Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary Hauntings & Prison Breaks (Ep 199)

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very spooky hello hi this is two girls one ghost two girls and where your ghostesses that is Corinne and I am Sabrina and I feel like I just felt I just had this weird moment of first day of school and I just sat up super tall and smiled and I'm I I don't know where that came from I I know I chuckled a little bit at the top because yeah well that's exciting now that we still get just as excited coming to recordings that's true there's

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nothing there's nothing wrong with that nothing wrong with that and you're all snuggled up in like a nice cozy little Sherpa sweater I see it is my favorite winter I guess it's still technically fall but winter coat Well it snowed in New England today so it's basically winter it's raining congratulations we got cheated out of it but everywhere else oh the snow would be so nice actually it's very cold here I love the first snow that makes me so excited it's so magical like the feeling in your body this is why not to I mean I've already said a million times I wouldn't live in LA again and I've lived in L.A for seven years but part of the reason I I felt kind of like some of my joy some of my light was dwindling when I was there was because I feel like I really rely on the seasons changing in the joy and the anticipation you get leading up to each change because you just have so many like moments where it just like you remember

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that feeling when it first knows you remember the first time you go into a restaurant and they have all the Christmas lights up you remember the first day in the spring when you get to take off your jacket like those are things that you get to look forward to and they're Universal across everybody who lives in the area that you live in like everybody has those same feelings that it just feels kind of you know communal like that everybody's enjoying it together I like that yeah the only exception is that them living through with the cold bitter winter true miserable it's fun although like if it's snowing and and you can like go outside and do like outdoorsy snow snowy activities you have to like Outdoor Sports to be able to get through it although I I will say the past few Winters have been very mild from what I remember growing up and it does make me a bit concerned for the planet because it's

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not as hard to live here anymore through winter which is not great but no not not fantastic not fantastic can we talk

Entertainment recommendations

about something a little bit more exciting and and uplifting sure Olay is excited too um well two things actually I just watched the documentary Inside the Mind of a cat and it was delightful um I highly recommend it for anyone who wants a just a light and informative documentary about cats um Leia's entering oh blocking my light she she heard you call for her but I just started watching the Cabinet of Curiosities I think it's called it's Guillermo del Toro's new show and it's kind of like black mirrory in the sense that or like kind of like Goosebumps where every episode's a different just circling

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um every episode is a different story and different characters different casts but there's there are two that I watched and they're very spooky like one of them is kind of a demonic entity in a storage unit and another one is about a bunch of birds in a house because of spirits like it's really really cool okay I guess I didn't realize I I kept seeing the card come up for it on like Netflix or whatever streaming sayathon I didn't realize that it was black mirror-esque I think I thought it was kind of like a baking or a craft show and I was equally as excited to watch it for that reason but now I'm definitely going to binge it I've only seen two I've heard you know there's some that are better than others but I'm excited to watch the rest did you watch Barbarian on HBO yes me too

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it is freaky and it's one of the turns it's one of those movies where you don't really know where it's going and it goes in ways you didn't expect but yeah I really like a good classic horror movie you can't go into watching this movie and you can't be watching with a really critical eye like it is classic horror there are things that happen that are inhuman you know like you can't go picking things apart and say like oh well that couldn't actually happen and I think that that's what made it enjoyable was like that sort of juxtaposition between scenes that feel very real and acting that feels very real between people and then just this like wild horror section of the movie it's it's interesting but it does remind me of and I I thought of you after finishing it because I was like it does have it follows Vibes just in the sense

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that there is you know an a a deeper meaning on top of being like a fun horror Thriller film I think it has you can really dissect the story it also kind of now you're making me think it did remind me a bit of the style in which it was filmed felt a little bit like Hills Have Eyes House of Wax you know okay a call back to some of those amazing movies of the 90s and early 2000s movies Nick and I finished it and then I sent him a picture of the woman and then I at night was oh my God I also love that you didn't know who the whole cast was a surprise Brothers yeah it's like oh it was good I just it was a good like Classic this feels like a it would be a

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classic horror movie you know yeah sometimes you need the break from their like true psychological thrillers and to just have a little yeah you know creature printed out to me was that Barbarian if you like mix up the letters it does spell Airbnb oh which is interesting because it takes place in an Airbnb so I'm like what do they have against Airbnb the most realistic part of all of that I think was when we won't spoil too much about the movie but when the tape measure was brought out to measure the extra square footage because it was hilarious in that moment oh my gosh I wouldn't just like fully ignore everything yeah yeah I would I would bring someone else in to investigate but that that would be my first thought when I find a secret room I'd be like hell yeah let's see how much more space I have here well can I turn this into a little bar

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do I have them for a bowling alley in my basement like how cool apparently in the basement would be very cool um yes now I need to see nope that's next on my list did I tell you I saw it Nick and I did a Rooftop Cinema and we saw it yes did you watch don't worry darling yet I just watched it on the plane have you seen it oh you did no not yet but I've been watching all the theory videos online about it and all the like character dissections so I'm going into the movie I feel like already knowing quite a bit or maybe I'm like cheating my way into the movie but I'm already kind of like knowing so what it could mean I do feel like the trailer does give some of it away and for those of you who watched it I'm curious if and for when you watch it I'm curious if you'll think the same thing I felt like it ended at the climax of the movie huh yeah okay personally well

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I'm interested to watch it because I was reading or I guess watching a theory that the main guy's wife is actually a robot she's AI I'll send you that video and then maybe you'll start you have to watch the movie because you can watch the movie okay I'll probably come back and think the same thing though yeah right but I think that's probably because it's very similar to like Stepford Wives in that way and I just re I just rewatched that recently too um except for wives classic that's great I love how it's like we start this episode saying oh it's snowing in cold and Christmas magic and you know what that means it's classic horror movies yeah I I feel like the holidays and just when it gets colder there's nothing better than just curling up in your in your comfies get a warm

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weighted blanket if you like that kind of thing and just snuggle up with a warm cup of cocoa or I don't know mulled wine yes hot cider oh I just had help from everybody oh what with my with my Christmas list oh okay

Holiday planning

so every year I like to choose one thing in my apartment for either me to upgrade for myself or to like ask for from my family and to upgrade my space okay and I really want a nice tea kettle and I'm not an electric kettle person I am a put it on the stove and let the water boil and contemplate life for 15 minutes while that happens type of person you're old school so I'm old school but I want something that's like really good and really nice and also has to be aesthetically pleasing so I need help from everyone else and also like not a 400 dollar that's not what I'm talking about when I

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say upgrade yeah but like also not 20 bucks from from Target like I want currently I'm using just like my normal like pasta pot that I use but I want something I want to feel like I'm in this cozy little cottage so you need like a little body kettle of a mountain I want a legit tea kettle I'm what about one where everyone's just gonna go let me look I like that I love Smeg let's see well they have the electric one and then I was looking at the stob one as well because you could double double dip on the stab one and make that sort of like a soup bowl but other people were saying I don't know there's good and bad reviews for everything but I need well you know who has one tell me I wish this episode was sponsored by them but Caraway home has one oh okay shall I email Caraway yeah and that one looks really cute and they have different colors oh Le

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Creuset has a good one yeah oh this is this might be the vibe you're going for I'm gonna show it to everyone okay this has like old Farmhouse Cottage oh the like Crusade one I did look at that one online too see I just can't make a decision and I need people to help me and I love the copper ones but you can't always use the copper on certain stove tops and I don't know where I'm gonna live always so all right well everyone else send suggestions yeah so you know what else I need help for

