FADE to BLACK host: Jimmy Church guest: Rebecca Pittman

Tonight, best-selling author Rebecca Pittman joins brings us her two favorite, most chilling, hauntings in America: The Smurl Family and the Bell Witch!!!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:26):
This Hope Radio for the Masses.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Headline of this July eighth, nineteen forty seven, the Yadi
Air Force has an outstart applying.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
The curtains found and there's now in the possession of
the Arda. The game is really changed, the game change Changer.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
I occasionally think how quickly our difference is worldwide would
vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside
this work.

Speaker 3 (00:59):
This is a black.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
It's your host, Jimmy Church on the Game Changer Radio Network.

Speaker 3 (01:07):
All right, good evening. How you doing. It's Fade to Black. Yeah,
well you knew that, that's why you're here. But it's
also Wednesday, September third, two thousand and five. I mean,
Jimmy Church, let's do this, Mayna. Yeah. This week on
Fade to Black, another incredible week. I know I say

(01:29):
that every week because it is always incredible around here.
Monday night we had Christopher Done here talking about the
Great Pyramid, his work and what is being discovered right
now underneath GISA and underneath all of Egypt. Pretty incredible.
Last night, George Hass what's on Mars? Great conversation tonight,

(01:52):
best selling author Rebecca Pittman joins us we're gonna be
talking about her two most favorite haunted chilling things here
in America. And then tomorrow night, Jason McLean is with us.
We're gonna be talking about Bigfoot and goat men in Texas. Yeah.

(02:16):
What a week? Oh man, Yeah yeah. I wanted to
mention really quick before we get things rolling. I depend
on my teleprompter. I've a teleprompter right there. Okay, i

(02:37):
have three cameras, right, okay, I've got this camera, this camera,
I got this camera, and above this camera, I'm pointing
straight at it. That's the teleprompter. And although with my show,
this show fade to black, I don't have set questions.
I just know my guests, I know the subject. It

(02:59):
is something an interest in and we roll with it.
But I depend on the teleprompter for a few things
at the beginning of the show, like what I'm doing
right now, and when I do the news live during
the day, that is heavy teleprompter. All right, I'm doing
the news. I'm not improvising the news, right and it's

(03:21):
all on the teleprompter. So I read what is on
the teleprompter people, I do, I do. And earlier today
it had the wrong date. Yesterday's date and the day
from yesterday and the teleprompter and I'm reading the teleprompter

(03:44):
and I read the wrong date, and I know it
sounds strange, and it's a weird thing to say. Do
I know, of course I know a day it is,
you know. But I'm banging the teleprompter and I'm just
going through it, and it's got the wrong date. I'm
going to read the wrong date. And I don't make

(04:05):
those kinds of mistakes often. I don't. And it was
there today, and I just want to let you guys know.
It's live. It's not taped. You guys know that, and
what happens happens, and when that happens. Yeah, I know
what day it is. I should I'm just reading my teleprompter, Okay,

(04:25):
all right, all right, So I'm going to read the
teleprompter right now. I have six events coming up in
twenty twenty six. I have the Conscious Life Expo February
twenty through the twenty third at the lax Hilton. After that,
I have the Contact Modalities Expo May first through the third,
twenty twenty six, and Delavum, Wisconsin at Delivan Lake. After
that Contact in the Desert May twenty eight through June first.

(04:49):
Tickets are on sale this Thanksgiving Day. I come back
from that and I head south to Peru for the
Peru Inca Celebration of the Sun, and that is June
twenty third through July first of twenty twenty six with
Brian Forrester. I come back from that, change my bags,
turn around and head to the UK for the Monty

(05:11):
Python Tour of Scotland. I come back from that. That's
August first through the ninth. I come back from that,
change my bags and turn around and head back to
Peru and Eastern Island, also with Brian Forrester. And that
is November of twenty twenty six. So I have a
full schedule set up in front of all of us

(05:33):
that I normally do every year. But now you've got
it because I've just read it off of the teleprompter.
Like this tonight, Rebecca Pittman is joining us. We're going
to be talking about her two most favorite, most chillen
hauntings in America. We're going to do that, and she
is a paranormal researcher, and these hauntings. The Smirrel Family

(05:59):
case which inspired the Conjuring Four is there, and we're
also going to talk about the bell which legend and
I mentioned the other day. I don't believe in coincidences.
I love those, and I love synchronicities. I had a
friend of mine, my best friend, visiting from Florida. His

(06:23):
name is Rob, and Rob and I have known each
other since we were kids. And when I say best friends,
I don't know, that's not something you just throw around.
Rob and I being best friends all of life's first
that you do. Rob and I did them together and
very close, very tight, and everything that goes along with that. Well,

(06:45):
Rob comes over to the house. I posted pictures of it.
And Rob comes over and we have catching up to do,
and you know, it is so great to see him.
And he turns to me and he goes, hey, man,
you know, I know you do UFOs and the paranormal,
and so have you ever covered the bell Witch? I said,

(07:09):
what he goes, I just did a tour with this
investigator and we went out to the bell Witch property
and I went into the bell Witch cave and he
told me that this extraordinary experience that he had and
he heard some things videoed, some things, had a full
body apparition all and I'm sitting there thinking, man, my

(07:32):
best friend Rob on his own is out investigating the
bell Witch. Now that was over the weekend, and and
that was great. Now I go and open up and
start to set up this week's shows, and there it is,
Rebecca Pittman is here. And not only is she here

(07:54):
and we're gonna have a great show, but the two
things that she wants to talk about, one of them
the which legend, do not ever discount the universe. I
find that completely strange. I find it bizarre. I find
it lovely. I find it incredible and totally cool. And

(08:17):
tonight we're gonna do that. Rob is listening to this show.
Hello Rob, And yeah, yeah, I mean I it was
just one of those things where I just sat back
and went, you've got to be kidding me, all right,
I think it's absolutely incredible. She is the author of
twenty best selling books in the non fiction, paranormal and

(08:38):
true crime genres, as well as business books in the
creative arts and murder mystery thriller novels. Her books are
often featured on international TV, radio and podcast forms. She's
a former TV talk show host That Makes My Night
Easy and an escape group business creator Mirrorless and run model.

(09:01):
She lives in the foothills of Colorado, and I would
like to welcome for the first time to paint the
black Rebecca Pittman and Rebecca. The universe is trippy, isn't
it right?

Speaker 1 (09:13):
I love synchronicities. They're my favorite thing.

Speaker 3 (09:17):
It's just, you know, and for anybody that wants to
dismiss that stuff and live a boring life and there's
nothing going on out there, and you know what, something
like this would have happened and they wouldn't have noticed it.
Oh it's okay, Yeah, it's a coincidence. No, it is not.

(09:39):
It is not. I just it's so cool when that happens,
and you just have to sit back and enjoy the moment.
I know that I do. It's incredible, isn't it.

Speaker 1 (09:50):
Well. One of my favorite definitions is it's the universe
leaking into your reality, letting you know I'm here. And
I do love that. I pay attention to that, to
intuition to. I mean, the funny thing is is I
always get a front row parking space. I don't care
if it's Christmas and people are circling the block. Every

(10:13):
freaking time, I will get right in front of the door,
and my sons will tease me about it, and I said,
maybe the universe thinks the only thing I'm good for
is a good parking spot. I don't know, but I
will take it.

Speaker 3 (10:25):
I you and I are on the same page there.
I don't know why that is for me, because I
have the same thing where I'm blessed with this. I
can pull into a parking lot that is full, and
I'll go to the first row and pull up, and
there's a spot, and I pull in. Everybody that's parked

(10:48):
on the other side of the hill, right right, all
those cars. Okay, all right, I get it, but I've
never been one of those people that park No. I
pull straight to the front, and I expect it. So
I tell my friends and people that's it. Yeah, people
that know me know this about me, but I will

(11:09):
warn them, and then it happens. I don't understand it.
It's a weird thing, and I for me, it's just
second nature. Now I'm kind of give you, well, I
think it's my diva side. I think it's my diva

(11:31):
side allowing me to enjoy being a diva and pulling
up into the first spot.

Speaker 1 (11:39):
I won't dispute that part, Jimmy. But I also believe
that you said the magic word, you expect it to happen.
And when we do that, we've let go of all
the resistance that blocks the good stuff coming in from
the universe. And I do believe it's because you expect
it to happen. There's no resistance there and boom, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (12:02):
Yeah, I love this. Jan I don't post stuff from
the chat room too often, but it's just popped up.
I do the parking space thing too all the time.
It works. I yeah, you know, I did it today.
I did it today. I had to go I had

(12:24):
to go to Low's and I was putting some parts
on one of my Harley's and I needed a tool.
At that moment, I jump in the car, I dash
up and I'm like, man, I got stuff to do.
I don't have time to go to Low's, but I do.
I'm pull into the first spot parts. Everything just walked

(12:45):
in and it was I just love it. I love
it all. Right, before we get started, Rebecca, you get
the first time guest disclaimer. Okay, so let's get that
out of the way so we can get the show started,
which is this Beck. It's just you and I sitting
on my couch having a conversation as friends. Where the
conversation starts, it starts where it ends it ends, But

(13:07):
we're gonna end as friends. But you have to accept
so we can move on.

Speaker 1 (13:13):
Accept.

Speaker 3 (13:13):
Okay, that was easy. That was easy. Let's let's let's
start here. I am a huge true crime true horror fan. Okay,
there's and there's a difference between something that's fiction and

(13:37):
nonfiction when it comes to this. I thought that it
was a small little thing. It was a small genre
and that you would have to go today. That is
where it's at, isn't it. There are more true crime
and true horror podcast, TV series things that are The

(14:00):
world loves this stuff, don't they.

Speaker 1 (14:03):
And it used to be paranormal and true crime has
surpassed it. They're pretty darn clothes. But yeah, true crime
is a runaway train.

Speaker 3 (14:12):
Right now, I watch I watched today. I'm gonna throw
this out at you. I'm gonna see if you caught
this yet. Have you seen There's a new documentary movie
just came out called Unknown Number. Have you seen it?

Speaker 1 (14:28):
Ooh no? But I love the.

Speaker 3 (14:31):
Title it is. I'm not going to give anything away
here's the setup though. A girl and her boyfriend who
are in high school get harassed and stalked by text

(14:55):
from an unknown number for twenty months, okay, twenty mins.
And I mean stuff in this text I mean especially
I'm a father, I mean these texts, this stuff. I
couldn't have handled it as a kid. I couldn't have

(15:17):
handled it as an adult. And at some point some
days it was fifty texts a day. All right, Wow,
I'm gonna leave it right there. Who it turned out
to be and why? Holy crap. So I saw social

(15:38):
media and I see it pop up. Has anybody checked
out unknown number? Oh? My god? Oh you know? And
then I saw it again. Then I saw it again
and I finally took the time to watch it. Amazing,
So go and watch it. Let's see has anybody in
the chat room seen I'm just checking right now, anybody

(16:03):
seeing unknown number? Has anybody seen that yet? I mean,
there's a I think this is part of it, and
we're gonna get to it right now with you. I
think this is part of it when it comes to
true crime and true horror, where they have a method
of doing this and they have a setup and nobody's

(16:26):
seen it yet. Okay, all right, it's Netflix. We'll just
let everybody know it's Netflix. Go and just do it tonight.
Thank me later, we'll talk about it tomorrow. But they
have a way of doing that, that cliffhanger right in
the big reveal. And what's great about it is we
get to do our own detective work right and set

(16:49):
it up and then it's never who you think it is.
It's man, it's good. It's it's really really good. And
we're gonna be talking. We're gonna start off with the
Smirle family. And again, it's a true story, and I
think that's the part of it that all of us.

