5,000 Bodies at the Bottom of Niagara Falls? | The Daredevils Who Risked It All (Ep 276)

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very spooky hello hi can IIT something embarrassing I have been having like wrist pain and I was like what is happening it's from holding our microphones because it is heavy I literally cut myself below the screen where like you can't see it I try to hold it with two hands cuz this thing is freaking heavy and also I've noticed my left arm is so much stronger because I have so much more stamina to record like this than I do with my right hand they are bricks we need to sort out the the microphone stand situation we do need to do that and then also we need to just

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like think about our form and not having limp risks as we hold it or maybe we're strengthening this is want strong wrist start a podcast it's so funny because I had messaged Morgan and Taylor from creeps and crimes well we messaged them in our group and we were like what the heck do we do about mic stands like you guys seem to have your [ __ ] together with the mic stand and they're like oh my God it's impossible these microphones are so freaking heavy and they're like oh well you just have to figure out which arm you want to be the strongest because that's where we all end up unless you're sitting at a table with one of those really short stands it's hard to find one that can actually reach and hold this brick I think fall of 2024 is going to be once we are settled into our spaces and have like a setup we'll have microphone stands but because we've been moving around so much and you've been doing construction on your house yeah we're not set in one spot so we've been moving around a ton but we'll get there we'll get there we have the whole summer

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of my maternity leave to like figure out the office space in my house and how we want to sit in it you guys know what you came you know what you signed up for this is better than what it has been that's true the only promises we're making are to ourselves Saina no one else is expecting any of this from us that's true but we appreciate all of you for being here with us uh I know you were about to introduce us when I confessed my weak wrists this is two girls one ghost two girls one ghost and are your ghostesses that is Karen and I'm sa I have a call to action for all of the plant lovers out there I live in zone 6 and this past winter there was not a lot of snow but it was very cold and so what happened was and this happened to people all over my town because I've been you know gossiping about plants with people as I meet strangers on the side of the street plant gossiper everybody's plants that they had in their yards that were like 18 years old or like 30 years old

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died because there was no insulation from the snow to keep the roots protected so the frost would just go down and kill the plants and half of our plants are now dead which normally you shed a tear because you're like that's so sad and that's so expensive to replace but I'm kind of like whoa did you hear that there was like a burp that rumbled up and it sounded like a dinosaur call I wonder if the mic picked that up if it did Jamie keep it in that was crazy but I'm excited because it gives me an opportunity because they're mostly in front of our house on the like colder area I guess where we got the most wind it gives me the opportunity to pick some new plants so I was kind of thinking like a Roa dendrin that sort of like a some sort of flowering plant like a lilac something like that but I want suggestions from people cuz you plant in the fall can you tell everyone what happened to you yesterday oh my God I was so mad I went to with what the [ __ ] is it

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called something like that and I've been there before and I they have such good selections and I am at this moment very pregnant and very unable to do much movement but I really used all my muscle and like all my best squatting form and I collected all of these plants for my house and I went to check out and they gave me back my AMX and they were like we don't take MX and I was like no problem I have Apple pay we don't take Apple pay and I was like no no problem I have my Visa memorized they're like we won't take that unless we can see the card and I was like really [ __ ] you I didn't say that but I felt like that felt like crying I had a whole cart and also normally I would have just been like oh that's frustrating whatever and leave well I did internally but I was more frustrated and on the verge of tears because one of the women that worked there was really mean to me so I was already on edge cuz she came up to me she was like that's okay she was like

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you can't plant those they're not ready to be outside but like said it in a very rude way I also didn't know that she worked there she had no identifying information and she was a bit older so you know sometimes people just like come up and start talking to you so I just thought we were striking up conversation so I was like oh really and she was like well why would I waste my time standing here telling you this if that weren't true yeah you can't plant this and I was like also like okay okay can we have a conversation please let's not be SN happy and rude and also like okay like maybe you wanted that opinion but it could have been delivered kindly like it's at the plant shop maybe telling me how to take care of it until I can plant it rather than being it was very aggressive right off the bat that's why I didn't think she worked there at first because if she had I I would have thought she would have been like oh by the way just so you know like we'll probably get another Frost or whatever so if you were planning on putting these outside maybe wait a few more weeks right or whatever but she was so quick to it and so I got a little Snappy back and I was like well well maybe it's a

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good thing I have a sun room then huh they don't have to be outside do they I would have just okay and got frustrated with me and then stood there with me with my cart as the cashier checked me out and then I was told that I couldn't pay for my flowers and run away and so I was on the verge of tears but right now I will say I'm on the verge of tears most days I'm kind of on the verge of tears right now so it is what it is I will try my best not to set you off I wish I could give you a hug it's unpredictable what will set me off Brian literally asked me he was like are you going to hang pictures today just curious about like the tasks and I was like how dare you ask me what I'm going to do leave me alone don't talk to me I was like I need alone time which means I need you to not talk to me for like eight hours I feel like you have finally experienced every PMS symptom that I experienced every month when I get my period I was actually think about that

