APPALACHIAN LEGENDS & HAUNTINGS | The Axe Murder Hollow | Paranormal Podcast (Ep 331)

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This man is still haunting the land carrying a bloody axe.

Was he just like, "I think you cheated on me and I'm gonna axe my whole family to death."

Yep. So, this is part true crime, part ghost story, and full chilly Willies. This is the story of Axe Hollow Murders. Yeah,

very spooky.

Sorry because I'm trying not move to where Whoa. trying not move to where you told me not to move to.

Where'd you come from?

I don't know. You said the focus is good here. So, I'm not I'm like frozen here.

Where did you come from? Where did you go?

Huh? Oh, okay. Hi. Hello, everyone.

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Hi. This is Two Girls, One Ghost.

Two Girls, One Ghost. And we are your ghostesses. That is Karen.

Hello.

I'm so sorry. I am Sabrina. Welcome to another episode of Two Girls, One Ghost, where we are diving into some Appalachin lore.

Corinne's new ghost story

Before I get into my story, I feel like you every time you go home, you get ghost stories to come back with.

Oh, I do have one.

See, I would have forgotten to even tell you.

Okay, please tell me.

My mom is convinced that it's my Grammy, but I'm convinced that Noah is telepathic. So, this is this is our like thing. Like, it's not a huge ghost story. It's basically just the night before my parents were like, "We we really want to get up when Noah gets up." And I was like, "Good luck. He's been getting up so early recently."

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And at 4:45 a.m., Noah gets up.

I pluck him from the bed. And as I'm about to like open the door, my parents' television turns on in their room to the news. and they have never ever had that happen before. So like that's not a normal paranormal thing for them or just like electrical thing. But it was like

is Noah Matilda?

That is exactly I kept calling him Matilda. I was like Noah is Matilda. So my mom was like oh I think it's I think it's Grammy. Like she knew that like cuz my dad had to leave for a day when we were visiting to go tend to some things. And my mom was like no Grammy knew that dad wanted to spend time with Noah and he was like getting us up. I was like I don't know. I think Noah wanted to spend time with you. is like, "Turn on the TV. Wake you up. I'm up."

I believe it. No. Is a spooky kid.

I think so. I don't know. That's our ghost story from the weekend.

Yeah.

I Okay, so I actually weirdly watched Matilda two nights ago.

Did you?

And I realized that we are all I feel

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like our community I can speak for y'all. I feel like we we cater to a specific type of person because we are these types of people.

I think we've all become Miss Honey. I was going to say your outfit's kind of Miss Honey vibes.

Thank you.

You know, like if you had like a white turtleneck on under it or something like I feel like it would be so Miss Honey

cuz very like '9s.

Thank you. Um I in my depression this past couple of weeks spent a lot of money on new clothes that I have nowhere to wear except for our podcast recording.

So I'm going to be dressing up for you.

Okay, great. I will probably still arrive in sweats, but we'll see what happens. Anyway, I was thinking because so in Matilda, Miss Honey basically

gets kicked out of the her father's beautiful mansion

and she buys she like rents a little cottage and plants a bunch of wild flowers and lives in this cottage. And I was like, that's all of us. That's all we want.

That totally is. Oh my gosh, I'm obsessed. Wait. And that reminds me that this morning Noah and I were outside

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walking around and I'm holding him and a hummingbird came up to us and was like a foot away and I was like, "Oh my god." I was like literally saying, "Oh my god. Oh my god. Are you okay? What's wrong? Is this a miracle? Are we blessed?" Like I was like flustered and talking out loud cuz when does a hummingbird ever come and stop and flutter in front of you for multiple seconds?

Okay, so Noah's Cinderella too,

I guess. He He was like la. And I was freaking out. And we saved a ton of animals. And this is magic. You know what? Maybe Noah does have something weird going on because we were saving frogs left and right because they kept like migrating to where we were in my parents backyard. There's like a water retention pond that's just like become a pond with all this wildlife. And never have we seen deer back there. But when my dad walked Noah out on our last morning, there was a deer like beautifully just resting right at the edge of the pond just sitting there staring at them watching.

So Noah is a Disney princess. I guess he is. He's beautiful.

He is beautiful.

He is beautiful. You know what else is

the legend

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beautiful?

Horror.

Scary.

Spooky scary.

Spooky. Scary.

Spooky. Scary. Scary.

Is the Appalachin area.

Mhm.

The Appalachin Mountains, Appalachin Trail, the horrors, the creatures, the ghosts that haunt it.

And we're basically turning into an Appalachin podcast at this point cuz we're obsessed.

We are. But this one has a twist.

Oh, okay. Interesting. Let me hair flip to get ready. As the story goes, there was once a small farm off of the woods. This farmer lived there and he was a very sad man who found it very difficult to find joy and pleasure in life. The world calloused him, shrouding him in a darkness where laughter and joy ceased to exist. His Eeyore demeanor drew clouds over top everyone around him. His wife became a shadow of herself. She spent her days trying to keep her husband from becoming angry. This toxic environment spread over to their children, too. They went to school. They came home and worked.

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There was never time for play. One summer, the farmer decided to hire a man to help on the farm because it was just too much to do by himself. Apparently, he hired a drifter. And I would like to say he probably didn't do an interview process because if he had he probably wouldn't have hired this man because this man was the complete opposite of him

where he found no joy. This hired hand loved to smile, loved to sing, was just a happy, pleasant man, which obviously annoyed the [ __ ] out of the farmer,

right? Cranky.