Brushy Mountain introduction

because this is now the call to action part of our podcast which we just created Nick and I are going to South Africa Leia has the Zoomies Nick and I are going to South Africa for our honeymoon which we haven't done for two years and we're going for Christmas and New Year's this year and if anyone's from South Africa or been to South Africa and Cape

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Town specifically we would love activity recommendations and restaurant recommendations um yeah what is the what is the like food that you have to try yeah what is local to only that area that you'll be in that's a good question too I would love to know um we're doing this like 14 course authentic dinner one night how do you do that as a vegetarian do you have to tell them and they have vegetarian applications um and then we're doing a safari I'm so excited that's so fun so fun how many people are in the group for the Safari do you know I don't know I mean we're staying at a smaller Lodge and I think there's only like a couple rooms so I don't I they're pretty small and intimate

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that'll be great now you gotta pick out all your outfits yeah Safari outfit I'm gonna spray them with like the mosquito repellent stuff that you can yeah wash your clothes up to six times because they should make mosquito Nets that come like a big contr like an umbrella hat oh I'm gonna like a beekeeper like a beekeeper suit yes yes but like it it is further away from your body so that nothing can get you a little it's like a fashion statement yeah you I mean you could just fashion one yourself by carrying an umbrella with a net around it I'm sure I'm imagining like a jumpsuit like it's like a cute outfit jumpsuit that has like gloves in there The netting see that's the difference between you and I you have a sense of fashion and I do not so I don't know that that's fashion but catch me on New York Fashion Week

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Runway next year I think it would work out I think oh gosh all right where are you taking us this week Karen this is a good one this this is a good one and I know it's a good one because I kept adding more and more details up until the point that we are recording now like I had to stop right wow oh my gosh I could keep going but alas we do have to record so here we are here we are all right so I was thinking about just like abandoned buildings and how Eerie they are and how many of them are just like desolate and left to Decay and so many times there are artifacts within those buildings where you're like who who left in such haste why why did that one repurpose this building why is it like this and then I found a place well I didn't find a place Venus our patreon donor found this place oh that it fits all

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those those boxes checks all those all those boxes but has been given another life so has been somewhat repurposed oh okay so very good news for all of us Phantoms and paranormal enthusiasts out there so we can visit it oh we can visit it and we should I'm down this is a place that I'm I'm sad it's not scary oh it's scary but for some reason I'm okay with it interesting okay because curious to know because they have a they have like a distillery in a restaurant I'm like I'll go so you're like food and drink I'm gonna get too scared I'll just go to the bar

History of the penitentiary

okay this is Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary also known as Brushy so I'm gonna keep calling it Brushy throughout this just so that I'm not exhausted by saying that it kind of feels like a nickname for for like bigfooter or a cryptic Brushy yeah it seems a little bit endearing doesn't it Brushy

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well it's it's not it's not a good place to be uh but this place was created after the Coal Creek War so we're gonna learn a little bit about the Coal Creek war first so you can understand why this place became what it was so after the Civil War the cold business it was Boomin right everybody was down in the mines trying to make a little Penny but the conditions were awful for all of the coal miners and amazing for all of the coal mining companies to just get filthy rich and take advantage of all of the workers right yeah so it was a regular practice for these coal companies to provide housing for their employees because you know like most of these places are in the middle of of nowhere the towns are created for to bring the miners in to work in the mine so there's not much around so part of the regular practice was these coal mining companies they would provide housing for their employees but take a little bit off the top of of those wages

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as rent but then also because there was nothing else around where would these people go to get food and clothes and other necessities to live them and and their families potentially well there's nothing around so of course the companies took advantage of that and they constructed stores on site for workers to buy all these things but of course the products are sold at these astronomical inflated prices yeah so you you need water you need a fresh Linens well guess what you're gonna pay like four times the amount that you would right you'd gone into town is far away and these are they're basically like these are necessities and they know that they have to buy them and so they're making it difficult oh that's so it's annoying I hate people yeah it stinks it stinks and you know capitalism we're still feeling it but so uh after the rent after the food after all of the

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Necessities to live these coal miners had almost no pay left at the end of this and it's an extremely dangerous job too yeah you're hoping that your situation that you're going to strike gold that your situation is going to change but in the end you're taken advantage of and risking your life every single day so imagine the rage when these coal miners they find out the coal companies were beginning to use prisoners in the mines rather than pay miners in the mines so the coal companies they'd struck a deal with the state prison system and they would lease out prisoners from the jails and put them to work in the mines that makes me think of I even think it was the old Salem jail oh maybe not that but there there was some prison we talked about a long time ago where they made the inmates build their prison did I cover this already no I couldn't have that did happen here oh I'm scared now no I don't think I don't

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think I I think this was a common practice it was a normal yeah unfortunate but normal thing yes yeah yeah well okay so the the convict Leasing system existed in a lot of the South so many different states did this and many different businesses utilized this free labor essentially hmm but once it started creepy so it had already existed for 40 some years but once it started creeping into the coal mining business this is when people got really really pissed off the coal miners specifically right so the convict Leasing system essentially made it okay for mining companies and other businesses to lease out labor from the prisons which suppressed employee wages for non-convict workers across the state of Tennessee and all throughout the South if they could even get work at all so it was free labor for the companies a few more pennies in the pocket for the state and the coal miners needed to do

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something and they did they demanded change change for them who'd consistently put themselves in danger while working in the mines to earn a barely livable wage and were now being abandoned and also inadvertently change for the prisoners who were thrown into some of the harshest and most dangerous conditions now risking their lives for no pay and that's in the early 1890s laborers and the American South began an armed labor Uprising the heart of this Revolt was an Anderson County Tennessee and I also want to oh like it's like unionized unionizing but they took up arms it became like a horse yeah yeah so these group of coal miners they there were 2 000 some coal miners that were in this area at the time and they were all coming together and like literally had their rifles their pistols their Sean militia wow truly because nothing else was working all of their

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well also I I had omitted this part of history but I'll bring it up now in the past obviously the coal mining conditions even before the convict Leasing system existed within that business it was it was awful right like they were barely getting paid they were barely getting by yeah and so what they would do was they would go on strike and basically unionize until their pay got increased and so that was working for them little by little but then when the convict lacing system happened they couldn't do that anymore like yeah who cares if you're on strike or not you're lucky because the company's already had people that they could force to work there yeah exactly exactly all right so now a very important note in this story or a very important part of the story is that with the Emancipation Proclamation at the end of the Civil War slavery had been abolished legally on paper right which for many people didn't make any difference at all and unfortunately in the South the

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convict releasing program had originally begun because the state couldn't afford to house or feed the number of inmates that it had hence leasing the prisoners out to the coal companies who would put them up in housing but these prisoners were mostly black people the southern states and the people who were in power were still incredibly racist it didn't matter that slavery had still are yeah yeah quote unquote like officially and dead so they would send black people to jail for little petty crimes probably many many people were in there for doing absolutely nothing at all and they would give them these ridiculously long sentences sometimes life sentences to be in prison so slavery was no longer legal but you could still send a black person to jail and then take advantage of the legal use of involuntary servitude when they just found a loophole to continue

