Latest / Haunted Ozark Theater / Episode 46 - The Phantom Killer ft. Dawn of Mantis

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Episode 46 - The Phantom Killer ft. Dawn of Mantis · Haunted Ozark Theater

• 0:19
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Haunted Ozark Theater.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_02: H O T, your hot horror podcast.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_02: And as promised, this episode is going to be all about our trip down to Texarcana with the fellows from Dawn of Mantis.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_02: So right now it's just me, but here in just a few minutes, you're going to hear Cody, you're going to hear Joey, you're going to hear Ivan as we explore some of the real life locales that have to do with the Phantom Killer murders and also with uh The Town That Dreaded Sundown, which was a film inspired by those murders.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_02: It was a surreal and fascinating experience to be down there and be in these actual places.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_02: And you're going to hear a lot more about that here in just a moment.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_02: But of course, we have to do this day in horror history.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_02: And back in 1974, on this day, October 11th, Black Christmas was released in theaters.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_02: And we've talked about Black Christmas several times.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_02: And so I won't spend too much time on it, but I will just address the quick highlights, which is it is one of the earliest examples of a slasher.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_02: Slashers have seemingly been around forever, but it's a subgenre that probably came into existence in the 70s, and maybe even came into existence with this film, Black Christmas.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: That could be debated, and maybe one day we'll do a whole episode on just that topic.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: But Olivia Hussey plays Jess, and we talked about her in our episode about Final Girls.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_02: Is she the first final girl?
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_02: I think she is.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_02: If she's not the first, she's certainly one of the first.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: And we also talked about this film in the Bad Decisions episode.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_02: This movie is famous for the scene where the cops call her and say the killer is in the house.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_02: The calls are coming from in the house.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_02: And she's down on the first floor.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_02: She could go out the front door and get away, but instead she goes up the stairs and starts calling out to the killer, and we deemed that a poor decision.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_02: As far as rewatches go, it wasn't that long ago that I watched both versions of The Town that Dreaded Sundown.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um 1976, the original by Charles V.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_02: Pierce, and then they came out with a it's like a meta sequels, uh, I would call it.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_02: And that one came out in 2014.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_02: Both really good, both really interesting, both um were absolutely brought to life, even more so when we were in the actual filming locations, it was pretty incredible, I gotta say.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so I did not re-watch those because those were still pretty fresh on my mind, but I did re-watch The Legend of Boggy Creek, and that's another Charles B.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_02: Pierce film, and the reason why I re-watched that is because in addition to exploring the Phantom Killer murders down in Texas, can I take a little trip down to Falk, which is not much further south, and that is home to uh the Monster Mart.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_02: It's home to many, many, many sightings of the Boggy Creek Monster.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: And um I just wanted to be brushed up on that, and that's a really fun movie as well.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, they call that a docudrama.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um Charles B.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_02: Pierce, he grew up in the Texarkana area, and so the Phantom Killer Murders and the Boggy Creek Monster, those are the kind of the two big folklore things in his neck of the woods, and so he uh, you know, dramatized them once he became a filmmaker.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_02: Uh the town of the dreaded sundown, um, some people call it the first true crime slasher, which makes it the perfect thing for Don Amantis to team up with us here at Haunted Ozark Theater and tackle.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and then, yeah, Boggy Creek Monster, a docudrama.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_02: And we do have a little segment coming up where we go to one of the locations where the Boggy Creek Monster is actually sighted.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_02: We go to the actual creek called Boggy Creek, and of course, like I said, we go to Monster Mart and uh take in all the sights and sounds of the museum and the gift shop that they have there.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_02: It was it was really fun.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_02: While I was researching um the legend of Boggy Creek, I came across a film that's simply called Bigfoot Wars, and it takes place in the fictional town of Boggy Creek, which it's heavily implied that they're, you know, in the Texarcana slash Falc area in this movie.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it's probably not even a B movie, it might be a C or even a D movie.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but it was tremendously entertaining.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_02: It was definitely a fun and wild ride.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um I would say like so bad it's good, but it wasn't even really bad.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_02: It was just uh just very campy and just very enjoyable.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_02: If you haven't seen it, check out Big Foot Wars.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um C.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_02: Thomas Howe is in it, as well as Judd Nelson, believe it or not.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_02: And uh it had some great creature effects, some great gore.