S2 – 7: Dark and Bloody

came up empty again and again. I couldn't find any history attached to the home that would cause unexplained phenomena. No deaths, nothing on the land before it, no tragedies nearby.

Except one day I did have a breakthrough. Imagine being told that the house you built and put your blood, sweat, tears and savings into was being ordered immediately vacated, not just your house, but your entire neighborhood, churches, stores, schools, that the government was ordering you out under the law of eminent domain, and there was nothing you could do about it. Some become desperate an attempt to move their homes. Some dismantle them and take the wood elsewhere to hopefully rebuild.

Others simply take them easily stipend offered by the authorities and leave everything they've known. Then the water comes slowly at first, but soon all you knew is now at the bottom of a lake, quiet eerie, a monument to entire lives completely displaced, all for a dam. That house that was haunted was built from wood taken from piles of dismantled homes that had been taken apart prior to

a local dam being built. That would, to me, carried the energy and weight of entire lives up ended without any choice otherwise, that would contained memories of family's weddings, births, deaths, holidays, birthdays, you name it. When we started asking about the damn, the E V P s came quickly, water submerged, help change. I've long speculated that the energy of the wood caused the activity in that home, which takes us to today's haunt. An entire damn that never quite got it right, and

its history begins with the words dark and bloody. Join me as we take a very literal deep dive into the rapids of the Tennessee River and visit Hale's bar Damn. I'm Amy Brunei, and this is Haunted Road. Hale's Bar damn had the odds stacked against it from day one and honestly probably shouldn't have ever been built. The carst formations in the area of Hal's Bar form a fractured cavernous system on and below the riverbed. Hale's Bar Dam

was built on a faulty foundation. On the very day after Hale's Bar Dam filled its reservoir, engineers noticed water bubbling downstream of the dam. The dam was leaking due to the fractured bedrock. Before and during the arrival of white settlers in the Tennessee area, the land was used by the Cherokee people. This has resulted in one of the most consistently repeated motifs in the story of Hale's

Bar Dam, the alleged curse of Chief Dragon Canoe. In seventy according to historical accounts, a Native American warrior, Dragon Canoe, upset that his tribe was trading hunting grounds to European settlers and what is now Kentucky and Tennessee, angrily warned that this land would be arc and bloody. The warning was apt, as the region featured an especially hazardous section of the river below Chattanooga that included the area known

as the Narrows or the Tennessee River Gorge. As westward settlement continued, there were many accounts of the dangers associated with the Narrows, whirlpools, and shoals with colorful names such as the boiling pot, the suck, the skillet, and the frying pan. According to historian Sherry Teal, this illegal land deal between Richard Henderson and some of the Overhill Cherokee

chiefs occurred near present day Wataga, Tennessee. In March sevent Dragon Canoe opposed the deal, and his reported words loom heavy in historical accounts of the event. Henderson and Daniel Boone visited Dragon Canoes father to show the Cherokee peace chief and others the goods that they would receive in

the deal. This means that Richard Henderson traveled more than one hundred fifty miles over the Appalachian Mountains from North Carolina into the Overhill Cherokee territory during the winter to show goods to these chiefs. Why they wanted to strike when the iron was hot, or more precisely, while the winter was brutal and draining prior to the killing frost

There had been a historic three year drought. The effects of the frost and drought upon the Cherokee would have lessened their resources during the winter, or at the very least strained them. It is probably not a coincidence, then, that Boone and Henderson visited the Cherokee during a lean winter, perhaps speculating that the pressure for Cherokee leaders to agree

to a deal would have been strong. However, the story claims that Dragon Canoe was furious he refused to accept the treaty and spoke a curse on the ground he had fought for this idea that a mystical curse and not the threat of pushback from a skilled war chief, plagued the land and river, and manifested during the construction of the hales Bar Dam. It was constructed on the same stretch of the Tennessee River that his strategic strongholds sat.

