They Call Him Zombie Boy

fictional character named Philip Aylesford. His made up background included being described as a seventeenth century English aristocrat who lived during the reign of Oliver Cromwell. His story included a tragic love affair, an unjust execution of his beloved, and his eventual suicide. The participants, who were aware that Philip was a creation of their imagination, conducted regular seance type sessions. They attempted to communicate with Philip. Through these sessions, reciting

his history over and over over time. Various phenomenas such as raps and knocks in response to questions, and movements of the table were interpreted as Philip's presence and interaction, despite knowing he was not real. The experiment suggested that a group's collective belief and focused intent could induce intelligent, interactive paranormal activity, which raised the question could paranormal phenomena be attributed to psychological or unconscious processes rather than well ghosts.

I'm Amy Brunei and this is Haunted Road. On Plymouth Street in Middleborough, Massachusetts. A Georgian style two story house sits behind a wide lawn. It's surrounded by leafy trees and green grass, with some distance between the front door and the street. This house, known as the Oliver House, has a row of four windows framing the first floor entrance, which sits between two white columns. Five more windows dot the top floor. The yellow walls and black and white

shutters and trim give it a classic homey look. It's easy to imagine people gathering here for a tea party in the colonial era. Similar period details mark the inside of the house, which has historically accurate furniture, separate parlors for men and women, and numerous bedrooms for the house's owners, children, governesses, and enslaved people. The floors are made of wood, as

are the doors and some molding. According to a twenty fourteen assessment by McKinley, Castlow and Associates, Inc. The home has a private life iibar and multiple fireplaces that end in two brick chimneys. The kitchen and carriage house are comparatively newer than the rest of the structure. These additions were put up sometime around the early eighteen hundreds. The Oliver House sits on a fifty four acre estate about

a mile from downtown Middleborough. As if it wasn't obvious from all the descriptions I already gave, this town was founded in the mid sixteen hundreds as a British colony, but its dark history goes much further back than that. Before European colonists derived in Massachusetts, the Wampanogue people lived there. However, in the early seventeenth century, a deadly epidemic swept through

the region. The indigenous people called it the Great Dying, which speaks to how many lives were lost to the disease. The Wampanoge people who survived the outbreak remained in the region that could later become Middleborough, but it was an influx of European settlers who helped make the area flourish financially. A lot of men manufacturing facilities sprouted up in town, particularly for shoemakers, and today Middleborough is the home to

the Ocean Spray Cranberry's headquarters. The Oliver House was built in seventeen sixty nine for an engaged couple named Peter Oliver Junior and Sally Hutchinson. It was dubbed the Small Oliver House to differentiate it from another larger and more impressive building that sat nearby, Oliver Hall. According to rumor, both of these were built not too far from a hill that had once been a Wampanog burial ground. Peter and Sally were married right around the time that the

house was completed. Their wedding was a massive society affair, drawing guests from all over the world, which is unsurprising given that both came from wealthy and powerful families. Sally's father was the Governor of Massachusetts, while Peter's father sat on the Supreme Court. Given their political ties, it was only a matter of time before Peter and Sally would find themselves caught up in a brewing revolt. See. In

seventeen seventy three, Benjamin Franklin visited the Oliver House. Officially, he was there as the guest of honor at a party that had been thrown for him, but it's believed that the Olivers and their friends, all of whom were loyal to the British, were trying to halt the coming American Revolution in its tracks. Franklin was a very influential figure, and the Crown's loyalists may have hoped that if they could recruit him to their side, the whole rebellion would

fall apart without him. Instead, this visit may have only heightened the tension between the revolutionaries and those who supported British rule. According to rumor, while Franklin was at the Oliver House, he somehow got his hands on some letters that had been exchanged between Sally's father, Governor Hutchinson, and her husband Peter. In them, they discussed calling on the British army to violently put down the revolution before it