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delivery yes so they they legalized slavery they just reformatted it basically exactly so the majority of the people that were part of this leasing program and put into these horrible conditions were black people in the South who'd done nothing so it was just horrible for everybody involved so change was needed but change didn't come so easily so many of the things that people were fighting for they had to they were basically consistently ignored by the governor and and by the state of Tennessee so they felt like they had no other choice than to arm themselves and come together as this militia and so they headed to Bryceville a mining town with a large number of convicts working in the mines this group of 2000 some miners they surround the mine Stockade so like the barrier that was around the

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mine the guards surrender and this group gathered all of the convicts and marches them to the neighboring town of Coal Creek and puts them on a train back to Knoxville because they had been employed by the Knoxville iron company so basically they are finding all of these prisoners and like freeing them they're like wow no get out of our mind this is our job we're gonna put you on a train and and send you away and so I don't know what happened to those convicts I don't know if they were if they were met anywhere on the train if they got to escape yeah wow but okay this worked for them and the coal miners did this twice so twice they went and they freed all the convicts from them good oh man accomplishing two two things exactly so they do this two separate times they're showing their Force they're attacking and burning privately owned mines and mines that were utilizing the state prisoners in the convict placing

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system it was a very daring Act of defiance but it was necessary for the movement in labor rights history and many of the coal miners were severely wounded and lost their lives in this protest so it wasn't as easy as just marching up with guns that's what I was saying I'm worried about that's what I was my first concern when you were saying that they were burning active Minds like what if I hope people weren't in there when that happened oh gosh I don't know I don't know but it's also so like I told you about the two times that there's a group of two thousand some people going and marching up to the mines but there were also many smaller groups you know like a subsection of five people that are are trying to protest and the amount of like death and injury and attacks that just didn't end in Surrender by the guards or the state yeah we're high so a lot of people a lot of coal miners did lose their lives fighting for the right to be paid for their work right right jeez so this is such a fascinating part of

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history that I know I I have never heard because you learn about like the gold rush and all these different things but I feel like in school we don't we didn't really I don't know you just like don't hear as much about like labor reform right yeah yeah and what it actually mean like what people had to do and what they had to risk to get there there's also so many subsets of just history it's it's how many years and how many people who have ever existed it's just impossible to ever cover that amount of history no Leia she's trying to knock over my bottled ghost no Leia That is rude how rude anti-ghost debut don't be anti-ghost I'm sick of this podcast she's like it's the it's the Leia show now but anyway I'll just say that we just

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there's just not enough time in life to cover all of that and I remember in school like you would learn like a sentence that I you would read one sentence that summarized like 50 years of history and it's just like right it's all diluted down into this yeah sentence in our textbooks which there's so much that goes into it that will often times is buried it never goes uncovered or learned by most people so I guess that's the fun of exploring so many haunted places is a lot of them are old and and we learned a History Podcast with a dash of ghosts so basically yeah a lot of people lost their lives uh in these protests and a lot of hundreds of protesters were arrested but their movement had not gone unnoticed Tennessee's convict Leasing

Life and escapes at Brushy

system was in the National Spotlight now so all of America was was looking at this system oh my gosh Leia is attacking Sabrina holy crap

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come here she is mad at you she is it's because I left she's like biting you knocking your stuff my lighting is weird Okay I'm just gonna hold her like a baby yeah hold her swaddle her okay so now it's in a national Spotlight but not in a good way right everybody's looking at it and being like what the hell is this this seems awful and clearly people are losing their lives over revolting against this practice so many political campaigns later Tennessee state government does not renew its convict labor lease contracts so once the expiry dates come they let it go and then they pass a bill to abolish convict releasing for good and this made Tennessee one of the first Southern U.S states to end convict leasing okay that's great yeah but they found a way around it which was by having prisoners build a prison deep in the remote Tennessee wood surrounded by rugged terrain situated

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next to a quarry the prison opened and some of the first prisoners who were transferred here were the same prisoners who'd been taken advantage of in the convict Leasing system mind debacle and now they were here in this remote prison run by the state where prisoners were put to work again they were instructed to build railroad lines once again worked in the coal mine that was on the property and various other jobs so basically instead of the state leasing out workers to work in Coal Mines they would just were like well let's just build a prison where their grandmother's now oh my gosh yeah yeah Shady business finding those loopholes just yeah if the workers under produced in the mine they would be beaten so they were once again essentially enslaved working in dangerous conditions in this prison in the middle of nowhere beaten regularly given almost no medical care which resulted in disease running

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through the prison like wildfire it's so sad so in I mean imagine working in the coal mine and also these people had no training like they they didn't know what they were doing and so there were quite a few deaths with you know things collapsing or lack of oxygen and whatnot within the coal mines but also they were just inhaling soot yeah it's so bad for your lungs so bad they never see the light of day sorry I just thought of um what's the Zoolander when he tries yo man that's not the right picture but of course that comes into my mind yes okay so they never see the light of day they're in these horrible conditions breathing in all this crap then at night they're crammed into the prison which to no surprise to us here if you've listened to any episode in the past or know anything about uh previous medical facilities or presents they are overcrowded almost none of them kept the

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capacity as capacity they crammed people in and so of course people were getting sick there was tuberculosis pneumonia typhoid fever syphilis almost the entire prison population was sick and disproportionately the black prisoners were sick so 75 of the black prisoners had some some sort of horrible illness and there was no real medical treatment people were just mostly neglected and people were dying I feel like also hygiene was never taken care of like bathroom access is not easy or well taken care of just living conditions are probably just horrid yeah they were they were for a very long time pretty much the entirety of the prison's life so despite the high security and the remote location gossip still went around town and the nation was hearing about Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary and it wasn't good it was not good gospel not a good reputation no people began to

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whisper about the conditions what the men were forced to do the diseases that pumped through everybody's veins and it reminded people of the Siberian prisoners that they'd heard about so people are now thinking brushy's hell on Earth it is basically living in the Soviet Union and so this is all of these terms that were very fear-mongering and made everybody really nervous and and led to more gossip about the place which was never good but it's interesting because I'm at least glad that the conditions and the truth of what was happening there spread and that people were learning about it rather than I feel like a lot of these places would cover it up and on the front you know look like this wonderful great place and then actually if you pull the curtain back it's just horrendous yeah and it's unfortunate too that of course it takes everybody gossiping about it

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for any change to have to actually have a change to happen yeah so the state they're like [ __ ] we don't want to be compared to the Soviet Union I guess we have to do something now yeah so they did what they could do to remedy this and improve conditions well their version of it which was to build a new prison on site that could hold more people and who built this of course the prisoners did right they built Their Own Prison again it's like have they not learned anything yeah this is just so it just feels so cyclical and they just keep doing exactly what they're saying they're not gonna do yep yep they just try to sprinkle something a little extra like Pizzazz or a new wording on it but they just keep repeating history here geez so these workers well the prisoners workers are sent down to the Quarry and the prisoners gather material for this

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giant Stone structure that's shaped like a cross in his four stories high and so there's some rumors about why it was shaped like a cross some people said because at the time you know Christianity in the South was predominantly the religion probably still is but essentially it was like the thought was that only God could could save these Souls of the people who were in life serving out life sentences like horrible criminals so made it across the new building did provide some more space and it was cleaner so in terms of illnesses and diseases things were definitely getting better and the cells were 8 by 10 feet with a metal bunk bed a toilet and a sink and usually there were two men put in each cell but sometimes with overcrowding there were four men assigned to each cell and then they would be assigned shifts so essentially if you were four people in a