More than a century before. Contemporary to Dragon Canoe, the waterway was referred to as the Suck by French explorers, but amongst the Cherokee people it was believed to be the home of uk Tina, the Great Horde serpent, who lived in the rivers of the Cherokee homelands and controlled the currents of rivers, creating whirlpools and other deadly river hazards.

So what is the suck. The fast moving currents of Suck Creek flow from the north and its waters empty into the slower westward moving current of the Tennessee River. The faster creek waters caused lower pressure to be near to the mouth of the creek. This causes the water to whip around the low pressure, forming the whirlpool called

the Suck or uk Tina. Before the Tennessee Valley Authority dam projects of the early twentieth century, the Suck would have been formidable, and it is still present today as a water navigational hazard for vessels on the Tennessee River.

After colonizers moved in, they began to wonder how they could mitigate and perhaps harness the power of the Tennessee River, along with Mussel shoals and the Elk River shoals further downstream, The Tennessee River gorge had long been one of the major impediments to river navigation in the upper Tennessee Valley. While various nineteenth century canal projects had minor success in extending navigation across the shoals. The Tennessee River Gorge remained

largely untamed, so enter the dam. This valley of the whirlpool rapids had not been tamed by the turn of the twentieth century. To improve navigation on this particular hazardous expanse and to provide electricity to Chattanooga, government approval was given to the Chattanooga and Tennessee River Power Company to Old Hales, bar Lock and dam. It has the distinction of being the first main river multi purpose dam built

on the Tennessee River. In eight several Chattanooga business interests formed the Tennessee River Improvement Association to lobby for efforts to extend year round navigation to Chattanooga, and around nineteen hundred, Major Dan C. Kingman of the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, drafted a design for a dam that would flood the Tennessee River gorge and remove the swift current in various hazards that had long prevented large scale navigation

through this stretch of river. Congress passed the enabling legislation on April nineteen o four, and with funding from Chattanooga entrepreneur Charles E. James and new York financier Anthony Brady Guild formed the Chattanooga and Tennessee River Power Company to oversee the project. The project was estimated to cost three million dollars, but by the time the project was finished

in nineteen thirteen, it costs ten million dollars. So just for reference, in one three million dollars would be about ninety three million dollars and ten million dollars would be about two hundred and eighty three million dollars. Construction began in nineteen o five, and it proved to be a massive undertaking. The project employed thousands of men, requiring the construction of a village to feed and house the workers

and their families. Because people lived on both sides of the damn, a tunnel two and a half feet wide and six and a half feet tall was built underneath the dam to allow easy access from side to side. It was fraught from the get go, and between nineteen o five and nineteen ten, four different contractors failed to complete the project because of difficult foundation conditions. Another source claimed that not one, but two communities were constructed in

order to house the workforce and their fami Lee's. The work required to build such a structure was demanding and dangerous. Since thousands of men worked three shifts around the clock in wet and muddy conditions without strong safety regulations, it is not surprising that there were injuries and fatalities. Nony Webb, an expert on Hale's bar, noted that the total number cannot be documented, but she has provided examples of the

types of violent accidents that occurred during construction. A boiler explosion to the life of one man, of falling Derek crushed out the lives of two others, and one poor soul had his foot entangled in a rope and was pulled underwater and drowned before he could be saved. Besides work fatalities, there were also murders at the camps, along with shootings. There was one incident where a gentleman was struck across the neck with a heavy bench, killing him instantly.

The project dragged on and missed at least two deadlines by the time it was completed in nineteen thirteen. At least one major flood had occurred in nineteen eleven, and the finances were about as leakproof as the dam itself. When construction was finalized, the hails Bar Dam measured almost one half mile across and sixty three feet high. The lock at the time was the highest single locklift in the world. With the best modern technology utilized, the dam

still leaked. In fact, a group known as the rag Gang was hired to walk around and plug leaks for one dollar a day. What the heck is a rag gang. Soon after the dam's completion, the leaks began to appear. The engineers had chosen the location of the dam because the river was narrow, But unknown to them at the time was that the ground beneath the river is limestone.

