The Creepy Parlour, 24 with Melinda Mitchell

Join Genevieve in the Creepy Parlour and catch up with Melinda Mitchell. Melinda's plans for the Museum of Mortality are moving forward, and they also discuss the Radium Girls.

Episode Transcript

(00:33):
Warning. The following video contains stronglanguage which may be offensive to some viewers
and or inappropriate for children. Thecontent within this video is intended for mature
audiences only. Welcome to the CreepyParlor, where we delve into the dark

(01:11):
side with an undercurrent of lighthearted fun. Our discussions will explore gothic mecca or
creepy topics. The first Tuesday ofevery month, we will host a Haunted
Happy Hour where you can join usfor a group conversation that focus on ghosts,
weird events, urban legends, andmore. Here at the Creepy Parlor,

(01:33):
our subject matter and maybe spooky,but our spirits are high. You
can catch the Creepy Parlor every Tuesdayat seven pm Eastern only on wlf DV
Radio. Hello everybody, and we'llcocomes to the Creepy Parlor. I'm Genevieve

(02:00):
and I'm absolutely ecstatic to bring backmy next guest, my very dear friend
Melinda. She's gonna be talking withus about quite a few different things,
but we're gonna focus a lot onthe radium girls, So if you're not
familiar with this topic, brace yourselves. This is gonna be a little bit
crazy. So hang on one second, I'll let Melinda introduce herself. Hello,

(02:24):
my friend, Hello, everybody,Welcome, Welcome, thanks for having
me back. I really enjoy it. Hello, Jillian, Hi, Natalie,
Hi, Mikey, Hi Ray.A lot of fun people in the
audience today. Yes, we do. We gotta say hi to everybody.

(02:50):
Welcome everybody. This is gonna bea really interesting show, I think.
Jillian, Hello, my best friend. See, that's what happens. You
go on the creepy parlor and thenyou can't get rid of us. Let
me guess it. Oh, so, if you wouldn't mind, just tell
everybody a little bit about yourself.Well, my name is Milinda Mitchell.

(03:15):
I am the founder and director ofthe Museum of Mortality Will kind of a
co founder. My mom and Iare starting it, but I'm also the
owner of Madame Cora's Emporium. Wehave an online store as well as an
actual brick and mortar in Burlington,Wisconsin. So the store is helping me
kind of get the museum up andgoing. So it's not fun so two

(03:37):
projects at the same time, becauseI never do anything easy, you know,
it's no big deal. And youalso tell ghost stories, correct,
I am also a ghost tour guidein Lake Geneva through American Ghostwalks. Awesome,
excellent. Julian's the creepy polish Ohthanks, guys. Actually want I

(04:00):
consider myself? Yes, so Hi, Natalie says she's looking forward to this
not often covered true. I thinkthat these women definitely don't get enough attention
for what they've been through. Sodo you want to get a little give
a little background to that since youhave all of the equipment and all of
the I bought play toys. Excellent, excellent, because you have to,

(04:25):
Okay. So with the Museum ofMortality, our primary time frame is the
eighteen fifties to the nineteen fifties.Will be discussing and covering a lot of
different aspects. Some of the mainthree areas will be funerary rights, traditions,
and histories. Why do we dothe things that we do? Why
do we were black? White?You know? So we'll be covering a
lot of those. But well,then we're going to have a medical wing,

(04:46):
and the medical will you know,cover how we went from honey mud,
maggot's bloodletting and leeches to patented medicines. Then we also have the rise
of spiritualism because prior in the earlyeighteen fifties when we had the Civil War,
before that, people were dying athome. Now all of a sudden,
people were dying away and people wantedto, you know, contact the
dead. Is there another you know, another side? Did they go peacefully?

(05:09):
Is or anyway they can track thattheir body down to bring it home?
Did you leave me any money?You jerk for going off and playing
you know war. So there youhave the rise of spiritualism. While that
created a lot of tensions because youhad quack medicine, you had all sorts
of other things come into play withthe rise of hypnotism and mesmeritism. While

(05:31):
then you had to have the medicalside of things challenge everything, you had
the funerary side challenging everything. Andwe'll be disgusting about how all these different
things really put pressure on it.So not only did it increase our quality
of life, our life span,but how we are today and how we
can be where we're at. Andin going through all my research, because

(05:54):
literally I'm leaving no stone unturned,I'm having a lot of fun doing it.
Well, you know, I reallyend up getting into a lot of
different things because part of it isI actually want to do a street of
shops and you'll start off on lifein dirt and gravel road and then progress
to brick to asphalts, so you'reactually walking a timeline. So I want

(06:17):
each little store or each building toreally be a part of the timeline and
how we started to evolve. Butalso like a mini museum within the museum,
because you know, you might bringyour dad along and he's like,
man, I don't really give acrap about all this, but you know,
oh, Blacksmith thing, these arethe actual tools. I recognize these.

