November 19, 2025 • 55 mins
This week Sierra tells us the real life Ghosts style story.... The Great Amherst Mystery. When 18-year-old Esther Cox began experiencing violent fits, unexplained fires, and messages mysteriously carved into walls, her small town of Amherst, Nova Scotia, was thrown into chaos. Was Esther tormented by a malevolent spirit? Suffering from untreated trauma? Or was there something darker lurking in the shadows of her family home?
Want more twisted content? Consider joining our Patreon for some welcome goodies and 100+ bonus episodes ready for you to unlock. Your support truly means the world to us.
https://www.patreon.com/twistedanduncorked
You can buy us a drink on Buy Me A Coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/twistedpod
Watch on our YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@twistedanduncorked
Follow us on all of the socials:
Instagram and TikTok @twistedanduncorked
Facebook @twistedanduncorkedpodcast
Want more twisted content? Consider joining our Patreon for some welcome goodies and 100+ bonus episodes ready for you to unlock. Your support truly means the world to us.
https://www.patreon.com/twistedanduncorked
You can buy us a drink on Buy Me A Coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/twistedpod
Watch on our YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@twistedanduncorked
Follow us on all of the socials:
Instagram and TikTok @twistedanduncorked
Facebook @twistedanduncorkedpodcast
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, Twisted humans.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Do you find yourself wanting to know more about the
latest murder, conspiracy, cult, or haunting.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Than this is the podcast for you. I'm Alicia and
I'm Sierra and this is.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Twisted and Uncorked. Hello, and welcome to episode to eighteen
of your favorite podcast. Yes, I'm back to this. Today's
story has a few different categories it could easily fall into,
including conspiracy or haunted, but I have chosen to call
(00:35):
it unsolved for reasons that will become apparent, and then
we will speculate wildly. But first, do you have a
fun fact for me?
Speaker 1 (00:45):
I do. I originally was just going to pick from
my random fun fact book, but then a friend of
mine that I work with at the yoga studio came
back from Singapore and I was talking to her about
her trip and she taught me a fun little tidbit
that may not surprise you or may surprise you. We'll see.
(01:11):
So there are these I'm sending it to you on Instagram. Okay,
there are these stickers in the women's bathroom in Singapore.
I'm just going to read it to you. It says,
don't be a peeping tom. You can be arrested one
wrong action a lifetime of regret. Voyeurism carries a jail
(01:33):
term of up to two years, a fine, and or caning.
So they cane people in Singapore if you fuck up there.
And I'm just saying certain crimes. I feel like we
need to bring back caning for what the fuck is
like like beat beating somebody with a cane?
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
So you have to look at the little sticker that
I sent you because it's quite funny.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
I see, yeah, that is quite funny. Also, why is
there a shower in that bathroom?
Speaker 1 (02:05):
I don't know. It also upsets me that there has
to be a sign for that, because that means that
enough incidence has occurred that. But you know, if you're
going to peep on somebody without consent, yeah, you should
be caned for that.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Just SA Yeah there was.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
I think there would be a lot less crime if
we brought back caning.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
There was a kid at the school who went to
alternative school because he took a photo over the stall
of another kid while he was pooping. Thought it was hilarious.
Look what I got hah and guess what he got?
S standard, So don't do that funny.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Don't do that, it's not funny. What is your fun fact?
Speaker 2 (02:46):
My fun fact is the term firesider was almost taken
away from tradition and culture through commercialization. Have you heard
of firesider like as an herbal remedy? No? Okay? So
traditional firesider is made of an onion, horsepradish root, ginger,
(03:07):
cayenne pepper, garlic, and apple cider vinegar, all put into
a jar to ferment for about a month or so
and then strained and mixed with honey and taken daily
in the colder months for immune support when it's harder
to get essential vitamins and antioxidants from foods because the
gardens are frozen. So it's like, you know, an herbal
(03:28):
tincture remedy type thing.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Love it.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
The recipe itself is probably hundreds of years old, but
the term firesider was coined in the seventies by an
herbalist and author named Rosemary Gladstar, just as a fun
thing to call it when sharing the herbal remedy since
it had apple cider, vinegar and spicy herps. In twenty twelve,
the term was trademarked by some company who wanted the
(03:54):
rights to the name and the traditional recipe rbalists got
together in created organizations, one called Tradition Not Trademark and
another called Free Firesider and hopes to gain enough attention
and support to get the trademark decision reversed. And in
twenty nineteen they want a precedent setting case declaring that
(04:16):
firesider cannot be trademarked. As long as you have access
to the ingredients, you have your own little immunity booster
to help yourself and your family through colder months.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
I think, what is actually in a firesider?
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Onion, horse, radish root?
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Does it like? Tell you like the actual like.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Quand so literally you take a jar in it, you
cut up a hole onion, put an onion in there,
cut up some horse rash fruits, stick it in there.
What else did I say? Ginger, cayenne, pepper, garlic, And
then all of that stuff is just in a jar.
And then you pour apple cider vinegar all the way
until everything is covered because applesider vinegar makes things not
(05:01):
go bad. Whittle it on it and you basically bury it.
But you can put it like in a cabinet or
dark cabinet or something and let it ferment. And then
you strain it into a different jar with honey so
that you can actually eat it, because otherwise it would
be disgusting, and you just take a spoonful. I made
it before. It's not good, but it's a good immunity.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
I literally thought you were gonna do taste really good.
I'm like, you're a liar.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
No, it's not. It's not for for tasting, it's for
you know, benefit.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Yeah, I'll stick shots. I think he makes different ones
with ginger and turmeric and cucover and all sorts of ones,
and they actually taste okay.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
So, speaking of firesider, today's episode pairs well with a
drink called a firesider sangria, perfect for the holidays, but
much more palatable than the firesider from before.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
This one is is apple cider, vinegar, I'm sorry, not vinegar,
apple cider, fireball prosecco and caramel. Or for a mocktail version,
steep some cinnamon sticks in ginger beer and then mix
that with applesider and vinegar and caramel. What do you think?
Speaker 1 (06:17):
What did you do?
Speaker 2 (06:17):
How did it turn out? So?
Speaker 1 (06:19):
I made a baby between the two because I hate
I don't hate fireball. That's that's a sad thing to say.
The smell of fireball makes me ill. So I made
it with prosecco. Okay, I'll tell you what I did.
I have caramel, apple cider, prosecco, and ginger beer and
(06:43):
cinnamon in here.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
But what I did is I put everything in it,
and then I topped it with my ginger beer. So
it made a little ginger beer explosion, bringing all of
my caramel and cinnamon to the surface of the bubbles,
and then proceeded to pour all over the side of
my glass. So I sipped it, and now I have
cinnamon all over my face and my cup is sticky.
(07:08):
But it's really I was like, would it be an
episode if I didn't fail in some way with the smell.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
I made my own caramel. Do you want to make caramel? No,
use a can of sweet and condensed milk and boil
it in water until it turns to caramel. That's it.
So you do Yep, I just easy.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
He did up one of those little caramel squares.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Yeah. I made my own camel, and then I did
apple cider, and then I did have cinnamon sticks that
I put in a jar, a mason jar with ginger
beer and I left it there for like two days
because we were originally and I record yesterday. So I
did that on Wednesday, and I was nervous that it
wasn't going to come out cinnamoni because it didn't change
(07:55):
color or anything. And I was like, well, this was pointless.
And I opened the jar and it just smelled like
Fireball minus alcohol, and so it worked perfectly. It's great.
It's very cinnamoni. The apple cider is great. The caramel
is just all makes it. It's perfect. I love it. It's
so good.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
I think it would actually be kind of tasty warm.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
I was thinking that too. Yeah, I thought about I
don't know how to heat ginger beer.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
I don't if I was the bubbles, but if I
did the actual like Fireball version, probably I feel like
I would do warm.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
I feel like that would be good warm. But yeah,
this is really great though.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
My friends did that for a Christmas party. It was
like a warm applesider punch with Fireball and like sliced apples,
and it was really good. That was the last time
I drank Fireball.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Enough said fun party. Before we get into the episode,
I want to warn you that ninety five percent if
the information in this story comes from one source, and
the other five percent seems like a combination of the
game of Telephone and urban legends that spun off of Truevans.
(09:13):
The main source is a book written by an eighteen
hundred's actor named Walter Hubble, who claims that this story
is a true account of facts and that he and
the others in this story experience these things. But he
tells you so many times in the book that it's
true that it makes you think it's not true, Like, dude,
(09:36):
you're overcompensating here, Like, why do you have to tell
me eighteen thousand times that this is real? One should
be good? He literally writ a like a notarized paper
saying everything I said is true? And I'm like, what
are you over compensating for? Broll that and like, I.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Don't know of notarizing a piece of paper makes whatever
you're writ saying true, Like I don't think that's how
that thinks. So yeah, okay, okay, if it did, I
would be right about a lot of things.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
All right. So I'm going to tell the story his
way first, and then use the other five percent of
my source material and my own speculation to finish off
the episode, So here we go. The story starts in
a two story cottage style home on Princess Street in Amherst, Nova, Scotia,
in August of eighteen seventy eight. The homeowners, Daniel and
(10:39):
Olive Teed, lived with six others. They had two young sons,
Daniel's brother lived with them, and all OF's three younger
siblings lived with them as well. Olive's mother had died
shortly after giving birth to the youngest sibling, Esther Cox,
and their fall left the kids with their grandmother shortly after,
(11:02):
not wanting to be a single father. While Esther was
just a teenager, her grandmother passed away, and so she
and all of the siblings moved in with Olive and
her husband Daniel. Esther's closest sibling was Jane, who went
by Jenny, and they shared a bedroom in the home.
When the two of them were described in the book,
(11:24):
they seemed to be complete opposites. Jenny was described as
a pretty and someone that every man wanted to court,
while also having the job, which wasn't the norm for
a seventeen I'm sorry, eighteen seventy eight women quote. She
was a village bell and always had a host of admirers,
(11:45):
not of the opposite sex alone, but even among the ladies.
Oh wow, she was basically perfect.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Yeah, fucking smoke show all right.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Esther, on the other hand, was described as quote low
in stature and they're inclined to be stout, with a
very earnest expression which seemed to say, why do you
look at me? I cannot help being unlike other people,
and an indescribable appearance of rugged honesty end quote that
(12:15):
is that's rough, Honestly, I cannot tell it. Really, what
are you even trying to say?
Speaker 1 (12:24):
I don't know, are judging her? And she's just like,
what the fuck are you looking at?
