Hello, spooky friends. I'm John, your host. And welcome to another episode of Dairyland Frights, the paranormal podcast that covers everything spooky, creepy, and mysterious in the midwest. And today, I am. I'm so honored to be joined by one of our own in the midwest, author T. Cruelos. Thank you so much for joining us here on the podcast. T.
Thanks for having me.
Yes. So, t, I'm going to. I don't mean to embarrass you, but you are an amazing writer, and I'm. If you don't mind, if you want to sit back for just a little bit and listen to your biography that I got off your website and everything, I I think people want to hear this because you'll definitely want to check out his books, go to his website, and, man, if you won a lot of awards. Holy cow. And I forgot he has a podcast, too. So come on, people. When do you have any free time?
I like to keep myself busy.
Yes. So a little bit about t. He's freelance journalist, an author from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, my birthplace. Yay, Milwaukee. Although we do have Jeffrey Dahmer. Oh, wow. Some of his favorite subjects to explore, including subcultures, social movements, weird news, the paranormal and strange personalities. And by the way, t, make sure you step in if I'm getting anything wrong or you're like, john, that's kind of what I do. But please, anytime you want to step in and correct me, feel free.
So far, so good.
All right. So he also writes about local arts and entertainment, lifestyle and food and drink. I love food and drink. Come on. And Milwaukee has some great restaurants for publications like Milwaukee magazine, Shepherd Express, and Milwaukee Record, his five nonfiction books. And please check these books out. I will put links on the episode. Please go and support a local author and independent author because, hey, Stephen King can have all the **** money.
So books are american madness, Wisconsin legends and lore. We'll talk about that apocalypse any day now. Oh, boy. I got, by the way, I ordered a couple books. Monster hunters ordered that book. And heroes in the night. He has been published in publications like, which I use all the time on this podcast, Atlas Obscura, 14 times and the Scandinavian Traveler. Okay. And writes a weekly column at his website, tiasweird week@tiacrulos.com. and he also, I don't know how this guy, boy, he never sleeps.
Tia has a weird week podcast, which I have listened to, and I love it. It's amazing. Weird stuff on there. Check it out. You won't be disappointed. And here we go. Boy, Tia was awarded a goad Milwaukee Press club excellence in journalism award in 2021. And you just won a recent award. Correct. I want to talk about that one. Yes, last night. Let's hear about that one.
Well, I'm a freelancer, so I write for Milwaukee magazine pretty frequently. I would say not every issue, but almost every issue. And last year they asked me if I wanted to write about the local surfing scene, which there are people who actually surf on Lake Michigan.
Get out of here.
Yeah. It's not very well known that that happens, but there is a very devoted following, and Milwaukee has a surfing scene. There's also a big surfing scene in Sheboygan, actually. So. So I wrote an article exploring that, and it's got nominated for the Milwaukee Press Club excellence in Wisconsin journalism awards in the sports story category, which is very unusual. I don't do a lot of sports writing, but this one happened to fit, and the award ceremony was last night, and I won gold.
So congratulations.
Congratulations.
It was a very fun article to work on.
You know, I bet it was surfers, Lake Michigan. I gotta read that one, my friend. Yeah, I don't think. Are these the same surfers, like, in California? Like, hang ten? Are they?
Yeah, it's very similar. Surfing on Lake Michigan, of course, has some differences. For one thing, you need to wear a well insulated bodysuit because Lake Michigan is really cold. And also you need to be ready to go because it depends very much on the weather conditions. So, like, not every day is a good day to be surfing on Lake Michigan. No, you gotta wait until the, you know, the warm air hits the cold water and produces those nice waves.
Crazy.
And it might be good in one spot and not in another spot. So I think that's kind of the appeal is you gotta, like, get your board ready and hit the road and see where the surfing is good and.
Yeah, yeah.
And get it while you can.
Wow, that's. That's amazing. I've never tried surfing, but my friend tried surfing when he was in Hawaii, and he showed me, his wife took pictures of him falling down a lot. So it's not easy, right? It's definitely not easy. But like I said, 2021. You won an award in Milwaukee magazine for on citizen Journalist.
Yeah.
Title reporting live from the street. So what was that like? Was it just talking to people who go on the street and talk to your locals and just say, what do they think of this? Or what was that about?
Well, this was kind of a trend. I don't know if people are still doing it, but with all of the protests that were going on around the country in 2020, there were people who decided that they wanted to document what was going on, so they just had their own cameras, and many of them would travel from city to city going to protest and other events and would live stream it so people who are stuck at home could see what was going on outside. And these people worked independently.
They often had a link to their. Their venmo or their. Their cash app or whatever.
Yeah.
And that's. They kind of funded it themselves. And some of them would sell footage to news stations as well. Oh, so that piece, I just kind of talked to. Some of the people who do this are kind of adrenaline junkies, I would say, because they're often going into situations that might be dangerous. Um, and, um, so I just interviewed them. And in particular, uh, I have infamous night in Kenosha where protesters got shot. Right.
Uh, they were the ones who were able to piece together what happened that night through their video footage.
So, yeah, that's. That's an amazing story. I will read that story. That's sad. That's. That was a very, very sad time in Wisconsin histories that if you want to go. I'm not a true crime guy, and that kind of falls in the area. True crime. But if you want to go and look at that, my spooky friends. Go and look at that. It's not paranormal, obviously, but go and look what happened after that shooting involved with the. I think he's not a man. I call him a boy who did this. It will shock you.
I don't give anything away. But let's just. Let's just keep it as that. But you picked up two more Milwaukee Press club awards in, I believe, 2022. Milwaukee magazine articles. This one, the last frame. And want to buy a famous tugboat.
Yeah, those two. The last frame was another gold winner, and that was about a bowling alley in Milwaukee called the Falcon bowl.
Oh.
Which is over 100 years old. And it looked for a period that its future was unknown, and people were concerned that this sort of beloved institution might be going away forever. But people rallied, and they bought the bowling alley. And I'm glad to say an update to that article is it's still. Still operating and still a very beloved neighborhood hangout over there.
Love it.
Yeah. And want to buy a famous tugboat. That is about my now friend Mark Guben. He is. You've probably not heard of him, but you might have heard of his rooftop, which reads from the Cleveland, and it's on the flight path to Mitchell International. Here.
Yes, yes, yes.