Portions of the limestone continually collapsed and resettled, shifting the dams foundation and causing cracks to form in the dam walls. Administrators created a rag gang, which was a group of men tasked with stopping the leaks. Supposedly, they used whatever they could find to fill the cracks, including asphalts, hay bales, mattresses, blankets, and even a truckload of corsets. At one point, surprise,

it didn't work. In nineteen nineteen, engineers attempted to minimize the leakage by pumping hot asphalt into the dam's foundation. This was temporarily successful, but by ninety one a study showed the dam was leaking at a rate of one thousand cubic feet per second. The passing of the t v A Act in nineteen thirty three created the Tennessee Valley Authority and gave it control a flood control and

improvement initiatives in the Tennessee Valley. By this time, Chattanooga and Tennessee River Power had merged with several other companies to form the Tennessee Electric Power Company, or TEPCO. The new company was a fierce opponent of the t v A and was headed by Guild's son, Joe con Guild.

TEPCO challenged the constitutionality of the tv A Act and federal court, and in nineteen thirty nine, the U. S. Supreme Court handed down their decision in favor of the t v A. A few months later, TEPCO was forced to sell most of their assets, including Hale's Bar Dam, to the t v A for seventy eight million dollars. Later, t v A efforts to stem the leaks were successful in the early nineteen forties, but it was far too little,

too late. In the late nineteen fifties, boils began to appear in the water below hales Bar Dam, and an investigation showed the dam was again leaking, this time at an alarming two thousand cubic feet per second. Die tests carried out in nineteen sixty suggested that many of the leak as channels had interconnected, increasing the possibility of a future damn failure. Eventually, the cost of maintenance was far too much to bear. The t v A couldn't stay head of the damn dam Sorry, I had to do

it at least once. According to a contemporary news article. The decision to replace hales Bar with a new dam was reached after a detailed review of efforts which had been carried on over several weeks to reduce leakage under the old dam. The tv A board said so, the Nikki Jack Dam was built six miles downstream, and the hales Bar Dam ceased operation on December four, nineteen sixty seven. Recently, the hales Bar Dam Powerhouse was listed on the National

Register of Historic Places in two thousand and eight. Since the dam was closed, it has been operated as a private event space. In addition, tours can be arranged by reservation. A marina has been developed next to the site. The building is currently being used as the home of Damn Whiskey and Moonshine Distillery. Now. In addition to the workplace debts I cited earlier, there have been a number of

drownings around the dam over the years. Another claim I've heard repeated many times over the years, but can't find anything specific to corroborate, is the idea that there are actual bodies in the cement of the dam. According to the serf Ski Nation news men lost their lives during the building of the dam. Some even fell into the cement mixer and were built into the walls of the dam.

Other accounts are more intense, claiming that up to several hundred workers perished during the construction of the hales Bar Dam and that they were expected in such a large project in those days. That is taken from the website of the Paranormal Investigators of Milwaukee, but I don't see a source cited for the info. Stephen Waar, a tour guide at the dam, has given some of the most specific detail about bodies buried inside the dam that I've heard so far. According to him, in the tunnel behind

a few inches of wall. There are apparently two bodies that have been stuck there in the concrete since nineteen o seven. Guide explained that they were able to use some device to detect crevices within the concrete and determined that the bodies had decayed and calcified in the limestone mixture, and they're apparently holding onto each other still as one

pulled the other into the concrete behind them. Again, I cannot find any new sources to cite these claims, but they've been repeated so much I felt the need to pass them onto you all. Interestingly, the dam features yet another strange and mysterious bit of history. Thanks to the building of the dam, water levels upstream rose quite a bit, enough to cover an entire cemetery, Mullins Cove. The Mullins Cove cemetery has headstones dating back to eight and it's

speculated it was flooded sometime in the forties. Typically, the t v A would move graves elsewhere if this was the case, but by the time they took over the damage was done. When the dam closed, the water level descended enough to make some of the graves viewable again just under the surface, with a few even standing above the waterline. It's an eerie spot to visit by kayak or by boat at three am, like I did when we filmed Ghost Hunters there with all that dark history.

