259. A Haunted Castle for Delinquent Boys

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very spooky hey who knew it would take so much effort to start a recording h i sometimes I'm a little bit envious of the people that have Studios where there are other people there doing all of the audio and Tech for them but then at the same time I'm like I don't want to go in anywhere I I've honestly become such a homebody to the point where I never want to leave like if someone gives me a reason to leave I'm like absolutely not you sure about that are you sure you

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really want me to cuz we could do it virtually which sounds significantly better together and also I feel like in the winter do we need to be social do we need to be venturing outside of our walls winter time is like you're in bed by 5 heated blanket is on oh cuddled with the cat that's all you need relax and ignore the false sense of urgency words by it's a picture of you in the bed draped over the side of it in your background exactly yesterday I had a a wonderful moment where I was forced to relax and do absolutely nothing and it was right before I was getting into bed I was just so stressed and I haven't slept in like four days cuz I can't turn my brain off and I was like you know what I'm just going to put like little eye gels underneath cuz I know as soon as I get into bed I'm not going to fall asleep I'm going to be up sure for an hour at least and then I opened up the

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eye gels and it wasn't an eye gel it was an eye warmer and as soon as it it's exposed to air it starts heating up the eye patch and you put it over your eyes so I was like well I'm not going to waste it so I just sat there in bed like a little mummy like a corpse for 30 minutes with my eye patch on and during that time Brian came in had to ask me some questions my parents are here helping do some housework so my mom also came in and I'm just laying like a like I'm in a coffin eyes closed every talks around me and it was lovely that's amazing yeah it was great I'm proud of you I know that you were forced to experience relaxation like that because your body physically was like I'm going to shut down so you have to do this Ken but I'm proud of you for honoring that because you do deserve it and you do need it and you've been going through a lot you have a lot going on you have a lot on your plate and we are doing a lot as podcasters as people as

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humans so I just hope you can give yourself that more often and not necessarily when your body shuts down and tells you you have to yeah that's a good point my dad actually was like Karan you need to it was like 11:00 p.m. and I was still moving Stephan he goes you need to rest and I go who me and he goes yeah you the only one in here who's pregnant like get out of here and then they forced me upstairs and then my mom said you better not come back downstairs so that's why I was up there it wasn't really by my choice oh man any it's so funny CU I feel like one day when I'm pregnant I'm just going to use it as my excuse to do absolutely nothing like I feel like I'll finally be able to be like sorry can't get out of bed I'm pregnant I think I would also be doing that if the problem is we have the house and the house is like torn apart and there's infestations and rotting walls and things like that

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and so I feel like I my pregnancy is for doing everything that I can possibly do to get the house ready and then as soon as I give birth I am like talk to you guys in three months I'm I'm mute I'm unreachable I'm out which is good you're doing all of the work now so that you can take that time for yourself and for your family when the time comes snaps for you Karen that's the plan and I support it but we were creepy kids and we did creepy things as kidss and one of those things that we did was a lot of creative writing do you have something to share with us today from your childhood journals and homework I have an essay that I wrote and I'm really really proud of it it's one of my favorite things I've ever written I've talked about France kofka before France kofka is was an amazing literary author Leia's screaming Leia come here sheez sorry in high school I had a teacher who we read France Kafka

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and then we had to write Kafkaesque pieces and so I wrote this essay and I won't be able to read the whole thing because it's pretty long I will read let's see how many excerpt it's like when you're at a bookstore and you're the author and you read like an excerpt from your new novel yeah for everyone in the crowd that's us right now we're the crowd you're up at the podium like it's like seven pages so I don't really know that I can read the whole thing but as context met orphosis is about it's like a story of this man who turns into a beetle and he kind of becomes a nuisance to his family and I haven't read it in very long time but taking that into frame of reference that was what we read and reading material and then we had to write a Kafka piece so this is called the brain of a stitch I wrote it December 6th 2009 also this is so clearly I've been obsessed with the name Charlie since high school forever she has my alter ego which is so funny cuz

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actually Charlie as a baby name is becoming less popular this year after it had a moment so that's good cuz if you use it as a child's name in the future the hard thing is that I think Charlie is my Alter Ego like she is me so I can't name my child can't bestow it upon anyone else exactly okay so I'm going to read I'll find a natural stopping point Charlie woke up in a sweat her night gown stuck to her legs and her hairline slightly damp all she wanted to do was get out of her dream she couldn't understand it why was there a car why was she crying as she forgot about the dream she rolled over and faced the bedside table she glanced at the clock and saw it was already 8:30 in the morning she jumped out of bed her mom would be angry when she went downstairs for breakfast Charlie knew her mom she always had a strict schedule for Charlie to follow breakfast at 8 and any later and she would give the food to the dog at 9 Charlie had to read the newspaper out loud to her parents after that Charlie would sit with her mom and

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Stitch for 3 hours straight Charlie slipped off her night gown and quickly put on her blue jeans in the pink floral shirt that were lying on the floor of her closet she ran down the main staircase sprinted into the kitchen no one was there the kitchen was empty with a piercing silence the stove remained cold Charlie thought oh no she was in for it now she had woken up late and now she was going to be punished the Clock Struck 9 and 9 meant it was time to read the newspaper Charlie looked to the kitchen table where her mom had always put the paper but it was cleared off completely Charlie couldn't find it anywhere so maybe she could start stitching and her mom would be proud she had taken her own initiative she walked the kitchen doors into the room where she always stitched as she entered the room she stared at the two chairs one chair was hers it was small and wooden and painted across the top was her name in pink the other chair which was twice the size of hers belonged to her mom it was old and Charlie could see little pieces of wood sticking out everywhere