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today because I was thinking about how rough pregnancy has been for me in the third trimester and how my brain is just mush well it really started like midc trimester yeah but like my brain is mush I can only do social things for like maximum 90 minutes my brain just doesn't work I'm like not reliable for any of the our podcast work like things justop go right over my head I'm like get done two seconds later forgot I was supposed to or that I said I would well but like in comparison it's pretty bad compared to how reliable I've been in the past seven years to now and so I was thinking about it and I was like my God this is like truly rocking me right now and then I was wondering when you're pregnant Sabrina because you do have a lot of these symptoms for PMS I was like either not to scare you but I was like either they're going to be exacerbated and this is going to be like the worst thing in the world for you or you're going to be used to them and so it's going to be just another day in Sabrina's life or everything is going to be the opposite

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and suddenly you're not going to have any of the sympoms amazing I hope that that happens for you I I hope that that happens for me too but yeah I have a feeling it won't be like that because every time even right now I have my period right now but like the last week I've just been experiencing all the side effects and like the symptoms and PMs and everything and I I forget every time I'm like am I getting sick like is this my period am I just going through about of depression am I like I don't know but I experience it every single month and yet it shocks me every single month someone the other day asked me how my first trimester was cuz we were on tour and I was like to be honest I have no idea of what I was feeling like half of those symptoms were pregnancy cuz I didn't know for a little bit of it that I was pregnant and I was like and we were traveling so much and we were going on 3 hours of sleep and Sabrina was right there with me the whole time we are symptom to symptom tiredness to tiredness I was like I had zero compar comparison that I was experiencing

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anything different than Sabrina yep so when we find out that you're pregnant in the future we will start batch recording probably the second we find out so that you can take maternity leave and uh not be crying in your last eight weeks being like we have to record another 30 episodes I think we've also learned just like from all of this to just be ahead at least a month moving forward and now it will be so much easier know what's going to happen because we're ready kind of there right and we're used to it and now we're close so yeah we can record whenever whenever whenever whenever Leia's going through a I think a like teenager angst phase right now I because she's a little bit chunky I had to put her on a diet oh and yeah so I changed her food and she's not but it's good she's not like going crazy she doesn't seem like she's hungry all the time but when I give her her can food she's like

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not eating it but then she'll meow for it and then I I truly have to put it into her M like open her mouth put the food in her mouth and she does this like like as if she's gagging and then she'll eat it and then she'll go and eat the rest of it but I have to force feed her first what in the world I know she's just being St what is this I don't know did this just start is this Rebellion do you think in part because she's in a new place in the move or did this start before when did she go on the diet truly I I did a lot of change all at once but I'm I'm also slowly transitioning I have like some of her old food in with the new food poor Leia you know what she's being spoiled she's still very very spoiled there's no poor Leia in this situation I think we've all experienced the emotions she's feeling though yes well let's pivot off of uh us and onto something else okay this is a regular Sunday episode which means we research haunted places haunted stories or just strange things out there and tell you about them and this one was inspired by

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a stop on the tour it was an unexpected stop on the tour an unplanned stop on our 2023 tour and so being a podcast about the dead we often talk about the dead and death but oftentimes I feel like a lot of the stories that we cover involve war or diseases or quarrels between lovers and historical figures and that sort of thing but this episode is going to talk about death by another manner and that is death by a force so strong it is bigger than any person and that would be mother nature and I'm just now realizing I'm choosing a lot of stories recently that involve natural disasters or Mother Nature killing people and specifically water disasters what does that mean for me I don't know stay away from waterfalls and Rain don't go chasing waterfalls don't go chasing waterfalls I'll stick to the rivers and the lake lakes that I'm used to

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so it'll be good okay but we are going to discuss Niagara Falls which we went to We did an unexpected Pit Stop on two hours of sleep this is maybe the most wild thing that happened on tour and it was weekend one what we were up at like 2: a.m. or whatever to get on our flight that was at 5: out of Toronto to get to Pittsburgh cuz there's no direct flights no and as we're our luggage is boarded Sabrina's boarding group is already called right like I think I was like one or two groups behind you and as you're getting ready to get in line you get the alert on your phone saying your connecting flight has been cancelled but I didn't even get an alert I literally luckily opened the app and just was looking at our next leg and it said the next FL it just said canceled we didn't get any alert and I was like excuse me you didn't get an alert either and I look at you and I go Karan I think our next fight was canceled and this is why we would be so good at The Amazing Race because we didn't question what to do I

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think I just immediately said we got to pull the bags let's go yeah and then you went up talked to the gay agent you were like we have to get to Pittsburgh our flight was cancelled she goes say less grabs us grabs our bag runs us through these secret tunnels and then we rented a car and then I remember there was speaking of the woman who was kind of Snappy with you at the plant store I'm not the type of person where if someone says something rude to me I don't snap back I usually just like cower Inward and I'm like like I can't deal with this and I get sad but I remember I was getting our bags you were getting a rental car and like the bags weren't coming so I had to go upstairs to the whatever up to like the desk to talk to them and I'm like lugging some stuff and I'm getting out of an elevator and there there's this man waiting to get onto the elevator but he starts getting onto the elevator before I get off the elevator and I think I was looking down at all the stuff that I had and he goes maybe if you weren't on your phone you would see where you're going and I was like I