Of course, there are paranormal reports at the dam. Many people have heard women and children's voices, maybe a whisper in their ears. Strange shadows have been seen moving about the dam, including a man dressed from the nineteen forties. Several guests have been touched lightly, with some claiming to have been scratched and even strangled. Visitors have left gifts for the spirits and areas that are said to be haunted by children. Supposedly, most of the gifts disappear from

one visit to the next. Regarding Dragon Canoe, stories often claim that the curse was true and that all of the shadows in the history of the dam stemmed from it. Some accounts mentioned sightings of Dragon Canoe spirit as well. The presence of the spirits of children doesn't immediately make sense. Many have attributed it to a supposed flood that happened that filled that tunnel on property that many used to walk from place to place, including children going to school.

Others attributed it to the high fatality rate of children in the camps during the Spanish flu epidemic. I can't find record of any of those happenings, but I did find drownings, lots of them, including a six and a nine year old in nineteen fifty. I also found a horrific account of a little girl who burned to death in a fire on a pleasure launch at the Damn in nine Her aunt also perished, and a number of people were taken to area hospitals with severe burns. On

that tragic note, let's shift gears. I've investigated Hales Bar Damn on a number of occasions, including three nights in a row with Adam Burry for our show Kindred Spirits. Prior to that, we investigated with TAPS when we were on Ghost Hunters. We had a number of experiences, so I thought it fit to bring him back to chat

with me about them. This includes details of one of the most terrifying moments I have ever had while investigating, So you can hear all about that and more when we get Adam on the line right after the break. All right, So I am sitting here with someone who you should all be very familiar with by now, and If you're not, then I don't know what to say. Mr. Mr Adam Barry and my partner in crime on Kindred Spirits, my real life bestie. He's here to talk about Hale's

bar damn with me. So Hi Adam. Hi. Yeah, if you don't know who I am, google right now and come back to this episode because you're going to need to know it. Hit pause. He's highly google able. Yeah, highly. My net worth is forty million apparently on Google. But don't tell anyone because I didn't even saw that, and I'm mine is net worth eight hundred thousand, and I'm like, what is that Adam doing? Right? I like this. It's all crypto. It's all crypto and n f T girl.

What we're referring to is that there's these like very made up biographies about us all over the internet, and they just have these very weird ideas of like our net worth and totally I apparently have like three children, so you have millions he didn't know about. I have kids that didn't know about. And my husband apparently he's worth fifteen million. He went to go check the mattress to see if it's in there. He was like, where did I put it. Oh my goodness. Anyways, as usual,

we immediately just went off topic. So not like a ghosts what ghosts? Okay, So we're talking about Hale's bar damn. I was talking a bit with Adam before this. I really tried hard to find someone affiliated with the damn to talk about it today, but no one would reply to me. So I was like, you know, Adam and I have investigated there. We've been there at least five or six nights investigating. We you know a lot of people over the years who have investigated, so we've heard

a lot of stories. I do want to write off the bat before we get into the ghosts. I did have one of the most terrifying moments of my life in that place, and to this day, it still gives me the shivers to even think about it. So Adam and I were there investigating for ghost hunters years and years ago, and in the middle of the dam building. This is gonna get good. In the middle of the damn building, there's water, it's filled up, and there's a

whirlpool in there. And so Adam and I are there at night and it's just us in like our camera operator and maybe a sound person and I look in that water and there is something very large in there, and it's like circling around the edge. And I am not kidding when I say this fish was five or six ft long, and I was like, what is that? I couldn't even concentrate on investigating. There's just this mass. I'm like, is that a shark? Like? Are there sharks

in Tennessee? Like? What is this? The whole time we were in there, it just slowly circled around the edge of this pool and we never got our answers until we went back, and the gentleman who was giving us the tour when we went back for Kindred years later, he was like, oh, yeah, that was an alligator gar. And I'm like, what is an alligator gar? And so I googled it. They're also highly google able and disgusting.