could go any further. Some people believe Franklin found these letters while he was digging around in sally closet. Others say an unidentified chambermaid gave them to him, but most historians think Franklin received these letters several months before he ever set foot in the Oliver House. However, he got them. Franklin passed the letters along to future US President John Adams,

who published them in the Boston Gazette. This only outraged the general public and pushed the colonists one step closer to war. In seventeen seventy four, during the fallout from the so called Hutchinson Letters affair, Sally's brother was run out of town and her father, the governor, fled the country. That same year, Peter's father was impeached and lost his position as a judge. It became a frequent occurrence for angry mobs to gather outside the Oliver House, threatening Peter, Sally,

and their three children. Eventually, the whole family escaped to Boston, and from there they sailed to England. They got away just in time. During the Revolutionary they wore Oliver Hall, that larger, more impressive home that led to the Oliver House's nickname as the Small Oliver House, burned to the ground. Although the small and now only Oliver House survived. At one point, revolutionaries seized it and auctioned it off to

raise funds for the war effort. After passing from owner to owner in the early eighteen hundreds, the house was home to a couple named Thomas and Abigail Sadly, they lost many children during their time there, and only two survived to adulthood. Their daughter, Bethania sprote inherited the house after her father's death, only for tragedy to befall her family as well. In eighteen forty one, her two year old daughter Abby died after a kettle filled with boiling

water fell on her. Months later, Bethania lost her unborn child in a miscarriage. Then three years after that, in eighteen forty four, another of her children died young. This time it was pneumonia that claimed his life. Bethania's husband, Earle, was stricken with tuberculosis in eighteen sixty four. He grew sicker, and once it was clear that the end was near, a local reverend named mister Putnam reportedly came to visit him.

An article called The Peter Oliver House by Michael J. Madigan says that Putnam wanted Earle to make his peace with God before he passed away. But as the story goes, Earle didn't want the reverend's help. According to Madigan, Earle said, in all my business relations in life, I never have traded much with the middleman. I have always bought my

goods at wholesale. It now looks as though I shall see the Lord before you will, and I can no doubt patch it up a good deal better than when I get there and see him, then I can with you. According to the story, the reverend had nothing to say to that, He silently left the room, and Earle passed

away a short while later. His death came in the midst of another national conflict, and just as the Oliver House had played a key role during the Revolutionary War, It's rumored that before or during the Civil War, it

was a stop on the underground railroad. Supposedly, enslaved people who were fleeing from Southern States could hide from the authorities in a hidden chamber just behind the first floor fireplace, and when they were ready to move on to the next stop, they could leave the house unseen, using an underground tunnel that connected the cellar to the local Namasket River.

It's worth noting that while the hideaway behind the fireplace is real, there's no evidence that it was ever used to shelter formerly enslaved people, and if that underground tunnel ever existed, all signs of it have disappeared by today. As for the residents, they sold the house in eighteen ninety three. The home sold again in nineteen forty five, and the new buyer was a man named Peter Oliver. It was no mistake that he shared a name with the man who originally built and lived in the house.

This Peter Oliver was a distant relative of the initial Peter Oliver. The twentieth century, Peter restored the house to its original state for the most part. He made some improvements, including adding electricity, indoor plumbing, and perhaps most importantly, bathrooms. In twenty fifteen, the house was in a much more livable state when it was sold to the City of Middleborough.

This was part of a preservation effort not only to save the historic house, but also to protect the woodlands around the property and all the plants and animals that lived there. Today, the house operates as a historical museum. It's open for public tours, including ghost tours. It's unsurprising that with so many lives lost within its walls, the Oliver House is haunted, and visitors generally agree that the

spirits there are mostly friendly. They reportedly make their presence known by moving items around, and on at least one occasion, a painting fell off of a wall, as if some invisible force had knocked it down. There is also video evidence that shows a bar across a door in the kitchen seemingly moving on its own, and mysterious photographs are abundant. At different times, people captured pictures of faces peering out windows or of an entity that has been dubbed Zombie Boy.

