The Haunting History of Alton | Presidential Beef & Man Eating Beasts in Illinois (Ep 254)

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very spooky guys thank God for Sabrina cuz I was already starting the episode we hadn't even clicked record yeah you were like hey and I was like wait what this is not how we do it but if we were in person and I was in charge of clicking it and I didn't we might not have known that's true you caught me we're not in person not yet I hope to see you very soon yes cuz you're heading out this way visiting some family and I count as family so you're going to visit me you do you do I am I'm going to be there for a christening a baptism I'm going to be a godmother and I'm really excited

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mother knows best what should we call you should we only call you Fairy Godmother Sabrina moving forward okay great or do you have any other pitches well I don't know that I would be like a fairy godmother if anything I'd be like a witchy godmother a witchy godmother yeah this is like in our Boston show when my my dad's Cousin Jay who I call Uncle Jay was in the crowd remember and you picked on him cuz he said he didn't believe but he was like way up in the balcony so I couldn't see who it was and we're like who is that he was like your godfather he is my god parent yeah if my parents die he has to I have to go live with him that's what happens so no matter how old you are you go to live with your go parents I'm going to be 60 years old being like Jay it's time that I move oh man I I do just picture Practical Magic and

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living like that's the type of godmother I will be if God forbid knock on would do any of your like stitious superstitious I'm a little stitious things that nothing ever happens to Lexi or my family or Johnny but I would be a freaking sick ass witch to live with have you thought about things that you'll do when Noom is a little bit older that like make sleepovers at your house really fun or like When Auntie comes to town you do this or that well I mean it depends I mean I don't really know what kind of things she's into yet you know true got to Dazzle her surprise and Delight yeah you got to show her what she could like she doesn't get exposed to I am proud of myself this will have happened already because this episode comes out in 2024 but for Christmas I got everyone little gifts and I got noomi a sweatshirt that says like my auntie is my favorite or

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something like that but then I got myself a candle that says my favorite aunt or best aunt and I'm GNA put it in my stocking and I'm gonna open it and be like oh my God no Emy stop it stop it this is so sweet of you I cannot believe you got me this for my first Christmas as an aunt yeah that's such a good one sometimes you have to gift things to yourself 100% who doesn't finish shopping for themselves before moving on to other people because I certainly buy almost nothing for anyone else until I've purchased everything that has intrigued me first fair you know what has horrified me is the amount of money I spent on Christmas gifts oh yeah I'm with you there and given that we just bought a house this is the least amount of money we've ever actually spent on on Christmas cuz it's

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like our poor Christmas like have my parents were like you could just pay for us when we go out to dinner with you guys one time and I was like okay and so I got like a couple other little things to put in their stockings and then Brian's parents they wanted a DIYs and vacuum so we went in on it with my sister-in-law and her husband so four of us pitched in for the Dyson so things got a little bit more affordable but it was kind of like a I feel like I was used to multiple presents like buying multiple things for people and it has been a one present Christmas we growing up and you know what I kind of like it and you know what at this point in our age I feel like a lot of the times we end up buying things for ourselves if we want them so a lot of the gifts that personally I end up getting for Christmas I don't really need and as much as I love gifts I'm trying to simplify my life and declutter because I have too much exactly I did recut my

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hair so from last week's episode love it it's a little more wolfy a little more it's lighter I like rocker with your sweatshirt too it looks sick oh my gosh what's her name Rocky I should wear the wig from BR the 13th show Rocky you should I was thinking about that show in particular and our Halloween shows the other day because I don't remember what I was looking at but it was some video where there was some sort of like theme to a party and everyone was like to a te exactly like no one messed with the theme at all and I was like this wouldn't work for Sabrina cuz you love to bend the rules I was like I can't play a serious game with you because I know that you'll find a way a loophole you'll find a loophole they do call me loophole Sabrina big hole Serina Jesus big ho oh my gosh I'm so sorry sorry uh this is two

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girls one [Laughter] ghost I'm so glad that that was the transition two girls one ghost that's big old Sabrina over there big ho Sabrina and you'll be I don't know big tits Karan big booby I do have double D's with me right right now Duncan Donuts isn't it just Duncan nowadays it is here's the sound of the ice ice coffee baby okay well I'm going to give some uh ASMR sounds as well I'm gonna open oh a white claw I'm just kidding it's a Celsius what flavor I'm not confident I've ever had a Celsius to be honest I also slurped it really loudly which I don't drink like that I just did it on purpose for ASMR purposes but hey it's okay I did strawberry guava

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I love I think you would be allergic to a lot of them it's a difficulty of having a million allergies my brother asked me an interesting question the other day MH the reason we have allergies is something went wrong in my mom's pregnancy with me and when she got pregnant with me that is when her very first allergy started which was Apples so basically we're thinking like something with the hormones or the blood or I don't know how it works but it's really random that like the second she has a child allergies begin and then I have the same allergies and then my brother has the allergies after my brother was like do you think when you have kids Karin that it will reverse the allergies then you'll be allergy free I was like oh my god I've never thought about that but that would be amazing that would be really cool I'm curious if there is a medical professional out there if they can help us solve this mystery because it's clear I'm sure people have done studies on on it but my

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mom also never had a cavity in her life and when she was pregnant with me she got a cavity and of all three kids I am cavity prone oh none of my siblings are it's so weird and also as babies we leave behind our DNA inside of our moms like they will forever have parts of our DNA in them so I feel like we really just [ __ ] our mom's over oh 100% sorry Mom sorry Mom but that's okay she passed on some trauma to me you know we it goes back and forth it's like it's an exchange yeah give lifelong exchange of back and forth and traumas that could be our new autobiography together it's the lifelong exchange of oddities and traumas I love it okay and it's only a picture book actually one of the things that I did when I was at trauma and beyond my intensive Outpatient Therapy that I did last year was drawing your feelings so

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they gave you an outline of a human body and you could like using colors and markers draw in like feelings and emotions and like where you feel certain things and like Scribble and it was one of the most cathartic things and then we it felt very much like show and tell you like showed everyone else in the group what yours look like and it was just like interesting to see where I associate and where I feel certain feelings like my stomach is one of the biggest ones and I have so many gut problems and I'm like I think that's where I hold my trauma and so I imagine our picture book will be filled with different images like that and people have to just the first page chapter three and then it's just like a scribble around the gut or just multicolor rainbow around the throat oh what does that imply that you can't speak up because no one listens to you and so you have to only rely on yourself oh or it could also be like okay I like