Speaker 2 (12:28):
That's just moxactly look so based on other sources that
basically said she was a very independent woman and boasted
it proudly, I think this is supposed to be an
insult to a eighteen seventy eight woman. I think they're
alluding to she'll be a spinster one day and never
get married because she's too stubborn to do what she's
told if she doesn't want to. I mean, I got
(12:50):
a right like I would have kind of inspect her,
go esther.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Back in the day, I would have been. I'm not
marrying somebody.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Fifty two year old man with a disgusting I'm fourteen.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
If we made it long enough to not be burned
at the stake, true old spinster. So I relate. I
can relate.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Yeah, she was extremely helpful in the house and in
the neighborhood as a caretaker of the home and a
friend of the children of the community, so she's a
good person. Esther, at nineteen years old, is the main
character of this story. On September fourth, eighteen seventy eight,
Jenny went up to her bed in her room where
(13:33):
Esther was already lying down. They shared a bed. They
shared a room, it's a small house. Just as Jenny
started to fall asleep, Esther kind of shot up at
a bed, screaming that she felt a mouse in bed
with them. Jenny was jolted awake and lighted the lantern
to help her look for it. The sheets were not
(13:55):
moving anymore, so Jenny assumed the mouse was trapped in
the layers of the hay mattress and that it couldn't
possibly get out and hurt them, so they just went
back to bed. It's eighteen seventy eight. The mattress is
made of hay. There's nice.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Yeah again the next day, I would not survive.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
The next night, as soon as the girls put out
the light and tried to sleep, they heard a noise again,
this time under the bed. Es lighted the lamp and
asked her sister to help her kill this mouse. The
rattling or scurrying noise was coming from a box of
sewing materials that was under the bed, so Esther pulled
it out. But when she did, they heard why did
(14:40):
I write? They heard? When she did, they saw the
box leap suddenly out of her hands and into the
air a foot before falling back onto the ground. Not
believing her eyes, Jenny grabbed the box and placed it
on the floor in the middle of the room, only
to see it do the same thing, jump up about
(15:01):
a foot into the air all on his own. At this,
both girls screamed in fright, causing Daniel teed Patriarch to
come into their room and see what was going on.
When they explained it to him, he laughed a little,
thinking they were pranking him, but when he noticed they
(15:23):
weren't joking, he was mad that he was woken up,
and he called them crazy and told them to go
back to bed. The next night, Esther went to bed early,
feeling feverish. Around ten pm, Jenny came up to bed,
but was once again startled up by her sister. Esther
jumped out of bed, taking all the blankets with her,
and began screaming, quote, my god, what is the matter
(15:47):
with me? I'm dying? End quote. Jenny lighted the lamp
and saw Esther standing in the middle of the room,
gripping the back of a chair with so much force
that her nails were into the wood. Face, bright red
eyes about to pop out of their sockets, and hair
(16:07):
standing straight up like static.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
What this has escalated quickly from mice, I tell you.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
The other adults of the house, all of Daniel, the
brother or the brother in law, all came into the room,
and Esther yelled that she felt like she was about
to burst, and then Daniel remarked about how she looked
like she was swelling and was hot as fire to
the touch. Esther exclaimed quote, I am swelling up and
(16:39):
shall certainly burst. I know I shall end quote. She
began screaming in pain and grinding her teeth as the family,
they say, watched her swell up more and more.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Sounds like a scene from Willy Wonka, and I'm not.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Exactly Danielle remarked about how she looked like she was swelling.
She was, oh, wait, I'm swelling up, and I shall
certainly burst. I know, I shall. She began screaming and
pain grinding her teeth. They watched her swell up more
and more, and then suddenly, somewhere across the home, they
heard a loud, thunderous bang. Esther was suddenly in bed,
(17:22):
but everyone else was shocked still by the loud noise,
except Olive, who exclaimed that she believed the house was
struck by lightning, and she ran off to check on
her children. The children were fine, and there was not
a single rain cloud in the sky to have produced
lightning or thunder. But three more loud bangs shook the
room where Esther was lying in pain, and as soon
(17:45):
as those bangs ended, Esther became peaceful, calm, tired, and
fell right to sleep like nothing ever happened. The next morning,
Esther was feeling normal. She ate helped around the house
as usual. At dinner, the whole family decided that they're
not going to talk about the weird bangs anyone because
they didn't know what they were and they didn't want
anyone else to worry. And also, it's kind of weird,
(18:07):
so let's just not talk about it. Ignore it, it'll
go away. Four nights later, a similar event transpired in
the room of Esther and Jenny. Jenny tried to convince
Esther to sleep it off, ignore it, maybe it'll go away.
But as they lay there, the blankets were suddenly ripped
off of them by some unseen force tossed into the
corner of the room. Both girls screamed and Jenny fainted.
(18:31):
Then the other four adults entered the room again. Both
girls were still lying in bed es. They're swelling up,
Jenny pale and limp having fainted. Olive tried to cover
her quote unquote exposed sisters with the blankets from the
corner of the room, but when she did, they immediately
flew off the bed again, and a pillow went with them,
(18:52):
hitting John teed brother in law right in the face
and causing him to run out of the room in fear.
I mean fair, fair, but also I want you to
remember this for later. Olive tried to cover her exposed
sisters quote unquote exposed. Uh, and then a pillow hit
John T'd right in the face and he had to leave. Okay,
(19:15):
So the three remaining adults replaced the blankets again and
sat on the edges so they couldn't be pulled away
a third time. Esther continued to swell until three loud
thunderous bangs which shook the whole room sounded again, and
then she immediately looked like herself again, healthy and peaceful,
and fell right to sleep. And the next morning the
(19:38):
family decided to call in a professional doctor. Carrit laughed
at the information given to him, claiming nothing would happen
if he was there, which would prove the girls were
just playing a prank. He decided I should have been called,
but that's just not yet. He decided to come and
basically watch the girls sleep that night. Eh, I know, right,
(20:00):
this whole.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Thing is like ugh h eighteen hundreds of it all.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
His first inspection of Esther, who was just lying in bed,
not swelling or in pain, yet, concluded that Esther was
suffering from nervous excitement and had quote evidently received a
tremendous shock of some kind end quote pun probably not intended,
but I liked it tremendous shock. Then a moment later,
(20:28):
the pillow from under Esther's head was pulled out, and
then it levitated there for a moment and was put
back in its position under her head. John T, the
brother in law, got hit in the face that I
before said if it happened again, he's gonna grab the pillow.
And when it happened again, he did grab the pillow,
but this unseen force was stronger than he was and
(20:51):
yanked it right out of his hands.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
I'd be like, you can have it. I'll just sleep
on the floor. It's fine.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Doctor Curritt looked under the bed but couldn't find anything
that was making noises. Oh, the banging started again. I
skipped that sentence. He couldn't find anything making noises. The
blankets flew off the bed again. Everyone watched, and then
they heard scratching and words were etched into the wall
(21:19):
that read quote Esther Cox, you are mine to kill,
and to quote done done dun.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Like it just started etching into the wall with no
one touching it. No, that is horrifying.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
The blankets went back to their place. A piece of
plaster from the wall came flying towards the doctor turning
a corner, landing at his feet. He picked it up
and placed it on a chair, but then the banging
happened again as usual. After big loud bangs, Esther was
tired and he went to sleep. The next morning, the
(21:55):
doctor was still there. Esther, I think he left and
came back. Maybe he stayed and watched her sleep. I
don't know. The doctor is there. Esther goes into the
cellar to grab something, raced back upstairs and was like,
someone is down there. They're throwing stuff at me. The
doctor went to check nobody was there. Nothing happened. Then
he asked her to come down to the cellar with him,
(22:18):
and this time potatoes were thrown at the two of them.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
I like this on unseen entity, right, what is happening?
Speaker 2 (22:30):
The doctor left eventually came back later with medicine quote
several very powerful sedatives, morphia being one end quote. The
sedatives did not knock us throughout. She felt as if
electricity was running through her, and when the bangs began,
they were louder than ever before. They started in the room,
(22:54):
but traveled to the roof, on the streets, and were
eventually just all around them in the air. The doctor
left that night at midnight, but the sounds would continue.
The whole street heard it that night and the next view.
Sometimes they could even hear the banging in the daytime. Now,
the newspapers started printing stories about the strange, unseen thing
(23:15):
that was terrorizing the teatouse, and the whole town was
talking about it, and for some unknown reason, Esther always
felt relief with those loud bangs. After a month of
feeling this way, feeling pressure, hearing bangs, and then being relieved,
(23:37):
a reverend, doctor Edwin Clay, a Baptist clergyman, came to
visit the teat house to see the wondrous event for himself.
After seeing and hearing all the strange happenings, Reverend Clay
was convinced that this was something out of Esther's control.
His theory that it was. His theory was that it
(24:03):
was being caused by electricity, a subject of intense development
at the time. Technically it had not been actually discovered yet,
it would be discovered the next year. He said, and
preached from that day forward that her nerves had experienced
a shock of some kind. I'm actually unsure if he
(24:23):
meant literally or figuratively, but he said that the shock
mysteriously made her like an electric battery, whereas like I
would like to call it a conduit. This reverend would
say that invisible flashes of lightning were leaving Esther's body
and the bangs were minute peels of thunder violet soreingale
(24:47):
aka Esther Cox. I'd say, so, yeah, I found this
story and was like, what is this ye.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Of this episode?
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Not everyone was in agreement with this theory, though, another reverend,
Reverend Temple, who was the pastor of the church the
Teed family attended, allegedly saw strange happenings as well, but
he never outright agreed with the electricity theory. What he
saw was a bucket of cold water become agitated and
begin to boil when sitting right on the kitchen table.
(25:25):
According to the book, many more people saw the events transpire. Quote.
It became fashionable for even the most exclusive class to
call at the cottage to hear and see the wonders
end quote. Except the book also said that the people
who came would not allow their names to be given,
so we don't actually know if anyone saw and came
or whatever came and saw and this continued for a
(25:50):
few months until December when Esther got diphtheria. Diph Theoria,
by the way, is a sickness of the upper respiratory,
but it's known as a dater's illness, kind of like
how in the modern day we call mono a kissing disease.
You guys do that, right?
Speaker 1 (26:07):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Yeah, so is she dating?
Speaker 1 (26:10):
I don't know. I don't know how the prudish one
in high school got mono.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
But that was me as too. Anyway, she was sick
for two weeks and the power or whatever it was,
completely left her alone. Nothing happened while she was sick.
After that, she went to stay with her other sisters
sorry sister in New Brunswick for another two weeks, and
still there was no swelling, no banging. She was fine,
(26:36):
but when she went back home something different started happening.
