Thinking Sideways: Gateway to Hell

the beginning of something special. It's very special special as in what we're going to be doing for this month. This show will be coming out on the first week of October and for the entire month of October, since it's that month that's spooky, spooky month, We're going to do stories that are kind of based around Halloween. Spooky stories like my story is gonna be Cash for the Friendly Ghost Factory. Fiction is not going to do that story how to get some clanking chains? Hang on now

I do. I'm going to give everybody a little bit of a teaser, and that is that at the end of the month, we're going to be doing a show that is what I would consider kind of a big Halloween favorite. I would say, that's true, that's pretty scary. We've gotten lots of requests for it, we have, and I think that's all we're gonna tell people. We're just gonna leave you on the hook. You're gonna have to

wait the next couple of weeks, four of them. Yeah. Actually, if you can, guests, send us an email if you want to take a guess. If you guess correctly, then you'll get a free Thinking Sideways T shirt if we

ever start making him. And yeah, so I feel if you want to head just I'll let me say it's a very well known thing, okay, yeah, and that so please take again it And as they say on with the show, today's story takes place in Stall, Kansas, which is about fifty miles from Kansas City or Missouri or it's you said, it's about ten outside of Lawrence. Yeah. Yeah, and everybody knows where that is, of course, yeah, of course. Uh. And there's there's quite as it's been quite a legend

around that area. It's pretty well known and depending on the sources, this story has been around for anywhere from fifty to a hundred plus years. Yeah, though it's it seems too well. I'll talk about that more later. Yeah, just quickly, then, let me describe Stall, because I got a Google streep you this afternoon look at everything, and yeah, I know, I know. Um. And so it's title town of I don't know, twenty or thirty people or something

like that. Not very many people lived there. And by the way, when I was cruising through on Google street View, not a soul was evident, not a single human being was in sight. Well that was the story, the story itself from this creepy little town. According to Joe, all centers around the cemetery in that town, and in the cemetery supposedly is a gateway to help. So here's the legend.

In eighteen sixty seven a church was built where currently the Stall cemeteries located, and that church was eventually abandoned and it fell into disrepair. Maybe part of the reason is the fact that behind the church is a set of stairs, which, according to the legend, opens up on Halloween and from it emerges Satan himself. That's right, old scratch. And why do you know why? Because because he want breath of fresh air. Maybe well, yeah, probably to reclaim

the souls of the damned. Well, there's actually a lot of supposed reasons why Satan comes out of this stairway on Halloween at midnight on Halloween every year, and this is kind of a laundry list. I'm sorry. Is it just the one night or is there another night? Well, depends on the accounts. There's Halloween, there's the spring or summer equinox, supposedly, I mean, people account a lot of different days and it's that midnight, but it's always at midnight. Interesting,

always at midden. I have such a problem with that time. But okay, sure, why well, okay, so in pretty much all of the like accepted Christian lore, the night, the hour of the witching hour, almost the hour of beast is actually three am. So it's always interesting when people are like, oh, yeah, it's a midnight, because that's like, for whatever reason, not nearly as like credit double credible.

There we go with the word I'm looking for. It's not only as credible or like mysterious and believable to me as when people are like, oh, it was like almost three am. I think it's got something to do with the you know, the clock hitting and the night spinning. I don't know, there's all kinds of it's always it's always midnight. Midnight has always had that sort of creepiness about it, or so for some reason, just the very

word midnight. Yeah yeah, all right, Well, let's let's go through this, this list of supposed reasons as to why Satan himself comes out every night. The first is that the graveyard which the church is located on, sits on one of the seven points on this planet where the devil has his gateways. There's okay, run with me here. There's seven gateways to Hell on this planet. Supposedly one of them is located somewhere in India, and according to the legend, it just happens to be that Stall, Kansas

houses one of those very spots. So they just had the bad luck to build their church right right the top of a stairway to Hell. Basically, yeah, so yeah, they had a really bad surveyor I don't know, I would guess that there was some kind of like, oh, yeah, there was a draw there because there was so much evil and they felt the need to cleanse it. But and and we're gonna we'll go into some of that stuff. Let then let me just kind of run through this.

Think the Satan put some some warning signs up, don't build here, you know, because that's the way he is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's a real warner. Wants you to build there, all right. The next is that that location was a favorite spots for witches to practice black arts, and they do this because of the fact that this place is a focal

point for black magic. Again, if I'm guessing this is based on being a gateway, this focus one of the seven points on the planet, and also because there's a large pine tree on the grounds that was used to hang at one time, which is I just feel like this is a chicken egg scenario. Yeah, well, let me let me keep going. I got a tree to talk about. The tree has been in the graveyard evidently for decades and up until several years ago when it was cut down.

But evidently there was a headstone at the base of the tree, and the tree had grown up and around this headstone and eventually split it apart, which is something that people point to as evidence that it's an evil place. That's just kind of what tree roots do. Yeah, I know, let's see. The next one is that Satan is visiting a dead witch who was at one time his bride who was buried there. Yeah, as we saw on the thrilling documentary of Corpse Bride. I didn't see that one.

Putting them before I get too far off, I'm pretty sure. Did Do you ever, either of you ever watch that TV shows Supernatural? That's it's not on anymore, right, I think it might be done. I I watched some. Yeah, but evidently evidently there was an episode where they actually played off of this whole Gateway to Hell installed and there was a season finale where they were shutting the Gateway to Hell and it was installed, and they were like inside them, they were shutting the Gateway to Hell.