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um once we get down the cast list into some of the lesser-known actors, the the performances suffer a little bit, but it it doesn't take away from the fun and um spectacle of it all.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_02: The premise is that the Bigfoot creatures have run out of females.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: So they start kidnapping human women to how do I say this, keep their species going.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: And the men of the town of Boggy Creek take up arms and uh literally go to war with dozens of of Bigfoot creatures.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it's really camp like I said, campy and um but fun and well done, and uh, like I said, good effects, creature effects, makeup effects, gore effects, all all well done.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um not CGI, it's all practical.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_02: But a movie that's definitely flown under the radar, I doubt that many of you have seen this.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_02: If you're listening to the podcast, if you have seen it, get on our socials and comment on it.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_02: And that reminds me also that uh some of the audio you're gonna hear was pulled from video that Dawn of Mantis posted.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_02: So if there's some uneven quality to some of our audio throughout this episode, that's the reason why.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_02: But additionally, you can go to any of Dawn of Mantis' socials and see the video of our our trip down there.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_02: And I encourage you to do so.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_02: And Dawn of Mantis is gonna have uh their own episode, I believe, that's gonna be extremely similar to this one.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but definitely uh go over there and give them some love because they're a great bunch of guys and they have a great, great podcast.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_02: So without further ado, uh I'm gonna get you over to our uh audio that we recorded live in Texarkana.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_02: This first clip you're gonna hear is our first stop that we made, which was at the Starks Family Farm.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_02: And even though it was the first stop we made, it was actually the last killings that the Phantom Killer committed before he disappeared and was never heard from again.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_02: So uh stay tuned for this first clip and enjoy.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_04: Hey Joe here with the Dawn of Mantis Podcast, along with Ivan, who's behind the camera, and Paul and Cody from Haunted Ozark Theater.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_04: We are currently about 10 miles outside of Texas Arcana, Texas, off of Highway 67.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_04: You're gonna hear a lot of cars go by, but tried to ignore that.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_04: Um, this gate and this old corner post, this is about the area of the entrance of the old Starks family farm that was right out in that field where on May 3rd, 1946, the Phantom Killer came from that direction.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_04: He crossed those railroad tracks, that highway came through here.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, he stood outside the Starks family home and shot Virgil through the window, I think twice.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_04: He killed him instantly.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_04: Then he came around through another window and came after Katie, Virgil's wife, shot her through the face, and somehow she survived long enough to get away and run to a neighbor's house just down the way, and she survived the attack.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_04: Virgil didn't.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_04: But yeah, that was May 3rd, 1946.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_04: So it's been a little over 80 years ago.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_04: So I know this area looks quite a bit different, but from all the newspaper articles, books, everything we've read and studied on, we believe we are right about at the spot.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_04: It's very close to where it needs to be.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_04: Joey, why do you think this was the last killing?
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_04: Personally, I think uh Yule Swinney is as we covered this.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_04: We do like a seven or eight hour series on on the phantom killings we did a few years ago on the podcast.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_04: But I think it was because they had Yule Swinney in custody, and I think he was the phantom killer, and I think that's why they stopped.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_04: Now, a lot I don't know if that's a popular opinion or not, but that's what I believe.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_03: And he didn't have any ties to the victims, that was just random killings.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_04: I think it was all completely random.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_04: Wow.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_04: And at the time, you know, he'd already committed uh a lot of other murders, well, several other murders inside Tex Arcana and along like Lovers Lanes where teenagers were parking.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_04: And so a lot of people say, well, it's a different MO.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_04: We don't think he did the Starks murders.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_04: I think he did because at the time police were staking out every single Lover's Lane, every dirt road, every goat trail they had a cock car on.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_04: So I think he was forced to come out out of the city just a little bit, drive 10-15 minutes, find a farm, and you know.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_03: You were saying earlier that he might have been a genius, or maybe it was more luck because you said something about the police officers.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so there was uh two officers, can't remember their names right now, but when Katie was able to escape and go to a neighbor's house and call for help, uh the the officers they called had just driven by.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_04: So they when they went back and forth.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_03: Are we talking minutes?