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two bed so you and another person would be assigned one shift where you could sleep on the bed and then the other shift you'd be sent down to the mine to work and then oh that's a swap yeah except for on Sundays on Sundays I don't think anybody worked in the mine they basically closed everything down and so people were just all Chrome together too yeah yep yeah so the extra space it did make life at Brushy slightly more tolerable but it was it was not good it still was yeah no on Earth they're still doing everything that they were doing I feel like nothing nothing changed at all no if a person it's like this it's like the picture Spot the Difference but there's nothing different there's nothing different you'll just keep looking forever yeah and you're like I don't know did they make this gray a slightly

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lighter color of gray it's like it's still the same thing it's still the same thing yeah if a prisoner at Brushy acted out they were sent to the hole the hole was an extremely small space half the size of a college dorm room unagreeable I like that that's your that's your measurement yes because I was looking up the size of it and then I was like wait this feels to me kind of big oh so then so then I looked up like measurements of what I call a dorm room is because we always think of those as small right and so it was half the size and they would put people down here it was like mostly solitary confinement though I think sometimes multiple people would be crammed and piled into the space together there were no windows no lights it was it was complete darkness Pitch Black they would sit here in the complete darkness for up to 30 days they'd be given very little food like basically they'd get one full meal every three days and then like a glass of milk and a stale muffin or something

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that's just it is it is they would give them one bowl of water and then another bowl next to that water which could be used as a toilet so a bowl two bowls one for defecating and urinating in and the other was supposed to keep you alive by drinking it the whole existed until 1957. so it kept being used for a very long time geez some of the inmates were extremely dangerous as well because so Brushy turned out to be a prison where only people serving life sentences went it was the end of the line that was sort of like what it was what it was nicknamed what it was known as so these end of the line prisoners who had nowhere else to go and had committed these atrocious crimes or had been sentenced like they had they would be sent here

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and so it was just it was getting dangerous because there were prisoners who actually had committed these atrocious crimes and were living out the rest of their lives here so sometimes people did need to be isolated from everybody else and sometimes people needed to be permanently isolated from everybody else so the prison built a d block on top of the Old Death House where they had previously kept bodies of deceased inmates so basically if an inmate had passed away they'd be kept in the death house until they were either buried on site or or I guess family is coming and picking them up and transporting them okay so it's like the a morgue but it wasn't it's actually it's important like a morgue yeah but probably a very gross one so yes so they start new construction deep within the walls of brush eight and they create this d block in the 1960s the state decided to turn Brushy into a Maximum Security Prison so

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I guess I got a little bit ahead of myself previously this is it happened in the 1960s when all of these criminals kind of like influxed into uh this prison and the prison was now known as the end of the line prison the final prison the people would be sent to to make room for the more dangerous criminals the inmates who had lesser offenses were given jobs outside of the prison like volunteering for the fire department so while some inmates were finally experiencing a bit more freedom 100 beds were added inside a Brushy to welcome some of the real life monsters in some notable prisoners were were sent to Brushy the most famous being James Earl Ray who assassinated Dr Martin Luther King Jr James Earl Ray had attempted to escape the prison many times first he tried escaping by removing a cinder block from his cell and squeezing his body through it but the path led him to the Steam

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Plant that was on site so basically if he'd gone any further the steam would incinerate him burn him to death so he didn't make it out that time then he tried sneaking past a guard with a makeshift saw that he had planned to use to cut through the air vent and then crawl through there was another attempt in there somewhere as well but the fourth time he tried to attempt he actually made it out he and six other inmates constructed a ladder and climbed over the wall together three days after his Escape well actually let me back up I believe in doing my research I believe the answer is actually he and four other inmates made the latter together and escaped but what happened was two other inmates had witnessed them climbing over the fence and just decided in the last minute to hop on and go join in yes and and one of those inmates was a black man who once he was recaptured he didn't know that Rey had been like

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the ringleader of this escape and he was like oh if I knew that he was involved in this I would have never yeah I would have waited and tried to escape another day so in terms of raise how he fit in in this prison remember like he assassinated or was tried as being someone who assassinated Dr Luther Martin Luther King Jr so there were some people who obviously hated his guts and then there were some people who didn't believe that he actually did it and were aiding him and like trying to get him to escape and try to like help him out so it's interesting different politics right yeah for yeah every group within this prison so he finally gets out with all these other inmates and they're all in the woods he specifically is in the woods for three days he made it about like eight and a half miles away but police

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dogs found him hiding under a pile of leaves so he was trying to get his sight over his son yeah and then four years after his Escape he was stabbed 22 times by other prisoners but lived and apparently his jobs weren't that bad so that's kind of like where some of the rumors went where people were like oh well he was just stabbed a bunch so that but but almost superficially so that he would be transported to get a medical facility and try to escape yes so he survived stabbing and then he did die in a prison in the future but at a different prison after being transferred gotcha okay this is my favorite escape attempt this is incredible there needs to be a movie about this one okay another I'm

James Slagle's escape

sure there probably is there's so many there's guys from prison movies yeah The Prisoner James Slagle which I'm probably butchering the pronunciation of his last name so I'm just gonna call him James for coming forward James was serving 318 years in prison for

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kidnapping for kidnapping and murdering a man who had stopped to try to help him fix his car so an atrocious crime yeah jeez in Brushy James is here he's serving his time he's looking around and he's realizing that none of the boxes that leave Brushy are big enough for a human to fit into it so he's he's trying to think of his escaping right like it's always probably on a lot of people's minds there especially given some of the successful attempts in the past yeah so you're so much successful so he's thinking about it he's watching all these boxes come and go and he gets an idea he's like okay none of the boxes will fit a human but just a regular human what if I can contort my body essentially cut myself in half and what these into a tiny box he's like some Houdini stuff yeah he teaches himself yoga he studies yoga

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for a whole year challenging himself contorting making sure he stays really thin like he is executing on his plan so he folds himself into all these odd shapes gets extremely flexible and then he also stress trains his shoulders by Smashing his shoulders into the concrete basically trying to like beef them up and make them I guess in I don't know exactly what but basically he was like once I'm in the Box I need a way to get out of the box and I need my shoulders to like be able to crush the Box open so he's bulking down everywhere else and becoming super Nimble and then his shoulders are bulking up and it didn't raise any alarm to any of the prison cards because they're just watching him walk around and smash himself into the concrete so they at the time are thinking you know like he's just there's something is he not like mentally breaking news on shoulders and

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then like oh that seems so painful right very very painful but yeah this is what he does uh and then finally after a year or so of this training he was able to contort his way into a pair of boxes so if two boxes were next to each other each box was 18 inches high and 14 inches wide and long so incredibly small but yeah that is a very small box so two of them together he could fit himself into these little boxes that would be shipped out of Brushy but how are they two separate boxes how did he they are okay this is how so he observes James observes the guards and he was working in the dining hall the dining room at the time and so sometimes they would send extra food and extra supplies to a nearby facility and the prisoners would basically like stack all of the