(17:10):
I'm going to hand it over to you. What attracted
you to the smirl family.

Speaker 1 (17:19):
It's interesting because I had just written about the seventeen
seventy one infield House in Connecticut that came out in December,
and it's a duplex, and all of a sudden, I'm
hearing about this smirl family haunting in West Pittston, Pennsylvania,
and it's a duplex. So it caught my attention that

(17:42):
here's two incredibly haunted places and they are both duplexes.
So I got into it and the more I read
about it and researched it. And plus the main thing, Jimmy,
was just the documentation. The amount of newspaper reports that
were coming out in live time. This wasn't later, this

(18:03):
was as the events were happening. Gave it a lot
of credibility. You've got police reports, you've got priests, you've
got Jason Miller, who played the priest and the Exorcist
actually went and tried to help them, the actor that
played the lead in the Exorcist.

Speaker 2 (18:22):
And.

Speaker 1 (18:24):
So yeah, immediately I like things that are well documented.
I don't want hearsay. I don't want it to look
like somebody made this up or enhanced it. So I
do a lot, a lot of research on every book
I write. And that was what got me started on
It was Okay, this isn't made up, and this is

(18:44):
scary as heck.

Speaker 3 (18:47):
As we get into how the haunting started in the
backstory here and start to do the setup on this,
what's your overall take. Now that you've done not only
all the writing that you've done, but the research that
goes into it, you start to formulate your own ideas
and theories about what may be happening. When we're dealing

(19:12):
with hauntings in the paranormal and spirits and religious stuff.
What ultimately do you think is going on. Is it
something that you can explain in a science sense, or
does it remain deep into the world of the paranormal

(19:33):
and unexplained.

Speaker 1 (19:35):
I think every case is different, although a lot of
them have similarities. I know people today are very familiar
with the fact that a teenager going through puberty will
often set off a poltergeist experience. So that's pretty common,
and that does happen in the Smirrel family. But my
first book was about the Stanley Hotel in Ess Park, Colorado,

(19:57):
and it is sitting on a tunnel. It's literally sitting
on a rock tunnel hewn into the mountain, filled with
all these different minerals and crystals, which I'm sure you're
familiar with too, the stone tape theory. These are the
electromennative field of the earth. There you go. But these

(20:18):
are causing vortexes. They're causing residual hauntings to be played back.
And then there's also negativity. A lot of these hauntings
that happen in families are because these families are fighting constantly.
There's a lot of negativity, and yes, a Ouiji board

(20:38):
things like that can bring something in. So I think
the cases are different, and yet a lot of them
have similarities. If they're on a lay line, like the
Pyramids of Giza and stone hinge, all of that with
the Earth's energy, and especially if it's exacerbated by sitting
on water and you know, all of this, I mean,

(21:00):
all of these things can create conditions. And so it's
never any one thing, I don't think, And yet there
are similarities.

Speaker 3 (21:09):
Yeah, And we discussed this so much with you know,
I have the best and brightest guests, and it puts
me in a position to investigate, research, going down that
rabbit hole. You know, I hate to use that metaphor,
but it's truly what you do. And then I buy

(21:30):
this house that I'm in now, this house that you're
this right, this house and it's a newer house subdivision.
Everything's fine. This place is completely haunted and I've got
a little bit of everything going on here. But I

(21:51):
go and I investigate. I'm seeing stuff, stuff's happening, stuff's moving,
I'm seeing the I'm seeing it's nuts. It's nuts. But
there's nothing I can find. I'm not on an Indian
burial mound. I don't have any lay lines that I
know of. I don't think that there's anything geological happening

(22:15):
underneath me. I lived in the Mahabi Desert. This isn't
the formal site of a mental institution. There wasn't a
you know, ancient battle ground, nothing, as far as I
can tell them. So I even talked to my neighbors.
I didn't want to freak my neighbors out, like they
know what I do. But I didn't want to freak
them out too much. But hey, man, so what were

(22:38):
the families like before me? Oh, they're normal, just normal anything, okay,
all right? Anything else? No, No, they were great, they
were awesome. I was hoping somebody is gonna say, yeah, man,
the dad killed everybody, right, so I could go, oh, okay,
all right, at least so I can get some answers.
But I don't have anything here. I don't have any answers.

Speaker 1 (23:00):
Did you do any remodeling?

Speaker 3 (23:02):
Uh? No, well yeah, well kind of what are you suggesting?
This is interesting?

Speaker 1 (23:11):
That's one of them. Very often a haunting will start
after somebody remodels the house. It awakens something that.

Speaker 3 (23:18):
Was No I have well, no, I haven't. No, I
haven't done anything extensive.

Speaker 1 (23:26):
I mean that new toilet, Jimmy.

Speaker 3 (23:28):
Yeah, I know, Well, okay, I did do I did
do a few of those, but well, I guess that counts.
I mean, I built a studio and I put all
of the sound walls in and stuff. But I didn't
change the room itself. But I did build the studio
the rest of that. I'm glad that you said that.

(23:50):
I would have never thought of that, but I didn't. No,
I haven't. No, No, I didn't put its.

Speaker 1 (23:57):
Haunted artifacts that people accidentally bring in from a flea market.
I mean, we don't know what's attached to some of
the stuff we bring home.

Speaker 3 (24:06):
Well, it started when I moved in, though, Okay, so
when the house, when the house was empty, before the
moving vans were here, all right, it started then, I mean, crazy,
I don't I have artifacts here and I've moved stuff.
But that's that's came in way after the haunting revealed it.

(24:28):
So yeah, yeah, and it's kind of slowed down too
as well. I know that we're here talking about the
Smirrel family and the Bell Witch, but I need answers, Rebecca,
I need answers and I don't uh, every time I
start talking about this subject. The one thing that I

(24:48):
can say it's it hasn't stopped, but it slowed down
compared to what it was.

Speaker 1 (24:57):
Well, that's hopeful. It might you're open to it. I mean,
look at your show and the subjects that you talk about.
It might think it's found a kindred spirit and somebody
that'll understand it. A lot of these hauntings or people
who don't know they've died, which broke my heart. When
I interviewed Lloyd Arbach, he said a lot of them

(25:19):
don't even realize they're dead, and they're wondering why you're
in their home, and that really made me sad. But
there's just such a wide field with this. But yeah,
the smir Old thing, And for people who don't know,
the Conjuring four Last Rites is coming out day after
tomorrow on September fifth, and it is a highly anticipated

(25:43):
movie because it's supposed to be the last one in
the series and it is about the Smirl family. So
I lucked out because I did not know that when
I started writing the book, and so that turned out nice.

Speaker 3 (26:00):
There are no coincidences, young ladies, there's no coincidences. What's
the foundation of the story, who were the Smirls, what's
the time period?

Speaker 1 (26:13):
Okay, so look, can I describe the house? The one
thing about the house?

Speaker 3 (26:19):
First, Rebecca, it's your show. I'm just some dude with
a microphone. You do what you mean?

Speaker 1 (26:24):
Okay. Well, for one thing, West Pittston, Pennsylvania was built
on the mining industry, and it was built on the
cave system, and there were a lot of cave ins
that happened in that area. And in nineteen eighty or
eighteen ninety six a cave in killed fifty eight men. Well,

(26:46):
guess what year the house was built that this Merle
family moved into on Chase Street. It was built in
eighteen ninety six, not far from where these caves had
caved in. They found pig bones in some of these
cave ins. But the thing that's interesting is the Smirl
house is on a residential street, but it's the oldest

(27:09):
one there. It used to sit in an empty field
with nothing around it, and then in the fifties they
started building newer homes and so their here's this little
duplex sitting at the end of the street, and it
is massively older than all of the other houses on
the street, so do with that what you will. But

(27:31):
it was built above a cave system, and it was
really old, and it was also not far from a cemetery.
But in nineteen sixty eight, Janet met Jack Smirle at
a church dance. They were both very religious. They both
wanted to raise their children in the Roman Catholic faith,
and when they got married, they moved in with Jack's parents,

(27:55):
Mary and John, and luckily Janet adored or mother in law.
They all got along. And this was in Wilkes Bar, Pennsylvania. Well,
Hurricane Agnes hit it in nineteen seventy two and just
wiped out the town, including their home. So they moved
over to the house on Chase Street in West Pittston

(28:17):
because it was a duplex and the older Smirls, Jack's
parents took one half of the duplex and Janet and
Jack took the other half. At that time they had
two small girls, and while they were living there, they
gave birth to a set of twin girls, so all
in all, there were four daughters in the end, and

(28:38):
that's who they are.

Speaker 3 (28:39):
The first time that I covered and talked about this haunting,
I wanted to do a deeper dive into it. It's
one of one of the most intriguing cases. But I'm
going to start here. You mentioned the duplex. I remember
the first time that I saw that house, I went, oh,

(29:01):
that's haunted, right, I mean, you know, and the back
of the house looks haunted. Most of the historical photos
some are in color, but most of them are in
black and white. And when the original research and the
investigation went in down, all of that stuff's in black
and white. It just looks haunted. Yeah, yeah, yeah, perfect

(29:26):
setup for all of this. They move in. All of
this takes place in the I'm going to I shouldn't
say all of it because I think it was haunted
way before they moved in. But they moved in the
early seventies, didn't.

Speaker 1 (29:41):
They nineteen seventy three, right October first? So the Jack's
parents bought it for only eighteen thousand back then, and
they sold the other half to Janet and Jack and
the girls for only four thousand, So it was a deal.
But it was a fixer upper. It was horrible. It

(30:02):
had been owned by an old woman on the live
for a while on one half. The other half had
been unoccupied. I mean, it was pretty much disgusting. So
that's where your remodel comes in. That's the first thing
they did was start trying to fix it up.

Speaker 3 (30:19):
And what happens. What happens first. Obviously we have so
many investigators and the media grabbed hold of this case,
and Ed and Lorraine Warren and all of that. We'll
get to all of that, but before the craziness kicks off.

(30:41):
And you're right about this too as well. I don't
want this to get past me. I'm sorry about that.
It's a documented case. We have books, we have investigations,
we have a couple of movies. We've got the new
movie that is coming out tomorrow, the Conjuring Four. This
case isn't something that has escaped everybody. This has been

(31:05):
out in front research and investigated by just about everybody
that had skin in the game. Right.