So he has been punking people with his rooftop for over 40 years now.
Oh, my God.
And he's a very wonderfully eccentric guy, as you can imagine.
Oh, yeah.
And he has a huge collection of bizarre artifacts from throughout history, including he has a tugboat that he named the Solomon Juno, and that's over 100 years old, this tugboat. But now he's getting to be quite elderly, and, um, he can't maintain the boat, so he's hoping to sell it. So if you're listening and you want to buy a historic tugboat, he is willing to make a deal with you more than the money. He would just like to see it go to someone that will appreciate it like he did.
Hmm. I could see it now. Dairyland Frights podcast on the tugboat.
Right. Broadcast from the boat.
Hey, there we go. And then not only are you in print, but you're in film too. You did a documentary you were a producer on. And correct me if I'm wrong, I'm your host. You won a 2022 Rico, is it Brico Forward Fun award? Is that correct? Yeah. So what was that one? I haven't had a chance to check it out, but I will.
Yes. That was very exciting. And it started with another Milwaukee magazine article, actually. I had randomly run into two horror hosts, doctor destruction and Dedgar Winter, who both have their own shows, and they're both based and were based in the Kenosha area. And horror hosts, if you're not sure what I'm talking about, if you know Elvira Svenuli, Joe Bob Briggs.
Oh, Joe Bob.
Even, you know, mystery Science Theater 3000, I don't qualify. There are shows where you have a host, and they introduce, usually kind of a crappy movie, and they make some jokes about, and then they show part of the movie, and then they appear again, like in the segments that go to commercial. So I was familiar with the classic hosts, but I began to see more and more horror host shows in the Kenosha area. And at one point, there was four that were on at the same time.
And they broadcast online as well as. Kenosha still has a cable access.
Oh, yes. Yeah.
So I was like, I think this is kind of unusual that this, you know, Kenosha is not a huge city.
No.
And they had more ***** hosts than Milwaukee or Chicago. So I started to look into it, and I wrote this article from walking magazine about this kind of unusual warho scene and really enjoyed working on it. And I was like, you know, this is a very visual story because they have these costumes and homemade sets. And a friend of mine introduced me to a friend, Alicia Krubsky, who was a film student. And I was like, you want to take a shot at doing a documentary version of this?
And we drove back and forth to Kenosha several times, doing interviews, and slowly put it together. We won the Brico grant, which is issued by Milwaukee Film, an organization here. And it came together, and we were able to officially premiere it at the Milwaukee Film Fest, which was just a couple weeks ago.
Nice. Nice. I remember a guy. I don't want to date myself, but here it goes. I remember a guy, american tv, when they were in business, in appliance, american tv, in applause. They had a guy, the local channel here, I believe, was in Madison, and he was on at midnight, and he would be introducing those crappy b horror movies. And I remember as a kid, I would watch that to be scared, and then I would have nightmares, and my mom would be like, will you stop
watching that? But I remember he looked like a really bad. And I'm a big old metalhead. I'm into, like, rob zombie and stuff. He looked like a really poor man's version of Rob Zombie. And he'd like this stuff, introducing the movies, and he'd do some gags, and you bring some people in, and I remember that. And then just one day just went off the air, like, you know, this.
You know, Madison area.
Yes. He was Madison.
Could have been there. Classic host from there called. His name was Mister Mephisto.
I think that was him.
Yeah.
I have to go back and check. That could be. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, I love that stuff. You know, we miss it. And I'm a big Joe Bob Briggs fan. He's. He's still going strong. Go check. You know, he still does stuff. You got to get shudder, you know? You know, the way it is today, you gotta, like, you can't, like going to your local whatever. You got to get, like, shutter. And he's still on there. But now you. You obviously have written books because you're an author, too. He's a book.
American madness. When the nasty National India Excellence Book Award in the current events category. His other book, Monster Hunters, was the finest in the 2015 Midwest Book Awards. And I think that's great. And even though you're known, as you said on your website, for stories, you spotlight unusual subcultures, social movements. And then you talked a little bit about your interests, which I thought was great. You said your interests are culture, which makes sense.
Sociology, art, entertainment, food, and drink. Yeah, I hear you. Music, literature, comedy, small businesses, you know, activism, hobbies, and, you know, I just think that that's really cool. And then you have talked to everyone. This is great. From comedians to mayors to graffiti artists to fishermen to burlesque dancers. The people who dress in superhero costumes that patrol the streets. Yeah. So tell me a little bit about that really quickly.
Well, you know, I think everyone has a story, or a lot of people do. And when it comes down to it, I just, I enjoy hearing people's stories, no matter who they are. So, I mean, oftentimes I'm drawn to unusual or unique people because, I don't know, that's just my thing. But. But, you know, I also do enjoy finding the story behind everyday people and, and what their life is like.
So, yeah, I've talked and talked to a wide range of people, and I freelance quite a bit, so it requires me to talk to a lot of people.
Yeah, and I think that's great because one of the things I started this podcast is because my love of paranormal, but I have spoken to Satanists, witches, paranormal investigators, doomsday people, you name it, authors. I would never, ever get the opportunity to do that beside this podcast. And when you talk to these people, well, I don't know why, but people are like, oh, that guy's a doomsday prepper, or he wears a superhero costume and he's what?
Hey, they're just people like you, and they're trying to make a difference. They're trying to make a living, they're trying to, you know, put themselves out there.
Right? Yeah. And I think in this day and age, too, it feels like, you know, our country is certainly very divided and, you know, and I think people hide behind their screens quite a bit.
Yes.
So I think it's important, you know, get out and talk to people and you start to realize that you might not agree with all their ideas. They're just people.
Yeah. Some of the nicest people I've ever met tv is guys you would see or women you would see who think they're going to kill me or something. Like they're covered with tattoos, they're just big. They talk to just big teddy bears. I know this one guy I work with, he was six foot, 5260, covered in tattoos. He could crush you like he'd crush a beer can. Sweetest guy ever. One time I had some trouble when I was working with him, and he was like, hey, let me help you out with that.
How can I help? What do you need from me? And, you know, my wife, when I brought him over the house one time, my wife was like, oh, yeah, first. But then he started talking to him. She's like, he's just a big teddy bear. And I'm like, yeah, you don't want to get on his bad side. Okay. But if you're on his good side, he'll do anything for you. He'll like, he's one of those guys you call 03:00 in the morning. Hey, man, could you come over here? I'm having some. Yeah, no problem. Be over there.