They were closing it from it was closed on them. They were closing it to stop the evening escaping. I haven't seen the episode. I just happened to find something that related to and then read it on IMDb. Padlock on it. Yeah, I think concrete. Yeah, Okay. The next reason that Satan would be coming out at that location, he's visiting a son that he had with a witch, and that son was so deformed that he only lived

for a few days end. According to the legend, the ghost of this boy appears on Halloween as a werewolf and scares or chases people off of the grounds or prowls around the woods. How many? How many supernatural legends can we cram into one theory? Just wait? Actually, I

which attack a few more on Well we're at it. Well, let me let me before you start working on these, let me just give you the rest of them, because well, I gotta say the story about Satan's son who was it was deformed and diet maybe you know, I feel really sorry for Satan. I'm next up the legends. And this is again another reason that it's so haunted and so terrible. Is that in the eighteen fifties, the mayor of the town of Stall was stabbed to death by a stable hand in a stone barn that was on

the cemetery grounds. And I'm guessing the idea behind that is that it's desecrations of hallowed ground. I've got to guess that's why this would be a reason, but I'm not sure. Like the Indian grave thing, right, you're you know, this is a hallowed site and then you commit murder, although I guess that would mean that no more than seventeen years later, but probably like ten years later they built a church on top of that building. So that's a weird. I'm sorry, I'm just like attacking, but I

need I need a little clarification here. Okay, So the town was stabbed and that's what attracted Satan to it, or it was the gateway was already there, and I think it attracted Satan. Again, it's so it's committing murder on on hallowed ground. That wasn't that that it was a cemetery at that time, which is technically theoretically according you know, it was supposed to be. When when it's a um some kind of religious burial area, you know,

it's whatever. I can't remember. It was Germanic people that had settled the area and had made the graveyard, and suddenly I can't remember whether they were Catholic or what. But you know, if it's at that point it's a graveyard, it's a hallowed piece of ground. But it was in a barn on a graveyard. So how does that make a difference. You know? I think what we need to do is actually that there's a really cool graveyard not far from where I live. It's a it's a very

old Pioneer Graveyard. Let's let's go murder somebody there and see if it's stairway the hell appears. Okay, onto the next one. Thank you, thank you for making Halloween just got weirder. Thanks Joe. Uh here's our next one. In early nineteen hundreds, and I don't have a year, but this will be, you know, between nineteen hundred nineteen ten, when everybody calls at the nineteen hundreds, I'm guessing that's

the time range we're looking at. A boy was accidentally burned to death by his own father while he was burning a field. So Dad, it's burned in the field, doesn't realize the boys in the field, and its walk out of the field or dies from smoke anilation, I don't know for sure. And then a few years later a man in the town was found hanging from a tree, and I have to presume it's that same pine tree.

Um And both of these took place near a road that was known as Devil's Road, which appeared on old maps of Stall, but it doesn't exist anymore, so it's it's not a modern road. You can't go on Google maps and find it. But you know, some of the hype maybe the fact that Stall is located. Also, this is another thing to kind of go in that same same vein, is that in the state, Stall is in the Topeka zip code, and that's evidently has the prefix of six six six the market of least this this

and this attracted Satan to the spot. I don't I'm guessing we're still We're still. This is on the laundry list of things that are built up around why Satan might be coming there. I can't point it was attracted to the six six six postal code, which didn't come into exist as a delay in the nineteen sixties. I don't know. Also, like, are we going to discuss the fact that it turns out that six six six is

actually like a misinterpret misinterpretation. Actually we can actually talk about that right now, I mean, what do we I don't remember what is the translation? Correct, It's like six six one or something. Six nine six is one possible interpretation of it. It's not six six six whatever it is. Yes,

I know that that it's a misinterpretation. And the that reminds me I saw this whole laundry list in this in this humorous email that was rocketing around it was like all these different numbers, like you know, six six six six six six six six six social Security now broke the beast and we're just the whole there, riffed on the whole thing they had. Yeah, because we're not done yet with the reasons why Satan might be coming

to this place. Uh. And and I should probably just go ahead and say something right now, which is this story kind of has the feel of a very urban legend. Yeah, it's totally got the urban legend field, So don't I think everybody who's listening is probably figured that out by now. But I just want to say that, which is why I want to get all of these supposed reasons out there and out of the way. If you're already packing your bags and then gassing up your car, is to

drive the Kansas to go look at this place. Hold off a bit until we get to the end of the Yeah, yeah, yeah, because you you'll find a few things. Um. Now, this doesn't say exactly why he's going to that location, but one of the things that it's believed he's doing by I mean out at midnight on Halloween, is that he's gathering up all of the souls in the area and by the area. I don't know how big that is. I don't know what that denotes. Is that the continental

US or is that just that area code? I don't know. I like that. I like it that he operates by ZIP code. Yeah, that's kind of cool. But but he's gathering up all the souls in the area who died of a violent death that year to then parade them around the earth for one more night before taking them back to Hell. Nice. Although just because somebody died of violent death doesn't mean they gotta go to hell. Yeah, because you never know, maybe you do go to Hell

for diying of violent death. You know, if you weren't smart enough to out without what your adversary, maybe it God send you to Hell for that. So sorry, you guys were talking about something, but I was busy off in google land. Um so I found the number of the base, the actual number. It's um six one six. Well, okay, no, I'm sorry. It's Google says it's six one six point six six six six six, So it's not a whole number, it's not calculated number. So I guess the world's hardest.

I guess it's six one seven because you're round up. But I don't. I mean, I'm just saying so, just so f y I every listener, that is the number of the piece, six six point six six six six six. I don't know. I don't know where the number comes from and why a fraction is attached to it, but I don't know. Maybe maybe look it up later. Let's let's keep and sorry, that's all right, I like that, Okay, Well, and this is just more to add to the legend.