The nickname comes from his grayskin and visible injuries all over his face. There are a lot of theories about Zombie Boy's origins, including that he may have died in a car accident and that his spirit somehow became trapped in the house afterward. That last idea came from ghost tour manager Christy Parrish, who gave an interview to the

Ghost Hunting in New England podcast. Famously, on an episode of a little show called Kindred Spirits, Adam and I discussed that zombie Boy could be a manifestation of so many staff and investigators referring to him and giving him an identity that included a horribly scarred face, drawing on

the Philip experiment. Through an evening of seance like interactions, we gave Zombie Boy additional fictional attributes, including that his father was a Civil War hero and the entire town had a parade for him when he died, and that Zombie Boy perished after falling from a horse, and, in a personal homage to one of my favorite movies, Practical Magic, that he had one green eye and one blue. Shortly after,

we received evidence including EVPs, communicating these attributes. Additionally, Psychic Chip Coffee from hundreds of miles away called to tell us he was picking up on a spirit with a heavy Civil War connection. Visitors often say they feel as though they're being watched when they're in the home, and they may spot shadow figures in the basement or hear footsteps in areas where they don't seem to be any

people around. Like in many other haunted locations, fully charged electrical devices tend to lose all of their power much more rapidly than they should. At the Oliver House, one interesting story came from a tour guide who was taking some visitors around the Oliver House when he spotted a woman in an eighteenth century dress. At first, this didn't strike him is particularly odd. Many of the people who volunteered on site wore period costumes, so his initial thought

was that she was there to work. But then the tour guide noticed that something was off about this woman's appearance. Specifically, according to an article with the impact called Secrets of the Oliver House, this eighteenth century woman had unnaturally large eyes. They didn't even look human. While the tour guide stared at the woman in shock, she put a finger to her lips, the way you do when you're shushing someone. Then, without another word, she walked backward, passing right through the

wall behind her. Visitors sometimes feel as though a young child is grabbing their hand, but when they glance down, there's no children nearby. On one occasion, a young girl went on a tour of the home only to announce to all the adults that she was having a great time playing with the little boy she was with. The Only problem, none of the grown ups had a boy with them, and no one could see the girl's companion. Some people believe these childish ghosts or some of the

sprote children who died in the house. Of course, it's always hard to identify the spirits in any haunted location, but the Oliver House is unique, as some people believe they've identified one clear feature that could explain how it came to be so active. The house is in the Bridgewater Triangle. According to cryptozoologist Lauren Coleman, this is a small strip of land in Massachusetts where UFO sightings, encounters with strange creatures, and other paranormal activities are extremely common.

All to say that from a certain perspective, the Oliver House isn't that unique. It's one of many active hotbeds in the region. But just because there are countless unexplained incidents in the triangle, that doesn't make the spectral figures at the Oliver House any less important and their stories aren't any less meaningful. That's why today I am talking

to Adam Barry and Richard Estep. Richard has spent a considerable amount of time researching and investigating the home, as has mister Barry, so welcome back to the program Richard and Adam Berry. Well, hello there, guys, we welcome back.

You guys know this better than anyone. That place is like peeling back the lairs of an onion, and just when you think you have a part of the story down, you realize there's a whole other level beneath it to uncover.

pretty widespread, they're large. So I FaceTime with Greg Newkirk, our friend Greg Newkirk, and I said, so, if if one were to go look for puck wedgies, what should What should one do? And he said I wouldn't. He says, but if you have to, which you do, leave an offering of some kind, some sort of like fruit nuts, honey, something to show that you mean well. And I was like, okay.

