introduced me to the
Exorcist and the Shining.
And even to this day, the Shining is one of myfavorite, if not the favorite, horror movie

(07:31):
that I have.
So ever since then, I've loved watching
paranormal documentaries, and it's all justsuper fascinating to me, and I'm looking
forward to covering some super spooky storieson this podcast and sharing it with all of you
listeners.

Speaker B (07:45):
Yeah, that.
That's awesome.
So, as you see, listeners, we all love theparanormal for some of the different and same
reasons.
You know, one thing I forgot.
Did you, any of you watch Goosebumps?

Speaker C (07:59):
Oh, I love.

Speaker A (08:01):
As a kid.

Speaker C (08:03):
Same.

Speaker B (08:04):
Yeah, I.
I don't know if you remember that.
And we'll get to our subject here.
Just,
you know, it's our first episode, people, sowe're just working through things, but trust
us, you'll love us.
So. Goosebumps, the scariest one I saw.
I don't know if you remember.
This one was the clown episode.
So the clown episode was this little boy findslike this clown doll.

(08:28):
He's playing with it and everything and heputs it down the spookiest stuff.
And I almost peed my pants.
Hey, I was nine,
you know, Come on, give me a break.

Speaker A (08:37):
Pretty scary for a nine year old.
Scary.

Speaker B (08:39):
The scariest scene was the boy sleeping in his bed.
And it scared me to death,
was that I was watching it and they're in.
The scene is the.
You see the ghost go, excuse me, the clownhand go through and open the door and come
through the door.

(09:00):
And everything was something like that.
Man,
did I have nightmares.

Speaker C (09:07):
Yeah. Clowns are so scary.

Speaker B (09:10):
Yeah. And we'll cover.
One of the things we'll cover later on is
possibly serial killers.
So like John Wayne Gacy.
Oh, man, that's scary stuff.
So, I mean, unbelievable.
So thank you so much, Megan and Brooke.
We're gonna do now is turn to paranormal news.
And we're just finding some interesting newsthat we find on the web and everything like

(09:34):
that.
I'm gonna share a quick couple stories with
you.
One of them you're gonna go, well, that waskind of anti climatic,
you know, that didn't turn out.
So there was one here in England in the uk.
I know your husband's from the uk, Brooke.
He is A woman takes a video of a ghostly

(09:55):
figure at this deserted mansion.
And it was on Tick Tock.
I'm not on Tick Tock.
But if you go on Tick Tock, it has like 14million views.
And if you look,
you'll see like this head in the window ofthis deserted mansion.
And yes,
the man and the daughter did walk into themansion and walk around and everything and

(10:20):
didn't feel anything, didn't see any ghost oranything.
Wouldn't go to the attic where they saw theface.
But here's the thing.
First of all, that deserted mansion is notdeserted.
It's actually somebody owns it and they justhaven't kept it up.
The second thing is.
This is weird.
Tell me you think this is weird, Megan.

(10:40):
Brooke,
they took a mannequin's head and they stuck itup into the window.

Speaker C (10:48):
Why?

Speaker B (10:50):
People off.

Speaker C (10:51):
Just for fun.

Speaker A (10:53):
I mean, who doesn't do that? Honestly?

Speaker B (10:55):
Yeah.
So the story, if you read through it at first,you kind of look at, you're like, oh my God,
that, that looks real.
That, that's mannequin said,
oh, boo.

Speaker C (11:04):
Crazy.

Speaker B (11:05):
Sorry,
sorry.
Hey, we're here.
We're like Brooke and I,
we're kind of the same way.
And Megan, you know, hey, if we have to debunk
something, we'll debunk it.
You know?

Speaker C (11:15):
Exactly.

Speaker B (11:16):
Right?

Speaker A (11:16):
Absolutely.

Speaker B (11:18):
So the second quick story is about in Montreal.
I think this is hilarious.
Those Canadians, they're just crazy.
So this guy did this Halloween decoration,
and it looked real.
So what it was was it kind of looked like aman with a bag over his head,

(11:38):
and he was duct tape,
and he was hanging.
And so people first walked past that were
like, oh, my God, you know, what's going on?We need to call the cops.
That's real.
And then they call the cops, and the cops comeover, and this guy comes out of the apartment
building, goes,
dude,
it's not real.
It's mine.

Speaker C (11:59):
Wow.

Speaker A (12:00):
Must have been convincing.

Speaker B (12:01):
Yeah, right? People believe this is an actual person and
hanging from a tree near an apartmentbuilding.
And turns out,
because people called in, and some people arejust lame, and they go, oh, that's disgusting,
and stuff.
I'm like,
right, it's Halloween.

Speaker C (12:18):
Right?

Speaker B (12:19):
Right.

Speaker A (12:20):
Yeah. Have some fun.

Speaker B (12:22):
Yeah, exactly.
Have some fun.
So that was not real either.
But if both pictures are on,
we'll put a. We'll put some of the links onour website when we get that up,
we'll kind of show you.
Once you see the pictures, you'll be able togo like, yeah.
Wow, that looks crazy.
It looks real.
But fortunately, neither of them are real.

(12:42):
But still kind of creepy.
Right?You still don't want to see a mannequin's head
staring at you.
Right?

Speaker C (12:49):
I would freak out.

Speaker B (12:50):
Yeah. And you don't want to walk past the body hanging out a tree.
That looks real,
because that really happened.
We'll cover this story down the road.
In 2006, a woman actually hung herself from atree in front of her house.

Speaker C (13:05):
And.

Speaker B (13:06):
And people thought it was fake, but it turns out, oh, man,
that's crazy.
And people walked past her body for hours,
and they thought.
And people touched her, too, because they
thought,
this is a really cool Halloween decoration.
No, it was real.

Speaker A (13:23):
Better safe than sorry, I guess.

Speaker B (13:26):
Yeah, absolutely.
So without further ado,
we're going to cover a cryptid I've neverheard of before here in Wisconsin.
And one of the things I want to back up justto tell you guys, we're going to cover mostly
Midwest to start out, because the Midwest istruly spooky and creepy.

(13:49):
One of the hotbed areas for the supernaturaland cryptids and Brooke.

Speaker C (13:54):
And serial killers, actually.

Speaker B (13:56):
And serial killers.
So we'll cover that, too.
But Brooke brought up something to us.
I thought was a great first subject for us to
do, the Hodag.
So, Brooke, why don't you take it away andtell us all about that Hodag cryptid?