(06:38):
And then we'll you know, youcan actually go and look at our
research books and we'll have an entirebookcase dedicated to blacksmith thing or dedicated this.
So I ended up getting into collectingglass and crystal, so that way,
in the glass and crystal shop,we can set it up like every
decade so you can actually see howthe styles change. Well, of course

(06:58):
with that you end up getting alot of glasses from the Depression era.
This is uranium glass. Now uraniumglass is radioactive. God, I love
it. Some of them. Ihave a huge cabinet, so literally I
just brought one, okay, twopieces. Okay, wait wait, so

(07:23):
so this snowballed. So this isradioactive glass and it contains uranium, and
everyone gets uranium and radium confused,and people were like, oh, you
know. So one of my friendswas like, well, you got to
read about the radium girls, becauseit goes along with your science wing but
also talking about radioactivity. So toshow up, you have a guy your

(07:46):
counter. Will it pick up anythingfrom those pieces? Yeah, excellence,
I told you I came prepared.So this piece here puts off about twenty
to forty per minute with background radiationlevels zero to fifty is acceptable. Your
banana is gonna put out like twentyto forty. And with uranium glass,

(08:11):
yes, it actually glows under blacklight UV light, so you can kind
of see it gets really pretty,really green, but not all of it
is green. Now there is yellow, which also contains it, but it's
anywhere between point two percent to twentyfive percent uranium oxide that is used as

(08:33):
the coloring. So vassaline glass isyellow. Most it's still uranium based,
but then you've also got the green, which is more what everyone calls just
uranium glass. So yeah, thisis this is a lot of fun with
the black light and kind of seehow it just glows my cabinet. My
cabinet can light up everything in thehouse. I love that Natalie had just

(08:54):
commented and said it glows under certainlight. That's how you know it's really
light. You're like, thing,I got the light. Yep, I
got smart. Okay, trying tofind my camera position here so you might
not be able to see it,but you can see how it kind of
glows. I'm trying to do it. Like, so it glows a bright
green. Now, are you kindof see how the green lines are jumping?

(09:18):
Yep. So you've actually got fourdifferent types of glowing glass. You've
got selenium, which is pink.You've got cadmium, which glows like an
orange. Um cadmium and manganese bothdo like an orange or pink similar to
selenium. But then you have theuranium glass, which is you know,
primarily the greens and the yellows.So that snowballed into well since you're learning

(09:41):
about this, while there's also youknow, radium girls, and it plays
into the scientific and medical wings.So this is a book by Kate Moore.
Absolutely fantastic. I mean, it'sit's a it's a thick one,
but it's not dry. Most ofmy research books, I get the textbooks
because I'm ulous. I read textbooks for fun. So I picked this

(10:03):
one up, and you know itwas really reading about it because uranium has
a you know, twenty six millionor billion. Hold on, I'll look
it up. I got it righthere. The half life of uranium two
thirty eight is four point five billionyears. It decays to radium to two

(10:26):
six which then decays into raid onrd on gas. Yeah. Now,
uranium was discovered in seventeen eighty nine. Radium was discovered finally in eighteen ninety
eight by Madam Currie. And themain reason, you know, it glows.
It glows on its own in thedark. It's not like uranium,

(10:48):
you know uranium glass, where youactually have to make it react. Uh.
It actually glows in the dark.And so when planes and after the
after the First World War, theyreally want the dials and stuff to be
illuminated, but not have lights onit because then it made our planes a
target. So Madam Currie had foundthis beautiful radium that glowed in the dark,

(11:13):
so they didn't need light bulbs inthe dashboards. So the radium corps
were found it. Can we justtalk about her for a moment and how
she had it in her pockets.She'd bring it home from the lab and
everybody she was dangerous. Nobody didno. She knew, she knew it

(11:33):
was dangerous. Within within the firstcouple months of her discovery, she actually
figured out that, you know,by carrying it in her pocket, she
was developing source from it. Ascientist that she gifted some too, kept
it in her in his pocket nextto his testicles um and ended up developing

(11:54):
sores. So they knew that itwas causing it. But it became the
thing, so radium and you know, to give you that healthy glow.
They didn't think, you know,they wanted to market the next big quack
medicine, and so they were radiant, you know, radiating your makeup,
radiating water, put you know,now a lot of the things that they

(12:18):
were radiating. It was basically likethey were taking the item and flashing it
by radium and not really totally embeddingin it. So like radith or water.
It was basically in essence like waterwhere they put like a like a
vial of it into made it kindof radioactive. A little bit and then
pulled the vial out moved on tothe next tank of water. So it

(12:41):
was radiated water. So luckily enough, you weren't putting a whole lot of
it into your body, but unfortunatelythe radium girls did. The radium girls
were the paint dial the dial paintersfor the radium paint companies, and they
were given so much of the mainmixture they would have to mix it up
the paint themselves. They weren't givenwater to clean the brushes, so they

(13:05):
would have to dip it, lippoint it to get it into a very
fine point in order to paint thesmall numbers on the dials. Because this
you can see, like, okay, the dial right here, you can
see how small it is, that'sonly an inch. The numbers, they
had to paint them clearly, sothey had to get the brush very,

(13:26):
very fine, and you couldn't dothat with like a glass brush or anything
like that. So the scientists thatwere extracting the radium were behind leaded glass.
They had safety features. But thegirls were told to lip point and
they were ingesting it, even thoughthe companies knew, because Mattam Currie was
telling everybody it was telling them,no, this is dangerous, you shouldn't

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have it. So these guys knewthat this was going to happen, or
they knew that it was dangerous andthey shouldn't be doing this, but they
didn't give them the right tools todo things safely. Yep, because it
was people. It was profit overpeople, and we didn't have OSHA back
then, we didn't have any youknow, any type of protection groups.