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this we're dissecting this hypothetical drawing that we haven't drawn yet but I like the idea of a rainbow around the throat because it's like I feel strangled and I can't speak but I know what I have to say and my voice is beautiful yeah so it just it doesn't turn into you not expressing yourself or not getting what you need it just turns into you being the one that fulfills it for yourself it's like yeah you want to rely on other people you want to be heard but at the same time you yourself are being very strong and you're self-reliant now and you have to hear yourself yes okay we're going to make up a whole book of these things we draw the things first and then we decide what the meaning is behind it or you decide what the meaning is we draw it and you can Journal next to it what you interpret it to be what does this mean for you and how do you psychoanalyze kin and Sabrina because clearly there's a lot to analyze here and how does it all relate to Ghost

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Stories which is why we've gathered here today that's a great question it doesn't no but I am really excited about

Introducing Alton, Illinois

this episode because I decided to do a little bit of like a different it's a topic but it's a much bigger topic I basically did a haunted town a whole town a whole town but there was so much that I'm actually going to do one of the places in the town that had too much to include in just this episode I'm gonna do that as an entire episode it's going to be our first bonus episode actually on patreon so hell yeah and if you hadn't heard the news about our patreon we're now releasing episodes ad free in one week early there and we're doing one extra episode only posted on patreon it won't be on our regular feed every month every single month so today's episode is about Alton Illinois Mark Twain once said Alton Illinois is a dismal little River

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Town dismal I thought it was going to be like some beautiful description but Mark Twain does not like this town dismal meaning gloomy depressing dreary lacking in Merit particularly bad from Miriam Webster dictionary definition and listen I usually wouldn't speak ill of literary great like Mark Twain okay if you look at my Instagram bio I literally have a Mark Twain quote in my Instagram bio it's about cats isn't it is cuz Mark Twain once said when a man loves cats I am his friend and comrade without further introduction which it couldn't be more true if you like cats we're going to get along just great if you don't and if you're allergic it just takes a little bit more time to warm up or you can like the ghosts like ukine and then you know it's basically the same thing right exact exactly I like ghost cats yeah that's true which I might have one with me this is the figurine supposed to be haunted by a ghost cat Okay so so usually I regard

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Mark Twain pretty highly but when I read this I was like you know what Mr Twain I might have to disagree with you here we can still be comrades because you like cats but we are going to have a little bit of a disagreement because I'm going

History of the land

to paint a very different picture of Alton Illinois for you today I'm going to give you a little intro to it but I picture this like an infomercial imagine me I don't know with a perm wearing a white button down almost like a airline stewardess with a patterned Ascot and picture cheery music playing as images of this town flood your field of vision Alton Illinois a town you'd like to call home it's picturesque settled upon the banks of Mississippi River just across the river from Missouri this picture perfect small town is one Ray Bradbery wrote about super Americana quaint Victorian Queen an style homes Stone churches red brick buildings rich with

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history houses that are Generations old passed down through families lovely but there is one thing that sets Alton Illinois apart from all other small towns in America Alton Illinois is America's most haunted small town boom that's the opening scene to the first television show we'll write together I feel like that's that could be our stable move where it's just one of us stress up like a Stepford Wife that's exactly I was trying to do like a Stepford voice yes I loved it I'm glad that I painted the picture accurately Alton Illinois where the Paranormal is normal that's right it's haunted AF y'all need that as your bumper stickers over there yeah where the paranormals normal many buildings within this small town have been featured on notorious paranormal TV shows many residents are neighbors not strangers to the ghostly residence and here's a beautiful picture

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of the Alton Skyline we'll insert it into the video stunning stunning but to accurately share the haunting Tales of Alton Illinois first we are going to revisit my what I once hated now in my adult Years love history we'll travel back through time talk through the history of Alton Illinois talk about the history of the land then we'll knock on some of the doors of several haunted buildings in this town and discuss the ghosts the Legends and the lore perfect and yes I know I've painted such a Serene picture of Alton Illinois but I do need to warn you because Alton Illinois is or was the home to the bird that devours man a pterodactyl basically more on that later though I'm so curious can I just say something that's completely unrelated to this but has to do with birds of course Brian and I we were playing Tri Pursuit the other day

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and I was losing terribly but then we had two categories that involved birds and I [ __ ] swept and I won the whole game you should join like the aabon society I got no bird questions wrong and I was like oh God I didn't think I knew this much that's amazing don't be embarrassed that's awesome hey he made me win so yeah exactly there we go win it all costs that's all that matters you're big Sabrina and I'm the bird Lady of I don't know of the north of the North Alton Illinois as I said sits upon the Mississippi River m i SS I SS i p p i I did that right cuz the last time I tried to do that I did it very wrong so I practiced a couple times before recording this episode what did you call it again I I think I said M SSI PP I SS I don't know I said something Mrs Mrs pissy Mrs pissy that's what I said Mrs

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pissy okay but it's not only known for its Riverside accommodations I guess I don't know that's not the right word but anyway it also boasts beautiful Limestone Bluffs that surround the entire town and there was one quote that I read that people who come to Alton aside from Mark Twain apparently are stirred to creativity and to stay and write and paint and draw beautiful landscape they just get absorbed again except for Mark Twain no Mark was

The legend of the Piasa

missing something I wonder what Alton did to to him what happened to him to Mark Twain there someone broke his heart in Alton Illinois maybe and also like all of our stories and all of America this land belonged to Native Americans it was home to the Ilan yoke Native Americans they were made up of 12 to 13 tribes and they resided along the Mississippi River the population before Colonists came was in the tens of

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thousands they lived off the land they harvested crops they hunted they farmed they fished and all 12 to 13 tribes were led by one great Chief but then each of the smaller tribes had their own Chiefs and I do want to say I mean it's I'm not the person who is educated enough to speak on this topic but it was sad in doing the research like anything I found about the ill yoke tribes is like written from a colonist perspective rather than a tribal perspective and I do think that is kind of a sentiment globally and it's pretty devastating that is sad it's also wild that in school we're almost like brainwashed a little bit because we enter first grade and they make us sing this land is your land this land is my land from California to the New York Islands or whatever however goes but it's like we're it's not

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though no I mean even Thanksgiving like when we learned about Thanksgiving growing up it was like oh everyone coming together in peace and Harmony and it's like oh no we don't learn about the slaughtering of any yeah anyway that this is not the point of the episode I just think it is notable to comment on and believe it or not after doing all of this like searching I was trying to find documents and stuff from native American tribal people themselves and the one website that I actually ended up finding something on was the NRC government website which is actually the US nuclear Regulatory Commission what in the hell did they have to say about this I have no idea but they had I think there's this document that's in the Illinois ntion like there's some history museum there and they have a document that someone transcribed and it's on this website I don't know

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but it documents what life was like for them so basically this document is kept in the Illinois State Museum and shares stories of the oke tribes and describes the lifestyle they had lived prior to colonists coming and taking their land they lived in bark or readed mat covered framework lodges and there would be four to five families per Lodge in the fall tribes would move into the Plains by foot and do the buffalo hunt and then February was the agreed upon and accepted time of year for war between tribes apparently yeah oh so they basically had the purge before The Purge was even a concept it was just like save all your tension and your words and your upset for February and then we'll just hash it out then yes and apparently was looked down upon to kill it was more of a victory if you took captives and and so basically like throughout the year