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_03: Minutes.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_04: So the timeline, they believed that they were driving by here as the murders were happening, murder, or right after.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_04: And in fact, one of them noted the reason they kind of noticed this area was because on the other side of those tracks over there is a dirt road, and there was an old sedan parked over there, just kind of out of, you know, in the middle of nowhere.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_04: So they was like, that's weird.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_04: And then you know, five minutes later they get a call.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_04: Well, then we just drove by there, and so they figured that was either happening or you know, it's crazy because that means as the officers drove by minutes later, that's when the phantom crossed back, and then when they came back, they notes that car was gone.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_03: Never to be seen again.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and then they also know there's tire tracks, there's footprints.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I think the near miss that happened in real life, which we were just discussing, was the impetus for including the final scene in the town that dreaded sundown, where the passing train allows the phantom killer to escape from the police.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but this was the climax of that movie, the phantom or the town that dreaded sundown.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_02: So, this is the spot where uh that final killing, which was the climax of the film, this is the spot where that likely took place.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's weird to be here.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_04: Like after especially reading about it so much.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_03: And we've grown up with it being for Mark's.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_04: But uh, yeah, I mean, we think this is the place, like I said, based on all the research we've done.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_04: This is uh after 80 years, you know, it's gonna look quite a bit different.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_04: But we're standing next to a really ancient, like 12-inch rotted uh wooden post that we believe may have been, you know, a part of the entrance to their farm.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_04: But if not, we're within a one or two hundred yards either way, and that field is where it was.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_04: We can be pretty confident of that.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_03: So probably a nice warm summer night, huh?
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_04: Just relaxing and it was yeah, a little bit before 9 p.m., I think.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_04: Uh Katie Starks was a bad A though, I'll tell you that, because the bullet went in her cheek and right out behind her ear.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_04: And uh, you know, it must have gone in right above her mouth because I read that as she was crawling away from the phantom, she was spitting out her teeth.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_04: And she even had the presence of mind to uh one of the teeth was gold capped.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_04: And that was this is 1946, that was a lot of money.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_04: So she even went, you know, had the presence of mind to pick up.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_04: To think of that one, put it in her blouse.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_04: And you are the expert on this.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know about that.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_03: The five killings is this the only second victim to be shot?
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_03: No, there were other shootings.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, there were yeah, yeah.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_04: The very first two victims that lived were beaten really badly, and uh, but there was a mix of uh beating and other shootings amongst the other killings.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I think I think Benny Joe, uh Booker, and Paul Martin were both shot.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_04: I think there was a couple others.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_04: Um yeah, and we'll get into that.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_04: We're gonna make a few other videos today at those sites as well.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_04: Spring Lake Park is where the a couple of the other ones happened.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_04: So as far as the Starks farm, we're pretty sure right here.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_04: Just put yourself back there 80 years, and this is exactly where it happened, trippy.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, it's Paul.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just cutting in to set up the next clip that you're gonna hear.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_02: We took a trip to Spring Lake Park, which was the site of the third attack, the second set of double murders, and we recorded some audio about the attacks and then where the bodies were found in relation to the attacks.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_02: And there's a plaque in the park.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_02: And if you want to see a picture of the plaque commemorating the victims, uh, we'll have it posted on our Instagram so you can go check it out.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_02: It was super weird being there uh because the park was just full of children playing.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_02: It was a bright Saturday sunny afternoon, and um, it was so joyful and lively.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_02: But knowing that this grisly thing had happened there 80 years ago, it was just a weird juxtaposition.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_02: But anyway, take a listen to this next clip and hear all about our discussion about this the events of Spring Lake Park.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_04: So now we are at Spring Lake Park in Texas, Arcana on the Texas side.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_04: We were uh when we were at the Starks farm, we were on the Arkansas side.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_04: That was the only case to take place in Arkansas, and the rest were in Texas.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_04: And so uh at Spring Lake Park on the uh night of April 13th, but technically in the early morning hours of April 14th, 1946, uh Paul Martin and Betty Joe Booker parked his car basically right off North Park Road, right here.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_04: None of these houses were here, so it was woods, but basically parked right here at Spring Lake Park.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_04: It was a little bit of a Lover's Lane situation going on.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_04: And uh at about 1.30 or 2 in the morning, I might be a little bit off on that, but somewhere around in there, uh the phantom killer forced them from their car and uh he shot them both with a 32-caliber pistol.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_04: Paul's body was found in the park not too far away.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_04: Betty Joe Booker's body was found, I think anywhere from like a mile and a half to two miles away from here.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_04: And uh, we're gonna go to those sites as well and uh kind of show you as near as we can where where she was found.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_04: But what's cool is uh one thing we know for sure, because the whole theme of this is we don't know what it looked like or what was here or what was not here 80 years ago.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_04: Well, the structure right behind Paul and Cody was absolutely here 80 years ago.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_04: It was here at the time because there's a plaque on it over there that uh says it was built in 1931.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_04: Isn't that correct?