She told Jenny one night that she could hear voices
whispering to her telling her that a ghost would set
their house on fire tonight. And then Jenny called in
the rest of the family to warn them, and they
laughed in the girl's face and called them crazy like always,
(26:56):
and then ten lit matches fell from the ceiling all
around the room. What it's just falling from the sky
lit matches. Luckily, the family was able to put them
all out, but that night loud noises starting.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
It's made out of straw. That's a huge right. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
This time the loud noises seemed to be intelligent. Jenny
said that she felt that whoever was whispering could hear them,
and that the bangs were the responses. So the family
and doctor Kurt started to communicate with the power, though
(27:39):
now the bangs were more just like knocks. It would
knock once for no, two for I don't know, and
three for yes. Daniel asked if there would really be
a fire. Three knocks, and just shortly after a dress
was taken down from its hanging place, pulled under the bed,
(27:59):
and set on fire. But again, luckily they put it
right out because they watched it happen in front of
their eyes and they're like, what the fuck. On another occasion,
there was a fire that started in the cellar. That
one got out of hand, but the family, as well
as other neighbors, were able to put out the flames eventually.
Not long after that, one esther explained to her family
(28:21):
that a fire was going to happen again, and that
she could actually see the ghost, a man with glaring
eyes laughing at her. From this day forward, the family
allegedly believed that the thing that was terrorizing their home
was a ghost or a demon, a thing that was
once alive on earth but no longer is. Allegedly it
(28:42):
claimed it had been to hell, and Daniel said that
he couldn't have Esther living in his home anyway with
this threat hanging over them. Esther very much agreed that
she needed to leave. So a neighboring man named John White,
who was very interested in the power that esther.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
His name was John White, though.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
Allowed her to come and stay with him and his family.
For four weeks. She was fine. Everything was normal. Esther
wasn't anxious or scared anymore. She was happy and healthy.
She cooked and cleaned and went to church with this family.
John's wife cared for Esther like she was her own daughter,
and Esther was a great help to the whole house.
(29:27):
But after those initial four weeks, something started to happen again.
As she was scrubbing the floors, her scrubbing brush was
pulled from her hands and disappeared, and then she heard
the voice again screamed for miss White. They looked all
over the house for the brush, and eventually it fell
from the ceiling and hit Hester, hit Esther right on
(29:48):
the head. For the next two weeks, the ghost or
whatever communicated with Esther and John White, much like it
had been doing back at her home. It did parlor tricks,
able to tell how many coins were in visitor's pockets
the dates printed on them. It tapped on the walls
until eventually the ghost or whatever started doing bad things again.
(30:11):
The thing was banging around and starting fires. John White
says he made Esther start coming to work with him
at a saloon because he was scared of what could
happen at his house while he wasn't there. At the saloon,
an axe, as well as the stove door off of
its hinges, flew into the air and crashed onto the ground.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
What the fuck?
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Another time, John White's son's pocket knife flew through the
room and landed in Esther's back, literally stabbing her in
the back with blood on it. Frederick, the son, removed
the knife, literally pulled the knife out of her back,
placed it in his pocket, and then suddenly it was
(30:55):
in her back again, like it disappeared from his pocket
into her back. So then he took it out and
put it in a cash strawer and locked it. For
whatever reason, this made the men in the saloon want
to try an experiment where they put large iron spikes
on Esther's lap so they could see if the ghosts
could move them.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Yeah, I don't why we saw what happened with the
pocket knife. Why are we bringing up sharp objects to
this game.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Eventually, the large iron spikes were thrown off of her
lap twenty feet, but only after they reached an insanely
hot temperature, so hot that no one could touch them.
Poor Esther, Like what the fuck? Furniture all around the saloon,
including large boxes, would move about the place as well,
(31:46):
and so eventually, like this is too fucking much, she
moved back to her other sister's house, you know from
when she moved there after dipteria, and again nothing bad happened.
She's fine there, everything is good. When she returned to Amherst,
she went from there to a farm where she stayed
with another nice family, not John White or the Teeds.
(32:10):
And she stayed at this house in Amherst, this farm
for eight weeks and nothing happened. It seemed like everything
was all over, and so you know, she's like, I'm
good now, I'm better, everything's great. She moves back in
with her sister at the tea house and got a
job at the saloon with John White so she could
(32:30):
move forward with her life. And then it all started
up again during this time, We're unsure exactly what time,
because the book is written by you know, the man
who this section is about. John White had been writing
letters back and forth to the author named Walter Hubble. Walter,
(32:52):
having just finished his acting tour, decided to come and
stay in Nova Scotia for a while so that he
could meet this woman with power now in letters which
I did not see, but I saw other sources write about. Allegedly,
John White and Walter Hubble both wanted money, real dad,
They thought this was a perfect way to make money.
(33:14):
Walter Hubble, however, is like, I only wanted to come
so that I could prove ghosts are and real, but
instead I found out that they are or whatever. So
after just one day with Esther, after hearing all of
the things that he heard from John White, Walter Hubble
took Esther Cox out on a lecture tour. He was
(33:36):
going to show her off to the world and speak
about what was happening to her. After one day, they
completed three lectures in three towns, which have newspaper articles
written for each one, which are included in the book.
The author is not included, and Walter Hubble says, like
eighteen times I did not write these. However, it's twenty
(33:57):
twenty five and I'm pretty sure he did write them.
I'm pretty sure you can google it and and his
name is on it.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
So good try, sir, good try. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
I had it pulled up so I could read them.
They're really long, so I'm not going to do that
right now. Again, the book is free. They're in the book.
Did I say that already? The book is free, It's
in the archives. So basically, what was happening was during
these lectures, nothing would happen on stage, Like he was
(34:30):
trying to say, all of this stuff was going on
with this girl, but nothing happened. She you know, she
couldn't perform or whatever. But then the newspapers would talk
about how just before she went on this, this and
that thing happened, and at the hotel, this this and
that thing happened and this, but nothing ever happened on
stage After the third lecture, the audience was starting to
(34:53):
believe that this was all a fake. They did not
like that Esther couldn't perform on command and that the
power only came out sometimes, and an angry mob started
outside the third lecture hall, with people throwing stones and
bricks at them.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Allegedly rude.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
Feeling unsafe, John White convinced Walter Hubble to bring Esther
Cox back home to Amherst. This is when Walter Hubble
decided that he would stay with the Teed family for
the summer and start to write a book. And he
says that this had nothing to do with the ghost
to the power. He just wasn't ready to leave Nova
Scotia hadn't just gotten there. But of course a lot
(35:32):
more happened after this, things that would help him to
write this veried book. On one occasion, his umbrella was
thrown from one side of the room to another when
no one was near it, only Esther and all of
sitting at the table next to him. Another time, a
large carving knife flew through the kitchen at Esther and
landed on the floor right in front of her.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
God, it wasn't her back.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
I'm just saying his things would continue to be thrown,
chairs pushed all about, hammering, knocking sounds, and things being
thrown seemingly directly at Walter. In the beginning of his stay,
Esther said to him, quote, oh, you will soon get
used to them. I do not think they like you.
Ends quote So Esther's like, hahabitch. The violence around Walter continued.
(36:24):
Here's a quote from the book. Here, While lying on
the sofa in the parlor in the afternoon, several needles
were taken from the knitting in Esther's hands and thrown
at me. A piece of cake little George was eating
was snatched by a ghost from his hand and thrown
at me three times in succession. Dear little fellow. He
(36:48):
cried bitterly about it. The ghosts then undressed him by
tearing his clothes off after unbuttoning them, at which rough
treatment he cried again. I believe he would at times
see them, for on more than one occasion I observed
that he acted as if strangers were present whom he feared.
On this same day, Esther's face was slapped by the
(37:10):
ghosts so that the marks of fingers could be plainly seen,
just exactly as if a human hand had slapped her face.
These slaps could be plainly heard by all present. Also,
by the way, little George is like three years old
and was just stripped by a ghost. So perfect, it's
fucking weird. Yeah, this is just one paragraph of his
(37:32):
experience at the Amherst Haunted House, and it goes on
for pages. But later down the road, Jenny says that
Walter exaggerated a lot in this part of his book,
So I'm going to skip over a lot of these
There were fires and more things being thrown and YadA YadA.
But then we get to the names of the ghosts
(37:52):
that were in the home or attached to Esther. They
used a spirit board and pointed to letters, waiting for
the affirmative knock from the spirits to get these names.
There was a ghost named Maggie Fisher who died at
twelve years Nope, who died twelve years ago at the
age of twenty one. She was described by Esther as
(38:13):
being a pleasant looking young woman who dressed in long,
loose wrapper. She liked to hang from the doorway and
swing back and forth as well as look up and
down the street out the windows. She could speak both
English and Welsh. She was now in hell. This all
(38:33):
just reminds me of the TV show Ghosts. So I'm
just letting you know who the characters are in the story.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
Right, swinging from the doorframe.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
Yes, but she's just fun, She's just having a good time, Okay.
Her sister, Mary Fisher is in the teed house as
well at times. Mary Fisher has been dead for three
years and died at the age of nineteen and looks
similar to her sister. And then there's another ghost named
Bob Nickel, and he allegedly is more like a demon.
(39:04):
He's the fire Fiend. He died when he was sixty
and lived as a shoemaker. His description was quote a
very rough and brutal looking ghost, wearing a scraggy gray
beard and dressed like any common looking dirty tramp.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
And wow, harsh, harsh.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
I mean this man is awful.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
So that's our thor sort of.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
Yeah. There was also a Peter Cox, who was an
uncle to Esther, who had died a long time ago.
He was old, short, thin, with white hair, a smooth face,
and he tried to keep the other ghosts from breaking things.
That's Pete. And then there was a Jane Nichol who
(39:49):
was either a wife or a sister of Bob Nickel,
and an Eliza McNeill, who both of them were just
ordinary looking and war clothes like kitchen women of Nova Scotia.
Soon after learning all of these names, Walter Hubble says
that automatic writing became a power of Esther's, but not
by choice. He said that she was writing a letter
(40:12):
to her sister once when she became possessed by Bob Nicol.
He took over her arm and wrote, go out of Amherst,
you bitch, goddamn your soul to hell, Goddamn Hubble soul
to hell and yours end quote Now important distinction here.
(40:33):
When he wrote god damn your soul to hell, goddamn
Hubble's soul to hell and yours, he spelled soul. So
l E. He's a shoemaker. I don't know if this
means this demon Bob is illiterate, or if he intended
a pun since he's a shoemaker. I like to think
that demons probably have a sense of humor.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
I like to think so too.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
Yes, yeah, like that was on purpose?
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Yeah, that's funny, and shit, it is kind of funny.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
Walter goes on and on about the demon tearing Esther
and Jenny's clothes off in their room at night, throwing
knives and things all throughout the day, setting fires, scratching people,
making items disappear and reappear in other places later. Once
they heard a trumpet playing all day but couldn't find it,
and then eventually discovered it was Bob, and Walter asked
(41:24):
him to let him see it, and so it appeared
from nowhere and fell from the ceiling. Another time, Walter
asked for a match from the ghosts in which he
could light his pipe, and then he was showered with
forty nine matches that fell from the ceiling out of nowhere.
But eventually the violence ramped up so much, fires, knives, forks,
(41:45):
throne so forcefully, forcefully they stuck in the walls that
the landlord of this house told Daniel and olive teed
that they had to kick Esther out or else they're
all going to be kicked out. She's got to do.