But the hired hand,

sometimes you need a little joy.

I think it was too far gone for this man. But this hired hand continued his work with a smile on his face which became contagious. It spread across the farm to the wife, to the children. He would craft gifts for the children. He would create toys for them. He would give them flowers. This is the movie Clouse. I'm telling you, with a really horrific ending. Wait. Little by little, this

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farmer grew to resent the hired hand. And then he began to suspect that this man was having an affair with his wife. Enraged, he fired the man, driving him off of his land.

Oh, my brain filled in like driving him off of I thought you were gonna say a cliff.

Oh, I think he instant death. Like Game of Thrones, how many people are dying in the first two seconds of the story?

A lot.

Content warning here. There is a lot of death. He then confronted his wife and in a blind rage he picked up an ax and he brutally murdered his wife and then his children during the confrontation. Like did she admit to it or was he just like

I think he was just

I think you cheated on me and I'm going to axe my whole family to death.

Yep.

Holy crap.

He then went in search of the man he had driven off his land. And he was later found by towns people wandering the woods still carrying the bloody axe muttering to himself. Ever since then, people have claimed that the spirits of the entire family haunt the land, and

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that this man is still haunting the land, carrying a bloody axe, looking for the man. Jes. Ever since then, this has become local legend, local lore that people have like dared one another to go spend time in the axe murder hollow. But there are no records of this murder happening. And we're going to dive into what is called the axe hollow murders or sometimes called the axe hollow murder.

Mhm.

And we're going to discover that despite this being legend in Appalachia in various regions, the real legend comes from a place technically not in Appalachia.

Oh, interesting.

And I was very confused because I found it in this book which I used for the research of when we did our three-parter,

Appalachia Folklore Unveiled. Can I look at it? Just gently peruse as you

please. And that's how I picked this topic. I picked it for later cuz I was like, "Oh, I definitely want to research

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this."

But when I began my Google search, this legend takes place in Eerie, Pennsylvania.

[ __ ]

What?

I think I think the listener story I picked out is from Eerie. And I actually had no idea.

Don't quote me on this quote me on this, but I'm like fairly certain it is.

That would be spooky.

Okay. Well, I think it is. So, it's interesting because then I was looking on Reddit and I went on a deep dive and people were asking, "What's your local Appalachin legend?" And multiple people from the Lake Erie area were like, "Oh, the legend of Axe Hollow Murders."

Jeez.

But it's technically 30 miles north of the Appalachin region. So, it's not wandering through the woods. I bet he

Yeah,

like a classic wander onto the trail. So it's not part of the technical Appalachin region, but this takes place in Erie, Pennsylvania. And I think its legend has become so prominent that it has spread through multiple regions in

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Appalachia and also unfortunately there have been a lot of What are you What are you saving for later? Um there's a Bigfoot like creature in Appalachia called the wood booger. We'll learn about it at a later date.

You can keep the book if you would like.

Okay, I will. Okay. So, yes, this legend has become so prominent and unfortunately there are a lot of acts involved murders and attacks that have taken place throughout this whole region. And keep in mind this region is what it traverses like 13 states and multiple countries. So, it's massive. It's been around. It predates us humans. It is ancient. There have been a lot of deaths and a lot of murders.

But a lot of people hiding out on the trail for nefarious activities. I think stories are so scary. It's very sad.

It's a love hate.

Love to be scared. Hate that it's real.

Yeah. Hate to be scared by real humans,

right?

Cuz ghosts are just doing their ghoul [ __ ] you know? They can't help it. But I wanted to dive deep into this story

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because we love a hometown legend, a like story that you grow up with that haunts you and that all the kids spread and that people talk about in school. the doorbell that they dare you to go ring late at night.

Spooky house at the end of the street. Mine was Emily's bridge, which we covered in an early episode. We'd drive out to Emily's bridge like dare you to go across the bridge.

Mine was my next door neighbor.

Yours is real close to home.

We called him Mr. Milk. I think his name was Milton. I don't know. He was he was a very old man. And I looking back I feel really sad because he was clearly a sad lonely old man. But he gave pennies on Halloween and his backyard was a freaking jungle.

Like when I think about it from my childhood perspective, I think of the movie Dysbia. Like that's what his like vibe was to us as children. And we would dare each other to like ring the doorbell or to jump over the fence and

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like run through his backyard. Oh my gosh. I know. I feel really bad for him. Maybe he was just ahead of his time and it was actually a pollinator habitat that he was keeping for the birds and the bees. He just liked nature.

Yeah.

Yeah. Anyway, I feel like we all grew up with that. So, I wanted to do a story similar to that, but also dive deep into where the legend came from. So, this is part true crime, part ghost story, and full chilly Willies.

