Latest / Hidden Creatures: Stories, Sightings, and the Search for What Hides in the Dark / Episode 9: Hauted Hatchie Tours with Sandy Emmons

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Episode 9: Hauted Hatchie Tours with Sandy Emmons · Hidden Creatures: Stories, Sightings, and the Search for What Hides in the Dark

0:17
SPEAKER_05: Welcome to Hidden Creatures.
0:19
SPEAKER_05: Stories sightings in the search for what hides in the dark.
0:24
SPEAKER_04: Join us as we explore mysterious encounters, legendary creatures, and unexplained stories from around the world.
0:31
SPEAKER_05: From eyewitness accounts to local folk.
0:43
SPEAKER_05: Something is out there.
0:46
SPEAKER_05: Waiting.
0:47
SPEAKER_05: Let's step into the shadows.
0:52
SPEAKER_05: This is Hidden Creatures.
0:54
SPEAKER_05: Let's begin.
0:59
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Hidden Creatures Podcast.
1:01
SPEAKER_02: I'm your host, Lori Chen, and with me are my co-hosts Kristen Jones and Richard Pike.
1:06
SPEAKER_02: Hi.
1:07
SPEAKER_05: Hello.
1:08
SPEAKER_01: And we are thrilled to speak with Sandy Emmons of the Haunted Hachi Tours in Waxahi, Texas, where she leads an immersive, guided paranormal activity tour that ends with a real investigation.
1:20
SPEAKER_02: Sandy is a paranormal researcher and historian with over 20 years of experience.
1:24
SPEAKER_02: She blends Gothic Victorian charm with authentic ghost hunting methods, armed with plenty of tools to investigate a variety of haunted local locations.
1:35
SPEAKER_01: Welcome, Sandy.
1:37
SPEAKER_01: Well, I should say hello.
1:39
SPEAKER_01: Hello, Lily.
1:40
SPEAKER_01: Hi, Richard.
1:41
SPEAKER_01: My husband and I, we have been doing this since 2008.
1:46
SPEAKER_01: Actually, we've been doing it a lot longer than that.
1:48
SPEAKER_01: But in 2008, I was working at Freestone County Historical Museum.
1:54
SPEAKER_01: Not the museum I work at now, because I work at Ellis County Museum.
1:57
SPEAKER_01: But back then it was Freestone County Museum.
2:00
SPEAKER_01: And a lot of strange things went on there.
2:03
SPEAKER_01: I mean, really strange.
2:05
SPEAKER_01: And nobody told me that that was a haunted museum when I came to work there.
2:09
SPEAKER_01: All the board of directors, they knew.
2:11
SPEAKER_01: And so one night when we were leaving, the first board meeting I'd ever been to, it was a whole complex.
2:17
SPEAKER_01: Well, it had five buildings at the time that were like a whole block in downtown Fairfield.
2:22
SPEAKER_01: So it looks like it did back in the 1800s.
2:26
SPEAKER_01: So I have a funny feeling that anybody that died or passed away maybe in the 1800s kind of recognized that block and they all just came to stay there.
2:37
SPEAKER_01: But the funny thing is, I was leaving the board meeting.
2:41
SPEAKER_01: It was in our main building.
2:42
SPEAKER_01: And as we were leaving, I looked over and there was an 1800th jail that was on the premises.
2:48
SPEAKER_01: And I look over and there's a light on in the jail.
2:51
SPEAKER_01: Nobody had been in the jail since I had worked there, and I'd been there about a week, I think, or two weeks.
2:56
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, hey, there's a light on over in that jail.
3:00
SPEAKER_01: And the board members said, Yeah, hey, good night.
3:03
SPEAKER_01: We're taking off.
3:04
SPEAKER_01: And they just took off.
3:05
SPEAKER_01: So I had to go back in.
3:06
SPEAKER_01: I got a key and I went back and I turned the light off.
3:11
SPEAKER_01: So we knew something was going on as the days went by.
3:14
SPEAKER_01: We I'd hear talking in the main area where I was working.
3:19
SPEAKER_01: You'd hear footsteps.
3:21
SPEAKER_01: People that came in would feel things.
3:24
SPEAKER_01: And so it eventually led to me thinking, hey, maybe we should have an investigation at this location.
3:30
SPEAKER_01: And I wasn't really a paranormal investigator per se.
3:33
SPEAKER_01: I had always gone to haunted history tours and things like that.
3:36
SPEAKER_01: I always loved the paranormal.
3:38
SPEAKER_01: And I lived in a home in Houston that was actually on the haunted list for Houston.
3:44
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know that either when I bought it.
3:46
SPEAKER_01: It was my first house that I bought.
3:48
SPEAKER_01: So I called up a paranormal team and I said, hey, could you maybe come in and investigate this location?
3:54
SPEAKER_01: Of course, they were happy to do so.
3:56
SPEAKER_01: So they came in and of course I went on the investigation with them and I fell in love with it.
4:01
SPEAKER_01: So fast forward though to how I created this tour, I decided that we had been everywhere.
4:08
SPEAKER_01: We have been in tours in Arizona, like at the Bird Cage Theater.
4:13
SPEAKER_01: We've been, you know, to the Stanley Hotel and Estes Park.
4:16
SPEAKER_01: We've been to Gettysburg and Eureka Springs and all of these other places.
4:21
SPEAKER_01: And generally what happens on a lot of tours is you go out, you learn the history and the hauntings, and that's great.
4:28
SPEAKER_01: And it's a fun time, and I really love learning the history, but I really wanted to delve in more on the paranormal side.
4:34
SPEAKER_01: And I felt like people that go on the history tours and the haunted history tours, I felt like they would want something deeper also.
4:42
SPEAKER_01: I've had this idea for many, many years to combine the two.
4:46
SPEAKER_01: And so we actually did our first one that's a combination.
4:50
SPEAKER_01: Because, like I said, I've been leading paranormal investigations and public investigations since 2008.
4:56
SPEAKER_01: But this is the first time I've actually combined the two together, which was a you know a paranormal tour of the downtown area of Waxahatchie, but using equipment and then coming back and doing an actual investigation.
5:08
SPEAKER_01: What made it very unique that everyone liked last night?
5:12
SPEAKER_01: They like the fact that before we even got out and started the tour, I have a camera set up, a video in the museum, and I show them all of the evidence, well, pieces of evidence that we have captured from each of the buildings that we were gonna go out and tour.
5:30
SPEAKER_01: Because you can't go into all of them, right?
5:32
SPEAKER_01: But I was showing them the evidence prior to getting there.
5:36
SPEAKER_01: So they were all excited and hyped up when we got out to the locations, and um, we actually did have a lot of activity.
5:44
SPEAKER_01: That's really fun because they know what to look for a little bit.
5:47
SPEAKER_01: Well, because if you've ever been on a on a like a haunted tour, and and again, I love all my other tour operators that that tour, but inevitably they pull out a tablet or a phone and they're like, hey, look, this is what happened in this building, and you're standing 20 feet away, you're on a street where there might be a bus going by, you can't hear anything, and you can't usually see it.
6:12
SPEAKER_01: So I thought what would be better would be to let everybody see it first and then go out and take a look at the buildings and tell the haunted history there.
6:20
SPEAKER_01: And that's what they really love.
6:21
SPEAKER_01: That's so fun.
6:23
SPEAKER_01: I think what's interesting, you said two things that um interested me is well, a lot of things, but when you were working at a museum that was haunted, both museums that I have worked at are in historic buildings.
6:36
SPEAKER_01: The one that I work at currently is the Ellis County Museum, and it's in the 1889 Masonic Temple, and it's pre-story high.
6:45
SPEAKER_01: And last night was off the chain.
6:47
SPEAKER_01: People left believers.
6:49
SPEAKER_01: I mean real believers.
6:50
SPEAKER_01: We had some crazy activity last night with audible voices and all kinds of things.
6:55
SPEAKER_01: It was pretty amazing.