Less of a reason why Satan would come around, but thanks to his presence, evidently strange things happen in the graveyard, and these are a lot of room. This is some

reports on all hallow z Halloween. People keep saying that they are reporting strange moaning noises that the old church that's on the property on the graveyard, that church that we that was built, uh, still had a crucifix on the wall, and evidently on Halloween the crucifix would spin a hundred eighty degrees so that it was upside down, which kind of sounds like pranksters to me. And I also don't know that it would still be attached to

the wall, but that's what people say is happening. Think somebody would have stolen a long time ago, you would, uh. And and actually you know that there's a lot of focus on the church. This this, the church this on this site has spawned and helped foster a lot of the stories in the legends. The church itself in the early nine hundreds caught fire for reasons unknown. I could never find out what caused the fire. It was never recorded anywhere that I could track down. Probably caused by

something flammable. But after it caught fire, stop being used. And some people are saying that the religious community actually destroyed the church themselves in an effort to seal the gateway to Hell. So yeah, and because it wasn't maintained for so long, the roof of the church actually blew off many years ago, likely in a big windstorm, just ripped off. So it's a building with no roof. That sounds so much like an episode of True Detective. I

can't even tell I remember that church. But being open to the sky, uh, it seems to be one thing that that helps some of the stories. Um. It seems to help the idea that witches and black magic are taking place because they can get in on their flying broomsticks. Now yeah, and they you know, they're not going to be seen by anybody when they're doing their their practices.

According to the stories, when it rained in the area, water would not fall on the inside of the church, but instead would run off as if the roof was still there. Well, obviously the rain didn't get the news. Evidently there are reports that strong winds were actually happening inside of the church. So this is this is kind of that Poultergeist area where there's just strange cold spots

and winds out of nowhere. And there was one guy who said that the wind was so strong it knocked him over and quote held him down and wouldn't let him up for a while. So they were probably hot winds and they smelled the sulfur and all that stuff. Never heard that part. Nobody ever commented on the temperature, which was a little funny to me for that same reason, I know. But we still got some more things that

are about the church. Man. Oh yeah, there's a lot here. Uh, there's there's glass bottles, so I don't know if you guys had come across, but they yeah, some people say, and they are adamant about this, that if you throw through a glass bottle at the interior wall of the

church on Halloween, it wouldn't break. Or if you held two glass bottles in the shape of the cross and hit him against the wall, they wouldn't break, which is a little odd that that also then spawns people to say that, well, if you did throw a bottle at the wall and it did break, then you were going

to hell. It's so convenient. It's so convenient. I just like, for a second, like these kinds of stories are just like the worst, right, because you're like, well, it didn't break for me, but if it breaks for you, you're going to hell, which is like it a house for the fact that like anybody who has like a fine grasp of physics or like feels like they want to do it, they are going to go and it's gonna break, and they're gonna be like, oh, well, maybe I'm going

to hell. Or I have a really thick wine bottle and you have a very thin walled vodka bottle. There's always that even beer bottles don't breaks as easily as you would think. I remember many years ago, I was out with a friend and we were kind of bored, and uh so we decided to make a Molotov cocktail.

So he poured some gasoline into a Raineer pounder, which is a sixty in beer ball, which is actually, uh not as heavily built as like say a long neck bottle like you find a bud in or something like that. Those are those have thicker walls than the old Rainier pounders. And so we we stuffed a rag and you know, and then it was about half filled with gasoling and

stuff to raging. And I'm so afraid it was. And so we were out and we go out to the middle of nowhere and we um and we light the rag on fire, and then then we take the bottle and fling it like fling it hard down the road about twenty ft, you know, that's what. It hits the pavement good and hard, and it didn't break. And yeah, so beer bottles don't break is easily a sea things. But I have a theory about the origin of this,

particularly this particular thing. Okay, let's hear this. Yeah, I'm curious, and just I'm curious. I think that somebody decided to insert this in the legend at some point. This is the glass bottle, the glass bottle that that won't break.

No matter, how are you start against the wall. I think whoever was doing it was being was some guy and probably as Lateeen's earliest one, who was being a complete flaming and thought, I know, I'm gonna trick all these people that go out there and the smashing bottles and leaving broken glass everywhere. So and so I think that's what I think it was. Could be all right? Well, and and and we've we're not done here with the

legend and the stories around the legend. Uh, there are threads out there that say the name of the town was actually Skull and not Stall. So the town is s t U l L. And people are saying that that T was actually a K at one point, so it was the town of Skull, but the residents changed the name just Stall as a way to try to repent from the bad deeds that had happened there and throw people off from the trail of everything wrong that

was done. If you're going to change your town name from Skull, I mean, just like change it a little more, maybe maybe like Scroll or like Keaven. How about I mean, like really you know the fact that you like change one letter in your thing, like that's probably we're not going to help so much. Maybe just be like no, no, no, we're called normal now. Well no, they just were as creative in the olden days. Apparently they didn't have the internets.

They could have come up with something else. This is pretty I never I never knew that Kansas was such a hot bit of black magic and witchery. Evidently it is. Okay, well, let's uh, let's let's actually get back to the Gateway of Hell, because we've been talking about Satan appearing and the reasons that he is. But like I said, the gateway is supposedly located at the church, and it's supposedly located on the side of the church. But it's not

easy to find. This is because it isn't used by people much, you know, excluding Satan, because he's not a person but people, which people either okay, um, And and so it's been overgrown with grass and scrub and all of that. But people say that if you do manage to find the stairs and you start to walk down him and again this is the story, you will lose control of your body and supposedly it would feel as if another force was compelling you forward. Okay, And then

then then the story diverges into two veins. Version one says that if you do indeed take the stairs, you'll descend to Hell, but you'll never be able to come back. I don't know how anyone would know that, but okay, well, you know Dave went down the stairs and he never came back, so probably don't walk down the stairs. Whatever.

The second version is that if you take the stairs and you descend to Hell, it's gonna take you two weeks to make it back out, but you won't realize that that much time has past, because yes, this place also causes lost time. Like all this makes me think about is Monty Python and the Holy Grail, where she turned me into a new Well, you don't look like, well I got better. I went in Hell. They took me. Well, you're not in Hell anymore. I got better. I don't know.