No problem. And that's, you know. How did I get to know that? I just walked up to him one day when nobody was talking to him at lunch. Hey, I'm John. Nice to meet you. Yeah, we just started talking.
Yeah, that's often the case.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. And then, like I said, your first three books, heroes in the night, monster hunters and Apocalypse any day now. Like, we're about unusual subcultures, real life superheroes, paranormal investigators, and end time preppers. Procrastinators. I'm sorry, I'm really helping that one.
Oh, yeah. You know? Yeah, right. Prognosticators. As someone that predicts the future.
Yeah. Which I love too. And then you can look where they've been published and stuff. One thing you did, American Madness, is about a conspiracy theory culture and how it has ruined people's lives. And that was published in 2020. Can you tell a little bit more about that?
Because I am a big conspiracy guy, but I also believe they can ruin people's lives, especially the satanic panic, which I haven't covered yet, which I want to cover one of these days, because I believe over 20 people went to jail because someone said, it's Satan. Like, what are you insane? Like, what are you. It's innocent people going to jail, spending years in jail over someone going, yeah, Satan.
Yeah, yeah, go ahead, american madness. I do talk about the satanic panic a little bit. I just give kind of a short summation of what it was. But I started that book. That was the longest I spent writing anything. I started working on it in 2010. 2010. And it got published in 2020. So it started because at that time, in 2010, I was working on my first book, Heroes in the Night, which is about this unusual group of people called real life superheroes that adopt their own superhero Persona.
And some of them actually go out and try to fight crime on the street. And some aren't that intense. Some do more of a charity, charity thing or something. So anyhow, I'm working on this book, and I get a message from a guy named Richard McCaslin. And he said, because I was doing a blog that was kind of updating my progress on this. Right. You know, I met. I met Green Scorpion the other week, and we hung out that type of thing.
Nice. And he says, I think you'd be interested in talking to me because I have the superhero Persona that I created, phantom patriots. And I actually raided a place called the Bohemian Grove, and I went to jail because of it. And I was like, what is this guy talking about? I'd not heard of the Bohemian Grove or anything like that. So I looked it up, and it is essentially a campground for very wealthy, powerful men.
Many presidents have been members, a lot of CEO's, politicians, and it's in northern California, and every summer they have a retreat there. And they kick things off by having this kind of unusual ritual in front of a giant statue of an owl, the great owl of Bohemia. And because it's a secret club, of course, there's a lot of conspiracies about this place. So Richard had gotten hooked on Alex Jones, who has just started his career.
And he saw a documentary, quotes documentary that Alex Jones had made about the bohemian grove. And he took it very literally. He got very upset because he believed that they were sacrificing humans in front of this owl. So he created this character, the Phantom Patriots, which was this kind of frightening skull mask and a jumpsuit. And he very heavily armed himself. He had an assault rifle, a pistol, a samurai sword, smoke bomb launcher, crossbow. And he went to this place and raided it.
And, you know, security guards saw him and called the police. He had a very tense standoff with the police where he almost died. And they arrested him. And he spent six and a half years in jail.
Yikes.
And he got out, and I met him a couple times.
Okay.
And, you know, I was. I think I was interested because he was such an unusual character. But I mean, I quickly discovered that his conspiracy ideas, a lot of people believe this stuff. So I kind of wanted the project became getting to know Richard, trying to understand why he believes some of these things, where they came from and stuff like that.
You know, sadly, I think the conspiracy weighed down on Richard so much that eventually, and this is kind of a spoiler for the book, he took his own life.
No.
Yeah.
Sorry to hear that.
Yeah. Well, I only hope that, you know, people can read it and maybe understand, like, what's going on here.
Yeah. And there's been some dangerous ones. Pizzagate, which is a really weird one. So pizza gate, bohemian Grove, I might do something on that. I'm not too. Man. It's interesting, though, but pizza gate, what happened was, it was, it was just made up. Someone said, a conspiracy, that there's a pizza place, the basement of this pizza place. All these politicians are like, I don't know, baby's blood. It was just really bad, child. Yeah, it was tried. It was, yeah, it was really, really bad.
So this one guy took it seriously, like your friend there.
Very similar story to Richard.
Very similar, yes. And went and shot out, I believe, a window. I don't think he hurt anybody. I'm not really sure on the story. I have to go back. But it was just that someone got so worked up and said to themselves, I got to do this. The other thing was with two, there's been other conspiracies out there where people have said, you know, breaks the area 51. We do know area 51 has secret government projects there. And they did a thing, I think it was three or four years ago.
Well, let's storm area 51. And millions of people got on. Let's get them. And the government was legitimately concerned, like, what are we going to do? We can't start shooting people in the streets and like, start giving the army to show up there. And like 100 people showed up. They had goofy signs and some guys were in their underwear being stupid. And luckily nobody got hurt. There were a few people arrested.
But the problem is, and, you know, you can get into the insurrection in January with the government. Yes, but that's a whole different podcast, which I don't do. But the whole, the whole thing is with conspiracies. It's good, I feel, to bring them out and let people go, huh. Okay, that's scary. That's really frightening. But is there really this happening or that happening? But if it brings light, there is sex trafficking. There is child trafficking. We know that.
But if it brings the light that you're sitting at home one day and you say to yourself, how can I help? Like, without violence, like, how can I help? Can I maybe work for an organization that deals with child trafficking and I can take my time, or maybe I can work with people who have been trafficked and help them find a home, you know what I mean? Get back into life.
It's much more constructive.
Yeah, yeah, let's use that constructively. Okay. And if there really is some people out there doing crazy stuff, yes. There's been kids who have Slenderman, for example, which I had on one of my shows where the innocent girl was stabbed because these two little girls thought there was a slender man, and they would go to the Shangri la heaven or whatever you want to say, and they actually did it. Okay. Right in your backyard. These are the kids, you know, right, who did that.
Now flash forward again. Good ending. One of the girl who got stabbed is going to college. She totally forgives those two girls. Totally forgives them. She's like, hey, I was young, whatever. But again, if you watch documentaries on this, certain people kind of allowed that to happen and kept pushing them, kept pushing them. And those. One of the girls was schizophrenic.
