[SPEAKER_00]: Warning, this episode contains details that some listeners may find disturbing. [SPEAKER_00]: Eighteen seventy-eight, Amherst Nova Scotia, Canada. [SPEAKER_00]: Esther Cox, a young woman, began experiencing strange and terrifying paranormal events in her home.
[SPEAKER_00]: She reported hearing unexplainable noises such as knocking and scratching sounds, and soon these events escalated into objects moving, flying across rooms, and even Esther's body is reported to have sometimes swelled up. [SPEAKER_00]: a physical manifestation of an attack from the spirit world. [SPEAKER_00]: Eventually, fires started without Reza putting the whole neighborhood in danger. [SPEAKER_00]: It was soon full blown, poltergeist activity.
[SPEAKER_00]: Esther's story is the basis for what is now known as the Great Amherst Mystery. [SPEAKER_00]: This is a study of strange. [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the show, I'm Michael May, and with me today, is my old friend TJ Rotel. [SPEAKER_00]: And TJ, you have a background in a lot of entertainment background. [SPEAKER_00]: You've been performing. [SPEAKER_00]: You've been producing primarily a lot of digital content.
[SPEAKER_00]: Didn't you get started in like the digital world when people were making web series and stuff? [SPEAKER_00]: I did. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm an OG YouTube kid in the digital age. [SPEAKER_03]: The birth of new media. [SPEAKER_03]: That's where I got my start. [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely, and then you even ran a studio for a while doing digital content. [SPEAKER_00]: I did, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't run by like what I'm allowed to talk about, so I don't want to put you on the spot of anything, but. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: I think there's there. [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, everything's pretty much out there on the world, so. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay. [SPEAKER_03]: Good. [SPEAKER_03]: You can talk about anything. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to like bring up something. [SPEAKER_00]: You'd be like, I don't, I hate those guys.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't want to talk about it. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't hate anybody. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm a pretty friendly dude. [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for being on the show TJ. [SPEAKER_00]: You don't live in LA anymore. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's nice to see you. [SPEAKER_00]: This podcast has been nice, excuse to hang out with people that I don't talk to enough. [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely. [SPEAKER_00]: So I appreciate you being here.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as the audience knows, because they will have gotten an intro that you do not get to hear. [SPEAKER_00]: But this story is, we're dealing with some spooks and spirits. [SPEAKER_00]: I was about to say, as I like to say, spooks and spirits, I don't think I've ever said that before. [SPEAKER_00]: But we're dealing with some spooks and spirits.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is a, this is kind of like a Canadian version of like Amityville or something like that where it's, it's a relatively well-known story in Canada. [SPEAKER_00]: that deals with a woman and her family who are experiencing a lot of horrifying haunts. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's an amazing story that a listener who I'm not going to name because I haven't asked if I can use her name, but a listener suggested that I look into this story.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm so glad she did reach out and suggest that because this is a good one. [SPEAKER_00]: I have a lot of thoughts. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if I have anything quite new that's like not out there. [SPEAKER_00]: to bring to this story, but I definitely have a lot of details that I don't think most people are aware of that have come across it. [SPEAKER_00]: Any questions before we get going TJ? [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you sold me with Canadian Amityville.
[SPEAKER_03]: My brain's already spinning of what this could possibly be. [SPEAKER_00]: That's a hell of a comparison. [SPEAKER_00]: It may not be the best comparison, but it's just what jumped into my head. [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going to start from the beginning here. [SPEAKER_00]: So this takes place in Amherst, Nova Scotia, not Amherst, Massachusetts, where my wife is from, but Amherst, Nova Scotia. [SPEAKER_00]: This is like the far east side of Canada on the coast.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it shares a border with New Brunswick. [SPEAKER_00]: Amherst itself, the town was settled in seventeen sixty four by loyalist for the British crown people that fled during and after the war of independence in America. [SPEAKER_00]: And also immigrants that came in after the expulsion of the accatians, which is a brutal period of Canadian history that I was like, oh, I'll look into that a little bit and I was like, oh, this is too complicated for this episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I read about that later. [SPEAKER_00]: The total population today is like, it's around like, ten thousand residents today. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's not a it's a small town, but it's a small town. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: It was like the the population was like five thousand and change. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Like that's a that's a pretty small town.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's a pretty small town at the time of the events in eighteen seventy eight or yeah, eighteen seventy eight is where we're getting started. [SPEAKER_00]: The population was two to three thousand people, which again, it's small, but at that time in Canada, I kind of think that's a pretty decent sized town for the time I would imagine anyway. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I would think so, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, so the Amherst mystery still may be known as one of the most famous things that have happened in Amherst in Canada and it is the story of a woman named Esther Cox and this has become a bit of like the calling card for the city of Amherst like they have the Esther festival. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, like they're, they're, they're fast. [SPEAKER_00]: Esther Fest. [SPEAKER_00]: It's, uh, it's almost like Salem, like they're kind of trying to build some tourism around this story.
[SPEAKER_00]: As they should, I love stuff like this. [SPEAKER_00]: Like this does make me want to go visit. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: I would, if you, if you ever, if you want to go to that festival, I will want a hundred percent go with you. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, man. [SPEAKER_00]: We'd have so much fun. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: So Esther lived with a bunch of her family members and a two story timber frame house in town.
[SPEAKER_00]: And timber frame, careful of fires that actually does come up in this story, but I covered the the solder children mystery, and that was a timber frame house that just lit up and burnt down very quickly. [SPEAKER_00]: That's what I was going to do, build your house at a match to X, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, exactly. [SPEAKER_00]: Build it on a match. [SPEAKER_00]: This is good. [SPEAKER_00]: And this relatively small house.
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, she had, I think it was nine people total. [SPEAKER_00]: Let me see if I got that number right. [SPEAKER_00]: She lived in it with her married sister, all of Teed, olives, husband, Daniel, their two young children, Willie and George, John Teed, who was Daniel's brother, William Cox and Jane, Jane's sister, and that would also include Esther. [SPEAKER_00]: So how many is that? [SPEAKER_00]: Is that eight? [SPEAKER_00]: Eight. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay. [SPEAKER_00]: I know William Cox.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wonder if they're related. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that'd be interesting. [SPEAKER_00]: Wouldn't it? [SPEAKER_00]: That would be pretty cool. [SPEAKER_00]: You should actually just find out for my own curiosity. [SPEAKER_00]: So Esther's sister Jane, they shared a room together. [SPEAKER_00]: Jane and some accounts is referred to as Jenny and I don't know if that's just a mistake because this is over a hundred years ago or if maybe she went by Jenny, but her real name is Jane.
[SPEAKER_00]: for a while. [SPEAKER_00]: I thought they were two different people. [SPEAKER_00]: But as I got into it, I actually think they're the same person. [SPEAKER_00]: And Esther was raised by her grandmother. [SPEAKER_00]: Her father left when she was a baby. [SPEAKER_00]: Her mother also died when she was young. [SPEAKER_00]: And Esther is the youngest sibling in this large family. [SPEAKER_00]: And she was also known to be physically pretty small and frail.
[SPEAKER_00]: She had brown eyes and her brown hair and blue eyes. [SPEAKER_00]: and her grandmother who was raising her also died when she was a teenager. [SPEAKER_00]: And this is essentially why she's living with so many relatives because she's only eighteen when the story starts in eighteen seventy eight. [SPEAKER_00]: So she needs a place to live and, you know, family or, of course, going to let her live there. [SPEAKER_00]: Been there. [SPEAKER_00]: Been there indeed. [SPEAKER_00]: Me too.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Esther, her day-to-day routine was helping to carry the house and also watching her young nephews, Willie and George. [SPEAKER_00]: On August, twenty-eight, eighteen, seventy-eight. [SPEAKER_00]: This is where things kind of kind of start. [SPEAKER_00]: Esther came home from a carriage ride. [SPEAKER_00]: with a gentleman named Bob McNeill. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's a date. [SPEAKER_00]: She was courting this gentleman, this Bob. [SPEAKER_00]: Classical Chair, dried first date.