Speaker C (14:11):
Yes. Oh, my gosh.
I'm so excited to talk about this because I
think, like,
I've always known about the Hodeag.
I knew that it was really associated with
Rhinelander, Wisconsin, which is a small townway up north, kind of in the Northwoods area.
But I never really knew the backstory of it.
I always just thought, like, oh, you know,
it's your typical,

(14:31):
you know, local cryptid.
Kind of like Mothman.
I recently went to Point Pleasant, WestVirginia, to kind of check out, like, Mothman
Mania down there, and I thought it was kind ofsimilar, but the Hodak has a very different,
very unique backstory to it.
So I think it's going to be really fun story.
It's maybe not as scary as you would think,

(14:51):
but.
But it's very fun nonetheless.
So we're going to talk about the Hodig today.
So I want to cover a couple of the sourcesthat I used first to gather my information,
because a couple of them are really great.
So I'll use the Wisconsin historical society
website.
WisconsinLife.org was a big one.

(15:12):
The Wausau Daily Herald website.
And then something that I just found actuallytoday, when I was kind of just filling in the
gaps,
was a dissertation written by this guy, CraigWilliam Kinnear.
He was a grad student at.
Of philosophy at Notre Dame in 2016, and he
wrote his dissertation.
It's called the Legend of Logging, Timber

(15:33):
Industry Culture and the Rise of Paul Bunyanfrom 1870 to 1945.
And it had so much good information in it.
It was like 240 pages long.
I put the link in our little document, if youguys want to take a look at it.
But it's very interesting,
and I got a lot of information out of that,too.
So thank you to Craig William Kinnear,wherever you are now.
Wow.

Speaker A (15:52):
What a dissertation.
That's awesome.

Speaker C (15:54):
I know.
I was like, this is so perfect.
This has, like, all.
I don't know, just all the information I waslooking for in it.
So it was really.
It was really good.
But anyway, so I think to understand thehistory of the Hodag and where the kind of
legend came from, you have to understand alittle bit about what was going on in the late
1800s and in northern Wisconsin.

(16:15):
So I'll give you a little bit of backstory sothat it kind of sets up where what we're
Talking about.
So in the late 1800s, there were, like,logging was a huge thing.
So the logging was really.
Throughout the 17 and 1800s and even before
that, people who lived in Wisconsin.
Well, I mean,
after they.
After it became the state of Wisconsin,

(16:37):
logging was huge.
That's what most of the.
The people in the northern Northwoods area
did.
But by the late 1800s, the loggers were kindof starting to struggle a little bit.
The reasons for this.
There's a couple different reasons.
One of them being that the number of white
pines in the northern Wisconsin area weredwindling due.

(16:58):
Due to them kind of overlogging the area.
There were also a number of.
Sorry, my dog is, like, chewing on his toyright in my microphone.
Let me, like, mark this down.
He's so annoying.
Go away.

(17:18):
So.
So the.
One of the reasons was that the number of
white pines were dwindling due to overloggingof the area in the north woods.
Also, there were a lot of forest fires in thearea, which.
This is crazy to me, and just kind of a smallsidebar, but did you guys know that the most
deadly forest fire in the history of the USActually occurred in Wisconsin?

Speaker A (17:44):
I did not know that.

Speaker C (17:45):
I did not.

Speaker B (17:46):
Crazy.

Speaker C (17:47):
Yeah, I did not know that either until really recently.
My dad was actually talking about it, but itwas called the Peshtigo fire of 1871.

Speaker B (17:54):
Yes.

Speaker C (17:54):
And from what I read, it actually happened on the same day as the Great Chicago
Fire.
Yeah.
Which is so weird to me.
But because of that, like, no one ever really
talked about it.
Like, people just kind of, you know, theytalked about the Great Chicago Fire because it
happened in such a big city.
But the Peshtigo fire kind of went under the
radar, but it actually killed 1200 people,

(18:16):
which is a crazy large number of people.
That's more lives lost than, like, the more
modern California fires.
So it was a huge deal.
And it burned 1.5 million acres as well.
Um,
Peshtigo is a little bit.
It's. So it's southwest or southeast of
Rhinelander.
So it didn't directly affect the Rhinelander

(18:38):
area.
But at this time, I think people are kind of
realizing, like, hey, we're losing our whitepines.
There's forest fires going on.
Like, is logging really a profession that's
going to, like, lead us into the future?

Speaker B (18:51):
So, by the way, just really quickly, Brooke.

Speaker A (18:54):
Yeah.

Speaker B (18:54):
Logging was extremely dangerous.
Like, people would be getting their limbs cut
off.

Speaker C (19:00):
Yep. Oh, yeah, for sure.

Speaker B (19:02):
There was no osha.
There was no government.
You just went out and just started Cuttingthings down.
And people died that day.
They were like, well, should have got out of
the way.
So anyway.

Speaker C (19:14):
Yeah, exactly.
Like,
it was.
You know, it was early.
It was.
It was the 1800s, so.
Yeah,
not as safe as they are now in that industry.
And.
And by the.
By 1890, there were actually 23, 000 men whoworked across 450 different logging camps
within Wiscon.
A lot of people, especially.

(19:35):
Yeah, especially when you consider, like, thenorthern towns were towns of, like, a couple
hundred people, and, like, pretty much everyman in those towns was working in the logging
industry,
so it was tons of people.
The trees were dwindling,
so. And there was also a little bit of afinancial panic,
too, in the.
In 1893. From what I understand, it kind of

(19:56):
revolved around the railway expansion.
In May of that year, they kind of stoppedputting money into railway expansion.
And because the railway system was how peoplein Rhinelander were getting all of their
lumber to cities like Chicago,
they really kind of panicked.
And their primary railroad actually went
bankrupt in the fall of that year, too.

(20:17):
So people were kind of leaving Rhinelander
like crazy at this time and leaving the northwoods area.
They were like, we're not gonna do thisanymore.
We're gonna go, you know, towards the cities.
So it really kind of was not a great time forthe Rhinelander area and other Northwoods
towns.
So that's kind of a little bit of why the

(20:38):
Hodag lore kind of started sprouting up.
So.

Speaker B (20:43):
And, Brooke, one of the things we'll cover, too,
is railroads are extremely paranormal becausethere's been so many deaths on railroads today
where you get on Amtrak and you grab yourthing and just.
You're off.
Right.
Whatever.
And you fall asleep, and you're in New York in
no time at all.
I mean, here, you know, like a moose.

Speaker A (21:05):
Yeah.

Speaker B (21:06):
And derail the entire track or snow you couldn't get through, and people would
freeze, you know, in.
In their cars or.

Speaker A (21:16):
It's dangerous, right?

Speaker B (21:18):
Extremely dangerous.
So anyway, going with the whole day,
definitely.

Speaker C (21:24):
And I think that's kind of part of the reason why there was such a. Why they
started putting money into it in the 1800s.
The late 1800s.

Speaker A (21:32):
Yeah.