Speaker 1 (31:13):
Well, that's again it's because I mean these newspaper reports.
This became a nationwide story, it did, and there's all
of these newspaper articles. It got so bad when the
story got out, with the amount of people standing in
front of that house wanting to see something, that the
police had to barricade the street. People were showing up

(31:35):
in campers and just watching the house camped out on
their lawn, which is chanting. And then it got bad,
and we can talk about that when we get there.
But yeah, I mean this was not This was by
no means kept under the carpet. And because so many

(31:55):
of the neighbors and people who went into the house
witnessed things themselves. It's just an incredibly well documented story.
And that's again that's what drew me to it.

Speaker 3 (32:07):
What's the difference or is there a difference, I should say,
between the religious aspect of certain cases where demons are
brought in and this is a religious thing, and there's
that approach versus the ghost of your grandmother visiting the

(32:30):
house and tipping stuff over or are they the same thing?
What's the difference? Because once you throw the religious thing
on this, that's more scarier than the ghost of your
grandmother showing up at the foot of your bed. If
it's demons, you know, pouring out of the gates of hades,
I don't know, but that's really terrifying to us.

Speaker 1 (32:55):
And that's a very good question because when they were
seeking help, is this really got bad? I mean, they
were sexually attacked by a demon. There was a lot
going on, and they were trying to get the church involved,
and the church is very reluctant to do an exorcism,
let alone send out a priest. And there was a

(33:16):
very telling comment that they were told by one of
the priests, and he said, if it's a ghost or
a poltergeist, you don't need an exorcism. So the fact
that they were needing an exorcism meant it was a demon.
There were actually four spirits in the house, but the
strongest one was a demon, and he was using the

(33:39):
other three ghosts to kind of do what he wanted
them to do, which again is exactly like the seventeen
seventy one infield House book. It was amazing to me
it had a demon that was using the other ghosts
there like a puppet master and making them do things.
So I found that really interesting.

Speaker 3 (34:00):
Girls, the family itself, and the girls because so much
was well. I don't want to get ahead of the story,
but could they have attracted this bad side or was
the bad side already there? Now?

Speaker 1 (34:20):
The bad stuff was already there, but the sexual assault
started happening after the daughters were hitting Puberty Down, who
was sixteen, was actually in the shower and something was
rubbing up against her suggestively, and she ran screaming out
of there. When Janet the mother, was taking a bath

(34:41):
and this one, I don't know why, because of all
of the awful stuff that happened to them. Maybe it's
because I'm a girl. You're never more vulnerable than when
you're naked. And she's in the bathtub and these wolf
whistles started coming out of thin air, like a construction
guy whistling it woman. And I don't know why that

(35:03):
bothered me as much as anything else that happened to them,
because she's so vulnerable and she's in this very small
little bathroom and these they just had this lustful connotation
to them, and these whistles are coming at her and
she starts screaming for her husband. And then when her

(35:24):
teenage daughter would undress in her room, it would be
the same thing. These wolf whistles would come out of nowhere.
I mean, that's really freaky stuff.

Speaker 3 (35:34):
You know how I take a shower. Oh no, now,
I live alone, Okay, I take a shower like Ted
NuGen loaded weapons. I'm just telling you, I just I
you're right about it. When you are at your most
what what what do you what? Can you can't? You

(35:57):
can't defend yourself buck naked? You can't. You can't. It's
the most terrifying thing that could possibly happen. You know,
I might be able to defend myself a vive underwear on, all, right,
But if you're naked, No, no, you're the most vulnerable.
It's one of the most chilling things. And all of

(36:19):
us think that, all of us recognize that. And it's
only elevated if you're a female. It's taken to another level.
Did it start with the girls though they were hearing
noises and stuff in the house and things started to
kick off. Was it always focused on the females of

(36:40):
the family.

Speaker 4 (36:42):
No.

Speaker 1 (36:42):
Oddly enough, the first occurrence happened to the older Smirls
on their half of the duplex, and it was almost
right after they moved in because they wanted to fix
it up. So they got this red carpet because that
was the thing in the seventies where the avocados and
oranges and reds, and the guy install the carpet brand new.

(37:03):
The next morning they came downstairs and there was this
huge black stain in the middle of the carpet, and
they're going, what And so they get down on their
hands and they're in their sixties, which is no big deal,
but they get down on their hands and knees and
they scrub out the stain and they went, all right,
it was a freak thing. The next morning is back

(37:25):
again in the same place. And that's how it started.
They scrub it again, they call the carpet place, complain
about it. They're going, man, there's nothing wrong with our carpet.
They finally had to throw the whole thing out and
get a different carpet and it didn't come back again.
But at the same time, on the other half of

(37:45):
the duplex, Janet and Jack are fixing up theirs. They're
painting walls, and these stains kept coming through the fresh paint.
No matter how many times they painted it, these stains
would come back until they finally paneled the whole first floor.
I mean, they couldn't, they couldn't get rid of them.

(38:06):
And then these small things started happening. Now at this
time they hadn't had the twins yet, but the girl
the other girls, like Don was about five six years old,
the other one was around four, and they got blamed
for everything that started disappearing. A tool would vanish, you know,

(38:28):
somebody set something down and it would disappear, and the
girls would get you know what, guys, enough, it's not funny.
We're trying to get stuff done here. Well, the paranormal
world calls that grooming a lot of times. That's how
haunting start is with little things, so that you're starting
to doubt your own mind. I thought I put it there,

(38:50):
I thought it okay. And it's starting to undermine the
feeling in the home, the security, and it will try
to isolate the members and start to get them fighting
with each other. And this was a really loving, really
religious family and so they didn't fight often, and so anyway,

(39:12):
it started with that. And then finally the Jack and
Janet remodeled the bathroom because they had girls and it
only had a little shower. They had to bump out
a wall into the bedroom next door to fit a
bathtub in. And this was a huge expense for them.

(39:32):
I mean, they had just lost their home to the flood.
They're putting in all new stuff, all new piping, making
sure the electricity wasn't the old knob and tubing and
all of that, and so they bought new tub, redid everything.
They were so proud of themselves. And the next morning
they walked in there and it looked like something had

(39:55):
taken a sledgehammer to the sink, big chunks of broken off.
It looked like something with talents had raked down the
wall and just marred the bathtub till it was it
was worthless. They had to start all over again. So
it started pretty quickly. And yet what amazes me is

(40:18):
even then, I'm thinking, how do you explain that away?
And yet they seem to keep thinking, all right, that
was a one off. It won't happen again. I don't
know what happened, but let's keep going. And they had
put all their money into this duplex and they didn't
really have anywhere else to go, which happens a lot too.

Speaker 3 (40:38):
It would happen. It's the same thing today. You know,
the expenses are expenses, and you go and you do this.
In most cases, it's your life savings. You know, it's
everything that you've got, and you just what you just
go buy another. No, no, it's not the real world.
You're stuck. You've bought it. This is your investment, and

(40:59):
you've got to write it out. That's frightening to me.
I just three days ago. You're right. It's the little things, right,
and they're always there. They're always there. And this happened
three days ago here at the house. It's the little things.
I walked in to my master bathroom in my bedroom upstairs,

(41:25):
and on the floors in there, it's a tiled floor.
But in front I have dual sinks, and in front
of the dual sinks, I have a long runner carpet
right in front. Right, you get that, you know what
I'm talking about. So I've got that. I love decorating.
I ride a Harley, but I'm an interior decorator as well.

Speaker 1 (41:47):
I love that.

Speaker 3 (41:48):
Yeah. So anyway, so I've got the runner, but in
front of the runner, I have a a chacuzzi tub,
and then I have a shower, and outside of the
shower on the floor straight is a gray short runner.
They match anyway, but it's it's it's not. I walked

(42:10):
in and the runner in front of the shower is
out in the middle of the floor, crooked, and I
just stopped and I looked, you know, I just pulled
it back, straighten it back out, stood up and go okay,
all right, whatever, and I say it out loud to

(42:32):
the ghosts. I'm talking to the ghosts. But it's like
the little things, right, It's just it's constantly it.

Speaker 1 (42:39):
Messes with your mind, you think, is it me? It's
kind of insidious. It's like it's having fun with you.

Speaker 3 (42:49):
But I don't. I don't get scared anymore, you know,
I just yeah, I just turned to uh, I just
turned the other side and just live with it. But
and so, but their dog gets thrown right, and picked
up and thrown. The daughter's thrown down the stairs, and

(43:14):
and and and that's where that's taking it another step.
It's one thing to have a busted up sync, right,
but when your dog, you know, the pet and the
family pet is being thrown around, and your children are
being thrown down the stairs. Now, it's it's taking things
to another level, isn't it.

Speaker 1 (43:35):
Yeah, not quite yet, but it's getting there. The next
thing that happened is Jack was watching TV. He loved westerns.
He had his favorite title was John Wayne. He had
a frame picture of him on the wall in the
living room. He's a it's a new television set and
it burst into flames. And I mean it's just melting

(43:56):
the entire inside. And I can't even imagine the smell
of a burning television set, and he's trying to he
gets the flames put out of that. The next day,
they had a brand new electric stove that Janet was
so excited about because the one that was with the
house was just one step above a campfire. But she's

(44:20):
sitting there having a cup of coffee after the girls
went to school, and all of a sudden, sparks and
smokes start coming out of the electric stove. Then the
toaster catches fire. Then Jack's new car that he bought
when he got promoted at work, which he was so
excited about. He hadn't had a new car. He's driving

(44:41):
and flames start coming out from under the hood of
the car. So it was like this was a whole
thing around fire all of a sudden, And again they're
trying to explain this stuff away. And then the next
thing that's just to me Again. As a woman, Janet
was home a lot alone because the kids would go

(45:02):
to school, she would stay at home mother and Jack
would be at work. And this is a really old,
tiny duplex. Well there's a basement where the laundry was
and she went down there with a basket of laundry
into this dank, you know, old probably almost stone walls
because this thing was built in the late eighteen hundreds.

(45:23):
And she's putting the clothes into the laundry. She hears
Janet and she's down there by herself, and at first
she's thinking, Okay, I didn't hear that, because she's, you know,
turning this swishing wall, she's turning everything on. And then
she hears it again and it's right behind her and
it's Janet, and she thinks it sounds like her sister

(45:46):
who was going to come visiting later. And she thinks, well,
she got here early and shows I'm in the basement.
And then it set it again, only suddenly it's in
front of her, and she starts backing up towards the
stairs and starts she backed up the stairs so she
wouldn't take her eyes off of the room, and all

(46:09):
of a sudden it was in front of her again,
blocking her from the Doorboe, Janet, I mean, I'm just
going So she like bolts out of there into the
living room, and they both were kind of chainsmokers, she
and her husband and she's sitting there just puffing and
trying to figure out what's going on. And so this

(46:29):
was the next trick that this entity was doing. It
was using other people's voices. She'd hear a door slam
and one of her daughters go mom, and it was
her daughter's voice, and she said, I'm in the kitchen, mom.
I mean, can you imagine being a whole?