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boxes of excess food onto a freight and that would basically be like lifted up put onto a car and this truck would transport it out so okay he's observing the guards because he's thinking okay if I can find a way to basically like put two of these boxes together put myself in it and hide amongst these boxes that are being shipped out I can get out so he's watching the guards and the guards going around before they transport all these extra supplies they don't really touch anything like it's kind of like a preliminary like a quick gaze like all right good to go you know they're tiny boxes why would they ever think yeah someone's in one of them Okay so with this knowledge James and a few other inmates who were on his side I love that all the inmates are helping each other Escape like they know that they might not get out but they're still gonna help their friend get out yeah so James and a few other inmates they stack these two small boxes incredibly small boxes together one on top of the other and they cut a hole in the middle and

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James squeezes in and then they push one of the boxes like the top box a skew so it kind of looks so he must be in there kind of like in the weird angle Twisted so they didn't so that it didn't look like a perfectly stacked box like someone was in there like it looked almost impossible for anyone like someone kind of just tossed it on top kind of exactly yeah totally what I'm trying to like I I feel like I need a visual for this because I'm trying to picture what I wish their man looks like yeah I wonder if there's like a diagram of any yes so he I mean he lived in that prison for a very very long time after that but basically okay so I here's your spoiler alert that he didn't totally get out he didn't fully Escape my favorite part is so after they have the boxes that are askew they put other boxes around other extra supplies potato sacks cartons of fruit if they have fruit in

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prison I don't know there's a random [ __ ] around it so that it doesn't look suspicious but then they label his box 153 pounds of roast beef that's what they wrote on it so he must have weighed 153 pounds like oh my God how random it's funny though and also if the if the boxes are so small like maybe I don't know label it something else right and awesome like was that normal did they normally grab Sharpies and write on the box right pounds of whatever it was yeah it's very silly but it worked the truck yeah the facility with James on it he uses his shoulders to bust open the box after they're they're out for a while so now he knows he's like in the woods on these remote roads where no one else is he jumps off

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the back of the truck so directly behind it not to the side so the truck driver wouldn't catch a glimpse of him in the rear view mirror and he kind of like scurries Into the Woods all that work all that training he finally breaks out but how cruel of the world to do this to James he gets into the woods guess who's in the woods there's an off-duty prison guard who's just out there rabbit hunting oh look this is like 200 Acres of woods and he gets off in the one spot that there's some guy rabbit hunting I mean to be honest considering the fact that this man murdered someone I am glad he was caught um it's part of the universe for everyone else but for him personally it's karma I mean it's karma he wasn't a good person and no maybe he had a clever Escape Plan but

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he still did bad things and so he ended up where he needed to be well I hope he continued with the yoga and then maybe it helped with him soul searching and some some spiritual cleansing there anywho this off duty prison guard calls the prison and is like hey is James supposed to just be walking around and they're like no so they send people out a group of them and dogs to go find him but it's actually hard to find James because his trickery and his escape plan doesn't end at just getting off of of this truck I imagine him like climbing up a tree yes well but there's dogs right so he's thinking about the scent and what's going to happen when the dogs find him so he he runs to the stream so that the water kind of like washes away yeah it muddies the scent and you know the wind takes it a little bit more and then he does something interesting he crosses the stream at

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multiple points multiple times together and he's doubling back on his own trail so the dogs are all over the place they have no idea where the hell James is yeah anywho he does eventually get caught yeah and he's put into the hole he's there for the 30 days the whole month and he's fed the green monster quote green monster what was the meal that they were fed when they were down there when they got food every three days and it was steamed okra and turnip greens that would be cooked until they became slime-like and fed to the prisoners it's just like you're taking an ex it's just like they're taking an extra step to be evil they were they absolutely were let's not forget a lot of the prison guards were beating the prisoners as well yeah it's a lot of violence so yeah all right so clearly there is a

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variety of prisoners here at Brushy many of them incredibly dangerous some of them unfairly there yeah in fact all the prisoners who were there were serving life sentences until the mid 1980s when they did uh turn Brushy into a prison that would accept a general population inmates so there were a mix towards the end in the 1980s but the condition of the prison was no longer the biggest threat to the inmates it was the other inmates because there were still some horrible horrible people here and a lot of people were sent here it was also one of the first I think it was the first penitentiary actually maybe opened at the time like this and it was the longest running in Tennessee so a lot of people were transferred into this prison at various times so still had really hard criminals despite the general population coming in as well right there was also a long rivalry between black prisoners and white prisoners which led to many fights and

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many deaths racial segregation within the prison very much existed and in 1982 seven white inmates held guards hostage with knives they took the guard's guns and they shot two black inmates in a Cell there were two other black inmates in that same cell and they survived by hiding in the corner of their cell behind their mattresses to hopefully go undetected oh my God oh my gosh and this this obviously made the news but there were other things like this that happened all the time that were hanged they were stabbed they were shot they were beaten in one instance supposedly someone was chopped up and flushed down the toilet so nobody was safe here was disgusting yes yep geez nobody was safe here except for maybe Geronimo Geronimo was not a prisoner Geronimo just happened to live in the area and

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became well liked by the prisoners of brushing Mountain State Penitentiary spending most of the time hanging in the yard with the inmates who is this man um well it's actually not a man Geronimo

The story of Geronimo

is a deer a pet dear stop no it's so good okay so in the 70s a young tear fell from a nearby cliff and the guard found the deer and brought the deer into the prison yard and the prisoners decided to keep it and name the deer Geronimo because it fell from the cliff you know like Geronimo oh my gosh so Geronimo spent his days grazing on grass chewing on cigarette butts of the inmates and they would all giggle and laugh as Geronimo would steal their food from the commissary he would they would sneak him medicine if they ever thought he was depressed or sick and they would joke that he was a snitch because every time they'd be huddled around like playing cards or something Geronimo

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would constantly be he'd be in the Huddle but then he'd like continue to look over his shoulder which would clue the guards often to like come over and see what people were doing so they would call him the little snitch here I think quite a few years quite a few years I don't know the exact oh my gosh the exact number it's like animal therapy it totally is yeah and when Geronimo would get sleepy and not want to be bothered he would Wander over to one of the guards and just kind of like lay down and try to sleep at the guard's feet knowing that no one else would come over because people weren't you know trying to interact with the guards so is there other photos of Geronimo oh I I read so many freaking articles for all this research and I never saw a photo of Geronimo doesn't mean it doesn't exist it just this I didn't find it this looks like I don't know if it is I mean that very well could be right yeah

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probably no so Geronimo everybody's a fan of Geronimo in me yes right yeah what a fun pet you know like you're you're at this horrible prison for the rest of your life and then the blessing of Geronimo falls from the sky and into your prison yard how lovely bring some Solace and peace and love right and I like that Geronimo just kind of immediately became tame you know like he wasn't panicked and trying to leave and run away into the this is when he could this was his home so there is a period of a few years where the prison did have to shut down because there were the the guards went on strike basically because it was really unsafe for them to be working there too just all around the prison was unsafe for everybody in it uh so they had gone on strike and this really stressed out a lot of the prisoners who were transferred to

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another prison in Nashville because Geronimo had been left behind and so they're all getting really stressed out about geronimo's feet and so they petitioned to have Geronimo moved too to the Nashville prison so that they could be reunited with their pet deer and because Geronimo was tame the state for some reason decided to say yes and they funded the move of Geronimo the deer from Brushy to Nashville but whoa or Geronimo he was really struggling to adjust to the Nashville jail and he was throwing quote temper tantrums according to the warden and he was kicking people's faces and he was trying to escape the prison uh he did get captured after escaping brought back to prison so similar to all the other prisoners that keep escaping apparently geronimo's now a prisoner as well but um they basically we don't know the Fate oh no Geronimo and what happened to him it just kind of ends there where we don't