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_04: Yep, yeah.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_04: So this was here.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_04: This is what Paul and Betty Joe drove through that night before they parked when they got attacked.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_04: This was absolutely here, so we can know that for sure.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: What about the let's talk about filming locations?
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: We figured out something else about this park on the way over here, Cody.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_03: This is actually where they filmed the trombone scene with the stabbing.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_03: So we uh don't know the exact spot, but they did film it at this park.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_03: So one of these trees is where she got she was tied to the tree uh brutally murdered, facing the tree with her back to the killer.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_03: Like you said, that's how it was portrayed in the the movie.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's that was probably fictionalized heavily.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_04: I I find it hard to believe that a super fan has not obsessively tracked down the tree and marked it.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_04: Like I can't, it's a really a shocker that that hasn't happened.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, so now we are at the location of uh where they found Betty Joe Booker's body.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, we're roughly a couple miles from where Paul Martin's car was found at Spring Lake Park.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_04: Well, right behind me here is uh Cowhorn Creek.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_04: Now it wasn't paved like this back then, obviously, and it's only paved like this for a few more feet behind me, and then it's just kind of like a dry, I guess a wet weather creek.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_04: But in those woods, right back over there, is exactly where uh Betty Joe's body was found.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_04: Of course, we don't know exactly where there's actually a picture of her body.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_04: Um it's kind of panned close in where you can only see like one tree next to it.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_04: And obviously these trees would look different 80 years ago anyway.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_04: But we do know that it was uh right by this creek in those woods at this at this corner.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_04: There's a big hospital that's been built that's behind us right now, obviously since then.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_04: But uh, you know, that's the thing with doing this 80 years later, everything's gonna look so much different now.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_04: But we do know right there, right there in that, you know, 50 square foot area is where her body was found.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_04: So now I'm standing in the parking lot of a grandy's restaurant off Richmond Road in Tex Arcana, Texas, which may seem weird, but this actually looked very different 80 years ago.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_04: This was kind of a lover's lane pull-off.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_04: This was all woods, you know, none of this was here.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_04: And on uh February 22nd, 1946, the Phantom committed his first attacks here, but uh they did not result in murders.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_04: Actually, he attacked Jimmy Hollis and Mary Jean Larry.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_04: Uh he beat them badly, and Jimmy Hollis ended up in the hospital with uh some severe head injuries, and I think he was in a coma for a while.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_04: But they both did live.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_04: And so uh for a while the police did not think this was connected to the murders that can you know happened after because those were murders.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_04: These were beatings, those were murders, but of course they eventually put two and two together.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_04: Um, Jimmy Hollis and Mary Jean Larry were not scandalous cheaters.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_04: A lot of people like to put that spin on this when they retell the story that they were both married to other people when they were out here that night.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_04: They were married to other people, but they had both begun divorce proceedings from those people uh a good ways before that.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_04: I think maybe even before they met each other.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_04: So anyway, just to kind of try to clean up their names a little bit after the fact, it wasn't quite so scandalous, but yeah, just imagine this 80 years ago as a bunch of woods with a lover's lane, and this is the spot of the first Phantom Killer attack.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_04: So we are at Hillcrest Cemetery, still in Texarkana on the Texas side, and we have found the grave of Paul Martin, who was murdered by the Phantom Killer April 14th, 1946.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_04: We were talking before we started rolling about how uh Paul said unceremonious, and that's a good term.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_04: It's just uh I don't know, with uh with this significance of of him having been murdered by the phantom killer, and you know, uh a string of murders that's become famous all over the world since 1946.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_04: Uh you come to one of his victims' graves, and there you go.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_04: It's just this little flat.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_04: I don't know.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_04: It's just very strange, you know.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_04: Um just like when someone said when we were at one of the other locations where the body was found, you think that there might be a a memorial or a plaque or uh something, but it's it kind of surreal for you because all the hours you put in studying these cases and you're right here.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_04: It's so surreal.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, he's right beneath the city.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_04: It just seems like there would be a little more.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_04: Uh but life goes on, I guess, you know.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_04: Um maybe that's all they could afford.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_04: Maybe that's it.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_04: So yeah, it took us a minute.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_04: We went to a couple of varieties.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_04: Cemeteries because our GPS is hate us, but here we are, and there's the grave of Paul Martin.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_04: So we've already been out to the area where the Starks farm used to be, where the uh final known attacks of the Phantom Killer happened.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_04: Now we are back in Hillcrest Cemetery.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_04: We just showed you the grave of Paul Martin.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_04: That's actually as the crow flies, what guys, a hundred yards from here?