6:57
SPEAKER_01: So uh yeah, I've worked in two different locations that are extremely haunted.
7:02
SPEAKER_01: Well, I find it interesting that you have no idea and then you start to pick up on it.
7:07
SPEAKER_01: So I don't know if it's one of those things where like you were sensitive to begin with and it pulled you there.
7:12
SPEAKER_01: People say that I'm a conduit.
7:13
SPEAKER_01: Uh, I I've done some investigating with a lot of different what you might want to call paracelebrities because we do a lot of paracons and things.
7:21
SPEAKER_01: I actually speak at places.
7:23
SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm about to go do History, Haunts, and Legends in Jefferson, where I speak and I lead tours.
7:28
SPEAKER_01: This will be my third time that I'm doing it for Jody.
7:33
SPEAKER_01: The Bigfoot convinced it.
7:34
SPEAKER_01: Not the Bigfoot conference, but we do know Craig.
7:37
SPEAKER_01: It's just that, you know, we can't do it.
7:39
SPEAKER_01: It's all at the same time when we have our stuff going on.
7:42
SPEAKER_01: This it's the first weekend in November in Jefferson.
7:46
SPEAKER_01: Where were we going with that?
7:47
SPEAKER_01: I was I got off topic.
7:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, what happened back in like 2009 or 2010?
7:54
SPEAKER_01: I went to New Orleans because we were doing an investigation.
7:58
SPEAKER_01: We actually won the investigation, which was kind of fun.
8:01
SPEAKER_01: And it was with Dustin Perry from Ghost Hunters and Ghost Hunters International, who now I've known quite a bit because we've gone to a lot of stuff.
8:09
SPEAKER_01: And then uh John Zapphis was there.
8:12
SPEAKER_01: And I that was the first time I had met John Zapphis, you know, that's haunted collector, and he was a consultant, like on Andy Gohar and all of that.
8:19
SPEAKER_01: He's kind of the OG, you know, of paranormal.
8:22
SPEAKER_01: And so we were in the haunted mortuary that is in the garden district of New Orleans, and the mortuary had been turned into a like a live haunted house, you know, like down in the basement.
8:37
SPEAKER_01: But the second floor was actually at one time, this was a plantation.
8:41
SPEAKER_01: It was not an actual mortuary.
8:43
SPEAKER_01: It started out as a plantation.
8:44
SPEAKER_01: So the second floor was actually still set up like it would have been when the family lived there.
8:49
SPEAKER_01: And there was a big room in the center of it, kind of like an ante-room that led into the other rooms.
8:54
SPEAKER_01: And we had set up basically like a seance, but it was with scientific equipment.
8:59
SPEAKER_01: And so we had spirit boxes and we had some other things.
9:02
SPEAKER_01: And John's office was sitting next to me on this side, I think.
9:05
SPEAKER_01: And every time that we'd go around the table and people would ask questions, I would get responses.
9:11
SPEAKER_01: After it was over, John came up to me.
9:13
SPEAKER_01: We were all staying in the same hotel, and he said to me, He goes, You know, you're a Claire audience, right?
9:18
SPEAKER_01: And I said, What?
9:20
SPEAKER_01: I didn't even know what that was.
9:21
SPEAKER_01: I don't claim to be psychic.
9:23
SPEAKER_01: You know, like I can't tell you, oh yeah, Serena's standing over in the corner in her white Victorian dress, telling that she was murdered by Joe Bob or whatever.
9:32
SPEAKER_01: I can't do that.
9:33
SPEAKER_01: But I do tend to hear things and I'm able to communicate very well.
9:38
SPEAKER_01: And I tend to get a lot of really great answers when I'm using any kind of paranormal equipment where you can hear audio.
9:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you mentioned you you heard some voices last night, even.
9:49
SPEAKER_01: We did, and I was I locked eyes with one young woman that was on our tour.
9:54
SPEAKER_01: She was standing just a little further away from me, and there was another lady behind me.
9:59
SPEAKER_01: I was standing about right in the center of everybody.
10:03
SPEAKER_01: We were in the middle of the museum, we were standing by the Masonic exhibit.
10:07
SPEAKER_01: We were talking and we were trying to get voices and things like that to come back to us through the ghost box.
10:13
SPEAKER_01: But what happened, I think we had already turned off the polter pod.
10:17
SPEAKER_01: I can't remember exactly what happened.
10:19
SPEAKER_01: I was tired by then.
10:20
SPEAKER_01: This has been a long weekend.
10:21
SPEAKER_01: But all of a sudden, three of us heard singing behind us like a female, and it kind of went, woo, like that.
10:29
SPEAKER_01: This girl, this was their first kind of paranormal thing that they had been on.
10:33
SPEAKER_01: Her eyes got so wide, and she looked at me and I said, Did you hear that?
10:37
SPEAKER_01: And she goes, Yes, I heard it.
10:39
SPEAKER_01: And then the other woman that was behind me was like, I heard it too.
10:42
SPEAKER_01: So some of the room on the other side didn't hear it, but we heard it very distinctly.
10:47
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
10:48
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so the area that you're in, Wasahatchie, why is it such an interesting place for paranormal investigating?
10:56
SPEAKER_01: It is different than any other town in Texas.
11:00
SPEAKER_01: That's why there's been 40 films filmed here.
11:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, over 40 films and TV series and things.
11:06
SPEAKER_01: Actually, the spin-off for uh Yellowstone was just filmed here, uh Dunton Ranch and Bass Reeves, another one.
11:13
SPEAKER_01: Taylor Sheridan kind of likes that area, but prior to Taylor Sheridan liking our area, back in the 80s, there was a man here named Mr.
11:21
SPEAKER_01: Felty, and he was instrumental in bringing a lot of Hollywood here.
11:25
SPEAKER_01: The reason why they came is because our town looks more southern gothic.
11:30
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't look like the typical Texas town.
11:34
SPEAKER_01: So these films have all come here and filmed.
11:36
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we have four Oscar winners that were filmed here, and one of them being Places in the Heart, and that was based on a true story.
11:43
SPEAKER_01: Have you ever heard of Places in the Heart?
11:45
SPEAKER_01: It was a Sally Field movie.
11:46
SPEAKER_01: She she won the Oscar for it, and that's a great, great, great movie.
11:51
SPEAKER_01: She said, Yeah, she said, You like me, you really like me.
11:54
SPEAKER_01: That was filmed here.
11:56
SPEAKER_01: It was partly all filmed in the Rogers Hotel, which I'm sure they got some EVPs on the on that film, you know, when they were doing it.
12:03
SPEAKER_01: But the reason that we feel that it's so haunted, we have more buildings and homes on the registry for historic homes and buildings than anywhere else in Texas.
12:15
SPEAKER_01: We have over 82 of them.
12:17
SPEAKER_01: In fact, we found that out last night when we were doing the ghostwalk because we only had to do two blocks around the museum.
12:24
SPEAKER_01: And that's about all we could do within that hour because there's like double and triple the amount of stories and amount of haunted buildings.
12:31
SPEAKER_01: The reason why we feel that they're haunted, first of all, because they're all intact.
12:35
SPEAKER_01: We have six historic districts.
12:37
SPEAKER_01: We're also built on limestone.
12:39
SPEAKER_01: That's another reason.
12:40
SPEAKER_01: That's why the super collider was originally built here and then it moved to Switzerland.
12:45
SPEAKER_01: They defunded it.
12:46
SPEAKER_01: It was supposed to go around the entire circumference of Waxahatchie, and over 15 miles of it was actually built down below, you know, in the tunnels.
12:54
SPEAKER_01: And the reason why they chose this location is it's because it's so much limestone, and limestone tends to hold energy.
13:01
SPEAKER_01: So originally, Waxahatchie was not really a settled area for Native Americans.
13:08
SPEAKER_01: There were a lot of Native Americans here.
13:11
SPEAKER_01: And I and I and I have to say, some of my friends, and I actually have a background.