I actually want to go check this out because I think it would be I think it would be actually very cool if I could go visit Hell, se check it out, and then come back and then, you know, if you needed to repair awesome actually existed at Yeah, definitely. All right, So I guess we're gonna take a road trip because I'm okay with Joe descending into hell and maybe never coming back, but maybe coming back in two weeks. You're just going to hang out for two weeks for

we could do it. Oh yeah, well, thankfully a pre recording. We'll be all right for a little while. Ye're all right. So here's here's one thing to note. The church just not standing anymore. Evidently in two thousand and two, though, who did this is in a little bit of conflict. The church was torn down, and there's versions that say and these versions that you read about is that the property owners say they didn't authorize it and don't know

who did it. And then there's other versions where it said that the property owners did authorize it and they hired somebody with a piece big chunk of machine or you know, a cat or something down to come over and just knock it down. And it collapsed. It just fell right down as soon as they got to it. And actually, another thing that I heard is that one of them, because there's there's houses right there, there's people

that live very close. Apparently one of those had noticed about a week before this, when it was torn down, one of them had noticed that one of the walls had collapsed in a storm or something. And that's that's a very good point. The thing was a giant hazard. Yeah, I mean it hadn't had a roof for years. This folks to to describe this to you. It was stone walls. It wasn't brick. It was stacked stone walls, which when they don't have a structure on top to stabilize them,

tend to bow and want to fall over. Well, especially if if one wall or corner collapses, you really lose a lot of support and stability there. And so I think the owner probably just had it knocked down for safety reasons and liability reasons. Yeah, it's and I I leaned that same way because some of the articles I've read say that there's that they're quoting the owner of the property. But you know, it's the Internet, and some of these stories you can't really track to tell if

that's really their source or not. Yeah. You know. Actually another theory that I heard, actually I made it up just now. The owner wanted to build a retaining wall. So you're obsessed with retaining walls lately. That's because you want one. Okay, Well, here we're gonna go to a anecdotal bit of legendary. Is that I just make that word legendary? Is that a real word? Yeah, that legendary, but legendary. I think the word you want to use

instead of anecdotal is apocryphal. There that sbscribes as to a t okay. According to this, the Pope visited the United States back in the nineties. Well he did. I mean, let's be fair that he did. Uh, and he told his pilot to go around the entire state of Kansas because he didn't want to fly over un sacred ground. Well, let's be fair. Un sacred ground just mean there's un sacred air space to palm. What wait a minute, what

the aboat? It's it's like a giant column all the way to space of unholy ground, all the way through the universe. Well, well, while all that's circulating around, all these stories are circulating around, all of these things that we've just covered in however long, it just turned throne um. It's no wonder that every year yards of people calm to the graveyard to try and see Satan make his grand appear. And you know, every single one of those peoples, after he crains his beer, has to run over the

church and try to smash it against the well. Because there's so many people coming to the graveyard every year. The graveyard is now circled with cyclone fencing and if you look at this on Google, to go to Google and you go to stree Few, you see nothing but chainling fencing around the entire thing and passing and no trespassing signs. And every year on Halloween the cops are there and they are escorting people away from the area and they will threaten them with fines and jail time

for trespassing private property. Apparently the locals are actually not real about this. Oh no, they hate this. Let me just be very very obvious. They hate this story because they have relatives who are buried in that graveyard. And there's a lot of vandalism that comes from a bunch of drunken Yahoo's out on Halloween, smashing bottles, knocking over headstones.

I'm sure it's not just that. I mean, like, we've just spent what the last like half an hour recounting all of these different things that have been tied in. And you know, if your family lives in this place for long enough, you know maybe it was you're like great great grandfather who accidentally killed that boy in a fire and like and brought the whole thing. Well, no, but like that's a tragic story of history and being exploited to be a part of Satan's grand plan. Like

that's track. There's people now, you know, who have died in the last year who it's not as if this is a history. This is an active graveyard, people who've died within the last probably i'd say, six months. And it's got some very old graves in there, it does, but it's got some very new graves. And there are stories of people going there days after Halloween and finding the headstone of their loved one knocked over and broken because people were doing whatever they were doing and knocking

stuff over. How do you know it wasn't Satan that knocked with that headstone. I was going to say, it just shows them for like showing off their wealth of getting like a headstone that's above ground. We're both wore old people, Joe, Yeah, both are. I have to say that. And and this is to me kind of unfathomable, but like you know, I go for walks and runs to the nearby Pioneer Cemetery near my house sometimes and there's vandalism there too, and it's it's kind of amazing that

people would vandalize headstone, but people do it. Know, people vandalize everything, and I don't understand it. I understand graffiti as an art form in certain applications, but tagging I don't agree with because that's usually just a defacement of property and usually it's there's nothing artistic about it. Okay, well, that tag might be artistic in its own sense, but when you reproduce in a hundred times on every signpost and building, then it just becomes junk. So it's it's

just visual junk. But and by the way, when that when that tagger is caught, I think he needs to get a special tag tattooed on his forehead. Well, let's let's move not to theories but problems problem So all of those legendary things that we just talked about, there is a ton of problems with them, and I just want to suss out a couple of them right off the bat. The town of Stall was originally named Deer Creek, and that community in eight got its own post office.