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely. [SPEAKER_00]: And the morning before she went on this date, she was sitting around with her sister, Olive. [SPEAKER_00]: And a bit of what I'll call like a premonition, perhaps, comes into play here. [SPEAKER_00]: Where she talks to her sister, Olive, about this very strange dream that could mean a variety of things. [SPEAKER_00]: And this account comes directly from a book that is the book that kind of made the great Amherst mystery a story, which we can't fully trust.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll get more into the book later on, but it was written by a guy named Walter Hubble who was an actor, so you know, you can't trust him. [SPEAKER_00]: who came and wrote about this account, wrote about this story. [SPEAKER_00]: So anyway, in Hubble's book, he actually writes this scene of what Esther and her sister all of were talking about before going on this date. [SPEAKER_00]: And this is actually where our first scene's gonna come into play, TJ.
[SPEAKER_00]: So in that script, I sent you. [SPEAKER_00]: I have to put up myself. [SPEAKER_00]: All right, so it's a scene one. [SPEAKER_00]: Do you have that in front of you? [SPEAKER_00]: I do. [SPEAKER_00]: Cool. [SPEAKER_00]: Let's have you read, do you want to read Esther? [SPEAKER_00]: Sure. [SPEAKER_03]: All right. [SPEAKER_03]: Joe, I'm going to do her voice. [SPEAKER_03]: I do want me to just be TJ doing yesterday. [SPEAKER_00]: Try her voice. [SPEAKER_00]: Try her voice.
[SPEAKER_00]: I say try it. [SPEAKER_00]: If it doesn't work, you can stop. [SPEAKER_00]: Is she, is she British? [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, no, she's Canadian, but you know what, go for it. [SPEAKER_00]: Go for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I [SPEAKER_00]: So it's the lead family home in the kitchen. [SPEAKER_00]: One early evening in Esther Cox is sitting at the dining table speaking with her sister Olive.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have the most precarious dream last night. [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, a dream, do go on. [SPEAKER_03]: Last night, I sat for two hours on the front step, looking at the stars. [SPEAKER_03]: After I came in, I went down into the cellar in my stockings in drank a pint of buttermilk, and a large rat ran between my feet. [SPEAKER_03]: Then went to my room, said prayers, and went to bed.
[SPEAKER_03]: I dreamed that I would, that I dreamed that when I got up in the morning, everything in everybody changed except myself. [SPEAKER_03]: What do you mean? [SPEAKER_03]: You, Dan, Jane, brother, William, John, Teed, William, George, all had heads like bears. [SPEAKER_03]: And then she laughed. [SPEAKER_03]: Yes. [SPEAKER_03]: Script no. [SPEAKER_03]: You all had eyes as largest horses eyes. [SPEAKER_03]: Only they would blood red. [SPEAKER_03]: I heard a noise in the street.
[SPEAKER_03]: And ongoing to the door, I saw hundreds of black bulls coming towards the house. [SPEAKER_03]: Blood dripping from their mouths. [SPEAKER_03]: I woke up and found I'd fallen out of bed. [SPEAKER_03]: Do you think there's truth in this dream? [SPEAKER_03]: Did you ever know want to come true? [SPEAKER_03]: Or was it cause or was it caused by the pint of buttermilk and the rat? [SPEAKER_00]: I never could make up my mind fully, but this I am certain.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever damn dreams comes true, there is no doubt about that. [SPEAKER_00]: So yes, that is a... that's again. [SPEAKER_00]: That is a scene from Walter Hubble's book. [SPEAKER_00]: He claims this happened the day before or the before Esther went out on a date that kind of starts things off in our haunted tales. [SPEAKER_00]: So I don't know if this is true to be very honest.
[SPEAKER_00]: the book is cannot fully be trusted, but it is interesting and it is I mean have you ever have you ever had a pint of buttermilk and seen a rat that could do that could do that could set off that yeah yeah I do love that I do love that Jesus that this was caused by the pint of buttermilk [SPEAKER_03]: Well, I mean, like, like, this is the eighteen hundreds, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Like, it's like, medicine. [SPEAKER_03]: They're using leaches and blood.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's like, it's a very different world of medicine. [SPEAKER_03]: It's like, it is a serious thing that women are getting diagnosed with the doctor's office. [SPEAKER_00]: She also talks about it, it's almost like someone sneaking downstairs to eat ice cream in the middle of the night, but it's like having a pint of buttermilk instead, which, by the way, I like buttermilk, most people hate it. [SPEAKER_00]: And you can't have a lot of it though.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is rich and like hits your stomach pretty hard. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, I'll have like a sip and be like, ooh, get like a little kick from it or whatever. [SPEAKER_00]: But it's not something you would want to drink a pint of, at least, you know, that's what I would think. [SPEAKER_00]: So anyway. [SPEAKER_00]: So the the previous day Esther was supposed to go out with Bob and he canceled on her.
[SPEAKER_00]: So she's very excited this this night the same night that she's talking to all of here. [SPEAKER_00]: And Bob ends up showing up in the carriage. [SPEAKER_00]: He picks up Esther. [SPEAKER_00]: She gets in the carriage and they go for a ride. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think they knew where they were going or she didn't know where they were going. [SPEAKER_00]: But it's a, you know, it's a nice romantic carriage ride. [SPEAKER_00]: And he takes her out of town.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they end up in some stories. [SPEAKER_00]: They say like the swamp area and some stories, it's just the woods. [SPEAKER_00]: But it's just, it's out of town. [SPEAKER_00]: And when they get out of town and they're alone, Bob pulls a gun on Esther. [SPEAKER_00]: and just get out of the carriage.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: And the story goes that as soon as he gets out of the carriage and he's holding a gun to Esther, they hear another carriage coming and this startles bob and it's like, oh, get back in the carriage and like makes a get back in the carriage and takes her home. [SPEAKER_00]: She comes home. [SPEAKER_00]: She doesn't tell anybody about this event. [SPEAKER_00]: She just like runs to bed crying.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the family's just like, oh, I wonder if she and Bob broke up or had a fight. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, that's what everybody's assuming. [SPEAKER_00]: That'll think it's something this crazy serious. [SPEAKER_00]: So that's the that's the tale that kind of is is told about this situation.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll jump ahead here and say that some people myself included assume that if this is real, that might have actually progressed further and she never told anybody that she may have been assaulted or sexually assaulted that night and just didn't, you know, it's too traumatic to share and it's that day and age where you don't say those kind of things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, so there's a chance something, I mean, that situation as described as traumatic, but it could have even been more traumatic is my point there. [SPEAKER_03]: Because again, like we're talking, eighteen hundreds and, you know, not to be crass, but guys didn't need guns to assault women in the eighteen hundreds. [SPEAKER_03]: They just did it. [SPEAKER_03]: It was a very, you know, not that times aren't really messed up these days, but way back when it was even darker.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I wonder if he wasn't bringing her out there to kill her. [SPEAKER_03]: Like, not just a soldier, but like, you know, because why the gun? [SPEAKER_03]: Like, yeah, why the gun? [SPEAKER_03]: You know, like, you're alone in a carriage. [SPEAKER_03]: Like, that's a scary situation in modern society when we have things like cell phones and GPS. [SPEAKER_03]: Like, that's a to do that back then when you're in a horse and carriage.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's a, I can't imagine what that felt like. [SPEAKER_00]: No, no. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there's so many questions about this and I don't think anybody ever got the full details. [SPEAKER_00]: The way that we know of this story is it actually comes out during a just for lack of a better term, a possession. [SPEAKER_00]: She ends up sharing this tale. [SPEAKER_00]: And so that's something to consider as well. [SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of questions to this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do think something happened between them. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if it was an assault. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if she's making up the gun story. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, all these things are valid, which we will get into reasons why, but I feel like something happened. [SPEAKER_00]: Something that she was not happy about happened that night.