She had some mental issues, which is good for the parents in a sense that they know their little girl has issues and mental issues so they can get her the help she needs so she doesn't do this again or maybe works. So, again, I think that's really interesting to write books about that and especially that in your backyard. This isn't happening, like, just in New York or La or some of the babies.
This is happening in your backyard as we see your neighbor is doing maybe things that you're like, maybe I should try to help them or talk to them. I don't know what the answer is. All I do know is that we should look at this for a more constructive way. Right?
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, absolutely. Oh, go ahead.
Like you say, you know, there is. There is real, I mean, real conspiracy, you know, now that's made up. I, you know, certainly our government's done a lot of really messed up stuff.
Mkultra comes to mind.
Yeah, that's an example I give. In the book, I talk about some conspiracies that were real, but I think we're really in a critical stage where people need to learn some media literacy because there is so much completely fake stuff that gets circulated. A lot of times it's circulated because they're hoping it's going to damage someone politically or they just are trolling, I guess.
Yeah.
So, I mean, I see people get fooled by some obviously fake stuff, including myself. I've been fooled before, so.
Right. Yeah. Now, this is a book I ordered, and I ordered the last book because I love conspiracy and I love this Wisconsin legends and the lore 2020 collection of Wisconsin folklore. So talk a little bit about that. You know, I'm sure I just read a little bit of it, kind of a blurb, but, you know, hodag, beast of bray, road, stuff like that. Is there anything else you kind of want to talk about with that makes Wisconsin such a great state for all these legends and lore.
It really is. And I haven't done my podcast in a while, but I was doing that regularly with my friend Heidi Erikson, and we often commented about how unusual Wisconsin is. I don't. It's hard to find places that compare to it exactly, but it's so rich with storytelling, which I love, of course. And I think we just have this great culture for it. Dating back to indigenous people.
Had a lot of really interesting stories, especially about how certain parts of Wisconsin were formed, oftentimes by these monster like creatures like thunderbirds and Lake serpents. And. And then, you know, we had all the settlers who brought their stories from Germany and Ireland and Poland and all over the place. And we have a very strong tavern culture here. So people like to sit around and drink and tell stories.
Yes, we will talk about that. I didn't read this on your book. Have you ever heard of a story, maybe you put it in there called Haunchyville?
Yes. Yeah.
Okay.
That's in there.
Great.
I visited. I tried to visit Haunchyville.
How'd that go?
I did not find the haunchies. So the story behind this, this is from Muskego, I think, right?
I believe so, yeah. I'm trying to get up here. Yeah.
It's in the Milwaukee area. It's kind of one outer suburbs, but supposedly you go to the end of Mystic Lane, which is a real street, and you'll find a village of very angry little people who will chase you out. And the stories vary quite a bit. But in some stories, they have a very tall albino bodyguard that protects them as a shotgun. Some stories say they'll cut off your legs because they're angry that you're tall or, you know. So it's an urban legend.
And me and a friend, I was probably late teens, early twenties, me and a friend drove out there because we wanted to see what was going on. And we did see some small stone huts. I think this is probably where the urban legend started.
Yeah.
I think that they're just garden sheds or something.
Yeah, probably.
But they look like, you know, could be little cottages and there's a stop sign that's very low to the ground. So I think people's imaginations, you know, you know how it goes. Someone makes up one part of the story, and then they pass it along. Next thing you know, there's this huge mythology behind this.
Yeah.
And sadly, now, I think that's an urban legend that's going to be lost to the ages because that area has now been developed into a subdivision, so there's no mystery there anymore.
Yeah. So my spooky friends, I always. Tea. I always give warnings to my spooky friends. When we talk about graveyards and everything, what I say to them is, remember, this is private property. Folks do not do that. And cops, they're gonna arrest you because you're trespassing. Or at least, you know, so maybe not. Yeah, go ahead.
I hope this is a conspiracy. And maybe the police invented the story just so they can make money handing out trespassing tickets, because they are known to do that.
I love it. I love it. So we'll come back to that because I think that's really interesting. And then you also wrote the same paranormal, but a very interesting Brady street pharmacy stories and sketches 2021 short memoir of a greasy Spoon. Love greasy spoon diners, which they're not around that much, unfortunately. A pharmacy counter, you worked out in your youth, so, you know. There you go.
Yeah, that was a fun little project. You know, I didn't have big expectations that it was going to be an incredible bestseller or something, but I did work at this diner. It was called the Brady Street Pharmacy on the east side of Milwaukee. And it was your classic greasy spoon pharmacy counter. There was a small convenience store in it as well. And I worked there from about the time I was 20 till about the time I was 30. So I worked there for all of my twenties. And I just.
It was a place that had a lot of unusual characters that hung around there. So I had all these stories I would like to tell my friends over the years about, you know, this guy came in and he did this weird thing or whatever, and at one point I was like, you know, you. You should write those stories down because you're starting to forget some of the details.
Sure.
So I just, you know, spent time here and there writing some short stories about the regulars and my coworkers and myself a little bit, and it turned into a little book.
No, that's great, you know, because, again, greasy spoons are a lost art. Good luck trying to find one. You have to drive around and, you know, but, you know, I get it. It's really hard. I live here in Spring Green, Wisconsin, and it's so it's, you know, we do have some, but it's, you know, it's like we have an old dive bar, Baron Brooks. It's been there forever. It's where you can go in, get a burger and a brew and, you know, most people are just talking about sports and life and, you know.
Yeah, but it's still interesting that it's there, and I love that it's there. Again, corporate America has not destroyed everything we love, but that's a whole different podcast. Let me, I got some questions for you, t. First of all, did you always have the desire to be an author? Did you always like, hey, you know, this is something I want to do?
I think so. I didn't quite know that it was possible, but when I was young, I was a very avid reader, you know, and I really have my dad to thank for that. He would read me stories a lot and got me interested in reading. And even at a young age, the stuff that I like to read, superhero comics, any book I could find about UFO's or Bigfoot or ghosts, I read a lot of adventure, juvenile adventure stories, mystery and stuff like that. So I've always had love for these topics, I think.
And I started to write a little bit in high school. I was on the high school newspaper thing and I made my own zines, which are these kind of small self published publications.