13:15
SPEAKER_01: My my grandmother was actually born on a reservation in Oklahoma, so I can actually say this.
13:20
SPEAKER_01: They actually prefer to be called Indians.
13:23
SPEAKER_01: So I would prefer to call them Indians too.
13:27
SPEAKER_01: So the Indians that came that that were here at the time, there were five tribes that hunted here.
13:33
SPEAKER_01: They used it as a hunting ground.
13:35
SPEAKER_01: And you know, most of the times hunting grounds are considered sacred.
13:39
SPEAKER_01: That's the name where Waxahie came from, or at least that's the legend of how we were named.
13:44
SPEAKER_01: Possibly the Tonkawa Indians or the Waco Indians or the Anadarco Indians or the Kickapoo Indians, all of these tribes use this as a hunting area.
13:56
SPEAKER_01: So when the settlers came here, there's a creek that runs through downtown Waxahatchie.
14:01
SPEAKER_01: There's actually two of them.
14:02
SPEAKER_01: I like to refer to them as the mini river walk of San Antonio.
14:06
SPEAKER_01: They're not as impressive, but they're there.
14:08
SPEAKER_01: And um, when the creek uh they would see the bison drinking at the creek, and that's another misnomer because people say, Oh, you know, it's not buffalo, it's bison.
14:19
SPEAKER_01: But the French actually coined that name buffalo because they said LeBouf, which means beef.
14:25
SPEAKER_01: And so that think where the word buffalo came from.
14:28
SPEAKER_01: But in regards to Waxahatchie, hatchy means water in most southern Indian languages.
14:35
SPEAKER_01: Anywhere you go, like in Florida, Mississippi, you know, Alabama, you're gonna see the word hatchy, and it means moving water, like creek, river, whatever.
14:44
SPEAKER_01: So these bison or buffalo were drinking at the creeks, and the Native Americans or Indians would point to them and they would say this word that sounded like Waha, Waha.
14:56
SPEAKER_01: So they kind of the settlers put that together, and that's how they say that we got our name.
15:02
SPEAKER_01: It meant Buffalo Creek.
15:03
SPEAKER_01: So Waxa Hatchet.
15:05
SPEAKER_01: I was wondering what it meant this whole time.
15:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
15:09
SPEAKER_01: So going back to why it's so haunted, we were also one of the main stops on the Shawnee Trail.
15:15
SPEAKER_01: The Shawnee Trail is older than the Chisholm Trail.
15:18
SPEAKER_01: It said that cowboys would ride an additional 50 miles to get here because we happen to have a lot of entertainment, which happened to be 21 brothels and saloons around the square area.
15:30
SPEAKER_01: We actually investigate several of those.
15:32
SPEAKER_01: One of our investigations coming up is called the Weird and Wand Archive, which is now a Harry Potter themed bookstore.
15:40
SPEAKER_01: It's gotten a lot of press, but it's in this building that's amazing.
15:44
SPEAKER_01: It's um not that huge, but it it was used to be an old kind of brothel theater, kind of like the Birdcage Theater on a smaller scale, the one that's in Tombstone.
15:55
SPEAKER_01: It looks just like that.
15:56
SPEAKER_01: The stairwell that goes up still has bullet holes in it and everything, and it's super, super haunted.
16:03
SPEAKER_01: They actually get almost, I would say, poltergeist activity.
16:08
SPEAKER_02: Can I ask you about that?
16:09
SPEAKER_02: This is not in the script, but Kristen and I were talking about the difference between ghosts and poltergeists.
16:15
SPEAKER_02: And Kristen was telling me that a poltergeist can follow a person anywhere they go versus, I guess, at ghosts.
16:22
SPEAKER_01: I kind of feel like whoever is in that building is attached to the building.
16:27
SPEAKER_01: I know the whole history of it.
16:28
SPEAKER_01: I just kind of went on and on about history, and I I don't want to lose everybody with all the history, the background.
16:35
SPEAKER_01: But this building, the Jaegers lived in the building.
16:38
SPEAKER_01: The Jaegers were the family that there were actually six, there were six children, and then the husband and wife.
16:44
SPEAKER_01: And Jaeger, he died of consumption.
16:47
SPEAKER_01: He was a very prominent man in Wasahatchie, and he was also a professor at Marvin College.
16:52
SPEAKER_01: And whenever we invoke his name when we're investigating, he comes through, you know.
16:58
SPEAKER_01: Like I said, how did you pass away?
16:59
SPEAKER_01: And he's like sick.
17:01
SPEAKER_01: But we also encounter, it seems like two females, and we feel like they were more attached to the brothel.
17:07
SPEAKER_01: And they seem to be the ones that cause a little bit of the activity because I don't want to go into all of this too much, but there are two chairs that are at the top of that staircase.
17:18
SPEAKER_01: And Nicole, the owner, she bought these beautiful wing-back chairs.
17:22
SPEAKER_01: We don't know if maybe that's what brought it in because she bought them out of an antique store down the street.
17:27
SPEAKER_01: We have a lot of antique stores here in Rock the Hatchie.
17:29
SPEAKER_01: Y'all need to come and visit because it's a beautiful kind of.
17:32
SPEAKER_04: I need to.
17:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
17:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
17:33
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
17:34
SPEAKER_01: So last night we had people from Grapevine.
17:36
SPEAKER_01: We had people from Alvaredo the night before.
17:38
SPEAKER_01: We had people from Fort Worth the night before.
17:40
SPEAKER_01: We're only 35 minutes from downtown Dallas and about 40 minutes from downtown Fort Worth.
17:44
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's not very far.
17:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we're not very far.
17:47
SPEAKER_01: So Nicole bought these two chairs and brought them in when she was, you know, doing the decoration of the store because she's only been open maybe over a year now.
17:55
SPEAKER_01: Every day she would come in and these chairs would be pulled up closer to the staircase instead of back by the windows where she had placed them.
18:04
SPEAKER_01: And this went on for a long time.
18:05
SPEAKER_01: So when we came in and we investigated, we had what we call pyramids.
18:10
SPEAKER_01: They're based on sonar and not EMF.
18:14
SPEAKER_01: They're like, you know, just like what you have in your vehicle and it and when you're backing up and it goes peep, peep, peep, because like there's a child behind you on a bicycle or something and makes you stop.
18:23
SPEAKER_01: Well, that's what these are based upon.
18:25
SPEAKER_01: They're built by Jeremy Jones, who does all the equipment for ghost adventures.
18:30
SPEAKER_01: And Ian Powell and Aaron Powell, who investigate with us, they are local investigators here.
18:36
SPEAKER_01: Uh, Ian helped do some of those original designs, you know, like the equipment and everything that ultimately now you see a lot of it on ghost adventures and things, but he used to work closely with Jeremy Jones.
18:48
SPEAKER_01: So we had these sonar pyramids set up on you know in front of each chair, and we were getting a lot of activities with yes and no questions, and so we felt like there were two females up there.
19:01
SPEAKER_01: Well, just recently, Nicole went off to Alabama because her daughter goes to school there, and she came back.
19:08
SPEAKER_01: And when she came back, one of the chairs was all the way down the staircase, and the the legs were broken on it, and that nobody would nobody went in there and did that.
19:17
SPEAKER_01: That's why I said it's almost poltergeist activity because it's throwing things.
19:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it also turns on TVs and everything while we're there.
19:26
SPEAKER_01: The automatic door locks, you can hear them, they go, it's very strange.
19:30
SPEAKER_02: That uh that's actually terrifying with the broken.
19:33
SPEAKER_01: You know, I it sounds angry.
19:35
SPEAKER_01: They work there every day, nothing has been, you know, done like that.
19:39
SPEAKER_01: A lot of times books she'll come in and there'll be books on the floor.
19:42
SPEAKER_01: Whatever is there likes to manipulate objects.
19:45
SPEAKER_01: And that's kind of an interesting haunting.