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have never snapped so much I said excuse me I'm actually the one getting off the elevator so you should wait for me to get off before you get on I'm not even looking at my phone good and I was proud of myself God people are so cranky you don't just take a breath and mind your own business this is getting me riled up I'm getting mad we who is that guy let me see him find him for me sa let me give him wet wiie oh God I'd wet Wily the [ __ ] out of him me too mad I'm sorry you had to go through that okay we survived and we would crush on Amazing Race and we stopped at Niagara Falls and so on our journey we were like hey as we cross over the border of Canada into the us on our way to Pittsburgh let's go see Niagara Falls and so we did we took an hour to wander around Niagara Falls and it was incredible it was both of our first time there right you hadn't been before I've been I've been oh you had been okay well I'd never been and it was wild and then as we were walking up I was like I should do do an episode on Niagara Falls because I think a lot of

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people died here and then basically the whole time we were walking I was reading the Wikipedia page about everyone who died at Niagara Fall so it was a little Grim but but intrigued that's just who we are so nothing new so in the Northwestern area of New York right on the border of Ontario Canada is a group of three waterfalls that collectively are called Niagara Falls and they sit at the end of Niagara Gorge the largest of the three is called Horseshoe Falls and it straddles the international border of the US and Canada the other two American Falls and bridal veil Falls exist within the US border and there is also a bridge named Rainbow Bridge that divides the American and Canadian side it's appropriately named because every photo I've seen of Rainbow Bridge there's just a rainbow that's cast from all of the water right there so it's super super beautiful I just imagine being original settlers and coming across how horrifying would that be oh my gosh

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I know well and there's a ton of evidence that the the native people lived here for a long time so I feel like typically they had a lot more respect for the nature around them and probably were a little bit more used to kind of like the chaos that the waterfall could create and the danger that it could create versus some of the European settlers SLC colonists who came and were like who it kind of reminds me of the moment in is it land before time where they get through the cave and it opens up and they see the beautiful waterfalls yes is that not the same scene where the mother dinosaur dies oh I don't remember that part oh I think Ducky's mom dies or something or who's ducky I don't remember no littlefoot's mom dies sad anyway we're talking about Niagara Falls yes there's a cluster of islands between the Falls that allow tourists to go out and view the waterfalls from the middle of the river which I believe we did I think we went

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on to the Goat Island section to view the waterfall I do love that it's that we went to Goat Island because this is two girls one goat of course so how appropriate the beginnings of Niagara Falls were formed originally 10,000 years ago when there was this glacial ice sheet that melted and over a thousands of years it started filling up these large basins of water creating the great lakes and then the Falls themselves were formed by the water curving into to The Gorge basically like just like carving it out and this created Niagara River which drains Lake eie into Lake onario and then it continues on until it dumps into the Atlantic but because of the sheer amount like the sheer volume of water that moves through this area the three combined Falls have the highest flow rate of any waterfall in North America and niagar Falls consistently ranks in the world's top most dangerous waterfalls so if you look at any list you Google world's most dangerous waterfalls it's somewhere between like

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number two and number seven every single time jeez around 5.9 million cubic feet of water dumps from The Falls every minute and humans we have taken advantage of this sheer power of water and we have used it by creating a hydroelectric power plant to harvest some of the power of this moving water and actually about a quarter of the electrical needs for the state of New York and for Ontario is powered by Niagara Falls I mean that is crazy that also just proves how powerful it is I also think it's incredible that humans have figured out how to circumnavigate that power I know I don't understand it when I was in Iceland I tried to understand like geothermal energy renewal sources and how they do it and I it was all over my head but I was like that's incredible and we should do that everywhere we can someone commented on our Invisible String Theory episode on YouTube saying something like I thought I was coming here for science something

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like that and I was like what about our podcast has made you believe we would come here with scientific knowledge ever I mean if that was on YouTube it had to have just been someone perusing around who's never listened to our podcast right but I feel like the first clue before you comment perhaps the first clue would be to look at who's posting it and if it's called two girls one ghost maybe go oh that's weird that's probably not a science channel click on it and then go oh [ __ ] that's definitely not a science channel not at all I mean we added a little sprinkle of science into there yeah but a lot of it's just like theorizing and trying to figure it out we don't have any knowledge no and all of the scientific I guess quote unquote like facts that involve The Invisible String Theory are theoretical science so it's not yeah there's nothing to be proven or told okay and I'm sure as all of us are aware this is a huge tourist destination I'm

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sure most people in the world have heard of Niagara Falls because it is one of those places that are like a bucket list item for many people and so I thought I'd provide a couple interesting facts beyond what I think is already super interesting that I've said but the very first recorded couple to Honeymoon at Niagara Falls Aaron Burr's daughter stop Aaron Burr sir TR da I know I mean they were the first recorded couple so who knows people came they were obviously not historical figures being related top so it was recorded Pam and Jim from the office they Ted them under the Falls yes and impressively Niagara Falls actually played a huge role or I shouldn't say huge but did play a big role in the Underground Railroad as slave owners would travel to the falls for a sightseeing opportunity and they would usually bring a few of their slaves with them and this gave the opportunity to the enslaved people those