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So these poor girls, like someof them, you know, they were
in there. They were starting asteenagers because you got paid paid per dial
or per tray of dials that youfinished. So these girls were making several
dollars a week, which was alot more than what they would have been
able to make working in a departmentstore or anything like that. So this
was like top tier pay. Sothey were you know, and the companies
were like, oh, bring inyour sisters, bring in all you know,

(14:35):
bring in your family members, andbasically killing off entire family lines.
But the girls were told that itwasn't dangerous. No, no, it's
the greatest thing. It's it's fine, you can do this. You're fine,
you're fine, you're fine, whenreally they weren't, and it was
taking months and years for symptoms tostart showing up, so their legs would

(14:56):
start hurting, their joints would starthurting, so almost like they were developing
osteoporosis at eighteen nineteen years old,you know, even though you you know,
you weren't old enough, you know, to really be developing. So
one leg started to be shorter thanthe other one. Well, by then,
most of the girls, you know, they did their you know,

(15:16):
did it for a while, andthen some of them were like, you
know, I'm really tired of this. I want to go start my family,
or I'm going to go get ajob in the bank because I don't
have you know, it's strenuous topaint these little dials. So some of
the girls were moving on, notrealizing that they were contaminated by the radium.
I mean they were. They wereencouraged to like paint their teeth with

(15:37):
it, paint their hair with it, and go out and party. Doesn't
it sort of like, um,give you a little energy boost at first
at first? Yeah, yeah,because your body's like, oh, what
is this. They did not realizethat radium mimics calcium, So as the

(15:58):
girls were eating the paint, itwas being deposited into their bones and then
basically riddling their bones with cancer andthings like that. But radiation for uh,
like chemo and radiation. This iswhere it started because they felt that
it could destroy cancer. And itcould. But we have HeLa cells,

(16:19):
which is Henrietta Lax. Her cellsare immortal. That one's a completely different
side of the story. But shewas actually treated with radium and it didn't
it didn't stop her cancer at all, but it caused cancer in these girls.
They just didn't know it. So, you know, the girls,
their teeth started getting loose and fallingout, they had the bad breath like

(16:41):
the fossy jaw girls. The girlsthat worked in the Matshtick factories, they
started to develop tumors like the Matchtickgirls. And the companies actually tried blaming
it on phosphorus and syphilis. Theywere sending their doctors out to check over
these girls and then going, oh, no, no, it's not this,

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You've got syphilis. And the girlsare like, I'm a virgin.
I spend all my time working becausethey were working six seven days a week,
wow, to support their families.But you know they were coming home
completely covered in the radium dust.And it leaked, so it was getting
leached into the walls, it wasgetting leached into the water supply. And

(17:23):
there was two main factories, Orange, New Jersey, which not too far
from you, and Ottawa, Illinois, which is an hour or so for
me. So the girls in overin Orange, New Jersey were the first
ones to start realizing that something's wrong, Like when one of them went to
a pull a tooth and quarter ofher jaw A quarter of her jaw came

(17:47):
out with the tooth. The onedoctor that she went to go see outside
of their doctors washed it, cleanedit, couldn't figure it out what was
going on, so he ended upthrowing it into a drawer, not realizing
threw it tested jawbone into a dloorbecause he couldn't figure out what was causing

(18:08):
the girls toxicity. They didn't haveany tests for radium poisoning yet, but
he threw it into his drawer andit ended up being on top of films
X ray films. A couple monthslater, he opened the door to look
for something, took the jaw out, looked at the films and there was
a white spot where the jaw hadbeen. So he realized that they could

(18:30):
start testing the girls by putting theirbodies onto X ray films and making them
sit there for a while. Wow. And you know, okay, so
me being very science minded, thisis fascinating because it wasn't really that long
ago. It was nineteen forties.But the Radium corporations they changed their names,

(18:55):
they changed tactics and stuff. Theydid not stop using radim on watch
face dials until the nineteen seventies.Wow. So, like in the Orange
Girls, they've tried filing a lawsuitand the company started stalling it and stalling
it, installing it because these girlsstarted dropping dead. So they figured,

(19:18):
you know, if we just stallthe case, they'll I'll be dead.
Case goes away. Well, eventuallythe girls ended up settling, but that
opened up the precedence for the girlsin Ottawa, Illinois to file a lawsuit
and actually win. But because ofthe different groups they were working with,
that's where one of the reasons whywe have OSHA now is because of the
foss Jaw Girls, the Radium Girls, and the shirtwaist factory tragedy. That

(19:41):
was some of the start of OSHAbecause there was only a six month statute
of limitations and it was taking severalyears for the girls to die, but
once they started to die, theywere dropping like that. And so the
girls in Ottawa were able to finallyfile because the company, by settling said
that obviously this is our issue,Yes we did something wrong, or they

(20:03):
would have followed it through until theend and just done it. But because
of all the bad publicity and everythinggoing on well in Ottawa, they shut
the factory down while they were incourt. Then a couple months later opened
up a couple blocks over under anew name, doing the same thing,
doing the same thing, and theykept trying to recruit the whole town.

(20:26):
Well. So now like in Orangeand Ottawa, the EPA went in and
started cleaning up the sites, butran out of money. So there's fifteen
active sights in Ottawa, Illinois,of which only two were actually cleaned,
which means they dug down ten fifteenfeet, scraped all the dirt, and
took it to Idaho and dumped itin the middle of a field. But
the sites are still radioactive. There'sstill so much radioactivity in the sights.