Oh my gosh, I cannot believe your your best your friend here, your best friend here is smart, but he's not a Jeopardy person. However, last night, three Letter Animals was a category and it was alligator this, and I screamed, gar, It's like it's synchronousity and I I screamed it, and Ben looked at me like I was crazy. And then the answer was gar and I was like, see, I know it. I was, that's a nail's bar down. I can't even and I know they're probably gentle giants. I

don't know, but the way they look. I love aquatic creatures with that, the idea of that in that water. And so then we went back for Kindred to film. There were a lot of reports, like paranormal reports coming from that pool area, and so they preemptively, they thought they were helping us out there, like, hey, we preemptively ordered you a boat so you can get into this water. And and I was like, no, I'm not doing that.

And so if you notice on the episode Adams in the boat by himself, because I was like, I'm not, I am not doing that. Like what if that thing is still in there and it like brushes up, like if I fall in it? Oh my god, I can't anyway, so I think it is okay. So I have never googled it, and I just now did that. If I had googled alligator gar before getting into that boat, I do not think I would have actually done it. These things look crazy, it's yeah, So there you have it,

and apparently they're very prevalent in that area. So they're monsters. They're like literal dinosaurs. They are they are so fascinating and terrifying. So, like I said, one of my scariest moments when people ever when they asked me, like, what's the scariest thing that's ever happened to you? Like I quickly flashed to the alligator gar and then like try to get to a ghost moment for them. But it's

there always forever. So okay, let's talk about ghosts. So we have actually had a number of experiences I think, probably too many to even fit into the shows that we've filmed there. So why don't you start? What do you think has been like one of the craziest moments that you've had while investigating at Hales bar Well, having a rock thrown at my face and hitting me in the face, I think while investigating around that whirlpool in the middle of the damn I think that was probably

pretty intense. I mean, we've seen objects move, and we've been touched, and you know, we've been pinched and poked. To have something physically thrown at you is pretty um, pretty intense. Yeah, And that kind of activity doesn't happen often, and so I remember because your face actually had like a red mark on it. And I'm trying to recall where I was. I heard the rock, I heard multiple rocks, like I definitely heard things being thrown in that moment.

You were to my left. We were up on that platform up the stairs, and so we were looking across, and so strangely enough, years before that, when we were filming or um investing. I hate saying filming because we're investigating,

but just it's automatically my brain. But we were investigating and being filmed while doing so for Ghost Hunters, and I do remember standing in that same spot and we were looking across and we saw a shadow figure in like a very high up area which no one was either able to get to or was there at that moment.

And then we heard this like crazy voice yelling at us, like just this very like gruff like voice, and we record it, like we got it on our recorders and everything, and I remember Steve Gonsolves just being like, what the heck is that, and like, we don't know, there's something weird in that room. And I think maybe that whirlpool,

that energy, the whole makeup of hales Bar. I don't know if you remember this, but like it literally is built on limestone, and you know a lot of people speculate and theorize that limestone has to do with paranormal activity. It was built in an area that the French I believe, referred to it as the Suck because they couldn't navigate it with boats, and so they built the dam specifically to make that area more easy to navigate and then

also to provide electricity of Chattanooga. But I feel like that whole whirlpool thing, if you believe any of the theories that running water is some sort of conduit for

paranoral activity, hails Bar has it. I think we thought maybe that that area that like whirlpool area, because it was connected to like Native Americans, that that section of the dam had sort of a Native American aspect to it, that kind of activity in that area, and then when you got to the other side were like the offices and the barracks were where the workers were, it was