19:48
SPEAKER_01: It's not an everyday haunting.
19:50
SPEAKER_01: It takes a lot of energy and force to be able to do something like that.
19:53
SPEAKER_02: They have to be pretty motivated, I would think.
19:56
SPEAKER_02: We have a couple of the places that you go we're super interested in.
19:59
SPEAKER_02: I think Kristen has one for the Rogers.
20:03
SPEAKER_04: Uh what can you tell us about the reported activity and your experiences at the haunted Rogers Hotel?
20:10
SPEAKER_04: Uh, we've heard some stories about celebrities staying there.
20:13
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's been many celebrities that stayed there.
20:15
SPEAKER_01: We used to stay there at the hotel, like in 2007.
20:18
SPEAKER_01: We didn't live here in Waxahatchie, but we would come.
20:21
SPEAKER_01: We're both my husband and I are odd fellows.
20:23
SPEAKER_01: You can see the tattoos here, but we're odd fellows in Rebecca's.
20:26
SPEAKER_01: I'm a past grand, and so is he.
20:29
SPEAKER_01: And so we would come here because the Waxahatchie Lodge, he's been a long-term member about 25 years, and then I've I've been there also as a Rebecca.
20:38
SPEAKER_01: But we would come here and stay, and we would stay at the Rogers.
20:43
SPEAKER_01: Sadly, it's no longer a hotel.
20:46
SPEAKER_01: It actually has commercial locks and and a few residential locks.
20:50
SPEAKER_01: I know several people that live there and work there, and they all have their own stories now.
20:55
SPEAKER_01: But back in 2007, the first time I ever stayed there, the first thing that happened, we had gotten in about four o'clock in the afternoon and we were waiting to go to the party.
21:06
SPEAKER_01: That wasn't until like eight o'clock.
21:07
SPEAKER_01: So we're like, what are we gonna go do?
21:09
SPEAKER_01: Well, we're gonna go drink in the basement because they had a they had a bar down there.
21:12
SPEAKER_01: So we go down, and I did not know that the Rogers Hotel was haunted at the time.
21:18
SPEAKER_01: Remember, internet was still kind of you know, not yeah, you know, you didn't have all these stories coming out and you didn't hear a lot.
21:24
SPEAKER_01: So we went downstairs to to have a drink, and I went over to the women's restroom, and while I was in the restroom, I heard a what sounded like a scream.
21:34
SPEAKER_01: It kind of went, ah, like that.
21:36
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, it oh, I kind of froze.
21:39
SPEAKER_01: And you know, I was in a bathroom stall, but I was like, oh my God.
21:43
SPEAKER_01: And so when I heard that, there was a person in the stall next to me.
21:47
SPEAKER_01: And I said, Did you hear that?
21:49
SPEAKER_01: And she said, No, what did you hear?
21:51
SPEAKER_01: And I said, I think I heard something scream.
21:54
SPEAKER_01: And so we came out of the stalls and started washing our hands at the basin.
21:58
SPEAKER_01: Well, she had on a hotel uniform and um so she worked up in the lobby actually and she'd come down there to use the restroom because that's where the restrooms are and she said what did you hear and I said well I I'm telling you I think I heard the scream and she said well you probably just heard Sarah and I said who's Sarah and she said oh she's the little girl that drowned in the hot springs pool and now the restroom is located here but if you just go beyond the wall of the restroom there's where the Waldo Springs hotel the the pool is it's right beyond where the restroom is and I was like oh okay so went back to my husband at the time my fiance and told him about what happened and he said oh yeah and he's like because he had lived here in Wasatchie for many years and he used to have keys to the Rogers when it had not been yet again renovated into a hotel and things.
22:52
SPEAKER_01: So he's like oh yeah it's on it and I was like what and he said yeah because you probably heard Sarah so everybody knew Sarah was and um that night after the party we went back to the hotel and we were staying across from the Bonnie and Clyde suite.
23:07
SPEAKER_01: So Bonnie and Clyde supposedly used to stay there quite a bit too so that's one of your celebrities that you might have in the hotel.
23:14
SPEAKER_01: But we were asleep and at 330 in the morning now granted this was a shabby chic kind of hotel by this time it was not the Rids.
23:24
SPEAKER_01: And so you had these TVs that were like the old fashioned TVs that you'd have to get up and actually turn on and off and they were real thick.
23:32
SPEAKER_01: They were not thin screen or anything like that.
23:34
SPEAKER_01: 330 in the morning the television came on by itself and it was this woman past her and she was just screaming fire and brimstone you talk about jump up out of bed I jumped up out of bed and I was like what the what?
23:49
SPEAKER_01: And I said my God and so I went over and I turned the TV off and we tried to get back to sleep.
23:54
SPEAKER_01: And then about five in the morning about 530 maybe this transistor radio next to my nightstand flares on and it was like Ernest Hub music or something.
24:05
SPEAKER_01: It was some Western music and I thought oh it must be an alarm so I went to try and turn it off it was just a transistor old fashioned radio there was no alarm on it whatsoever.
24:16
SPEAKER_01: That was my first experience in the Rogers but there are many many many instances of haunting there and there's been a couple of tragedies in there other than Sarah drowning.
24:28
SPEAKER_01: There's been a death in the elevator shaft there was actually a suicide in the elevator shaft by Rogers.
24:36
SPEAKER_01: His name was Emory Rogers he was the original founder of the town that's who founded the first two hotels that were there that burned in a fire before the Rogers Hotel was built.
24:46
SPEAKER_01: His son supposedly committed suicide there at the hotel and somewhere they say that he hung himself in the shaft and so a lot of things happen with the elevator there.
24:58
SPEAKER_01: Currently there's a new place that just opened uh in the basement it's kind of a speakeasy and it's called Rhythm and Bruise.
25:05
SPEAKER_01: So it's in the same place where the hot springs pool used to be which the pool is still there it's just empty and it's a cement like indit now I think behind there.
25:15
SPEAKER_01: But his name's Matthew the guy that owns it and he has he wants us to come investigate obviously because he said that he hears his name being called all the time and he's gotten to the point where at night when he's locking up he'll say well goodnight baby girl and uh they've even bought toys and stuff and put them over in the corner.
25:34
SPEAKER_01: And the previous place that was there the arcade they had toys there too and they said they would come in in the mornings and sometimes the toys would be out on the floor.
25:44
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot more stories than that.
25:46
SPEAKER_01: Hairstylists I can tell you so many but wow we don't have enough time.
25:52
SPEAKER_01: But last night we had a lot of activity if you go to Facebook we just posted I just posted a story or a reel or whatever you want to call it I pass out equipment to everybody on the tour and so it was hilarious because there were like 14 people they all have equipment and as I was showing them the the bathroom and what had happened to to us personally and we were pointing everything toward the bathroom and everything began to light up all at once when I started talking about Sarah.
26:23
SPEAKER_01: So okay I want to watch that one I have a good video too of the third floor there where you see an orb there's a there's kind of like a ballroom on the top at the museum because our second level is quite haunted.
26:37
SPEAKER_01: So one of my tenants actually shared this video with me of the Rogers Hotel because I think it's his daughter or something that had a recital there.
26:44
SPEAKER_01: So in the ballroom on surveillance camera you see these two orbs that shoot out and kind of fly around the room and then after a few seconds they hone in on this big area where they were storing all of the ballet costumes and you just see a ballet bag just like get thrown off the top of this shelf.
27:04
SPEAKER_01: It was crazy.
27:05
SPEAKER_01: And we have that in the museum too.
27:07
SPEAKER_01: Like you said that's a lot of energy it's that's spooky.
27:10
SPEAKER_01: The video that I have in our museum is pretty fantastic where we hear all the footsteps on the second floor.
27:15
SPEAKER_01: All my tenants have to have to kind of be ghost friendly because they have all experienced things but I have some really incredible video of the museum of things occurring and it's all confirmed camera.