Speaker C (21:32):
Is because it was.
It was very dangerous back then, like, many
things.
But.
But. Yeah. So all these.
All of this going on, it kind of led thelumberjacks to.
They started telling a lot of stories,
really.
Not just in Wisconsin, but in Minnesota and
North Dakota and, you know, Maine, all ofthese states, all these lumberjacks kind of

(21:55):
started telling stories this is kind of whenPaul Bunyan stories started to gain popularity
as well.
And they.
It was really just because they kind of had
this nostalgia for the way that things used tobe.
So they were kind of sad.
They were down on their luck.
They at times didn't have a lot to do, so theywould.
They would start telling these stories.
And the Hodag was one of these stories that
they started to tell.

(22:17):
So a little bit about the general Hodeg lore.
So this doesn't really have to do with
Rhinelander specifically and the RhinelanderHodag story.
But generally speaking,
the Hodeg was said to be the spirit ofmistreated oxen who would drag logs from the
forest.
So the lumberjacks were not always very nice
to their oxen.
And so it was kind of.

(22:39):
Yeah, I know, right?
But it was kind of a story that, like, the.
The hod eggs would rise from the ashes of
these dead, mistreated oxen.
And that's, like, why they were so angry and
vengeful.

Speaker A (22:50):
That's terrifying.

Speaker C (22:51):
Yeah, it's interesting.
It's really.
It's kind of.
It's a little spooky.
And then in other cases, some people talkabout how the Hodag was very similar.
The way that it's described in.
The way like that, as temperament is
described,
is very similar to the Ojibwe nation storiesof water panthers or Mishi peshu.
I'm not 100% positive I'm pronouncing thatcorrectly, but if you look up pictures of the

(23:14):
Mishi Peshu, it's actually kind of similar ina way to how the Hodeg looks.
It's a little bit different.
The Mishi Peshu looks a lot cooler, and the
Hodeg looks a little goofy and frog like.
But a lot of people talk about how they do
look very similar.
And the Ojibwe tribe actually is in verysimilar location.
So they're also in northern Wisconsin,

(23:34):
northern Minnesota.
So it's just interesting that those stories
kind of align a little bit.
And, you know, maybe they were seeing the same
thing out in the woods.
So that's also kind of a fun thing.
It was a very common monster in theselumberjack stories in the 1800s,
all the way from Minnesota to Maine.
So again, not just relegated to Wisconsin.

(23:57):
And actually, the first written mention of itwas in A history of Kent County, Michigan,
which was published in 1870,
but did not.
That didn't make it famous.
It didn't really become, like a famous storyuntil it hit Rhinelander.
But but yeah, so it was definitely in.
In the lore before this whole story.

Speaker A (24:17):
Was it called the Ho Day at the time?

Speaker C (24:19):
Yeah, it was.
Yeah. Right.

Speaker A (24:21):
Interesting.
It'd be interesting to know the origin of the
name and how that came about.

Speaker C (24:26):
Yeah, I'm not sure, actually.
I tried to find that information and I
couldn't really sort of.
So. And it's.
Yeah, it would be interesting to find thatout, but that was the first time it was
written down, and I couldn't find actually theactual, like, copy of the history of Kent
county, Michigan from 1870.
So maybe, like, they give a reason why theycall it the Hoed eg in there, but.

(24:50):
But yeah, not something that I found,
but a little bit too, about what the creaturelooks like.
So a quote from the former Rhinelander mayor.
And this is.
This is so fun.
So this is a more recent mayor of Rhinelander,so not from the 1800s, but he's actually
portrayed Gene Shepard, who we'll talk aboutsoon,

(25:11):
but in reenactments of this whole Hodig story,which I think is so fun about, like, small
towns.
Is that the mayor of small towns?
It's not like some politician.
It's like some guy who's in, like, local
theater, which is just.

Speaker A (25:24):
Yep, that's Wisconsin for you.

Speaker C (25:25):
Yeah, right.
I love that.
But the way that he described the Hodag isthat it has spikes all the way down its entire
length of its body, with the fist full ofneedle sharp pointed spears at the end of its
tail, fangs that would rival a saber toothtiger, and it could rip out the belly of the
biggest bear.

Speaker A (25:46):
That'S supposed to come from oxen.
That's scary.

Speaker C (25:48):
I know.

Speaker B (25:49):
Yeah, that's pretty messed up.
That's like some mad scientist let his
creature go and went, well, you're on yourown.

Speaker C (25:57):
Oh, well,
yeah, exactly.
And it's interest.
There's, you know, varying kind of tales aboutwhat it looks like, but most people say that
it's either green or black,
kind of, depending on who you ask.
And then it has the head of a bullfrog withbulging eyes, short legs, and it's sometimes
scaly, sometimes furry.
Yeah.

(26:17):
So because it, like,
I don't know, like, it sounds scary, but whenyou look at, like, the modern day, like,
appearance of it, it's actually pretty cute tome.
I think it's cute,
but would like.

Speaker B (26:30):
To have it as a pet.
Look at my whole day.
Yeah, that would go over well.

Speaker C (26:34):
Yeah.

Speaker A (26:35):
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Speaker C (26:38):
It is.
It really is.
And I think the Ho Egg is beautiful.

Speaker B (26:41):
Hey, Brooke, how tall is this thing?
Did it say anything?

Speaker C (26:45):
So I know it said about 7 to 8ft long, and then it would.
It weighed, like, 200 pounds.
So I want to say, like, not very tall.
I think, like, 2ft tall is what we're.
What we're looking at.
Kind of like almost an alligator, like.

Speaker B (27:00):
But a little bit, right?

Speaker C (27:01):
Yeah, a little bit taller with, like, the face of a bulldog or bullfrog, I
guess.
But.

Speaker B (27:07):
Yeah.

Speaker C (27:08):
Yeah.

Speaker B (27:08):
And you.
You'll probably get into this brook, but does
it hang around swamps, or is it just kind ofjust walk down the street and be like, hey,
what's up, dude?

Speaker C (27:15):
Like,
it definitely hangs out in the woods.
Primarily,
it does not.
So there's like, a whole other thing that this
guy, Gene shepherd, that'll talk about, but hewrote, like, a whole backstory about the
Hodag, and it.
Actually,
there's this story that he wrote where theHodag and this swamp monster were, like,

(27:36):
fighting over territory because the Hodag,like, wanted to be in the swamp territory, but
it wasn't, like, suited to that territory, soit had to fight this swamp monster.
Otherwise.
Yeah, it was.
It was a whole thing.
But none of that is necessarily.
Well, we know it's not true, but.

(27:56):
But he.
Yeah, the Hodeg supposedly mostly is in.
Is in the woods.
Like, deep, forested areas.
They like to stay close to trees because it,like, gives them comfort.
So.

Speaker A (28:08):
So are they aggressive or are they more docile?