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women children men would die and so when they would go on these wars and have these wars they would take captive men women children and then basically adopt them into their family to replace anyone they had lost throughout the year oh my gosh it's so sad when you put it that it is very sad I also don't understand how this happened if they all had one kind of like head Chief wouldn't you think there'd be something that's like hey don't do that I mean think about a government you have a president and then you have like government officials and there's still problems between states and you know I guess that's true one person can't just like make everyone obey I guess it's proof that on a much smaller scale it's kind of still a government human nature yeah they played lacrosse they gambled they raced recreationally they had many rituals and religious ceremonies that they practiced and then their world was turned upside down when the French came and colonized

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and despite their in quote willingness but I probably like their need to survive ability to adapt their population went from tens of thousands

Colonial expansion and history

down to the thousands and just was really depleted when Colonists came and colonized the land they were forced to move west and sadly like I was saying a lot of what we know now comes from the colonists and people who didn't really understand them couldn't really communicate with them or comes from archaeological studies and more of like historical research that has been done now but this is interesting so French colonists Louie julier and Father jacqu Marquette were among the first colonists to explore the Mississippi River Bend IN 1673 while they were exploring They Came Upon This Bluff and it is in what is now Alton Illinois and they saw a horrifying terrifying image on the face of the rock

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oh they were stopped in their tracks by this image it was so terrifying it was a pictograph which they didn't know at the time what this was or what it was but we now know it was a pictograph made by the illano tribes and we'll insert a photo of what it looked like but I'm going to tell you about it first in the Rocks was a monster drawn into the face of the bluff both of these men documented the monster in their journals and said it was as large as a calf with deer like horns on its head it had red eyes and a manlike bearded face their bodies were covered in scales with long tails that wounded completely around their bodies what is this monster you may ask what is this horrifying being it was the pyasa p i AA pronounced pyasa which translates to the bird that devour

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man proof of pterodactyls existing the Thunderbird it's real it kind of is thunder bird like it also I mean yall know I love a good conspiracy kind of looks like a dragon looks an awful lot like a dragon even has the beard and almost like the antler situation going on yeah scales a long tail it's like a dragon with a called eagles's claw apparently it was massive too so imagine this swooping down towards you and this so these two men the Frenchmen they see this imagery and they're so horrified by it cuz they're like what is this does this lurk around here right because they don't know what sort of animals are right it very well could be an accurate depiction right although I do think it's funny that they were so scared because in the photo it does kind of look like it's smiling for the camera it's like turning its head and it's like chees like holding the

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smile for a really long time the legend of the Pasa has become a bit muddled over the centuries the story was told through pictographs so there were no like written words to The Legend of it but I am going to share one version that I read and the pyasa legend and lore remains very very prominent and important to Alton Illinois and this is like an archaeological marker that has actually informed a lot of history about what it was like and life was like for the illano tribes so as The Story Goes centuries before the French and the white men came to colonize a giant bird with antler-like horns horrible red eyes a manlike face a body covered in scales and a long snake likee tail soared the skies of the ill and yoke land and it searched for prey it was so large so

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powerful a beast that would swoop down from the highest height in seconds at an alarming speed and sink its claws into even the largest and heaviest of animals and carry it off with ease I mean this thing is so big imagine like a little field mouse trying to go up against a eagle yeah it's like that you don't stand a chance like maybe you get lucky you don't that they missed you but it's not really because of anything you did right and this Beast terrorized the tribes it earned the name pyasa because the word translates to bird that devours man which is what it did the pyasa would descend into tribal Villages and take away unsuspecting victims carry them off never to be seen again the illo came together and they would send out like their best warriors to go and try to defeat this p saw but they failed time

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and time again the only thing that they were ever able to discover was a cave in these Limestone Bluffs they came into it and they found a cave full of Bones and skulls where it presumably had taken all of the victims and yeah had a snack so it's not like it's nesting up on a cliff and somewhat exposed like it hides and lurks in caves I also wonder the tactic that they used to try to hunt it down I am curious if they ever attempted to just use one of the group members as bait just had them like lay down well did they so Chief woga feared for his family for his friends and so he decided to fast and pray in solitude so he spent many days many nights in a tent by himself praying to the Great spirit and he was fasting this entire time so on

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the last night of his fast it was the last night because of what happens but on this very last night Chief watoga goes to sleep and in his dream the great spirit appears to him and instructs him to pick 20 of his best warriors to arm them with bows and arrows with poison tips he was told that 19 of those 20 warriors were to hide in designated spots and the 20th Warrior was to stand in plain sight as bait did they have to draw straws like who how did they know who I'll tell you was bait in the dream the great spirit shows that as the pasas saww comes for the bait all the other men were to shoot their arrows at the Beast so Chief woga wakes up and immediately gets to work he selects his best man he picks 19 men and he decides

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he will be the 20th he would sacrifice himself honestly that is an honorable thing to do correct yeah good because also if you think about it if this creature is so incredibly fast I would presume that when you're standing there as bait all the men who are supposed to be saving you and protecting you and shooting down this Beast are probably not moving quickly enough in their own Terror and the amount of time it takes like a human to process what's going on to actually shoot it while it's far away from you there's a chance you yourself even get speared with that's exactly it so he knew that it was basically a suicide mission because right there's so many ways you could die in this situation one the P saww could get you one claw into your neck would kill you or your own men who are shooting poisoned arrows towards this Beast 19 arrows flying towards you like you're bound to get hit by one yeah so the men

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and chief woga went out and 19 of them hid in the surrounding areas as Chief voga stood in plain sight and as he did he chanted the death song because he was certain he was going to die gives me chills to just think about someone in that moment he had like painted his face like two in like the battle paint and was chanting The Death Song of a warrior and sure enough the pyasa came reaching its deathly sharp claws for the chief it descended Swift as a Thunderbolt And The Warriors pulled back their arrows and shot them off 19 arrows shot off towards this Beast all 19 arrows poisoned were flying towards Chief woga and the Pasa time slowed as Chief aoga welcomed death and all of a sudden a horrible terrible shriek resounded across the land the

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Beast had been struck it was an unearthly and horrendous sound like pain unlike anything else Chief vogga expected death to come swiftly but nothing he opened his eyes to find the pyasa slain at his feet all 19 arrows penetrating his scaly skin not a single one had missed not a single one is incred had hurt Chief woga I'm shocked as I'm sure all of they all of this group was as well in a dream after this event the great spirit visited him and said he protected him with a like a bubble basically due to how honorable he was and his intentions were so finally this Beast was slain the Beast was slain I'm very curious too about the sound