You were the kid who went in when everybody's reading sports, or you said you're going, because I heard I do this too, and some of my guests do this too. And check out book on ghost. I think the librarian would be like, okay, yeah, I'd be like, UFO's. Woo. Like I'd be like ghost and UFO's. And I'd be, when I was a little kid, I'd be like, librarian, can you get more of these? And they'd look at me. Oh, sure, John. Yeah. Okay, we'll get more of those. Yay. And my mom, she was very good too.
She would buy stuff for my birthday and stuff. Although my mom, I remember the first time she was reading a book about Ed Gein, the butcher playing field, and I said to my mom, I was like, twelve, what is that? And my mom didn't hold back and she, it's a different parenting, right? And she didn't hold back and she told me and showed me pictures and I was like, I'm kind of interested in that too. So, yeah, she inspired me that. Let me ask you another question. What inspires you to keep writing?
Like, you know, it's really hard in today's world because there's so much, right, YouTube, this, that, and Amazon, blah blah, blah blah blah, and on and on and on. And anybody can be an author, right? Anybody, quote, right? What inspired you to be like, you know, I love talking to these superheroes and these burlesque dancers and whoever else right.
I mean, it's just, it's something. It's a passion of mine. I mean, there's like this unbeatable feeling when you're digging into a story and it's going well. I mean, it doesn't always go well. Sometimes it's got challenges, for sure. But when you're on track with a good story, it's very exciting that you're able to do that and share it with people and help explain some part of this world that we live in.
Yeah. So let's go into that, because I do have authors listening to this, as well as wannabe authors like yourself, who's very accredited and has won a number of awards and has success in it. What would you say to them? Like, how do you know it's a good story? Like, you could do anything, right? You could literally do, like, I can write about this building, I can write about this lake, you know, I can write about legends of lore. How do you go about saying, okay, this is a good story.
It has some legs to it, or whatever. You want to say me to it. How do you go about that and do your research?
I mean, I think it depends a little bit, but things that excite me about getting into a story, one would be, it's not something that's been done to death. Like, there's a lot of topics that have been written about so much that I don't think I would be able to add anything new to it. I think a lot of stories have some sort of emotion at the heart of it, you know, you got to care about the people that you're reading about.
Sure.
I mean, I guess not. There's a lot of historical writing. Well, even then, you know, you kind of want to find something that people can connect to.
Sure.
But, yeah, yeah, you gotta find an interesting topic and something that you would be good at writing about, too, you know? Like, yeah, there's topics I wouldn't be good at writing about, so I just wouldn't get into it, you know?
Yeah. So let's go to the old staple of write what you know, uh, when you're talking about that to a young author, and they go, hey, t, I'm like, I want to be an author. I want to do this. And they keep telling me, write what you know. Well, all I know is baseball. I'm just going to throw that. All I know is baseball. What would you say to that person? You're like, okay, you know, baseball. This is my suggestion.
What you should do if someone's really into baseball, and they want to write about that. I would, um, you know, I would say keep your eyes open for an interesting story. You know, maybe it's telling the story of a particular player who had to overcome adversity in their life, but, you know, had that passion and drive that made them a success or, you know, look for an interesting chapter of history. There certainly has been many in baseball.
You know, it could be like a scandal, you know, like, if you're looking at some of the classic baseball scandals or, you know, a team that had an incredible season, you might write about that season in particular and try to interview people with that. It's a. It does require a lot of, like, exploring, and you're gonna have some false starts and ideas that aren't gonna pan out. But if you keep looking, you know, I think you'll eventually will connect with something.
Yeah.
That works.
I would say to that person, look up the Pfister hotel, Milwaukee, and then go and talk to the baseball players. Grown men who are like, 63250 can bench press a house and have said, and I quote, I will never stay there again. It is haunted, and forget it. Yeah, that's an angle, right? That's a different angle for you. It is talking to sports players who say, I won't stay at that place. It is haunted. There's many, many, many haunted hotels across the United States and the world.
I do have one for you, Tia, that I was going to suggest right now, if you don't, if you give me this pleasure. There is the legend of albino cannibals in Hummel park in Ohio, and no one's ever done a story on them. I did a podcast on them. There's this Hummel park. It used to be a Hummel park. So this is. I love this story from my paranormal. You can go back and listen to the episode. So when you go into this park, the first thing is the entrance to the park. The marker looks like a gravestone.
It just says humble park. And then the trees are, like, bowed over, and supposedly they're bowed over because this. Okay, a little golden time here. Kitties, take off your headphones. Is they would hang slaves from these trees. So the trees boat over, and you can hear the still. The screams of the slaves trying to survive, you know, and get loose. The other thing, and this is my favorite, two favorite things.
First, there are albino cannibals in Obi in the park, which, of course, it was an older family who lived in this park, and they basically became cannibals. Not much of a story behind there, but you could research it and find out. And last but not least, there is a stairway to hell in the park that, when you get to the top, supposedly doesn't happen all the time, but a portal opens. Satan comes out and grabs you and takes you to hell. So come on, dee, let's go.
Yeah, no, you know, I hadn't heard this story, but it definitely piques my interest. And, you know, when you look into it, sometimes there is. You discover, like, an urban legend kind of grew around an actual thing. Like, maybe there was a family of albinos who hung out there and in this rumor, started about them and evolved, you know?
Yeah. Yeah. So last but not least, before we get to the. Excuse me, the paranormal.
Yeah.
How did you go about publishing your first book? Like, what did you do to get that published? Because that's, you know, not easier. It's easier said than done, I think it is.
Yeah. It's tough. And I think a lot of writers probably drop out because the process is very tough. No one likes to be rejected. And if you're trying to sell a book, you're going to be rejected. I guarantee it. So I got rejected so many times, I can't even count. But, you know, I believed in the book, so I was working on it without having any sort of deal for years.
I would just kind of save up money, and then I would take a long weekend and go out to New York and hang out with the New York initiative was a team out there where I would go to, you know, I went to San Diego and I went Oliver. And, you know, I kept looking at publishers, and then I found one that I thought might be a good fit, which was Chicago Review Press. They're a mid sized publisher out of Chicago, obviously.
And I found that one of their editors was an author himself, and he had written not like the weird Wisconsin. His series was called strange. He wrote Strange Wisconsin, strange Illinois, strange, Ohio.
Right.