Speaker C (28:11):
Well,
another quote that I have, according tofolklorist Charles E. Brown, that hod eggs are
said to eat mud turtles, water snakes, andmuskrats, but they do not disdain for human
flesh.
So.

Speaker A (28:26):
All right, so it could go either way.

Speaker C (28:28):
Yeah. Like, if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time, they might.
They might fight you, but, yeah, it's mighty.
Yeah.

Speaker B (28:35):
Like, if you have pineapple.
Pineapple on your pizza once in a while,
you're like, yeah, whatever.

Speaker C (28:41):
Right?

Speaker B (28:41):
Yeah, I guess.

Speaker C (28:44):
Yeah, exactly.
Like, it's not my favorite food, but I guess.

Speaker B (28:47):
Favorite.
But that little kid looks really good, you
know?

Speaker C (28:51):
Yeah, exactly.
So. So. Yeah.
So not like, they don't hunt people, butthey're.
You know, they don't disdain the taste of ourflesh.
So it's all good.

Speaker A (29:03):
Good way to put it.

Speaker C (29:04):
Every once in a while.
So, yeah.
So another.
So to understand this story of the Hodag andRhinelander,
the main character of the story by far is thisman, Eugene Shepard.
Also go.
He also goes by Gene, so I might call him
Gene.
So this guy, he was born March 22 in 1854 inOld Fort Howard, Wisconsin, which is now Green

(29:28):
Bay.
He moved to Rhinelander in 1884 after timbercruising for 12 years.
So he's basically a lumberjack for 12 years,kind of going from town to town.
And then he kind of settled in Rhinelander in1884.
He was well known in the city.
He was a land surveyor and he was also a
business venturist.
And he really was known as a storyteller.

(29:51):
So he actually was one of the people who
started circulating early tales of Paul Bunyanstories.
He also drew a lot of pictures.
Yeah. Which is kind of cool.
So he drew pictures that would, they, you
know, they show up in like old history booksand things like that when it comes to the
stories of Paul Bunyan.
And he was definitely like kind of a serialbusinessman.

(30:13):
So he had his own businesses.
He eventually owned a resort in Rhinelander.
I couldn't find the name of it, but he did owna resort and he also owned.
I,
I found this in a couple different sources andI couldn't find any, like, details on it, but
in one of his sign side businesses, he soldperfumed moss in the mail,

(30:35):
which.
All right.
I don't know.
Yeah, I'm not sure, like what the, you know,who the clientele was or what the purpose of
it was, but he sold perfume.

Speaker B (30:45):
Perfume moss, I tell you.

Speaker C (30:46):
Yeah.

Speaker A (30:47):
You know, I love an entrepreneur.

Speaker C (30:49):
Yeah, we do.
We do.
You know, he's, he's getting his, he's gettinghis bread.
So that's, that's good.

Speaker A (30:54):
Gotta make that money.

Speaker C (30:55):
Yeah.
He was also a very well known storyteller,
like, like I said, and also a prankster.
So a lot of people around Rhinelander knew him
as a prankster.
One of my favorite stories that I found abouthim against this was in multiple sources.
I couldn't really find a ton of details aboutit, but apparently this is something he would
do frequently.

(31:16):
But one time an auditor showed up at his houseand knocked on his door.
And when he saw that it was an auditor, helathered up a bar of soap and put it in his
mouth and opened the door and act like he wasrabid and like, this guy.
Yeah. And he started like growling at theauditor and the auditor ran away.
And apparently he was like, known to do this.

(31:37):
So this guy is like a character.
He's,
you know,
I'll be back.
Yeah,
for sure.
Yeah, I know.
He, he's really, he's a really cool guy.
Very interesting.
But one thing is, after he settled inRhinelander.
He became.

(31:57):
He kind of settled in it right before things
started to go downhill.
So he became very invested in bringing people
back to Rhinelander.
And since the whole lumber work thing wasn'treally going over well at the time, he wanted
to turn Rhinelander into an agriculture.
Agricultural haven for farmers.
So he was actually, at the time buying up abunch of empty plots of land because he

(32:19):
intended to sell them to farmers.
So he had a pretty vested interest in bringingpeople back to Rhinelander and, like, putting
Rhinelander back on the map.
So it kind of gives a little bit of contextfor where this story goes from here.
But one thing that he did, actually, wasbefore he kind of started talking about the

(32:40):
Hodag as, like, he found the Hodag.
He captured the Hodag, which we'll talk about.
He actually would put central oradvertisements in out for Centralia Lumber
Company, which was a. Like, a local nearRhinelander Lumber Company.
And he would run ads twice a month,
which was telling, like, an ongoing to becontinued story about the Hodag, which he

(33:02):
wrote all the content for.
I'm pretty sure he drew all the pictures, too.
I found a couple examples of some of the adsthat I can put up on our website when we post.
This blog post was really interesting.
What I thought was so fun about it, though,is, like, it wasn't really, like, an outward
ad.
Like, it wasn't like, centralia Lumber

(33:22):
company, buy our wood.
It was literally just like,
story about.
Here's about the Hodag.
To be continued in our next.
Like,
you.
And I was like, this is kind of like one of,like, an early example of content marketing,
which I thought was fun because Megan and I.
Marketing.
Yeah.
I was like, they really were trying to, like,build up their, you know, their people's

(33:44):
interest in the company and, like, creatingthis brand recognition.
Not necessarily just trying to sell theirproduct outright, which I thought was kind of
fun.
But anyway, let's talk about how Eugene founda hoedag in 1893,
because this is a good time.
So in 1893,
Eugene kind of starts telling people aroundthe town that he found a hoed egg.

(34:06):
And people are like,
what are you talking about?So he convinces a group of local men to go out
and hunt this hoed egg.
And there's about 20 of them.
There's a picture.
Again, we'll put this up on the websitebecause it's very funny.
But he rounded up this group of guys.
They all left with, like, their dogs.
They brought rifles and, like, pitchforks.
They Brought squirt guns loaded with poison

(34:29):
water and out to, like, go find this hoed egg.
Because Eugene had been saying that, like, thehodeg was trying to kill, like, kids.
He didn't like there.
There was no evidence of this having happened,
but he was trying to rile people up.
So they actually, like, go out,
and I believe it was in a cave.
They finally supposedly found the hoedag and

(34:52):
they killed it with dynamite.
Oh, my God.

Speaker A (34:55):
That's your go to?

Speaker C (34:56):
Yeah, that was their go to.
Apparently, all the other stuff that they
brought.

Speaker B (34:59):
Hang on a second.
Get a picture in your mind of a bunch of local
yokels.
Sticks of dynamite,
pitch floors,
Right.
And they don't really know what's in there.
It could be, like some old ***, you know,
shelter, Right?
Like some homeless person just trying to getout of the rain, and they're just chucking

(35:21):
these dynamite sticks.