Speaker 3 (46:50):
No, I'm scared to death, man. We need to get
to the break as soon as we can, so I'll
go turn on some lights.

Speaker 1 (46:59):
And then it would use her husband's voice and go, honey.
It could imitate any voice, but if you want to
be really scared here and I know we're going to
break soon, so I'm going to leave you with a
fun one. These are so far they haven't seen a
form yet, they haven't seen a body, an apparition. It's

(47:19):
all things that are happening and disembodied voices. Well, her
mother was not doing well. She'd had a heart attack,
and again she's on the other side of the duplex
and she's sitting there watching TV. One night, she was
well enough that her husband thought, you know, can I

(47:41):
go now? Can I go play a card gamer? Because
he'd been just taking care of her. Shes I'm fine,
go and it's all dark except for the TV light,
and she sees something out of the corner of her
eye and she looks over there and she can't tell
what it is, and suddenly a headless puppy ran across

(48:01):
the room, went beneath her feet and under the couch.
I'll tell you what. When I wed that part, I
just that might have been one of the first nights
I left my lights on, But that's when suddenly it
started taking form. It would show up as a blackack,
tall male outline. It had didn't have features, but it

(48:25):
appeared to Janet while she was ironing in the kitchen,
and it's foul older, and the temperature would drop like
thirty degrees and she just froze because now you're starting
to see this thing. It floated past her, went into
the living room and went through the wall that adjoined
the duplex next door where her in laws lived. She

(48:46):
goes running over there and her poor mother in law's
home alone with her rosary beads, praying like crazy, and
she said, this thing just came through the wall. So
now you're starting to have this thing appear and at
the same time, all this other stuff still happening, banging
on the walls, foul oders, something in the closet that

(49:08):
sounds like a large bird slapping trying to get out.
It was just non stop.

Speaker 3 (49:17):
No, no, no, I can't, I can't. I cannot.

Speaker 1 (49:23):
Happy Halloween early everybody.

Speaker 3 (49:25):
I mean, you know, uh, And let me ask you this.
Do we sometimes it's real. I'm not saying it's not right.
I'm saying we manifest this stuff into reality and it
becomes part of our reality. And when you look at

(49:48):
a family like the Smirls and and others that have
deep religious beliefs they have, you know, and and suddenly
because of that, you're asking for this and you're opening
up the door. They're not bad people, right, But there's

(50:10):
something else that manifests this. And could I be inviting
this stuff in by talking about it? And like tonight,
am I going to see a headless puppy? Because you
and I are discussing it on the show. I bring
up the gates of Hades and maybe tonight I'm going
to find out who's guarding those gates. I don't know,
but is that a possibility?

Speaker 1 (50:31):
I've like I've written twenty books, ten of them are
about nonfiction. These are all the most haunted places in America.
And I've had people say, as anything followed you home,
because I always go spend the night in these places,
and a lot of times I'm all by myself. And
by all by myself, I mean nobody else is in
the house, and I've never I'll hope one JINX if

(50:58):
you may get a phone.

Speaker 3 (50:58):
Call from I'm looking in the background for anything moving.
So I've got your back. I've got your back.

Speaker 1 (51:05):
I just bought a new Ruger. But anyway, yeah, no,
I don't. I mean Ouiji boards and things like that
where you open the door and invited in. Yes, but
I haven't had anything knock on wood. And I consider
myself a very religious person. I believe in Heavenly Father,

(51:30):
and I try to be a good person. But when
I stayed at Limp Mansion all alone up in the
attic bedroom, something kicked the bed and sat on my feet.
And so I've been around some pretty spooky stuff and
I haven't. I haven't had anything happen. And I have
grandchildren now, so they're going our grandma is a ghost hunter.

(51:51):
I went I am not a ghost hunter. I'm an
investigative journalist, thank you very much. So I I.

Speaker 3 (52:01):
Okay, all right, I'm gonna share something with you I've
never shared. All right. It's it's the little things, right
every night, every night, okay, not every other night. Every night,
when I shut down everything, crawl into bed. If I'm

(52:25):
watching a movie, it's after I turned the movie, you know,
and I've I've turned out the lights, and I and
and and everything is quiet. I laid my head on
the pillow and I shut my eyes. Okay, it's dream time.
There is a noise every every time, every time, every time,

(52:47):
every time. And I used to I used to. This
is a few years ago. If it came from behind me,
I would freak out. So I would have to sleep
on my back. I couldn't stay in the same position
if I was on my side if it came from
behind me. Now I don't know what right, so I

(53:07):
would have to get on my back. I couldn't write
and so But now I don't give a ship right,
no matter where it comes from. I don't open my eyes.
I don't react. Yeah, I'm scared, but I don't. But
I don't show what it could be normally. Now I

(53:31):
haven't had the hey Jimmy, good night voice of my
dead father. No, I haven't had that. But it's always
it's always it's it's always a right, it's it's something,
it's something and it and it's only once and and
that's it. I mean, it's it's to the point. It's

(53:56):
to the point, Rebecca, like I give it like ten second,
like I know it's gonna happen, and and and there
it is every night, every night.

Speaker 1 (54:07):
So it's right, it's right after you get in bed
and close your eyes like that fast.

Speaker 3 (54:11):
Yeah, pretty pretty much, Yeah, yeah, pretty much. Wow. Now
I liked your ruger comment. So on my king sized bed, okay,
on that half of the bed on the blankets is something.
I leave it right there. Yeah, I leave it right there.

(54:32):
I don't want to say it live on the air,
but well I have that by by each of my
doors in the house. Yeah, for sure. But yeah, but
there's yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (54:47):
Well I heard gunshots in the hallway at went mansion
really in a dog in a dog bark. And then
I was researching this story about the lamps L. E. M. P.
And they were the they introduced Logger beer to America.
They were super wealthy in the Gilded Age, and when
I what happened was four of them over this generation

(55:10):
shot themselves in the house. And when I heard gunshots
in the hallway right outside my bedroom door that these
were not muffled, I jumped and it was bang bang rule.
And I found out later that the last limp that
shot himself, Charles, shot his dog first because he didn't
want to leave it behind, and then shot himself. But

(55:35):
I couldn't reconcile the pattern if he shot the dog first,
don't you think you'd hear the gunshots or the dog
first and then the gunshots. But the dog bark came
at the end unless he missed him.

Speaker 3 (55:48):
The dog's last gasp.

Speaker 1 (55:51):
Yeah, but that one's chilling. That's a residual haunting that
the house was playing back.

Speaker 3 (55:56):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I loved that. I love
that that. Before we get to the break, let's talk
about the sexual assault, because assaults, because suggesting that leaves
it open to interpretation to the audience. What happened.

Speaker 1 (56:18):
Jack was attacked by what they call a succubus. This
is a female demon that will sexually ride a man
to try to get him to climax that supposedly that
gives her his life force. And when it pinned him
to the floor, it looked like an old hag, and

(56:40):
then it changed into this firm young woman, but it
still was covered with scales and green stuff coming out
of its mouth and everything else. It attacked him twice,
and then Janet was attacked by an incubus, which is different.
It's a male demon, and she was sexually assaulted. It
would caressed her legs at night, it levitated her and

(57:02):
threw her around the room. And so yeah, by this
time the church was taking notice and finally sent someone
in to do an exorcism, because that's getting pretty serious.
It was dropping light feeling fixtures on their kids, throwing
one of the girls down the stairs. It was getting bad.

Speaker 3 (57:26):
How did Ed and Lorraine come into the picture.

Speaker 1 (57:30):
They one of their neighbors, knowing what they were going
through and that they couldn't get the church to do
an exorcism, said hey, there's this famous couple that's lecturing
at the local college and they do these kind of cases.
So they went to them and said, please come look
at our house. We need help. It's hurting our children.

(57:51):
And they came in and Lorraine immediately picked up on it.
She could tell them without them telling her, this is
where this happened. This is what's happened. That closet in
your master bedrooms were the entities coming and going, and
they filmed it, and I got permission from Tony Spira,
who's the head of Ed Lorraine's foundation now that they're gone.

(58:13):
He gave me permission to put the photos in the book,
which I really appreciate. But that's how they got involved.
They brought out teams, they came back several times, but
even after three exorcisms, it kept coming back until they
finally had to move in nineteen eighty eight, so they
endured it for fifteen years.

Speaker 3 (58:34):
Yeah, they didn't get involved until the eighties. Did you
say master closet.

Speaker 1 (58:40):
The master bedroom closet, which is like inches from the bed.

Speaker 3 (58:45):
That's where mind started. Really Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (58:50):
I wonder what that is. Maybe you have haunted Levi's.

Speaker 3 (58:57):
I'll send you pictures of my closet. You might be.
You might be onto something there. The yeah, that reveal
it started the first day that I moved in the
second day, first days, first day was with my daughter.
So no, it wasn't it was the second day, second day.

(59:18):
First night, I was safe, I was in the safe zone.
But the second day the trucks got here and or
the first truck, and I had boxes to unload. And
I was unloading those boxes in the master in the

(59:38):
walking closet upstairs, and you're right, it's right next to
the bed. Well it's you know, twenty feet away, but
you know, next to the bed. But yeah, yeah, yeah,
I don't want to get into the details of it.
We're talking about the smirls. We're going to take a break.
But I went downstairs to take a break, get some coffee,

(01:00:03):
and I went back upstairs with some more boxes about
an hour later, and I walked into the walk in
closet and the stuff that I put away was in
a pile in the middle of the floor. Yeah. Yeah,
And I thought I thought that. I and Matt I thought, oh,

(01:00:25):
I thought I put all of that away. I did it, okay,
all right, exactly, so I put it away. I put
the exit. You know, i'm unloading boxes. I do that.
I stepped back, looked at the closet and went, Okay,
we're looking pretty good. It's nice and neat. This looks good.
Went downstairs doing whatever, getting another box, maybe another cup

(01:00:46):
of coffee. Went back up there an hour later, wash, rinse, repeat.
It was in the middle of the floor and then
I screamed, I did, I did. I screamed. I fell
out of the door, fell into the bathroom, and I okay,
all right, what's going on?

Speaker 1 (01:01:04):
Wow?

Speaker 3 (01:01:05):
We Yeah, I said it out loud. I said it
out loud. What's going on? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, it's pretty wild.
But the master closet very interesting. All right, I'm your host,
Jimmy Church. Our guest tonight, Rebecca Pittman is here. We're
talking tonight about her two favorite most haunted places stories

(01:01:27):
cases in America. We're going to take a quick break. Rebecca,
you stay right there. I'm your host, Jimmy Church. We'll
be right back after the short break. Stay with us.