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_04: Barely.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_04: But now we're at the graves of Walter Virgil Starks.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_04: So Virgil Starks, who was killed at the farm that night by the Phantom.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_04: And his wife Katie, who uh survived, went on to remarry someone with the last name of Sutton.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_04: And she lived until July 3rd, 1994.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_04: So she lived almost another 50 years after that attack, which is a mark remarkable.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_04: So yeah, that's you know, we were surprised because again, like I said, with Paul's grave, we we were expecting a little bit more reverence, I guess.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_04: These, uh Katie's was almost completely covered in grass.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_04: You know, we before these pictures and before this video, we spent about 10 minutes peeling the grass off and tearing the roots and stuff away from these gravestones and dusting them off so you can even see them.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_04: Um Paul found these and it's a miracle.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_04: Well, there's a larger uh upstanding right there, yeah, the upright marker that kind of shows where they are, but it's still kind of a miracle that he even saw these two um, you know, the flat gravestones, just kind of because of the condition that they were in.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_04: But anyway, yeah, uh it's again, it's really trippy.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_04: Um, good for Katie for living almost another 50 years after that whole mess.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, but uh yeah.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, it's Paul interrupting again.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_02: The next uh bit of audio that you're gonna hear contains a clip from the film The Town that dreaded sundown.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_02: It's a scene that takes place in the police station within the movie.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's actually an old train station that they used as if it were a police station, and we were able to find the exact spot that appears in the movie and visit it and talk about it.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_02: And then additionally, there's a funny little scene with Charles B.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_02: Pierce himself, he plays a character called Spark Plug.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_02: He's kind of the comedic relief, and there's a funny little scene where he uh runs down the steps past the sheriff and past the lone wolf, and we recreated that scene uh with us as the actors, but on the actual steps, the exact same spot.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_02: So if you want to see the video that we took, uh I'll put I'll post it on our TikTok.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_02: So check that out and check out this next clip.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know the man in the white suit?
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's Captain Morales.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: You'll be his driver.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: Try not to reckon.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: No there.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_03: So, guys, we're here at the filming location of the town that dreaded sundown.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_03: This is where the sheriff and the lone wolf come down from the movie.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_03: This is the police station.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, it's a lot different from 1976, but we're 100% certain this is where they filmed it.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_03: And it is, it's really neat being here and seeing the history of this.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_03: And we were back at our uh place we were staying, and we were watching the original Town that dreaded sundown, and this is this exact same spot.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_03: How this affected the whole town.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_03: It really is something, and me and the rest of the guys, we really feel it.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_03: You can you can just tell it's it's really neat.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, I'm butting in for the last time to set up the final clip, which is us down in Falk.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, we went on the hunt for the Boggy Creek monster.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_02: At least uh we went to one of the places where he was sighted.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_02: And it's the swamp at the end of a dirt road about five miles west of Falk.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_02: We couldn't get all the way out to the swamp because it was private property, but we got as close as we could and filmed some content out there in the woods.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_02: It was very thick, um, very beautiful.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_02: And if he's out there, I could see why he would choose to hang out in this particular area.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_02: Uh after we left there, we stumbled upon the actual Boggy Creek and took some pictures with the signage, and then made our way into Falk proper and hit up the Monster Mart.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_02: So, anyway, this is the last clip for this show, and then I'll be back afterwards to wrap everything up.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, guys, we're here at one of the Falc Monster sighting locations.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's uh where would where would you say it is like in re relation to Falc?