Chili willies. This is the story of Axe Hollow Murders, also called the Axe Murder Hollow. Before we dive into the

Erie Pennsylvania

supposed murders and the undeniable hauntings, let's set the scene. It's the fall of 1945 in Mil Creek, which is in Eerie, Pennsylvania. Eerie, Pennsylvania sits along the southern shore of Lake Erie, which is known for its beauty, its beaches, the wintry snow dunes. We have some pictures in the YouTube video if you would like to look at them. But just beyond the shoreline, a short drive to Mil Creek, the landscape shifts and so

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too does the energy. These woods feel older, like they're carrying something heavy, historic. It's because they are. And while not exactly in Appalachia, this land does share many similarities to Appalachia. There's deep history with indigenous people who have lived upon this land and creating a deep harmony and understanding with mother nature. And it is also rich with oral tradition, ghost stories, and warnings whispered between neighbors. The Pennsylvania region is known for stories of ghostly soldiers, killers in the woods, ghost brides, strange lights in the trees, and Mil Creek itself has always been a quieter town with evidence of indigenous tribes habitating all the way back to 3,700 BC. Wow. It was a community shaped by hard labor. Picture lots of farmland, two-lane roads, a close-knit community, and a path of woods that everyone knows to stay away from. So, now that we have

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the scene, we're in Mil Creek. You heard the legend in the very beginning of this story. The farmer, where did it come from? I took to the local archives. Oo. And I was searching newspaper articles for hours, but I found some. I found lots. Dang. And there's some discrepancy here because there was one article that I found, not newspaper article, but one like article about this topic that said that the very first mention of the axe hollow murders was in 1945, like the fall of 1945. And I'll tell you the story, but I couldn't find that specific newspaper article.

And I think someone else deserves credit, and I'll get there in a second. So, according to this one article, the

the haunted football team

very first mention of Axe Murder Hollow being called that was in 1945, Erie, Pennsylvania. The Harbor Creek High School's football season was in full swing. Pep rallies, bonfires,

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teenage bonding, all in an effort to root the Huskys to victory. A championship. Woof woof woof woof Huskies. This feels like a TV show to me or like a movie because we didn't I didn't grow up with like football being

No, my high school had had football for one year and then got we were like we suck so they canled it.

Yeah. It wasn't the spectator sport of Vermont for sure.

But in all reality, these kids were just looking for some fun. And that is why on one chilly fall night, the entire football team loaded into cars and drove out to Thomas Road and stepped into the eerie woods. Word play there is intended. Call it a dare, hazing, some kind of teenage ritual. But there they stood, a gaggle of teenage boys who thought themselves men, invincible. Nothing could scare them. They'd heard the rumors of the horrific axe murders that took place in these woods. They'd heard of the hauntings left behind, and they

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thought that they could go into these woods unscathed, as you do when you're a teen. But as they approached the remnants of the stone fireplace, the wind whipped through the trees, icing their veins, and they became aware of another presence, if that's what you can even call it. It felt like eyes on them. The way that their parents watched them hawkeyed as they brought girls over to study study. It felt like they had interrupted a gathering, but they were in the middle of the woods with no one else around. That feeling turned into horror when all of a sudden it was accompanied by a laugh,

high pitch, short, then fading away.

That is not what I was expecting.

Then crescendoing into a maniacal, maddening cackle that would not cease. Don't look at me. I'm scared.

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I knew I'd get you. The entire team h high tailed it out of the woods faster than they'd ever run sprints in practice, but not fast enough for them to miss the flashes of light and the appearance of a silhouette standing in the woods watching them go. A ghost. Horrified but grateful to escape with their lives, the football team quickly grew infamous not for their fall record but for their encounter with the ghost of Axe Murder Hollow. And that is a dramatized version of what I imagine happened to them in those woods. But that so basically when tracing back the legend a lot of people are like this is the first time it was written in newspapers and given the term axe murder hollow. This episode of Two Girls One

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The Origin Story

Wait, so it was written in you said 1945. And then when when did it say the murders happened?

So that's what we're trying to figure out. So there's no mention in the like legend what when it happened.

Okay. So we don't know if it was like fresh or if this was you know 1901 farmer slaughter.

I definitely think it was like past like not fresh.

Yeah.

Cuz then you would be able to to know

to actually go into the archives a bit. Yeah.

But so then I was like looking for that newspaper article about the football team going to Axeh Hollow Murder and I couldn't find it. But I could find something that was indeed from Harbor Creek High School. But I think we need to give credit to our queen of the tea, Sue Richardson. Because each week Sue and this other woman, Suzanne, Suzanne Blackwood, would write for this column called Student Social Scribblings, and

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they would spill the gossip from all around school. And this was in the local paper. Oh my god.

Yeah. I And I'll read like just a little blurb of

I love it in other things.

This is like some other things that are in

like how salacious was the gossip. Was this like it didn't hurt anyone?

No, no, no. Like Okay, I'll just give you an example. The halls of the academy certainly smelled like a flower shop on Monday. So many of the girls were wearing their corages from the tryh high dance. Get well wishes go to Beverly Bonan, the cute band twirler who is in Lake View Hospital. Like it's all of these little tidbits of things that are happening at school. A little more news about the try who who is the meanie who started that engagement rumor. It was most embarrassing for all concerned drama.