[SPEAKER_00]: So a week or so later Esther is in her room with her sister Jane, because they they share a room and they heard a noise under the bed. [SPEAKER_00]: And so they get up and they start looking around and they assume they're looking for a mouse. [SPEAKER_00]: couldn't really find anything. [SPEAKER_00]: A night or two later, they heard the same kind of sound. [SPEAKER_00]: They start searching around and underneath the bed is a box.
[SPEAKER_00]: And some stories they say, they found a box. [SPEAKER_00]: But it actually sounds like this is a box where they stored quilts. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's a little box with a blanket in or whatever. [SPEAKER_00]: They pull out the box. [SPEAKER_00]: It sounds like the sound is coming from inside the box. [SPEAKER_00]: And as the box is sitting on the ground, the box actually jumped into the air by itself. [SPEAKER_00]: and then landed on the ground on its side.
[SPEAKER_00]: The girls scream, because that's very weird. [SPEAKER_00]: Yep. [SPEAKER_00]: And so the brothers, the brother came in, Daniel came in, they run in the room. [SPEAKER_00]: There's a box lying on the floor in two girls screaming and they just start laughing at them. [SPEAKER_00]: They're like, oh, silly women, scared of a box or whatever and just kind of write it up. [SPEAKER_00]: The next night Esther had dinner and she said she was feeling not super great.
[SPEAKER_00]: So she went to bed early [SPEAKER_00]: And then apparently she woke up and was screaming, I'm dying, I'm dying. [SPEAKER_00]: And Jane turned on a lamp and, you know, was watching Esther kind of freaking out. [SPEAKER_00]: And of course, this is a scary situation. [SPEAKER_00]: And Esther standing in the center of the room, her face was red as blood and she was grasping and like holding onto the back of a chair.
[SPEAKER_00]: And apparently she held onto the chair so tightly that later they found like fingernail marks in the wood. [SPEAKER_00]: for how tight she was hanging onto it and the rest of the family kind of runs in and they help guide Esther to the bed and the the accounts say that Esther actually like swelled up like her body like swelled.
[SPEAKER_00]: And someone said, I wrote a quote down and stupid me didn't write down which person said this, but there's a quote that says, I'm, oh, no, I must be Esther. [SPEAKER_00]: I am swelling up and she'll certainly burst. [SPEAKER_00]: I know I shall is one of the quotes from her. [SPEAKER_00]: And so the family's horrified as you can imagine, like her face is big or skin is apparently even hot to the touch. [SPEAKER_00]: She's screaming, she's grinding your teeth.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, again, this is like exorcist type scene here going on. [SPEAKER_00]: And everybody's worried about it. [SPEAKER_00]: And then they hear a large boom, almost like a thunder sound. [SPEAKER_00]: And then they hear another one and it shakes the whole room and someone in the family goes and looks at the window and it's clear skies, you know, there's no storm or anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Esther eventually, she's laying on her bed and she eventually returns to normal and goes to sleep. [SPEAKER_00]: So really bizarre situation. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's wilden. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: So over the coming nights, they kept hearing some strange things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I believe four nights later, you read, I've read so many different articles that some of my timing, if people out there, especially people in Amherst that like know the story really well, [SPEAKER_00]: I would get conflicting timing reports from accounts, I say, so I put this in a general sort of timeline. [SPEAKER_00]: I may have some of my specific details, and like four nights later, could have been six or two or one.
[SPEAKER_00]: It could be a little wrong in that, but I'm trying my best here. [SPEAKER_03]: I won't tell you. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, thank you very much, teacher. [SPEAKER_00]: You're the only one. [SPEAKER_00]: So about four nights later, a similar thing happened, she swelled up. [SPEAKER_00]: This time the like linens on her bed would fly off the bed and land in the core of the room as if like ghost were like pulling the sheets.
[SPEAKER_00]: A pillow underneath her head was thrown at John Teed and Esther said she felt like she was being shocked as if like electricity was in her body. [SPEAKER_00]: and they even, one of the accounts I read is like, even the bed was moving around and they had to like the family had to sit down on the bed and keep it down on the ground.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so they do probably the only thing they could think of is they call a doctor, which is honestly probably what I would do too is I'm just like, who do you call in that situation? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I was just not really, you know, it's a doctor or priest or bone. [SPEAKER_00]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_00]: I had to take a sip of my coffee there. [SPEAKER_00]: TJ's making me record this early in the morning. [SPEAKER_00]: So. [SPEAKER_00]: So a doctor is called in and most stories.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's nameless. [SPEAKER_00]: It's always just like a doctor is called in. [SPEAKER_00]: However, in Hubble's book, I believe he names the doctor because there's a doctor, correct that he talks about. [SPEAKER_00]: So that might be who this doctor is. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's just how I'm going to refer to him. [SPEAKER_00]: So Dr. Crete calls in. [SPEAKER_00]: or comes in, excuse me. [SPEAKER_00]: And he arrives in the evening one night around nine PM as Esther was going to bed.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he said she was suffering from nervous excitement, which is very much in eighteen seventy eight, you know, doctor account, nervous excitement. [SPEAKER_00]: And she was suffering from a recent shock. [SPEAKER_00]: And but a pillow was pulled out from under her and kind of like thrown in front of the doctor. [SPEAKER_00]: So [SPEAKER_00]: There's a bit of a paranormal activity that I'm sure he does not understand.
[SPEAKER_00]: The doctor became very amazed and John T. even tried to take the pillow. [SPEAKER_00]: The pillow was like pulled away from him. [SPEAKER_00]: And that night they hear more banging in the house, more noises. [SPEAKER_00]: And then they started to hear like scratch it on a wall.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the doctor kind of followed the sound around and tried to figure out where it was coming from and near the head of the bed on the wall was scratched the words ex Esther Cox you are mine to kill scratched into the wall.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: apparently a piece of plaster from the wall like broke off in land in near the doctor and they heard more pounding and shaking and it's weird sounds and esters and bed being scared but at the end of the night she's able to fall asleep and the doctor gave her sedatives the next night hoping that that would like if I'm going to give their sedatives before bed maybe nothing will happen however there were still more noises that were even bigger and louder
[SPEAKER_00]: And this goes on and one day about three weeks later Esther goes into convulsions and this is when she shared what happened with her on her date with Bob to everybody is she's like going into convulsions on the bed and she ends up sharing the slight Bob pulled a gun on me kind of thing. [SPEAKER_00]: and the whole group in the room there starts to, I guess, devise or decide or figured out that they might be able to communicate with the spirits.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is where our second scene comes in, TJ. [SPEAKER_00]: Ooh, is it a big, a fancy thing? [SPEAKER_00]: No, no, no, you'll see a stay tuned cliffhanger. [SPEAKER_00]: So let's have you read. [SPEAKER_00]: Do you want to be the doctor or Jane? [SPEAKER_00]: I'll be the doctor.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, so this is a scene of apparently what was going on and while the doctor was there about three weeks after the big stories I've told were Jane or not, Jane excuse me, where Esther has now shared the story of Bob and they're starting to figure out some some things about the ghost. [SPEAKER_00]: All right, you ready?
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're an Esther's bedroom at night, and Esther is in bed, she's trying to rest, and her sister Jane is sitting in a chair nearby, speaking with Dr. Carrite. [SPEAKER_00]: Dan and John lead, stand in the doorway, watching on. [SPEAKER_00]: Dr. I believe whatever agency makes these noises, it can hear and understand what we are talking about, and perhaps, see us. [SPEAKER_00]: Suddenly, three knocks are heard in the room, clear as day.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my, I can hear, or it can hear. [SPEAKER_03]: It can hear. [SPEAKER_03]: I believe you, Jane. [SPEAKER_03]: Let's try again. [SPEAKER_00]: Esther, do you know how many spirits are present? [SPEAKER_00]: Esther Shakespeare had no then bears her face and her pillow afraid. [SPEAKER_03]: Spirits? [SPEAKER_03]: How many persons are in this room? [SPEAKER_03]: Give us a knock for each one. [SPEAKER_03]: Right on cue. [SPEAKER_03]: Five knocks.