At that time. It was then called Stall after the for the name of the first postmaster. They had Sylvester's Stall. So the town being named Skull that's out that's out right off the batall used to be Selvester's Skull and then he changed his name. Listen, skeletor stop it? Okay, do you remember the part that there was the one part of the legend of the mayor being stabbed, right, Well, it turns out the town hasn't officially had a mayor

ever ever. H Well, I mean it's it's kind of too small to really have a mayor, don't you think it is? Um And by the way, I assume the local police are like the county sheriff. I believe it's the County Mounties. There's there's no actual stole police forces from what I could see. So yeah, it's obviously there's no one there that's actually the mayor. That's a problem unless you know they're saying, hey, we could call you the mayor. Don't call me the mayor. I know what

happened to the last mayor. I'm not taking that for spinal tap, all right. So I haven't been able to find any concrete evidence that the stairs and their cover exists. Now, there are a lot of stories about people searching for him and quote unquote finding them, but nothing is verifiable. But here's something I want to point out is that there may have actually been a set of stairs there that would have led to a basement. Because if this church was built in the eighteen sixties, think about it,

It's Kansas. You need to store food down well, but also with tornado, So if everybody's at church and a tornado comes along, you hustle them into the basement and you hide there. Yeah. So there's a very valid reason why there might have been a set of stairs as the church, but there's there's nothing to say that it wasn't there. But nobody ever finds them. So that's one thing that I want to point out about the stairs themselves.

I also guess you could say, like some crypts have like a couple of stairs down, and you know, if if like the crypt or like the building structure above it had for whatever reason been demolished, there would be like some random like a couple of stairs down. I could see how that could have like ballooned out into something like this. You know. There it's so hard to tell in a cemetery with a church in Kansas where yeah, yeah, no, I mean there could have been, Um, what is it?

It's it's when what do they call the big buildings that it's not a cpped, but what is the building that's around mausoleums? I mean mausoleums have been put on the ground. It could have been that. That's what it was. That's why there was the Last problem that I have with this whole story is the pope. It's always the Pope. Remember that whole story about him diverting his plane. I'm sure didn't actually happen. There's nothing that shows any record

of his plane ever diverting off of its flight plan. Yeah. Well supposedly that that story, if I remember right, appeared like in Time magazine somewhere around. But we've never been able to weird. Yeah, I suppose that's what people are claiming. But I like it's also pulp Benedict not the most superstitious of the popes. Pulp Benict you mean John Paul. No, wasn't it Pulpe Benedict at that point superstitious of the anyway? I mean, the pope is not going to be afraid

of Satan. And you know, um, this story is like so many Internet stories, they start out as a as a clean ship. Let's just come out of the shipyard, and they sail off through the waters of the Internet and they become encrusted with many many barnacles Internet. Yeah. Yeah, and that's what happens that many of these stories Internet barnacles. Internet barnacles for the day. Yeah. So yeah, the pup's story is you get another barnacle on this story it is. Yeah.

Well let's uh, let's get into the theories finally. Yeah, okay, well theory number one. It could be real, well, it could be don't give me that look, you know, I mean, Satan might actually exist. I don't know how when it comes down to Earth, and yeah, let let me go through this is that you know, there there are a lot of stories around about gateways to Hell and their locations. Now, strangely enough, none of them, the major ones that you find out there that are gateways to Hell, none of

them are in Kansas. But uh, that's that's okay. There are lots of things though, that are referencing gateways to Hell in major populated areas. Isn't there supposedly one like right close here, like that in Clackamus or something? Yet I don't I didn't see that one, But there's so many geographs central major cities have them associated with them, and then major historic cities always have them associated with them. So there's these stories all over of the gateways to Hell. Yeah.

I mean, if if you're saying then you're gonna have a gateway to Hell, I mean, you want to put it in a major city because you're a lot closer to the shops and services and stuff like that. You don't want to have in the middle of nowhere. Maybe, or maybe it's in the major areas because of the atrocities that happened there. I don't know, who knows. Yeah,

but let's let's put that part aside. That fact aside is that if we think about this from a theological standpoint, I don't know it's theological the right word to use, I'm not sure, but philosophical that's probably the better word. Philosophical. It's possible if Satan's real and I'm not saying Satan is or is not real, But then what criteria would he or shear it? Because again I don't I don't know um used to determine where to come out into the world at I mean, it's this place is off

the beaten path. I completely understand that. But you know, I mean, I've read all this stuff about these strange occult sites that are where Satan may come from. And if you think about it, Okay, let's just say that there is some random point where all of this occult stuff is happening. Think about it. This is the best analogy I can come up with. Think about it from

the standpoint of almost like radiation. So there's all this occult stuff going on, and it builds up like radiation at that location, so then it becomes a hot zone. So then that could theoretically be a place that would pop up on Satan's radar to be a good place to come because there's all of the it's just it's just embroiled with it, and it's just such a hotbed that that might be a spot that's an easy access point.

So he he senses Satan's senses that there's a lot of like bone heads who would be easy, easy pickings and good recruits, and so he senses that, so he just makes himself a little gate way to Hell. And no, no, what I mean is let's say that let's say and and this I'm making this up just to try to

help foster this explanation. Let's say that there is Satanic worship and so there are there's offerings, you know, there's sacrifices, there's atrocities committed at this area, and so it's it's seeped and all of this really bad stuff that would become something that would come up on a Satanic radar, for for another way to look at it. So it's a pig. It's a pig. But I guess like if we're going to make that argument, then like there are

literally millions better places in this world. Then still yeah, and also there's no evidence whatsoever that there were there was ever any sort of Satanic dark arts, witchcraft, witchcraft or anything else practicing stall well. But but okay, but I want to go back to what Devin said briefly, which is the stories always say that there are X number of gateways to hell, But do we know that's true? Why couldn't there just be gateways plural? And there's no

number two? Why can't why can't the whole world be a gateway? I think the entire world is kind of

a gateway to help. I mean, like that's it's just like that when you you kind of go down that rabbit hole is a term that we use on this ship a lot, going down that rabbit hole and like to say, like, well, like this is one of the like smallest places in America, right, it's really small, very and I think that like probably the percentage of bad things that have actually happened in this town to the population versus like the number of years it has existed