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who could to try to escape and Escape up to Canada they were in the north there were other people that were working to help them but then unfortunately there were probably just as many people who were like the slave Hunters slave capturers also working there to try to bring people back so it was obviously convoluted and complicated and not just easy to run away around the Falls but there was opportunity for a lot of people to escape their right captors up here which is awesome but it wasn't always a sightseeing opportunity Niagara Falls was not in the 1870s people actually had to pay to see just a little glimpse of the falls because people got greedy and they were like oh let's bring commercial development and industrialization to Niagara Falls and try to chip away at this natural beauty and so because of that it wasn't really easy for people to go see the falls it was not like the tourist destination that we can experience today right but

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also because of that people were like okay well this is totally threatening the existence of the falls and so a conservation movement was led for the next several decades and public parks were constructed as a result and to help restore Niagara to its sacred State they would limit how many resources were used how much we take from the falls and also provide people safe access to view the Falls without negatively impacting the ecology and topography of the area and on the American side this was the very first state park ever established ever in the US in the US yep first day park that's cool also people could go look at the Wonder of the falls I will say from having seen it on the US side and the Canada side I do think the Canadian side is the better view yeah that's what everyone says yeah or doing it from doing one of those like boat tours where you get a poncho and you go kind of like

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as close as you possibly can to the falls that's pry that scares me too much I don't think I can do that see I like that better than being above being above it is scarier oh cuz you could fall over but then I'm thinking about like the churn of the water it's like a little washing machine like if you fall in you're kind of [ __ ] most of the time and then if you're like oh yay I lived and I'm just floating Downstream there's this other part not too far it's like a mile down which is like no one survives that if they get into this one section CU it just drowns you immediately well just don't jump off the boat K or don't get pushed off the boat well I'm thinking of like the boat capsizing I think I'm scarred from that one duck boat tour in like Chicago or Wisconsin or wherever that was a few years ago it's a boat made to do that and it went down don't go chasing waterfalls that's what we've learned don't go chasing waterfalls is a lesson of this story so while Niagara Falls while the Falls have always been viewed as a perfect example of force and strength that Mother Nature

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has and to not mess with planet Earth some people have tested their luck by venturing a little bit too close to the falls or in some cases voluntarily rolling over the falls in barrels where did that come from I don't really know why they chose barrels but I will tell you about the first people who attempted to do this and so for this episode we are going to discuss or Dive In get it water pun dive in dive into some of the strange and some downright heartbreaking stories of some of the deaths or survival stories of people who have gone over the falls and then next week we're going to uncover some of the hauntings that exist within this area okay I have a quick side tangent question did you ever do that science experiment in like middle school or high school where you had to create a Contraption for an egg and drop it off

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the egg yeah yeah what did you use and did you succeed I did succeed and that was freaking great I used pieces of paper but I mimicked kind of like the Bedrock of the earth and so I had different layers of like different textures and crusts so I had some a bunch of flat I had some crumpled I had some like that I cut in strips and made them like kind of squiggly and I just kind of kept doing that in different forms all the way up so that there were different layers of cushion and it worked okay what did did you use as like the parachute or did you not do a parachute did you justop we did not have a parachute we were just dropping freaking eggs from ladders into our thing below oh you dropped it into your thing below the way we did it was you create like a basically a hot air balloon situation a basket for the egg and then a parachute and you drop it in the contraption to see and try to protect it oh maybe we did do that cuz I'm remembering taping plastic straws to my egg so I must have had some sort of parachute yeah I don't know did yours

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crack or did you survive mine survived or a bunch of survivors over here who says this isn't a science podcast we've taken science classes before therefore we have signed to the I've actually taken an embarrassing amount for how dumb I sound on this podcast when it comes to that topic we've done a lot of schooling and still sound dumb whatever we're relatable yeah we're experts when it comes to the Paranormal yeah our expertise is limed guys we just enjoy coming here is that not enough having fun okay so this week we'll talk about deaths next week we'll talk about hauntings I guess and some of the deaths but in an unsurprising yet disturbing moment in history the very first recorded public stunt occurred in 1827 when a wrecked shrer named Michigan so basically it was a sailboat named Michigan that was not being used as a sailboat anymore was loaded up with Effigies of people and animals which to

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my knowledge were living animals and placed on the shrer that was placed on the River on track to go over the falls as this like stunt because humans are [ __ ] up and of course people would be like come come hither let's all see the animals plunge to their death and pretend like we're on there too with our little papier-mâché people I hate that it's one thing to do like the fake f but to actually put living animals it kind of happened a lot I think it's it was like one of those things too where well we still do it think about all the freaking lab animals it's so the animal testing but it's like you know you send a dog up into space before you send a person so you send a dog over the waterfall before you send a person come on there's humans who would volunteer for this [ __ ] there are yeah and some kind of some people did okay so this was an actual event where people would come and watch the boat go over with the

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animals and people were charged 50 cents to come see this event so it wasn't just like you know a bunch of guys being like wouldn't this be funny and pushing it over the edge like it was an advertised event that people would come and watch I mean if you think about back in the day like people would go and watch executions and stuff so yeah yeah humans are pretty sick yeah right and so there was something about this event which just must have inspired a few more humans to be like oh [ __ ] people will come and watch Things fall over the side and perhaps they'd pay a pretty penny to watch me fall over the side and so began a string of daredevils who flocked to Niagara Falls to show their strengths and endurance and test their luck okay Enter Sam patch he called himself the Yankee Leapster but he also accepted the nicknames the daring Yankee and the Jersey jumper I like Jersey jumper the best I know it does sound fun so Sam he was a