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her mom's pillow was lying on the floor next to the chair as it always did Charlie went to pick up her needle and thread they were attached to the piece she was working on a scarf one she had made for her mom she had given the scarf to her mom almost a year ago when her mom took it out of the box she immediately threw it on the ground she told Charlie that no person would wear a scarf with such pathetic stitching as she had done Charlie had taken back the scarf and took the criticism into consideration as she always did and since then Charlie has been working on the scarf she took a seat in her small chair and went to work needle under over under over under over over under Le's adding to the uh Rhythm here she had made the most careless mistake possible in an agonizing rage she tore the stitches out almost tearing the thread she went back to work determined to complete the scarf her pupils grew wide and slowly the glossiness had grown into dryness her

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eyes thirsted for Tears her Focus was a trance and she was forgetting to Blink Stitch after Stitch she kept going nothing could take her away from this moment or this scarf I want to skip to the end okay I'm like already feeling very the yellow wallpaper yeah it does have that Vibe yeah Charlie's mind was racing she had to stitch until her mom came home if her mom came home found Charlie doing nothing or something other than stitching she would be seen as a failure she was pacing side to side in the room searching for something to stitch she threw open the drawers and found nothing she ran to the opposite side of the room and tripped as she fell she cut her arm on the pieces of wood from her mother's chair she tried to catch herself before falling into the wood but this only further forced the splintered wood into her skin she took a seat on the floor dug the wood out of her skin letting blood drip into the floor at that moment she could feel no pain or see any blood because her mind had gone back to thinking she had looked at the cut she had received and many other cuts on on her skin and decided to

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put the needle back between her thumb and middle finger and dug it into the skin just above the fresh cut she pushed the needle through the other side of the cut and pulled tightly she watched as the two sides of her skin were pulled closer together Charlie made six perfect stitches all on her first attempt the skin was so tightly stitched back together that no blood could find a way to drip from the cut so she decided to do this to every other cut on her body oh God so gross she fumbled with the needle in the thread in the tips of her fingers she slowly brought the needle up to her lips where she began to dig the sharp end of it into the lower lip at first the needle was too stubborn to permeate the chapped skin but Charlie pushed and finally the needle went through the bottom lip she pulled it through the inside of her mouth then pushed the needle through inside of her upper lip brought the needle back down to the bottom and pushed it through repeating the pattern until her lips were stitched shut basically

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you've always gone dark she stitches her entire body shut and you realize at the end that her parents are dead okay I thought at the beginning that her parents must be dead when the newspaper wasn't there yeah Jesus Sabrina what did your teacher say what was the feedback cuz number one it's beautifully written I think you're brilliant I love everything that you do and right and so I can't imagine I would ever think that like you're you're reading this and I'm like you should create your own Black Mirror type of Series where it's just like people finding different ways to go mad cuz this could be episode number one but I I am curious like from a teacher perspective when you read something that you're like okay number one my student is incredible but number two is this concerning the dark creativity taken well Kafka is very dark it's very maob this class was a psych Literature Like psych psychological liter class oh oh so

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interesting guess what grade I got on this well I would say A+ I got a B why I know that that bee I'm just kidding I really liked her she's the reason I went to LMU Kate Wester did she go to LMU no but she was from California and then she was like there's a small little Jesuit school in Los Angeles that maybe you'd be interested in and that's how I heard of it interesting I heard of it from my math teacher in Vermont who also went to LMU isn't that so Random wow yeah he was really nice he and his wife adopted one of the high schoolers that was a gred above me who didn't have the best home life I don't know why she gave you a b other than maybe all of the other work that you had done was just even more brilliant so in comparison this was she was like Sabrina I know you're capable of more but I thought it was incredible I feel like you got the tone right immediately cuz like the first part before you skip forward when I said it's giving the yellow wallpaper I was also thinking Coraline at the same time and that's exact exactly what it's

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like the perfect little mix thank you Karen that's very nice of you to say I I honestly haven't read it all the way through since high school so if I were to to look back or if I were to revise it there were there's probably a lot of things I would hurricane Leia there are probably a lot of things that I would do but her class in this class specifically was one of the reasons that I fell in love with writing so it's always fun to look back at that yeah and also I'm a disturbed lady my brain is sick we know that there are some things that if I told you like what I was into well K you know but like people will be like it makes sense but it's [ __ ] weird I want you to expose the truth you want me to expose myself but I know you won't it's a whole spin-off podcast that is not about the Paranormal let's just say that no no should I start like a secret like a secret podcast where I

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just spill all my dirty little secrets we can do like a voice changer and you can have a different identity we'll call it the Dirty Little Secret podcast I love it so now everyone knows who it is now you guys don't sh don't tell sh forget we need one of those like spinny hypnotic like wheel happening you will never remember this conversation but you will listen to that podcast that's a good idea we should just hypnotize everyone to listen to our podcast the one that doesn't exist instead of the one that actually does oh my gosh any well guys thanks for listening to this one we do appreciate it I don't know that we even introduced ourselves this is two girls one ghost two girls one ghost and we are your ghostesses that's Karen I'm Saina I am wearing our ghost girl hat which we did put on our website for everyone to buy now so if you guys want to be a ghost

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gal like us you can buy a hat prer hat rep my bracelet is caught in my shirt I guess you have to take the shirt off I'm tied up Reveal Your dense boobs now I'm tied up Serena getting stuck in your stitches all right well I am the one delivering us a haunted tail this week and I do want to provide a trigger warning at the top for mention of child abuse sexual assault violence imprisonment and torture all right sticking with the scary creepy maob stuff that I was writing about in high school okay yep where you taking us I'm taking us to California to talk about a place that was actually recommended To Us by a listener at our San Francisco show I think one or two people at that show in the meet and great line told us to look into this place oh cool it is called Preston Castle so coming off the height of industrialization there were industry Titans there were a ton of workers and