fairly low. So if we're saying that like this level of percent of corruption over the X number of years equal corruption Satan's gate, then like, like seriously, just like then there's a gate everywhere and like we're just screwed. So for me, it's like this, it's you know, I talked about Acam's razors sometimes, but it is right. It's like either the entire or world is a gateway to Hell, which,

like Joe is going to argue, and that's fair. But so either we're gonna say the entire everywhere that human beings exist is a gateway to Hell, or we're going to say that is not a valid theory. Yeah, you know, well I'm willing to run with that. And here's that. Here's the deal is Satan. Satan started out life as what an angel he did, Yes, and uh and so

be favorite angel. Yeah, exactly. And you never hear about angels needing like an escalator down from Heaven to get to the Earth, right, I mean, Satan, if he does exist, I don't think he needs a stairway or portal or anything else to visit the surface of the planet. I think you can get here, you know, whenever, wherever he chooses.

I don't my my religious studies are very weak, but I do remember having seen some things that I've read that when Satan was cast out and then sent to what would be his kingdom, which was Hell, he couldn't just come to Earth. He had emissaries that could come there. So then that would foster that idea of it had to be something special to allow him his visa for you know, a term that we use for access to get into the area for a limited duration of time. I don't want I don't want to go too far

down this. I don't want to beat this too much because this, again, this is so open to interpretation. There's so many ways that it can be viewed. But that is just you know, if if that's just this one theory that I've seen let's let's move to the next one. Let's which again is on the vein of its real But this vein says that the townspeople know it and

they're covering it. Okay, And I just like I'm going to go ahead and like say, right now, if this theory is valid, that that means that the townspeople are all demons, Satanists worshipers watch Supernatural. No I don't, but I mean it's just like that that's just follows, right, is that like, if the townspeople are covering up Satan's literal stairway out of Hell, they are horrible human beings. I mean, I think we need to go there and

and check it out. See if they have red glowing eyes, and if they talk like this, you know, that's that would be kind of a clue or they live in fear of it. And and let me let me run through some of the stuff that's been put out based on this, this kind of this this bend it's and I think we've already covered why they hate this story for all the thrill seekers, because as we said, there's the vandalism and and the damage, and no wonder they're

peeved about everybody coming there. But in the reports that come out, in the quotes from townspeople, um, they do some things that don't always help their case. You know, they say they don't know where the story comes from. They say it's made up, and it's not completely it's not believable, which again makes sense. But here's the thing that they've done that can raise some suspicions. This happened

in on Halloween. Reporters from a local newspaper and there was an also reporters and a crew from a television station went to the graveyard and they joined a bunch of onlookers who were hanging out waiting the church. No, they were outside of the grounds. It couldn't get into the grounds because it's gated off now, and the sheriff

deputies were there, as evidently they are every year. But they didn't ask anybody to leave the premises or the area outside of the cemetery until eleven thirty at night. And they, according to the story, they did this because a representative of the cemetery owners showed up and ordered that everyone was to leave. Now, if you want to put the whole thing to bed, and you want to say, listen, this is made up, stop coming here and stop doing this.

Then let the media in. Just just let the news guys in and say, hey, guys will escort you with the police. You can hang out at this spot, stay here till twelve thirty and lo and behold, nothing happened. Nothing. Instead, they shoot a way as if they were sweeping it under the rug and hiding it all. Yeah, I mean, that would be a good strategy to put it all to bed. It's just to just to have the cruise there.

Though that you know, some true believers would probably say something on the order of like, well, gee, you know, Satan didn't show up because he's camera shy and there's all these I mean, but at the same time, this doesn't mean there's any sort of conspiracy of what because there's hundreds of people there probably making a good old racket.

The owner, you know, you don't know where the owner list, but he probably lives, like you know, right next door, right across the street, and he wanted to go to bed and so he just basically sent somebody over there. Or there's a third theory, which is that the representative of the owner it wasn't the owner of itself, was actually Satan No, I mean I think that like to

build on Joe's are more rational theories. Yeah, I mean, it's not like you, as a property owner, walk up to the police and say, I want everyone but the media to go home. I want to put this to bed. Let's let the media in. You escort them, and they'll prove that there's nothing going on here. No, you say, there's a bunch of people here, they're going to ruin my property, send them home, and then they go home. You know, you know, you don't say, like, oh, there's

one film crew there that might be reputable. That's one person with a video camera out of like who knows, it could have been thousands of people with videos. But you've seen we've all been to places where you see the TV news van and it's a it's emblazoned on the side with the name of the station, and it's got the little radio dish, And yeah, it was a TV crew. They had their gear, They showed up with cameras in the whole nine yards. It was reporters who

were tagging along with him. But it's the newspaper reporters. But they've I've got to presume that if the guy showed up as a TV reporter. He's got the news van and he's got all the news crowd with him because he's gonna try and report it and send it over to the station to make the splash of look what's going on installed tonight. So that to me, it's like,

well it stands out like a sore thumb. So from a bunch of Yahoo's in their pickup trucks drinking beer to a bunch of guys with cameras and somebody standing there with a microphone in front of the spotlight talking that person. Is is it like on YouTube or anything? I mean, so like it's hard to know. Like that, it was kind of that trend of like undercover reporting, Like was it undercover reporting like or or they trying to emblazon? Were they like trying to sneak in? Was it? What?