Jerome Poland is his name. And I was like, well, this guy at least appreciates strange stuff, I would guess. So you write what's called a book proposal. It's pretty much an outline of your book. And I sent it to him, and he said, all right, we're gonna do it.
That's. Yeah, yeah. So getting out there, right? Getting out there networking, finding people that maybe in your kind of same line, you know, author or somebody upcoming. Right. Maybe that's a good way to do it, too.
And you need to understand the perspective. If you're sending something to a publisher, they get mounds and mounds of submission every day. A lot of times, they don't even really read them. They just kind of, like, get the gist of it, and they're like, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. So you've got to have a thin skin. If you get a rejection letter. You can't be like, I'm a terrible writer. I shouldn't be doing this. You got to be like, all right, I got this rejection.
I need to move on and try to find the right connection.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's tough. It is really tough.
Yeah. But, yeah, right. You say you just gotta. You gotta be persistent. You gotta keep going. You gotta be able to handle rejection. And no, at the end of the day, you talk to a superhero. You talk to whoever, a doomsday prepper that you go, huh? I never really thought about that. And, you know, that's, to me, that's a great thing, right? Like I said, I talked to a woman who's a practicing witch from the Netherlands. I never thought I'd ever do that. Yeah, talk to her. She's an amazing person.
She's a nice person. She's a mom with three kids. Now, what's your. When you hear witch from the Netherlands, what's your thing? You think she's in a basement sacrificing babies and probably black, you know, has black shroud over her head and. No, she's just a mom just trying to make it, you know, and she just believes in this stuff, and it makes her stronger. And I'm like, okay, cool. Like, I didn't know that. So let's talk a little about. Let's get into the paranormal. Okay.
Yeah.
So tell me a little bit about. Have you. Tell me about a paranormal experience you have had, and it can be something. Well, you know, I thought I saw a ghost or a shadow, whatever. What paranormal experiences have you had? And share it with my audience.
Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, I mean, it's. It's fairly new to me, and while it is and isn't, like I mentioned when I was a kid, I love to read about this stuff. I read about Bigfoot, UFO's in particular. When I was a teenager, I think X Files was popular, and I was very interested in real UFO cases. So I read a lot about it. And then I finished my first book about the real life superheroes. My publisher at Chicago Review Press, they're like. And this was very encouraging to hear.
They're like, you did a really great job with this book. We want to sign you up for another one. What do you want to do. And I had a couple ideas, but the one that really stuck out, I was like, you know, I've kind of seen these guys on tv on shows like Ghost Hunters, and I know that there's people who are dedicated to investigating paranormal stuff, and I'm really curious about that. I would love to go on some investigations to find out what this is all about. Are these people credible?
Are they. Are they quacks? You know what's going on here.
Yeah.
And they approved that because paranormal stuff, you know, is kind of a hit. There's a lot of hit shows and books and stuff. And so I got to work, and I hooked up with a group here locally called the paranormal investigators of Milwaukee. And I pretty much approached them, and I was like, how would you feel if I tagged along with you for, like a year or a year and a half? And they, you know, they thought over and they agreed. So I ended up doing a lot of ghost investigations with them.
I also traveled around. I went to the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine, and got to meet Lauren Coleman, who was authored dozens and dozens of books about cryptids. I went to the Mothman festival. I went to the international UFO Congress, which is a big UFO convention in Arizona. And so there was a couple of weird things that happened during all this.
Okay.
One was I joined the paranormal investigators of Milwaukee to investigate a place called Bobby Mackey's music world, a famously haunted location in. In Kentucky. And it's creepy. It's a creepy place and supposed to have a portal to hell and all sorts of stories. A guy at one point tried to sue the bar because he claimed that ghost beat him up in the men's room. And, yeah, there's all these stories.
And it was a very creepy night, and I didn't experience anything directly, but a member of the team, who I think is not someone who fabricates stuff, she started crying at one point and said that she had lost her sight and the feeling in her hands. And another person on the team at one point felt like they were being possessed by an angry spirit. And on another trip that they had made, I wasn't there with them, but someone actually got pushed against the wall by an unseen force.
It's. Yeah, it was creepy. But the big experience I had was actually, this is getting towards the end. I had a deadline approaching, and I was like, okay, there's one more thing I want to do, which is I want to get out there with a Bigfooter and see if we can find Sasquatch, you know?
Yeah.
So Lauren Coleman suggested that I talk to a researcher named Jim Sherman, who lives in Michigan, and he is a member of the Bigfoot field researchers organization, which a lot of people know. It's. It's kind of represented on finding Bigfoot. It's a big, big organization, and Jim is a great guy, very normal guy. I mean, he's a high school history teacher. He's a track coach, you know, and just looks like the most normal guy that you can imagine.
But, you know, on the weekend, he loves to go out in the woods and see if you can find Bigfoot. So he was like, okay, there's this property here in Michigan that I've been to a couple times, and there's weird, weird stuff going on there. So I'm gonna go there later this month if you want to meet me there. We'll spend the weekend looking for Bigfoot. I was like, great. This is just what I want. So, the last night we were there, we had this really wild night.
I was about to go asleep, and I heard this blood curdling scream. And I don't. We don't know what that was like. It could have been a coyote or something.
Sure.
We don't know. But anyway, you know, I was. I was very frightened. I got my tent. I thought for sure I was gonna see Bigfoot standing there. Jim was in his jeep. So I go over to his jeep, and we're sitting there, and he was like, did you hear that? And I was like, yeah, of course I heard that. It was really loud, like, scream. And then there was this, like, banging on the ground, like something was running away.
Ooh.
But this is not the weird thing that happened. What happened then is I'm looking out the window of the jeep at the field, because I'm seeing if there's some big shape walking around. I'm like, oh, man, that must have really scared me, because I'm shaking. The star in the sky is shaking. I was like, wait a minute. Now it's something moving. And it was this big ball of light that was, like, hovering and bobbing up and down.
And then it would, like, zip over a pretty significant distance, and it would hover there, and then it would zip over here. And once in a while, this very strong light was coming out of the bottom of it. And we both got out. We looked at it through binoculars for quite a while. We got video of it. The video is terrible because we can't focus on it, follow it. But it was. It was very strange. And I'm not saying it was the alien mothership, necessarily. But, yeah, it's.