So she left. She went to live on that far
with the family she had stayed with, you know, for
eight weeks long ago when everything stopped. Walter said he
(42:05):
tried to talk to the ghosts after she was gone,
but nothing ever knocked back or dropped objects from the
ceiling again. For a while, everything was fine again, es
there was loving life. The power was leaving her alone.
After some time, she started making friends in the neighborhood
who she would leave and go hang out with, but
(42:26):
come back to the farm at night. One day, she
left the farm and right after the barn had caught fire.
The only logical explanation to the police and the people
who owned the farm was that as There set the
fire before she left, and so she was arrested, tried,
(42:46):
and sentenced to four months in jail. Because the courts
did not believe that Bob Nickel the ghost, had done it,
she was only made to serve one month. She was
out on good behavior, and there was no ghostly activity
while she was in jail or ever again. That was
the last of it. Esther went on to marry and
to have children of her own, and stayed out of
(43:08):
the spotlight for the rest of her life. And that
is the end of Walter Hubble's original story, But he
added some stuff in a later edition of his book
after some people started basically talking about him and how
this was all employed to get money. So the biggest
plot hole, I suppose you could call it, and Walter
Hubble's story, is that Esther did experience a trauma that
(43:29):
he decided to leave out of the main story. Now,
for me, this trauma does not mean there was no power,
but for many people, the trauma and the fact that
he left it out screams Esther made this all up.
So four days before the very first fit of power
that Esther experienced, she went on a date with a
man named Bob McNeil. No one will ever truly know
(43:54):
the extent of what happened on this date except Bob
and Esther, But what Esther eventually admitted to was that
he took her on a carriage ride. After driving through town,
he led the horses to go toward the woods and
then stopped there. Then Bob got out of the carriage
and ordered Esther to get out. She thought he was kidding, laughed,
(44:16):
called him crazy, But then Bob pulled out a gun
and pointed it at her and again told her to
get out or else he'd kill her. She again refused,
because Esther doesn't give a fucking shit okay, and in
the distance, another carriage was heard heading their way. Bob
quickly got back into the carriage. Maybe the other carriage
(44:39):
spooked him and forced the horses to speed dangerously back
to Esther's house, where he dropped her off. She was
soaking wet when she got home because it had been
raining on the ride home, but Bob was going too
fast for the top to be let up, so it
was just raining right all over them. That night, she
cried herself to sleep. I never spoke of Bob McNeil again.
(45:02):
Her family just assumed they had a breakup. This was
Esther's trauma. Now here's where we speculate and also dig
into this game of telephone. Firstly, Walter Hubble believed, after
having to confess that he knew this information, that there
was a demon inside of Bob McNeil the X. He
said that Bob McNeil was known around town to have
(45:25):
always been a bad guy, and he used to skin
cats alive as a child. He said that the Teeds
never approved of Esther dating Bob McNeil, but she did
what she wanted anyway. He believed that this demonic thing
inside of Bob McNeil broke off of Bob and reformed
inside of esther as Bob Nickel, possessing her. So weird,
(45:49):
but whatever. The fire starter, Yeah, the fire starter, Bob McNeil,
Bob Nickel, both shoemakers. Oh, I didn't tell you that yet.
So one of the theories is that she was a
lying liar who lied. Skeptics and even some ghost believers,
such as a member of the spr thought that because
(46:11):
the names of the ghosts were what they were, this
was proof that they were fake. Bob McNeil, the guy
who may have caused her trauma, was a similar name
to Bob Nickel that was supposedly a demon tormenting her.
Jane Nicol had the same first name as her sister,
Eliza McNeil had the same last name as the ex boyfriend,
(46:35):
Peter Cox, was a relative. Basically, their claim was that
es There wasn't even clever enough to give random names.
She just wanted attention after a breakup, and she used
names that she already knew to name the ghosts that
were tormenting her the quote unquote ghosts when she was
really tormenting herself. So that's one theory she quote turned
(46:56):
her personal crisis into a public sensation. And the next
theory is that maybe the trauma didn't happen exactly this way.
Speaker 1 (47:04):
Whoa excuse me, I didn't know I could do that. Sorry.
Speaker 2 (47:12):
The next theory is that maybe the trauma didn't happen
exactly this way, and then maybe it was polter geist.
This in a way is the same, except Esther wouldn't
have known she was doing it, so it may have
been her subconscious trying to deal with the trauma with powers.
She didn't know that she could harness Carrie style like Matilda,
(47:33):
Matilda exactly.
Speaker 1 (47:35):
That's violent.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
It's not her fault till right, right, right, It's not
her fault that it was happening. Her body was just
overwhelmed and powerful, and this is how it coped. Some
people believe that more happened than Bob McNeil just pulling
a gun on Esther. So why would he tell her
to get out for no reason and then not even
kill her, Like if he was going to kill her,
(47:57):
he would have just killed her.
Speaker 4 (47:58):
Right.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
Probably he sexually assaulted her, but she didn't want to
admit that part because there's such a stigma around sex
before marriage. At the time, So with the poltergeist theory
in mind, I also wanted to point out that I
get a really bad feeling about Daniel Teed and even
John White. So all those sources say that Bob McNeil
the X was a shoemaker, just like the ghost Nicol
(48:23):
by the way, but one source says that he worked
with Daniel Teat, who was also a shoemaker, and also
that Bob McNeil just continued on about his life. If
I was held at gunpoint by some creep and my
brother in law found out about it and worked with
the creep, there would be some words at the very least,
(48:43):
probably some hands. But there was no report about that.
So maybe Daniel just didn't fucking care. He did call
her crazy on multiple occasions when she was in distress.
Maybe this trauma was just the tipping point for esther
speculation Okay, wild speculation maybe, As there had a bad
(49:04):
life at the Teed house, It's a little strange that
the powers manifested in sexual ways at time, like them
being exposed on the bed or the kid being undressed
by the poultergeist. I didn't mention this before, but in
the book Walter Hubble mentioned that Daniel told him the
(49:27):
quote unquote true nature of the torture that Esther experienced
from the ghost, but that it quote unquote shall remain
nameless here. So seems like he's trying to say sexual
abuse from a ghost or maybe from someone in the home. Yeah,
I'm not blaming Daniel per se. Maybe it was jaun
(49:50):
Ted the one that got hit in the face with
a pillow, you know, like it could have been anybody
in the home. When Esther moved to be with her sister,
she was fine. Also, when she was sick, she was fine.
No one's going to sexually abuse a sick person. That's gross.
I mean, it's fucking grossed sexually abuse anybody, but you
get it. She was fine when she was with her sister,
(50:12):
not accidentally poltergeisting, because she actually felt safe. And then
she came back and it started again. And then she
went to John White's house and was fine for a
while until around the time she started working at the saloon,
where I'm sure gross men hit on her because she
was a woman. Maybe that made her feel unsafe again.
(50:33):
And then when Walter Hubble came around, I don't know
that he was a creep, although he was an actor,
usually they are, but he clearly wanted to make money
off of this, taking her on tour like she was
a museum exhibit. From the first day he met her.
She probably felt unsafe again. Yeah, and when she moved
to the farm, a very safe place, she was good
(50:54):
for a while until she started making friends in town.
Maybe someone in town made her feel unsafe again and boom,
accidental violent soaringaled styled lightning strike. Another theory is that
Esther was crazy, maybe even with some sort of split personality.
(51:16):
This doesn't have to mean it wasn't a carry style
power event. Maybe she was crazy and magical, or maybe
she was a trickster and crazy. Some people think that
she was basically just a pyromaniac who liked attention and
or to start fires, and she eventually learned her lesson
after Jalen moved on. And then the final theory is
(51:37):
sort of all of those combined. So few sources say
that after the carriage ride, Bob McNeil moved away. He
was ashamed or whatever. Maybe he was fired. No one
ever heard from him again. What if Bob McNeil was
a shitty guy he tried to take advantage of Esther,
the stubborn and independent woman, but she wouldn't let him,
(52:00):
so she killed him. She was out in the woods
trying to cover up the body, soaking wet in the rain,
when another carriage came and asked if she needed a
ride and took her home. She made up this story
to make herself feel better, to trick herself and her
family into thinking she didn't do anything bad, and then
her guilt manifested into the Poultergeist. And then again the
(52:23):
unsafeness is what amped up the Poultergeist quote unquote power.
Maybe Esther took her revenge. I don't know, what do
you think it's the ultimate.
Speaker 1 (52:34):
Murder cover up?
Speaker 2 (52:35):
Yeah, poltergeist to cover up a murder.
Speaker 1 (52:39):
I mean that's brilliant, really, that's kind of what I
want to believe. Yeah, because it explains the inconsistencies. But
then also, like since one to ghosts act under our timeline, right,
like if it was a ghost situation, like I mean,
I don't know, I kind of like that howl.
Speaker 2 (53:00):
I I don't know, I don't know how I had
never heard of it. I don't even remember how I
finally heard of it. I think it was like a
random post on Facebook or something, and I.
Speaker 1 (53:09):
Was like, wait a minute, what that's so awesome?
Speaker 2 (53:12):
Super random. Yeah. I don't even know if I think
it was a ghost, because usually poltergeist is related to
usually girls, but teens. Uh. And you know, people believe
that it's just some supernatural hormones basically a ghost, not
like something that died. But like, you don't realize how
(53:34):
much power your brain has, and you don't realize you
can control shit with your brain, even though it's your
subconscious brain. You don't know you're doing it, you know,
like Carrie.
Speaker 1 (53:43):
Yeah, like Magilda.
Speaker 2 (53:45):
Yeah, so I don't know.
Speaker 1 (53:48):
Maybe that's not the first case like that to be attributed, right.
Speaker 2 (53:54):
Maybe there's no ghost involved at all. Maybe it's all yes, sir,
she's powerful. She didn't realize it. I don't know, how
fucking weird.
Speaker 1 (54:05):
That's a great case.
Speaker 2 (54:06):
Yeah. Well, Amherst now has a yearly quote unquote Esterfest.
It's a street party that they do the Halloween. This
year there was live music, vendors, bounce castles, a petting zoo,
and a pie eating contest. I don't actually know why
they call it Esterfest, but at least her name is
living on I believe it deserves too.
Speaker 1 (54:27):
So right, that's whatever awesome, that's surfacet Oh that's cute.
It kind of rolls off the tongue too.
Speaker 2 (54:34):
Yeah, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (54:37):
Well, I'm glad I finally know about it. Let us
know what your guys' thoughts are. Yeah, I like murder
cover up.
Speaker 2 (54:44):
Yeah, accidental, like murder cover purpose, purposely murdered accidentally poltergeistd.