[SPEAKER_03]: Ugh. [SPEAKER_03]: Well, look at the time. [SPEAKER_03]: It's certainly getting late. [SPEAKER_03]: I best be off. [SPEAKER_00]: Wait, Doctor, you can't leave. [SPEAKER_03]: I'd stay if I could. [SPEAKER_03]: I've got a thing. [SPEAKER_03]: Tudals. [SPEAKER_03]: So, this is from the book. [SPEAKER_02]: No, that was me. [SPEAKER_02]: Added in my unflared. [SPEAKER_00]: I was like, what the hell kind of, like, doctor in the eighteen hundred.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't mean to make it sound like that's from the book. [SPEAKER_00]: That's my own interpretation of what may have happened. [SPEAKER_00]: But the details of which did come from accounts I've read. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think I've read about this in the book. [SPEAKER_00]: I think I read about this in other places. [SPEAKER_00]: I can't remember exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yes, so this is they kind of come up with this thing theory, if you will, that they can communicate with these spirits by knock. [SPEAKER_00]: And this allegedly that scene that I think is very true to what happened is when they start kind of figuring out this knocking ability with the spirits and they devise I think one knock is no two is maybe and three is yes something like that and they would try to communicate with these spirits.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, excuse me, I haven't in my notes. [SPEAKER_00]: One knock is no, two is doubtful, not maybe. [SPEAKER_00]: And three is yes. [SPEAKER_00]: So that is how they would ask questions and get answers. [SPEAKER_00]: And it seems like these spirits were connected to Esther. [SPEAKER_00]: And she had to be in the house for anything to happen. [SPEAKER_00]: If she was out of the house, another one was going on. [SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, and story starts to spread around town.
[SPEAKER_00]: The local community starts to become fascinated with the Amherst mystery and the events that are being reported and even newspapers in town are actually competing against each other. [SPEAKER_00]: with like Esther Cox stories. [SPEAKER_00]: It's big news. [SPEAKER_00]: It's big news. [SPEAKER_00]: And one of the papers would be like pro Esther like, Oh, these are these spirits are real. [SPEAKER_00]: She's going through something terrifying that we don't understand.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need to try to understand it. [SPEAKER_00]: And like other newspapers like [SPEAKER_00]: She's making it up, the whole family's in on it, don't believe it. [SPEAKER_00]: So there's these competing viewpoints and opposing even like newspapers and towns and news spreads. [SPEAKER_00]: Like some of these stories get out even all the way down to the United States of America. [SPEAKER_00]: People start to hear of Esther Cox.
[SPEAKER_00]: A doctor Edwin Clay caught wind of the story and he was a Baptist priest. [SPEAKER_00]: and he wanted to understand what was going on and see if he could help. [SPEAKER_00]: So he visited the family and experienced some events with Esther. [SPEAKER_00]: He believed it was happening fully and he also claimed the family wasn't helping Esther, which is a weird thing to say.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he had a theory that the experience started because of the carriage ride, because of the trauma and shock of that situation with Bob [SPEAKER_00]: And she became a battery for shock is what he said. [SPEAKER_00]: So the noises were like thunder that was coming from her body because her body has like electrical shock in it or something like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he would even talk about this during sermons in town and gave [SPEAKER_00]: Essentially, lectures about what was going on, and this helped spread the story because people trust their priest. [SPEAKER_00]: So now it's giving legitimacy to Esther's story and the whole town starts to really become obsessed. [SPEAKER_00]: Soon, things progress in Esther's house, meaning things fly like now there's like objects moving around.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's no longer just noise and her, but like [SPEAKER_00]: Furniture's falling over, things are flying around. [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes Esther would be found covered in bruises and then fires came into play. [SPEAKER_00]: It started with like matches, like there'd just be matches that we catch fire by themselves and soon other things would catch fire by themselves. [SPEAKER_00]: And then there was a bit of a stop in these paranormal events in late eighteen seventy eight.
[SPEAKER_00]: Esther was diagnosed with diphtheria. [SPEAKER_00]: and she was moved to live with relatives during this diagnosis. [SPEAKER_00]: And of course, she moves out, nothing's going on, no activity. [SPEAKER_00]: She moves back in January of eighteen, seventy-nine. [SPEAKER_00]: And she moves into a room by herself that kind of separate Jane from her, thinking maybe this is safer.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one night Esther told Jane that she could hear a voice telling her that the house would be set on fire, that night, unless Esther left. [SPEAKER_00]: and the ghost was. [SPEAKER_00]: had been alive and is now dead. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's not like just a demon. [SPEAKER_00]: It is like a deceased person who has become a spirit. [SPEAKER_00]: And the family sort of called it in a room to discuss this thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: She repeats that she's been told to leave or else the house will catch on fire. [SPEAKER_00]: And then allegedly matches started lighting like around the room. [SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: And here's what's interesting is Esther claims that the ghost is a guy named Bob Nickel. [SPEAKER_00]: and he was a shoemaker and he claimed that, you know, he was the one saying he would burn down the house. [SPEAKER_00]: This is interesting to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to call it out right away instead of later at the end of the story. [SPEAKER_00]: Bob is also the name of the boyfriend. [SPEAKER_00]: Bob McNeil is the guy that took her on the caradrive. [SPEAKER_00]: Bob Nichol is the ghost. [SPEAKER_00]: There's, and also a shoemaker, Bob McNeill, the guy that took her on the carriage ride, worked at a shoe company with relatives of esters.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's some interesting connections to make with this ghost and the experiences that she had that are pretty obvious to me if these stories would be true. [SPEAKER_00]: Now there's a story of one day Esther and Oliver at home and the nephews are playing around. [SPEAKER_00]: I believe outside they're playing around and Esther and Oliver have started to notice smoke coming from the seller. [SPEAKER_00]: They go down there and there's a fire. [SPEAKER_00]: They try to put it out.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're having difficulty. [SPEAKER_00]: They're screaming for help. [SPEAKER_00]: And a strange passerby's passing by the house. [SPEAKER_00]: And here's them calling for help. [SPEAKER_00]: He comes running in. [SPEAKER_00]: Takes office coat and helps like smother the fire. [SPEAKER_00]: I shouldn't say coat. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if he actually had a coat. [SPEAKER_00]: There's just what's in my mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: But he'll smother the fire and then he leaves and never set a word. [SPEAKER_00]: And they don't know who he was. [SPEAKER_00]: So some rumors spread and some people speculate that maybe this was a ghost. [SPEAKER_00]: It was actually trying to help them and not a passerby. [SPEAKER_00]: And the fire marshal comes by to check out the, you know, what happened here? [SPEAKER_00]: And the fire marshal thought Esther started the fire. [SPEAKER_00]: And this is not good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Neighbors are not happy because timber frame homes, like I mentioned earlier, their homes made out of matches, which like you said. [SPEAKER_00]: So the families around the lead house are like, we don't like Esther being here because all these fires, you guys say like matches are lighting by themselves. [SPEAKER_00]: This is dangerous. [SPEAKER_03]: So she's plummeting in the evening.
[SPEAKER_00]: So she's forced to move away and she moves in with a family called the whites for a little while. [SPEAKER_00]: Apparently fires did start in that home too from time to time. [SPEAKER_00]: She worked in Mr. White's tavern. [SPEAKER_00]: He owned a bar tavern kind of place. [SPEAKER_00]: And apparently the hauntings followed her there when she was working.