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know exactly what happened to him but he did he did get transferred he did stay with his his friends for what we know of to be the rest of his life he also became a three-legged deer because he did break his leg one day I think probably during an escape attempt and it had to be amputated so he was a three like a deer I really hope Geronimo died a happy dear I I hope so too I don't want to think the bad things no we can just say but I am he's a deer and he lived a happy life and then when everybody else went back to Brushy perhaps he did too and he lived the rest of his life in the home where he was born in these beautiful Tennessee mountains with all his prisoner best friends I hope so yes all right so I was I did some extra research because I was like why the hell would the state ever fund this like why out of all the things that need to

1:00:00

happen and all the improvements that they could do they spend money on transporting a deer a deer like a white a wild tamed deer to Nashville which isn't very close by I mean it's a few hours so it's not like they were just going one town over and I found our our guy James who escaped in the Box he actually did an interview where he talked about the deer where he talked about Geronimo and he said quote we loved him we would have rioted if they took him away and they knew that so basically it was like they were trying to keep the peace and didn't want a bunch of rights in the prison breaking out and in order to do that the price was bring them their pet deer bring them Geronimo mm-hmm it just said because Geronimo clearly didn't like the move it was too much for him yeah yeah interesting life at dear lead yeah so despite some cool and some odd and

1:01:00

some horrifying stories from this prison uh it just in general was a very terrible and Dreadful Place eventually it closed in 2009 it apparently closed because it was just too expensive for the state to keep up and maintain so an article said but nine years later the Brushy Mountain Group took over this abandoned building and opened it to the public once more saving the building from abandonment and bringing business and jobs to the area once again so Brushy is now a stop on the Barkley Marathon so if you run that Marathon you can run right on through it it is also a venue for private events you could have your retirement party there you could have your weddings there's a wedding venue yes I believe a deposit for a specific venue site is three thousand dollars and they have set up for microphone they have food catering all that stuff so actually

1:02:00

probably decent option okay

Paranormal encounters

yeah yeah it's a really cool place this is why I'm like I want to go because it kind of feels like yeah but for paranormal lovers they have car shows there they hold concerts there's a Distillery where you can sip on a variety of Liquors like the end of the line moonshine and various vodkas and whiskeys there's a restaurant with mouth-watering barbecue I was looking at their their offerings their menu online it looks freaking good and of course you can go on a ghost tour a variety of tour options there are some self-guided Daytime tours self-guided tours at night and of course some overnight paranormal tours would you do that I think so I actually do I think I might Corinne what has gotten into you I don't know I know the food does look good here's why so they have the guards or whoa they have the guided tours but

1:03:00

they also have so the guided tours are are often done by ex-prisoners and ex-guards who still live in the area so it's really awesome because you get all of the information you can kind of like pick their brain and get all the information about right what life experience yeah yes totally and from what I was reading I think when you do the overnight I think there are still some people that work there on site like different x-guards and ex-prisoners who are around so I think you know if I were really scared I couldn't like run over to one of them and be like tell me about Geronimo the Jews you know yes so that would be the best question yeah well we'll have to go and find out uh okay okay so obviously this place is ripe for Paranormal Activity there are many deaths horrifying crimes and also the massive property was built on Limestone and water and other various

1:04:00

rocks and elements that oftentimes find their way into our research which basically just like energizes the spirit world and makes it a little more likely that Paranormal Activity will remain here and so that's why going on a paranormal tour is a good option uh when you go on a guided tour actually if you go on a self-guided tour as well you can go into the movie theater room and every 30 minutes they play an 18-minute documentary about the horrors of brushing like some of the gruesome details of the crimes and people here so that's available for you and then you can Venture around the property into the abandoned prison rooms like the laundry room the gym the exercise yard the whole you can climb down into the hole turn off all the lights and imagine what it would be like for those prisoners crammed against the walls in each other in total darkness for a month now that it's also sad uh I just imagine like that room has so much horrible sad energy

1:05:00

totally oh I'm uh it's there's I feel like every old what was once an abandoned jail or once an abandoned hospital has something like this like there's some hole or death shoot or something that's just like absolutely atrocious and probably has the most amount of horrible feelings in EVP is coming from it yeah just like residual energy on top of other Spirits yes okay the CH which on the property the restaurant is called the chow hall but the chow hall was the cafeteria basically for the prison and it's a separate place than the restaurant this was a very violent place to be as a prisoner so you would obviously go to the cafeteria because you needed to eat yeah in the cafeteria there were regular stabbings there was even one murder involving a meat cleaver and this person's Spirit identified

1:06:00

themselves one time and called themselves Waterhead a lot of Paranormal Activity is captured on the property um here in this cafeteria in the ciao Hall which makes sense because this is where everybody gathered together there was more opportunity for for aggression and dangerous stuff yes yeah also one of the rooms in the property has been transformed into a museum which displays artifacts from the prison and from the prisoners so when you go in here there's a bunch of glass boxes on display and inside of these glass boxes there are confiscated knives and Shanks that were made out of like 2 toothbrushes and bed posts yeah there's artwork from prisoners there's a variety of items that were used to smuggle drugs like I read that there was a Bible that was carved out there were flip-flops that were the bottom of it was also carved out you know to smuggle some things in to hide things yeah yep and then of course on this tour you walk by

1:07:00

the jail cells right that's probably what everybody thinks is one of the spookier places as people Venture around Brushy they feel heaviness evil lurking around the corners headaches overcome investigators nausea sets in chests tighten near the hole temperatures in the room swing back and forth from hot to cold disembodied footsteps are heard throughout the Halls growls Echo from the dark corners and orbs Dart in varying colors throughout the building the colors orbs is always so fascinating to me like what why are orbs different colors and I don't know that we have an answer to it but I'm curious I do not know yeah I think there was well I'm just gonna be pulling pulling things out of my brain that might not be correct but I think I had heard that it was like a blue and a red or I don't know if that means anything to anybody but yeah that is interesting yes like how someone

1:08:00

died or how they lived their life I don't know yeah yeah I don't know scratches also appear on visitors skin so if you go in there you might find yourself coming out with marks and people think that there is something very dark and demonic because oftentimes these scratches are in threes right like the three claw marks down someone's back one woman was reciting the Lord's Prayer and her back began to burn and then the three claw marks appeared across her skin no why no I demons demons we don't know why you just do this to pretend to be demons oh why it's something you would do probably uh there's a third floor Auditorium because remember this this whole structures for four stories high yeah third floor Auditorium has something in it people think that there's something really dark because people get attacked this is where a lot of people are

1:09:00

scratched a lot of people are their wrists are grabbed their shoulders are pushed you know there's something dark in here yeah on a lighter note there is a woman named Bonnie who's occasionally seen in the courtyard no one knows what is Bonnie doing there Bonnie is why she's there huh no one knows because there were no there were no female prisoners what about characters not not really I mean in recent past but it's not like in the 1800s there were any female guards there no so I think everybody's accounted for who were guards and also the land before was used by Native Americans in that area and she doesn't fit any of the descriptions for anybody that should have been or is known to have ever been on this property so no one I wonder if Bonnie is the spirit of like a victim of one of the men who were in the prison