Yeah. Oh my gosh. So this is a little bit Gossip Girl. Yeah. But there's no like hidden identity behind it. It's Sue

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and Suzanne. So, the article I could find, and this is the very first record of what I could find in the archives of it being called Axe Murder Hollow is from October 27th, 1945. Student Social Scribblings posted the following. And I think it's Suzanne who wrote this cuz she says, "Sue Richardson, who writes Academy News for us, came into the office the other day and asked, do you remember the axe murders which caused so much talk around 34 or 35?" Of course, Sue thinks that's way back in the dark ages. Well, Sue went on to tell me that they're the main topic of conversation of the young set these days. It seems quite the fad to go out to the axe murders hollow around midnight. They're supposed to be a man dressed in white wearing a minor's hat with a flashlight on top who carries a gun and chases all comers. This dismal place, says Sue, is out by West Library and after a rainstorm is just like a mud puddle. I was out there Friday night after a dance, said Sue. But the ghost didn't show up. There was almost a full moon and everyone said he only comes out when

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it's pitch dark. Maybe he didn't come out because of the crowd. I counted 10 cars and at least 50 boys and girls. Whether this is true or not, it certainly is causing a lot of excitement. So,

I'm just now realizing Sue is also a teenager. I thought these were adult women writing about kids in a newspaper and that's why I was like, "This is so bizarre."

No, no. Sue is okay. in high school. That's how she knows all the tea.

Okay, this makes a lot more sense.

Yeah. All it took was me reading her.

Yeah.

You're like, "Oh, I get it."

Maybe Suzanne is an adult because Suzanne wrote, "So, if your children come home awfully late some night and tell you that they've been out to the hollow, just chalk it up as an evening spent waiting for a ghost which has been seen by only a few." And then Sue said, "I'm going out there again for one more try on a night where there is no moon."

Oh my god. So daring. Of course she's daring. She's gossiping openly about people.

Yeah. This is like the spot where also

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lovers go and make out and there's like rumors that if you stop there, you'll be attacked by the axe murderer.

Why is that? Why do you choose a makeout spot that

Well, I think that's like the legend, the lover's lane legend.

Yeah. There's so many iterations of

just like the heightened emotion of like, will we die tonight? Do you want to make out with me?

Yeah. Or like getting scared together. It's probably like the guy who doesn't believe in ghosts and he's like, "Let's go to the axe hollow murderous spot." And then the girl's like, "Oh, I'm scared." And he's like, "Come here, baby."

Yeah. Gross. I'd be such a good dude. Um, as I'm saying gross, like response to it.

Well, cuz I wouldn't do that icky stuff. So Sue and the local teens continue to visit the hollow, but clearly from this article, it's stated that this has been happening. This is the hot spot. A lot of kids are going. This is not the first time people are hearing about it.

Mhm.

It's a popular thing for people to do.

Yes.

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The football team goes one night, they encounter some astral form, ghostly sounds. At some point, it goes in the paper. I don't know when because I couldn't find that article. But then on November 23rd of 1945, so like a month after that first article I read, there's another mention of the hollows in the student social scribbling. And this time it sounds like a lot had been stirred up over the last month because this one stated, also I love the way that this is written because it goes it's like a bunch of thoughts. So it goes really proud of the way the football team showed up so well in the all county lineup. Period. Next paragraph. The spooks involved in this axe murder holo affair has caused some real excitement around school. The kids seem to be turning one and all into determined but shaking spookchasers. Hatchets, knives, guns, and what have you, accompanied by students are making nightly trips out to Grub Road. Ed Hansen is making it his life's work to solve the mystery. Like, who's Ed Hansen? A student? Wait, Ed H. No, I'm thinking about the Hansen brothers. The band.

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Never mind. one of the Hansen brothers. Yeah,

he's here to solve the murder mystery.

Of course. Okay. Then a couple days later on November 29th, 1945, there's a statement being made basically being like, "Hey, the police are now really mad at all of us. Like, we need to cut it out." So, it it said, "By the way, there's been quite a little discussion about Axe Murders Hollow again. The state police have asked me to tell you not to go out there anymore." So like the police literally came to Sue and Suzanne and was like, "Hey, can you just let all the students know to not go and it said there has been too much disruption and if it doesn't stop immediately, they will see that there is something done about it." Oh, a light threat. But then the story seems to go cold. H for like 15 years. So after I read these articles, I was like, "Okay, the first thing I see is there's reference to like 1935, 1934

that there were these axe murders that happened in this area." So I tried to look it up. No record. Never happened.

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So clearly this has been around for a long time. Maybe in the 1930s, kids were saying, "Oh, it happened back in the 1920s." You know,

right? Yeah.

But then I kept looking into Axe Murder Hollow and I found an article from December 18th, 1960. The Eerie Times published an article called Axe Murder Hollow. Does a ghost roam along Thomas Road? Ooh. And this is the first article that kind of dives into where it originated from because I think there were Times news reporters who actually spent several months trying to get to the origin of this

with not much luck.

But this article dives into it. It's written by Tom McCormack. And the article begins, "Chill winds marking the death of Autumn. rip through Axe Murder Hollow. Twigs snap, dry leaves rattle, and an unseen dog howls in the distance. The last rays of daylight fade. A final warning that no living thing has a right to remain here. This is the most remote corner of Mil Creek and the most forbidding. For generations, Axe Murder

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Hollow, also called Little Egypt, has been the setting for countless wideeyed whispered tales of the Romani, of hermits, ghouls, missing persons, murders, and the revenge of the undead. It restates the legend, talking about how this is the least traveled road in Mil Creek that the farmer crazed with jealousy will not rest until he cleaves the lover's skull that got away. Mhm. And then the reports of strange going ons have happened and persisted for years. In this article, I found that like drivers would park there and they'd find messages written in like the dust or dew on their car, which I imagine is other like teens pulling pranks, but how creepy.