(01:02:07):
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here at Machu Pichu with Brian Forrester and Hidden Ink

(01:03:57):
of Tours. Amazing tour so far, Brian, but we're here
to announce what we're gonna do next year in twenty
twenty six. What's going on?

Speaker 4 (01:04:05):
Okay, November twenty twenty six, We're going to have our
major tour of Peru and Bolivia, either a pre or
post tour of Perakas and Nasca on the coast, and
then after that six days.

Speaker 3 (01:04:18):
In Easter Island bucket List Easter Island. Come join Brian
and Iroan his amazing team here at Hidneika Tours four Peru,
Bolivia and Easter Island. Signing out, say goodbye Brian, Bye
Gang Yeah. Rivermon Coffee, makers of the Fade to Black Blend,

(01:04:44):
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and it's doc again Rivermoonwildness dot Com. M all right,

(01:05:30):
welcome back Fad to Black. I am your host, Jimmy Church. Tonight,
Rebeccah Pittman is here. Best selling author and we have
a link below in the description. It's it's right there
where you can head over to Rebecca's website. All of
our books are there and everything else and great stuff.
So go and do that and and get get the

(01:05:53):
book that is dealing with these cases like the Smirl Family,
which is absolutely incredible. I want to mention this before
I bring in Rebecca. The watching that commercial that I
cut with Brian Forrester at Machu Pichu. The crowd that

(01:06:16):
you hear at the end of that's not dubbed. It
sounds fake, It's not fake. Where we cut it. We
were in the town square at Machu Pichu and all
of the tourists are there, and our tour group too
as well. But and there are hundreds of people and
they and Brian and I are cutting this commercial and

(01:06:37):
everybody respected that and stopped, and there was this huge
crowd around us watching us cut this commercial. You know,
it took sixty seconds or whatever, but that's them yelling
and screaming at it. It was really cool. And I
left that and I'm just it just warms my heart

(01:06:59):
to see that and that moment that's not dubbed. That
was actually real, and I just watched it right now,
so I wanted to share that with you. All right, Rebecca,
Ed and Lorraine Warren come into play before we move
on to the belt, which I want to do the
wind down here. Ed and Lorraine Warren I've seen as

(01:07:21):
you have too as well. And the audience. You can
go out there and check this out. Ed does Edi Lorraine,
I don't want to go. Well, it's kind of like
a press conference. They do it from the like the
front porch, right, and he's talking to the press, and
it's great historical footage, isn't it. And he gets out
there and he goes, man, I was there. Stuff is moving,

(01:07:46):
refrigerator shaking. I think that's what he says, right, stuff
is moving in We're playing music in the house, we're
playing religious music, and we're trying to exercise this thing.
But this family is going through. It was at the
end of everything was ed and Lorraine able to chill

(01:08:07):
things out. How did this case come to a close.

Speaker 1 (01:08:11):
Well, that's the I can't even tell you all the
stuff in the one hour we've had. There's so much more.
But no, they tried all together. I think four different
priests came in and tried Father McKenna, who was very
famous priest. He came in and did the second exorcism.

(01:08:31):
But these are not ordained. The church just did not
want to do it, did not want part of the publicity.
Because it had just blown up. People were throwing beer
bottles and bricks through the Smirrel's family windows. It was
just a complete circus, and so they finally had to leave,
and it followed them. It followed them to their other

(01:08:55):
house and immediately started slamming doors and scratches on their bodies.
And this was in nineteen eighty eight. The church finally
in nineteen and sorry, I got a look at my
note real quick? Was it nineteen eighty six? Nineteen nineteen,

(01:09:21):
nineteen ninety six? So we're talking all I mean, if
they moved out in nineteen eighty eight, and the church
does it finally does something in nineteen eighty or and
a couple several years later, that tells to me that
whoever moved in after them was having problems too. I mean,
why would you exercise a house after these people have

(01:09:42):
already gone. But Karen Smirl, who is now with some
of the interviews she's done, she's an adult. Her children
are seeing things in their home and she's trying to
train them. Has it hurt you yet? No? Then just
try to ignore it. So whatever it is is attached

(01:10:02):
to that family, and it is still with them today.
So the Mary and John finally passed away. Jack passed
away from diabetes, but the girls are grown now and
have kids of their own, and they're still dealing with
some of this stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:10:20):
M it is. Could it be you mentioned something earlier?
Could they have taken stuff from the house that you
know contain things certain objects? Do you you know what

(01:10:41):
I mean? Do you just burn your family's possessions and
not take anything with you and start clean.

Speaker 1 (01:10:45):
I think by then it was attached to the people.

Speaker 3 (01:10:47):
It was attached to the people.

Speaker 1 (01:10:49):
Yeah. They told the same thing to the Aples who
owned these seventeen seventy one infield house in that place.
Holy crap. They said, you can move, but the odds
are all follow you. I don't know if you remember
that movie The Entity with Barbara Hershey.

Speaker 3 (01:11:05):
One of the best YEP.

Speaker 1 (01:11:07):
It followed her when she moved. It attaches to people,
and that's why some people are so reluctant when they
don't have the money to start with, and they people say,
why don't you just move like it's nothing? Ozar is
gonna follow you anyway. So they're trying to get it
exercised and get all the help they can get to
get rid of it. And it even followed them to campgrounds.

(01:11:31):
They'd go camping to just get away from the house,
and it would run across the top of their metal camper.
It was they could see the shadow form sitting at
a picnic table outside the windows of the camper. It
would bang on the doors, and while they left the
house empty to go camping, the neighbors are reporting that
the house went crazy. They could hear blood curdling screams,

(01:11:54):
the lights are going off and on. It sounded like
giant birds were crashing into the windows. No, I mean,
it's like it was mad that they left, it would
follow them in the car.

Speaker 3 (01:12:08):
It was.

Speaker 1 (01:12:08):
I mean, I don't I don't know how anybody survives that,
let alone fifteen years in that house.

Speaker 3 (01:12:16):
The entity, the original researcher there on that case, I'm
trying to think of his name. He lives here in
southern California, and I had him on the show maybe
twelve years ago. Man, what's his name? Anyway, it doesn't
matter how he describes what he went through in the

(01:12:38):
room and what he witnessed.

Speaker 1 (01:12:41):
I mean, wow, well they got pictures of that.

Speaker 5 (01:12:46):
Oh yeah, Oh, it's it's it's it's crazy. It's I
when I hear, when I hear from people that have
gone through these experiences, and they described these shadow figures
and in this case, the entity that that appeared. Yeah,

(01:13:11):
I had that happen down the hall around the corner
on the other end of the house.

Speaker 3 (01:13:18):
I saw something walk through this room. Yeah, yeah, I
do this because it looked like remember the shadow of
Nosferatu in the original film from the early nineteen hundreds,
that shadow of him on the wall, like Gary Oldman.
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah. It

(01:13:39):
was like that. Yeah yeah, almost all once, but it
was enough.

Speaker 1 (01:13:46):
I've never seen a full body apparition. I've had so
much stuff happen to me, but I have yet to
see a form of any kind, which I'm okay with that.

Speaker 3 (01:13:58):
I watched the The crazy part about this is because
we see stuff in the peripheral all the time, we
all do, all right, But I saw this straight on
with my eyeballs. Yeah. Yeah was It was not cool?

(01:14:19):
Not cool.

Speaker 1 (01:14:19):
Well, the thing is is, once you've experienced this, you
can't go back. You can't pretend now anymore that paranormal
isn't real when your mind's I mean, when the Stanley Hotel,
when I was writing that book, I was walking down
the fourth floor hallway with six other people. It was
eleven o'clock at night. There was hardly anybody there because

(01:14:41):
the hotel back then after the whole Stephen King thing
typically started shutting down after their Halloween ball, and there
was hardly anybody there. We're walking along and talking and
this blast of cherry blind tobacco smoke just blue into
all of our faces until we all stopped talking at

(01:15:04):
the same time and gagged. And I had my hair
was twice as long as it is now, and I
went like this because I thought it would my hair
would smell like it, and it didn't. And my son
ran down the hall to see we're at tea boned
if anybody but we knew nobody'd run away. Were walking
in that direction, and then it just cut off, and

(01:15:26):
a smell that strong can't do that, it has to dissipate.
So I've had the weirdest stuff happen to me, but
I have yet to actually see a form Esperanza.

Speaker 3 (01:15:40):
And she's wonderful. Hey, Esperanza, how you doing? She said?
Skunk Works, which is down the street. Skunkworks, the famous
you know where they had the alien spaceships. It's up
the street Lockheed skunk Works. Opening up dimensions and Jimmy
is dealing with a residual pollution and that's really good.

(01:16:03):
It's a really good point. Cern over in Switzerland doing
those experiments that they are doing over there, trying to
create black holes, speed of light, collisions of particles and
the accelerator and just to see is there a danger.

(01:16:27):
It's kind of like a Ouiji board where science is
out there goofing around trying to do something. And is
it possible that science could open up a portal to
another dimension and let spirits and bad stuff through another
dimension and let them loose on planet Earth.

Speaker 1 (01:16:49):
I think we're already experiencing that. I wouldn't say let
them loose, but parallel dimensions I do believe already exists.
And with one of my favorite things is quantum entanglement,
where particles can react it or clear across the world simultaneously,
so when you're seeing things that are there and then

(01:17:10):
not there, like they can go through walls or I
do believe they can go into other dimensions. And when
we talk about the bell Witch, a lot of people
wondered if the bell Witch Cave was a portal that
the Witch was using to come and go so I
do believe in in parallel realities and other things I
think are interacting back and forth with our world. Some

(01:17:33):
people are in tune with it and can see it
and others can't. But yeah, I don't have a problem
with that.

Speaker 3 (01:17:41):
My my brother, my best friend Rob, who was just
here this weekend and told me about the tour that
he took the bell Witch property just recently. I think
he did it two weeks ago. But this is what
he said about the cave. He said that there was
about five people down there and the person that the

(01:18:08):
friend that was with him had a thermal camera that
they were looking through in the cave. He didn't have
anything at that point but the flashlight on his cell phone. Okay,
the friend that was with him looking at the thermal imaging,

(01:18:31):
said what is that and then points into the darkness.
He looks over on the camera and sees a figure
standing in the darkness on the thermal camera, but there
was nothing in the back of the cave, but he

(01:18:51):
sees it, and then he said, he comes off of
the thermal camera and is looking in the back of
the cave and this thing walks straight towards them, and
he said, he said, he saw it with his eyes.
He said it was a figure arms legs, walking, physical

(01:19:16):
black and as it started to step out of the
darkness towards them, it faded out and when he thought
it was going to be on top of them, and
then it wasn't, and everybody in that cave saw it.

Speaker 1 (01:19:33):
That's actually that's pretty cool.

Speaker 3 (01:19:35):
Yeah, that's what I said. I go, dude, he goes man,
we were terrified. I go, man, that is the coolest
thing ever. Man, he goes man, we were frightened. It
was just scary, he said. But he said, I've never
seen a ghost. I've never seen anything like that. And
it just walked. Yeah, and he said it was normal size.
It was. It was, yeah, a walking black yeah, yeah,

(01:20:02):
he said. Oh. He said one other thing that was crazy.
He said it wasn't see through.