Did I mean? It's just it's for me, it's hard to tell. And you know, I agree with you, there's no reason to send them away. But also like truly, if you know somebody who owns the property lives like right there and they're like I'm trying to go to sleep, they say, hey, cops on the phone, tell everybody go home. They don't know who's there. They just say it's loud

out there. See. I got the impression the way I read it that the person showed up, that representative of the people showed up, and then there's a problem with the representative may not have cared who was there. Secretary. She's like, it's midnight crap, Like I got called out of bed by these rich people to go tell everybody go home. I'm gonna tell her to go home. It's you're that's a very good point. But let's but but remember something else too, is that and that they can

boot them off the property because it's private property. But right next to it is a road, which is public property. And so if people really wanted to stay there and watch what the goings on and see if Satan appears, you can still do it. Yeah, well, did you you went on Google Did you go to the cemetery on Google Maps and look at the street view this The building itself is offset from the road. It's not like it's right. Yeah, now that's fallen down. It's kind of

out of sight. Yeah, you can. You can kind of see it from some of the satellite photos. It's footprint, but it's not right there, it's a ways away. So I mean, let's just I'm just gonna make up number. Let's say it was eighty yards away. That's a that's a fair bit of way to be able to see anything at night with a video game. Yeah, but if Satan is like appearing on Earth, he's probably like, there's a light show and he probably it's a disco tech. Now well no, I'm just saying like there's some fire

and brimstone happening. Well so, but the thing about it is is Satan is there depending on why he's there. If he's there to visit his deformed child that's buried there, then he's gonna walk him on the tombstone. So you take a take a little night vision gear, you know when they with a little magnifying capability, and you know, Satan, if he's there, was just sending Joe on location. Yeah

we really are. Alright, Well let's let's let's keep going here. Okay, all right, So the next theory is you're not gonna believe this, it's a total hoax. Yeah, Well, the origin of this story and tell us Joe's you know, gone a little ahead of us, which is the big red flag is when the story showed up back in the nineteen fifties. Supposedly there was a professor at the University of Kansas who made the story up about the Gateway

to Hell being located installed. He made this urban legend ofb Now, and evidently he told it to his students continually until it caught fire. But I don't know why someone would intentionally make a story like that up unless he really had it in for someone in that town, or just the town itself, like you must have hated some he saw the town named Stall and thought, Hey, that's kind of like Skull. I'm going to make up

a creepy ghost story about it. Alternately, I mean, he would just picked a small place that he didn't think any of his students would be from, which, well, the University of Kansas, that's not I mean, I can't imagine it's too far away. I didn't. I actually don't know how far away it is from Stall now that I think about it, or that it would be a place that enough people kind of knew about that it was real, a real place, but not like a lot of people

knew people from there. I mean, I don't know. Actually, it would be interesting. I mean, if this happened in the would be interesting look at the population tables and see what the tiniest town in Kansas is, and it

might very well be stolen. And and you know, going going with her theory that he just picked the very smallest town in Kansas he could find as the center and every Halloween just story because she was she she wanted to like because distically speaking, it's less likely he's going to have a student from this town because it's the tiniest town in Kansas and it's a what like maybe it's a farm community, so like they don't send a whole lot of people to college, you know, I mean,

I think it's that's a fair thing to say. Well, regardless regardless of what could have been the reason that it happened from this professor. The story is supposedly was repeated every year to his students, and nothing really happened until either nineteen seventy two or nineteen seventy four, I'm not sure which year. I tried to to get into the archives to figure it out, but I couldn't get

the old archives from the university to come up. But the university newspaper reported this story, and I kept digging and trying to and evidently they're back there. Back issues are just not there. I couldn't get. Maybe if I had pretended to have a student and try to log in, I might have found a way, but I couldn't get. But evidently the university newspaper reported it, and from that point it started gaining traction, and the first report of

people showing up in mass is v eight win. Supposedly, it's reported that a hundred and fifty people we got I guess they were all college students showed up to see what would happen from there. It's grown to what we have now of five people every Halloween showing up and and trying to get in there, and now we have the fence and police patrols and all of that.

I mean, should we talk about doing this? Sometimes? I'm like, every once in a while, like I don't know, like we talked about well maybe like there's always an like outlying detail in a story that one of us will bring up and we're like, man, that sounds like something somebody was just like it would be funny if we could see if that could be pretty in article. Yeah, and yeah, we have talked about it'd be fun to set up an alternative, an alternate website and and start

posting this stuff and just tacking stuff on people. Do not outrageous to think that, like a philosophy or psychology professor, you know, would use this for meeching moment or as an experiment or whatever. You know. I think that makes a lot of time. Yeah, it could It could be. It could be he wanted to start an urban legend and that and so it would be a great you know,

and maybe he did it for that reason. Maybe he started this little urban legend and then he would say to the student class of a couple of years down the line or something like that, he says, Okay, okay, have you guys heard this story about the Gateway to Hell and all that? How many of you? How many of you heard this? Raise your hands, you know, and all this stuff. Okay, you tell me about this story. What have you heard? And they tell me that, and so what do you think? You know? Well, let me

tell you something. I made it all up me myself, dude, you know, as just as a sort of psychological experiment. But I would I would think that if that were the case, if that exact scenario were the case, then there would be recounts of people saying, oh, yeah, I was in that guy's class and he admitted to making

it up. But there's nothing that I could find. And again, this is this is one of those stories, and I fully admit this everybody, one of those stories that is really, really, really hard to find a lot of concrete information on. But I did not see anything that said that he admitted to making up. As it is, I couldn't even find the name of the professor who supposedly made it up.

So to me, the professor making it up, it's just as likely as the other theories, because I don't have any brain of fact to this group right here, is that you have just said, like to our entire listenership, a professor making a story up to mess with the students is just as likely as Satan being real and coming they're They're both equally reasonable based on what I have to go on. Yeah, I think I know the name of the professor. His name was Professor Satan. I

thought he was one of the magazine ruses. Yeah, we had this, I remember that. I'm back in the fifties. We had this professor who told a story we had this really strange way of talking, was like more non standing, but only the goth kids passed the class. I like that, you're not going to mention the faces that you'll make it. Oh no, I don't look at him when he makes those faces. Actually put my papers in front of me.