Speaker 1 (54:53):
Yeah, happens to the best of us. I mean, I
don't think that what I have to say today at
the end of this episode is that exciting as an
accidental murder poltergeistie nis. But I will say if you
liked this episode, because I loved it, please go leave
(55:13):
five stars wherever you are listening now. It really is
the best way to spread the word. We will see
you in next week for my episode to be determined
and torn between a couple of things, and in the meantime,
keep its Twisted. Twisted and Uncorked is hosted and produced
by Sierra Zurn and Alisha Watson. If you like the show,
(55:35):
don't forget to leave a five star rating and review
wherever you are listening now. It really is the best
way to spread the word. You can check out all
things twisted on our website Twisted and Uncorked dot com,
and we will see you next Tuesday for a brand
new episode.
Hello, Twisted humans.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Do you find yourself wanting to know more about the
latest murder, conspiracy, cult, or haunting.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Than this is the podcast for you. I'm Alicia and
I'm Sierra and this is.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Twisted and Uncorked. Hello, and welcome to episode to eighteen
of your favorite podcast. Yes, I'm back to this. Today's
story has a few different categories it could easily fall into,
including conspiracy or haunted, but I have chosen to call
(00:35):
it unsolved for reasons that will become apparent, and then
we will speculate wildly. But first, do you have a
fun fact for me?
Speaker 1 (00:45):
I do. I originally was just going to pick from
my random fun fact book, but then a friend of
mine that I work with at the yoga studio came
back from Singapore and I was talking to her about
her trip and she taught me a fun little tidbit
that may not surprise you or may surprise you. We'll see.
(01:11):
So there are these I'm sending it to you on Instagram. Okay,
there are these stickers in the women's bathroom in Singapore.
I'm just going to read it to you. It says,
don't be a peeping tom. You can be arrested one
wrong action a lifetime of regret. Voyeurism carries a jail
(01:33):
term of up to two years, a fine, and or caning.
So they cane people in Singapore if you fuck up there.
And I'm just saying certain crimes. I feel like we
need to bring back caning for what the fuck is
like like beat beating somebody with a cane?
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
So you have to look at the little sticker that
I sent you because it's quite funny.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
I see, yeah, that is quite funny. Also, why is
there a shower in that bathroom?
Speaker 1 (02:05):
I don't know. It also upsets me that there has
to be a sign for that, because that means that
enough incidence has occurred that. But you know, if you're
going to peep on somebody without consent, yeah, you should
be caned for that.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Just SA Yeah there was.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
I think there would be a lot less crime if
we brought back caning.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
There was a kid at the school who went to
alternative school because he took a photo over the stall
of another kid while he was pooping. Thought it was hilarious.
Look what I got hah and guess what he got?
S standard, So don't do that funny.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Don't do that, it's not funny. What is your fun fact?
Speaker 2 (02:46):
My fun fact is the term firesider was almost taken
away from tradition and culture through commercialization. Have you heard
of firesider like as an herbal remedy? No? Okay? So
traditional firesider is made of an onion, horsepradish root, ginger,
(03:07):
cayenne pepper, garlic, and apple cider vinegar, all put into
a jar to ferment for about a month or so
and then strained and mixed with honey and taken daily
in the colder months for immune support when it's harder
to get essential vitamins and antioxidants from foods because the
gardens are frozen. So it's like, you know, an herbal
(03:28):
tincture remedy type thing.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Love it.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
The recipe itself is probably hundreds of years old, but
the term firesider was coined in the seventies by an
herbalist and author named Rosemary Gladstar, just as a fun
thing to call it when sharing the herbal remedy since
it had apple cider, vinegar and spicy herps. In twenty twelve,
the term was trademarked by some company who wanted the
(03:54):
rights to the name and the traditional recipe rbalists got
together in created organizations, one called Tradition Not Trademark and
another called Free Firesider and hopes to gain enough attention
and support to get the trademark decision reversed. And in
twenty nineteen they want a precedent setting case declaring that
(04:16):
firesider cannot be trademarked. As long as you have access
to the ingredients, you have your own little immunity booster
to help yourself and your family through colder months.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
I think, what is actually in a firesider?
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Onion, horse, radish root?
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Does it like? Tell you like the actual like.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Quand so literally you take a jar in it, you
cut up a hole onion, put an onion in there,
cut up some horse rash fruits, stick it in there.
What else did I say? Ginger, cayenne, pepper, garlic, And
then all of that stuff is just in a jar.
And then you pour apple cider vinegar all the way
until everything is covered because applesider vinegar makes things not
(05:01):
go bad. Whittle it on it and you basically bury it.
But you can put it like in a cabinet or
dark cabinet or something and let it ferment. And then
you strain it into a different jar with honey so
that you can actually eat it, because otherwise it would
be disgusting, and you just take a spoonful. I made
it before. It's not good, but it's a good immunity.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
I literally thought you were gonna do taste really good.
I'm like, you're a liar.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
No, it's not. It's not for for tasting, it's for
you know, benefit.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Yeah, I'll stick shots. I think he makes different ones
with ginger and turmeric and cucover and all sorts of ones,
and they actually taste okay.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
So, speaking of firesider, today's episode pairs well with a
drink called a firesider sangria, perfect for the holidays, but
much more palatable than the firesider from before.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
This one is is apple cider, vinegar, I'm sorry, not vinegar,
apple cider, fireball prosecco and caramel. Or for a mocktail version,
steep some cinnamon sticks in ginger beer and then mix
that with applesider and vinegar and caramel. What do you think?
Speaker 1 (06:17):
What did you do?
Speaker 2 (06:17):
How did it turn out? So?
Speaker 1 (06:19):
I made a baby between the two because I hate
I don't hate fireball. That's that's a sad thing to say.
The smell of fireball makes me ill. So I made
it with prosecco. Okay, I'll tell you what I did.
I have caramel, apple cider, prosecco, and ginger beer and
(06:43):
cinnamon in here.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
But what I did is I put everything in it,
and then I topped it with my ginger beer. So
it made a little ginger beer explosion, bringing all of
my caramel and cinnamon to the surface of the bubbles,
and then proceeded to pour all over the side of
my glass. So I sipped it, and now I have
cinnamon all over my face and my cup is sticky.
(07:08):
But it's really I was like, would it be an
episode if I didn't fail in some way with the smell.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
I made my own caramel. Do you want to make caramel? No,
use a can of sweet and condensed milk and boil
it in water until it turns to caramel. That's it.
So you do Yep, I just easy.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
He did up one of those little caramel squares.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Yeah. I made my own camel, and then I did
apple cider, and then I did have cinnamon sticks that
I put in a jar, a mason jar with ginger
beer and I left it there for like two days
because we were originally and I record yesterday. So I
did that on Wednesday, and I was nervous that it
wasn't going to come out cinnamoni because it didn't change
(07:55):
color or anything. And I was like, well, this was pointless.
And I opened the jar and it just smelled like
Fireball minus alcohol, and so it worked perfectly. It's great.
It's very cinnamoni. The apple cider is great. The caramel
is just all makes it. It's perfect. I love it. It's
so good.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
I think it would actually be kind of tasty warm.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
I was thinking that too. Yeah, I thought about I
don't know how to heat ginger beer.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
I don't if I was the bubbles, but if I
did the actual like Fireball version, probably I feel like
I would do warm.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
I feel like that would be good warm. But yeah,
this is really great though.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
My friends did that for a Christmas party. It was
like a warm applesider punch with Fireball and like sliced apples,
and it was really good. That was the last time
I drank Fireball.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Enough said fun party. Before we get into the episode,
I want to warn you that ninety five percent if
the information in this story comes from one source, and
the other five percent seems like a combination of the
game of Telephone and urban legends that spun off of Truevans.
(09:13):
The main source is a book written by an eighteen
hundred's actor named Walter Hubble, who claims that this story
is a true account of facts and that he and
the others in this story experience these things. But he
tells you so many times in the book that it's
true that it makes you think it's not true, Like, dude,
(09:36):
you're overcompensating here, Like, why do you have to tell
me eighteen thousand times that this is real? One should
be good? He literally writ a like a notarized paper
saying everything I said is true? And I'm like, what
are you over compensating for? Broll that and like, I.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Don't know of notarizing a piece of paper makes whatever
you're writ saying true, Like I don't think that's how
that thinks. So yeah, okay, okay, if it did, I
would be right about a lot of things.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
All right. So I'm going to tell the story his
way first, and then use the other five percent of
my source material and my own speculation to finish off
the episode, So here we go. The story starts in
a two story cottage style home on Princess Street in Amherst, Nova, Scotia,
in August of eighteen seventy eight. The homeowners, Daniel and
(10:39):
Olive Teed, lived with six others. They had two young sons,
Daniel's brother lived with them, and all OF's three younger
siblings lived with them as well. Olive's mother had died
shortly after giving birth to the youngest sibling, Esther Cox,
and their fall left the kids with their grandmother shortly after,
(11:02):
not wanting to be a single father. While Esther was
just a teenager, her grandmother passed away, and so she
and all of the siblings moved in with Olive and
her husband Daniel. Esther's closest sibling was Jane, who went
by Jenny, and they shared a bedroom in the home.
When the two of them were described in the book,
(11:24):
they seemed to be complete opposites. Jenny was described as
a pretty and someone that every man wanted to court,
while also having the job, which wasn't the norm for
a seventeen I'm sorry, eighteen seventy eight women quote. She
was a village bell and always had a host of admirers,
(11:45):
not of the opposite sex alone, but even among the ladies.
Oh wow, she was basically perfect.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Yeah, fucking smoke show all right.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Esther, on the other hand, was described as quote low
in stature and they're inclined to be stout, with a
very earnest expression which seemed to say, why do you
look at me? I cannot help being unlike other people,
and an indescribable appearance of rugged honesty end quote that
(12:15):
is that's rough, Honestly, I cannot tell it. Really, what
are you even trying to say?
Speaker 1 (12:24):
I don't know, are judging her? And she's just like,
what the fuck are you looking at?