Speaker 1 (01:20:10):
Whoa, Yeah, Well is it Zach Baggan? Is that Ghost
Adventures that Zach has?

Speaker 3 (01:20:19):
Yes, Okay, he did.

Speaker 1 (01:20:21):
The bell Witch Cave and if you get a chance,
if you haven't seen it on YouTube, it's pretty amazing.
They captured some pretty insane EVPs in there, and it
is a female's voice and they are shooting into there's
a lot of holes in there, there's branch off tunnels
and holes that you can't fit through very well. And

(01:20:42):
he looks into one of these holes and in the
witch's name was Kate, and he said, Kate, if you're
in here, show me something, show me anything. The EVP
picks up, here I come, and it was so clear,
and it was the same voice they'd heard earlier, and
this white orb comes shooting out right after it said

(01:21:05):
here I come. And it was one of the most
impressive pieces of footage that I've seen, and it freaked
everybody out that was in the show, but a lot
of people have heard her whispering in there. She's actually rescued.
Back when the Bells lived there, some one of the
little boys that was playing in the cave got stuck

(01:21:25):
in one of the holes and she pulled him out.
The kids were starting to panic, they couldn't get him out,
and she literally pulled him out by his feet and
drugged him all the way to the entrance. So, yeah,
it's pretty amazing. They certainly have a lot of stuff
coming out of that cave.

Speaker 3 (01:21:45):
Okay, let's let's get to the beginning of this. The
Bell which is named after the Bell family and so
let's get into that, the historical side of it I have.
I've talked about this case a lot, and I'm always
learning something new about it. It's pretty fascinating. But to

(01:22:09):
have something like this in a rural part of the
country that just seems to be pretty well documented. And
there's a pretty solid foundation historically in and around this
case in the Bell family. So let's start there. Who
were the Bells.

Speaker 1 (01:22:27):
Well, John and Lucy Bell got married in North Carolina
and had five children, and then he went through a
series of crop failures and a lot of other stuff.
There was a rumor that he had murdered an overseer.
In other words, it was time to leave. So they

(01:22:48):
took their two slaves, Chloe and Dean, and moved to
Tennessee to the Red River Valley area which is Adams today,
and star at a new and a lot of their
neighbors had already gone before them and said, this is gorgeous.
You got to come here. So their property was three

(01:23:08):
hundred and twenty acres and it butted against the Red River,
so there was all of this wild life. In fact,
the Smoky Mountains at that time had more black bear
than anywhere else, and you know, deer and fox and fish,
and so they and their crops were thriving. They had

(01:23:30):
three more kids, including Elizabeth, which Betsy has featured quite
a bit as one of the main people the witch
took her wrath out on. So they set up this house.
They've got slave cabins, they've got a tobacco barn, they've
got crops, huge property, a lot of other slaves, and

(01:23:52):
so they were fine for thirteen years. Nothing happened. And
then and that's the big mystery Wyat began. But it
started out with there were the main bedroom for Lucy
and John was on the main floor, and the kids
had bedrooms upstairs on the second floor. Two of the

(01:24:15):
kids were already grown and married, and the boys shared
a room and Betsy got her own room because she
was the only daughter left. Her sister Esther was married.
So there's two boys to a bed, making four all
together in this room. And they awakened one night to
what sounds like something gnawing on the bedposts, like a rat,

(01:24:37):
which is not unheard of. I mean, they're surrounded by woods.
So they get up and they light the candle and
they're looking in there because it was so loud. They're
expecting to see chunks of the bedpost gone. There's not
a scratch on it. So this starts happening every night.
And then their blankets start slowly being pulled off of them,

(01:24:59):
and this both beds, so it's not like one of
the kids is kicking a blanket off. It was just
moved very slowly and they'd lean over and because at
this time they're going, I don't know what's going on,
but nobody's thinking paranormal, right, they pull it back up
and it pulls it back off again. And that's how
it started, was with the gnawing noises and then chains

(01:25:22):
dragging across the floor sounds, and then it went into
Betsy's room and started tormenting her with the gnawing sounds,
taking her blanket, but she had long, beautiful hair. It
would tie it in knots and actually tie her heair
to the bedposts and then slap her so you could

(01:25:43):
hear this stinging slap like an open palm across the
room and it seemed to be targeting her. And then
it went downstairs and it was the gnawing sounds in
the parents' bedroom, but Betsy was getting the worst of
it as far as physical attacks, and that's how it started.
Now so far, nobody has seen anything.

Speaker 3 (01:26:05):
That is right, right, right right, because I understand correctly
that nobody in the community was talking about Look before electricity,
before the internet, there was a time before cell phones, right, Okay,

(01:26:28):
So but this was going on in other houses, and
nobody in the community was talking about it because it's
private stuff that goes on in the home. But as
it turns out that this spirit, whatever it was, was
messing with a lot of people, including the bells at

(01:26:51):
the same time, and then the community started talking and
then putting it together that it was some type of
shape shifting evil entity that was on the properties there.
That's a pretty interesting twist of this case, isn't it.
When everybody gets together going, oh, it's happening to us too.

(01:27:13):
It's not like this was a rumor that hit the
street and people took off and turned it into some
kind of folk tale. That's not the case, is it.

Speaker 1 (01:27:22):
Well, for a while, it was just the bells, and
they didn't want to tell anybody because they were well
respected in the community and they thought they'd be made
fun of. But the first time they actually saw something
was John Bell was out in the big stalks of
rows of corn and something ran and he thought, what

(01:27:44):
the heck was that? And he's got a shotgun when
she was with him always he goes to the next row.
It's running, and finally at the end of the row
here is this dog. But it had the head of
a rabbit with big green eyes, and he'd never seen
anything like it. And when he shouldered it to shoot
at it, it took off and he never could find it.

(01:28:06):
Then after that the slaves were reporting strange lights flitting
about in the trees. And keep in mind this is
the noises in the house. I mean they were exhausted.
Nobody got any sleep. This went on every night until
finally John told Lucy, he goes, I'm going to have
James come spend the night. I need somebody to verify this,

(01:28:28):
see if they can help me figure out what this is.
So their best friend and closest neighbor, James Johnson, came over.
And a lot of times when you bring in a witness,
the paranormal clam up. It didn't. It pulled out all
the stops, It pulled his blanket off, it slapped him,

(01:28:49):
and he was one of the people that would go
around and preach a lot of times. You didn't have
to be an ordained reverend or anything. You could go
in people's homes and read the Bible and preach. And
he would do that a lot. So he's an eyewitness.
And then the word starts getting out and suddenly people
are wanting to come witness this and see it. And

(01:29:12):
as soon as this witch realized she had an audience,
she started to speak. And that's when it gets weird.
It's no longer just noises while people are gathered in
the parlor. It started out as this guttural like she
was trying to form words and that didn't have a
voice box couldn't figure out. It would be somewhere in

(01:29:35):
the corner, this whispering, and then she started being able
to articulate more, until finally she could talk. You couldn't
see her, but she could tell people complete strangers, where
they were from, what their house in another county or
state look like, and if any of them challenged her,

(01:29:57):
she'd let out some of their secrets that they didn't
want anybody to know. And they clammed up because she
was I mean, it was just and people were coming
from all over and then she started quoting scriptures. And
these reverends were sitting there with the Bible, and they
would just pick a page where she couldn't see it

(01:30:19):
and just say the verse and the you know, and
she would like, you know, like John twelve, verse one.
She'd do it verbatim, never missed, didn't matter how many
different pages they picked out. And they couldn't figure out
who is this. I mean, it's somebody tormenting the family,
but it knows scripture, It could sing hymns, It had

(01:30:43):
a beautiful voice. And so all of a sudden they
are coming from everywhere, including Andrew Jackson, who was stationed
nearby in Nashville, came with his troops and witnessed it.

Speaker 3 (01:30:58):
Did it ever? Did the witch ever become physical?

Speaker 1 (01:31:04):
Appear only as a rabbit? She as she appeared as
an old woman in the art in the orchard that
Betsy and her brother saw. The rabbit was one of
her favorite things. She did turn one of the slaves
into a mule when he was making fun of her,

(01:31:27):
but no as far as an actual form. And they
kept saying who are you? And she said, I am
one who was happy and I have been disturbed, and
so she now starts jerking them around. They said, what
do you mean, She goes, I was an Indian here,
and the Indian burial grounds were very prevalent. If somebody

(01:31:50):
accidentally dug one up. John had him go respectively put
everything back. And so they found out that one of
John's son's friends, who wanted to see the burial ground
that they dug up his son. Drury, took his friend
over hoping to find artifacts, something expensive that they used

(01:32:12):
to bury with Indians. When he couldn't find anything, he
stole a job on, brought it back to the Bell home,
was playing with it. Drury wasn't happy about it, and
when he got bored with it, he threw it against
the wall and a tooth fell out and fell between
the cracks and the floorboards. And so they're thinking, that's

(01:32:32):
got to be it. If we find that tooth and
we go put it back, she'll go away. And they
never found it. I mean they're digging up floorboards and
they never found it. And all of a sudden they
hear the laughter. She is just laughing out loud, disembodied boys.
I fooled you, Jack, which is what she called John.
She called him old Jack. So then they just tell

(01:32:56):
us who you are. Well, I was someone who buried
a treasure, and she told them the exact location by
the Red River, what the rock would look like. You
go dig it up. But I want Betsy to have
all the money. And they're thinking, this is the girl
you've been tormenting, and she goes, I want I want
her to have the money, and James, you go with

(01:33:18):
them to oversee it. All day long, they dug and
pry up this gigantic boulder and there was nothing. They
came home dirty and angry at the end of the day,
and once again she burst out laughing and said, I
fooled you again. So finally they were wondering if she

(01:33:40):
was Kate, the ghost of Kate Bats, the witch. Because
Kate lived on a neighboring farm and was contentious and
tended to rub everybody the wrong way, people thought she
was a witch and they said, are you Kate, And
she decided to go that's good enough, so she took
the name Kate. Nobody will believe she was actually the

(01:34:01):
witch of Kate Bats.

Speaker 3 (01:34:04):
But she did. She did. Historically, she she has been
given the name Kate though because of that.

Speaker 1 (01:34:13):
Yes, yes, and she just said, yeah, you can call
me that.

Speaker 3 (01:34:17):
Right, right? And is it a case of and I
could see this, I'm just going to ask you, is
it just jealousy and romance? Was Kate jealous of Betsy?
I don't.

Speaker 1 (01:34:30):
The odd thing was is that when as Betsy got
into her teens, this young man, Joshua Gardner was just
crazy about her and trying to quarter right and Kate said,
you're not going to marry him, and the attacks on
Betsy got worse. She would love She pulled her by
her hair off the floor. Yeah, and nobody, what have

(01:34:53):
you got against Joshua? And she finally broke them up
after they got engaged. She broke them up. Now, I
don't know what that was. I really don't.