What was found and might be a potential origin story,

is a story told by Harper G. Rester Holtz, who was a retired interior decorator at the time of this article being published in 1960. Him and his family owned a dairy farm not too far

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from where the farmer and his family were said to live. But he grew up with a different story. Growing up, Harper knew that there was but one permanent resident in the hollow, an old recluse named Billy. Billy was said to be the son of one of the earliest colonizers of the area. But Billy was so disappointed in his love life that he moved into the woods and spent his life in a small hut deep in the woods. Once a month, Billy would venture into the town to get provisions, but he was cruel, unhappy, mighty cross. And Harper stated that we kids were scared to death of him and avoided him all we could. So, this talks now about a different legend where Harper grew up with the legend of Billy the Butcher, this like terrifying man who lived in the woods. So, you're like, "Oh, there's just like you can see how the game of telephone has evolved over time." But there's also two hilarious photos in this article that we need to talk about because it's 1960. The internet doesn't exist. Ghost photos are

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not easily accessible to find. But this one, I the photography team did some creative I don't know how they did this and I it's questionable. I'll show it to you in a second. But basically it says, "Times new photographer Ken Ziggler hid in the axe murder hollow woods in attempt to photograph its legendary ghost. When a brief wind rustled the branches near an old dead log, Ziegler saw nothing. Yet he fired his camera in that direction on a hunch. This, he says, is the image that appeared when he developed his super sensitive infrared film. Super sensitive ghost hunting camera. That's hilarious. Like, come on. Do people believe it?

I think that they did.

Oh my god. Let me see it again.

It's so bad. It's also funny cuz Tom McCormack, who wrote this article, put in parenthesis he says like as he clearly doesn't believe him,

right? This like what's he holding in his other hand?

I think it's supposed to be like an axe.

Well, he's holding an axe, but what's in

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these in his other hand?

Let me see.

Looks like he's dragging around like a owl or something.

Oh, it might be a head. Oh,

cuz there's one legend that we'll get into that like a version where there's a bloody head.

But I can't imagine like reading the newspaper that morning where you haven't been exposed to anything else like cuz you're supposed to take it all as fact, right? Like what's reported in the news, you're supposed to believe,

right? And then there's a map that's included in this article and it says, "Reproduced above is an old map that reportedly was found clutched in the hand of a skeleton unearthed at Axe Murder Hollow." Look at this map because it's hilarious. It has bats and like a woman in a witch

and it was supposedly found in the clutches of a corpse.

Is this like is this newspaper? The onion like early days the onion

right

this doesn't feel this is

well Tom McCormarmac

it's a mockery

but Tom McCormarmac is basically trying

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to like expose the whole story and how it doesn't really have a true origin

okay

and how it is found

right

well once you make your way around the 12th giant baton come with a bubbling cauldron and a cackling witch

bury me with a a weird [ __ ] app. Photo and map aside, we're still trying to find the origin story. And what we have right now is the name Billy and loose ends with axe murderers that potentially occurred in 1934 or 1935. Again, couldn't find anything about those axe murders that happened in 1934 or 1935. So, we're going to discuss three theories. Number one is Billy the Butcher. Number two is Little Egypt. And number three is the murder of Mary Lynn Cra. Again, content warning. There is a lot of violence and murder that happens specifically in theories two and three.

theory #1

Okay, but theory one, let's start with

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Billy the Butcher, who we heard about briefly from Harper in this article. Billy was just a name, just Billy. Like, beware of Billy. Billy the Butcher. But who is Billy? There is a real Billy that lived in this area. And there is also in the woods the remnants of a old stone fireplace.

Mhm.

Like the rest of the house has fallen or been burnt down. So that's like another reason that people are like, "Oh, that the farmer lived here because look, there's remnants of a home."

Yeah. Which I mean that exists all over the place,

right?

Like in Vermont sometimes my dad will like I've been with him in the woods looking for like original

Bigfoot. No, like the the original like foundations like the prints of the of homes that once existed.

The truth is that yes, Billy did live in this land in the woods on a farm. He was a farmer, but his name was William Gak, nicknamed Billy. He was born in Germany and moved to Mil Creek as a child with his mother and father. And I think this

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was like the 18 like late 1800s. Unfortunately, his father died shortly after they immigrated, leaving William and his mother to fend for themselves. William dropped out of school. I think the furthest he went is like third grade.

And then he went and found a job to basically provide for him and his mom. He supported his aging mother until she died of psoriasis of the liver. And for a very long time, he was in fact that guy in the woods, the recluse, the quiet, somewhat scary because he was different man who didn't really talk to people who wasn't very happy.

It is interesting cuz we started this episode being like we all just want to be in a cottage in the woods with wild flowers and peace and he was getting maybe a sliver of it.

Yeah, there's I think a little bit of a difference of like a woman living in the woods doing that and like a scary big man doing that. Yeah, but he was taking care of his dying mother.

I understand that, but I'm saying even like women in the woods get bad reps, too. And then this man, he stopped being

34:00

a farmer and became a butcher.

Billy the Butcher. Quickly, word spread of Billy the Butcher. Don't go near his house. You'll never come back. And then in 1922, two 14-year-old boys decided to sneak into the woods and rob the old man who lived there.