27:27
SPEAKER_01: It's not like we're in there investigating these are things that are caught at 1 30 in the morning 2 30 in the morning when nobody's there in the building wow that's amazing you mentioned uh you mentioned your affiliation with the uh the odd fellows uh a little bit ago what's the story uh behind that skeletons in our closet no no uh well uh uh unless you want to share the uh the 1891 the odd fellows lodge there and why it has become such an interesting paranormal location we're kind of intimate with it because we are members there but the hauntings have been happening for many many years even before we were there in fact there's a sign in the in the in the kitchen hall and it says like turn on lights turn on heater or air condition say hello to ghost you know it's like it's like a list of things have been happening there for a long time and we had an incredible investigation there on Friday night it was one of our public investigations and people got their money's worth that night too we did have a few things happen that were incredible but the reason why I feel like there's a lot of energy there a lot of people spent their entire lives practically going into that building every Monday night for 50 60 70 years because some of them were members starting when they were kids because there's a kid version of it and it's been an operation at that location did I mention fire how many times have I mentioned fire so far the downtown has burned three times so the Oddfellows are on the third building that they own and they moved to that building in 1912 it's been an active lodge and one of the biggest lodges in Texas since 1912.
29:16
SPEAKER_01: So you can imagine all the energy going into the building up this long tall staircase to get up to the lodge every Monday since its inception there in 1912.
29:27
SPEAKER_01: And then on Tuesdays the Rebecca's come in and so Mondays and Tuesday nights it's full of energy not all hauntings are because somebody committed suicide or got murdered or whatever it may be.
29:39
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes think about it if you passed away would you rather hang out in a cemetery or a morgue or a hospital or would you want to go where you had some of the best times of your life we feel like there's a lot of energy in there that has to do with the odd fellows but we also had to make money back then and we had to lease out part of the building to different occupants just like what we do over at our museum.
30:06
SPEAKER_01: And so back then we had doctors offices on the second level now back in the day there were no hospitals really yet and people would go to the doctor and a lot of times you know the cure was worse than the actual problem and they would not leave the doctor's office.
30:24
SPEAKER_01: So we may have some residual or some active hauntings from that.
30:28
SPEAKER_01: Wow our most famous story from there is somebody that is currently a member and he is not a ghost person whatsoever.
30:37
SPEAKER_01: In fact he's totally a skeptic and he was secretary of the lodge and he was sitting at the secretary's desk and all the other odd fellows had already left for the night it was way back in the early maybe 2000s prior to really having cell phones or anything anyway the other odd fellows they say from work to refreshment which means they have the lodge meeting they have dinner first and then they have the lodge meeting and then they go to a drink at a pub.
31:04
SPEAKER_01: And um in fact Oddfellows in the United States was birthed in a pub in Baltimore Maryland.
31:10
SPEAKER_01: So they had all left and they went to the College Street pub which is also extremely haunted and there's some great video of beer steins being thrown and they call their ghost Winston but not because it's really his name it's just because it's a British pub.
31:24
SPEAKER_01: So all the guys had gone over to the pub and Brad I'm gonna say Brad's name I won't say his last name but but and he owns a very very uh prominent business here in town and he's like I said not a ghost person and he said he was working at his secretary desk and he looks up and way across the lodge hall is the ante room door and he looks up and he sees this man at the ante room door and the man had on Buddy Holly glasses and a white shirt and khaki pants.
31:54
SPEAKER_01: And so he's like can I help you and he looked back down for a second looked back up and the guy was gone.
32:01
SPEAKER_01: So he assumed that the door was unlocked downstairs down this long staircase that you have to you know go down.
32:07
SPEAKER_01: And so he got up and he looked around and he looked in the dining hall he looked in the uh pool hall he looked everywhere didn't see anybody so he fully expected to go down those stairs and find the door unlocked well of course he got downstairs and he pulled on the door and the door was locked so he had to get on the cordless phone.
32:26
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't even a cell phone but at least I think it was cordless by then he got on the phone and he called the pub and he told everybody hey you need to get back here because there's somebody in the building and uh so that's that's a good story.
32:39
SPEAKER_01: And then I just had that recently happen in the museum myself and one of my volunteers there was loud knocking going on on the interior of one of our doors that you can't get to unless you're in the building and uh we heard a voice say like Daniel when when we asked who is it and I'm more afraid of the living than the dead because I've been robbed at gunpoint in Dallas that's why we moved back to Waxahati um we got robbed in our driveway.
33:08
SPEAKER_01: So really truly I am more afraid of the living than the dead absolutely absolutely so I called the we so I looked at Melanie my my volunteer and we both heard this it was crazy it was like on our inner door that leads to the back part of the museum I said Melanie don't open that door we're gonna call the police because I want to make sure that somebody didn't get locked in this building you know and and and the way that they answered me I knew right away it wasn't one of our tenants we only have three tenants and they're hardly ever there.
33:36
SPEAKER_01: It's for commercial abuse and nobody was there.
33:38
SPEAKER_01: It was early in the morning nobody was in that building so I called the police the police came and they they were young and it was funny because they cleared the building with their gun you know on each level when they got to the third level which is the Masonic Lodge they got spooked and I don't know quite what spooked them but I think they thought they heard something and um I explained to them if you ever look again on my Facebook page you can see some of the stuff that I have posted.
34:06
SPEAKER_01: I've been up there by myself and seen stuff on my SLS camera.
34:10
SPEAKER_01: You can see it coming toward me when I ask and things like that.
34:14
SPEAKER_01: I said well yeah this building's kind of haunted and I said if you want to see some of our surveillance camera you can see it and I showed them this one video that I have that nobody has been able to debunk.
34:24
SPEAKER_01: And when I showed it to them they had on body cam right and so they said hey can we film that and take it back to the station and I said sure so they filmed it on their body cam off my phone and they went back to the station wow I'm gonna have to come down there.
34:43
SPEAKER_01: The night before last we got a little bit emotional in the Oddfellows investigation.
34:47
SPEAKER_01: Our current noble grand was actually with us his name Sterling and Sterling was there.
34:52
SPEAKER_01: My husband Andy was there again the longest running odd fellow that's currently alive at that lodge and something knows my husband when we go because as soon as we turn on any of our equipment like our ghost boxes or our polter pods somebody will ultimately say hey Andy or hello Andy so they know it's him and they recognize him but the other night somebody came through to us that it was a young odd fellow that passed away before his time and it's been a few years.
35:25
SPEAKER_01: But as soon as we heard the words coming through the polter pod, it was almost instantaneous I was just about to say his name and say are you here and before I could do that my husband said it.
35:40
SPEAKER_01: And so I knew he recognized him immediately I'm getting goosebumps and my hair is standing on end as I say this I'll get emotional.
35:47
SPEAKER_01: See I'm starting to cry because Sterling also teared up and started to cry because he realized that's who it was too.
35:54
SPEAKER_01: When you're asking it's kind of like a Ouija board you know people ask me about Ouija boards all the time well you're asking things to communicate with you whether you're using a Ouija board or whether you're using a polter pod and that happens on a lot of our investigations people come through and a lot of times that have no connection to the building whatsoever it's connected to the people that are on the tour.
36:16
SPEAKER_05: Wow right that's that's very interesting have you ever had an experience at the Ellis County Courthouse or a favorite story from that location that you would like to share?
36:26
SPEAKER_01: Well there's so many favorite look there's so many favorite things I mean like favorite EVPs and things.
36:31
SPEAKER_01: I think my most favorite EVP ever I caught was a loud loud voice well there was two of them but this loud voice that says poppycock which who uses that term anymore I thought that was a fantastic one that actually happened to me at the Tig Railroad museum which now they're reopening that museum it's not called Tig Railroad museum anymore but that was a hilarious EVP.
36:54
SPEAKER_01: And then another one was at the Freestone County Museum where I worked we were doing a we did we've done a fair amount of TV and everything.