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that the Beast made because I don't know if you've heard this or if other people out there have heard the update but they recently updated what they believe the T-Rex actually sounded like oh based on the study of other animals and just more things that we know about like vocal boxes and the size of this animal and chickens and you know how we think of T-Rexes as like having this like big like deep like it's so much scarier the new sound that I believe it made is like this you know when horror movies like The Fog or the Mist how there's almost like a low Rumble in the distance like a a fog horn or like a siren it kind of sounds like that where it's like a like really deep and then there's like clicking over it like a I can't I can't describe it but it is terrifying can we insert it yes

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but my point being is that T-Rex is a huge creature that they believe actually the little arms weren't useless arms but they were actually wings and so it makes me think like this creature is also a winged creature that is quite large is it a T-Rex is this baby T-Rex could they baby T-Rexes could fly and they had tails and then their little tail Nubs dropped off like a little tadpole and then they got too heavy to fly and that's when they turn into land creatures land rexes which is chickens that's true and now we eat them couple times a week full circle they used to eat us and now we eat them I

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don't though like how I said that so high and mighty like I'm not plants have

Local oddities and curiosities

feelings too so and I didn't make this Choice my mom did for me so since we're coming off of the holiday season let me give you one more quick random fact please did you know that holly leaves you know when you think of a holly leaf how they're kind of like Jagged around the edge that is only true of holly leaves that are low on the tree or on the bush or whatever they grow on because deer will come and eat the leaves and as soon as it sends signals like as soon as the plant knows that they're being eaten they will change their structural shape to be really Jagged and Pokey so that they will Spike the deer and pro themselves survival yes but it only happens on the lower region so the upper part of the plant will still have really like Sleek round wow cuz plants are alive they are and we eat them Circle of Life okay so the pyasa is dead

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and has been slain and the illano people drew the image of the Pasa into the Limestone Bluffs as a way to remember the story and remember the danger that once threatened and once lurked their people sadly the pyasa was not the threat that ultimately devoured them because what is scarier than monsters humans man because the colonist came many years later and they ultim ly were the undoing and devourers of the illan Yoke tribes so for centuries the colonists would pass these pictographs of the pasas saww and would be terrified and stilled with fear and despite colonization the legend of the P saww does live on and like I said it's very important to the people of Alton Illinois it's actually the pasot is the mascot of the Alton High School the original pictograph I think has been through time has had a lot of like Decay and there's been a lot of money put into restoring it which I think is beautiful

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and great they take a lot of pride in it so with the pad defeated the colonists took over the role of Beast and the first colonist settlement in Alton Illinois was in 1783 and then Alton Illinois was officially founded in 1817 by Colonel Rufus Easton who named it Alton after his son Alton Easton they had a fery service erected very quick and Alton became a booming River Town where a lot of people would come to trade it was growing really really fast it was growing faster than St Louis and it was on its way to becoming what we know St Louis to be today like it was going to be the Metropolis of Illinois but there were a bunch of businessmen who were more invested in St Louis's success that they ended up creating another town to basically divert any business away from Alton and back back to St Louis and it worked got to protect your Investments it worked so basically

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Alton while it still saw some success it did just kind of become stale in terms of increasing and becoming larger stale or might we say dismal it became dismal maybe that's when Mark Twain visited so now in 2020 at the 2020 census there was a population of about 25,000 people so it's not tiny tiny but it's a small town MH and so before we dive into more of the paranormal stories there are some more notable historical facts that I really want to go over the land saw a lot of death like you can tell there was the murder of a lot of the natives there was War slavery there were flooding it's like a lot of floods there's one industrial building that has markers and the dates of all the floods and it marks where the flood reached up to and I think the greatest flood was actually the year we were born 1993 and people

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were without water and power for over a week like it was a pretty pretty detrimental flood Vermont flooded again too I feel like the floods just kind of you get like an unlucky bout of a few years where it just kind of yeah wrecks the area but I do like this idea that this building is almost like a like when you're a kid you're like measuring your height on the wall this building is doing that for floods and that's actually funny because well I'll tell you that in a second because height is important in Alton Illinois and you'll find out in a second but there is some debate on this one because and I think it's like basically Abraham Lincoln had one duel in his whole lifetime and people say it happened in Alton Illinois but I think it was like close to Alton Illinois so it's one of those things where people are like oh Abraham Lincoln had his duel here but it happened closer to St Louis but I love that story because this is Young Abraham Lincoln

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1842 he got into a tiff like a verbal argument and debate over banking in Illinois with this man named James shield and they were like going at each other and they were going below the belt but apparently Lincoln took it way below the belt he's friends with this guy who runs a journal in Illinois and Abraham Lincoln writes a letter under a fake name pretending to be this woman named Rebecca who he is the original catfish yeah so I know this is such a fun story okay so he pretends to be this woman Rebecca and he writes this letter to the journal pretending to be this woman Rebecca and Rebecca writes about an encounter with James shield in the letter it says and this is like as if I'm Rebecca his very features in the ecstatic Agony

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of his soul spoke audibly and distinctly so she's saying that James said this to her and to other women dear girls it is distressing but I cannot marry you all too well I know how much you suffer but you do do remember it is not my fault that I am so handsome and so interesting you know what the sad part is it's very believable that someone would say that yeah so he's being painted as the gustan of the time yeah yeah totally so this is published in the journal and shield is furious Furious and he's like I I know I didn't say this who wrote this he demands to find out finds out somehow that Lincoln wrote it and keep in mind this is all like they're arguing about banking institutions I love drama of historical figures everyone's always so

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petty he basically challenges Lincoln to a duel and there's like so much more to this if you want to read the story it's hilarious because he apparently had like the court deliver a letter to Lincoln and Lincoln was almost like SM this is written terribly basically was like write this better if you're going to challenge me to a duel I can't even imagine like that would piss me off even more the way that duels worked is if you were the one who was challenged to the duel you got to pick the weapons that you fought with so Lincoln chose a Cavalry broadsword of the largest size and basically CU he's like I didn't want to select pistols because if I selected a pistol I knew that like death would happen and Lincoln didn't actually want someone to die although James Shield is like someone needs to die Lincoln's Plan was you know he's this tall man he plans to use his height against Shields and on the day of the duel they like turn

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towards each other Lincoln has this massive they both have these big swords but Lincoln's so big he strikes the sword above James's head like swinging a tree branch like a massive tree and the thing almost falls on top of Shield which I think scared him enough that they called it off oh okay good so no one died is there a chance for like a rebuttal if you don't want that to be a weapon could the other person be like you have to choose something else or you have to go by the rules of the other person I do think there were very strict dual rules what would you choose H I think I might choose a I can't really remember the name of them was it like a skip it remember that thing that you had to put around your ankle and you those are honestly just putting it on yourself was brutal exactly give up there were some they made with chalk where you could put Chalk in the bottom of the skip it and so when you would turn it around your ankle it would draw a circle with the chalk that's a great way to enter a duel just give them all chalk