Oh my god. They thought that Billy had gone into town and they snuck into the farmhouse only to be greeted by Billy, large, towering over them. Billy held these two boys in his house for hours until the police could arrive because he lived far from town.

Yeah.

So, imagine the horror as these two 14-year-old boys who clearly we can all agree they were the ones in the wrong,

right?

But now here they are

with a scary large

Well, the rumors are he kills you,

right? So, they're thinking they're about to be stew,

right? And they're alone with him in his house, and he's angry, rightfully so. And his home is surrounded by butcher items.

Mhm.

Cleavers, axes, knives, blood. They were

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let go. But

yeah, he kept the intruders until they were appropriately apprehended by official law enforcement.

We can agree

Billy did everything right.

We can agree that Billy's image was scary to children. Absolutely.

That situation to anyone would be scary.

And now imagine these two 14-year-old boys. They survived this, but they go off and tell the horrors of what they face. And like we barely escaped with our lives, like he was going to kill us. This rumor spreads even more. The truth is Billy lived a long life. He eventually married and had a family and then died in 1954 of natural causes. So the true pieces here is that Billy did live in the hollow. His home did burn down and all that remains now is the fireplace that still stands in the woods this day, which here's a picture. Oh, it's pretty. So, that's where people say like the farmer is looking to murder. I do understand how creepy it is though because there are some hiking trails in Vermont that I've been on that have that

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same sort of thing where it's like you hike and then you're like almost at the top when you see the just like the fire place still just remaining standing on its own.

Yeah.

And it is a little

eerie. It's eerie. is eerie. So, I feel like I can understand how this Billy the Butcher urban legend could evolve into the axe murder holo legend.

But I feel like it's missing the murder part, right?

Yeah.

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theory #2

So, let's get into theory number two. This story I do hesitate sharing because it's a very clear example of a group of people being demonized and villainized because they are different and not understood by society.

Mhm.

And again, there's no record of it actually happening. But back in the early 1900s, this area that is now the axe murder hollow was nicknamed Little Egypt because a lot of Romani people camped out here and would travel town to town. their lifestyle was considered

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different and so a lot of people would create unfavorable stories about them to portray that negative narrative. Yeah. That they were criminals, thieves, etc. There's a story that spread around the area of Erie, Pennsylvania, that one of the Romani men discovered his wife had been cheating on him and in a rage took an ax, beheaded her, and hid her head in the library building, which is why that image has like I think holding a head. Again, there is no evidence of this actually ever happening. And I'm going to go ahead and say this is absolutely a rumor that was used to increase the fear like fear-mongering and negative opinion of these people and to demonize them in society. But I think if that story is created plus the Billy the Butcher over time with a game of telephone, it becomes the legend we heard in the very beginning.

theory #3

Mhm. Theory number three, this is a very true murder that happened and is very devastating and I think if anything it perpetuated the narrative of this legend

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rather than created it. So in 1963, Mary Lynn Cra was a sophomore at Edinburgh College and she went on a blind date with a 21-year-old man named Daniel Bibowser who unbeknownst to Mary was married with a son. But Mary went on this date and apparently, it's hard to know actually what happened, but Daniel tried to make a move on her. She said no. He continued to make advances and it is believed that when Mary resisted, Daniel bound her, assaulted her, strangled her to death, and then stabbed her 15 times.

Oh my god.

He then put Mary's body in his trunk before deciding to dump her body. But Mary was reported missing, and everyone knew that she had gone on this date with Daniel. So Daniel was apprehended and arrested and he confessed to the murder pretty quickly and led the investigators to her body. He had dumped Mary's body in Axe Murder Hollow in the hopes that when her body had been discovered in the hollow, it would confuse officials and make them think it was connected to the

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urban legend.

Hauntings Today

Okay, so we can agree on this. The legend originates with tragedy. Whether it's a man who is just trying to live his life in the woods being turned into the monster butcher, a group of people demonized for their ways of life, or an innocent woman violently and unjustly murdered by angry men. This legend comes from darkness, sadness. And we can also agree that regardless of this origin story, these woods are haunted because countless people have heard and seen all kinds of things. the writing in the cars, the sounds of laughing, lights in the woods, apparitions roaming this area. And it is still a place that people go to visit. But over time, this area has rapidly changed. Back in 1960, this road was like the least traveled, the most dense woods area, but now most of the woods have been cleared for residential developments. It's now surrounded by homes and parks, and the hollow is not as abandoned as and as remote as it once was. But the legend

41:00

continues and it's one of Pennsylvania's most infamous legends and vastly known. So much so that it spread through the Appalachin region and that its location is now confused. Is it in the Appalachia area or not?

It's close to, but it's not.

Some locals are okay with the fact that the legend is continuing. But in 1985, I found another news article from a landowner named Lynn Perry Aldot, who wrote an exasperated plea in the newspaper begging people to stop perpetuating the sudgeant and care about the land if they visit. What happened at Axe Murder Hollow? Nothing, exclaimed the exasperated land owner. And I'll put a picture of it if you guys want to pause and read it, but I'm not gonna read the whole article. But it's very uh I understand probably so sick of people trespassing.

Yeah. And I think a lot of it is teenagers going probably with alcohol and leaving trash behind. And I think that was the part that pissed people off.