Speaker 3 (01:35:05):
When I was in second grade, this girl Mary pulled
this other girl's hair over me. So it happens on
the playground, I.

Speaker 1 (01:35:12):
Can see how that would happen.

Speaker 3 (01:35:14):
Yeah, it happens. It happened. I didn't stop to see
if it was a poltergeist or whatever. It didn't have
to do that, but one would kind of. I mean,
it seemed like Kate had it out for Betsy the
whole time, and Joshua comes along and it just amplified things.

Speaker 1 (01:35:34):
Yeah, But then Kate soon changed to John Bell, the
head of the family, and she kind of let Betsy
alone for a little while because Betsy gave in wasn't
dating josh But she made John's life a living hill.
His tongue swelled up so badly that he couldn't eat,

(01:35:55):
he couldn't talk. He said it felt like a stick,
like a bit was going across his tongue, biting into
his cheeks. His face would go into contortions, he'd run fevers,
and she just made his life a living hell. And
then she started announcing I'm going to kill you John Bell,

(01:36:17):
and he got worse and worse. If he was out walking,
his shoes would fly off his feet, even though they
were laced up. His son would bend down and double
not Autumn.

Speaker 3 (01:36:27):
Yeah, for eighteen seventeen, for eighteen seventeen. This case has
it all right, It's amazing, wasn't this is my memory? Okay,
I could have it wrong, but wasn't Betsy. Didn't Kate
then slap Betsy and then use her like a voodoo doll,

(01:36:51):
like stuck pins in her.

Speaker 1 (01:36:53):
No, she would she would take her comb out of
her hair and make her shoes fly off off. She
scratched her, she slapped her, and then she would Betsy
would go into trances where her eyes would roll back
and she convolts on the floor, and right when they
thought she was dead, she'd come out of it. But

(01:37:15):
the odd thing was was Kate loved Lucy. The mom
couldn't say a bad thing about her, called her old loose.
And Lucy got really sick one day and was bedridden,
which was just so out of the ordinary. These are
really healthy husky farmers. And some kind of fever or something,

(01:37:36):
and the witch went crazy. And again it's just her voice,
and she's in the room where the neighbors are administering
to her and putting coc and she goes loose, loose,
What can I do for you? Please speak to me loose?
And she quit eating. Lucy did, and they were worried
about her. All of a sudden, the voice is, I
brought you something loose, And these hazelnuts come falling down

(01:38:00):
out of the ceiling onto the bed because they were
growing everywhere around there. She's eat that loose, she'll feel better.
And Lucy was really weak and she goes, I cannot
crack them, and she goes, hold on, hold on, and
you hear the cracking noises, and she cracks them and
drops them on the bed and she couldn't eat those,
so she now starts dropping clumps of wild grapes from

(01:38:24):
the ceiling onto the bed for her and was just
wringing her hands, and said, should I sing for you?

Speaker 3 (01:38:32):
Loose?

Speaker 1 (01:38:33):
And she had a beautiful singing voice, and Lucy said, yes,
that would make me happy, and she sang her this
beautiful church song.

Speaker 3 (01:38:41):
Didn't everybody in that family, Didn't everybody in the family
at some point come down with some type of affliction.

Speaker 1 (01:38:50):
No, oh, okay, it was just Betsy and John and Lucy.
Lucy did recover. John kept getting worse until finally the
doctor was called in from Port Royal, which took him
a while to get there. So back in those days
you tried to fix things yourself. And he'd left his

(01:39:12):
medicine cabinet there with these medicines to be given to John,
who is now bedridden. And one morning they come in
and he's dead, and there is this strange purple, dusky,
dirty bottle sitting in the medicine cabinet and all of
the other medicines are gone, and nobody's ever seen this thing,

(01:39:35):
and it smelled horrible. And here came the witch's voice, laughing,
saying I did it. I got old Jack. I gave
him a dose of that poison last night, and he's dead.
And she was laughing hysterically. And so a couple of
the men took the vial and stuck a straw in

(01:39:55):
it and caught the cat and ran the straw across
its tongue, and the cat convulsed and died. So, I mean,
that's just these are witnesses. These are all these people,
including a doctor who was there, that witnessed this, and
nobody knew where. I mean, she claimed that she brought
him the poison, and no one could figure out any

(01:40:18):
other reason why it was there.

Speaker 3 (01:40:20):
I read or heard. I want to ask you about this.
There were reports that she say, you mentioned this earlier,
and I just remembered this, that she recited Bible verses

(01:40:42):
at the same time in two different towns that were
like ten or fifteen miles apart. Did you have you heard?
Have you heard this?

Speaker 1 (01:40:52):
Yeah? So there were two different reverends, and back then
it was Baptist and Methodists, but nobody cared. They all
showed up at each other's homes. It was a very
close knit community. I didn't care what you were. And
the reverend from both of the congregations happened to be
there one night and somebody, this was Sunday, and somebody said,

(01:41:13):
I really liked your sermon today to one of them,
and all of a sudden, her voice shows up in
the reverend's voice and recited the entire sermon that he
gave that morning, saying the hymns, gave the verses. And
then somebody turned to the other bishop, who was like

(01:41:35):
the Baptist bishop who was thirteen miles away, and they
both of them had eleven o'clock services, identical services, and
they said, well, you're lucky she didn't attend yours. So
she starts talking in his voice and said the entire sermon.
So she was in two places at one time and

(01:41:56):
didn't miss a beat, and it sounded exactly like them.
And he said, that's word for word, that's what I said.

Speaker 3 (01:42:03):
How crazy is that? Yeah, that's just that's that's just
crazy to me. And how did oh man, we're right there, Okay,
we have fifteen minutes left. Well, I'm going to try
to compress all of this in. I have so many

(01:42:24):
questions and you have taught me so much more about
the Belt Witch than I already knew. And I love
this and the audience is really digging this. Didn't didn't they?
Didn't they burn a witch? And if they did, who

(01:42:45):
did they burn or what did they burn?

Speaker 1 (01:42:51):
Not with this story?

Speaker 3 (01:42:52):
No William Porter.

Speaker 1 (01:42:56):
Try Oh oh, that's my favorite part.

Speaker 3 (01:43:00):
So yeah, don't tell me I'm crazy.

Speaker 1 (01:43:02):
No, I'm sorry. Well he didn't get it done.

Speaker 3 (01:43:04):
No, he didn't get it done. He attempted to. And
so my point is who Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:43:11):
So William Porter was one of their good friends who
kept coming all the time trying to help them. He
was a bachelor. He lived in a home that was
just two rooms that had a big fireplace partition in
the one wall that separated the two rooms. It's wintertime,
the fire's going. He's laying in bed and this creeped

(01:43:31):
me out so bad. And he hears Kate's voice and
by now he recognizes it because she puts on a
performance every night at the Bell's house. And she goes,
I am cold and I want to crawl in bed
with you.

Speaker 3 (01:43:45):
Oh no.

Speaker 1 (01:43:46):
Then he goes, oh no, Kate, if you'll behave yourself okay.
He felt the blanket lift and something scaly is light
up next to him, and she was actually hoggy the blanket.
She rolled into like a taco and took the blanket
with her, and all of a sudden you could see

(01:44:07):
the outline of a person which was new, and he thought,
I've got her. So he grabs up the blanket. She's
trapped inside. You can see her whole form, and he's
running toward the fire to throw her in the fire.
He goes, I'm going to burn you up right, and
this odor starts coming out that is so overwhelming. His

(01:44:31):
eyes are water and he's trying to get to the
fire and it just kept getting bigger until he was gagging,
and he dropped her and ran out the front door,
and when he came back, she was gone.

Speaker 3 (01:44:43):
But ew, I dated someone in the eighties, Oh oh,
very similar. It was in Hollywood Sunset strip. Yeah she was.
She was pretty scaly too as well. But the parts

(01:45:09):
of this that sound modern, these are it sounds like
something that we would hear about today. It's very strange,
But this that we're talking about eighteen seventeen. Here you know,
to have by location and apparently entanglement of these of

(01:45:30):
this entity at two places at the same time, you know,
fifteen miles apart, in two different towns, shape shifting, bouncing around,
you know, voices that are being heard out loud, these
things are they just sound like a modern partment. This

(01:45:52):
is eighteen seventeen. That's the fascinating part about this case
for me.

Speaker 1 (01:45:57):
But that's also important because they still lived in witches then.
It was in the Bible thou shalt not suffer a witch.
Even though the witch trials had been you know, in
the late sixteen hundreds, people still very much believed in witches.
So it wasn't a stretch for them to believe that
this entity was a witch. And Richard Williams Bell, one

(01:46:20):
of the sons, wrote his whole account of it and
called it Our Family Troubles, the Account of the Bell
Witch of Tennessee. And it's fascinating reading. And you can
tell this is a guy that was right there. And
so John Bell dies and the kids grow up, or

(01:46:41):
Betsy ends up marrying her old teacher, Richard Powell, because
she had to break Joshua's heart. She realized if she
married him, the witch was never going to leave him alone.
And then so the house after Lucy dies, it's turned
into storage. Then it's broken up into timber. It's divided

(01:47:01):
up among the male heirs, and they build houses still
on the property at different locations. And today the descendants
of the Bells and there's a lot of them still
there have things happening in their homes. And we're talking today.

Speaker 3 (01:47:19):
Yeah, my friend was. My friend was just there. He
was just there. He said, the adjacent property that that
there's just the foundation there, but the Bell property there
is a house that is there. He doesn't know the
age of that house. So that's a you think that's

(01:47:41):
a rebuilt He says, it's old. He doesn't know if
it's the original Bell family.

Speaker 1 (01:47:46):
It's right next to the Bell which cave. It's not
where the original house stood. It's a they did a
reconstruction to show you what it looked like back in
Now a museum at the back.

Speaker 3 (01:47:58):
Tell us about the cave and where is it on
the property and how big is it? Like I said,
I just my friend was just there. It was fascinating
and is apparently there's something still hanging out in that cave.
My friend saw it is the witch still running around
on the property.

Speaker 1 (01:48:19):
She told them when she left, she finally left them
after she killed John Bell, she said, I'll be back
in seven years. She did come back and stayed for
a couple of months with one of John Bell's sons
who was grown and married, and talked about the Napoleon's War,
all of this history stuff, told him about the future,

(01:48:42):
and told him that we were going to destroy the planet,
and that all these earthquakes and everything else. It was
stuff that was pretty eerie that she knew back then.
And then when she left, she said I'll be back
again in a hundred years. But she never did, but
maybe she did, and maybe she's in the cave. The
cave is where it was even when the house was standing.

(01:49:05):
It wasn't very far away, maybe half a mile, and
it sits right above the Red River. In fact, when
it floods, which is a lot, it actually has a
little waterfall that comes down on the other side of
it into the river. And the opening now has a gate.
Because it's run by a tour company, they keep it locked.