a completely different set of activity. Yes, and that was weird too, because that was when we were dealing with a spirit that did not like disorder, and I think you really we were just talking about this in another interview recently, but remind me what happened exactly, because you

know that sequence of events better than I remember. Yeah, So we were investigating in the third or fourth floor, because we had to walk through the tunnels and then up three flights of stairs, and we were in this section and we were doing the STS method, the spiritbox session, and we garnered from that communication that whoever was there seemed to be in charge. And the idea I think came because this person of this entity wanted order and

structure and liked to watch out for this space. We were thinking like that, maybe that's why they were there, and so we decided to leave trash on that third floor with a rimpod you know that makes sound if anybody gets near it. And we explained all of our equipment and said this is how you can communicate with us and get our attention. And so we put like a plastic bottle and a rapper I think of something else,

and we just left it. And when we got down maybe a flight and a half of stairs from where we were, the equipment started going off like crazy as if to say, hey, you're a jerk. You left this trash on the third floor, and as soon it kept going off and kept going off, we both went back up. It was still going off. As soon as we touched that trash. As soon as we picked it up, it stopped, the equipment stop going off, and we were like, Okay,

that's weird. Yeah, remember I feel like that. The gentleman who we were speaking with at that time, he said he'd always felt like someone was in that area kind of.

I mean, he got very emotional at the end when we were kind of telling him everything that happened, but he always felt like there was someone there who kind of felt the same affinity for the location as he did, like really wanting to clean it up, really wanting to keep it nice and neat, And so that was kind of cool that we were able to tell him that his feelings were correct. I think we all sometimes get those vibes like there's something around here that maybe we're

all a little bit psychic. But yeah, I don't know if he's still working at the dam, but hopefully whoever is there is aware of this person in this area who likes order. Yeah. I think what was really cool about that is this gentleman really devoted a lot of his time and his life to cleaning up that damn because they were doing damn tours. It's never gonna get old. They were doing don't We're in the history, I do

it like three times. They want to do damn tours, and so it has to be safe for people to do that. And so he had like pulled out a bunch of like drywall and bricks and rocks like hard labor, like hard work. And then when the activity in the office area was getting aggressive towards him, like he had felt like he was grabbed there and I got grabbed in that same area, and you know, there was a

dark shadow figure. He assumed that they were just mad at him or something was wrong, and all he wanted to do was make the space safe for guests, but also clean it up for the spirits in a way. And so when we told him that, I was not expecting him to get as emotional as he did, because this guy is like southern and stoic. But he was really moved by the e vps that we got and our assessment of the space, and it really changed his

It really changed his life. Honestly, Now, speaking of getting grabbed, like how did that feel when you got grabbed there. Okay, wasn't the best moment. I think the weirdest part about that experience is we had heard that if you just stand in this area of this section of the room or whatever, you sometimes feel like somebody's grabbing you. And we always try it ourselves and most of the time it doesn't really work, but we I stood there and the first thing I thought was it was my pants leg.

I thought it was my pant leg, like I don't know, like bunching up or something. But I wasn't moving, and so when I looked down to see that my pants leg was fine, it felt sort of like a staticky hold of some kind. I can't explain it any other way than it being like this weird staticky maybe my fabrics moving, but I felt like something was grabbing onto me. And you know, we were filming and we had equipment

and obviously nothing was around me. And I think we tried to figure out if it could be logically explained, but it couldn't. So I think it was more about the I think it was a pressure. I thought maybe it was my pants, like bunching up staticky. But it was very different than just standing there normal like I knew something was off and it felt like something was like grabbing onto me. And obviously you're not the first.