(20:51):
And like they want to build anice cream parlor, they've wanted to build
schools on it, and parks andapartments, and so that means people be
living on top of these still hotspots because radium has a sixteen hundred a
year half life before it becomes radonand rdon's not that great either, So

(21:15):
these poorgo of The book is absolutelyfabulous. So this became one of my
pet projects. So I've actually beenin talks with Kate Kate Moore, who
wrote the book. She's absolutely fantastic, and I told her about my pet
project for what I want to dofor the museum, besides talking about this
in general, because this was playsinto not only my scientific but also into

(21:36):
the quack medicine because of all theradiated products. So I was talking with
her and I'm like, you know, I watched the movie that came out
on Netflix. It's on Netflix now. Is actually yeah, I have to
watch it. I haven't seen it. No, Oh my god, Okay,
so two hour rant on that one. Yes, that's one of the

(22:00):
reasons why we do raid on testingis because of the fact that the girls
may have lived there and radium goals, but these people people warm on the
risk. They have these dials nextto their beds for decades. I'll get
to that am all okay, okay, we'll get to that. So I
had watched the video because it wasa documentary type show. It came out

(22:21):
two years ago, in like eighteennineteen, and it went to a small
film festival and then from there.It finally went on to Netflix a couple
of months ago, and after readingthe book, after reading numerous articles,
after going through and doing a lotof research myself, I was so excited
for it. So the day ithit, I watched it and I got
done and I was just like.I called my friend who told me it's

(22:44):
finally on. It's finally on,and I went called her up and I
said, do you have time?And she goes, I got time,
and I went on a two hourtirade. I ripped it apart, hoped
it was. It didn't it.Folks to understand the Jim Crow laws and
a lot of that, the socialinjustice issues that were going on during the
timeframe of the you know, earlynineteen tenth to nineteen twenties, is very

(23:07):
important. I get it. Butthey spent way too much of the film
going after that and not talking aboutthe girls. They took a lot of
artistic license with it that they shouldn'thave. Yeah, it has a tendency
to well, it wasn't Netflix.It was actually supposed to be like it
was an indie film festival film.And they did do a lot of artistic
license. Like you know, theytalked about the girls believing in ancient Egyptian

(23:30):
gods and stuff like that. Nowthey were Christian, and you know,
they came from a very Christian area. They spent a lot of time talking
about the social injustices going on.But then they took the months and months
long battle with the court system inNew Jersey and crammed it into five minutes.
They didn't show any of the decayof the girls. They did.
They didn't show the fact that oneof the women had the entire court come

(23:52):
to her house because she couldn't leavethe couch. The judge packed up everything
and everybody and took it to herhouse to get her testimony. They didn't
talk about any of that. Theydid not really, I mean, the
degradation of these women, just alittle bit of theatrical makeup would have done
so much. Because it's just likethe foss Jaw girls. I'm going to

(24:15):
try and get this right here.You can see the tumors. How hard
would that have been to do ina prosthetic that's a cancer in the knee.
These are the girls, wow,you know. So they took so
much information and tried to cram itinto like ten minutes and focused way too

(24:37):
much on other things. And soI talked to Kate and I'm like,
I gotta do these girls more justice. I gotta do these girls more justice.
So I'm going to start doing documentationand I want to go because it's
only an hour for me. I'mgonna take my Geiger Counter and do some
preliminary But the Museum of Mortality istrying to save up money, not only

(24:57):
for our five one S three notfor profit status, So if you really
want to go and donate to us, we'd love that we can go after
our five O one C three Nextweek, I finally have an appointment yea,
and I carry these in store.You can also message me I carry
the books helps the museum in thestore. But I'm gonna start going down

(25:18):
with just my little one, andthen I'm hoping that the museum can actually
go and buy one of the bigGiger counters with the want I need one.
Wait, wait, so before weget into that. I'm gonna do
a quick break and we'll get intoyour plan for that. How's that because
I know you're like you're busting atthe seams, I said, pet project.

(25:38):
Yes, yes, okay, sohold on to that for one second.
We're gonna do a really quick breakand then we'll be back. You're
gonna hang in there for a second, we'll be right back war so real

(27:52):
quick before why on leash you backin? Um, I just want to
mention everybody, please check out allthe other great shows that we have here
on wlfeeshdb dot com. You cancheck us out on stream TV as well.
You can binge watch all these shows, all these great shows back to
back on TV, and also checkout all the great content artists on Psychomantium

(28:12):
thirteen and PBDCTV. And just takea little quick at little that way,
going that way, peek at oursafe Space logo up there. Um,
we just want everyone to know thatwe are part of that Safe Space network
as well. So, um,we are here if you need us.

(28:32):
So even me, even me,I am total fighter and warriors. So
yeah that that's me, because Imean you didn't Yeah, I am on
a fight to prove these girls andto you know, keep talking about because
that's part of the problem. Theykeep wanting to gloss over history. It
was a hundred years ago, ifnot less. Yep, now he's coming

(28:56):
there. I'm glad you're doing Hey. So, yes, So I need
to get myself one of the biggerguy your countess, because this is more
I'm just a detector. You canget them for about eighty dollars on Amazon,
which is where I got it.I love it. I'm the one
that walks around thrift stores and antiquemalls wearing this around my wrist and carrying
a black light, the ten XLumix, because that's me. I total.

(29:17):
These are my purse at all times. But that's that's actually how I
found one of the radium dials thatI have. This one here is actually
of nineteen sixties fourties to sixties rollup bedside alarm clock. This one puts
out about eleven hundred counts per minuteon average. Anything over one hundred starts

(29:45):
to get dangerous. Anything over athousand is definitely dangerous. But the particles
that are coming off of it becauseit is semi protected and you're not ingesting
it, it would take a longtime for the radiation to actually accumulate within
the body enough to cause cancer.The biggest thing was ingesting it. So
if I licked the dials or eightthe dials, then I might have a

(30:06):
problem with it. Other than that, it's behind let a glass. I
was going to ask you, like, do you keep these pieces in a
special container or something? Do youjust kind of like hang out with them
around your house? So this isthis is the only one I've gotten.
Um. This one puts out abouttwelve hundred, so not that much bigger
um. But this is my bigboy. This is my big boy.