37:01
SPEAKER_01: We appeared on my ghost story.
37:03
SPEAKER_01: If you ever go to my ghost story season two we were the season finale it's actually the whole episode is called uh things that go bump in the night but our episode inside the episode was called Disturbance at the jail so go watch that if you can you'll see some incredible this EVP that I'm about to tell you about it wasn't in the even an EVP it was an audible voice and it said I come here when we asked is there anybody here with us and it was a child's voice and it even had a list and we happen to have the people that were PBS haunted Texas with us and Dennis Foley which is a great name for a sound man right Dennis Foley as a Foley artist.
37:45
SPEAKER_01: But Dennis you can hear him because he's got on his headphones and he has his boom mic and he's like what was that really loud so those are my two favorite EVPs but they didn't you know come from Waxahatchie per se.
37:59
SPEAKER_01: I have tons here too.
38:00
SPEAKER_01: But with the courthouse it is very uh fabled to be haunted not only for the sculptures that are on the outside of it but the interior there's been people that work at the courthouse and they see a woman in white quite often up on the third floor and there was a lady named Nancy Breverton.
38:22
SPEAKER_01: She was one of the first females to hold a treasury position forever.
38:26
SPEAKER_01: She like was there from like 1909 to 1930 or something like that.
38:31
SPEAKER_01: She wore those beautiful white Gibson girl type looking you know Victorian dresses and it's right outside her door.
38:37
SPEAKER_01: So they feel like that's who they're seeing up there on occasion.
38:42
SPEAKER_01: Sadly it looks like the catfish plantation restaurant closed but it didn't close it burned down again fire fire fire this keeps happening they're like an arsonist so the catfish plantation sadly did close back during well a little bit after COVID.
39:01
SPEAKER_01: Interestingly enough my husband and I looked at it to buy it and we were gonna open up a chili parlor in it and uh and have frozen custard and chili and things like that.
39:13
SPEAKER_01: At the time they were asking too much money for it but we would have kept it as it is but the people that ultimately did buy it they decided they were going to renovate the whole thing and change it and it didn't look anything like it used to we used to lead investigations there actually the catfish plantation they used to sponsor us when we used to do the ghost show in Beaumont way back when like in 2010 we would lead investigations there and we had some incredible ones Caroline the one that haunts the house she's the mother of Paul Richards are you a baseball fan Richards yeah okay so you know who Paul Richards is no he was in the Baltimore Orioles he grew up in that house.
39:53
SPEAKER_01: Caroline was his mother and Caroline was not a nice person.
39:57
SPEAKER_01: In fact when he bought her like indoor plumbing or something she said she would rather just have a nice dress.
40:04
SPEAKER_01: That's what she told him but uh anyway so the what happened currently the house was completely renovated and they put a butcher shop in it and people would come in ultimately and say hey what about the ghost?
40:17
SPEAKER_01: Is it haunted and I guess the owners would say no we haven't had any activity we haven't had anything happen and um it burned.
40:25
SPEAKER_01: And it was on it only been open six months.
40:27
SPEAKER_01: And they just renovated so they say it was fossil wiring.
40:33
SPEAKER_02: I'd heard so many stories and I was I'm sad that I can't go because it was something about one of the bathrooms I think it was the ladies' room and something in the wallpaper.
40:43
SPEAKER_01: I actually saw a pan like hover and then go it was actually a frying thing and it like hovered and then went down.
40:51
SPEAKER_01: We also used to have great back in the day we didn't have like fancy equipment or anything but we had flashlights and so we would have great conversations with flashlights where they would turn on and off but uh one of the best episodes I work a lot with the Kling Brothers which uh they used to have Ghost Lab on Discovery Channel.
41:11
SPEAKER_01: In fact we're doing a paracon in April 2027 it's free to the public and with Kling Brothers we'll be here but also Dustin Perry will be here Katrina Weedman will be here Heather Taddy so Katrina and Heather used to work on Paranormal State together and we've all become friends.
41:28
SPEAKER_01: Anyway they're coming and then we have Jay from Ghost Adventures coming and we have Ben Hansen coming currently you can see him on paranormal caught on camera and all of that.
41:37
SPEAKER_01: And then we have Dana Stricker who is a remote viewer she's coming it's a free day it's April 10th in 2027.
41:44
SPEAKER_01: But why I'm talking about this is because the Kling brothers Barry and Brad Kling they came to help me do a paranormal symposium here two years ago at the historic Chautauqua which is a 1902 building out in the park.
41:58
SPEAKER_01: And so we brought in this paranormal symposium and I had Brad and Barry as my guests and they talked specifically about the catfish plantation because that was their one of their favorite episodes they ever filmed for Discovery Channel because on that episode it was funny because they didn't get too much activity when they were doing the actual actual filming.
42:21
SPEAKER_01: At one point they were doing something I can't remember it wasn't even like actual investigating at the time but on camera you see this fork just pop up from a table and just like fly across the room kind of and so it was one of their favorite episodes so they're pretty sad that it burned down too all right I think we wanted to switch gears a little bit and wanted to ask is there a particular location anywhere in the world not just Waxahatchie that consistently either gives you the creeps or somewhere that you would love to investigate there's a lot of places I would love to investigate and I would love to go to Ankara.
43:03
SPEAKER_01: I would love to go to anywhere in Ireland or Scotland or anywhere.
43:07
SPEAKER_01: I grew up actually in Brazil.
43:08
SPEAKER_01: I was raised in Venezuela and Brazil I speak Portuguese.
43:12
SPEAKER_01: My dad was kind of an adventurer actually my mom had dementia she passed away two years ago but I took care of her for the last four years of her life and the show that she loved the most was anything that had Josh Gates on it.
43:26
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if y'all know who Josh Gates is but yeah so could be and the reason why she loved it so much is because it reminded her of my father when he was young.
43:36
SPEAKER_01: We were taken to every place that you can imagine any kind of UFO hotspot, Machu Picchu, any anywhere, you know all the Aztec things and lions all throughout Central and South America and then in Brazil too.
43:52
SPEAKER_01: So my dad kind of gave me the love of this I think when I was young but I would have to say if you if I wanted To choose a place that was probably the place where we had the weirdest investigations ever.
44:05
SPEAKER_01: Back in the day, uh, it was Yorktown Hospital in Texas.
44:10
SPEAKER_01: There's something about Yorktown Hospital that there's something not good in that hospital.
44:16
SPEAKER_01: That's that's been the only time when I've said, Hmm, I think I don't want to go back in the building.
44:20
SPEAKER_01: It was about 3 a.m.
44:21
SPEAKER_01: and we've been investigating all night.
44:23
SPEAKER_01: That was probably back in 2010 when that happened.
44:26
SPEAKER_01: That's where we saw a big black mass it manifested down in the basement area.
44:30
SPEAKER_01: That's when my husband really became a believer because he was always a debunker prior to that.
44:34
SPEAKER_01: He's still a debunker, but at least now he's a believer.
44:37
SPEAKER_01: If anybody wants to get, you know, the scared part of an investigation, I would say that would be the place to go.
44:44
SPEAKER_01: Uh for Texas.
44:46
SPEAKER_01: Now, if it's like I said, for me, I would love, I mean, I love ancient locations.
44:51
SPEAKER_01: I'd love to go to Egypt.
44:52
SPEAKER_01: Anywhere in the world that you can investigate, I would go.
44:55
SPEAKER_01: I truly am not scared to go in any destination.
44:58
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
44:59
SPEAKER_02: Some of the Egyptian tombs that they go in, I'm I don't know.
45:04
SPEAKER_02: Something might come out of there, like a curse.
45:06
SPEAKER_04: And yeah, so I'm gonna leave the mummies alone.
45:08
SPEAKER_04: Let them rest.
45:09
SPEAKER_01: They're about to be a solar eclipse in Egypt, and now they just have that new ancient location that they uncovered, and um, they're gonna have a big like solar eclipse uh travel thing.