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stuff and then they get distracted by just like creating art below them it's an art duel I don't know what I would pick um I want to pick something weird tissues pool noodle a pool noodle did you just say yeah it's a good one a kazoo have a kazoo off a recorder just make everyone's ears bleed hot cross buns any childhood tool is basically your go-to I love where your brain goes like when any questions brought up your brain probably I feel like you have a catalog of the 90s to 2000s that is like front of mind it's because I don't remember anything from age like 13 to 16 because of bullying so I only remember early childhood and then after there's the before and then there's the after it's very present in my mind mind because it was the only thing that was happening for like 3 years of blacking out see I

44:00

think I only exist in the present anything before today is repressed constantly experiencing trauma who cares we're living in the future every second you're moving forward so that's all that matters it's the future I can see it's the that's so Sabrina oh my God okay so the duel happened no one died cool but Al ill Illinois was also an important town for abolitionists as Illinois was a free state but Missouri which was right across the Mississippi River was not so a lot of people would escape and flee into Illinois and many of the homes were equipped with tunnels and hiding places and served as parts of the Underground Railroad oh but sadly while many slaves were able to escape through Alton Illinois there were a lot of that were murdered or Taken back into slave states because slave Trappers would like hide

45:00

out in Alton Illinois to bring them back to Missouri how shitty of a human do you have to be to have that as your job yeah the first Illinois Penitentiary was built in Alton it was used during the Civil War to house prisoners of war and I think at like one given time during the Civil War there were over 12,000 Confederate soldiers held in this Penitentiary which I guarantee it was not built tostain that many people so no Karen I wrote this down for you just think of and picture the smells I knew you were going to talk about smell the hygiene or lack thereof nastiness so gross well because I knew you were going to think about the smells so this is a reminding me of there was some event I think I told you this where people would dramatically read letters written by historical figures and there were like notable actors and stuff doing these readings and there was one historical figure whose name I cannot remember for the life of me off the top of my head I like how you tried to pull the memory

46:00

out of your brain like what I'm trying but I know it's not there it's coming and if I guessed it would be wrong but ask you the name of characters from cartoons you got them test me on rug rats or rocket power and I'm there baby no but he had written to his wife and I was like I will be back next week make sure to not bathe for at least 3 days cuz he wanted her he wanted the stank he wanted the stink he wanted to taste all the flavor so some people liked how gross it was I will say in my life there are certain people that their smell smells good like their stank is like an attractive like it's a pherone thing you know we're animals yeah it is although when Brian had Co I was like I could smell it on him I was like this is not good this is gross you're like I need to stay away from you for until you were better I also had Co though so it's probably I was probably smelling a little bit of myself too there's also a mass grave for Confederate soldiers who died during the war on the north side of

47:00

Alton and sadly at this same time there was a small pox epidemic that killed a lot of the Confederate soldiers and a lot of people in Alton I think there were like some 2,000 men women and children who died between 1863 and 1864 jeez and then these last two stories while not paranormal are just kind of like the nails in the coffin to argue against Mark Twain's dismal description of the Town Alton Illinois was home to the world's tallest man Robert persing wadow he was 8 11.1 in tall he is pictured next to two women who are our height he was 439 lb but he is just so tall J how is this real it's sad he had hypertrophy of his pituitary gland which was resulted in abnormally high level of human growth hormone and because of this I mean

48:00

humans are not meant to be this tall or this large he did die at 22 years old because of Health complications yeah I wonder where he's buried because I feel like about to tell you keep proper okay great because I'm just thinking like humans in 3,000 years are going to excavate that area and be like holy [ __ ] Giants were real he is buried in the Oakwood Cemetery in Alton Illinois and the Earth is raised I mean he's buried 6et below but they specifically raised the ground so that people could understand the height that he was so it's like the 8 ft and 11 in raised and it has like a plaque to him so you can yeah walk the distance of his body correct and then there is a memorial to him including a life-size statue and a replica of the chair because all of his things had to be custom made and they stand on College Avenue across from the Southern Illinois University dental school so if you visit

49:00

Alton Illinois you can visit this so home to the world's tallest man and in 1937 the local fishing Community was plagued by something they were unable to catch any fish because all of their traps kept getting destroyed the wood traps and their mesh traps were being destroyed underwater so they were like there must be some type of fish that's large and destroying everything we must catch it and trap it and get rid of it so that we can continue with our business as usual so these two commercial fishermen build a strong wire trap and put chicken guts as bait inside of it they came back the next morning and it worked they slowly pull their trap out of the water and it is heavy and they're like what is this so it's like the world most giant catfish well they're stunned to find it is no fish at

50:00

all it is a shark in Illinois in the Mississippi River [ __ ] it was a bull shark then yeah because they swim in rivers they swim far Upstream they Scar the [ __ ] out of me they're so aggressive those are the ones that always kill people Everyone Gets afraid of great white sharks bull sharks it was a bull shark bull sharks are the one that will eat someone in the bay six feet off of land yeah well this one did not but they caught it it was 5 ft long and they ended up putting the shark on display in Calhoun fish market and so hordes of people are coming to the market and looking at this shark but then it started to smell and so they had to get rid of it but I read an article and apparently there's like this guy who was like my dad was friends with or like my grandfather wask was friends with the bullshark no friends with the fisherman and apparently it was all a hoax but there's no way to verify that oh I don't know people were like like oh they wanted to draw a business yeah well how

51:00

far up the Mississippi was it it's in Alton Illinois I don't know how far up the Mississippi I just was confirming that it was in Illinois because I said in Illinois and you said in the Mississippi River so I was like wait did I miss part of the story and it was they were traveling more south oh no it's in it's in Illinois yeah okay clearly Alton Illinois is not as dismal as Mark Twain put it it's full of history and spirit and as you know quite a lot of death and some crime and the one thing is like you could say that about a lot of places in the world that there's a lot of death a lot of crime a lot of history so why then is Alton Illinois said to be so much more haunted than all other places in the world well remember those Limestone Bluffs that surround the town oh limestone is an organic material that is said to hold information It's Magic it's magic and so Alton is surrounded by these Limestone Bluffs there's so much

52:00

running water through this town the combination of the water and the Limestone like there's just this kind of echo chamber in Alton Illinois that

The hauntings of Alton

retains the history of the land it's like its own little Vortex it's like a time capsule a Vortex that recalls the history of the land the memory and is actually alive the stories in the history sometimes bleeds into this world oozing residual energy and sometimes is more than residual but also active energy it imprints on the town of Alon and has since led to Alton Illinois becoming known as one of the most paranormally active towns and the most haunted small town in all of America dang I honestly forgot that there was even a haunted part of this episode because with the mystery of the bull