A lot of people have reported being grabbed. It's interesting how physical the activity is at Hales Bar and there's a lot of shadow figures. I mean, the history there is intense. I don't think I remembered how intense it was until I just started going back through our research for this podcast. But like it has seen everything, and so I could see why there would be a lot of spirits there that would feel the need to try to get attention. But I never felt anything there was

negative or evil or bad per se. No protective and rightly so based on the history. I feel like the land was sacred and Native Americans, the organization or the damn was very important to those that built it and that protected it, quote unquote, and I think that's what it was about. And that can also be confused with

aggressive activity. I mean, a protective spirit is going to do what they need to do to make sure that you aren't destroying the place or or making it worse, or you know, not following the rules, like that guy who you know leading trash, and so I think that can be confused with like this aggressive activity, but it was all about protection I think. I think so too, And the activity didn't seem to change day or night. You know, people always ask us, you know, why do

you investigate at night? And you know, we investigate at night for a lot of reasons, mostly because outside influences are not as you know, there's not a lot of traffic, there's not a lot of outside noise. You know, you can see light anomalies easier in the dark, things like that. But Hail's Bar specifically has activity all the time. Like I remember few times having like because we I think we had oh yeah, we had our DVR and everything is set up in that main room where we could

look over everything. And I remember a few times going into that giant space where the pool is and they do boat storage in there and stuff, and hearing noises in the middle of the day, like knocking, sounds, rustling, like it almost felt alive, like it just never stops. Well, yeah, it makes sense because if you're you know, they would work during the day. You know, they probably there was probably a security guard or somebody at night, like monitoring

the space. But you know that the place is very active during the day, so it could be anything from residual activity to intelligent activity too, you know, a ghost just going about its business, you know, like like it's still an operation. Do you remember the tunnel? Oh god, wait, okay, wait a second, So there's two different So there's the tunnel, right, yes, I mean it is a tunnel, but it's just like buried, you know. They put it on top of the ground

and then put land over it. So it is a tunnel. But the other tunnel, like when I was in that boat and like you got to the end of the thing and they were like can you the I think, are I forget who? Maybe it is Brian, but he was like it works for us. He was like, can you get through this doorway to go into this other water filled tunnel? And I was like, absolutely not, No, I can't. That is the layer of the alligator car and the spiders. It was very strange because you walked

down those stairs and it's just submerged. It's just water. Literally. You can tell this used to be an area people worked in. But it also goes to show Damned was constantly being repaired, Like it was just constantly like there was a team assigned to filling the cracks because it was constantly breaking because it was on that limestone, and they would shove anything in these cracks, mattresses at one

point a truckload. Of course, it's like just trying to repair this damn And you know, once they stopped that within however many years, or it's just completely flooded inside. Like what they were stopping for so long is crazy to think about, and you can really see it going down there. Yeah, it's probably one of the weirdest things we've ever had to investigate, like going down those stairs

where that water is. Like, that's as an investigator, I think, you know, we always were always like, oh, we'll do it, but like then when you get down there, like, well, how do we how do we do it? And I think we did it pretty well. I think we're doing e VP work. And then maybe do we have any kind of underwater I don't even remember when we tried that with Ghost Remember there's also a cemetery up the

way that was submerged. Um I forgot about that, Yes, and so we did try to do some like underwater recording. So what's interesting about that? And I could be misremembering because I did the history a bit ago, but I feel like the cemetery was a lot more submerged in the forties and then the sixties they did something and then suddenly the cemetery resurfaced in areas. So now for anyone who visits their boats there, the cemetery is literally right under the surface, and that water is very clear,

and there are some headstones actually like coming up. But it's crazy how well they've been preserved having been submerged for so long. And also I don't know that you know this, but that is five miles up from the damp. So we got in a boat and it was thirty degrees. I don't know, I just remember being Remember we were five miles up that river in the middle of the night to the cemetery. I don't think any of us knew far away it was. They were like going, it

was you mean, Dave and Steve. They gave us boots or something. And I was a WE investigator at this moment, right, so they're like, go out, go stand over there. So I put these boots on to go stand in an area I think on the near the graves that I could stand there, and then my foot just like slipped and water filled my boot, remember that, right, I do? And then you had to we had to go back and it was so cold one lost your foot. What a story that would have been. Oh god, I think

I spent like fifteen minutes. They had a dryer, a washer and dryer, and I think I put my socks in the dryer to dry them off. I too have a picture of myself. I took a selfie like waiting for my socks to dry, like in this area. That's so weird. That place is so weird. Not to mention the kittens, the feral kittens that are everywhere that we kept feeding, you kept feeding. Listen, Okay, I had to get some Caesar's or whatever they eat because they were hungry.