45:20
SPEAKER_01: It's supposed to be amazing.
45:21
SPEAKER_01: I feel like that's the start of a horror movie.
45:25
SPEAKER_04: For real.
45:26
SPEAKER_04: So I do have one more.
45:28
SPEAKER_04: Um, how do you separate paranormal activity from things like uh old buildings, electrical interferences, animals, or people's expectations?
45:38
SPEAKER_01: That's a good one because here's the thing.
45:41
SPEAKER_01: If we're doing a real paranormal investigation, like a real, real paranormal investigation, we can go sit in a building for hours and not say a word and be in the dark.
45:51
SPEAKER_01: When people are paying you to have a paranormal investigation and you go sit in a room in the dark and don't speak for two hours, that's not very entertaining for them because they don't really get to experience the after part of it where you're listening to your equipment or things like that.
46:07
SPEAKER_01: I would say that I I kind of compart to minimize private investigations versus public investigations.
46:15
SPEAKER_01: On public investigations, we use a lot more types of equipment to try and get any kind of reaction.
46:21
SPEAKER_01: Uh yes, on occasion, we have to tell people that it's maybe the electrical in the building.
46:28
SPEAKER_01: Like last night when everything started happening in the basement of the Rodgers and everybody's equipment started lighting up.
46:35
SPEAKER_01: I started looking around because I'm like, there's gotta be like conduit here, electric.
46:40
SPEAKER_01: I don't know, because it was just so odd when it happened.
46:44
SPEAKER_01: And we do like to do baselines where we can.
46:47
SPEAKER_01: In regards to noise canceling, it that's hard too.
46:51
SPEAKER_01: Like people will tell me later on, oh, I've got this E VP, and it's really just somebody coughing, or it might be somebody's stomach growling because they went and had, you know, food before the the tour.
47:01
SPEAKER_01: So it it it's hard.
47:03
SPEAKER_01: And then I also see a lot of times people put up a lot of photographs and they'll say, Oh, look, look at this photograph.
47:10
SPEAKER_01: There's a person in that window.
47:12
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, Oh, is there really a person in that window?
47:15
SPEAKER_01: Or are they kind of just seeing because our our eyes want to make something of everything?
47:21
SPEAKER_01: That's just how our brains work.
47:23
SPEAKER_01: And so it has to be pretty convincing for me to put it up and say, Oh, that's real.
47:29
SPEAKER_01: And our my experience may be very different from what somebody standing right next to me is having.
47:35
SPEAKER_01: For them, they believe it.
47:36
SPEAKER_01: Yes, you have to debunk and some things can clearly be debunked, but some things can't.
47:41
SPEAKER_01: If somebody's on the tour and they say something touches them, something may really have touched them.
47:46
SPEAKER_01: We had that last night, actually, and the night before.
47:48
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I've been touched, so you know, and that's not something somebody else can see, but it happened.
47:55
SPEAKER_05: What's the biggest misconception that people have about ghost hunting?
47:59
SPEAKER_01: My gosh.
48:00
SPEAKER_01: That it's demonic, everything's a demon.
48:03
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I hate that.
48:04
SPEAKER_01: I so hate that.
48:05
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I would say that 99% of paranormal investigating and ghost hunting and things like that does not involve any kind of demonic possession or anything like that.
48:15
SPEAKER_01: You know, I grew up in a Catholic country, but they don't have a corner market on exorcisms.
48:20
SPEAKER_01: I mean, well, they do on exorcisms, but possessions, that's what I find is that there are beliefs across the world that are very similar.
48:27
SPEAKER_01: It's just like religion.
48:29
SPEAKER_01: There's the same story over and over in religion.
48:32
SPEAKER_01: If you listen, again, this goes back to ancient aliens, but they can but you know, they're very good about that on ancient aliens because they're like, you see the same story in India, you see the same story in the Netherlands, you see the same story in Egypt and in Mexico.
48:47
SPEAKER_01: And in terms of people telling me, oh, you know, you're doing the devil's work or ghost hunting is horrible and all this.
48:54
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, but wait a minute.
48:55
SPEAKER_01: If you're a Christian and you believe in the Bible, the Bible is the most paranormal book that's ever been written.
49:02
SPEAKER_01: I mean, look at it.
49:03
SPEAKER_01: Burning bushes, you know, killing all the children of the first book.
49:08
SPEAKER_01: I mean, parting the sea.
49:09
SPEAKER_01: What is all of that?
49:11
SPEAKER_01: It's paranormal.
49:12
SPEAKER_05: Right.
49:12
SPEAKER_05: Not easily explained.
49:15
SPEAKER_02: I'm curious to know what is the scariest thing or most terrifying things happened either to you or one of your guests on a tour?
49:24
SPEAKER_01: That's an interesting question.
49:26
SPEAKER_01: Because just feeling like something could possibly like attach or follow us home.
49:31
SPEAKER_01: I really feel like some of these locations that you go to that get investigated all the time and it's a free-for-all, like a big building or an abandoned building, or old hospitals, old jails, where they just have hundreds of investigators come in all year long, kind of let them go and do whatever they want.
49:49
SPEAKER_01: A lot of people, I think, invoke things that they shouldn't probably be dealing with.
49:55
SPEAKER_01: And then you come along and you're just like, la, I'm just like a regular ghost hunter and I just want to meet nice ghosts across the you know universe.
50:03
SPEAKER_01: And then something may have come through that was invited that shouldn't be there.
50:10
SPEAKER_01: That's all I can say, you know, about that.
50:12
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I love going and ghost hunting and I love paranormal investigating.
50:16
SPEAKER_01: I really like doing historic buildings and historic homes or modern homes or modern buildings if there's been a haunting.
50:24
SPEAKER_01: But I still go to these, you know, everyday attractions, but I just feel like sometimes they've been manipulated.
50:31
SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense?
50:32
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
50:33
SPEAKER_01: Like provoking.
50:35
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
50:36
SPEAKER_02: And I wouldn't have understood that except a few weeks ago, we all went out to Goatman's Bridge in Denton.
50:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
50:43
SPEAKER_01: So we actually knew somebody who's a big artist, but he was also a warlock.
50:47
SPEAKER_01: And um, he was part of all that original stuff back in the 60s and 70s and 80s.
50:52
SPEAKER_01: He died a few years ago.
50:53
SPEAKER_01: But even his artwork, uh, some friends of ours came in possession of his entire collection that they showed here in Waxahatch.
51:00
SPEAKER_01: He actually have a dowry.
51:01
SPEAKER_01: And I'm telling you, some of those pieces seemed like they had some energy that was just really strong and heavy.
51:08
SPEAKER_01: So there you go.
51:09
SPEAKER_01: That's a place where generally, if you go, something might happen to you, like you might get scratched or you know, you might feel like you're being attacked.
51:17
SPEAKER_01: Right.
51:17
SPEAKER_02: And like you said, it's the energy, and unfortunately, it's the people with the intention to invoke that or to invite that and have these sessions where they they do are summoning things that they shouldn't be.
51:27
SPEAKER_02: And like you said, we're just there to look around and you could feel something.
51:31
SPEAKER_02: How do you protect yourself?
51:33
SPEAKER_02: We've been trying to learn about crystals and stones and salts, but what do you what do you do or what do you find works for you or others with you?
51:40
SPEAKER_01: Well, here's the thing.
51:42
SPEAKER_01: Again, I'm totally different probably than a lot of people.
51:45
SPEAKER_01: But today, in fact, I was watching something.
51:48
SPEAKER_01: I think it was on Paranormal Cotton Camera or something, and there was a person there and they were like, Well, I went there because I wanted to help this person cross over and clear the space.
51:58
SPEAKER_01: Well, let me tell you, if I came to your house and I told you to leave your house and go stand out in the street and get run over by a vehicle or jump off a bridge, would you do it?
52:07
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
52:08
SPEAKER_01: Probably not, right?