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_02: We're west of Falc, uh out near a swamp, and I'd say maybe we're five miles west of Falc.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: So if you had if you had to say right now, what do you guys think?
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: Does does this monster exist or or not?
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, uh I'll I'll take the safe bet and say, I think it might, but I've just never seen anything to pull me all the way over to the uh side where I'm a definite believer.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_02: I would say that if he exists, this is the place where he would where you'd find him.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_04: Agreed.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_04: It's it's insanely dense forest and swamp out here.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, I think uh I think a critter could hide out if he's I mean he's supposed to be intelligent, right?
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_04: So it's not like he's gonna be dumb enough like Harry and the Hendersons to just walk across the road.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_04: He could be watching us right now.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_02: We're we're not that far out of Falc, but it's remote.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_03: My only thing is everyone out here, I would think, is the hunter.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_03: And you're telling me none of these hunters have bagged him a big foot.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_03: I I don't know.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_03: Because he's smart, he's smart, Cody.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_03: They'd be instantly insanely wealthy if they did.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I I'm 50-50, I guess I would say.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there's some nice houses out here.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe that's how they could promote it.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's true, that's true.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: They sold it to some science lab and cell low.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, hey, we're gonna pay extra if you if you shut your mouth, and they're like, okay, well, we'll build the most awesome shop house ever.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's what we just saw, right?
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: So, all right.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, this is the location, and I guess we can go over here and point to that lake, right?
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: Banjos in the distance, so let's wrap this up.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, we're getting nervous here.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: I heard I heard he plays banjo.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: That would be banjo picking fool.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_02: If you had like a bluegrass band and your banjo player was aspo, oh man, how cool would that be?
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_02: So talk about insanely well.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_02: You can see the swamp back there.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_04: But we're on private property.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, this is private property, so we can't walk all the way over to the swamp, but you can see the swamp between the trees over there.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_02: And that's technically where he was sighted, was over on that swamp.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_02: Walking out of it.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know the okay, the finer points of the stuff.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: And that that's the iconic, uh, isn't it the cover of like the the movie, the iconic through the swamp?
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: The the um the Sasquatch walking.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know if they filmed here?
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_02: I know they filmed in and around Texarkana, is all I know.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_02: All right, folks, so that was our trip down to Texarcana and our exploration of all things related to the Phantom Killer and the Town That Dreaded Sundown and the Legend of Boggy Creek.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_02: Uh at the beginning of the episode, I mentioned um Black Christmas and how it is maybe the first slasher.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I also mentioned the town that dreaded sundown being called a true crime slasher.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I said something along the lines of maybe we'll have to do a whole episode on a slasher or on the subgenre of slashers.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_02: And I think I want to go ahead and do that.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_02: So I think our next episode coming to you in a week is going to be uh just that an exploration of the anatomy of slashers, the subgenre of slashers as a whole.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um, then we will do our coverage of the entire Halloween franchise, which is something like 14, 15 movies.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_02: I I I'm not exactly sure, but we'll give you that number obviously uh in that episode.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's probably gonna be a two-parter because the uh episode we did on Friday 13th ended up being a two-parter.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm I'm gonna give ourselves two spaces or two slots to break down the whole Halloween franchise, and that does include all the original films, plus the two Rob Zombie films, plus the David Gordon Green trilogy that came out a few years back.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_02: So it's gonna be a lot of ground to cover, but it's gonna be a lot of fun, and it's gonna be just in time for the actual holiday of Halloween.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_02: And then after that, sometime in early November, we will do our 50th episode Extravaganza, which I if I haven't said it already, it's gonna be a video episode.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we're getting with the Donamansis team to go live in their studio, or not live, but to record in their studio on camera.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_02: So you'll be able to hear it where you normally hear Haunted Ozark Theater, but you'll also be able to see the episode on YouTube.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_02: So check that out.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_02: 50th episode Extravaganza celebrate with us, and it's gonna be a lot of fun.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_02: And thank you all, as always, for listening.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I hope that you'll continue to listen.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_02: We feel your support, and most of all, we're just having so much fun doing this, and we have no plans of stopping.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_02: So here's to another 50 episodes, and thank you so much, y'all.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_02: Have a great rest of your week wherever you are.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_02: Bye.