[SPEAKER_00]: And people would even come by and hope that something something weird is going to happen because Esther's working is not at the tavern. [SPEAKER_00]: Let's go see. [SPEAKER_00]: And there's a story of like a knife got thrown at her and like stuck in her back. [SPEAKER_00]: And the person whose knife it was like took the knife out of her back and like quickly like put it away. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, oh, the ghost can't get it if it's in my pocket or whatever and hit it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's uh, yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, TJ has a great face. [SPEAKER_00]: Great face. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Just so confused. [SPEAKER_03]: I just so I mean, what did she die from the knife getting stuck? [SPEAKER_00]: No, I think it was like a small pocket knife kind of. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Like a like a mounting knife. [SPEAKER_00]: No, no, no, no, no. [SPEAKER_03]: Screamed in the back there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, no. [SPEAKER_00]: And I also did not, I didn't read that in many things. [SPEAKER_00]: I only read that it may be one account, so I'm not sure of all the details behind that story. [SPEAKER_00]: And also a lot of this, again, we can talk more about this at the end, but a lot of this may be made up or embellished from locals and the game of cell phone over a hundred and what is a hundred and fifty years or something. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, there's a lot to learn.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, she's eventually moved out of the White House, White House, met the White House. [SPEAKER_00]: She was actually a president of the United States. [SPEAKER_00]: And she moved in with the Beck family in St. [SPEAKER_00]: John's, and around the end of March, eighteen, seventy-nine, she was there for like three weeks that she was with the Beck family.
[SPEAKER_00]: And people would come and visit her and like study her doctors and lawyers and skeptics and magicians and all these people. [SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of them experienced like strange sounds and knockings and her communicating with ghosts using like spirit boards and things, which are essentially the precursor to the Ouija boards.
[SPEAKER_00]: And eventually she moves back to Amherst and stayed with the Van Amburg family where she was isolated out in the middle of the woods is where they lived and she lived there for eight weeks. [SPEAKER_00]: And... [SPEAKER_00]: All of them thought the hauntings had ended by this time. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, things were calming down. [SPEAKER_00]: And she soon goes back to work for John White's tavern because she actually like, when she moved out, she didn't work there anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, things seemed to return to normal. [SPEAKER_00]: But in eighteenth, seventy-nine, this is where this sort of be-list actor of the day Walter Hubble comes and he's heard of the story and he wants to meet Esther and write a book. [SPEAKER_00]: He claims he wants to write a book to debunk everything that she's claiming is happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: But instead, he ends up being a big believer in Esther and writes a book that lays the foundation for all the stories and the fame that came after this. [SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, he showed up and was curious about Esther meets her and ends up spending about six weeks with Esther and around her and her family.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he says that after five minutes of meeting her, his umbrella, which he had brought into the room and set down, [SPEAKER_00]: flew across the room and then a chair moved and he shocked and had to like gather his thoughts because he was just big skeptic and now immediately he's he's a big believer and again he they talked a lot he learned and claims that Esther said that five ghosts [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, five. [SPEAKER_00]: This where I'm going to mess up my counting again.
[SPEAKER_00]: She said that they were a handful of ghosts. [SPEAKER_00]: That's a better way to say it. [SPEAKER_00]: We're following her around says Bob Nichol, who I mentioned. [SPEAKER_00]: There's also a ghost named Maggie Fisher, Jane Nichol, who might be related to Bob Nichol, Eliza McNeil and Peter Cox. [SPEAKER_00]: Peter Cox is apparently some relative of hers as well. [SPEAKER_00]: That is this spirit. [SPEAKER_00]: That's around.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Peter is the only one trying to protect Esther, all the other ones are like evil spirits. [SPEAKER_00]: And they also did not like Walter being in the house. [SPEAKER_00]: So Esther says so yeah, Walter writes this book. [SPEAKER_00]: He claims a lot of crazy things happened, including like forks stabbing Esther in the face. [SPEAKER_00]: And he claims, you know, Bob is attacking her and sometimes her skin wouldn't flate and she'd become hot to the touch.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he Walter called this mesmerate sleep. [SPEAKER_00]: Or that's when she would go into like trances. [SPEAKER_00]: He would call it mesmerate sleep because mesmerism was a big fat at the time. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's his book is I did read it by the way, you can you can find it online, I'll provide links you can also find hard copies of it is still out there. [SPEAKER_00]: It is it's crazy and I mean that.
[SPEAKER_00]: in the way it sounds like it is a very it's a book that you can tell a writer is embellishing things so for the skeptics out there like myself of these things it's like okay are most of these stories because this guy wrote this book and it like actually sold pretty well and it starts spreading around but he's obviously [SPEAKER_00]: He's got to be either making shit up or embellishing it. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's just me. [SPEAKER_00]: People feel free to disagree read the book.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's actually a pretty quick read and he is a fun writer like he describes Esther, you know, because he's writer. [SPEAKER_00]: So he's got to like, she's about this tall and here's her hair and her sister Jane is like this, but he doesn't describe like Dan or there's like two members of the household that he forgot to describe. [SPEAKER_00]: And so I'm like the paragraph down. [SPEAKER_00]: He's like, I suppose you might want to know what they look like too.
[SPEAKER_00]: So here, I'll tell you. [SPEAKER_00]: Like he wasn't going to go back and edit it. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: He's just like I better fix this in the in the script here now. [SPEAKER_03]: Yep. [SPEAKER_03]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: It's pretty fun. [SPEAKER_03]: It's fun. [SPEAKER_00]: So the landlord for the for Esther's family actually kicked the family out because he thought there were too many people coming by. [SPEAKER_00]: There's too many lucky lose.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's too many weirdness. [SPEAKER_00]: There's stories of fires. [SPEAKER_00]: Like he actually did kind of force them to move. [SPEAKER_00]: And this is when I think the Blinky lights of dollar signs or even like the logo about people's heads started to go off because Hubble, the writer, John White, who owned the tavern and Esther decide to go in a tour and put on shows. [SPEAKER_00]: And they plan nine stops and they are initial tour.
[SPEAKER_00]: They only got through two shows. [SPEAKER_00]: Because Esther would be on stage and they would essentially just wait for something to happen and nothing was happening. [SPEAKER_00]: So the audience is turned on them and yeah, this is, yeah, it kind of changes the the public's perception of Esther because they start to. [SPEAKER_00]: question, they started to become skeptical of her accounts.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's even a story that like stones were thrown at them at one of the shows, which I really hope is not true. [SPEAKER_00]: Like that's that's just awful. [SPEAKER_00]: They returned to Amherst and she ends up working for a guy named Arthur Davidson and Davidson's barn burned down when she was there. [SPEAKER_00]: She claims it was because of ghosts. [SPEAKER_00]: However, she gets arrested for [SPEAKER_00]: because everybody else says you started this fire.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's interesting is when I dove into the story more, [SPEAKER_00]: She was actually arrested for theft. [SPEAKER_00]: She was arrested for arson too. [SPEAKER_00]: But I think it was the two things kind of happened right around the same time. [SPEAKER_00]: And a neighbor's home, some items were missing. [SPEAKER_00]: She was blamed. [SPEAKER_00]: She's arrested for theft. [SPEAKER_00]: She did go to prison. [SPEAKER_00]: She should serve four months in prison.
[SPEAKER_00]: I cannot confirm if that was for arson or theft or both. [SPEAKER_00]: So for listeners out there, if you know more about this, I would love to clarify that. [SPEAKER_00]: Email me, study of StrangerGmail.com, and yeah, she was sentenced to four months in prison. [SPEAKER_00]: She only spent one in prison. [SPEAKER_00]: I guess so. [SPEAKER_00]: Also, when she's in prison, nothing strange happened to her or anybody else. [SPEAKER_00]: So the spirits left are alone in prison.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now this story is, as I've already mentioned, it's kind of propagated by Hubble's book. [SPEAKER_00]: It becomes a good seller and people start telling the story. [SPEAKER_00]: If I already mentioned the newspapers, take opposing sides of this. [SPEAKER_00]: So it becomes like a big news cycle thing. [SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, again, some people are forest or some people are against or some people think she's a fraud, some people think she's telling the truth.