(30:30):
This is my my big my bigbaby. Now this one puts out eighteen
to nineteen hundred counts fro Minute's oneof the reasons why I call him my
big boy. He was done byWest Clocks. This is called Big Ben.
And I'll give you a hint.So the paint does degrade overtime,
so it does kind of have alittle bit of illuminescence still to it.
It should for the next sixteen hundredyears, but because of the paint mixture,

(30:53):
it does start to cloud up.But you can see it still glow.
Yeah, And when you take itaway. It does take a while
for it to I do not haveany orange you to wear, or red
or yellow because all three of thosecontained radiation. Isn't that amazing? All

(31:17):
left in the nineteen fifties, westill used a lot of radioactive items for
every day use. I wonder,you know, one hundred years from now,
what we're going to know about thethings that we're using today. We
would be surprised. And so Yeah, during the Cold War, the height
of the Cold War, so someof the girls that were buried in Ottawa,

(31:40):
Illinois were exhumed during the Cold Wartin order to study the effects of
radiation on decay, you know,on bodies as they decayed. So they'd
only been dead for thirty forty yearsat that point. They exhumed like three
of the girls, took them toJoliet, Illinois to study them at the
level. They took their bodies filledwith radiation out of the ground again,

(32:07):
took them to Juliet, tested them. Okay, the girls were so hot,
as in, so radioactive. Theyencased them in lead. Then it
took them back incase their coffin inlead into a lead lined vault. Wow,

(32:27):
before rebearing them. That's how muchof this toxins that they actually had
ingested, and just so I wantto I want to go to their grave
sites. Of course, I'm forme. I also want to pay my
respects. So for me, it'slike I want to go talk to them
and I want to ask them questions. Yeah, but I want to do
my big Geiger counter because even thoughthey're encased in lead and their coffins are

(32:51):
oh no, there were still bodiesleft. The bones had disintegrated, but
there was still enough of the matterand stuff for them to you know,
to test on even after thirty fortyyears. But because they've been sealed in
vaults, slows down the decay.And so I still want to go and
test and see if their their burialsites are, how radioactive their burial sites

(33:12):
still are today even though they're incase in life, because for decades before
that they were not right. Correct. Wow, I want to do these
girls justice. I yes, Ican. I think that that's a really
really good plan. There's a lotof places where you know, you don't

(33:36):
realize that something's been going on.So a lot of history has become dark
history. People don't want to talkabout the death and decay and the destruction
that these towns allowed this. Youknow, these companies to kill their their
their towns, and they keep themalive. They kept them. You know,
they put profit over people. Thetowns even put profit over people because

(33:58):
it made sense for them. Theyneeded that, they needed the workers,
they needed the taxes, they neededthe income, so they put profit over
people. And unfortunately the world stillhasn't changed in one hundred hundred plus years.
We still have most of our companiesare putting profit over people. And
that's some of the things that weneed to be aware of. So when

(34:19):
you move to a town, youkind of have to dig in your Yeah,
I want to go and visit youguys and go to Orange anyway,
So I'm going to be coming toyou in New Jersey at some point.
We're gonna have to do like inperson meetups the whole tour. We got
a lot of hot spots in NewJersey. Yeah, that's one of the
reasons why I tell people get yourown Geiger counter, because you may not

(34:40):
realize what is radioactive in your house. My house that I'm currently sitting in
was a built in nineteen twenty fourand so yeah, I went and walked
around with this, I also tellpeople get an EVP or not evp EM
like electronic magnetic field because because thenwell you can actually find out if you
have faulty wiring. Yes, andall old houses, you want to know.

(35:07):
So my pieces, the clocks thatI have are actually located at Madame
Cora's emporium. I literally ran overthere about an hour before the show because
I was like, we're talking aboutright and girls. My guys are at
the store. So I went andgrabbed him so I can have him here
so I could show off my mycouple of dials. Hey, I have
a few questions about them. Well, about the girls. First of all,

(35:29):
do we know how many girls wereaffected? Thousands? Thousands? I'm
thinking like twenty No, it's no, no. And so we the girls
changed over like underwear, and thepainting went on for well all the way
until the nineteen seventies, so you'redealing with girls from the nineteen you know,
for fifty sixty years. And employeechangeover was a lot because a lot

(35:53):
of the girls may not have beenable to cut it as a dial painter.
So they would you know, havethem one month trial run if they
didn't get good enough at it,they would be you know, let go
so thousands upon thousands of people.Wow. Yeah, so we don't have
all the names. The only namesthat we have are the ones that we're
involved in the lawsuits. That's that'sunbelievable. And then so just along that

(36:19):
line, yeah, the pieces thatyou have, you have any are there
any like regulation or anything with them? Like? Are they I find I
found two of the three in inuh antique stores interesting, but I have
an older case that's lead a glass, So I put them in the lead

(36:40):
a glass. And when you know, me having three pieces doesn't make it
any more dangerous. It's still puttingoff the same amount accounts. It's still
you know, still putting off thesame amount of radiation. So it's it's
not gonna like multiply like I'm gettingeighteen hundred from this one eleven hundred,
so now I'm getting doused with threethousand. You know. So when I
go to actually do the museum,I want to have multiple sets of cases,

(37:02):
but I do want to set upa lot of the higher ones.
Like my big boy who puts offthe eighteen hundred counts for a minute,
I want to put him into youknow, into a special case that will
be leaded glass, lead lined,and I'm gonna have a Giger counter actually
have the read out on the frontof the glass, and I'm gonna make

(37:22):
sure it's a push button so youdon't have to hear it unless you want
to hear it. Because you canactually listen to on a lot of your
Guiger counters and stuff, you canlisten to the counts actually being ejected off.
Yeah. Yeah, it's fascinating,isn't it. Really. It's like