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people who worked in trades obviously it wasn't the safest choice we know that because there were a lot of unions that were formed to help with keeping workers safe but it just you know it was a horrible environment to work in for so many different people people were severely underpaid and companies just didn't also want to pay their workers at all and so one of the things that resulted from this was that companies started to be a little bit more creative with how to get cheap labor from people who seemed to be forgotten by society and we've covered a few places like this prisons prisons where workers were I almost said utilized but like that's not the right like they were they like forced to work yes exactly yeah this is something that happened all over the world a ton of places in America and that's mostly what happened in the adult prison system at the time but for juvenile delinquents during the Victorian era corporations control is

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this like holes kind of yeah it totally is this is Holes without kissing Kate Barlo or any treasure and without any schute what's it called like the peaches the schug I don't remember it's something that sounds really weird but it's the peaches oh now I'm just picturing someone one of the boys teaching another boy how to read and I'm getting emotional yeah okay this is basically holes but with not sh of buff okay so the juvenile delinquents they during the Victorian era they had a really big concern for Crime which is kind of interesting because I was reading about the different crime rates and I feel like it was still going down at the time that this Preston Castle would soon to become but at the time all of the Victorian era people were just like super concerned with all of the theft and all of the crime and all of the murder that was happening and they would have these really really harsh punishments and so one of the

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punishments for kids was basically just being sent to jail like a normal person but then they soon realized like oh [ __ ] maybe we should not be sending children and these young adults into the same sort of system that were sending oh they like weren't separated they were thrown it together they weren't separated no and they were like as harsh as they could be with some of the things that they wanted people to suffer from and like the the different punishments for their deeds they also ultimately had the goal of these people being able to be rehabilitated into society and they were like okay these kids are coming out way more damaged than they ever went in so let's come up with a different solution and that solution was Reformatory schools so this happened all over the place there were a bunch in the UK questionable questionable we definitely know that and versions of that still exist today I mean think about like like Paris Hilton and all of those sort of

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like Forest schools I knew someone who was sent away to a forest rehab school I also think like a lot of kids are sent to not to say like all boarding schools are like this but a lot of kids have been like I went to high school around a lot of people who were sent to boarding schools kind of so their parents didn't have to like deal with them which is really sad yeah I feel like that was an East Coast thing because when we did you notice this when we went to Almo like in the west coast people I felt like the West Coast difference was that people who went to private and boarding schools were because they could afford to go to private and boarding schools and it was like this kind of ritzy thing and where I grew up sure there were plenty of people who went for like sports and academics but if you were sent from a public school to a private school was because you [ __ ] up like you were being sent away I think more for specifically for boarding school I experienced that although there was a period of time where I was like being bulled really badly and I just like was so unhappy in high school that I considered going to boarding school and

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I remember like I like went into my mom's bedroom one morning and I was like balling my eyes out and I was like here are some boarding schools I've looked up but I want to go to a and she like she was very supportive she was like if you this is really what you need but I ended up being fine yeah my mom did that she presented schools for me in middle school and then I was like no no I'm good yeah I'm just going to keep suffering every day here I'm not going to run away from my problems I was more like ah what's another year or two I'll make it my dad was sent basically to a Reformatory school was he in America or in the Middle East I don't think I've talked about this on the podcast but there's a lot of mystery with my dad and his upbringing and I heard a rumor which I'm not going to say yeah cuz we were like is he from Pakistan is he from India like there's so many different things too with where in Asia's family he was born in Pakistan and lived there for for a couple of years in high school I think he got in or middle school he

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got into a lot of trouble so his parents sent him to boarding school in England and that was like he got smacked by nuns like it was like a they punished you yeah see that's the version I think in Vermont that I'm used to seeing too it's like The Nuns with the rulers that they smack the back of your hand and scream at you yeah all right so these Reformatory schools a lot of them were set up for offenders who were under the age of 16 to basically be sent to these schools quote unquote which were really just like prisons that had a little bit more focus on the eventual Rehabilitation of people and letting them enter the world with some skills under their belt but a lot of them ended up housing young adults too so people would still be sent there if they were like 20 21 22 it just I think it was like maybe a judgment call and also there were a lot of kids that never committed any crime they were simply abandoned by their families or orphaned

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and they were also sent to these schools was this like men and women or was it just men cuz I feel like a lot of these places ended up being like boys schools and then like girls were sent to like psychiatric facilities which is very sad yes that's exactly how it went this was this one was a boy school because most of them were especially because at the time like the goal was to teach these kids the trades and then to have them move into a job and so there was definitely a bigger push for men to get that sort of sure treatment mhm so one of the schools in America which by the way these schools were largely funded by government entities but those government entities were also somewhat controlled by the various companies you know like obviously there was money being put in their pockets by certain people and so what sort of things that they would offer in these trades or how many people were sent to them I think was a bit still influenced by it's a same thing as today different font okay so one of

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these schools was Preston School of Industry known now as Preston Castle which was again recommended by a listener at the San Francisco show it was built in 1890 after the California state legislature purchased 230 Acres from the Iron Coal and iron company and then they built the Preston School of industry it's just super large castle looking building they had it's like just shy of 50,000 Square ft like it is a massive building massive okay there's 120 rooms but each room is not like an individual room for someone like their bedrooms would have you know like basically not not bunk beds but like would have multiple you know in Annie where they go into the room and it's all the orphans are together like all in one room one big long line of like twin beds that's sort of what the situation would be too so this Preston School of