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Rhode Island resident he grew up in Rhode Island he grew up working in a cotton mill he was a child laborer and when he and the other children were not working in the mill they would entertain themselves by jumping off of the mill Dam and like jumping from high heights and so he origal parkour yeah they're so dangerous as if he wasn't already in danger as a child working in a factory he was like let me leap off of the mill building and into this freaking Dam okay so he clearly had no fear and that moved with Sam as he grew up and entered his 20s in his 20s he moved to New Jersey to work at another Mill but his love of jumping off things it just never died with his childhood no instead he would perform stunts all the time and he realized that he started to kind of gather crowds of his own and he could charge for these events and he could be more than just this mill worker he could risk his life oh all the time and get paid for it so you have no fight or

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flight if you're a mdala is like what's that guy who did the a free solo that documentary you know if you have that I guess you kind of do need to take it more extreme to yeah what's his name Alex Alex something yeah sometimes you just don't fear death and Sam did not and so in New Jersey in his new state he jumped from 70 ft into the paic Falls I think is how you say it and he survived so he was like oh my God I can keep going higher and higher I can do this all the time so in 1829 Sam said to himself you know what we'll draw a really big crowd if I set up a 125 ft ladder over the river from Goat Island in Niagara Falls and jump off of it into the water and so that is what he did is that a custom that's got to be a customade ladder it 100% was because they actually had to like live reconstruct part of the ladder because so he scheduled the event it was said on this one day and people gathered to

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watch Sam presumably jump to his death but it was kind of a shitty day out and so not a ton of people a lot of people came but not as big of a crowd as Sam had expected not as many as he wanted no exactly so he was set to jump at noon and right before he was about to jump it was like 11: a.m. is a chain that secured the ladder to the cliff it snapped and so they had to rebuild kind of like part of the ladder in the chain to secure it again to give him a walkway out there and they they did it within the like next four or 5 hours and so now Sam was jumping at 400 p.m. he was more than 80 ft in the air so this was the tallest jump he would have done so far in his career and a crowd of people were all around him some cheering I'm sure some holding their breath awaiting his death and everyone watched as Sam walked out and he leapt off of the plank and into the water below everyone looked at the water where he entered and you could see the bubbles rising to the surface but for quite a bit of time there was no Sam and there was a rescue boat that had

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been set up to grab him pluck him from the water and it was circling it was circling and there was no Sam but then after what feels like a little bit too long for Sam's survival in a small distance away he does resurface and everyone's cheering cuz he's alive and the crowd is like going wild and Sam is like this is great but the crowd could be bigger right he's like riding this high and it's never enough he keeps chasing it and it's going to lead to something very bad I can tell it is so he decides he should do it again and he schedules another jump for October 17th and this time he will jump from 40 feet higher so it would be 120 ft High 10,000 people showed up to watch and Sam survived again he survived a lot of people it's a ton but then just a few weeks later he decided I'll do the same thing that I did in Niagara Falls a place that should surely kill me and I've succeeded twice I'm going to do the same at High Falls in Rochester New yor New York and it was November 13th Friday

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the 13th and he jumped and he never resurfaced but that did not dissuade other jumpers other stuntmen from venturing to Niagara Falls to try to do the same well I mean he survived in Niagara Falls so of course people are like well it was the High Falls situation it wasn't Niagara Falls true on October 24th 1901 Annie Edson Taylor became the first woman to go over the falls and the first person to go over the falls in a barrel this was for a publicity stunt again and she did she hoped she would survive and to test if she would survive she first sent her pet cat over Annie in a barrel not the cat lady you thought she was she sends her cat over in a barrel a few days before the cat survive she's like great then I'll survive too okay well I'm glad the cat survived that's so sad I know also it was at this point in my research too and I was like okay there's been so many animals that have gone over like the cats surviving and

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then I started thinking about the fish that are in the Stream and have to go over Niagara Falls so I Googled it and I was like how do the fish survive and basically the majority of the fish do survive the fall there's this the white foam that kind of like is created by the churn of the water at the base of the falls provides enough cushion that 90% of the fish who drop survive wow that's still a lot of cool yeah wait that's a fun fact I like that a lot I also am now thinking about the fact that there's a bridge called Rainbow Bridge and I know it's because this rainbow that's formed over with all the water particles and stuff but for how many animals have died here I do like the idea that there's this rainbow bridge that helps them cross over that's very sweet I didn't think about that that's really lovely I needed something positive yeah thank you for your contribution Sabrina that was great you're very welcome okay so Annie's cat survives 90% of the fish survive Things Are looking good for Annie too right and so she gets her big