Just being noisy, too,

right? It's like we're all about a local

42:00

legend if you respect the land and the people who live here. Like if you go, you sit there quietly, no one's going to have a problem with it. But if you go and you're drinking a bunch of beers and leaving all your trash behind late at night, waking up the neighbors, yeah, people are going to be pissed off. And I feel like there's like certain days where even if you are the person that doesn't want this to happen, like you have to understand that sometimes every once in a while something is. And I feel like a specific day like Halloween, like I would understand if I lived next to a cemetery or something like that that like maybe there's going to be noise until 4:00 a.m. and it just is what it is for that one day. Totally. But yeah, for it to be just like a constant cycle and rotation of

Yeah. shenanigans, hooligan activities,

which actually you talking about a cemetery on Halloween. I've been going to the beach as much as possible just because it's been so nice and this is summer

and I just walk over there and I had the most like I was just like I love Marblehead so much. My walk to the beach is less than 10 minutes.

I pass tons of homes that are older than

43:00

our country. I walk through a cemetery and a walk past a pond that is dedicated to a woman who was falsely accused of being a witch in the Salem witch trials. Like

then I walk to a beach.

Yep.

That has an island that at low tide you can walk to.

Yeah. And has like a group of people that go do uh like cold plunges and stuff together.

Yeah. A wolf pack.

So nice. It is magical. But others do want to encourage the legend, wanting to uphold the oral tradition and the local lore that it has created for the town of Eerie, Pennsylvania. And to wrap up this

scary story from Spooky Pennsylvania

story of the axe murder hollow, I'm going to read the latest rendition of the legend and story that goes around written by SE Scloser, the author of Spooky Pennsylvania and the author of like all the spooky blank books. We've definitely read their books before. Oh yeah. Settle in. This is going to be like a scary story told in the dark. Ooh. Susan and Ned were driving through

44:00

a wooded, empty section of highway. Lightning flashed, thunder roared, the sky went dark in the torrential downpour. "We'd better stop," said Susan. Ned nodded his head in agreement, stepped on the brake, and suddenly the car started to slide on the slick pavement. They plunged off the road and slid to a halt at the bottom of an incline. Ned quickly turned to check if Susan was all right. When she nodded, Ned relaxed and looked through the rain soaked windows. "I'm going to see how bad it is," he told Susan and went out into the storm. She saw his blurry figure in the headlight walking around the front of the car. A moment later, he jumped in beside her, soaking wet. "The car is not badly damaged, but we're wheel deep in mud." He said, "I'm going to have to go for help." Susan swallowed nervously. "There would be no quick rescue here, so he told her to turn off the headlights and lock the doors until he returned." Axe Murder Hollow. Although Ned hadn't said the name aloud, they both knew what he had been thinking when he told her to lock the car. This was a place where a man had once taken

45:00

an axe, hacked his wife to death in a jealous rage over an alleged affair. Supposedly, the axe wielding spirit of the husband continues to haunt the section of the road. Outside the car, Susan heard a shriek, a loud thump, and a strange gurgling noise, but she couldn't see anything in the darkness. Frightened, she shrank down in her seat. She sat in silence for a while and then she noticed another sound. Bump bump bump. It was a soft sound like something being blown by the wind. Suddenly, the car was illuminated by a bright light. An official sounding voice told her to get out of the car. Ned must have found a police officer, right? So, Susan unlocked the door and stepped out of the car. As her eyes adjusted to the bright light, she saw it. Hanging by his feet from the tree next to the car was the dead body of Ned. His bloody throat had been cut so deeply he was nearly decapitated.

46:00

The wind swung his corpse back and forth so it thumped against the tree. Bump, bump, bump. Susan screamed and ran toward the voice in the light. As she drew close, she realized that the light was not coming from a flashlight. Standing there was the glowing figure of a man with a smile on his face and a large, solid, definitely real axe in his hands. She backed away from the glowing figure until she bumped into the car. Playing around when my back was turned, the ghost whispered, stroking the sharp blade of the axe with his fingers, "You have been very naughty." The last thing she saw

word makes me feel like now we're in like a smut weird novel situation. Naughty naughty. The last thing she saw was a glint of the axe blade in the eerie incandescent light. Susan blinked. I'm just kidding.

47:00

Going to the blinks.

If you don't know what that's from, my dad wrote a porno. Highly suggest hilarious podcast.

One of the first podcasts we ever listened to. It was like my favorite murder and my dad wrote a porno.

Yeah. But no, Susan did not blink again.

Dang. And that's the uh legend that goes around town now. And that's the ghost story people tell at campfires.

That is very creepy. And I totally understand why kids would

keep it going.

Yeah.

Especially if there's like that much history and like you actually have newspaper clippings of people talking about this. It just perpetates

for generations,

right?

In different iterations, but over time it's evolving ingrained.

Yeah.

listener story

Okay. I lied. This is it's not from Eerie, but it is from Pennsylvania,

which in the tracker I did not mention Pennsylvania. So

I Yeah, I did not know. And I didn't Google. It is Eerie.

48:00

Snaps for Sabrina. Sority Snaps. I feel bad. Anyone who's from Eerie, how many times have you heard that? Well, it's fun.

Be more fun. It's pretty there. It's very pretty there.

I've never been. Okay. Hi, Kern and Sabrina. This story is about my father, and he recently shared this story with me after I sent him one of your episodes on an Appalachin ghost story. For context, my dad is a skeptic. He's a biologist and strictly believes in science and will always try to justify the supernatural with scientific evidence. Okay. Can I just say though, like I literally saw a video on Tik Tok the other day where it's a scientist who talks about how he like studied water and like feeding frequencies and information to water.