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Industry would serve as an alternative to jail for young boys and a place for abandoned Children Here kids and young adults would learn a trade and they would live in a largely self-sufficient property they would grow their own food they would learn farming trades they would raise livestock they would work in the print shop they would work in the bakery they would work at the cobbler shop like there were just so many different types of things for them to learn and so many different options and it sounds really too right yeah like it's like Oh What A Dream little commune yeah in theory it sounds amazing it sounds so great in theory but it was obviously not yeah I just like the idea of like a self-sufficient little Community but these people are not here willingly this is a forced upon commune situation where and it's not like oh I think I'll work in the Garden today or like me and Tom volunteered to bake bread today like it's not it's not not like that it's still very much a jail so not only did

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the victorians believe in harsh punishments for adult offenders but they also believed in it for children so this was no summer camp on the farm so life at Preston School of industry was entirely controlled by the superintendent and rules were very strict should a child make a mistake or step out of line discipline was clear it was harsh I mean at times it was deadly and these kids would be thrown into isolation they would be beaten publicly they would be St starved sometimes killed or if they avoided all of those things it didn't mean that they were going to avoid a horrible death or treatment there because there were also so many diseases running rampant in a place like this too yellow fever tuberculosis menitis typhoid fever malarial fever paralytic dementia and so on and in fact there was such an effort actually like to try to avoid this sort of stuff entering the facility even

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though it it didn't that they had this basically it was like a plunge pool filled with chemicals and when kids would be sent there and admitted basically like you know in in scenes that we see in television and movies where people enter the jail and they have to like get naked and they're sprayed with like a hose or like in the shower or whatever yeah so these boys would have to get in this chemical filled plunge pool and basically dunk themselves in why because it was an attempt to get rid of like the lice some of the boys had like crabs scabies other infectious diseases so that was one of the efforts made to try to lessen the amount of just disease and like parasites and bugs and stuff that existed amongst this population honestly the fact that humans have survived the elements is kind of crazy to me yeah it is immune systems so there was evidence of sexual abuse

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sadistic punishments even murder and over the 66 years of Preston School of Industries operation there were hundreds of Escape attempts which just reminds me so much yeah it's so sad it reminds me of Brushy State Penitentiary it reminds me of Alcatraz yes yeah people who just shouldn't have been there or like the punishment did not match the crime at all and people are just desperately trying to escape because the chance of being shot in the back while you escape sometimes seems a whole lot better than what you're experiencing there on your day-to-day life it really like frustrates me because this type of story doesn't surprise me like I know I want to know of the place that existed during this time period that actually ended up being beautiful and helpful and why do why does it feel like they all ended up being corrupt and the people who ended up in charge of these places were people

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who were power hungry and seeking some type of like power over people who were like lesser than them and then ended up convincing every other employee to just go along with it like why why are they all the same why do they all follow this as sad as it is I think it's because it was set up a certain way like I feel like our whole society would have to completely like dismantle and go against I feel like you'd almost have to like never be exposed to the negative treatments of prisoners to not be able to it's like the Stanford Prison Experiment when they had people volunteers assigned to be like the prisoners and then the guards it's like you had all the opportunity to be a good person but instead there's something in your brain that's like my ego my power I've seen this on TV this is my moment to to be aggressive and like get away with [ __ ] oh I hate it like why are we inherently when given power do we become something malicious and dark and it's like it's

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always existed in humanity which is also disturbing we're evil we are so we might build little solariums for people to be rolled out to and get some sunlight but as soon as they're out of that sun room there's still horrible horrible things happening in these facilities there's so much Darkness yes Samuel Goins he was a convicted burglar who arrived at Preston School in July of 1918 and he attempted to escape three times so he was one of the hundreds of boys who attempted to escape Preston School of Industry mm unfortunately during his third attempt a guard named John Kelly shot Samuel Goins in the back Sam was only 20 years old and he would have been released two months later so to me that that signifies that the conditions there were so bad that he could not wait another two months to get out like like it was that awful he had to yeah you couldn't wait and the numbers I saw online were I

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saw online that there were 17 boys buried and then I saw online that there were 19 boys buried I'm not really sure but I did read one article that said there were three people buried who record showed that they died from like being murdered and that the other 15 were due to illnesses so that's just on the property and as we know there are plenty of places that didn't keep records of how everyone went missing and picked and chose who got a burial plot and then basically whose family would come looking for them was it Athens Ohio Asylum where there were just it was just numbers like every grave was just a number and you didn't really know who was what like who was who it might have been I think it was it really sad it's sad because it's there's so many places like that too or it's just like not even a number it's just like a white marker just like field of white markers to all you Souls out there who were not given proper treatment in Life

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or in death and in your burial we love you all and we send you little spiritual hugs I know we're so sorry this is happening or happened yeah we do so Sam's fate unfortunately was not dissimilar to another boy Herman Miller who 7 years prior he was also shot by a guard who claimed to Simply Be shooting into the yard so basically this boy Herman and another boy didn't arrive for dinner and so this guard was saying that he was shooting into the yard to basically tell the super signify to the superintendent that there were a couple people missing so like boom boom like shot shot like oh no there's two people that never made it to dinner here's my signal to you H and it was totally coincidental that those shots hit the two boys Alo that can't be protocol shoot your gun multiple times if kids are missing count how many people are missing from the dinner table no so apparently this is it suspiciously

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struck the boys Herman died I don't believe anything happened to that guard well of course not so Herman passed from being shot Samuel passed from being shot both by guards and there were hundreds of kids who tried to escape who knows how many more people did die there that we just don't know about I was not able to find if anyone had ever successfully escaped Preston School of industry or if anyone was tried for the treatment and torture of these boys probably not sadly but there is one quote unquote unsolved murder case that has gotten a lot of press and that is not to do with one of the murder of the boys that were kept at Preston School of industry but instead this is about the murder of Anna Corbin the head housekeeper at Preston School of Industry oh yes on Thursday February 23rd 1950 award helper Robert Hall and housekeeper