53:00

shark and the dragon bird creature I feel like it's already creepy enough it's so fascinating with all of that as history you understand why it's the perfect place for hauntings right I'm going to quote another literary great William Faulkner once wrote the past is never dead it's not even past and I think that is a perfect way to describe Alton Illinois because what is time baby what is time so like I said in the beginning of this I'm not going to be able to cover every single place that's haunted in every single ghost of Alton Illinois but I am going to cover kind of the the hotspot haunts and then if you come join us on patreon you'll get an episode entirely about the Mineral Springs Hotel because it's extremely haunted and there's like 30 plus ghosts that haunt that hotel specifically whoa yeah so I'm going to hit the hotpots and and then maybe I don't know drive up tourism to Alton Illinois I don't know if they need that but maybe we all go

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head out there because they have so many ghost stour but I'm going to begin with the mcpike Mansion the picture is also like a very haunting image it almost reminds me of the visual image of American Horror House house oh I was thinking the house in Coven or even that yeah you're thinking season one I'm thinking what season four or something but yeah no totally be beautiful though oh and the red brick stunning The mcpike Mansion is a grand Italian Victorian home that was built in 1869 and the estate was 15 Acres it was built for Henry guest mcpike the home was complete with 11 marble fireplaces beautiful elaborate crown molding intricately carved banisters it was like no stone was unturned it was just like a very very elaborate and beautiful home and Henry this man he wore many hats he was a horticulturist who while living in this

55:00

Mansion perfected his mcpike grape and if you look it up it's like a grape varietal it's a dark purple grape was he a wine maker or he just really loved grapes well see he was a horticulturist so he just loved plants and it was 15 acres and he was known to plant some like the most incredible trees plants shrubs things that that no one had ever heard of at the time and then he would do like the biological cross-contamination of species to cre grafting trees together to create new varieties yeah so cool but in addition to being a horticulturist Henry mcpike also served as the mayor of Alton he was a fire Insurance investor and an industrialist and owned over 700 properties hey he's proof you can live many lives all at the same time and he was also a known abolitionist and so a

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lot of people believe that he there's no written evidence or documents of this but people believed that he really helped with the Underground Railroad and like I said he owned 700 properties people believed that he would use his businesses as a part of the Underground Railroad and move people through them that's very smart Henry and his family lived in the home until 1910 when Henry passed away the house then passed through some other businesses and other people it was a boarding house at a point but then this man who owns The Boarding House his name was Paul Laker I think that's how you say it when he passed away sadly the house became abandoned like no one bought it no one owned it and people would go in and loot the house like people literally stole everything they removed banisters the marble they even stole the toilets like this home was just just desecrated wow yeah and it was marked

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for demolition because it was so dangerous like truly walls were starting to cave in like people couldn't walk on the floors it was so dangerous to be inside that it was going to be demolished people must have not cared that the Looting was happening either because it I'm thinking about how heavy it would be to take down what like 11 marble mantel over the fireplace yeah that doesn't just happen really quickly in a 20 minute robbery I mean it had 15 acres and I think it was like up on a hill so it was kind of by itself that I imagine people were able to get in there okay but yeah I don't think people cared I think no one cared enough to really prioritize its safety and then yeah I don't know why it wasn't demolished but in 1994 this couple Sharon and George lud I think that's how you say it on impulse so this house is like on auction in 1994 and on impulse this couple's like let's just buy it and when they went to go view what they bought they were like oh my gosh this needs so much

58:00

work I think it cost $50,000 just to replace the roof like it was money pit Money Pit it's a project but they like really really truly cared about it it is now on the national register of historic places and has been protected and so more people are spending money to like help rebuild and restore restore it yeah well and I think there's a lot of programs now that will help and give money to homeowners to restore things back to like their historical accurate place yes and I do think it has gotten to a much better place but when Sharon and George first bought the home they were doing a lot of the work by themselves and they would notice even though there was no electricity set up in the home because it was like turned off they would see flashes of light Zoom through rooms they would see shadows and all of these weird things that shouldn't be happening they would hear noises and they were like what is going on and basically the inside of the home the interior was a lot of work and so they

59:00

had a hire a lot of people to help them with that but Sharon really liked gardening so she would spend a lot of her days out in the land of the property and garden and there was a period of time before they ever had any contractors or anyone in the house to help them fix it up that she would go up there and garden and every single time well actually the first time she's gardening she sitting out there and all of a sudden she feels eyes on her and she's like that's like weird so she looks up towards the house and sees a man standing inside the house looking at her through a window and she's obviously freaked out because she's like no one else is here who is this man why is he in the home this is a dangerous like he's up on the Second Story the floors are about to cave in like no one should be up there and no one's in the house so she like scared and freaked out like goes to investigate and no one's in the house she goes out back to the Garden

1:00:00

again same feeling looks up same man and this happens every time she's in the garden she feels eyes on her she will look up and it is the same man wearing the same suit and same tie over and over and do you think it's the horticulturist no you would think so but as they're renovating the home and like looking through the history of the home they find a photo of the man who owned the boarding house Paul linger she's like that's him that's the man why did I suddenly become suspicious of him that he used to like murder people in the boarding house and bury them in the garden I don't think that's why he's watching every time because that is a story that has happened but I think he was a good man a lot of the spirits in this house are like they're all as far as I know they're all very positive hauntings okay they're just curious they're looking for some entertainment yeah and watching someone Garden is something to do and maybe he was just curious like now there's this

1:01:00

woman who is investing time into this home mhm people have witnessed full body apparitions like people think there are other people there both Henry mcpike and his wife Elanor have been seen in full body Apparition and there's a photo of both of them side by side and after seeing these two people will confirm based on photos they'll be like that's 100% them wow the house is smokefree but Paul the man who owned the boarding house was a big smoker and so the house is like constantly smells like smoke because he's just lingering around there are a bunch of spirits there's a young girl named Sarah who smells like lilac perfume there's a woman in green dress who was seen standing on the stairwell there are a bunch of children said to be running around and laughing which is Pleasant Spirits like to move things turn lights on they also like to uh photob bomb

1:02:00

photos and today to help fund Restorations they host tours both historical and paranormal and they have seances of course they do and I guess this is a very common thing now because the conjuring house does this and this house has 15 acres of land they host camping and it's like a overnight ghostly camping experience that you can do in the fall months I wonder if people ever see anyone else just like wandering the property at night ghostly figures probably or if they're mostly inside and if you're outside camping and you look up you can you have a better chance of seeing them through the windows interesting you just got to stay up all night to find them I guess guess so or maybe you don't even have to because I think they're they're very active okay so then another building in Alton

Haunted sites and experiences

Illinois is the Morrison's Irish Pub which back in the day was Alton First National Bank and apparently there's a spirit of a bank robber who haunts there