Speaker A (35:23):
I know it's big or go home, I guess.

Speaker B (35:26):
Yeah, yeah, right.
That's just.
Oh, my gosh.

Speaker C (35:35):
Yeah, it was a little excessive, maybe, but they did.
They killed the Hodag.
And they actually have this photo of all the
guys around this charred body of a hodag.
So it's a very funny photo.
And you can see, like, the Hoda.
It looks like what the Hodehode was described.
It's like this, you know,
like, short, stout creature with, like, abulldog kind of face, with, like, fangs and

(35:58):
spikes all along its back.
And so people were like, oh, my God.
Like, they actually.
He actually was right.
He found a hoed egg.
They went out and killed it.
That's crazy.
So they really started.
This is kind of around when the Centralia
Lumber Company advertisements started comingout.
People were like, oh, my God, I can't believethis is happening in Rhinelander.
They found a hodeg.

(36:19):
And so that people were kind of talking aboutthis for a couple years.
So that was 1893.
Now it's 1896. And, you know, things are kindof calming down a little bit.
But Jean,
he wants to, you know, bring the hodeg back tothe forefront of everyone's mind.
So he actually started telling everyone thathe managed to capture a hodeg in 1896.

(36:41):
And he told people.
Yeah, this is true story.
He told people that he, with the help of abear wrestler,
went to a cave where he knew that the hoag wasstaying, and he put chloroform,
like a chloroform rag at the end of the poleand stuck the pole into the cave and made the

(37:03):
whole egg pass Out.
And that's how they captured the hoed egg.
So he starts telling people this and he'slike, you know what I gotta do?
I gotta bring this hoedag to the first everOneida County Fair.

Speaker B (37:15):
Of course.

Speaker A (37:17):
And nobody thought this was far fetched.
With his history.

Speaker C (37:24):
A lot of people thought it was real.
And yeah, it's the 1800s, so, you know,people, I, you know, I don't know if they.
I'm sure they're familiar with the concept ofpranks, but.
But they, you know, they believe this guy.
He was a well known guy in the county.
He, you know, he was very trustworthy to a lotof people.

(37:45):
So he actually,
you know, not to,
you know, get to the punch line right away,but this, he.
It was fake.
He did not actually.

Speaker A (37:56):
I thought it was real.

Speaker C (37:57):
I know.
Yeah. Sorry to like, ruined it already for
you, but he actually, like,
with the help of one of his friends who was awood carver, he actually created this creature
out of wood and put like, wires inside of it,covered it in oxide, like, made a very legit
looking creature.
And with the help of his sons, Leighton andClaude,

(38:18):
he could actually kind of move the creature,like, from under a table with like, the wires
and convince people that it was real.
And his sons would like, make all these like,
crazy noises and stuff.
And so he basically had like a tent set up atthis Oneida County Fair.
And he charged people, I. Some people said anickel, some people said a dime.
But he would charge people to come back andsee the Hodag.

(38:39):
And it was in like, pretty dark lighting andpeople would only be in there for a couple
seconds and then they would get scared andjust like run out because it seemed legit to
them.
So people really believed this.
And it was even said that he made up to 500 ina weekend when he was actually presenting the
hodeg at a fair, which is a. Of money.

(39:00):
Yeah, for a lot of money.
For back then.

Speaker B (39:02):
Yeah.

Speaker C (39:03):
That means, like, you know, up to 5,000 people a day were coming to see this,
this hod egg.
And he also, like, he made up so many weird,
like, stories about this hot egg.
So it kind of shifted from the original lore
of like, this Hodag being kind of, you know,born from the ashes of oxen and stuff like
that.
He kind of started making other stuff up.

(39:24):
Like, he told people that the Hodag only ate
white bulldogs and only on Sundays,
of course.
I know.

Speaker A (39:32):
Which is so funny.

Speaker C (39:33):
Yeah. Very specific.
But, yeah, I feel like he had like a beef with
someone who had a white bulldog or something.
That's why he said, that dog, it.

Speaker B (39:43):
Barks all the time, right?

Speaker C (39:44):
Yeah. I was like, my Hoag's gonna eat it.
So he would.
He would go to all these different locations,
and he would show this bulldog or thisbulldog, this Hoedag.
And he actually, after that, he kept the Hodagin his shed, quote, unquote.
And when people would come by pretty regularlyand be like, hey, we want to see the Hodag,

(40:05):
and he would actually, like, disappear intohis shed, and he would come back in shredded
clothes,
and he would say, like, oh, I'm.

Speaker A (40:12):
So sorry, but the Hoedagan, you prankster.

Speaker C (40:17):
I know, right? I'm like,
I just love that.
I don't know.
Like, people in the 1800s were, like, pullingthis kind of stuff because you just don't
think about.
You don't think that.

Speaker B (40:25):
No, you don't, right?

Speaker C (40:27):
No. But people had a sense of humor.
This guy had a sense of humor.
So.

Speaker B (40:32):
Yes.

Speaker A (40:32):
You know, probably so extraordinary.
You just had to believe it, huh?

Speaker C (40:37):
Yeah. Like, why not? Who knows?
You know, back then,
I'm sure they were like, the woods were soexpansive that people were probably like,
anything could be out there, you know?

Speaker B (40:46):
Yeah.

Speaker C (40:47):
Why not?
So eventually, this is actually crazy, butthis story of this Hodag started becoming
super widely circulated, not just inWisconsin, but as far out as Philadelphia,
which is crazy.
And people were reporting it as, like, a
genuine discovery.
Like, they were like, this is a real thing
that this guy discovered.
And at this point, the people of Rhinelander
were kind of, like,

(41:08):
you know, catching on to the fact that thiswas a hoax, but it was still being, like,
spread as though this was a real thing.
And it kept getting the attention of peoplekind of nationwide.
And from what I read that people fromresearchers from the Smithsonian actually got
clued into this, and they planned a visit toRhinelander in 1900 to see this creature.

(41:33):
Yeah. And at this point, that's when Gene waskind of forced into publicly admitting that
the entire thing was a hoax.
Again, at this point,
Rhinelander knew that,
but.
But. Yeah, so that was kind of when the jigwas up.
But,
like, dang it.
Yeah. But at this point, like, the cat was outof the bag.
Like, people were talking about this likecrazy.
So even after he admitted that it was a hoax,

(41:55):
people from New Hampshire to Arizona werereporting about this and talking about how
this town was, like, duped into believing theHodag was real.
Like, it just became this very popular thing.
And.
And, yeah.
So it. To this Day.
He's like a very.
You know, he's kind of like the mascot of theentire town of Rhinelander,

(42:23):
which is so fun.
I have a good quote here.
This was actually from the dissertation that I
read.
So he said that the exhibition of the Hodagmarked the death of logging in the Great Lakes
states and the birth of a whimsical nostalgiafor a bygone logging culture.
The same nostalgia would give birth to PaulBunyan.
So I think that's kind of like.