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Lillian Lee McDow were in the basement around 2: p.m. this was just before everyone was due for a staff meeting and they discovered in one of the closets the brutally beaten body of Anna Corbin it appeared that Anna had been initially attacked in her office when her attacker had basically just entered and and took her by surprise and then dragged her into the storage room her on her body there was a thin hemp cord that was used to strangle her and it was very clear from all of the evidence in the rooms that Anna fought and she fought really hard there was stuff that was all over like knocked over she was putting up as much of a fight as she possibly could in an attempt to break free but her life did end in an instant when her attacker violently threw her to the ground and her had hit the cement and her skull

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cracked once she had passed away there was an attempt from the murderer to sexually assault her corpse but it can be assumed that there was some sort of interruption that happened before that could happen because in the midst of trying to prepare himself for this act he decided instead to drag her body into one of the storage closets put in the corner and then cover her with rolls of carpet to try to hide her body oh it's just horrible it reminds me a bit of Waverly Hills Asylum yeah yeah I mean again there's so many similarities between I know these types of facilities which is just sad yeah Waverly Hills was like treating tuberculosis patients and had a full body shoot in a morg in a tunnel this place just had a makeshift morg but there was still just like so much violence that happened within the walls yeah so these two employees find

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Anna's body and obviously immediately alert the rest of the staff and authorities the school is put on lockdown and an investigation is begun within an instant many of the boys were included on the suspect list as well as a few staff members I think initially they literally talked to every single person in this school I am glad that they at least I wish they took this type of effort to investigate when the kids were murdered or in trouble but I am really glad that they did take it this seriously and part of me wants to believe that I feel like someone who worked there did this I know you kind of want to because you're like oh well if they get caught for Anna's murder like God knows how many they did to the boys and at least like that's one bad person taken away but yeah so they thoroughly investigated they interviewed every single person who was on site so it didn't matter if it was a staff member visitor a child didn't matter everyone was interviewed and

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interrogated and they brought in lie detector tests and a lot of people were put through lie detector tests as well which we know is not really the best indicator that someone is telling the truth or not it's very easy to get away with that but eventually the list is whittel down to just a few potential suspects and then there's just one name on the list who Eugene Monroe Eugene was born in Tulsa Oklahoma and what happened to his family is not quite certain but when he was 9 years old he was kept as an inmate inmate at the institution for deaf blind and orphans 9 years old and an inmate at a place created for the deaf blind and orphans makes you want to throw up his highest level of Education according to all records would be the second grade so he never got past second grade when he got older he did move in with his

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stepfather and together they lived in Los Angeles and not long after Eugene had moved to Los Angeles 17-year-old Vesta Bell sapenter was attacked in her bedroom on the second floor of her family's home she was raped she was murdered a thin hemp cord was wrapped around her neck he's got ano yep two people had been at the home during this attack it was vesta's brother and then it was Eugene Monroe who was delivering Furniture Eugene was questioned by authorities as a suspect but he was let go not long after this Eugene Monroe was arrested for burglary and he was sent away to Preston School of Industry now this was decades after the school first opened so at this time when it first opened like I think the way they operated was a lot more harsh than it was towards the end of its operation like before it was very much about I feel like that's how a lot of them but then they all end up closing when the

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operations are less intense right it's like exactly it's tot start to figure it out and actually become a Reformatory which is like what you intended to be and then all of a sudden it's like well now there's no need for you will close down exactly it's like oh instead of abusing all of these boys let's just focus on Rehabilitation and then everyone's like oh that's boring when you close the school it's so disturbing but that's literally disturbing it's a pattern it's a copy situation what has happened so many times and that's that's also what happened here yeah so the school at the time that Eugene Monroe is sent there it's a lot more relaxed and so people were roaming the Halls a lot more they had a lot more freedom and liberty to do certain things my thing is like how did he get the hemp cord like this was clearly premeditated like it's not just like oh seize the opportunity he had planned it and prepared himself for the attack well and also too the fact that it was hemp cords in both cases that's

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what I mean yeah I'm like are the ropes were just most ropes made of hemp then I guess it just seems so specific but it must have been because I can't imagine this guy's like going out there's no two-day delivery on Amazon to order like hemp rope right and while a lot of the other boys had a lot of freedom throughout the space Eugene usually didn't because he was so incredibly aggressive and just like really mentally ill and so they kept him locked away in a room often in solitude for long periods of time and he would he would rip pipes out of the room he would like destroy the room around him and he also was known to self-mutilate a bit too he had scars all over his face from just like scratching himself until he bled like this boy was so ill he had such a horrible life it doesn't excuse any of the crimes that he did right at all but like it was very clear that there was there was a lot going on with and so he was not someone who just usually roamed the wall walls of the

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what we know as Preston Castle today yeah yeah but you know there were still opportunities for him to move about he wasn't living in solitude the entire time he was there but he was punished a lot by being placed in solitary confinement okay so Eugene was the number one suspect and he was roaming that day he wasn't locked away so he would have had access to Anna Corbin on this day and so the question was could we place him at this scene especially given that this fits ano of someone who he probably likely murdered before and got away with Eugene was one of the few boys who did not pass the interrogation and lie detector test but the other boys appeared cleaner in appearance while Eugene was one seen by multiple Witnesses within 200 ft of Anna Corbin's office just within minutes before the attack and two he had blood on his shoes

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and belt and he had taken his clothes and thrown them into the incinerator a little suspicious is that not guilt SS yeah the KN used to tie the rope around Anna's neck was the same exact knot used in the death of Vesta Bell sapenter that's also suspicious another boy William J Mercer he came forward and he said that he and Eugene had engaged in some sexual activity together and that Anna Corbin had actually like walked by and witnessed this and caught them in the act and Eugene was so horrified by it and decided that he was going to take matters into his own hands and he was going to shut up Anna forever so they could never be discovered or like what he did could never be uncovered and so he had planned to attack her to basically shut her up forever and not ever tell about him and William's a and so William knew this and he must have