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ass barrel and a crowd is gathered and she squeezes herself into this Barrel which isn't really squeezing herself like it's almost the same height as her and she's riding through the Rough Waters in this Barrel until she goes over the side of Horseshoe Falls which is how tall again it is 170 ft Horseshoe Falls is okay big drop massive drop and also it's not just like a drop and then you just like gently float away like it's a drop you probably are underwater getting ch turned around for a little bit underneath the falls and then hopefully you hope you pop up somewhere right so the barrel pops up and they go and they try to retrieve the barrel and they grab it and they crack it open and Annie's alive she's miraculously survived she's a little bit bloody a little bit cut up but otherwise she doesn't have any serious injuries truly it seems like a miracle and people are cheering and Annie she's like what the [ __ ] did I just do she literally said quote no one ought ever do that again so

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she she was traumatized by it she wasn't like yay I survived she was like guys don't do what I just did I'm so curious about Annie now like who are you what led her to this point in her life and does she need a hug yeah I think she was a school teacher if I'm remembering correctly that is not what I expected at all I think she was there were some other people that were just like making some odd decisions like and soon after her there was a man named George stakis in 1930 he decided to go over in a barrel with his 150-year-old pet turtle and George died but the turtle survived in that one I'm like I feel like George hit his head on the shell of's turtle or something like that like I feel like he's just an idiot not to speak ill of the dead people should not be doing this yeah no nobody tried this at home what is your purpose again it's like why but the next Daredevil after an's miraculous barrel role to take on Niara Falls was

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Bobby leech Bobby would be the second person to go over the falls in a barrel so this was this predates George and his Turtle while Annie's Barrel was much more like it looked more like a oversized wine barrel Bobby's was this metal tube it kind of looked submarine like Annie oh I did right Annie had been a school teacher but Bobby he literally performed with the Barnum and Bailey Circus so like this was his Jam this was his stage he had experience that seems like the appropriate segue into Barrel Falls right yeah I don't know what what was going on with Annie's life either but if there were someone to survive doing this stunt it would be someone whose literal job every day is to do stuff like this and clearly death did not scare Bobby Bobby was so unafraid of death that actually he had literally seen a fellow stunt man die from diving off of a 150 ft platform into a 5T deep pool of water which of course that person would die right and Bobby sees

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this man die and just immediately does it right after just Fearless just doesn't just death doesn't scare him clearly is he's unaffected by other people's deaths he jumps in he survives that so he's like going over Niagara Falls in a barrel I'll be fine he's getting a little bit cocky yeah he's Brave he's delusional he's a bit of both well poor Bobby he did survive his metal Barrel fall overnight he did but I'm sure there's moments that he wish he didn't because he spent 6 months recovering from how many bones he broke like he was crumpled up like he was kind of a mess so metal was not the way to go yeah that doesn't seem like a cushiony situation no and then Bobby died in his late 60s after slipping on an orange peel stop he hurt his leg his leg became infected he needed surgery on the leg and and he died of complications from Gang Green and the surgery but it

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all started with slipping on an orange peel for someone who's lived such a dangerous life to die from slipping on an orange peel it's like the cruestv offense jeez okay so clearly jumping off of the falls and surviving is quite the stunt and it seems some people found it possible but there are other Daredevils who took advantage of the dangerous terrain without jumping over it was simply about crossing over so enter the tight RPP Walkers suspended this is like such a circus Niagara Falls is a circus suspended in the air tight RPP Walkers would cross over the gorge near Rainbow Bridge and the first to do this was French Daredevil Jean franois blondon graet graet he did it eight times in total in 1859 and during one of his walks he even carried his manager on his back like piggybacked his manager across the tight Road and there's no harness or anything no I would literally never do that I think I would rather do that though than the barrel I agree but I

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would never be as a manager I would never as a manager me in my managerial position as a human being being in the manager's position I would never trust anyone to piggyback me across a tight rope no that's just a hard no that's not a oh I have to do this in order to survive this is my one chance this is that's voluntary right he's volunt control yeah right making that decision but they lived they survived this guy did it eight times the next person who is notable to mention is Maria spelterini she was the first and only woman to cross over the Niagara River Gorge completing the stunt multiple times within the same month and even doing it blindfolded one walk and then she's like oh I succeeded doing it blindfolded let me up the antie and so then on another walk she freaking had her ankles and her wrists handcuffed to hinder her balance she makes it across so she's like how do I make this even harder clearly my balance is too good so

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then she is like well I'm going to make sure that I can't use the grip of my feet so she has Peach baskets tied to each of her feet so that she can't use her like Toes or feet to grip the tight rope she just truly has to rely sheerly on balance and she did it she survived she lived she did it yeah I have no comment this is just like it's hard to commentable yeah at all okay so in modern day it's completely illegal to do anything like this crossing over the falls intentionally falling over the falls it will result in a hefty fine but sometimes just sometimes special permission is granted like when on June 15th 2012 Highwire artist Nick Wenda he got special permission from both the Canadian and American governments to walk a tight rope across the Falls other tight RPP Walkers had crossed over the gorge a bit further down the stream but he wanted to go right across Horseshoe