(37:45):
her the ciest sounds in the world, and that's just going up right,
we're actually and that doesn't tell youwhat it is, right, because there's
something It does not tell you whatit is. It just tells you about
how dangerous it is. Yeah,there's some kinds of radiation that they don't

(38:05):
pick up correct. Correct. Sothat's why I want to get one of
the big industrial ones that you seein laboratories that has the wand and stuff
like that, just so you canactually tell what you know. It will
actually tell you what you're picking upon, whether it's you know, phosphorus
or iodine or you know. Iactually used to work in a pharmaceutic in
a pharmacy. At Biomedical Nuclear Pharmacy, I dealt with money, venom and

(38:30):
technesium and all sorts of fun things, and the lab only went hot once,
but it was all for imaging,so it wasn't detrimental. So yeah,
we actually had to turn the Geigercounters off for about a month because
the whole place was hot and there'sno Yeah, so I want to get
one of those because at least,you know, you can start to test

(38:53):
exactly what it is that you're dealingwith. So I think that's kind of
important because different radiation does sort ofdifferent things and whether it's gamma, beta,
alpha. Yeah, that's why youneed a black light more than a
black light, more than a blacklight. Yeah, that's just to see
if it's pretty. Yeah, it'smore than just um shining on your creepy

(39:15):
posters in the background. So yeah, it's it's it's absolutely amazing. History
is amazing. So you know,that's one of the things I'm doing with
the museum is bringing some of thesethings to life. And you know,
so these things live in a leadlead a glass cabinet inside my store um
Madam Cooris Emporium and hopefully within thenext couple months, I should actually be

(39:40):
taking over the building next to meand starting a mini museum so that way
people can actually see where we're atand start taking in donation, you know,
bigger donations and things, so they'llget moved over there into into a
special case. So so, um, you do you have a go fund?
I do. I do need tosee about redoing the tier levels.

(40:07):
So right now I still need aboutfourteen hundred dollars in order to finish getting
the five O one C three notfor profit status done and make sure that
I got everything covered as far asthat goes, and then I'm looking at
taking over the building next door.Excellent, Charis has congratulations, Thank you.
It's it's a lot of fun.So July first, I sit down

(40:28):
with my CPA and go, here'sall the information. Because I don't do
numbers, but I was the onepulling together demographics. I was pulling together
all these figures and I'm like,I hate math, and this is exciting.
I think it's because that's how youknow, it's something that you're really
passionate about, that you feel reallygood about. Yeah, we get to
talk, get to talk fun stuffin history, and so yeah, if

(40:52):
you come into my store, Iwill end up talking years off. Jill
says, we need to go toWisconsin and visit. Yes, I thought
you're supposed to be coming to Wisconsinsoon. We'll talk about that later,
so um yeah, anyone not tobe ominous about that. But anyway,

(41:13):
so you are also doing little videosand stuff on your Facebook page. I
am, so we have YouTube setup, I have tiktoking. I have
TikTok setup now, so I'm actuallystarting to do TikTok. So you can
find the museum and Adam Coras,both of them, so six projects all
at once. Well, Madam Coorsdoes not have a YouTube, but it
does have a TikTok, So I'vegot TikTok's for the Museum of Mortality and

(41:36):
for Madam Coras. Museum of Mortalitydoes have a YouTube. I have a
Facebook, website, Instagram, soif anyone has questions, you can shoot
it to me and you never know, it may end up in a video.
Because I have a lot of informationcrammed in my poor little skull here
that I need a jumping off point. I can't. It's hard for me

(41:57):
to just start and like pick asubject and do it. So one of
my friends go, So the firstvideo on YouTube that was for the museum,
not just talking about you know,radiation and uranium glass and at safety,
but the first museum museum one wasactually the difference between embalming and memification.
I saw that one. That's fun. How'd you like it? It

(42:20):
was awesome. Do you want totell you want to talk a little bit
about it real quick? Um,Well, mummification is actually is actually embalming.
Bombing is technically just how you handleyour dead. So mummification started um
nine thousand BC at least. Andmodern day embalming, which is arterial aspiration

(42:43):
or disinfection disinfectants done through the arteries, really started in seventeen seventy five by
Hunt the Hunter brothers. I'm tryingto remember this all from memory. Um.
They were most well known for actuallyum embalming a woman because she said
that her husband could control her fortuneas long as her body remained above ground

(43:05):
ground. Yeah, and it wasstill considered desecration of the dead until you
got to the Civil War. Untilthe Civil War where and you wanted to
transport the dead from the South backto the North, or even just a
couple of towns over. Yea.So that's when it became a little bit
more acceptable to do embalming because whilethe loved ones wanted to bring their dead
home, So embalming really didn't becomepopular until hotter and fifty years ago.

(43:30):
Isn't that crazy. It's such ahuge focus now too, you know everything.
That's what everybody thinks. That well, the majority of people think is
like what you do when someone dies, that you have to Yeah, nope,
I do Nope, I don't wantit, don't want it. I
prefer aquam. I'm really considering aquamation. It's an alkaline water and basically they

(43:52):
just put you into a tube anddissolve you into water and then it's filtered
and processed and returned back to whitewater, so you turn into gray water
and then you turn into whitewater,you know, clear water. Yeah.
I struggle with that one. Ijust want to a hole in the ground.
No embalming, nothing. I've alwaysjoked, you know, cream,
you know, roasty, toasty,extra crispy Creamate me and throw me over

(44:14):
the white cliffs of Dover. ButI'm like, but that means all my
chub and all the taxins in mybody is going to go into the air
and into the into the earth thewrong way. And I'm like, m
so I'm really thinking acclimation because itdoes, you know, it does basically
eliminate and make all like all ofit non existent. So I my my