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been with Eugene in the beginning of it because he did say and testify that he saw Eugene hit Anna Corbin in her office and then he got really scared by the violence of it all and so he ended up running away so he didn't see any more of the attack other than an initial hit the beginning of it but at least then there's a witness yes so there's multiple Witnesses saying he was close in proximity to the office and then there's a witness who not only gives him a motive not that he needed one CU it seems like it was random acts before with all of his crimes but gives him a reason to attack Anna Corbin and says that he saw a physical strike from Eugene inflicted on to Anna William's story changes at the preliminary hearing he recants his earlier statement and when questioned about this he basically said Eugene Monroe's attorney threatened him that if he didn't recant his statement that something bad was going to happen to him so he's like holy [ __ ] is this lawyer going to come for me is Eugene Monroe going to not be convicted and then he's going to come for me or one of his friends is going to

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come for me he was scared he was terrified that he was going to be killed basically and he was being threatened but despite being so incredibly crippled with fear that he had recanted his earlier statement he did eventually show up to the trial and was put as a witness and did confirm his original testimony which was that they had engaged in romantic relationships and that he had seen Eugene initially attack Anna Corbin in her office that day Eugene Monro was charged and tried three different times for the murder of Anna Corbin the first two resulted in a hung jury interesting the third resulted in acquittal he was let go he was never convict that's why it's quote unquote like unsolved murder he was a let go wow he must have had a good lawyer my God or people just don't [ __ ] care but also if you think about

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like Eugene's story it is tragic like there's a lot of empathy to feel for this person and I imagine that if you like milk that as a lawyer you can get a quiddle like who's who's the real villain here yeah I was reading that the first time they went to trial it was just like they just could not decide and the second time it was I can't remember the exact number but it was like if there were 10 one of them didn't think that he did it the majority did but still it resulted in a hung jury and then it God knows what happened the third time but it's just wild to be sent three different times yeah with all of the evidence that was had especially the history I mean I I guess like in court if you can't you can't necessarily bring up a previous crime if he was not found guilty for that but like as a outside perspective now looking at it it's like okay well that's really really suspicious that there's this other crime that he was a suspect of that matches

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this so perfectly I know but he was let go and he later once he left the school and obviously was not in jail Eugene was later arrested multiple times for sexual acts on others or attacks on others and when he was awaiting his court date for one of these attacks he slipped a few notes to other inmates into their cells bragging about how he will be fine he's gotten away with murder before so probably referencing the two murders he's already gotten away with and so then one of the inmates or maybe multiple were like well we're telling on you so they alerted the authorities so Eugene is then questioned and then they run his fingerprints through the FBI database and there's a match a match to a young 22-year-old pregnant woman named Dorothy waldrup who was found on a grassy null near her apartment complex she had been brutally attacked and

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assaulted in the same way that Eugene Monroe's other victims were and there was a knot around her neck included it was a bandan not a rope but the exact same knot was used in these this is a very very Bleak episode I know so sad I didn't know when I when someone was like you got to look into Preston Castle I don't know I thought like Victorian dress ghost wandering around and it's just like horrific horrific events that happened to all these people and yeah so his fingerprints matched this unsolved murder of this woman obviously he did it he is sentenced to life in prison for his crime originally they were trying to give him the death penalty but he escaped that they gave him life in prison but did he spend life in prison no cuz he [ __ ] got paroled in 1981 one he spent like 35 years in jail or something like that is he still is he

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still alive no so a few years back someone he came up in the system as like an inactive paroi so I guess they just like lost track of him and someone was curious and they looked into it and they found that he had three known residences in Los Angeles between the time that he was paroled and the time he died which was October 3rd 20 seven if I'm remembering correctly I didn't write it down wow so Preston School of Industry they closed in 1960 and then they reopened after years of sitting vacant after all of these horrific things happened there and now they offer ghost tourus so you can do some overnight investigations you can go during the daytime and follow a guide you can do self-guided tours if you're like doing a film like creating an independent film or something you can rented out to to actually use as your set you can do

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photo shoots there they've got a lot going on many of the rooms including the on-site apartments for the staff are basically time capsules so they've kept a lot of the same Decor the furniture the original beds that the boys had slept on like all of this stuff it's just left so you get to see so much of the original stuff can I see photo are there photos of it I'm going to look if you go on to their website I I do have some photos that I'm going to insert into the YouTube but if you go onto their website you can see they have a whole catalog of old historic photos of some of the boys working there some of the different staff members parties and just now some like abandoned I mean it's beautiful well and because they allow photography there are so many blogs too where you can see some incredible photos that people have taken inside of every single room wow it's really pretty the interior is kind of scary looking but the exterior is

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absolutely stunning so yeah it it definitely is a time capsule because although it's dilapidated they've kept a lot of the things that were originally there so it is very cool to walk around and kind of see that sort of stuff and of course the items are not the only thing left behind because the spirits of many people who have been here are said to be left behind as well yep so we know of at least three untimely deaths I'm sure there were plenty anym and then of course there were plenty of boys who passed away from different illnesses so there were a lot of people who died on this property also I bet just like the residual energy of like fights or just really toxic behavior and negative energy existing on that property probably has left right A lot of residual energy so much of it I'm sure so much of that exists and then it's hard to say cuz it's like well are these people who lived here or were imprisoned here that are haunting this place or is this a ual energy or is there something darker that's like feeding upon this