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Falls and so he set up a tight rope that was 1800t in length so was 550 M for those of us who don't live in America everyone else in the world and he would do all of this unsupported so actually that makes me question if the other tight RPP Walkers were supported they might have been they might have been strapped to something okay interesting I'm unsure but Nick definitely was not so he successfully walked across it thank God and he became the world record holder for longest unsupported tight RPP walk in history jeez now we've talked a lot about the stunts that people pull to go over this but there unfortunately are some other cases where people accidentally go over there are cases where people intentionally jump knowing that their likelihood of surviving is very slim I feel like of the intentional ones there are less deaths than I thought there would be which is fascinating there are a lot of deaths even with some of the intentional ones

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maybe I just plucked a lot of the surviv Survivor ones yeah but it is kind of crazy cuz you would think that way more people like the fact that some of these people did it so many different times and survived too is pretty wild so in modern recorded history from 1850 to 2011 there's been an estimated 5,000 bodies to have been found at the feet of the false 5,000 yeah and that's just from 1850 like as an estimate imagine how how many people before then before that yeah an average of 20 to 30 people die going over the falls every single year and I saw some reports saying it was more closer to like 20 to 40 jeez so I'm going to tell you about one of the cases that is terribly tragic yet still miraculous and this is the Miracle on Niagara and Sabrina you might recognize this because as we're walking down the path I was reading it aloud to you the story CU I was like basically doing our podcast but in person with without recording it 100% I've already done this

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episode just on the fly so on July 9th 1960 James Honeycut took his friend's kids in some articles James was listed as a family friend in other articles he was listed as the uncle so I don't know if he was an uncle or if he was like an uncle to these kids but he took these kids seven-year-old Roger Woodward and 17-year-old deian Woodward brother and sister out on his aluminum fishing boat for the day cuz they were going to spend the day fishing on the river how lovely which sounds lovely it does unfortunately during that time the boat lost power and they were kind of picking up speed going down this River and they couldn't get to the side and they couldn't do anything to try to grab on or like scoot themselves over because the water was just a little bit too strong and so they're quickly approaching the edge of the falls and there's no way to safely go to Shore and they're all freaking out there's a group of tourists nearby and two of the people they make their way to The River's Edge and the boat is actually close enough now that they're able to reach out and

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grab the girl so they grab deian the 17-year-old and they pull her from the boat to shore just 20 ft before the edge of the waterfall Jesus but they don't have time to grab anyone else the current is too strong the boat is ripped away immediately and down Shore they go and over the waterfall Roger and James fall this is over Horseshoe Falls so this is the what drop yeah Roger the seven-year-old had been wearing a life jacket and that choice saved his life James unfortunately passed away he was drowned and just didn't survive the fall but Roger became buoyant and the Maid of the Mist where Pam and Jim got married came over and they were touring the bottom of the The Falls it's one of those boats that like gets very close to the falls and they see this and they make their way over to Roger floating in his life jacket little seven-year-old kid so terrified and they pluck him out of the

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water to safety so truly a miracle did he break any bones or anything not that I saw listed no I'm sure he probably had some injuries that wild geez yeah I have no idea but I'm so glad both kids survived like obviously it's terrible that the adult passed away too but just the children the brother and sister that they didn't have to it's traumatizing enough to experience that together and traumatizing enough for the girl to watch her brother go over and think he's dead and for him to go over himself thank God they both survived I know oh so Niagara Falls does get a lot of attention for its beauty and for its strength and for the sheer number of lives lost beneath its surface water is also said to be a medium between the physical and spiritual worlds yes so it comes as no surprise when I tell you Niagara Falls is most definitely haunted yes which we will talk about next week wow okay so do you know is there like a number of how many people have died at Niagara Falls the number of

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bodies is around 5,000 there's no like actual tally marker yeah that's for like the body of water and like bodies found there but the surrounding area there was a bunch of wars that played a big role in the war of sure I know not going to spoil next week oh okay there's there's dead bodies around the land as well makes sense okay well I feel like the lesson here is don't go over chasing waterfalls in a barrel and don't go chasing waterfalls I really did think more people would have died from going over in barrels I would implore everyone to Google some of these deaths recorded at Niagara Falls because there's a big list that's recorded for different people like in their boating excursions or like there was one man who not too long ago within the past couple decades he was like I'll just kayak my way over the falls and make it to my dinner reservation and he just died like he didn't make it so there's a lot of cases of yeah there's a lot of people who

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didn't make it I just plucked out some of the ones who did that were doing really odd and interesting things when going over okay well yeah don't go chasing waterfalls and maybe just stay inside we don't have any listener stories from anyone who has experienced hauntings at Niagara Falls so I picked a different type of waterfall okay and this is a story from our listener Ashley and it is called my experience in Black Star Canyon hi ladies I just started the podcast and I'm absolutely loving it this was back in 2019 so I won't say hope you're still with us but I do and it always sounds like we're saying I hope you didn't die but we what we mean is perhaps you're still a listener and that would be great that would be great we also hope you're alive but it it does come off a lot darker than intended I feel like it's appropriate okay I came across the haunted Anaheim episode and I just had a write in I Liv 10 minutes from black star and 20 minutes from Disneyland land I laugh when you ladies were asking who would go to this place