Speaker 2 (12:28):
That's just moxactly look so based on other sources that
basically said she was a very independent woman and boasted
it proudly, I think this is supposed to be an
insult to a eighteen seventy eight woman. I think they're
alluding to she'll be a spinster one day and never
get married because she's too stubborn to do what she's
told if she doesn't want to. I mean, I got
(12:50):
a right like I would have kind of inspect her,
go esther.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Back in the day, I would have been. I'm not
marrying somebody.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Fifty two year old man with a disgusting I'm fourteen.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
If we made it long enough to not be burned
at the stake, true old spinster. So I relate. I
can relate.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Yeah, she was extremely helpful in the house and in
the neighborhood as a caretaker of the home and a
friend of the children of the community, so she's a
good person. Esther, at nineteen years old, is the main
character of this story. On September fourth, eighteen seventy eight,
Jenny went up to her bed in her room where
(13:33):
Esther was already lying down. They shared a bed. They
shared a room, it's a small house. Just as Jenny
started to fall asleep, Esther kind of shot up at
a bed, screaming that she felt a mouse in bed
with them. Jenny was jolted awake and lighted the lantern
to help her look for it. The sheets were not
(13:55):
moving anymore, so Jenny assumed the mouse was trapped in
the layers of the hay mattress and that it couldn't
possibly get out and hurt them, so they just went
back to bed. It's eighteen seventy eight. The mattress is
made of hay. There's nice.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Yeah again the next day, I would not survive.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
The next night, as soon as the girls put out
the light and tried to sleep, they heard a noise again,
this time under the bed. Es lighted the lamp and
asked her sister to help her kill this mouse. The
rattling or scurrying noise was coming from a box of
sewing materials that was under the bed, so Esther pulled
it out. But when she did, they heard why did
(14:40):
I write? They heard? When she did, they saw the
box leap suddenly out of her hands and into the
air a foot before falling back onto the ground. Not
believing her eyes, Jenny grabbed the box and placed it
on the floor in the middle of the room, only
to see it do the same thing, jump up about
(15:01):
a foot into the air all on his own. At this,
both girls screamed in fright, causing Daniel teed Patriarch to
come into their room and see what was going on.
When they explained it to him, he laughed a little,
thinking they were pranking him, but when he noticed they
(15:23):
weren't joking, he was mad that he was woken up,
and he called them crazy and told them to go
back to bed. The next night, Esther went to bed early,
feeling feverish. Around ten pm, Jenny came up to bed,
but was once again startled up by her sister. Esther
jumped out of bed, taking all the blankets with her,
and began screaming, quote, my god, what is the matter
(15:47):
with me? I'm dying? End quote. Jenny lighted the lamp
and saw Esther standing in the middle of the room,
gripping the back of a chair with so much force
that her nails were into the wood. Face, bright red
eyes about to pop out of their sockets, and hair
(16:07):
standing straight up like static.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
What this has escalated quickly from mice, I tell you.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
The other adults of the house, all of Daniel, the
brother or the brother in law, all came into the room,
and Esther yelled that she felt like she was about
to burst, and then Daniel remarked about how she looked
like she was swelling and was hot as fire to
the touch. Esther exclaimed quote, I am swelling up and
(16:39):
shall certainly burst. I know I shall end quote. She
began screaming in pain and grinding her teeth as the family,
they say, watched her swell up more and more.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Sounds like a scene from Willy Wonka, and I'm not.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Exactly Danielle remarked about how she looked like she was swelling.
She was, oh, wait, I'm swelling up, and I shall
certainly burst. I know, I shall. She began screaming and
pain grinding her teeth. They watched her swell up more
and more, and then suddenly, somewhere across the home, they
heard a loud, thunderous bang. Esther was suddenly in bed,
(17:22):
but everyone else was shocked still by the loud noise,
except Olive, who exclaimed that she believed the house was
struck by lightning, and she ran off to check on
her children. The children were fine, and there was not
a single rain cloud in the sky to have produced
lightning or thunder. But three more loud bangs shook the
room where Esther was lying in pain, and as soon
(17:45):
as those bangs ended, Esther became peaceful, calm, tired, and
fell right to sleep like nothing ever happened. The next morning,
Esther was feeling normal. She ate helped around the house
as usual. At dinner, the whole family decided that they're
not going to talk about the weird bangs anyone because
they didn't know what they were and they didn't want
anyone else to worry. And also, it's kind of weird,
(18:07):
so let's just not talk about it. Ignore it, it'll
go away. Four nights later, a similar event transpired in
the room of Esther and Jenny. Jenny tried to convince
Esther to sleep it off, ignore it, maybe it'll go away.
But as they lay there, the blankets were suddenly ripped
off of them by some unseen force tossed into the
corner of the room. Both girls screamed and Jenny fainted.
(18:31):
Then the other four adults entered the room again. Both
girls were still lying in bed es. They're swelling up,
Jenny pale and limp having fainted. Olive tried to cover
her quote unquote exposed sisters with the blankets from the
corner of the room, but when she did, they immediately
flew off the bed again, and a pillow went with them,
(18:52):
hitting John teed brother in law right in the face
and causing him to run out of the room in fear.
I mean fair, fair, but also I want you to
remember this for later. Olive tried to cover her exposed
sisters quote unquote exposed. Uh, and then a pillow hit
John T'd right in the face and he had to leave. Okay,
(19:15):
So the three remaining adults replaced the blankets again and
sat on the edges so they couldn't be pulled away
a third time. Esther continued to swell until three loud
thunderous bangs which shook the whole room sounded again, and
then she immediately looked like herself again, healthy and peaceful,
and fell right to sleep. And the next morning the
(19:38):
family decided to call in a professional doctor. Carrit laughed
at the information given to him, claiming nothing would happen
if he was there, which would prove the girls were
just playing a prank. He decided I should have been called,
but that's just not yet. He decided to come and
basically watch the girls sleep that night. Eh, I know, right,
(20:00):
this whole.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Thing is like ugh h eighteen hundreds of it all.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
His first inspection of Esther, who was just lying in bed,
not swelling or in pain, yet, concluded that Esther was
suffering from nervous excitement and had quote evidently received a
tremendous shock of some kind end quote pun probably not intended,
but I liked it tremendous shock. Then a moment later,
(20:28):
the pillow from under Esther's head was pulled out, and
then it levitated there for a moment and was put
back in its position under her head. John T, the
brother in law, got hit in the face that I
before said if it happened again, he's gonna grab the pillow.
And when it happened again, he did grab the pillow,
but this unseen force was stronger than he was and
(20:51):
yanked it right out of his hands.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
I'd be like, you can have it. I'll just sleep
on the floor. It's fine.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Doctor Curritt looked under the bed but couldn't find anything
that was making noises. Oh, the banging started again. I
skipped that sentence. He couldn't find anything making noises. The
blankets flew off the bed again. Everyone watched, and then
they heard scratching and words were etched into the wall
(21:19):
that read quote Esther Cox, you are mine to kill,
and to quote done done dun.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Like it just started etching into the wall with no
one touching it. No, that is horrifying.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
The blankets went back to their place. A piece of
plaster from the wall came flying towards the doctor turning
a corner, landing at his feet. He picked it up
and placed it on a chair, but then the banging
happened again as usual. After big loud bangs, Esther was
tired and he went to sleep. The next morning, the
(21:55):
doctor was still there. Esther, I think he left and
came back. Maybe he stayed and watched her sleep. I
don't know. The doctor is there. Esther goes into the
cellar to grab something, raced back upstairs and was like,
someone is down there. They're throwing stuff at me. The
doctor went to check nobody was there. Nothing happened. Then
he asked her to come down to the cellar with him,
(22:18):
and this time potatoes were thrown at the two of them.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
I like this on unseen entity, right, what is happening?
Speaker 2 (22:30):
The doctor left eventually came back later with medicine quote
several very powerful sedatives, morphia being one end quote. The
sedatives did not knock us throughout. She felt as if
electricity was running through her, and when the bangs began,
they were louder than ever before. They started in the room,
(22:54):
but traveled to the roof, on the streets, and were
eventually just all around them in the air. The doctor
left that night at midnight, but the sounds would continue.
The whole street heard it that night and the next view.
Sometimes they could even hear the banging in the daytime. Now,
the newspapers started printing stories about the strange, unseen thing
(23:15):
that was terrorizing the teatouse, and the whole town was
talking about it, and for some unknown reason, Esther always
felt relief with those loud bangs. After a month of
feeling this way, feeling pressure, hearing bangs, and then being relieved,
(23:37):
a reverend, doctor Edwin Clay, a Baptist clergyman, came to
visit the teat house to see the wondrous event for himself.
After seeing and hearing all the strange happenings, Reverend Clay
was convinced that this was something out of Esther's control.
His theory that it was. His theory was that it
(24:03):
was being caused by electricity, a subject of intense development
at the time. Technically it had not been actually discovered yet,
it would be discovered the next year. He said, and
preached from that day forward that her nerves had experienced
a shock of some kind. I'm actually unsure if he
(24:23):
meant literally or figuratively, but he said that the shock
mysteriously made her like an electric battery, whereas like I
would like to call it a conduit. This reverend would
say that invisible flashes of lightning were leaving Esther's body
and the bangs were minute peels of thunder violet soreingale
(24:47):
aka Esther Cox. I'd say, so, yeah, I found this
story and was like, what is this ye.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Of this episode?
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Not everyone was in agreement with this theory, though, another reverend,
Reverend Temple, who was the pastor of the church the
Teed family attended, allegedly saw strange happenings as well, but
he never outright agreed with the electricity theory. What he
saw was a bucket of cold water become agitated and
begin to boil when sitting right on the kitchen table.
(25:25):
According to the book, many more people saw the events transpire. Quote.
It became fashionable for even the most exclusive class to
call at the cottage to hear and see the wonders
end quote. Except the book also said that the people
who came would not allow their names to be given,
so we don't actually know if anyone saw and came
or whatever came and saw and this continued for a
(25:50):
few months until December when Esther got diphtheria. Diph Theoria,
by the way, is a sickness of the upper respiratory,
but it's known as a dater's illness, kind of like
how in the modern day we call mono a kissing disease.
You guys do that, right?
Speaker 1 (26:07):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Yeah, so is she dating?
Speaker 1 (26:10):
I don't know. I don't know how the prudish one
in high school got mono.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
But that was me as too. Anyway, she was sick
for two weeks and the power or whatever it was,
completely left her alone. Nothing happened while she was sick.
After that, she went to stay with her other sisters
sorry sister in New Brunswick for another two weeks, and
still there was no swelling, no banging. She was fine,
(26:36):
but when she went back home something different started happening.
She told Jenny one night that she could hear voices
whispering to her telling her that a ghost would set
their house on fire tonight. And then Jenny called in
the rest of the family to warn them, and they
laughed in the girl's face and called them crazy like always,
(26:56):
and then ten lit matches fell from the ceiling all
around the room. What it's just falling from the sky
lit matches. Luckily, the family was able to put them
all out, but that night loud noises starting.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
It's made out of straw. That's a huge right. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
This time the loud noises seemed to be intelligent. Jenny
said that she felt that whoever was whispering could hear them,
and that the bangs were the responses. So the family
and doctor Kurt started to communicate with the power, though
(27:39):
now the bangs were more just like knocks. It would
knock once for no, two for I don't know, and
three for yes. Daniel asked if there would really be
a fire. Three knocks, and just shortly after a dress
was taken down from its hanging place, pulled under the bed,
(27:59):
and set on fire. But again, luckily they put it
right out because they watched it happen in front of
their eyes and they're like, what the fuck. On another occasion,
there was a fire that started in the cellar. That
one got out of hand, but the family, as well
as other neighbors, were able to put out the flames eventually.