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sort of dark energy here right I don't know but many people have claimed to see a woman wandering the Halls which people believe could be the spirit of Anna Corbin which God I pray that that's a residual haunting and she's not there forever I know I hope so too that's pretty sad visitors and employees have reported many suspicious and ghostly sounds emanating throughout this building so they'll hear doors slam in they'll hear objects that seemingly fall onto the concrete floors below and this building is largely vacant like aside from the tours there's no one else there they also hear disembodied voices echoing throughout the building and people have also reported to have made physical contact with ghosts so this is one of the things where I'm like ah I want it so badly to be a residual haunting for the sake of the spirits and people not being trapped there and have to like perpetually live their Horrors over and over but at the same time people have said that they've been touched they've been pushed it feels a bit violent it feels a bit aggressive

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and so we can assume that that is an active and intelligent haunting but then it brings up the question and we've talked about this before like can there be such intense residual energy that it becomes Active Energy you know like where it's not truly or necessarily the full Soul and Spirit of a person lingering but it's like a combination of energy that's now just active right a part of them chipped off to be uncovered in their next life when they start doing Shadow work collect all their pieces again got to catch them all there should be like a board game we should make a two girls one ghost board game and it's called Shadow work and you go into different worlds to collect your pieces and in order to win the game you have to you have to collect all of yourself okay TM like but it's also like it's fun it's spooky but then there's some like true like you know that game we're not really strangers where you have to like answer

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like deep questions yeah I like this but there's like some paranormal spiritual T to it oh my God it's kind of like Truth or Dare so you flip a card you go okay you started the home little like start place you have your little like half person and then it's kind of like Candyland where you go to different places you go to Gumdrop Island and in order to like retrieve your Shadow piece you flip a card and it says either like truth or dare and the truth is a deep psychological dig into yourself question the Dare if you get a dare is like a paranormal like play a Ouija board or go do the 11 Mile game something like that go traumatize yourself more chip off another piece of you better Lu next time if you don't complete the task then you get stuck there oh gosh this game takes years to complete the game that never ends if you thought Monopoly was long just wait until you play shadow work Shadow work brought to you by two girls one ghost

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I'm kind of down this should be like a it could be a board game but I think it could also be a digital video game oh so cool we have so many good ideas we do one day one day okay well back to Preston Castle formerly known as Preston School of Industry there are just so many paranormal things happening here that it has been for paranormal enthusiasts to flock to this place M Ghost Adventures Ghost Hunters ghost Asylum so many different shows movies have come here to investigate or to film here simply be amongst the Paranormal try to capture some evidence and also Preston Castle hosts an annual paracon so they are totally feeding into this and it's a good way for them to get money too because if you choose to book a tour or do any of the events that happen part of the proceeds go towards funding the eventual restoration of this Castle so

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they are hoping to restore the building which I'm like man if you think it's haunted now imagine all of these Spirits like if they are actively there witnessing rooms being restored to their former glory which is where all of your like drama I know and negative memories are associated with and like the terror you'd feel of seeing it like come back to life again of you my God makes me feel bad imagine the stories from contractors that's what I'm want to know right yeah oh so the hauntings are actively happening today there's still a lot of mystery surrounding exactly what happened at the time that the school was open a lot is Up For Debate recordkeeping wasn't super great but it's something that we should talk about because this happened at a lot of different places it's an important part of history and now you can go to Preston castle and participate in one of the tours do a ghost hunt of your own and

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potentially contribute to the restoration and hopefully positive sort of uh business models of a future historic building and that is the haunted and largely criminal history of Preston Castle I love that they've rebranded to Preston Castle cuz it sounds so much nicer than it does Preston School of industry and yes like it never was a castle in in no regard there was no Ballroom or candle dinners the only type of Castle I could associate it with is like the castle of Rapunzel where it's a you know you're trapped there you don't get to leave wait sorry I feel like I've been bringing up Shrek a lot recently which is odd because I haven't watched the movie in years but it's a classic it's such a classic it lives within our hearts it's ever present at the top of our brains I just saw a video where someone was pointing out a hidden detail in Shrek well it's not really hidden but

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it's like a detail in Shrek that Fiona when she was locked away in her castle the only ones that really had like access to her were like the dragons and I guess ogres but like she didn't make communication with other humans and so people were like well how did she survive for so long and as she's leaving the castle and going by like the dragon who protected her there is a book that is open and it's about cooking humans and so people are like holy [ __ ] did she stay alive by cannibalizing people anyway interesting to think about whoa that's the like Dark Truth of Fiona's life is that she's actually a secret cannibal it makes it a real fairy tale right like a Grim's brother's fairy tale there's some disturbing things in fairy tales okay I have a listener story so I searched Castle because I thought castles right yeah okay me I thought so

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too okay so we're going a little bit of castle theme here this is from our listener Phoebe and it's called ghost experiences hi girls I'm a big fan of the show and after hearing a few similar stories I thought you would like to hear what I have experienced I have two very similar experiences both that still give me nightmares the first one takes place while I was at University at Royal Holloway if you don't know Royal Holloway or Holloway was one of the first women's colleges in the UK and is the home of Founders building which is a beautiful red brick ornate building opened by Queen Victoria in 1886 the building is unique and it's built around two Courtyards North quad and South quad and is also built on a slight Hill so that means if you enter the ground floor in the north quad you'll be up on the first floor of the South quad so because of its age and quirkiness the building can be incredibly Eerie I used to work in the dining hall so that meant a lot of time

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cleaning when all the students had gone to sleep and there would be times that I would be on my own one such time I was walking from one side of the Quad to the other after the dining hall had closed it was about 8:00 p.m. the light outside was dimming and in attempts to save electricity the university installed motion sensor lights so you could see people walking up the winding staircases if you were outside while I was crossing the quad I noticed one light go on as if someone was walking up a lesser used staircase I watched as one light went on and then another but there was no one there if it had been a person you would have been able to see their outline in the window so I stopped and I watched the lights and as I made the conscious decision a person came into view going up the staircases where the light was already on which didn't make sense as the light should have only come on after the person walked through that zone however it was when the shadow got to the top floor that I got really scared you should be able bble to watch the person walk all the way up to the top yet this person never emerged it was