1:03:00

because on Halloween night back in 1868 a patrol man named LH viley surprised a group of men who had broken into the bank unfortunately this man filey was killed and he haunts his former home which is on State Street in Alton Illinois and the bandits made off only with the coins that were in the teller's cages basically this man stopped them from stealing most of the money and since the Irish Pub Morrison's Irish Pub opened in 2015 coins mysteriously go missing like any change goes missing throughout the entire building well why are you leaving your change around if I were a bank robber and had Tendencies or if I were just myself in spirit form and I'm like oh there's a coin that someone seems to not me missing Sho yeah if you're a bank robber you're going to keep coming for it yeah this isn't locked away it's just on the camera for anyone to take in the article that I read the person who had written the article was like there's a belief that

1:04:00

one of the bank robbers is trying to make amends for like the money they stole and I'm like by stealing more that doesn't make sense yeah it doesn't make any sense I think they're still robbing yeah don't know what they do with that money but okay the Milton Schoolhouse was a school for over 80 years the tallest man in the world attended Elementary School there it is now a residential and commercial property so it's two floors the first floor is commercial businesses and then the second floor is apartments and it is said to be very haunted like people will hear children running around see full body apparitions I think I'd much rather work there than live there but as far as I know none of the hauntings are terrifying or scary I don't know but it was featured on Taps the old penitentiary this is one of the scariest hauntings so the old penitentiary which I said where the Confederate solders were held it has since been demolished and there's now just a massive parking lot right there

1:05:00

but people hate going to the cars late at night because all of a sudden out of nowhere they will come face to face with a confederate soldier with boils on their skin and like clearly suffering from small poox it feels so real they are so lifelike that it's so horrifying but all of a sudden poof they're gone they disappear the makes me sad too that in their afterlife unless it's a residual haunting which hopefully it is but if it's not it makes me really sad that they're still in so much pain and probably in one of the worst moments of their life just like filled with these blisters and boils and and wandering around looking for Relief reprieve from yeah the life they're currently trapped in yeah I don't know because it's also like even though the building is gone people will hear Phantom screams strange sounds and like muffled conversations it almost feels like the building still exists in another realm and it sometimes

1:06:00

bleeds into this one yeah so I don't know if it's like residual in the sense that it's a moment from the past bleeding into right the present or if it is an active haunting like it just exists and all the ghosts are there also because we talked about it being kind of like this own little Vortex it makes me wonder if every moment in time that existed here is almost like I'm thinking of it as like an echo chamber and everything that's said or experienced is moving through space and it's like an echo and sometimes you hear it yeah when it hits that part and it like bounces off of the Limestone or it like reverberates off of the waters yeah I don't know there's also this is kind of sad okay so there's an Infamous haunting at what was the hotel called the mansion house it burned down in 2010 I don't know if it was rebuilt in into apartment buildings and if there's still hauntings but there was a man named Tom boothby who lived in this

1:07:00

hotel he was a retired soldier who suffered from a lot of PTSD and had in the war taken many lives so in his suffering from PTSD he would have a lot of lot of nightmares and he would wake up in the middle of the night screaming like terrible screams that would wake up other guests so people were haunted by Tom but poor Tom was having nightmares that the spirits of the people he had killed in battle were coming back to him for revenge and we're going to take him and kill him that's so sad Tom was found dead he had died of natural causes but he had died in his sleep so there's some like belief that the spirits who were haunting him in his nightmares did end up getting him yeah in the astral realm perhaps his soul never made it back in time and you would think that the hauntings would stop because the hauntings were haunting Tom but then when Tom passed away instead of

1:08:00

him screaming from his nightmares guests were the ones screaming because Tom would appear at their bedside yeah what is he looking for I don't know but then the building burnt down and I think the haunting stopped or if there are hauntings and Tom still haunts that area then like people aren't really experiencing it because no one's sleeping there anymore and then like I said Mineral Springs hotel is extremely haunted and sadly due to the length of this episode already I am going to reserve it for a patreon episode but it's so fascinating today it actually operates as a healing spiritual business oh yeah there's a couple that bought it the name sounds healing you know like Mineral Springs hotel but ghosts are seen throughout all of the town there are Phantom nuns children women in black which could be the nuns there are ship captains the people hear Phantom screams just like

1:09:00

outside and this is just normal this is part of living in Alton Illinois it's basically Halloween Town meets human realm every day I like to think that the Phantom screams are because part of the Mineral Springs Hotel healing facility is like scream therapy where people just go outside and they scream and all the spirits that are visiting there are happening upon it are like oh interesting I'm going to try that and just randomly they'll go outside and be like like they're going through the healing Retreat as well maybe I just like to picture like you know there's a lot of coyotes near where I live so like occasionally you'll hear coyotes like howling and you're like oh it's just a coyote like I'm not going to do anything about it I imagine that in Alton there's just like screams and they're like ah it's just the ghost nothing you can do about it just the ghost oh woman scream not a coyote just a ghost just a ghost so if you want to know more you can come join us for the patreon episode or you can also read the book called Haunted Alton written by

1:10:00

Troy Taylor or you can visit Alton Illinois and attend one of their many ghost tours they have walking tours bus tours they have dinner tours they have overnight they have so many events because Alton Illinois is not dismal Mark Twain it is haunted AF and there is a lot going on in this most haunted small town in America I want to go let's go it feels like we would a coffee shop that we stop at walking in front of someone's house just taking a a leisurely stroll through a neighborhood it feels like we'd encounter something or at least get a lot of stories from people agree a particular energy this should be a Lily Dale don't you think well it's interesting because Lily Dale almost feels like a bunch of people gathered there and have made it paranormal and spiritual whereas Alton is like it just it is it's like a Vortex it just is and other people live there and they're like we coexist part of our

1:11:00

day yeah it just is what it is you're right it is kind of like a real life Halloween Town remember when we were looking at real estate in Lilydale and there was this one and we were like should we buy it cuz it was like $250,000 and we're like we could do this coming from people who live in LA in Boston which is some of the most expensive real estate market that felt extremely and it was like a six-bedroom house I was like oh my gosh yeah we're like let's just both move here permanently we can each have three rooms I wonder how much real estate is in Alon Illinois should we buy there have a two girls one ghost Airbnb Cottage situation a retreat yeah for all of us I like the idea okay I have a listener story okay

Listener stories and closing

this is from Avery AVR e e first time I've ever seen that spelling yeah I like that hello beautiful ghostesses Sven and Queen kitty cat Leia my name is Avery like Avery but cooler wait oh I do want to say something real quick so yeah in