(44:36):
main focus though, I want agravestone. I want a pretty gravestone that's
like one of the really nice oneswith the winged skull. That's what I
want. You want to go oldschool? I do, absolutely, yeah.
I mean you can set me aheadstone. We're good with that.
I don't have to be there oryou you just take my little box,

(45:01):
you go plunk it in the ground. We're good, yeah, headstone.
Are you going to have different thingslike that at the Museum Immortality, like
different dispositions and things we will actually, I do want to do a room
on or an area where we talkabout the things that are available. Now
you know where we've come and wherewe've come in the processes, so we'll

(45:22):
end up talking about like aquamation,cremation, the history cremation, things like
that, So we'll actually be movinginto talking about green burials and things like
that, where you know and whatyou can do now start planning for the
future because so much of it wedon't want to talk about because you know,
we don't want to talk about deathand the dying and handling dead bodies.
People go, it's a dead body, it's like it's a person.

(45:46):
Yes they are gone, their showremains. Yes, still have to deal
with it. Not only but Ithink that if you have, if you
have your actual intentions lined out andwritten down for people, it makes it
easier, so much easier. It'ssuch a stressful, distressful time. Right,

(46:07):
And yes, she should. Youshould talk to my friend Chris,
she is a death midwife. Yeah, and that's and that's one of the
things with the museum we'll be talkingabout. And I think we've said it
last time too, was that peopledon't realize that the day you turned eighteen
you need to have a power ofattorney in place for both medical and financial.
And people don't want to talk aboutso much of this stuff because we

(46:29):
are so removed from death. It'sdone a full pendulum swing backwards. Where
back in the Victorian era, deathwas everyday, sex was taboo. Well
nowadays you know the refrigerator of sexy, this car is sexy. But anything
that has to do with death anddying knew, and we've lost so much
touch that when somebody does die,especially unexpectedly, not only are you hit

(46:50):
with that trauma of one minute they'rehere, the next minute they're gone,
but you have to start thinking,well, what would they want, what
would they have wanted? What youknow? Am I doing right by them?
Whereas if you just spell everything out, and I mean you can,
you can change your mind. Likeyou know, at first, I was
like, oh, you know,I want to be cremated. Now I'm
like aquamation, this kind of soundsgood, or you know, green barril.
I'm like, you know, really, it's one half dozen ways or

(47:13):
another. If I don't have money, bury my ass in the in the
in the farmer bed, I don'tcare, um send me, send me
up to the boy farm. I'mgood. We should talk about that one
day. I can't wait to go. Are you going? I can't wait
to go. I can't I don'tknow when I'm gonna go. But one
of the next times I can getdown that way, I am going to

(47:35):
make arrangements because I want to gosee it. And I've been around so
much death and decay and destruction dealingwith you know, mummified animals on up
that the smell probably won't even botherme. I grew up in haunted houses
where blood, guts, gore doesn'tbother me. You know. I've been
first unseen for accidents where I've seenpeople ripped open by the road and bones

(47:57):
sticking out, and I'm just like, so, I'm like, I wouldn't
repeat this for those of you guyswho are watching that don't know what the
body form actually is. It isa center that it's um people who bodies
to medicine. They are basically studythey put they put bodies into every type

(48:19):
of situation possible, from being lockedin a car, you know, in
the trunk of a car, beingin a plastic bag, and they study
the way that the human body decaysso then that they can set up a
timeline. So if they find abody in this particular situation and they find
it at this level of decay,they know how far back to go on

(48:42):
when that person was killed or died, So it gives them a timeline instead
of you know, because once youget to a certain point, you know,
and the differences between north and south, summer and winter. The liver
tap may not be able to tellyou. So they study decay of the
human body in almost every situation possiblein order to be able to give it
to a timeline. But one ofthe most interesting things that has come out

(49:07):
of the body farm in the lasttwenty years is the ability to compost a
human being. Yeah, that isinteresting. That is it makes my marble
heart happy. So all the jokesabout one chippers and taking care of somebody

(49:28):
and freezing them first, they didfigure out how to do it. They
also found I think it was theyfound a deer eating human remains at one
of the body farms, and theyhad no idea that deer actually eight meat
meat. Human meat makes differently,just a little that live in deer country.

(49:52):
Yourself, Yeah, my cats,I figure, you know, that's
pretty much an understood arrangement. They'reprobably gonna eat you, but baby,
I know it's crazy. Um.Yeah. The forensic anthropology aspect of the
body farms I find absolutely, absolutelyfascinating, and those people are doing some
really amazing work with it, usingwork absolutely, I mean, they're they're

(50:15):
helping to move science forward to beable to give some families closure. Yeah,
it's it's amazing. It is it'sabsolutely amazing. So it's it's a
lot of fun, you know,it's a lot of fun thing to me
and studying all the different some things. It's a lot of fun talking with
you, I hope so does anyoneelse have any questions that we could answer

(50:37):
in the last few minutes that wegot I love this. The deer was
like, yeah, how do youlike that human? The other other white
meat in case I pick one does? I don't want any of it.
I just want to turn into butterflieslike the fairy do. I'm gonna just
explode into a bunch of bats.That's gonna be how I go out knowing

(50:58):
you. Yeah, yes, Karensays. The body farm takes donations.
Yes they do, but you haveto specify ahead of time with a living
will and with a power of attorneyfor both legal and medical. Yes,
um, And I think that that'sthat really just reinforces the point that you

(51:20):
were talking about once you turn eighteen, you need to have that plan.
I say that as though I havea plan, I don't, um,
And if I've learned anything over thepast year, it's the importance of having
that plan. Yep. So thenext time we talk you're gonna have sat
down with a lawyer and done itright. Yes, absolutely, promise,
ye, good absolutely. Um solet's see, No, that would work

(51:46):
too. Just a bunch of batsjust like you know what we do in
the shadows exactly and fly away.Um. So we only have a few
minutes left. Um, any anyfinal words. Thank you so much for
letting me be on again. Andyeah, if anybody has any questions,

(52:07):
they can always shoot me a messagethrough the Facebook page, especially, it's
the easiest way to get a holdof me. Eventually, we're going to
start doing a newsletter, so youcan actually go onto Museum of Mortality dot
com and sign up for the newsletter. Wait a minute, so with all
of the stuff that you're doing,you're now going to write a newsletter.