[SPEAKER_00]: And eventually, just things stop. [SPEAKER_00]: Like Esther doesn't experience stuff anymore. [SPEAKER_00]: She eventually gets married twice or first husband. [SPEAKER_00]: It's that day and age. [SPEAKER_00]: People die a lot. [SPEAKER_00]: So her first die, she remarries. [SPEAKER_00]: And she actually passed away at a relatively young age. [SPEAKER_00]: She passed away when she was fifty-two.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it was like, nineteen-twelve, nineteen, sort of somewhere around there. [SPEAKER_00]: The end of Hubble's book, [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to read what he writes at the very end of the book. [SPEAKER_00]: Reader, a word, this account of the haunted house in which Esther Cox suffered so much, and the author had such a remarkable experience, is no fanciful creation of the imagination, but really what is claimed to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: What it is claimed to be, a true ghost story. [SPEAKER_00]: So he claims it's very true. [SPEAKER_00]: So here's where I go into just personal thoughts TJ. [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, yeah, yeah, share share. [SPEAKER_00]: What's going on? [SPEAKER_00]: We're going to say before what? [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I don't know. [SPEAKER_03]: Okay. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: So so listen, I personally believe in ghosts.
[SPEAKER_03]: I believe in the spirit world and [SPEAKER_03]: psychic's experience. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm a very firm believer. [SPEAKER_03]: I've had some ghosty experiences in my own personal life. [SPEAKER_03]: So I staunchly believe that that's a real thing. [SPEAKER_03]: Uh, so let me preface, preface what I'm going to say with with this.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a fair amount in my opinion of this story that I would and would typically believe, but then there's these moments where I'm just like, oh, this, this, this also does, there is some, like, and I'm, I'm pretty easy to believe. [SPEAKER_03]: Go stories. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm just like, yeah, I believe it.
[SPEAKER_03]: But there is some stuff here that like, [SPEAKER_03]: leads me to believe there's something that maybe this started out as something a bit more psychiatric from trauma, you know, the trauma being held at gun point. [SPEAKER_03]: But then the the fancible side of my brain is like, well, what if her. [SPEAKER_03]: Her experience with with what was it to what was the guy's name nickel Ben Joe Bob John. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, Bob McNeill. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, Bob McNeill.
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe her experience with Bob McNeill getting pulled a gun point or held at gun point.
[SPEAKER_03]: triggered some sort of late and psychic ability that turned out to be that she wasn't experiencing a supernatural event in that she was being haunted, but that she was manifesting the psychic moments of telekinetically hurling a pillow across the room or pulling her bed sheets off as this kind of energy was coursing through her as she was trying to work through this trauma she'd experienced because again like
[SPEAKER_03]: like being held at gunpoint in the wood is as scary enough, but this is the eighteen hundreds. [SPEAKER_03]: There's a fair chance a lot more happened there. [SPEAKER_03]: But the thing too about like having like, because you start to talk like those are all these different ghosts and one of them is similar, like, I'd be curious to know what happened to Bob McNeil after that, like, what's his story?
[SPEAKER_03]: Because we don't like, you don't like Bob came by to pay her a visit or like he sent the letter, like did she kill him in the woods?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like like and that was like her first like he like pulled the gun and she went full blown carry and just like broke him in half and the woods and left him there to die and then like another carriage came and picked her up and like like that's the kind of shit that my brain starts to spin up on but yeah like I don't know but there's there's enough of it that feels like [SPEAKER_03]: It might have been that this might be a psychiatric thing, but I'm a, like I said, I'm a believer.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I'm like really trying to clutch on to the supernatural elements of this. [SPEAKER_03]: But that's about how far I can justify the supernatural elements of this is maybe it was maybe it was her. [SPEAKER_03]: doing this the whole time through some sort of ability sheet unlocked with that trauma. [SPEAKER_00]: So I actually do have some information on both Hubble's book in terms of verifying a lot of his accounts. [SPEAKER_00]: I do have some information on Bob McNeil.
[SPEAKER_00]: What have you got? [SPEAKER_00]: And I do have some other things to think about too. [SPEAKER_00]: So all right, I guess what order you want to hear some things in? [SPEAKER_03]: I wouldn't know about Bob McNeill because that's my that's my leading theory right now is that Bob was horribly murdered in the woods by Esther. [SPEAKER_03]: He was found psychic ability. [SPEAKER_03]: He was not that would be make a good movie.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, uh, I'm McNeill worked with Dan who who Dan lead who owned the house that Esther stayed in. [SPEAKER_00]: They were like associates at this like shoe and box camp or something. [SPEAKER_00]: It was like their shoes involved with that somewhere at some booting shoe company, something like that. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: That was in town. [SPEAKER_00]: They worked together.
[SPEAKER_00]: He moved at some point either during the story or soon after to another town kind of nearby and had a family. [SPEAKER_00]: But in all accounts that I can find, I can't find anything where like the two families ended up hating each other or like Esther's family heard the story so they kind of turn against Bob. [SPEAKER_00]: Everything seems to be very friendly afterwards. [SPEAKER_00]: And he did not die. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's just it's that's kind of all I have.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't I wish I had like well in nineteen oh one he actually he and Esther got together for coffee and had a great time and decided to start a book club like I don't have any of that information, but it it in all in all seriousness though, I do think that
[SPEAKER_00]: no one really knows what happened that night at the carriage and it whatever did happen, people didn't take it to the extreme of like, well, Bob's got to get fucking reverted or fired or whatever, everybody's kind of stayed friendly, which is actually true to what happens in a lot of assault, like sexual harassment situation, sexual assault, like
[SPEAKER_00]: will shoot that was my that's I work with that guy I've got to keep a job like what am I going to do you know so there's it doesn't invalidate what she says happened but it also doesn't it also doesn't validate anything else either as just yeah those are just kind of the the situation there's no one to interview yes exactly it's a hundred and fifty years ago it's tough yeah now in terms of Hubble's book
[SPEAKER_00]: This there's a guy named Egon Larson so he's Egon so that makes me super happy. [SPEAKER_00]: He was a science journalist and he claimed that [SPEAKER_00]: that no one named in Hubble's book, because Hubble is like, oh, this person says this and this happened to blah, blah, blah. [SPEAKER_00]: Egon is like, none of those people were actually verified. [SPEAKER_00]: He's making claims and none of those are confirmed sources or anything like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's worthy footnote because when you're doing something with journalistic integrity, you want to make sure that you're confirming and you're saying who said stuff and nothing in his book is verified with anybody. [SPEAKER_00]: David Sin, who's the guy who owned the barn that burned down, claimed that Hubble painted facts for the book. [SPEAKER_00]: So this is the guy who claimed that Esther Burntown is barn, and he's even like Hubble's doing some shit in this book.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's another book written by Lauren Glean Norris, who's a historian. [SPEAKER_00]: She's like modern day historian of this. [SPEAKER_00]: She wrote in that on November seventh, eighteen, seventy-eight, Dr. Carrite admitted that he knew nothing of the writing on the walls. [SPEAKER_00]: I remember the scene that the doctor was there and heard scratching and then saw like Esther Cox, your mind to kill. [SPEAKER_00]: He admitted that he never saw that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Never heard about it before. [SPEAKER_00]: He also admitted that he never saw fires being set. [SPEAKER_00]: And that was a lot of the, a lot of the accounts are the doctor was there and matches, we don't fire. [SPEAKER_00]: And he's like, what? [SPEAKER_00]: What are you talking about? [SPEAKER_00]: I never saw any of that. [SPEAKER_00]: So that's a worthy thing to be aware of.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, you got to wonder though, like, doctors too, like, so like, and again, like, this is the point and counterpoint that my brain wants to make right now, it's like, because it wants, we, like, people want to make all of them. [SPEAKER_03]: Like, you know, we like, we're all, we're all in the X file, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And, uh, [SPEAKER_03]: You know, when you when you see stuff like matches spontaneously lighting or things being thrown across the room, that's great evidence to to point to something supernatural going on, but [SPEAKER_03]: And within you here a doctor and he's like, I didn't see that, but then you had to wonder like a doctor in that age, would they support?