Really really are you know? I mean as as as kind of a kind of a final thought on this story and before I opened it up to the pair of you, my, my, my final thoughts are I personally, I don't hold a lot of stock in the occult and those kind of stories. I mean, I admit fully there are things that I have heard and seen that I can't account for in any logical manner. In other words, I can't I don't have an explanation for whether I've seen it myself, or I've heard about or seen it

on recordings, whatever the case. Maybe, But you know, that doesn't say that it is or isn't true. So I don't. I don't know that this story is real, but I can't say that some part of it isn't real. And that's I think that's why I wanted to to kind of have this as our kickoff for Halloween, because there's a lot of crap here, but there's also a lot of potentials that could have happened. So that's the really

difficult part. And I know that something we try to tackle is is peeling those layers apart to find the real thing from from the not so real things. That's real. That was a great experience, Steve. But you know that that that's where I stand in this. So I I don't know that I buy this, but you know this is this is completely outside of the things that I would normally jump into. Yeah, I'm I'm on, I'm on, you know, unstable footing. Yeah, well I am I think

that number one. As I talked about this a little earlier. But Hell is like heaven. It's not a place that you reach physically, you know, it's a place. It's a place where you it's like in another dimension on and so so it's a level of transcendences. Yeah, And so I mean there is there is a gateway to Hell, which is the entire planet, which is like you know, I mean, you can be you can you can do things that will well. The entire planet conversely, is a

gateway to Heaven exactly. But you can do things anywhere on the planet that will earn you entrance to Hell, and uh, you know, and that's that's your gateway right there. But when you go to Hell, you don't. Your your soul goes there, not your body, So you don't need a stairway or a gateway or anything else to get to Hell. I think the gateway is a physical manifestation for us to be able to recognize it. Yeah, but I don't. I don't think there's any such thing. Yeah,

it was. It's a fun story. You there's there's all kinds of people out there saying stories about oh, you know, you get down there, that's things pulling you down and you you go, can't there. You hear moans and horrible noises and scary stuff, and your flashlights will stop working. You always got you gotta break like seventeen times the amount of batteries you need to Yeah, that's in the accounts, yeah, exactly.

Which it doesn't really make any sense because if you're if your flashlight's gonna crap out because Satan has messed with your the batteries and your flashlight, well guess what your backup batteries have been messed with equally, so bringing backup batteries isn't going to do you any good? Can I can? I can? I go down the poulter geist rabbit hole here briefly with you on that, and I can't believe I'm about to do this. I can't either. Yeah, I know this is really weird because I'm the total

skeptic on this stuff. But the things that I've seen is that let's let's equate any kind of presence a metaphysical presence, whether it be satan or a polter geist or a ghost or whatever. We they you know, people equate them to an electrical disturbance. Can So if I have two batteries making connection inside of a flashlight, that is making a circuit, which is an electrical circuit. So when this electrical disturbance comes through, it screws up that

connection and it drains that connection. But those batteries themselves, the ones that you haven't put in your flashlight, that are just sitting in your bag, they're an unconnected circuit, so therefore they cannot be drained by that field. So they're still gonna work, right, And I feel like I just need to point out the fact that, like you went there and I was like, yeah, but it's more fun to mess with people if they like put their

batteries in and then you like short it out again. Yeah. Yeah, you know, like it's way more fun if they have to do that seventeen times than like shorting everything out at one. You physics meet fun, I guess, yeah, but yeah, it depends. I mean, I suppose if if this uh, this presence can can suck energy auto based basically from

a completed circuit. It wants electrical energy for whatever reason, it wants manifestation or it generates it, and it's sort of like e MP, it overloads it, which would pop the bulb. That would kill that would that would that would fry the bulb in the flashlight. Yeah, I would fry the Yeah, you can't really fry a flashlight because it's so simple. Yeah, but it's like yeah, so it's hardly yeah, drain it or whatever. Yeah, who the hell knows.

I think it's possibly somebody made that up. I don't know. I mean, I'm kind of with you, like I hate to admit the fact that, like it's just as possible that a college professor made this up as it is that SATAN really is like using a physical stairway to literally walk upstairs in a physical being clop clop clop or whatever, you know, regardless of what I believe about like heaven or Hell and what those things might be.

You know, I think it's fairly widely accepted that it's not a place that you physically go in your physical whole body. You know, it's a place that your spirit goes. Therefore, the people or things that rule those spaces would also not be like physical beings that like have physical bodies that they have to use a stairway to get someplace. But I also, I guess doesn't explain there's a lot of big question marks that aren't really well explained by

you know, saying like, well, but it's not real. Yeah, so this is one of those weird crazy doozies where I don't have a good answer for you. I'm sorry. Yeah, I think I think we're all kind of on defense on this. Yeah. It's like I don't know if say it exists or not. And you know, I'm open to the possibility of the existence of say, demons and things like that. I mean, they may they may actually exist. Seriously,

I mean, but don't the stairway now not buying it. Okay, well there there'll be the end of that, all right, ladies and gentlemen, Well, as always, this is the best and your favorite part of the show. Where were you? We give you all of our as josephs burtnant information again or he just had a piece of ice cream in his mouth and couldn't do his teeth were freezing, regardless the show. This one and all past shows are available on the website. The website is Thinking Sideways podcast

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the group and the page are both. They're like us friend us. We've had actually had a couple of really good discussions going lately, which is always fun to get all of our listeners involved. Did and of course, you can email us at Thinking Sideways Podcast at gmail dot com. You've got a thought on this, you disagree on a point, or you've got something to add to it. We love to get that and we have some great conversations over the email, so feel free to send us one over

the emails. Sorry, I just can't deal with that. All right. That having been said, ladies in Germs, we're gonna go ahead and wrap this one up, so until next week when we have another spooky story, we will talk to you then go oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. That's weird