1:10:00

oh oh oh oh well that's sad that's really what if she I was thinking more of like them I don't know or what if what if it's someone's a prisoner who was sentenced to life and it's it's his like wife or something you know like she longed for her loved one for her her whole life and so part of her soul is still there I don't want it to be a victim it's I know I know but it's a prison we're talking about people I know committed right I mean to some extent some of them committed heinous crimes yeah cell number 28 is where James Earl Ray was held and investigators have played MLK's I Have a Dream speech in front of the cell and have captured some EVPs uh one of the EVPs was of a spirit that was shushing them for playing the tape I'm not sure if it was that tape specifically or just shushing them in general because they're playing audio

1:11:00

probably like be quiet yeah interesting there have been many EVPs collected over the years from people who investigate overnight so maybe a reason for us to go and many of these EVPs are presumably the prisoners themselves calling out sometimes stating people's names trapped and Brushy for eternity but uh there's also some other weird EVPs that have been captured here so supposedly someone captured an EVP of pigs oinking which what gives me a kind of like Deliverance Vibes I I'm curious is it truly pigs oinking or is it like a human making oinking noises because I feel like that that makes a big difference yeah what it could be also that just makes me think about and you know I'm a vegetarian so I'm not trying to kill anyone who eats me I'm not that type of person like eat whatever you want but I have always wondered

1:12:00

there's a lot of animals who die for us humans and I'm curious if they're Spirits ever haunt people it'd be an interesting place just this this site that had never to anyone's knowledge held pigs for just like a pig haunting to happen yeah I guess it is kind of random but but I don't know did you or maybe come with the meat that is delivered oh that's horrible to think about just traveling with your chopped up body no thanks but I have another thought what if what if our our dear friend the dear Geronimo lived another life before being in the prison yard and geronimo's best friend was a pig at a farm that was many many acres away and so that pig never stopped looking for Geronimo that's a bit true and that's what we're hearing yes exactly yeah sweet little piggy

1:13:00

that's a children's book Geronimo and the pigs Geronimo and the pigs the Tennessee wraith Chasers ghost hunting team they went to the property I mean so many ghost hunting groups have gone to this property yeah but when they went to the celebrity totally they believe that they made contact with one of the prisoners Jack Jett with his Spirit uh because of a few things they got a bunch of evidence that suggested that he was present with them at that time so one of the people on the team their shirt was suddenly burned like there was like a little burn mark from a cigarette at the bottom of their shirt and Jet was a big smoker so this would make sense and Jet was also a little person and the location of the cigarette burn and then later readings on our K2 meters that showed a figure of shorter stature suggested that this could be Jet and so they're like I wonder if this could be the person in chat and then someone else in their group was down in

1:14:00

solitary confinement and asked is anybody here and then an EVP captured Jack me so they think that he was definitely present whoa in that group that day how communicative there's a lot of right a lot of um spiritual expression from Jet right yeah pulling out all the stops jet has a ton of energy to be able to to do it all to like appear on the meter to throw throw his voice give a couple EVPs and then to physically create a cigarette burning Mark into someone's shirt the fabric which is integrated which is so fascinating how does that happen like because it's not like there was a cigarette floating there and it happened but like it's just from a spiritual Realm yeah that's so fascinating I don't know how it happens but people were talking about how the temperature in rooms will swing really hot and really cold very suddenly and I wonder

1:15:00

if there's a version of that where Spirits can control the concentration of it so instead of a whole room getting really hot whether they can just like make a tiny little circle get really really hot maybe that's out interesting all right and so remember I was saying that there's a lot of EVPs people capture the EVPs all over the place here yeah well arguably maybe not arguably apparently everybody that uh guards and prisoners alike have said that the most haunted place in all of this prison is the chapel that kind of makes sense there's always a spiritual space they totally are so when people have done investigating here they've collected a numerous amount AVP is a polenta words spoken from the spiritual realm in this Chapel include yelling hell and get out

1:16:00

and Beast oh so it's clear that something dark still lingers at Brushy old guards and prisoners believe that there are two demons present in this prison there's a crawling entity that has been captured similar to the creeper at Waverly Hills sanatorium no so perhaps Brushy right I know but when people captured it on camera I believe you know what it actually might have been on Kesha's special because Kesha went there catch up have us on your show [Laughter] Bill Phil Sabrina's lifelong dream she's your biggest fan uh I think it might have been then if not it was some other group but basically they captured this crawling creature going across the ground and then it appeared to go like up the wall and up the ceiling so horrifying I told you about my friend who

1:17:00

was working on like a shoe store in Vegas and the they there was like a very dark energy but one day they came into the store and there was like kind of like a felt wall like velvety wall and they saw hand prints going all the way up yes to the ceiling of it yes didn't you say with little like little yeah um no no no so creepy so creepy man and most people would probably think that felt stores are wholesome places to just well it was a shoe stay out with Crafters oh oh the wall was like velvet got it got it yeah you wouldn't expect it at a shoe store yeah shoe store all right well to end this episode or this section perhaps Brushy has its own soul eating entity lurking about and you'll just have to go there to find out it is open from April through November for I

1:18:00

believe all of the things that the property has to offer like The Distillery in the restaurant and all the different tours but uh if you're hoping to go there when it's closed from December through March you're in luck because paranormal tours are available year round okay let's go we can go I'm so shocked by you wanting to go I guess especially after calling an entity that's there similar to an entity which we are terrified of at Waverly Hills yes and I think it's because when I picture myself there it's not an accurate depiction of what it would actually be like because you cannot bring food or drinks or anything on the tours but I'm picturing myself like a little Disney World situation where I have a snow cone in one hand and a hot dog in the other and I'm walking through and I'm munching

1:19:00

I'm having a good time I'm saying hello to all the people getting all the good ghost stories from all the guards and the spirits leave me alone that's what I'm thinking so yes you have an idealist idealistic version of the experience in your mind you go outside I'll take it I'll take it where's our buzzing there's a concert going on someone else is getting married you know geronimo's Offspring is running through oh there's a petting zoo where you can just put your the but but you're in the fence all the animals are free you're in the fence and then they pet it for 25 cents we're the zoo um I'll I'll take that version of it if that means we can go I mean I'm not saying I'm taking that that will happen I will allow you to believe that version in order for us to go and experience not that version I actually almost emailed them earlier

1:20:00

because I was just so curious but look like let's email them you've got so much info online too so I know all the tours the variety of things I'm ready to go let's do it okay I'm down you got to take me up on the offer before I change my mind I know I'm like oh do we go now do we pack up our things and meet there right I know get on the road hit the road

Listener stories and wrap-up

I have a listener story that there's two stories but one of them takes place at Eastern State Penitentiary so that is why I chose this one um it is from our listener CL and it's called a few of my encounters so the first story is not about the penitentiary but it's good so I'm going to read it okay okay podcast while looking for spooky stories to listen to this October and this is back in 2018. and I haven't been able to stop listening to it it really makes study hall go faster and I'm a