(52:28):
I need help, Jill says Melinda. I love you, and this is
on top of raising a four yearold son. Yeah. Oh my goodness,
Oh my goodness, go ahead,thank you, thank you. Right.
I didn't mean to interrupt your excitementabout your newsletter. I wasn't trying

(52:49):
to damper your enthusiasm. Yes,eventually, so we are working on just
gathering email addresses and stuff like that. So when we go to actually launch
a newsletter and things like that.Then we'll actually be able to have that.
So yeah, I'm I'm just soexcited. It's it's my passion and
I love it. So if youhave questions, shoot them to me on

(53:12):
Facebook. Who knows, it mightturn into a video, and if not,
you can find more information on dotcom. It's very obvious that it
is your passion and you're so enthusiasticabout it, and it's It's one of
those things too, where I alwaysfind it kind of difficult to explain to
people, like, yeah, thisis dark stuff, right, this is
stuff that most people consider to belike kind of a cob kind of dark,

(53:35):
but we get so excited about ityou can't not be happy talking about
it. And the fact that Iusually wear hoppink and black. Somebody call
me the pinkest Elvira of the night. That's a compliment and a half right
there, And I was like,you're too key to be morbid? Have
you met me? I have humanbody parts at my house. Oh,

(53:59):
that's a topic for a different night. There for the museum, somebody donated
me a hit from eighteen ninety eight, and my friend with Emma's wicked attic
in. I think Salem, shethinks she sent me a few things.
Katrina think sent me a few thinks. So I've got a couple of ribs,
you know, so I've got it. Eventually, might collect the whole

(54:20):
skeleton. I mean, that wouldbe pretty cool. I want one.
I want a whole skeleton it.Jill says, morbid can be cute.
But that's the thing, you know, just because it's dark and morbid doesn't
mean it's not happy, you know, doesn't bring me. I think because
we have a general understanding of abouthow death is not necessarily the end.

(54:44):
We've embraced it. We understand it'syou know, life is fragile. Embrace
it, and we're all going there. We're all going to the same place.
You can't escape it, No,you can't. And once you recognize
that, once you embrace that andrealize that is going to happen, it
takes the edge off. Yeah,do you want to go? Who knows,

(55:13):
sometime in the next couple of decadeswe might be able to live forever.
We might turn into a vampire.Look, I've been trying to become
a vampire for like twenty years now, and you'll have to ask me about
my things. Jill says, speakfor yourselves. I'm freezing my head,

(55:34):
Jill. I don't know who's gonnakeep your head frozen. But it's not
going in my freezer. I loveyou, but it's not going in my
freezer. For science. For scienceexactly, Natalie a scept me. Natalie's
doing butterflies. Okay, well we'llmake that happen. Mushrooms. Yeah,
we didn't even talk about mushrooms.That's a whole different Yeah, that's another

(55:58):
way to go. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a whole different way
where people are actually wearing mushroom suits. Yes, and they're great beyond.
But anyway, feed the fungus.So we only have about two more minutes,
um, if you wouldn't mind justmentioning again you Your shop, Madame

(56:22):
Cora's Imporium is located at one onetwo East Chestnut Street, Burlington, Wisconsin.
We also have an online and anazy best place to find about all
the products is actually through Facebook,because I usually release products there first before
it ever makes it online. Sometimesit never makes it online except through Facebook

(56:45):
because they get too busy. Batsand stuff too, all those little yes,
I just I just let release theline of batch wing hairclips. So
there's like the folded bat where itlooks like a bow tie and you can
actually wear it is bow tie two. It's really awesome. It's about six
um. Then I did the batwing with a bow on it, and
then now there's like little bat hairclipslittle baby that's ridiculously cute. I know

(57:09):
I was thinking of wearing them,and I forgot to grab a pair.
So so yeah, check out allMelinda's great stuff. She's got some just
fantastic things happening, and we'll haveher. We'll have her check in with
us in a couple of months tooand see where she's going with all of
it. But you can keep upwith her too Madame Core's Imporium and Museum

(57:29):
Imortality on Facebook and also Facebook.Madame Core's Emporium is running down here and
you can watch all her TikTok videoswhich are really fun too, and give
me more ideas. Yes, pleasesend her questions so she has more to
do, because she clearly doesn't haveenough to do. Thank you so much,

(57:50):
my friend for sitting with me tonight. This was just amazing and so
much fun, even though it isa rather grim topic. But keep doing
what you're doing. You're doing sucha good show. I appreciate it.
It's a pleasure. Thank you everybody, and thank you everybody. Thanks for
watching, and don't forget to checkus out w LFEESHDB dot com for all
the really great shows on here andsacramenty M thirteen and pbdct pbdctv, I

(58:15):
can never say it, pbdctv dotcom. Thanks everybody, and we will
see you next week. Have agreat night. Thank you, Thank you
for joining us on the Creepy Bar. Join us next Tuesday at seven pm

(58:43):
East. For now, the FantasticShow