(01:49:25):
It does flood often, so there's a danger. So there's
if you're going to try to see it, call ahead
because it's not always open, but it's there. I'm a
little bit claustrophobic. I'm going to Egypt to go into
the Great Pyramid of Giza in November, and I'm a
little nervous because I.

Speaker 3 (01:49:42):
Get the Great Pyramids. Let me, let me, let me
relax you. The Great Pyramid is Disneyland. You're not going
to get claustrophobic in there. Okay. It's the Bent Pyramid
that will freak you out of your mind. Okay. So
most tour groups when you go or whatever, when you

(01:50:03):
go to Egypt, they'll go to Sakara first, and you'll
go to the Ben Pyramid and the Red Pyramid out
in the desert. That's fine, it's amazing, it's cool. Just
don't go in them. The Bent Pyramid is probably the
most dangerous thing I've ever done in my life. And
I've done crazy stuff, all right. I've wrestled a polar bear.

(01:50:25):
I drove a car off at the end of the
Venice Beach Pier into the Pacific Ocean just to practice
escaping from a car. All Right. I fear nothing, but
I will never go back in the ben Pyramid. Okay,
dot not gonna dut.

Speaker 1 (01:50:42):
Have you seen the serapeum, Oh yeah, yeah, I've been
there many times. Oh I'm excited about that.

Speaker 3 (01:50:47):
Yeah, serrapium is unbelievable. I they gave me one morning,
the priest there and the director of the serapem gave
me the keys and we went down. It was like
seven in the morning and I got to unlock it
and go in and flip the switch and turn on

(01:51:10):
the lights. I was the first person in. It was
pretty cool, pretty cool, amazing. This will be your first time. Yes, Okay,
the sirapium is mind blowing. It's it's really the thing
about it. And we're talking about hauntings their spirits all

(01:51:31):
over Egypt, and you attract that stuff. You're going to
really dig that part of it. But the serapium, serrapium,
when you get there, it is Lawrence of Arabia. It's
the Sahara Desert. Okay, that's what you're looking You're looking
at sand, right, it's sand, and the step pyramid is

(01:51:54):
not that far away. But anyway, but when you get
there and you walk up, you can't see anything. It's
sand dunes and when you get to the stairs and
descend down and you go down three or four stories,
five stories down fifty feet maybe, and then enter and
go in and see what is there and how big

(01:52:17):
it is, because it's like it's the size of any
shopping mall that you went to when you were a kid.
It's like that. It's that big. The hallways are that big.
All the entrances with all of these boxes in them,
they call it sarcophya, but they're too big for that. Anyway,
you'll see, but are like storefronts, and it's ginormous. And

(01:52:41):
you turn the corner and there's another it's like a
giant mall. Well, my point being, remember this, Rebecca, after
you go from sand down in and experience that and
see all of it it's and then go back out
and then look around and look at those sand dunes,
go that is under what else is here? That is

(01:53:04):
under there? What else could be underneath these these sand
dunes out here in Egypt. It's an incredible mind blowing experience. Uh,
the Serrapean, it's incredible.

Speaker 1 (01:53:19):
I'm you probably know Mike rick Secker, Oh yeah, yeah,
hit Stargates of Egypt tour.

Speaker 3 (01:53:25):
Yeah yeah, yeah. He does a good tour. He's a
he's a you know, one of my close friends. He's
a good dude. And I just spent the weekend with him,
the two of this and uh but he's great. Uh, Mike,
that's gonna be a great tour. And he thinks outside
of the box and he's got a lot of knowledge and.

Speaker 1 (01:53:47):
He's got a lot of eclectic brains going on. Well,
so that we I know, we got to wrap up.
So anyway, as you go into the cave, it's very narrow,
broken floor, broken rock, huddles, little pools of water. They
do have lighting in there so you can see. Then
there's a rather large opening, but it's a lot of

(01:54:09):
branch off really freaky tunnels that are up here. So
you're looking back in there and seeing these stalactites and
all this stuff, and it just looks like it was
made for somebody to hide in there. But again call
ahead if because it's not open all the time. And

(01:54:29):
then so the name of the book is the History
and Haunting of the Bell Witch, and then the Smirl
Book is the History and Haunting of the Smirl Family Horror.
And again that movie with the Conjuring four comes out
September fifth. I want to say something to you real quick,
can I that's off topic.

Speaker 3 (01:54:48):
It's your show. I'm just following your leads.

Speaker 1 (01:54:52):
Well you're don't like this, okay, I've been noticing your guitars. Yes,
my sister dated Joe Walsh. Oh really yeah, and she
had him call me one night. They lived right down
the hall from each other in Beverly Hills and they
were dating. It was like two in the morning, and
she woke me up. I said, Marlena, what she knows?

(01:55:15):
Somebody here wants to say hi to you. He was
so stoned I couldn't. The only word I recognized was
Becky when he said my name, And then she took
the phone back and she went, isn't it cute?

Speaker 3 (01:55:33):
That is just too cool?

Speaker 1 (01:55:35):
I yet he had Elvis's do you call it a
Flying V guitar? He had Elvis's Flying V guitar and
he gave it to her, and she gave it to
my brother.

Speaker 3 (01:55:45):
Wow, yeah, there's one right. Let me move my chair,
see I'm backwards right here? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:55:54):
Yeah, yeah exactly, But isn't that fun?

Speaker 3 (01:55:59):
I just saw I love talking music. I just saw
the Eagles play the album Hotel, California, it's the Hotel
California tour. And I saw this in San Diego with
my friend Laurie and we were in the front and
seats like this for a concert like that. It was

(01:56:22):
amazing that we were in a position to do this anyway.
But I sat right in front of Joe Walsh and
he was right here. Man, all night. I got Joe.
I mean, I got the whole band in front of me.
We're in the front, but I was right in front
of Joe and he's just amazing. I'll tell you a

(01:56:44):
crazy Joe Wall's story. I'll make this really quick. On
my birthday nineteen eighty six, I was telling you about
my friend Rob that just went to the bell Witch
Cave right and I nineteen eighty six, I'm We're at

(01:57:04):
a guitar convention and Rob comes up and says, hey, man,
this is at a hotel in Santa Monica. Small thing.
He goes, Joe Walsh is playing in a private room downstairs,
and I go bullshit and he goes, no, man, come on,
I know where it's at. So he takes me downstairs.

(01:57:26):
We go up to this room and there's this door there.
It's locked. There's nobody there and I knock on the
door and somebody opens it. I go in small room,
like a small banquet room, twenty feet by forty feet.
There's a drum set at the end of the thing,
but it's tiny, tiny, like a bedroom, and I go

(01:57:49):
and I stand in front of the stage and I
look down and as I just kind of standing there,
going Joe Walsh. Really here he comes. He walked in,
walks standing right in front of me, and his drummer
comes out and a bass player, and he looks down

(01:58:09):
at me and he goes, how you doing, and he's
what is this really happening? Right? And by that time,
there's like five ten people in there. And Joe Walsh
blows into a James Gang tune on my birthday and
I'm standing there with my arms crossed and he's six

(01:58:30):
inches in front of me, and he played for like
an hour, hour and a half. And so anyway, about
a week later, it was incredible, and by the end
of all of that there was probably twenty people in
that room. Twenty and about a week later, Music Connection
magazine comes out and I get it and I'm upstairs

(01:58:50):
in my bedroom and I open it up. There's a
picture of me standing like this in front of Joe Walsh,
and the caption is Joe Walsh plays surprise private thing
at blah blah blah blah blah. But there's me right
there with my friend Rob standing next to me, standing

(01:59:10):
in front of Joe Walsh and the way that they
do a surprise thing, and you could tell the room
was empty and it was just me. I got my
arms crossed, going like, Joe, show me what you got, bro.
You know it was, it was great, It was it
was amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:59:22):
Where is that framed and hanging out?

Speaker 3 (01:59:24):
I know, right, I do have it? Though I do
have it, I have it.

Speaker 1 (01:59:28):
I trust you you didn't hang it on the wall.

Speaker 3 (01:59:31):
It's this big the picture. But oh, oh my god,
but that really happened. Yeah, it's It was just one
of those things. And I've never been around Joe uh
privately where I can go like he would remember, you know,
but I would definitely tell him that story. Maybe he would.

Speaker 1 (01:59:50):
That guy can play. He's I don't know, I think
he's one of the top five guitarists in my opinion.

Speaker 3 (01:59:57):
He's probably I don't know if he's you know, I
don't know how old he is. But he's you know,
he's been doing it since nineteen sixty eight, right. But
I got to tell you, I just saw him on
stage for two or three hours, and he was amazing.
His pipes were there, his chops were there. It was

(02:00:19):
just absolutely incredible to see him throw down like that.

Speaker 1 (02:00:22):
I'm so happy for you. That's such a once in
a lifetime thing. It was pretty cool.

Speaker 3 (02:00:28):
It was pretty cool. It was pretty cool. Rebecca, Thank
you so much. I look forward to having you on
the show again. We can just do this all night long.

Speaker 1 (02:00:38):
I really I love it. Yeah, we got to talk
about the infrastructure under Giza. Next time.

Speaker 3 (02:00:44):
I'll talk to you. Yeah, when you get back. Let's
when you least expect it in Egypt, it's going to
come and find you, Okay, So come back and tell
us some stories.

Speaker 1 (02:00:56):
Thank you. This was a pleasure. Thank you guys.

Speaker 3 (02:00:59):
Safe trip. And tell Mike I said, yo.

Speaker 1 (02:01:02):
And tell Rob I said yo.

Speaker 3 (02:01:03):
I will do that. Have a good night, Rebecca Pittman, everybody,
what a great show. What a perfect night here on
Fade to Black. And it's it's stuff like this that,
uh for me to just sit here and learn and
get it all together, uh and share it with you.
It's it's it's why I do this. So thank you, Rebecca.

(02:01:26):
We've got her. Her website link Rebecca Pittman Books. It
is below, also on our social media and over on
our website. I want to remind everybody as we wind
down here that tomorrow night, Jason McLean is with us
and we are going to be talking about bigfoot and
goat men in the great state of Texas. So until

(02:01:48):
tomorrow night, all I've got is go bec Lee Teppy.
Fade to Black his produce by Hilton J. Palm, Renee
Newman and Michelle Free. Special thanks to Bill John Dex,
Jessica Dennis and Kevin Webmaster is Drew the Geek. Music

(02:02:11):
by Doug Albridge. Intro Spaceboy. Aide to Black is produced
by kJ c R for the Game Changer Network. This
broadcast is owned and copyrighted twenty twenty four by Fade
to Black and the Game Changer Network, Inc. It cannot
be rebroadcast, downloaded, copied, or used anywhere in the known

(02:02:31):
universe without written permission from Fade to Black or the
Game Changer Network. I'm your host, Jimmy Church, Go Beckley,
Teppe