(42:44):
That's a good way of looking at him and alittle bit about the legacy of the.
The Hodag.
So Gene,
he did end up dying kind of alone and isolatedfrom his family, which I thought was very sad,
but I guess he, like,
wasn't the best person after this.

(43:04):
And he drank very heavily, so he actually diedof kidney failure at age 16.

Speaker B (43:09):
That's shocking.

Speaker C (43:10):
I know, right? But his legacy was gone.
Like, he's still well regarded in the town.
Like, everyone in Rhinelander knows who Gene
shepherd is.
So even though he kind of had, like, a sadending, he still,
his legacy lived on.
And the ma.
The Hodeg is actually the school mascot forRhinelander High School.

(43:31):
And earlier this month, it was actually votedthe best high school mascot in the country by
Scorebrook Scorebook Live readers, which is ahigh school sports news website.

Speaker B (43:40):
Oh, that's great.

Speaker C (43:41):
Yeah. It faced off against 11 other schools in the finals.
It received 183,000 votes, and second placeonly received 72,000.
So it beat it by quite a lot.
Yeah. So that it's very popular.
There's also a big statue of the Hodeg infront of the Rhinelander Chamber of Commerce.

(44:03):
It's very cute.
This is why I say the Hodeg is cute.
The statue is very cute.
I like it.
And it also.
The Hodeg lends its name to and the likeness
to multiple businesses.
So they have a Hodak store in Rhinelander
where they sell books and apparel andkeepsakes and plushies.
They have the Fun Factory Sweet Shop, whichsells chocolate hoed eggs.

(44:24):
Um, Hodeg pooped,
which.
That made me laugh because when I went to, um,
Point Pleasant, West Virginia, they hadMothman **** malted milk balls.

Speaker A (44:35):
Gotta have the ****, man.

Speaker B (44:37):
Yeah.

Speaker C (44:38):
Like, I love this culture of, like, these tiny towns just embracing these
cryptids.
It's so fun.
But.
But, yeah, then Metro Screen Printing andEmbroidery sells hot egg pajamas and other
clothing.
And there's also a Hodeg finder game where youcan actually go to the Chamber of Commerce and
get like a.
A sheet where you can find all the hoed eggsaround the town.

(44:58):
And if you find them all, you can go back tothe Chamber of Commerce and win a Hodag themed
prize.
That's might be the ****.
Yeah. I'm not sure.

Speaker A (45:08):
You'll have to find out.

Speaker C (45:09):
That would be a little disappointing if you go and find all those and
then you get a bag of ****.

Speaker B (45:13):
But there's a bag of ****.

Speaker A (45:15):
I like it.

Speaker C (45:15):
Brooke.
I take it.
I take it.
But the Hodeg was also mentioned as a beast inthe Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find them
book by J.K. rowling.
Not the.
I don't think it was mentioned in the movie,but.
But it was in the book,
and now it's kind of like a local inside joke.
Like, golfers will blame the Hodag for their
missing golf balls, and fishers will blame theHodeg for large fish that are caught off their

(45:39):
line.
I really tried to find, like, people who hadseen.
Had, like, legitimate experiences with theHodag, either, like, today or from, you know,
years ago.
And it's hard to honestly find because so muchof the Hodag lore is just,
like, overshined by this Rhinelander story.
So it's.

(45:59):
It's hard to find.
Like, I feel like,
you know, the Hodag is a legit cryptid thatpeople have had experiences with over, you
know, the past couple hundred years.
But because of this kind of, like,
Hodag extravaganza around Rhinelander, it'sreally hard to find stuff that's not about
that.
So I'm interested to see if, like, you know,

(46:20):
if I ever come across something like that.
We can talk about it in a future podcast.
Because I'm.
I'm curious, but I couldn't really findanything this time around.
But I want to end the story with a quote thatI found.
This is from Henry J. McCormick, who was aWisconsin State Journal columnist in 1939.
He said thousands of people came to view theHodag, and not one of them went away without

(46:44):
having learned a little more about northWisconsin.
And many who came out of curiosity.
Oh, sorry.
And many who came out of curiosity only havecome to make their home with us,
either permanently or for a few weeks ormonths out of the year.
Long live the Hodag.
Which I thought was just such a beautiful way.
Yeah. Just because the Hodeg may not have beenreal.

(47:07):
People came to see them and they learned aboutWisconsin and they had a good time.
And some people Stayed forever, which isawesome.

Speaker B (47:15):
Yeah. That's great.
So that is an awesome story.
Brooke, I just have one quick question foryou.
Does the Hodag speak English?

Speaker C (47:25):
That's a great question.
I wasn't expecting that.
I think it just made.
I'm pretty sure it just made noises.
I didn't see anything about it.
He's fluent in English.

Speaker B (47:40):
Yeah. This English accent.
Hello there.
Hello, my friend.

Speaker A (47:47):
Never know.

Speaker C (47:49):
Yeah, I will have that bulldog now.

Speaker B (47:52):
Yes, please.
Let's all admit we'd want to party with Gene.
Come on.

Speaker C (48:00):
Oh, yeah.

Speaker B (48:01):
I want to party with Gene.

Speaker C (48:02):
Oh, yeah, Gene. Gene's, like the guy.
He's the dude.
Love that guy.

Speaker A (48:07):
Gotta love a Prankster, too.

Speaker C (48:09):
Yeah. 100.

Speaker B (48:13):
Okay. So, Brooke, that was a great story.
And thanks.
Go.

Speaker C (48:22):
Megan.

Speaker B (48:22):
Do you have anything to offer on there?
Would you.
Would you keep the whole dag as a pet, like
Brook would?That's what I want to know.

Speaker A (48:32):
Well, you said it was £200, so it might be hard to walk on a leash, I'm
thinking.
But I could probably keep it in my basement.

Speaker C (48:39):
That's true.
I do.

Speaker A (48:41):
I have a Saint Bernard.
He's 155 pounds.
So if you just, you know, add a little bitmore weight, I mean, how much worse could it
be, honestly?
Although it might eat a lot, and I don't havea lot of access to white bulldogs
specifically,
so it might be kind of hard.

Speaker C (48:57):
That's true.
That's true.
They.
They're hard to come by.

Speaker B (49:01):
Yeah. And you'd have to.
All the bulldogs would be missing in the
neighborhood, so that'd be hard to explain.

Speaker C (49:07):
Right.

Speaker A (49:07):
I don't think my community would like that too much.
Yeah, but he's cute.

Speaker C (49:14):
He does look cute.
He's very cute.
Yeah.