And that little orange kitty cat I really wanted, but I'm allergic. I know. It's so funny how much the interviews are different from week to week on the show, because sometimes they're just like all business and then I get like you or John Tenney on or something and it's just all over the place, which is fine, I'm sure it. To listen, I think ghost kind of goes.

You know, we go out and do these things and we're very serious, and it is business, and it's like we want to help and we want to figure out the things, but there are times that we have to be normal in a way quote unquote we have to like have fun or like do something else to take our mind off of the seriousness of the business. Otherwise it can weigh as it can weigh us down. Oh yeah,

we learned that. And I think that's actually a really fair kind of warning to investigators, is that there, you know, you are surrounded by stories of really awful things. When you're a paranormal investigator, you know, you you are constantly reminded of your mortality and death and unfortunate situations. And I think that's why Adam and I do make time to kind of, you know, have fun and laugh with each other and but be serious when we need to be.

But also like there has to be some like levity and all of this really because it could drag you down very quickly if you go down that dark, deep hole of sadness, you know, or or the world pool of sadness, the whirlpool of alligator cars. I just in my brain, I just feel like there's an entire school of very large alligator cars waiting down there. For me, and I'm going to have nightmares about it tonight. I promise you next time we'll go fishing and see if we can catch it. Oh my gosh, No, okay, I

think we should stop talking about this now. Well, you know what, I appreciate you. Thank you so much for coming on and reminiscing and talking about the spooky things that go on there. Just the two people out of many who have had experiences at Hales bar and so I'm sure they are still doing tours. If you want to visit, tell them that you heard about it on Haunted Road or Kindred Spirits or Ghost Centers. But everyone we've met there has been lovely, so definitely check it

out if you have time. So, Mr Barry, what are you up to? Anything you want to promote or throw out there? God, I don't know. Just google me, Just google me and you'll find out. Yes, Adams on every Strange Escapes that I do, you were doing a cruise this summer. Obviously, new episodes of Kindred Spirits are airing, but I think this is either happening the week of our season finale or the week after. But if you haven't seen it, go check it out and stream it

on Discovery Plus. You can watch Adam and Me act like this all you want. You can watch both episodes of Ghost Hunters that were there and Kindred Spirits. All right, well, thank you, Mr Barry. I appreciate you, and I will

see you very soon. You're welcome. Thank you. Bye. I don't think I've ever used the word damn so many times in my damn life, but it certainly seems appropriate because Hale's bar dam quite literally seems damned oddly though, when you visit there, it's actually rather peaceful, and there are so many strange nooks and crannies to explore. Plus the view of the river, it's easy to sit on the water and reflect on everything that happened there in

its history. It's a massive structure, unmistakable, a constant reminder of what once was, a place so cloaked in tragedy that the urban legends and myths that have sprung from it aren't much worse than the real things that happened there. We might never know if there are bodies in the cement, or if dragon Canoes curse had anything to do with the Damn's downfall, but one thing is for shore Hale's bar Dam continues to be a beacon for both the living and the dead. I'm Amy Bruney and this was

Haunted Road. Haunted Road is a production of I Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Mankey. The podcast is written and hosted by Amy Bruney. Executive producers include Aaron Mankey, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. The show is produced by rema Ill Kali and Trevor Young. Research by Taylor Haggerdorn, Amy Bruney and Robin Miniter. For more podcasts from I Heeart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio Apple Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. M