52:10
SPEAKER_01: So people that that that say, Oh, we're gonna help the entity cross over the spirit, I kind of feel like the spirit's gonna do what the spirit's gonna do.
52:19
SPEAKER_01: And I learned that from when I had the old jail in Freestone County.
52:24
SPEAKER_01: When those guys were in jail, they probably weren't the best characters on earth, right?
52:30
SPEAKER_01: So when they crossed over, they're still that way.
52:33
SPEAKER_01: In other words, they cussed, they they always wanted cigarettes.
52:37
SPEAKER_01: Not that cigarettes are bad because I smoke on occasion, but I'm just saying that their characters, you don't change once, or maybe you do, you become energy, but maybe your energy stays the same.
52:49
SPEAKER_01: I'm just saying that if people were not that great here on earth, they're probably not gonna be that great when they pass over.
52:55
SPEAKER_01: So, but what I try and do, I don't really do a lot of rituals or anything like that, but we always do ask them, please don't follow us, please stay here, and we'll come back and visit you.
53:06
SPEAKER_01: You you like it here, so please stay.
53:09
SPEAKER_01: And so that's what that's what we do.
53:11
SPEAKER_01: And the other night we actually had we thought something followed us home for sure.
53:16
SPEAKER_01: It was interesting.
53:16
SPEAKER_01: We had been at the Dr.
53:17
SPEAKER_01: Pepper Museum in Waco, and I wasn't active at all.
53:21
SPEAKER_01: But when we got home that night, we were in bed, and we have a closet in our hall that has the washer and dryer.
53:28
SPEAKER_01: Like I said, our house was built in the 1800s, so they kind of they put a washer and dryer in the middle of your corridor, but that's okay.
53:35
SPEAKER_01: And it's in this closet.
53:36
SPEAKER_01: So we were in bed, and all of a sudden we see a light go on in the hallway.
53:42
SPEAKER_01: Andy and I both were like, oh my god, could something follow us home?
53:45
SPEAKER_01: Because it hasn't happened in a long time.
53:47
SPEAKER_01: I have had it happen once before.
53:49
SPEAKER_01: So he got up and he went and he turned the light off and came back to bed.
53:53
SPEAKER_01: And we're laying there, we're watching like Saturday Night Live or something.
53:56
SPEAKER_01: It's like two in the morning, and the light comes back on again.
54:01
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, oh my god, I cannot believe it that something actually did follow us home.
54:05
SPEAKER_01: But he jumped up that time and he ran into the corridor, and all he saw was the chain swinging, but then he saw one of our cats, and our cat, Juju, had figured out how to turn on that light, but we but it did give us a little bit of a stare thinking, oh my god, something just followed us home from this because we had just been there.
54:25
SPEAKER_02: I love that you named your cat Juju.
54:27
SPEAKER_02: I just realized you're Sandy and Andy, so I know another cat's named Chupa.
54:35
SPEAKER_01: And then we have our dog is named Spot.
54:37
SPEAKER_01: You know, the dragon that lived under the staircase in the monsters.
54:41
SPEAKER_01: Oh god, okay, so we have a spot, but that's because the monster mansion is here also in Wax the Hatchie.
54:48
SPEAKER_01: Oh my god.
54:49
SPEAKER_04: Well, okay, we have to go now.
54:51
SPEAKER_02: We really do want to come on a tour for sure.
54:53
SPEAKER_01: If you want to plug anything, your events, your tours, website, social, how our listeners can follow you.
54:58
SPEAKER_01: So we just did the Oddfellows Lodge.
55:00
SPEAKER_01: We're getting ready to do the Chautauqua, which is super haunted too.
55:04
SPEAKER_01: That's a whole nother story.
55:06
SPEAKER_01: And the Chautauqua will be on Friday, October 23rd.
55:10
SPEAKER_01: And then we have the Weird and Wand Archive, the bookstore where the activity happens with the chairs.
55:17
SPEAKER_01: That's going to be on Friday, October 30th.
55:20
SPEAKER_01: And then we have my regular combo.
55:23
SPEAKER_01: The combo doesn't have for French fries and Coca-Cola.
55:26
SPEAKER_01: It's a combo tour and paranormal investigation versus just being an investigation.
55:32
SPEAKER_01: And those we're having uh the next one's coming up is the 17th, and then we have it on the 31st on Halloween.
55:40
SPEAKER_01: You can just go to hauntedhatchie.com or and you click on book now and it'll take you to Eventbrite.
55:46
SPEAKER_01: All of my events are currently on Eventbrite, but we do plan to do the Saturday combination tour and paranormal investigation of the Ellis County Museum throughout the year.
55:58
SPEAKER_01: And we also do events throughout the year too.
56:01
SPEAKER_01: So this is not just going to be Halloween.
56:03
SPEAKER_01: How can everybody follow you on social?
56:05
SPEAKER_01: It's haunted Hatchie Tours on Facebook.
56:08
SPEAKER_01: And then I had to change my name on Instagram to Hatchie Haint.
56:12
SPEAKER_01: I decided Hatchie Haint because haints are the old word for ghosts in the South.
56:18
SPEAKER_01: That's why that's why people paint the underside of I just lost an earring.
56:22
SPEAKER_01: Was that paranormal?
56:23
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
56:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
56:26
SPEAKER_01: Just oh, there's the backing.
56:28
SPEAKER_01: That was very strange.
56:30
SPEAKER_01: But the haints were what the old South, that's what they called ghosts and spirits.
56:35
SPEAKER_01: They call them haints.
56:36
SPEAKER_01: H-A-I-N-T-S.
56:38
SPEAKER_01: So there's two reasons why people paint their porches blue underneath.
56:43
SPEAKER_01: One of them is to keep insects from building nests, which it doesn't work.
56:47
SPEAKER_01: I have two big glass nests right now on my porch.
56:50
SPEAKER_01: The other reason was to keep the haints away.
56:52
SPEAKER_01: So that's why they call it paint blue.
56:55
SPEAKER_01: If you look that up, you see that there's a color called paint blue.
56:59
SPEAKER_01: So my Instagram is patchy haints.
57:02
SPEAKER_01: I don't like Instagram very much.
57:03
SPEAKER_01: I don't know why.
57:04
SPEAKER_01: I it's just cumbersome to me.
57:06
SPEAKER_01: So I don't have as many postings there as I do on Facebook.
57:09
SPEAKER_02: Well, please uh tell Andy hi for us.
57:12
SPEAKER_02: And Sandy, thank you so much for coming on the Hidden Creatures Podcast.
57:16
SPEAKER_02: I love that you're heavy on the history because it's so fun.
57:18
SPEAKER_02: I know Kristen likes it too.
57:19
SPEAKER_02: Richard, um, this has been great.
57:21
SPEAKER_05: Yes.
57:23
SPEAKER_05: Thank you so much for your time.
57:24
SPEAKER_01: I think you really have to know the history to understand the honest.
57:27
SPEAKER_01: I know some people like to go in for a quick, but I like I like to know the history.
57:32
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, thanks, Richard.
57:33
SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Kristen.
57:34
SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Cory.
57:35
SPEAKER_05: Thank you so much.
57:36
SPEAKER_05: Thank you.
57:37
SPEAKER_02: Happy Halloween to you.
57:38
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
57:39
SPEAKER_02: All right.
57:40
SPEAKER_02: Stay safe.
57:43
SPEAKER_00: Bye, these are the encounters that they happen, told by the people who lived through them.
57:53
SPEAKER_00: Whether they reveal the unknown or simply deepen the memory, that's for you to decide.
57:59
SPEAKER_00: You've had a perfect like to share on this podcast, email us at hiddencreaturespodcast at gmail.com.
58:08
SPEAKER_00: Until next time, stay safe and don't wander too far alone in the dark.
58:12
SPEAKER_00: We have plenty more thrilling stories to share with you.
58:15
SPEAKER_00: And maybe one day, we'll share your story too.