1:12:00

episode 252 which was like the last episode of 2023 I talked about Leia's little glitch a couple vets oh yeah responded to the YouTube video when they were like that might be hyper stesia I think that's what it's called and it's like a sensitive skin like sensitivity issue that like is actually a problem so I'm taking her to the vet God bless the podcast because thank you for saying that because there's probably going to be other people that are like oh yeah my pet does that weird thing too and it's what we think it's just like a cute little like yeah could be something more the way it is right now it's not like a like it hasn't gotten really bad but it can get worse and so I'm not a you know I didn't look up all this stuff so this is why I'm taking her to a professional but basically it can get worse and there's different things that could be causing it so it's something to get looked at H well keep us up updated I will poor little Leia she goes through so much she's okay she's very loved yeah

1:13:00

she is she doesn't even remember any of her medical problems cuz she's like M food food food and The Great Outdoors and cottage life and birds she's living life she is okay I've been listening for a while now after your morbid collab and I love love love you guys encounters are always playing in my house in my car in my man's truck everywhere my daughter is six and she's always saying mom's got her podcast in again it's us my family's always been super open to the Paranormal and very in tune with energies my grandma always told us growing up that Practical Magic was written about the women in our family so OBS that's what my daughter thinks and she's constantly asking me when she'll be old enough to fly on her broom and dance under the moon naked I want to grow up in your family can you be my godmother that sounds so fun can you adopt us I'm writing y'all today with an experience about my sister's father also I'm going

1:14:00

to add some information about Alton Illinois which is known for being like haunted as [ __ ] if you're down let's do some ghost tours and have a haunted ghosty dinner let's do it also can I just say we actually had quite a few emails from people from Alton Illinois really yeah I was shocked that's so cool I'll have to do a whole encounters episode with them I mean I guess it does make sense that if you live in Alton Illinois which is known to be so haunted that you would be into the ghost in the Paranormal right no one ever wants to go to the haunted spots with me but my [ __ ] will not go alone any who here's a story about how I ran into my sister's dead Daddo at the gas station oh I live in a small town in Illinois no not by Chicago I'm about 40 to 50 minutes from St Louis so when I tell people where I'm from naturally I'm from right outside of St Louis on the Illinois side of the river very Midwest cornfed

1:15:00

description nothing here except Walmart fast food chains and Goodwill oh and plenty of gas stations have you had Casey's Pizza it's a delicacy around these parts I want pizza right now we didn't get to go there no we did try to hit up all the gas stations though on our on our route I've always been sensitive to the Paranormal I'll Sage any new place that I live in or any new place that my mom lives in any new place anyone lives in honestly just give me a call you're a good friend to have yeah definitely this tale is either paranormal or my mind just being weird and overdramatic I have three siblings my brother Elijah and my baby sister Amaya no one can ever pronounce it so I figured I would help okay so hopefully I did pronounce it correctly they said a-m y- a uh my uh yeah my brother and I share the same father total dick cheese sewer rat I don't know where he is and my sister's dad Joe is also a dick cheese but he was in my life for a

1:16:00

while and taught me how to ride my bike and did fatherly things with me when I was younger October 31st 2018 Halloween he passed away he was in a car accident in our hometown in Indiana and we lived over here in Illinois for about 13 years and hadn't seen him in probably 7 years at that point sad rough estimate because time is an illusion Joe was Joe and even though he had his demons he loved so big and we really always loved him too he had so much potential but he chose a different path fast forward a few days after his passing I stopped at a gas station that advertises liquor and cigarettes with big colorful lights in the windows because I needed a Dr Pepper from the sodi Fountain of course my back was to the door of the gas station so I couldn't see who came and went but I noticed the smell of diesel and cigarettes a very distinct smell that I haven't smelled in years like since I was six and I was brought back to when I was six again and Joe was working on his Bronco outside and my brother and I were

1:17:00

playing in the dirt I turned my head slowly and I almost puked I was frozen because he was right there Joe just walked into the gas station and now he was in line buying cigarettes I stood there Frozen and sweaty and I just stared I watched him come into the gas station and then I watched him leave I couldn't pay for my drink until he was gone because there was no [ __ ] way and once I paid for my drink I ran to my car and I locked the doors and I called my mom immediately hi Danielle I love the shout out in the middle of this I explained what just happened and was literally on the verge of tears when she said no way Avery something weird happened today to me I got a child support payment from him a what from who dead Joe came into the gas station and paid you money he only had been gone for a few days at this point the service hadn't even happened yet it was so odd and so real and to this day I feel in my gut that it really was him he

1:18:00

may have had his demons and done some really shitty things but I think that that day he was letting me and my mom know that he's okay and he's at peace the day he died my mom said to me Avery he's finally done running he didn't want to run anymore and she was right no matter how painful it was to accept my sister gave my brother and I some of Joe's ashes and I can't explain how much that meant to me he hangs out on my bookshelf with all of my [Laughter] smut not what I expected to be next to his ashes oh by the way our next patreon book that we're reading because we're do like a little quarterly book read we're reading acatar so uh that's our first dabble into fairy smut so please Avery and everyone else give us the smut recommendations because maybe it'll be a genre sticks smut it up we're smut [ __ ] every so often I give him a good shake and say got to get a workout in

1:19:00

today Joe or the occasional you [ __ ] suck Joe God my biggest takeaway from all of this has been that no matter the demons that someone is fighting the decisions they make or the path that they choose it's okay and it's normal to still love them it's okay to hurt and to separate yourself from them and it's it's also okay to love them so much he was the closest thing that I've ever had to a dad and I know every single day that he's so proud of us and we miss him all the time oh so now Alton Illinois it was home to the world's tallest man a man-eating bird but it's also [ __ ] haunted and then they go on to list like basically all the places that you just listed and then it says please check this place out love you ladies so much thank you for having your door open always for those that are spooky and cooky from Avery so I think Avery either lives in Alton or right by Alton because it sounds like the description right which

1:20:00

I'll say when I was going through all the emails that people sent from Alton none of them were about places that are like notoriously haunted they were all about people's own experiences with paranormal in their own homes right and so I was thinking like again it's this little portal it's this little Vortex and it just seems like more stuff is able to happen more frequently and more intensely where we're getting ghost stories from people because they're near here I'm picturing it like Halloween Town where like ghosts are just a PL as a plenty as humans like you walk past the good old Goldsmith's home and you see ghostly lady in gray poking her head out the window waving good morning and she like hey it's the beauty in the Beast opening but it's all ghosts oh my gosh now now we need more people from Alton Illinois to message us and just tell us what life is like or we go visit yeah that's true we can just go

1:21:00

there let's go well what a Time thank you everyone for joining us please email us your Alton Illinois or any of your ghost stories at all at two girlsm GH podcast gmail.com join us on patreon for the bonus episode this month about the Mineral Springs hotel and we have so many other bonuses on patreon there's only one tier it's $5 a month you get every single episode one week early and add free plus bonus content plus campfire stories and you get to hang out with us go check it out yeah we appreciate your support we do shout out to Jamie who edits our video and our audio Yeah shout out to all of you we love you and we will see you see you on the other side very spooky