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like they disappeared on the stairs before then I had never really been nervous to be on my own at the University but after seeing the shadow I would hear Footsteps in the dining hall when I was cleaning or down the corridor just outside of the hall like someone was running past I would hear the swing doors go but I would look and no one was there I would walk back into the pantry and things that I had put in specific spots were now moved there are a lot of ghost stories associated with my University and there was one of a student had taken their own life in the exam Hall after being driven mad during exam and there are various creepy graveyards dotted all around the place you should definitely do an episode if you haven't already on haunted universities my second story is somewhat similar in my very first job after graduating I worked in a very corporate office on the site of an old medieval castle once belonging to Henry VI called Bridewell Palace and it was initially built as a home for the Royal before becoming a poor house and later a hospital I don't know much about the

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site beyond that but I know that there was a lot of deaths that occurred in that place so one night I was working late it was about 9:00 p.m. and very dark outside due to the layout of the building and the closest Neighbors when the lights were on you could very clearly see Reflections in the surrounding glass I was sitting at my desk and something caught my eye it was a person a figure moving I watched as the figure walked all the way down the length of my office bear in mind I had been alone now for over an hour the figure was kind of skewed as the reflection in the windows weren't great but I could tell this man was wearing a hat I thought it was one of the cleaners and so I went to go greet them but when I stood and walked to where the figure would have been there was no one there I was alone and suddenly I got very cold as if blasted with air conditioning ooh it's probably walking through you you it happened for a second and I got really warm again not wanting to see The

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Apparition again I booked it out of there I left my computer on and everything the next day I told my line manager what I had seen and she said she had seen something similar years ago when working there alone one night I still sometimes dream that I see the figure in the window but this time when I stand to greet them it's a horribly disfigured individual I have a stressful job so I usually put these dreams to workplace dress but I do really believe I Saw The Apparition of someone who had died hundreds of years ago in Bridewell Palace the whole area around black frers is incredibly haunted even BuzzFeed unsolved did an episode there so if you're ever in London you should go do a ghost walking tour love the podcast Phoebe wow oh my gosh Phoebe's experienced so much and it's so funny too because it's like one of the co-workers was like oh yeah years ago I saw something like that and then it's like well Phoebe just started basically and is already experiencing stuff but I will say I think what's nice is that these encounters do seem more of like maybe they're not as aware of Phoebe

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yeah and they're just kind of going about their own life they're walking up the tower they're walking down the hall they're moving about and just doing whatever it's not like they're I mean it's still very creepy cuz they're just like around and who's to say that they're not just going to pop through a wall and be like right in front of her desk or something right but they're not necessarily like fully interacting with Phoebe they're just existing and Phoebe is seeing them yeah she's not being targeted in any sort of way and then it's extra creepy because Phoebe's alone it's dark it's late at night mhm and my first instinct is like why is it always late at night but I imagine in places like this a university and like a busy office that used to be a castle there's probably ghosts around all the time but during the day there are people so you don't notice you don't notice yeah you wouldn't think twice cuz if there's like 10 other people around this castle and Tower and walking up it you wouldn't think about the person you just glanced at right you wouldn't be watching them walk the whole way and if they disappeared you probably wouldn't

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continue watching being like well where did they go you would just probably move along cuz you didn't you're not thinking about it God that makes me really wonder like how many ghosts do we see and we just I know I was just thinking about that and then I like it weirdly like made me want to sit here and meditate and like try to con up a spirit like I really want to talk to a loved one because I wonder how often like if I'm out in public even though we were just talking about how we never leave our homes anymore or have any desire to leave our homes I look out my window I can see people sometimes exactly but like I do wonder how often they are around us and if you just like paused and really like sat in a public space and meditated like could you yeah conjure them and could you really dial in and where they are and who they are and communicate with them you know the people that just love people watching like especially it's one of those like tropes where when someone is retired and a lot older that they like sit in front of their window or out on their porch for a good part of the morning just rocking back and forth watching people

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yeah and they're just watching I'm like what have they seen what sort of things do they see and they're just like yeah probably I'm not going to tell anyone about that I have this story that I want to write one day about this woman who is in a retirement home and like has like Dementia or it's like the beginnings of dementia and she Witnesses a crime and is the only witness that can help solve it but because she has dementia no one really trusts her and the crime is like super weird anyway but isn't that like it's like woman in the window right is that the book where it's like she right it's like the unreliable narrator she yeah yeah oh I love unreliable narrators me too but I love this like idea I just remember my grandma being in the retirement home and she had dementia but she was just like so convinced of things that were happening and people being in her place like I really fully believe she was seeing spirits she very well could have been and it's also one of those interesting

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things where it's like sometimes people with dementia say things like they experience things or they say things from their past that sometimes were secrets and people just think they're talking nonsense or whatever and then it's found out later that holy [ __ ] that was very much a true story yeah well if you have any hauntings or if you see Spirit on the rig if you work in a haunted location please email us your stories to two girl1 go podcast gmail.com we want them all we can't wait to read them and there's so many ways that you can support us you can buy merch you can get a ghost girl hat and in matchz you can join us on patreon get episodes one week early and AD free plus bonus episodes every month plus campfire stories live every Tuesday and so much more join the pyramid scheme tell everybody about us and we'll see you again next week and in fact multiple times a week because we're always here

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we're always down to tell more ghost stories we're always in your ear we're haunting you now that's true shout out to Jamie for editing our audio and video and thank you all for listening we love you we will see you on the other side very spooky