I got to experience what's like when you see something like that, because everyone was like, so you were out in the sun with a Bigfooter guy, and then you saw this UFO, and they're like, it was probably a drone. I was like, first of all, this is at, like, three in the morning, and, yeah, it did not move like a drone can move or any aircraft that I know of.
So it was a weather balloon to you, right? Yes, weather balloon. Swamp gas. So your book covers. One of my favorite topics is I had on some paranormal investigators from Whitewater, and we were talking about the witches of Whitewater. And people are like, what? My. And my sister went to Whitewater, and she related some stories to me, um, too, you know, that were like, okay, like, nobody went near this tower is called the witch's tower. Yeah, boy, help me out here, tia.
Yeah.
Like, here's the stories I've heard. What they told me was there was a woman. She was not convicted, but think she's. Boy, that she was a witch. I can't remember her name, but if you can kind of help me out, kind of fill in the blanks here, because it was done a little while ago, so go ahead.
Yeah. Well, I wrote about that in my book, Wisconsin legends and lore, which was really fun to work on. But like we were saying before, a lot of these stories, they come from somewhere.
Yes.
And in this case, Whitewater was home to the Morris Pratt Institute.
Yes.
Which was a school for spiritualists, and it was built in the late 18 hundreds when spiritualism was fairly popular. Yes. But, of course, in somewhat of a small town of Wisconsin, it was viewed as being weird, for sure, that these people had built a school where they had normal classes. You could take classes in, like, math and geography, but they also had classes on how to communicate with the dead and, you know, how to stage a seance and stuff like that.
So the locals nicknamed the school the Spook temple. And. And they started speculating, and they were kind of. The school maybe harmed themselves because they were a little bit. They weren't very open about what they were doing.
Yeah.
You know, maybe they should have had some open houses or something like that.
Right? Zaggy, come on in. Check out the sound.
Right. But people then started, you know, oh, they're conjuring up ghosts and they're witches, and. And those stories began to evolve. That's. These witches from the school would hold a black mass in front of the witch's tower on campus, and the library at the. At the college supposedly has this book. The spell book that they locked up. Yes. And you can't see it, because if you do, you'll go insane from the magical power that it has.
So all these stories started, and especially being a college town, I think a lot of college kids probably hazed each other by telling each other scary stories about what was happening. There's even. It's called the witches triangle. There's three cemeteries in town, and they form a triangle because any three points do. And supposedly inside of this triangle is where all this weird stuff happens. And there's a story about a ghost of an axe murderer who appears in one of the cemeteries.
Yeah, lots of stories.
I love it. I absolutely love it. One of the things, too, that the people that were on when they went to the school and when they were younger, there's a. Well, there's a barbed wire fence around it. You're not supposed to go around. I don't know if they've changed it recently. Hopefully they have. But anyway, they, you know, these. They're kids. So they tried to go in it, and they got scared.
But one of the things he related to me was when he was trying to jump over the fence, he felt someone, like, pull him back. He said, john, when I jumped on the fence, it was like someone was pulling me back. And I thought it was my buddy, you know, just doing it because he's afraid I would hurt myself or whatever. He says, no, john. He goes, I fell back. I look back, there's nobody there, john. There's absolutely nobody there. And so they.
They get over there, and he says, like, he had to limp for a week because he jumped the fence and got caught, you know, on his pant leg, and he fell. But he said, he swear to God, he said, john, I saw, like, weird shadows in the campus after that. He goes, it was really, really freaky. Flash forward.
This guy does a tour for Wisconsin, whitewater, every Halloween and during October, where you can go on a ghost tour of Whitewater, go to the witch's tower, go to the triangle cemetery, go and see other things. And I thought that was so funny. I was like, so wait a minute. You got an actual experience, and now you're actually doing a tour? He goes, yeah. And he goes in. We're pairing. We're paranormal investigators. You know, from time to time, we like to go there.
And they've gotten some interesting evps and some other things, which is. Right. Just witches in Whitewater. Not to mention, I found a film called the Witches of Whitewater that a local director, producer, independent guy tried to make. There is a trailer out there that I put with the episode when it was on my podcast. That was a really, really good trailer. Of course, it's Hollywood. Hollywood, but it's indie horror, so you can't be like, hey, there's witches, and they're bad.
No, you had the show like, blood. You had the show Ouija board. You had to show people like, oh, God, the witches are trying to, you know, whatever. Yeah.
A very fun place to visit there, by the way, because of the spiritualist school. Whitewater got the nickname second Salem, you know.
Yes.
And so they're. I don't know if they're still open. I hope so. But there's a second Salem brewing company which brews their own beer, and they have food, and it's nice because the beers all tie into the local lore. So there is like a witch tower ale, and Elkhorn's not too far up the road, so there's a piece of bray road beer that they have, and the art is really fantastic for the.
Check that out.
The labels.
Definitely check that out. So do you have a favorite legend or lore?
I mean, there's so many that I really like. The beasts of Bray Road, of course, is a great story.
Yep.
The Hodag. I was glad to see Hodag was a clue on jeopardy. Recently.
Yes, we're famous.
And so that's a fun story. I haven't been there, but I know the guys who run it. There's a very cool Hodag store that you can visit in Rhinelander that has, you know, shirts and toys and Hodag vodka and all sorts of stuff. But, you know, the Pfister hotel, too, like you mentioned, that's a story that I like, I should mention. I am a tour guide for american ghost walks.
Oh, Mike Huberty. I had him on the show. Yes.
I'm one of his employees here in Milwaukee. I lead the. We have a third wardrobe tour downtown and then another downtown tour called the shadow of city hall. And we actually stopped by the Pfister Hotel. And that, of course, is one of the favorite stops on the tour, just because the stories are so good and we have a chance to walk through the lobby so people can check it out for themselves.
Yeah, yeah.
But there's also lesser known stories. I really like. The Christmas tree ship.
Yeah, tell them.
It's a great story. Before we, you know, the rail system was really in place, and certainly before we had trucks, they would. People would go up to the. Up northern Wisconsin area, harvest Christmas trees. And then they would sail down the lake to Chicago and dock there and sell the trees right off the boat. So it was known, the ship was the Ralph Simmons, but it was known as the Christmas tree ship. But 1 November, they got a little bit too ambitious.
They loaded the ship up with, you know, thousands of trees and the ship was not in great shape. And Lake Michigan can be very dangerous, especially in the winter.