Not long after that, one esther explained to her family
(28:21):
that a fire was going to happen again, and that
she could actually see the ghost, a man with glaring
eyes laughing at her. From this day forward, the family
allegedly believed that the thing that was terrorizing their home
was a ghost or a demon, a thing that was
once alive on earth but no longer is. Allegedly it
(28:42):
claimed it had been to hell, and Daniel said that
he couldn't have Esther living in his home anyway with
this threat hanging over them. Esther very much agreed that
she needed to leave. So a neighboring man named John White,
who was very interested in the power that esther.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
His name was John White, though.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
Allowed her to come and stay with him and his family.
For four weeks. She was fine. Everything was normal. Esther
wasn't anxious or scared anymore. She was happy and healthy.
She cooked and cleaned and went to church with this family.
John's wife cared for Esther like she was her own daughter,
and Esther was a great help to the whole house.
(29:27):
But after those initial four weeks, something started to happen again.
As she was scrubbing the floors, her scrubbing brush was
pulled from her hands and disappeared, and then she heard
the voice again screamed for miss White. They looked all
over the house for the brush, and eventually it fell
from the ceiling and hit Hester, hit Esther right on
(29:48):
the head. For the next two weeks, the ghost or
whatever communicated with Esther and John White, much like it
had been doing back at her home. It did parlor tricks,
able to tell how many coins were in visitor's pockets
the dates printed on them. It tapped on the walls
until eventually the ghost or whatever started doing bad things again.
(30:11):
The thing was banging around and starting fires. John White
says he made Esther start coming to work with him
at a saloon because he was scared of what could
happen at his house while he wasn't there. At the saloon,
an axe, as well as the stove door off of
its hinges, flew into the air and crashed onto the ground.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
What the fuck?
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Another time, John White's son's pocket knife flew through the
room and landed in Esther's back, literally stabbing her in
the back with blood on it. Frederick, the son, removed
the knife, literally pulled the knife out of her back,
placed it in his pocket, and then suddenly it was
(30:55):
in her back again, like it disappeared from his pocket
into her back. So then he took it out and
put it in a cash strawer and locked it. For
whatever reason, this made the men in the saloon want
to try an experiment where they put large iron spikes
on Esther's lap so they could see if the ghosts
could move them.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Yeah, I don't why we saw what happened with the
pocket knife. Why are we bringing up sharp objects to
this game.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Eventually, the large iron spikes were thrown off of her
lap twenty feet, but only after they reached an insanely
hot temperature, so hot that no one could touch them.
Poor Esther, Like what the fuck? Furniture all around the saloon,
including large boxes, would move about the place as well,
(31:46):
and so eventually, like this is too fucking much, she
moved back to her other sister's house, you know from
when she moved there after dipteria, and again nothing bad happened.
She's fine there, everything is good. When she returned to Amherst,
she went from there to a farm where she stayed
with another nice family, not John White or the Teeds.
(32:10):
And she stayed at this house in Amherst, this farm
for eight weeks and nothing happened. It seemed like everything
was all over, and so you know, she's like, I'm
good now, I'm better, everything's great. She moves back in
with her sister at the tea house and got a
job at the saloon with John White so she could
(32:30):
move forward with her life. And then it all started
up again during this time, We're unsure exactly what time,
because the book is written by you know, the man
who this section is about. John White had been writing
letters back and forth to the author named Walter Hubble. Walter,
(32:52):
having just finished his acting tour, decided to come and
stay in Nova Scotia for a while so that he
could meet this woman with power now in letters which
I did not see, but I saw other sources write about. Allegedly,
John White and Walter Hubble both wanted money, real dad,
They thought this was a perfect way to make money.
(33:14):
Walter Hubble, however, is like, I only wanted to come
so that I could prove ghosts are and real, but
instead I found out that they are or whatever. So
after just one day with Esther, after hearing all of
the things that he heard from John White, Walter Hubble
took Esther Cox out on a lecture tour. He was
(33:36):
going to show her off to the world and speak
about what was happening to her. After one day, they
completed three lectures in three towns, which have newspaper articles
written for each one, which are included in the book.
The author is not included, and Walter Hubble says, like
eighteen times I did not write these. However, it's twenty
(33:57):
twenty five and I'm pretty sure he did write them.
I'm pretty sure you can google it and and his
name is on it.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
So good try, sir, good try. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
I had it pulled up so I could read them.
They're really long, so I'm not going to do that
right now. Again, the book is free. They're in the book.
Did I say that already? The book is free, It's
in the archives. So basically, what was happening was during
these lectures, nothing would happen on stage, Like he was
(34:30):
trying to say, all of this stuff was going on
with this girl, but nothing happened. She you know, she
couldn't perform or whatever. But then the newspapers would talk
about how just before she went on this, this and
that thing happened, and at the hotel, this this and
that thing happened and this, but nothing ever happened on
stage After the third lecture, the audience was starting to
(34:53):
believe that this was all a fake. They did not
like that Esther couldn't perform on command and that the
power only came out sometimes, and an angry mob started
outside the third lecture hall, with people throwing stones and
bricks at them.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Allegedly rude.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
Feeling unsafe, John White convinced Walter Hubble to bring Esther
Cox back home to Amherst. This is when Walter Hubble
decided that he would stay with the Teed family for
the summer and start to write a book. And he
says that this had nothing to do with the ghost
to the power. He just wasn't ready to leave Nova
Scotia hadn't just gotten there. But of course a lot
(35:32):
more happened after this, things that would help him to
write this veried book. On one occasion, his umbrella was
thrown from one side of the room to another when
no one was near it, only Esther and all of
sitting at the table next to him. Another time, a
large carving knife flew through the kitchen at Esther and
landed on the floor right in front of her.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
God, it wasn't her back.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
I'm just saying his things would continue to be thrown,
chairs pushed all about, hammering, knocking sounds, and things being
thrown seemingly directly at Walter. In the beginning of his stay,
Esther said to him, quote, oh, you will soon get
used to them. I do not think they like you.
Ends quote So Esther's like, hahabitch. The violence around Walter continued.
(36:24):
Here's a quote from the book. Here, While lying on
the sofa in the parlor in the afternoon, several needles
were taken from the knitting in Esther's hands and thrown
at me. A piece of cake little George was eating
was snatched by a ghost from his hand and thrown
at me three times in succession. Dear little fellow. He
(36:48):
cried bitterly about it. The ghosts then undressed him by
tearing his clothes off after unbuttoning them, at which rough
treatment he cried again. I believe he would at times
see them, for on more than one occasion I observed
that he acted as if strangers were present whom he feared.
On this same day, Esther's face was slapped by the
(37:10):
ghosts so that the marks of fingers could be plainly seen,
just exactly as if a human hand had slapped her face.
These slaps could be plainly heard by all present. Also,
by the way, little George is like three years old
and was just stripped by a ghost. So perfect, it's
fucking weird. Yeah, this is just one paragraph of his
(37:32):
experience at the Amherst Haunted House, and it goes on
for pages. But later down the road, Jenny says that
Walter exaggerated a lot in this part of his book,
So I'm going to skip over a lot of these
There were fires and more things being thrown and YadA YadA.
But then we get to the names of the ghosts
(37:52):
that were in the home or attached to Esther. They
used a spirit board and pointed to letters, waiting for
the affirmative knock from the spirits to get these names.
There was a ghost named Maggie Fisher who died at
twelve years Nope, who died twelve years ago at the
age of twenty one. She was described by Esther as
(38:13):
being a pleasant looking young woman who dressed in long,
loose wrapper. She liked to hang from the doorway and
swing back and forth as well as look up and
down the street out the windows. She could speak both
English and Welsh. She was now in hell. This all
(38:33):
just reminds me of the TV show Ghosts. So I'm
just letting you know who the characters are in the story.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
Right, swinging from the doorframe.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
Yes, but she's just fun, She's just having a good time, Okay.
Her sister, Mary Fisher is in the teed house as
well at times. Mary Fisher has been dead for three
years and died at the age of nineteen and looks
similar to her sister. And then there's another ghost named
Bob Nickel, and he allegedly is more like a demon.
(39:04):
He's the fire Fiend. He died when he was sixty
and lived as a shoemaker. His description was quote a
very rough and brutal looking ghost, wearing a scraggy gray
beard and dressed like any common looking dirty tramp.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
And wow, harsh, harsh.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
I mean this man is awful.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
So that's our thor sort of.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
Yeah. There was also a Peter Cox, who was an
uncle to Esther, who had died a long time ago.
He was old, short, thin, with white hair, a smooth face,
and he tried to keep the other ghosts from breaking things.
That's Pete. And then there was a Jane Nichol who
(39:49):
was either a wife or a sister of Bob Nickel,
and an Eliza McNeill, who both of them were just
ordinary looking and war clothes like kitchen women of Nova Scotia.
Soon after learning all of these names, Walter Hubble says
that automatic writing became a power of Esther's, but not
by choice. He said that she was writing a letter
(40:12):
to her sister once when she became possessed by Bob Nicol.
He took over her arm and wrote, go out of Amherst,
you bitch, goddamn your soul to hell, Goddamn Hubble soul
to hell and yours end quote Now important distinction here.
(40:33):
When he wrote god damn your soul to hell, goddamn
Hubble's soul to hell and yours, he spelled soul. So
l E. He's a shoemaker. I don't know if this
means this demon Bob is illiterate, or if he intended
a pun since he's a shoemaker. I like to think
that demons probably have a sense of humor.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
I like to think so too.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
Yes, yeah, like that was on purpose?
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Yeah, that's funny, and shit, it is kind of funny.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
Walter goes on and on about the demon tearing Esther
and Jenny's clothes off in their room at night, throwing
knives and things all throughout the day, setting fires, scratching people,
making items disappear and reappear in other places later. Once
they heard a trumpet playing all day but couldn't find it,
and then eventually discovered it was Bob, and Walter asked
(41:24):
him to let him see it, and so it appeared
from nowhere and fell from the ceiling. Another time, Walter
asked for a match from the ghosts in which he
could light his pipe, and then he was showered with
forty nine matches that fell from the ceiling out of nowhere.
But eventually the violence ramped up so much, fires, knives, forks,
(41:45):
throne so forcefully, forcefully they stuck in the walls that
the landlord of this house told Daniel and olive teed
that they had to kick Esther out or else they're
all going to be kicked out. She's got to do.
So she left. She went to live on that far
with the family she had stayed with, you know, for
eight weeks long ago when everything stopped. Walter said he
(42:05):
tried to talk to the ghosts after she was gone,
but nothing ever knocked back or dropped objects from the
ceiling again. For a while, everything was fine again, es
there was loving life. The power was leaving her alone.
After some time, she started making friends in the neighborhood
who she would leave and go hang out with, but
(42:26):
come back to the farm at night. One day, she
left the farm and right after the barn had caught fire.