[SPEAKER_03]: Because that's that's that's throws in the face of everything that they believe in and how like science and that is in and especially in that age, that's witchcraft at that point. [SPEAKER_03]: You know what I mean? [SPEAKER_03]: There is that argument, you know, absolutely. [SPEAKER_03]: Was he back paddling because he didn't want to believe it or he didn't want to risk criticism from his patients or his practice.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, so like there's always that point A point B that you can make. [SPEAKER_00]: It's good. [SPEAKER_00]: And please keep pointing that out because that's what I need because I love these stories and listeners will know that I'll say like I love anything kind of remotely scary or mysterious or whatever. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm super into. [SPEAKER_00]: But I am a big skeptic of especially paranormal stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I try to keep an open mind about it, but one of my favorite things in the world is stuff just like that, where there's like, there's this account, or famous account, everybody knows the account of the doctor seeing the writing in the wall.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you read one thing, it's like, no, the doctor was quoted in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the,
[SPEAKER_00]: Like not looking at the other stuff, which is even considering like yeah, but with the doctor even believed that if he saw it because that's different than his own reality. [SPEAKER_00]: So please keep pointing stuff like that. [SPEAKER_03]: Because if you take out all the all the the scary stuff of like things flying across the room and the writing on the wall and you know stuff like that. [SPEAKER_03]: it points to trauma response.
[SPEAKER_03]: This type of thing like anxiety and trauma in the nervous system. [SPEAKER_03]: As someone who deals with that on a daily basis, the physical symptoms of anxiety are crazy. [SPEAKER_03]: I went through four months of my body twitching and convulsing when I first started dealing with anxiety. [SPEAKER_03]: I was physically jerking out of the bed as I was trying to sleep. [SPEAKER_03]: That's how severe my muscle twitching was.
[SPEAKER_03]: So like that kind of stuff is a real thing like that's that swelling, the skin, flush like all that.
[SPEAKER_03]: That can all of very well been trauma response and that's why I immediately jumped to was there did a fork actually fly across the room and stab her did was there right in because that's really the only paranormal proof you're going to be able to find because [SPEAKER_03]: Her physical symptoms, you can really point to this poor girl experience something very traumatic. [SPEAKER_03]: She buried that trauma because that's what we do as human beings.
[SPEAKER_03]: Our armadela will throw up a smoke screen and protect our minds from fracturing into a million little pieces. [SPEAKER_03]: and protect ourselves from that trauma and just bury it. [SPEAKER_03]: And that trauma sits there and it manifests in lots of different physical ways. [SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, I feel for her and that aspect and I do wonder if that's not what we saw here with this case.
[SPEAKER_03]: But if there's, you know, you again, you always have that be side of [SPEAKER_03]: No, I saw a fork fly across them. [SPEAKER_03]: I saw a pillow gets thrown across the room. [SPEAKER_03]: And that's where I, you know, the argument continues with that. [SPEAKER_03]: If there's, if there's, because people don't believe that shit, you know, I mean, like, if I, if I went on the internet right now, and I was like, there's scary stuff happening in my house.
[SPEAKER_03]: eighty percent of the audience be like, you know, but they're the at twenty percent would be like, yeah, I had that experience too, you know, that's weird. [SPEAKER_00]: I love it, TJ. [SPEAKER_00]: I think you're, yeah, I just love the way you're thinking about this because I agree with everything you're saying and it's adding a level to this story that I think is important to consider. [SPEAKER_00]: And I wanted to talk a little bit about spiritualism.
[SPEAKER_00]: because that is a very prominent movement in the world and Western civilization at the time that this story is taking place. [SPEAKER_00]: And I kind of think all these things can be true together, meaning some sort of supernatural events, some sort of traumatic psychosis event. [SPEAKER_00]: And also just things getting made up. [SPEAKER_00]: I think they can all work hand in hand in this story and it's fascinating. [SPEAKER_00]: And I'll give a quick example here.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's a guy named Dr. Price that came in to he was one of the people taking an interest and he's a doctor and he wants to see what's going on. [SPEAKER_00]: And he said he's in his Esther's room. [SPEAKER_00]: He could see things moving around. [SPEAKER_00]: But he quickly realized everything that's moving is moving towards Esther. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think she was in bed.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's like, this is interesting because when you go to say on says, things tend to move towards the person controlling those things by strings or some other sort of fake device. [SPEAKER_00]: And everything's coming towards Esther. [SPEAKER_00]: They can't go away from her because if they're on strings, they can only come towards her. [SPEAKER_00]: And also there's no electricity. [SPEAKER_00]: Everything's like lit by can't, it's a super dim, dark room, setting the mood.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you look at sayances, that's also how they would do it. [SPEAKER_00]: And during spiritualism, you had thousands of these fake mediums and spiritualists and psychics and people being possessed by things. [SPEAKER_00]: And these are well documented and accounted people that were frauds that were making a huge amount of money. [SPEAKER_03]: outright con artists, taking advantage of people who have gone through a thing and are trying to fix it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so people are aware of how to set the mood, just because it's in the zeitgeist, it's in the move, it's in, it's the, they didn't have Netflix. [SPEAKER_00]: Everybody's watching spiritualism, reading about spiritualism. [SPEAKER_00]: It is the big, this is what they're doing. [SPEAKER_00]: So everybody kind of knows how to put on these shows. [SPEAKER_00]: They know some of the tricks or at least have heard of some tricks or whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I bring this up for a number of different reasons, but I believe that when you look at stories or accounts from any period of time that may deal with ghost or aliens or monsters, pop culture affects the way that people see things. [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not saying those things aren't true. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm just saying people see a UFO in the sky in the nineteen fifties UFOs look like UFOs in the nineteen fifties movies.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now they're like interdimensional shape shifting whatever because that's also what's [SPEAKER_00]: in pop culture, let's being talked about. [SPEAKER_00]: And the eighteen seventies, spiritualism, this big movement of belief that you can communicate with a dead, a lot of times it's through knocking. [SPEAKER_00]: That's all the fox sisters that started the whole movement would do it as through knocks. [SPEAKER_00]: And here's this story that includes knocks.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, things would move and you sit at the table and there'd be ectoplasm and all this stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: That's the pop culture of the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: and a lot of this story fits into that era that feeling like if this was a movie would have that look of an old say on you know kind of a single single lamp on the table it's really dark completely vignette everywhere else in the room [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, and it's uh, but I feel like that's influencing her, but I'm not saying that she was just making stuff up.
[SPEAKER_00]: I actually feel like she was, my personal belief is something's going on here, and it could be like you were saying something dealing with trauma, because that affects your physicality, affects your belief system. [SPEAKER_00]: Or she does that and it just becomes a way for her to take control over her whole life. [SPEAKER_00]: So she is experiencing anxiety and trauma, but she realizes people are paying attention to her.
[SPEAKER_00]: So she takes it to a next level and sort of invents things because she's trying to take some sort of control over her life. [SPEAKER_00]: And I have some thoughts on that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, because I think we think of like like, and I'm going to take this ultra modern as in today, we look at influencers and we look at social media personalities and just fame in general, like you're in the entertainment industry, your director, writer, producer, actually, you're deep seated in the business like I am. [SPEAKER_03]: So you know, when you get a taste, [SPEAKER_03]: of that fame and that attention, it's like freaking heroin.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like it is the most addictive drug on the planet. [SPEAKER_03]: And just because it's the eighteen hundreds, doesn't mean attention doesn't exist. [SPEAKER_03]: It's a, it's a seductive drug. [SPEAKER_03]: And this, like you said, this may have started to something very real for her. [SPEAKER_03]: But then when you like, because you see it now, you see people who aren't actors, who aren't performers, they do something dumb on the internet and next thing, you know, they're on Ellen.