1:21:00

senior in high school well now he's graduate well now CL has graduated high school congrats congrats um anyway I've been listening to your encounters episodes and thought I might as well share mine because me and people in my family have experienced a lot of things that is all just too strange to be a coincidence I can't remember a strict timeline at the moment but I guess I'll start by saying that my younger brother has been a sleepwalker slash sleep talker for several years a couple years after we moved into the house we currently live in he started screaming in his sleep and running out into the hallway oh God me and my mom and sometimes my stepdad if he was still awake or woke up would always catch my brother before he ran down the stairs or got too far but it was really scary a couple summers ago he started talking about a man in my parents room repeatedly like almost every night for a

1:22:00

while and he would never remember it when he woke up he was always saying it was in the exact same spot and my mom would bring him over to that spot and show him that nothing was there but he would insist someone is there my stepdad asked my brother to describe him one night and he said it was a man with a cane Hmm this even freaked out my stepdad who is a total skeptic when it comes to anything paranormal we think the first owner of the house an old man who possibly died there is haunting it eventually my mom decided to talk to The Ghost and everything stopped after that sometimes my little brother still yells in his sleep but he doesn't usually run anymore and it's pretty easy to calm him down now things were calm for a while but for a while now things have been happening in my room and I think the ghost has moved on to me or maybe there's a second ghost because the one time I definitely heard something it sounded female

1:23:00

the scariest thing that has ever happened to me happened at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia Pennsylvania I live relatively close to Philly and I love creepy places and museums and stuff like that so my brother and his friend were like oh cool old prison let's go so my dad took us in February of 2018. everything was fine when we went in even though we knew it was probably haunted and we were walking around me and my dad were sort of listening to Steve Buscemi audio tour and we got to the first cell block that was open that's cool that Steve Buscemi did the audio tour for Eastern State Penitentiary cool I was just gonna say that that's more reason just to go is to yes that's incredible we got to the first cell block that was open to the left of us there were two open cells that you could go in and see how the prisoners lived obviously we went into one and almost instantly I felt a heavy pressure on my chest and

1:24:00

felt so insanely dizzy and awful and felt like I couldn't breathe I stepped out to find my dad and it all stopped almost as quickly as it started I avoided going into other open cells after that fast forward maybe an hour or whatever and we were looking into Cell Block 14 which is one of the most haunted cells in the prison I'm pretty sure they closed it to the public because of how much happened there anyway I turned on the audio tour for that block and it got about halfway through when the radio thing died I was like huh that's weird I thought it was at full battery and I thought they charged these before the next round of people but things happen so I walked away closer to the hole solitary confinement and it turned back on full battery I was really confused because I didn't press anything but that's when I started to be feel like something is happening

1:25:00

a couple minutes later we went on a guided tour of the hospital Ward because you can't just walk into the hospital and look around it has to be timed with a guy with a guide we were walking through listening to the tour guide and he was telling us about the youngest inmate ever incarcerated a 13 year old girl one of the women on the tour asked what she did to be put in this place and I without having done any prior research and even later when I was home trying to find information on this girl couldn't find anything on her somehow knew that she had committed arson sure enough the tour guide answered arson my heart freaking dropped into my stomach I was so thoroughly freaked out at that point but we couldn't just leave in the middle of the tour so we persisted onward into the surgery room where my brother's phone just died and then turned back on like the audio tour did I also felt something tapped my leg in there after we left the prison I felt so

1:26:00

drained and really sick this had happened before in the past when my friend and I stupidly played with a homemade Ouija board and she said that one of her other friends has had the same thing happen to him when they play or go somewhere haunted and informed me that I might be a battery for ghosts fantastic thing to tell a 13 year old that believes and goes I later had a panic attack that night because I was convinced something had attached itself to me and followed me home the panic attack was so bad that I ended up throwing the Benadryl my mom gave me to help my stomach not feel sick I guess that royally backfired I also slept with a Rosary clutched in my hand that night to help me feel better so those are a couple quick stories I might send a few more because I have more but some are nicer than others these two are the creepiest and I thought I would get these out of the way thanks to reading stay spooky CL I mean well I guess starting with that last one

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there's more than just being a battery for or or Beacon for all of the spiritual activity it makes me think that I can't remember which one of the Claires it is but with a Clairvoyance or or whatever they're able to get the information downloaded into them from the spirits the fact that they were able to identify exactly before the tour guide even said who this person was what they're looking for and just have all that information like clearly they're the story yeah yeah that's incredible it's really cool it's something that I feel like CL could totally Channel and work on if they felt the desire to yeah but I also understand that it would be really draining and to go I mean for as many things that happen to CL in the Eastern State Penitentiary like I totally understand maybe not wanting to

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do that consistently but fascinating and if you're going on a ghost tour I think there is some element of or some desire to experience something yes yeah so you got your money's worth whole why does every place have a hole it's awful yeah that is awful oh man yeah yikes yeah and then also the the fact that ciel's house is haunted to the point where cl's brother is waking up and screaming oh I know that's so I'm just thinking of their parents right now it's like how horrifying take up to that and then you want to tell your kids like there's nothing to be scared of everything's fine your house is safe but then when something like that happens how do you how do you backtrack out of that

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you don't you don't you don't yeah yeah so real my friend yeah my child so sorry they are here but I do love that cl's mom had a talking to the spirit and things yeah calmed down it's like can you stop dang please yeah should we go to Tennessee yeah I mean I feel like if we're going to Brushy Korean were close enough to Waverly Hills in Kentucky that we should just do um let's just double dip a little let's do like a a five day five different sanatoriums penitentiaries asylums like go to all those places that have been high on our list forever we will need like full days between just we'll travel and then also just to recharge yeah yeah I agree yeah okay well maybe we'll find a big photo the first leg of our of our road trip

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right lovely lovely one day oh it would be so fun we should really do it yeah I always say manifest but like we can do whatever we want we should just that's true we could just do it but we still should manifest because yeah um what a cool episode and a lot of history and I feel like I learned a lot so thank you friend there was hey it was all new to me too before my three days of diving deep into this place but very fascinating yeah we learned a lot about yeah the horrors of the past but then also we got gems like 150 Geronimo of uh roast beef and Geronimo exactly yeah or has been married there please let us know I want to see pictures what would you label yourself on the box 70 pounds of

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steel nope wow I was going my brain straight dirty why am I why am I like still what what were you gonna say steal what vagina I love it I don't know wide load I want to put like cherries or something like fried fruit yeah I don't know what I would put there's so many possibilities roast beef might be and roast beef's just the the original is the best it's so funny right I mean let's let's be real they did have a year to think about that I wonder if it was an in the moment thing when they were like oh [ __ ] what are we gonna label you as or if they were like this is how we know we never checked the roast beef boxes roast beef yeah interesting fascinating as is everything

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paranormal and so if you have any paranormal experiences or anything just weird and creepy encrypted and Supernatural in any way please email it to us at two girls one ghostpodcast gmail.com and also join us on campfire stories on Spotify live every Tuesday at 5 PM Pacific 8 PM Eastern and share your stories live with us you can also join us here on YouTube we're here in person it's closest we can get to being in person right now um and on our patreon we give you the scoop on on everything that we're doing new and exciting uh you can join before November 30th and you will get a holiday card from us otherwise tell everybody about us write review follow us on social media do all the things uh purchase merch if you're planning on getting any merch for friends significant others for yourself for the holiday uh do so sooner rather than later because we were alerted to

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the fact from our distribution site um that things in order to get them in time for the end of December you likely will have to order it by the first week of December so just skip that in your mind no yeah order it okay okay but we love you we're happy we do we love you all thank you for joining us and we will see you on the other side