Speaker A (49:16):
I feel like he's misunderstood.

Speaker B (49:19):
Sorry.
We're gonna travel now an hour south of
Rylander to Wausau, Wisconsin, for our nextstory.
Megan, take it away.

Speaker A (49:29):
All right.
Perfect.
Thanks so much, Brooke.
That was such a great story.
And it's going to be pretty hard to beat theHodag, but I'm going to give it a shot.

Speaker C (49:36):
Oh, thank you.

Speaker A (49:37):
All right, so today I have a super weird and terrifying story to share, and it's
based out of Wausau, Wisconsin.
And like John said, it's about an hour south
of Rhinelander.
So if you're going to make a trip to NorthernWisconsin to learn more about the Hodeg,
definitely make sure to add Wasa to your listof destinations.
So the story I have today, I.

(50:00):
You know, I don't Think that you're gonna beable to sleep tonight, John?
It's definitely gonna be a super scary one, sobe ready.

Speaker B (50:06):
Hey, hey, hey.

Speaker C (50:10):
Scared me.

Speaker B (50:11):
Great.

Speaker A (50:12):
All right, well,
I'll try ya.
All right.
So I also wanted to note that today's story
came from the weird Wisconsin book.
It's by Linda.
Linda Godfrey and Richard Hendricks.
This book is definitely one of the bestcompilations of Wisconsin based stories that I
found.
So check it out if you're looking for morestories about the weird, the spooky,

(50:35):
the unexplained in Wisconsin.
So without further ado, I'll go ahead and getinto it.
So today we're going to be visiting the formerRogers Theater, which is located at 310 North
4th street in Wausau, Wisconsin.
The Rogers Theater has been the site ofnumerous paranormal incidents during its years

(50:57):
of operation.
People in the theater have heard rappingnoises radiating from seemingly nowhere.
Staff members have reported feeling watched byunseen entities.
Lights have turned on and off, seemingly bythemselves.
And this is interesting.
Multiple projectors at the theater have
completely shut off and during movie showingsfor no reason at all.

(51:20):
And that's just the start of it.

Speaker B (51:22):
Oh, my gosh.

Speaker A (51:23):
This one terrifying incident, I'm going to tell you about it.
It happened at the theater.
It left an entire group of grown men running
for their lives.
Scary.
So before we get into that story, I'll tellyou that at the end, I wanted to talk about a
little bit of history on the Rogers Theater.

(51:44):
The Rogers Theater building was constructed inthe early to mid-1920s, and it's had a very
interesting share of businesses in it over thelast 100 years.
First it was a tire shop,
and then it was a funeral home,
and then it was later changed to a furnitureshop.

(52:06):
So all of these businesses were operatingthere until about 1943.
So interesting smattering of businesses thatwent on in that one building.
So then the building lay vacant for a numberof years.
However, it was reportedly used as a brothelduring that time.
So there's some crazy things going on in thisbuilding during the mid-1900s.

Speaker B (52:32):
Hang on, hang on a second.
So we've gone from a funeral parlor, a tire
shop, a furniture store to a brothel.

Speaker A (52:42):
Yeah, it sounds about right.

Speaker B (52:43):
Yeah, that's the weirdest combination of like, it's like walking down in
past your hometown, you know, and then you'relike, hey, look, wasn't that a brothel?

Speaker A (52:55):
I thought it was a funeral home.

Speaker B (52:56):
No, I thought it was a funeral home.
No, no, no, it was a tire.

Speaker A (52:59):
Shop,
you know, so that explains why there's somereally funky energy going on in this building.
So now it's 1945. It opens as the HollywoodTheater.
Then in 1960, it opens up as the new WausauTheater.
And then finally, in 1979, it opens as theRogers Theater.

(53:21):
So it has a long history of differentbusinesses in it,
but the Rogers Theater definitely has thestrangest history.
I always cover that.

Speaker C (53:30):
I've always.
I've always considered Wausau the Hollywood of
the Midwest, so it's fitting.

Speaker A (53:36):
There's a lot of stories out of Wausau, So if you want to learn more about
spooky Wisconsin, Wausau is definitely a goodcity to start with.

Speaker C (53:43):
Yeah, for sure.

Speaker A (53:45):
All right, so you can probably imagine that this building, with everything
that it's been from a tire shop to a furnitureshop, all the way to a funeral home and maybe
possibly a brothel, probably has some crazyenergy attached to this building.
So why don't we start with the apparition of aman in the black suit?

(54:08):
Over the years,
most paranormal reports from this theater comefrom the basement auditorium.
And former employees kept seeing thisapparition of a man in a black suit.
So they decided to give him a name becausethey were seeing him so often.
So, of course, what was that name, you ask?
Why don't you two go ahead and guess?

Speaker C (54:30):
The hat man.

Speaker B (54:33):
Bill.

Speaker A (54:35):
Actually, you're pretty close.
John.
His name was Bob.
Yep, they named him Bob.
And honestly, I kind of love that for him,because what better name for a ghost than Bob?
Honestly?

Speaker C (54:45):
Yeah, it's a good one.

Speaker A (54:47):
All right.
So anyways, one former employee reported that
while working alone in the basement projectorroom, he saw a man dressed in a black suit.
Suit crossed the stage area,
and the employee checked the theater, and ofcourse, no one was there.
Yeah, you know how it goes.
So he continues his work in the projectionroom, but the second he looked through the

(55:12):
projection window, the man in the suit wasstaring back at him.

Speaker B (55:16):
Oh, no.

Speaker A (55:17):
Yeah, and I don't know about you guys, but I probably would have crapped my
pants right then and there.

Speaker C (55:22):
Right on the spot, girl.

Speaker B (55:25):
I'm not gonna lie, man.

Speaker A (55:27):
Terrifying.

Speaker B (55:28):
Oh, God.

Speaker A (55:29):
So there's another story.
Another time.
A night manager was locking the front door ofthe theater for the evening when all of a
sudden, he was pushed out of the theater doorsby unseen hands.
And, of course,
no one was there.

Speaker C (55:45):
Yeah, that's crazy.

Speaker A (55:47):
But this.
This next story might be the scariest story of
all.
And I saved it for last for you guys.
So you Remember at the beginning of my sectionwhen I said an entire group of grown men left
the theater running for their lives?

Speaker C (56:00):
Yeah.

Speaker A (56:01):
Well,
here's the story.
So in 2002, the Rogers Theater did close itsdoors,
and a group of workmen began removing theseats in the basement of the building.
And if you'll remember, this is the mosthaunted part of the theater, so keep that in
mind.

Speaker C (56:20):
Yeah.

Speaker A (56:20):
So as they were working,
they started hearing this strange loudthumping.
So they stop and they look up,
and what they saw made the blood drain out oftheir faces.
Every seat in the theater was rockingviolently back and forth, back and forth, back

(56:41):
and forth by themselves.