The only logical explanation to the police and the people
who owned the farm was that as There set the
fire before she left, and so she was arrested, tried,
(42:46):
and sentenced to four months in jail. Because the courts
did not believe that Bob Nickel the ghost, had done it,
she was only made to serve one month. She was
out on good behavior, and there was no ghostly activity
while she was in jail or ever again. That was
the last of it. Esther went on to marry and
to have children of her own, and stayed out of
(43:08):
the spotlight for the rest of her life. And that
is the end of Walter Hubble's original story, But he
added some stuff in a later edition of his book
after some people started basically talking about him and how
this was all employed to get money. So the biggest
plot hole, I suppose you could call it, and Walter
Hubble's story, is that Esther did experience a trauma that
(43:29):
he decided to leave out of the main story. Now,
for me, this trauma does not mean there was no power,
but for many people, the trauma and the fact that
he left it out screams Esther made this all up.
So four days before the very first fit of power
that Esther experienced, she went on a date with a
man named Bob McNeil. No one will ever truly know
(43:54):
the extent of what happened on this date except Bob
and Esther, But what Esther eventually admitted to was that
he took her on a carriage ride. After driving through town,
he led the horses to go toward the woods and
then stopped there. Then Bob got out of the carriage
and ordered Esther to get out. She thought he was kidding, laughed,
(44:16):
called him crazy, But then Bob pulled out a gun
and pointed it at her and again told her to
get out or else he'd kill her. She again refused,
because Esther doesn't give a fucking shit okay, and in
the distance, another carriage was heard heading their way. Bob
quickly got back into the carriage. Maybe the other carriage
(44:39):
spooked him and forced the horses to speed dangerously back
to Esther's house, where he dropped her off. She was
soaking wet when she got home because it had been
raining on the ride home, but Bob was going too
fast for the top to be let up, so it
was just raining right all over them. That night, she
cried herself to sleep. I never spoke of Bob McNeil again.
(45:02):
Her family just assumed they had a breakup. This was
Esther's trauma. Now here's where we speculate and also dig
into this game of telephone. Firstly, Walter Hubble believed, after
having to confess that he knew this information, that there
was a demon inside of Bob McNeil the X. He
said that Bob McNeil was known around town to have
(45:25):
always been a bad guy, and he used to skin
cats alive as a child. He said that the Teeds
never approved of Esther dating Bob McNeil, but she did
what she wanted anyway. He believed that this demonic thing
inside of Bob McNeil broke off of Bob and reformed
inside of esther as Bob Nickel, possessing her. So weird,
(45:49):
but whatever. The fire starter, Yeah, the fire starter, Bob McNeil,
Bob Nickel, both shoemakers. Oh, I didn't tell you that yet.
So one of the theories is that she was a
lying liar who lied. Skeptics and even some ghost believers,
such as a member of the spr thought that because
(46:11):
the names of the ghosts were what they were, this
was proof that they were fake. Bob McNeil, the guy
who may have caused her trauma, was a similar name
to Bob Nickel that was supposedly a demon tormenting her.
Jane Nicol had the same first name as her sister,
Eliza McNeil had the same last name as the ex boyfriend,
(46:35):
Peter Cox, was a relative. Basically, their claim was that
es There wasn't even clever enough to give random names.
She just wanted attention after a breakup, and she used
names that she already knew to name the ghosts that
were tormenting her the quote unquote ghosts when she was
really tormenting herself. So that's one theory she quote turned
(46:56):
her personal crisis into a public sensation. And the next
theory is that maybe the trauma didn't happen exactly this way.
Speaker 1 (47:04):
Whoa excuse me, I didn't know I could do that. Sorry.
Speaker 2 (47:12):
The next theory is that maybe the trauma didn't happen
exactly this way, and then maybe it was polter geist.
This in a way is the same, except Esther wouldn't
have known she was doing it, so it may have
been her subconscious trying to deal with the trauma with powers.
She didn't know that she could harness Carrie style like Matilda,
(47:33):
Matilda exactly.
Speaker 1 (47:35):
That's violent.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
It's not her fault till right, right, right, It's not
her fault that it was happening. Her body was just
overwhelmed and powerful, and this is how it coped. Some
people believe that more happened than Bob McNeil just pulling
a gun on Esther. So why would he tell her
to get out for no reason and then not even
kill her, Like if he was going to kill her,
(47:57):
he would have just killed her.
Speaker 4 (47:58):
Right.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
Probably he sexually assaulted her, but she didn't want to
admit that part because there's such a stigma around sex
before marriage. At the time, So with the poltergeist theory
in mind, I also wanted to point out that I
get a really bad feeling about Daniel Teed and even
John White. So all those sources say that Bob McNeil
the X was a shoemaker, just like the ghost Nicol
(48:23):
by the way, but one source says that he worked
with Daniel Teat, who was also a shoemaker, and also
that Bob McNeil just continued on about his life. If
I was held at gunpoint by some creep and my
brother in law found out about it and worked with
the creep, there would be some words at the very least,
(48:43):
probably some hands. But there was no report about that.
So maybe Daniel just didn't fucking care. He did call
her crazy on multiple occasions when she was in distress.
Maybe this trauma was just the tipping point for esther
speculation Okay, wild speculation maybe, As there had a bad
(49:04):
life at the Teed house, It's a little strange that
the powers manifested in sexual ways at time, like them
being exposed on the bed or the kid being undressed
by the poultergeist. I didn't mention this before, but in
the book Walter Hubble mentioned that Daniel told him the
(49:27):
quote unquote true nature of the torture that Esther experienced
from the ghost, but that it quote unquote shall remain
nameless here. So seems like he's trying to say sexual
abuse from a ghost or maybe from someone in the home. Yeah,
I'm not blaming Daniel per se. Maybe it was jaun
(49:50):
Ted the one that got hit in the face with
a pillow, you know, like it could have been anybody
in the home. When Esther moved to be with her sister,
she was fine. Also, when she was sick, she was fine.
No one's going to sexually abuse a sick person. That's gross.
I mean, it's fucking grossed sexually abuse anybody, but you
get it. She was fine when she was with her sister,
(50:12):
not accidentally poltergeisting, because she actually felt safe. And then
she came back and it started again. And then she
went to John White's house and was fine for a
while until around the time she started working at the saloon,
where I'm sure gross men hit on her because she
was a woman. Maybe that made her feel unsafe again.
(50:33):
And then when Walter Hubble came around, I don't know
that he was a creep, although he was an actor,
usually they are, but he clearly wanted to make money
off of this, taking her on tour like she was
a museum exhibit. From the first day he met her.
She probably felt unsafe again. Yeah, and when she moved
to the farm, a very safe place, she was good
(50:54):
for a while until she started making friends in town.
Maybe someone in town made her feel unsafe again and boom,
accidental violent soaringaled styled lightning strike. Another theory is that
Esther was crazy, maybe even with some sort of split personality.
(51:16):
This doesn't have to mean it wasn't a carry style
power event. Maybe she was crazy and magical, or maybe
she was a trickster and crazy. Some people think that
she was basically just a pyromaniac who liked attention and
or to start fires, and she eventually learned her lesson
after Jalen moved on. And then the final theory is
(51:37):
sort of all of those combined. So few sources say
that after the carriage ride, Bob McNeil moved away. He
was ashamed or whatever. Maybe he was fired. No one
ever heard from him again. What if Bob McNeil was
a shitty guy he tried to take advantage of Esther,
the stubborn and independent woman, but she wouldn't let him,
(52:00):
so she killed him. She was out in the woods
trying to cover up the body, soaking wet in the rain,
when another carriage came and asked if she needed a
ride and took her home. She made up this story
to make herself feel better, to trick herself and her
family into thinking she didn't do anything bad, and then
her guilt manifested into the Poultergeist. And then again the
(52:23):
unsafeness is what amped up the Poultergeist quote unquote power.
Maybe Esther took her revenge. I don't know, what do
you think it's the ultimate.
Speaker 1 (52:34):
Murder cover up?
Speaker 2 (52:35):
Yeah, poltergeist to cover up a murder.
Speaker 1 (52:39):
I mean that's brilliant, really, that's kind of what I
want to believe. Yeah, because it explains the inconsistencies. But
then also, like since one to ghosts act under our timeline, right,
like if it was a ghost situation, like I mean,
I don't know, I kind of like that howl.
Speaker 2 (53:00):
I I don't know, I don't know how I had
never heard of it. I don't even remember how I
finally heard of it. I think it was like a
random post on Facebook or something, and I.
Speaker 1 (53:09):
Was like, wait a minute, what that's so awesome?
Speaker 2 (53:12):
Super random. Yeah. I don't even know if I think
it was a ghost, because usually poltergeist is related to
usually girls, but teens. Uh. And you know, people believe
that it's just some supernatural hormones basically a ghost, not
like something that died. But like, you don't realize how
(53:34):
much power your brain has, and you don't realize you
can control shit with your brain, even though it's your
subconscious brain. You don't know you're doing it, you know,
like Carrie.
Speaker 1 (53:43):
Yeah, like Magilda.
Speaker 2 (53:45):
Yeah, so I don't know.
Speaker 1 (53:48):
Maybe that's not the first case like that to be attributed, right.
Speaker 2 (53:54):
Maybe there's no ghost involved at all. Maybe it's all yes, sir,
she's powerful. She didn't realize it. I don't know, how
fucking weird.
Speaker 1 (54:05):
That's a great case.
Speaker 2 (54:06):
Yeah. Well, Amherst now has a yearly quote unquote Esterfest.
It's a street party that they do the Halloween. This
year there was live music, vendors, bounce castles, a petting zoo,
and a pie eating contest. I don't actually know why
they call it Esterfest, but at least her name is
living on I believe it deserves too.
Speaker 1 (54:27):
So right, that's whatever awesome, that's surfacet Oh that's cute.
It kind of rolls off the tongue too.
Speaker 2 (54:34):
Yeah, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (54:37):
Well, I'm glad I finally know about it. Let us
know what your guys' thoughts are. Yeah, I like murder
cover up.
Speaker 2 (54:44):
Yeah, accidental, like murder cover purpose, purposely murdered accidentally poltergeistd.
Speaker 1 (54:53):
Yeah, happens to the best of us. I mean, I
don't think that what I have to say today at
the end of this episode is that exciting as an
accidental murder poltergeistie nis. But I will say if you
liked this episode, because I loved it, please go leave
(55:13):
five stars wherever you are listening now. It really is
the best way to spread the word. We will see
you in next week for my episode to be determined
and torn between a couple of things, and in the meantime,
keep its Twisted. Twisted and Uncorked is hosted and produced
by Sierra Zurn and Alisha Watson. If you like the show,
(55:35):
don't forget to leave a five star rating and review
wherever you are listening now. It really is the best
way to spread the word. You can check out all
things twisted on our website Twisted and Uncorked dot com,
and we will see you next Tuesday for a brand
new episode.
Popular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.