Absolutely.
So the ship went down, all hands were lost. And Christmas trees washed up to shore for years that followed. And the story is that, you know, on a stormy winter night, or sometimes specifically on the dates that went down, which was sometime in November, I don't remember. But you can see the ghost of the ship sailing down Lake Michigan, trying to make its way to Chicago. And eventually they did find the ship.
It wasn't until the seventies a scuba diver found it and got some very eerie images because the trees are still in the ship, but all their needles are gone. So you have these very skeletal looking trees packed in the ship. So I was. I don't know, I just like a good maritime ghost story seems very classic. And it's. It's kind of a. An interesting but not very well known ghost story here in Wisconsin.
Yeah. And I just did the Lake Michigan triangle a couple episodes ago where numerous ships, a plane in the eighties, seventies, eighties, crashed in there. And it hit it so hard that just obliterated the plane and then thought UFO's were tied to it. In Lake Michigan they have ley lines, you know, people are familiar with that. Like I said, it's kind of a magnetic forces and it's crazy, you know, it's a huge lake too. And I was just like, wow, I gotta do this.
I've never heard of Lake Michigan Triangle. And like yourself, I like to try to do, you know, things. Maybe it's not top of mind like Amityville or, you know, sailing witch trials or something that's been done to death. Right. Certain poltergeist stories. One of the other things too is I think you did something like this. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I did a story on mineral point vampire and the Ridgway ghost, which is. I love those. Those are just great. Those are great. Go ahead.
Yeah, yeah. I mentioned both of those in Wisconsin. Legends and lore, you know, just short, short entries on each of those ridgway ghosts is great because I believe that's the oldest ghost story in the state. You know, it's. It's a story that's been told for many generations now. There's a variety of different stories about it, but they're all pretty good, you know.
Yeah.
Some pretty classic ghost stories. Guys are playing poker and then a ghostly hand deals himself in and.
Yeah.
Terrifies the whole bar, you know. And I love it. I also very much love it when cities embrace those stories.
Absolutely.
So Ridgway, it's a small town, but their water tower has a ghost, a.
Little ghost on it. Yeah.
So a little tribute to their famous ghost story there. Yeah.
And they also have, every June or July, they have a ridgeway ghost, little, you know, parade rock run. They have a little thing they give the charity, Rylander has the hodag. So I wanted to ask you, though, before we wrap up here, have you done shakes? Chicago. Chicago cigar bar, have you done that? Because that's haunted shakers. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Shakers. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I wrote briefly on them in Wisconsin. Legends and lore, too. I have a section where I just give you, like, the top five haunted bars in the state. And so they, they definitely made that list. I've been there a few times. It's a, it's a very interesting place. It's very beautiful because it looks exactly like it probably did over a hundred years ago.
Yeah.
So it did used to be a speakeasy in a brothel. And they've, they've really played that up. They do their own tours there. They have a lot of claims about ghosts. I don't know how many of those are what's true and what's. Maybe not, but it's a cool place to visit if you hate cigar smoke. Probably not a great place because it's the only building that you can smoke in in Milwaukee. So.
Yeah. Have you done anything about the wonder bar in Madison? Because that was Al Capone and everybody kind of hung out there, supposedly. Yeah. Gangsters.
Yeah, I know of it. And I wrote briefly about it in the book as well, you know. And what little I know about, I think probably heard from Mike. Mike Huberty.
Yes.
Because I know that they include that story of that in their tour in Madison, so.
Yes. Yeah.
I haven't been there. And I believe if I'm right, it's closed now. Right?
Correct, correct.
Oh, man. Yeah. I'd really like to check it out. And especially they have, like, some story behind, there's a painting of a, of a woman in the bar, that there's some significance to that.
And people who have been there, Mike was telling me a story about people have taken pictures of what they believe is Al Capone like an apparition of a gangster, like a guy, the fedora, long coat on, you know, just what you would see as a gangster. But people have said, you know, they have felt, you know, they've been pushed. They've been, you know, grabbed. They've been, you know, and I don't, you know, the bar closed down, not just to make it clear to all my spooky friends out there.
The bar closed down. Not because of that. It closed down because, oh, you know, we're into all these different things nowadays, so we just don't go to these bars anymore. Right.
Yeah. Especially, you know, pandemic era was very, very tough for businesses. Al Capone's ghost, by the way, very. He gets around. In fact, I think I wrote an article called, like, al Capos Ghost gets around or something like that, where I mentioned all some of the various places he's been seeing. Alcatraz, you know, and Chicago. Certainly. He did hide out in the north woods of Wisconsin.
Yes.
There's a lot of places associated with him.
Absolutely. So, tia, I could talk to you for hours. You're awesome. We have some great stories. I'd love to have you back on. There's a bunch of things I didn't talk to you about, but what do you got coming up? What you can tell my spooky friends they can check out.
I'm working on developing some book projects. There's nothing that's really solidly moving forward at this point. I have my hand in a couple of documentary projects, too, continuing to freelance articles from Walkie magazine, Atlas Obscura. So I'm busy with a lot, but no, like major project that's rolling out soon. People should certainly check out my website, tcrulos.com. i always update with new stuff there.
Yes, please check that out. I am a subscriber now. I love it. I love that I was brought to, someone brought me to your attention because there's so many great authors and everything that I'm discovering here in the midwest, and I've just touch that just brief surface. I love having, especially midwesterns and westerners who could talk about, you know, who've lived here all their lives, and you talk about all the crazy stuff that happens here and that people don't get it.
People are kind of like, oh, really? I never thought Midwest was like, oh, that's unbelievable. Cryptids, ghosts, you know, we had two serial killers that have influenced movies and books and my gosh, you know, just on and on and on and on. You can, you can find something whether true crime or ghosts or cryptids, so.
Or even weird places like House on the rock, you know, house on the.
Rock that right down the road from me and Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin is right down the road from me. I mean, it's just it's beautiful. It's a beautiful state, and we love it here. And, you know, it's so many great things that you guys, everyone can check out. So again, thank tv. This has been amazing. I love to have you back on the podcast and we talk a little bit more about what's coming up there and kind of get a little more into more legends and lores. But anyway, again, thank you so much.
We end every show by saying hi to your ghost, no ghost, because you never know, you might have a ghost and then stay spooky. All right, thanks, t. Have a great one.