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and hey it's me I would go and I have gone when I was 16 my friends and I took a night trip to Blackstar to check out what the deal was with this Infamous place I want to paint the picture for you the best I can so you turn onto the Canyon Road which is paved and there's Rolling Hills both ways on either side there's a gate that is closed and locked at night so you have to park and journey in on foot so when we arrive it's pitch dark out in the canyon so the only light you have is flashlights and and if you're lucky maybe a full moon to illuminate the creepy valleys we walked deeper into the trail and found another group out there so we decided to join forces and explore together it's important to stay on the path because everything off of the path is private property and apparently there's a big rumor going around that if you're on their land the residents will shoot you so we stayed on the path yeah good and we came to an old mine shaft doorway the door was closed but there was a light that was rigged on top to Signal entry this light was motion censored so when we walked up it flashed we thought it was pretty spooky but nothing more happened as we continued deeper the road

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started to narrow and change into a gravel road we crossed over a creepy bridge where a legendary witch lived below next to the creek off to the left in the field is a lone water well the well looked like it was straight out of the ring and none of us were brave enough to approach it I wouldn't ever want to look at what's at the bottom too cuz even if it's nothing paranormal it's probably like a dead possum or something there's definitely something in there open uncovered yeah we come to the end of the public road and a gate that states past this point is private property my group decided that was enough for us and we wanted to head back but the other group we met continued to hike to the waterfall and the notorious School Bus side note on the bus people have not only reported hearing the children but also seeing handprints on this window of the bus and I can't remember this episode specifically but I think there must have been a big school bus accident and the bus is still there oh it's starting to ring a bell I know it was so long ago yeah I don't want to like guess at the details but it is

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feeling familiar now we headed back to the car and came to the bridge again and as we're crossing this bridge I had a weird feeling and I heard this sound from under it I can only describe it as a deep feminine exhale the kind of sound you hear in a horror movie and this is the bridge above where the witch is supposed to live the witch is near my friend grabbed me so hard right at the moment and I asked if she had heard what I did and she did so I was not imag mentioning it we didn't speak of it while we were in the canyon and continued to cling to each other for the rest of the walk we again Came Upon the M shaft that we had seen previously and the light flashed again when we walked past so we were like okay probably motion censored but the weird thing is though as soon as we were away from it far enough away from it the light flashed again a couple times and that other group was not behind us interesting that makes me think like the witch is following them right cuz if there's whispering and Phantom lights could it be the wit stocking them in the woods when we made it to the car the first thing I did was

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ask my friend okay so what did you hear back there and she described the exact same sound that I had heard we got chills and we High tailed it out of there another friend from my group told us later that night that he went out there ones and there were shadow figures jumping around from Hill to Hill I've also heard people coming into contact with black star Bill who lives in the canyon and doesn't like visitors he will chase off trespassers chase people in his red truck and threaten people not to come back I'm thinking black star buils a real human but I don't know maybe I don't know also the darting shadow figures running through the woods reminds me of one of our first episodes where we did caught on tape and you covered the photographer who has captured a lot of different paranormal photos and there's that really creepy one where it's like the backlit in the trees Woods yeah and amongst the trees you just see a bunch of dark shadow figures luring it's super creepy mhm Ashley says I haven't been back there since other than when I drove up to the gate last Halloween to show my roommate

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but no way in hell was I getting out of the car thanks so much for reading I hope you ladies do a live show in SoCal soon stay spooky this Halloween and see you on the other side Ashley I wouldn't go into those woods Ashley no and it sounds like you were given every warning to not return I wonder what that other group who they split up from ended up experiencing yeah what if Ashley's group was experiencing kind of like the lights and the and the of the woman's voice but the other group was the one actually being staled like they were hearing someone or something stalk the other group a lot more closely oh interesting I prefer that because then Ashley is in the clear but it does sound to me to me it sounded like the this witch under the bridge was following them yeah oh to be the witch under the bridge honestly I kind of like that that is what we Channel a lot I see nothing wrong with with this woman we are team Wich under the bridge not team go over the waterfalls in a barrel and I

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think that's fair exactly and did Ashley come out alive was her group safe yes so team witch under the bridge that's way more relatable it sounds like there's a lot going on here though I feel like sometimes I feel Brave after episodes and I'm like oh I would go there oh should we go there I'm not saying that with this one no thanks not me you don't want to go to Black Star Canyon I don't I really don't well I don't want to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel so okay so we're both leaving this episode with some boundaries make a deal of what we're willing to do and not willing to do yeah yeah so we're on the same page if you've been to Niagara Falls and if you've experienced any hauntings generally whether it's at Niagara Falls or anywhere please email us your encounters to two girl wodcast gmail.com that is listed in the show notes it's also featured here on our YouTube channel if you are wondering and it's on our website it's on our Instagram it's on our socials so you'll find it if look if you look just put in the effort you guys and if you weren't

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already putting in enough effort by listening to this episode and listening to it the very end the last 2 minutes we ask one more thing of you and that is to tell people about us because it does help and then you've officially been sucked into the pyramid scheme that is two girls one ghost where you tell two people about us and then they tell two people about us and then we just have more and more and more and more ghost stories to talk about and who doesn't love to get sucked yeah so get sucked baby and also rate and review and thank you so much to our editor and producer Jamie Ryan for editing and producing our audio and video of our podcast uh thank you to all of you for listening we hope you enjoyed the science podcast and we will see you on the other side very spooky