Yeah.

And water retains more information on a full moon, which is why people make moon water.

Wa.

Under a full moon.

Oh, I didn't know that.

Isn't that wild?

I just knew like the structure. So you should whisper your intentions and like good positive energy into water before

49:00

putting it under a full moon and

okay help me deep low.

Do you drink the moon water?

You can you can also use it in like any ritual.

You can water your plants with it. You can Yeah. Mine's just sitting on my table and I have not done anything with it yet.

Oh, don't leave it in the jar too long. Right.

Well, it will grow sea monkeys or something. I'll bathe in it. Oh wow. But I do love this too because I feel like this is like a classic where it's always like a skeptic story, but specifically when a dad has their child send in a story, you know that this has like rocked their world.

Yes.

Okay. He's a biologist. He strictly believes in science and will always try to justify the supernatural with scientific evidence. But when I had asked him if he had any spooky stories from his time growing up in West Virginia and southern central Pennsylvania, he said he had one that he will never forget. He has never shared it before in his life. A little background to my dad's childhood. He grew up in a very rural

50:00

part of southern Pennsylvania in a hotel called the Grand View Ship Hotel on Lincoln Highway. That sounds amazing. The hotel was an actual ship. My grandparents owned it in the 70s and called it Noah's Ark where they had a zoo and a restaurant as well. And the hotel itself is pretty famous. Many presidents and notable historical figures have stayed there. So, it is old as [ __ ] The hotel is haunted and my dad knew this because he also lived there while his family owned it. This specific part of Pennsylvania is deep in history due to it being relevant during the Revolutionary War, having multiple Native American tribes local to the area and the Underground Railroad went through this area and my grandparents house. So, lots of ground for folklore to take place. The one night my dad was sitting in his room in the hotel, I think he said he was seven or eight, and he had a window open, but the screen was still there, he described to me what he saw, and it was something he had never seen before in his life. This is a man

51:00

who literally studies biology, zoology, and entomology for a living. He said what he saw flapping outside his window looked like a Jenny Hanover, which is basically like a dried out stingray skeleton that people used to have in their house as decor in the 70s, like his grandma did, which is why he knew what this was. He said, and they showed a picture cuz I was like, "What the [ __ ] is this? I've never heard of that." He said, "This creature flapped in front of the window for 5 seconds before flying away, and then he never saw it again." He told me that even 50ome years later, he has never encountered something that has looked like that. He has no idea what it could be other than something supernatural, and he's a very reserved and private man, so I knew that this wasn't him just bullshitting me. I'm hoping maybe you could help discover what this creature might be as I have no idea myself and I am very into Appalachin folklore. Thank you so much for your time. I hope you enjoy the story. And this is from Ivy.

Can I see the picture?

Yeah, we've seen this in like different cryptozoolology museums.

It's a dried out stingray. I feel like

52:00

they used to call them like mermaids sometimes, too.

But so stingrays are sharks.

No.

Yeah.

What?

I'm watching all the sharks on Netflix. I don't know why. cuz I love sharks and shark week is my vibe. But uh yeah, stingrays are flat sharks.

So I swam with sharks in the Cayman Islands

basically.

I hugged and kissed and touched a shark.

Mhm.

Can't say every species I'll do that too. That's crazy.

Isn't that wild? I was I had no idea. But there's a woman on the show who is like a expert in stingrays and she is she keeps saying flat trucks are sharks too.

That's so funny. Okay. And here's a postcard of the hotel. That is a ship, but it's also a hotel. That would be so cool to grow up on that.

Yeah.

I have no idea what the heck he saw.

I don't know either.

Well, part of me is like, did ghost of the corpse that his grandmother had up here like flying and flapping through the sky?

I don't know. If I'm a ghost of a a

53:00

water species, I'd be like, "Hey, I'm not restricted to the water now." But in a shriveled form. I feel like if it were spectral, it would be like its full stingray body.

Oh, I thought it was.

No, it was a shriveled, dried up, mummified version of the stingray flapping through the sky.

Maybe it was a fairy.

Can owls lose all of their feather? But then how do they fly? Never mind. I'm trying to think of

they can lose their feathers, right? Oh, yeah. But

but then how do they fly without their feathers?

I don't know. We have no answers.

Sorry, we have zero answers. But your dad should not be a skeptic is basically all we have to say.

Yeah. He can't figure it out. Guess what? Neither can we.

And we are professionals.

Yeah. So tell your dad. And that's really saying that this is

authentic paranormal experience.

Damn. Okay.

Wow.

Well, tell us your local urban legend. Tell us all the weird things that you've seen out your window. Tell us your parents' stories. Even if they say that they're skeptic, we know the truth.

54:00

We know the truth.

We know the truth. And yeah, just keep coming back. If you want episodes one week early and ad free, you can join us on Patreon where we have plenty of other bonuses like bonus episodes book club. I almost said book story, but

books and stories about paranormal.

Yes,

there's things.

There's things. And write and review us. Follow us on social media. Tell all of your friends about us. And yeah, that's it.

And shout out to Jamie Ryan who edits and produces our podcast. Thank you, Jamie.

We love you all. Thank you to all of you. We will see you on the other side.

Very spooky.