[SPEAKER_03]: And like, like, and then the next thing, you know, they're in the news because they've gone to Venice Beach and punched a bodybuilder in the head and gotten beaten up. [SPEAKER_03]: And on the, you know, like, because when you get that taste of fame, you will do anything. [SPEAKER_03]: to keep it.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I can definitely see this being a thing where, you know, she got some attention and from that started as a very traumatic experience and then [SPEAKER_03]: started to do either either voluntarily or involuntarily consciously or subconsciously started to do these things that continued to pull people to her room continue to give her that attention.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know what I mean like like that I think that there is there is something very valid in that conversation of [SPEAKER_03]: because again, you're dealing with trauma response and I don't want to talk shit on this girl because I mean, I obviously was there and we're a lot of this is based on, you know, the hearsay of who was there and wrote the book.
[SPEAKER_03]: But you know, so I want to I want to treat Esther with with the the respect that that people who've experienced trauma deserve. [SPEAKER_03]: So I'm going to start there and say Esther did experience trauma and whatever happened after that may have been out of her control be that paranormal or be that someone who just was so hurt by something that someone did that they did what they needed to do to survive and that was put on a show.
[SPEAKER_03]: We see it every day in the in mainstream media we see it we see it on TikTok and in all the social media elements. [SPEAKER_03]: So why not Esther? [SPEAKER_03]: why not the lady of the hundreds doing taking advantage of a system that's built to one key per down and now people want to have a conversation with a woman.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think that that's a that I could a hundred percent see as they're taking that social media influencer plunge and being like yeah like you know I mean I don't know like because it does it takes work like these con artists they put work into it there you can watch videos on how like yeah and this is the mechanisms under the table that got a shake or you know the wiring to get the kind of things to flicker so
[SPEAKER_03]: but like did Esther have the time and the knowledge did she have a partner? [SPEAKER_03]: Was this writer, did this writer end up being her partner for some of this? [SPEAKER_03]: Like there's so many different twists and turns that I love this story because it's, you really could like I can sit here like a lawyer and make arguments for the paranormal and for the not hearing it. [SPEAKER_03]: That's I think that's what makes such an interesting story here. [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_03]: I really can't like I'm not walking out of this with a firm opinion on Esther and either direction and I think that's great. [SPEAKER_00]: I do too and you know this like I said this is a listener suggestion and I have got another listener suggestions. [SPEAKER_00]: I think I've only done one other episode that was a listener suggestion. [SPEAKER_00]: Ninety percent of them I can't do and I'll politely just be like oh cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks and it's because there's not that layer to it like not to say all my all my episodes are amazing stories at all. [SPEAKER_00]: But this one really stood out to me when I was reading about it because of these like layers to it. [SPEAKER_00]: These layers of like oh this could be completely fake. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh my god, she could have experienced this terrible situation. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh my god, maybe there was a ghost or ghost associated with this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it can go with so many different ways and I find that really fascinating. [SPEAKER_03]: Well, you don't have to have one or the other, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Like we live in a world that's, you know, I mean, again, you've got people who, for lack of a better term, believe in magic and don't, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Like magicians are a great example of this because what they do is [SPEAKER_03]: classified as magic.
[SPEAKER_03]: And because they're so secretive of how they do it to their audience, it is magic. [SPEAKER_03]: You know, and you can choose to believe that. [SPEAKER_03]: Like when I see a magician on stage, make something, when I saw David Copperfield make the Statue of Liberty disappear when I was a kid, like I believed in magic. [SPEAKER_03]: I believe David Copperfield was a warlock. [SPEAKER_03]: It was able to do incredible things, right? [SPEAKER_03]: But I think that's a
[SPEAKER_03]: like because because we live in that world with both sides of the fence, you know, I do wonder maybe I do see a world where this was maybe a mixture of things where maybe a traumatic experience did do something that that tapped her into a world that she was unfamiliar with and maybe once it reconciled she decided to hang on to that and and and ride that train as long as she could and maybe set a fire to a baby yeah full some string on a fork or something but a
[SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, give like stabs in the back. [SPEAKER_03]: That's an interesting one. [SPEAKER_03]: You know, how do you know if that really happened? [SPEAKER_03]: How do you how do you explain a pocket knife in the back from across the room? [SPEAKER_03]: So I don't know. [SPEAKER_03]: It's it's a gray area for sure. [SPEAKER_00]: It's when and whenever you get a writer that's involved like this Walter Hubble guy who I think was obviously just trying to make a quick buck.
[SPEAKER_00]: It really it really makes it hard to look at these things. [SPEAKER_00]: because most of what we know from our account really started with his book, but he was had such bias in the situation because he wanted to do a book. [SPEAKER_00]: He wanted to tour with the show. [SPEAKER_00]: He wanted like, I think he really was like, hey, this is something cool to do between theater seasons right now and make some money and go up there and write about ghosts. [SPEAKER_00]: But here we go.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he, she could have been, Esther could have been experiencing stuff very different from what he wrote about that we don't even know. [SPEAKER_00]: because he was like, ma'am, you know what? [SPEAKER_00]: The weird thing that just happened to you upstairs isn't as good as, let's say a fork stabbed you. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to write that a fork stabbed you.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, like he could have been the one making stuff up and there could be other things going on that are completely unbelievable and paranormal and whatever and we just don't know about it because he changed it or wrote about a fork stabbing or something else. [SPEAKER_00]: So [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, great thoughts, DJ. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm really glad you were the guest on this episode. [SPEAKER_00]: I think it was a perfect pair.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, I'm really appreciate it. [SPEAKER_03]: Any happy to come back anytime you want to talk about ghosts and paranormal. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, this is super fun. [SPEAKER_00]: I appreciate it. [SPEAKER_00]: Now I love it. [SPEAKER_00]: Do you want to plug things? [SPEAKER_00]: Because I know you got some stuff out there.
[SPEAKER_00]: You want people to pay attention to when you want to tell people [SPEAKER_03]: I do, I think the main thing I'd love to drive people towards right now is my Twitch channel in my horror podcast, Blood and Popcorn, which is on twitch.tv slash channel, twenty nine that spelled channel two nine.
[SPEAKER_03]: And yeah, we with my co-hosts, Denise Pantoha and Glenn Acres, we talk about [SPEAKER_03]: the past the present the future of the horror genre and it's a lot of fun and that's on Tuesday nights at ten thirty Eastern seven thirty Pacific on twitch.tv slash channel twenty nine. [SPEAKER_00]: Nice. [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much. [SPEAKER_03]: I can't wait to have you on that on that show. [SPEAKER_03]: I would love to. [SPEAKER_00]: I would love to. [SPEAKER_00]: I would love to.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would love to. [SPEAKER_00]: I would love to. [SPEAKER_00]: I would love to. [SPEAKER_03]: I would love to. [SPEAKER_03]: I would love to. [SPEAKER_03]: I would love to. [SPEAKER_03]: I would love to. [SPEAKER_03]: I would love to. [SPEAKER_03]: I would love to. [SPEAKER_00]: That's really awesome. [SPEAKER_00]: Everybody checked it out. [SPEAKER_00]: I'll try to provide some links and show notes to that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, anything else before we go, TJ, I feel like I'm forgetting something, but maybe I'm not. [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I don't think so. [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I would just say like, you know, to your audience, you know, don't believe everything you hear or read, but sometimes maybe do, because I think there's, there's a lot in this world that we as human beings can't comprehend.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it's fun to believe in magic sometimes, but sometimes that magic is a little scary. [SPEAKER_00]: And if it does, make sure you're ready. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, thank you for talking about scary stories here with me on an early morning. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm still drinking my coffee. [SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, thank you so much, DJ, I'll talk to you soon. [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for having me.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've just listened to a study of strange, consider helping us keep the lantern lit, illuminating the unexplained by subscribing to our sub-stack, just head to the support tab at a study of strange.com or leave a quick review and tap that subscribe button until next time, stay curious and stay strange.