So I got some fruit nuts and honey and we went out into the woods and I remember feeling, you know, uneasy, because you're in the woods at night, and I'm thinking, I'm going to get attacked by an animal. I don't know what it's going to be. And I bent down and I put out the strawberries and the honey and

I drizzled it over. You know, some aunt's going to love this, but I put it out and I'm sitting there and you know, I know I'm older than I used to be, but I did that thing where I was standing up and I wasn't doing anything crazy, and I felt like I had gotten stabbed, like in my back, and you guys are going to be like, it's his sciatica. But it was very strange and I didn't know what it was, and I was like, oh God, what was that.

And then it got really weird and the camera ops were like, you know, Andy was standing there and we were all like trying to film and I was like, turn off the lights, turn off the lanterns, and he's like, I'm not gonna be able to see if we turned I was like, turn him off, and he turned him off, and you could hear something sort of shuffling around us. Now it could have been a bear, but not really. It was not there, not there, but it just seemed

really weird. It seemed very strange, and everyone in that space was like, something is weird, something is off, and I, you know, I didn't actually I wasn't looking. I wasn't saying please, Puck Wedgy come play with me or come hang out. Don't think they'd play like Grimlins or something. I was like, don't do that. But uh, I just said I'm here to offer it just in case you're here, you know. And I left it at that, and I felt like maybe they attacked me. I got attacked by

a Puckway your hurting for a while. It was it was weird. Oh and and what else happened? Isn't that the case where other things got happened? Like things got canceled for our crew, like somebody or that different or will we curse a different time?

Three minutes into those woods, I look down and I said, is that a tick?

as an explanation. You can look closer to home to explain some of this haunting.

that weekend. I took a board game with me that was a revolutionary war board game, and I would make moves and invite whoever the spirits in the house were leave it out overnight, I would invite them to make a move, you know, for the American side. That didn't happen, But what we did have was one of the security cameras at about four twenty seven in the morning. These cameras are activated by motion. One of the cameras just activated in that room. It pivots as though it's trying

to track in on something. It's focusing and unfocusing. You hear what sounds like conversation going on in an empty house and then it went dead.

was because we were upstairs in the room. I was looking into the mirror where they say they see zombie Boy, and Amy is doing the Estus method in the psychomanteum room.

And if you don't know what any of that means, you are listening to the exact right podcasts because you're going to find out, and we're asking questions and Amy is listening to the spirit box, right and just saying what she hears, and she starts talking about how I was brought here, I was put here or I and it was answering questions like I didn't know what it was, and I was like, this is so weird, this is so strange, and that's, you know, one of the telltale

signs of something that might have been created by our energy. And so we were so focused on that that I didn't get a chance to talk about the war right and talk to the family. So we went back in January. My focus was to talk to the family to you know, interact with him, because those are the most prevalent spirits and obviously if they were people that were once alive,

those are the ones we want to talk to. And so I'm sitting in the parlor area downstairs off the left entrance and I start doing an EVP session and I say, if you're here, I'm gonna play it for you. You're welcome because I recorded it. But I said something along the line is like are you here, Like what you know? Can you finish this? God save the what's the answer? They're supposed to say? King? Right? King? And now it was Queen and now we're back at King.

So listen, back then it was King because we're talking about the revolutionary warts. So I listened to this. Do you hear that?

invented this crazy like, uh what was that? It was like a three D three holographic image image.

ago or two hundred and fifty years ago. You can never quite tell. So check your biases at the door and go walk in the footsteps of the Olivers and Ben Franklin. If you ever get the chance to do that. That's amazing.

far as the living are concerned. But because so many spirits apparently still remain at the Oliver House, it's possible that even after all the witnesses have passed away, their stories don't need to be forgotten. I'm Amy Brunei and this was Haunted Road. Yay, thank you, guys. Haunted Road is a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild from Air and Minky. Haunted Road is hosted and written by me Amy Bruney, with additional research by Cassandra de Alba.

This show is edited and produced by supervising producer Rima el Kali, with executive producers Aaron Menke, Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick. Learn more about this show over at Grimandmild dot com, and for more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.