Speaker B (56:43):
Oh, no.

Speaker A (56:44):
So without a second thought, all the men threw their tools to the floor and
they escaped.
They said, I'm done with that.

Speaker C (56:51):
Yeah, that's crazy.

Speaker A (56:52):
So I can't even imagine seeing that.
You know, you're just on the job, doing yourwork, you know, trying to make your money,
and,
man, I. I would probably quit right then andthere.

Speaker B (57:02):
Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker C (57:03):
Right.

Speaker B (57:04):
I'm out.

Speaker C (57:04):
It makes.
You know, I've heard so many stories of, like,
ghosts really not liking when people arerenovating.
So it totally makes sense.
Like, these guys come in and they're like,
we're gonna take all these seats.
And the ghosts get mad and they just startwreaking havoc.
But it's so interesting, like, when so many,especially like,
men who are like, you know, kind of bluecollar workers,

(57:26):
have like, a similar experience like that.
I feel like that gives so much more weight to
it.
One person being like, I saw a ghost.

Speaker B (57:34):
It's like.
I mean, could you see that?Could you imagine you're just driving by and a
whole bunch of blue collar, you know, beerdrinking, you know,
big guys just come running out of the theaterlike scared little girls.

Speaker C (57:50):
Right? Yeah.

Speaker A (57:50):
These are, like, the most.

Speaker C (57:52):
Yeah. Like, you think of them as being, like, the most, like, down to earth,
like, you know, tough guys and.

Speaker B (57:57):
Yeah.

Speaker C (57:57):
For them to get scared, you know, like it was something.
Something crazy.

Speaker B (58:02):
Yeah. And that's something we'll cover.
Yeah. Again, when we do a lot of thesedifferent stories,
like you said, Brooke, renovation forwhatever.
Ghosts don't like it.
Like, if you're.
I don't know if you have to say to a ghost,like, put out your plans and be like, hey,
ghost,
we're gonna change the kitchen to ocean blue.

Speaker C (58:26):
Do you like that?

Speaker A (58:27):
Is that okay?

Speaker B (58:30):
And then maybe see a note on the plans.
No. You burn in hell.

Speaker A (58:36):
Written in blood on the walls.

Speaker B (58:37):
Yeah, written down.
Blood on the walls.
And you're going well.

Speaker C (58:40):
Okay.

Speaker B (58:41):
Ocean blue may not be your color.
Tell me a color you like.
Like egg white.
Is that a good color?

Speaker A (58:47):
Sage green, maybe.

Speaker B (58:48):
That I will like.

Speaker C (58:49):
No, I will love sage green.
Yes.

Speaker B (58:51):
So anything else on this, Megan? Because that is terrifying.

Speaker A (58:56):
I actually did some research to see what happened to the Rogers Theater after it
closed in the early 200s.
There have been some paranormal investigationgroups that have visited to try and capture
evidence of the unexplained.
But it sounds like most of the reports were
pretty uneventful.
So that's interesting.
But other businesses have tried to make use ofthe old brick building.

(59:20):
First it was a nightclub called the Fillmore,
but that closed down.
And then in a slight turn of events, thebuilding became none other than a chance
church,
so.
So today it is actually being used by thedowntown mission church in Wausau.
So after everything that's happened in thelast 100 years, I definitely think the

(59:40):
building needed some good juju.
And I really hope Bob the ghost is enjoyingattending church services every Sunday because
he's definitely dressed for the occasion inthat black suit.

Speaker B (59:50):
Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker C (59:51):
Yeah.

Speaker A (59:52):
So not sure if the building is still haunted.
Maybe, but you might have to visit foryourself and see what happens.

Speaker B (01:00:00):
You know,
that sounds.
That sounds awesome.
And thank you.
Now I gotta sleep with the lights on becauseI. I picture myself sleeping tonight and
opening my eyes and Bob staring right at me.
But thanks.

Speaker A (01:00:14):
At least he's well dressed, John.

Speaker B (01:00:15):
Oh, yeah.
At least he's well dressed.
You look good.

Speaker C (01:00:19):
Yeah, he's a fancy ghost.

Speaker A (01:00:22):
Thank you so much.
And I'll pass it back to you, John.

Speaker B (01:00:24):
Yeah. So,
ladies, you're always the greatest.
You know, I always tell you that.
And there's some really nice, spooky, and areally great Cryptid story.
I was gonna do a story, but we're kind ofcoming up on time here about a haunted bunk
bed.
But I'm gonna save that for next week because
I think it kind of is going to go with.
Or I shouldn't say next week.

(01:00:45):
I should say we're gonna do stories every
couple weeks,
so,
you know, be ready for that.
And we're going to talk about our next story a
little bit.
We're probably going to do summer win.
And the reason I say probably is because wehave so many things to cover, right?
Megan and Brooke.

Speaker C (01:01:02):
I mean, ideas.
We do so many things.

Speaker B (01:01:07):
But right now we're thinking on Summer Wind,
which you gotta tune in for that, becauseSummer wind, I think,
rivals Amityville,
rivals the, like,
any spooky house like in whether you werelooking at the Vliska Axe house in Iowa or

(01:01:29):
the.
Was it the wall?Gosh, can't think of the one in Kansas right
now.
At the top of my head.
Oh, shoot.
Can't think of that name.
But any of these spooky houses really take a
summer wind.
Doesn't take really a back seat to anything
and what's going on.
So that's probably what we're gonna do in a

(01:01:52):
couple weeks.
So stay tuned for that.
And like I said, then we'll do the haunted bugbunk bed story.
Because I gotta give it more time.
I'm gonna be honest with you because it's.

Speaker A (01:02:03):
I can't wait.

Speaker B (01:02:05):
It's funny and scary at the same time, which is very rare with spooky stories.
Right.
Anything else,
Brooke or Megan you want to bring up before weend this episode?

Speaker C (01:02:20):
I don't think so.
I'm really excited.
I. You know, you've teased your bunk bed storya couple times in the past, and I'm excited to
hear the whole story.
That'll be very fun.

Speaker B (01:02:29):
It's awesome.
Megan.

Speaker A (01:02:32):
I don't think so.
I'm also looking forward to next week and
hearing all about it.
John.

Speaker B (01:02:36):
Awesome.
So we want to end the show just to say, hey,look out for those cryptids, especially those
hoedags on the road,
zombie deer.
You never know, right?
And,
you know, one of the things we like to say,too,
is tell your ghosts we say hi because, youknow,
you never know, right?Gotta be friendly to that ghost.

(01:02:58):
And we'll be back in a couple weeks.
And until that time, stay spooky.

Speaker C (01:03:04):
It.