You see somethings going to happen. What's going to happen?
Welcome to the Occult Rejects this episode, I got a special guest. I got another person from North Carolina on, so this is very exciting for me. But before we do get to the guests, then let me introduce the rest of the rejects on the show. Julia. What is going on? Julia from Cosmic Peach. Please let everybody know what your deal is.
Thanks for having me again, Nick, looking forward to this one Cosmic Peach podcast. Wherever you listen to podcasts, this one is right up my ali, Illa Fair, normal stuff. Glad to be here.
Of course, Hell yeah, and thank you for coming on. And we got Brooke from Dark Florida coming on with us. You know, obviously if I got the paranormal, we got to get her own with us. So what is going on? Broke? Thank you very much for joining us.
How are you hi? I'm happy to be here with all the fellow rejects. I'm excited. You can also find.
Darkford podcasts wherever you listen to podcasts, and really excited to get into some of his stories. North Carolina is a spooky place.
Yeah yeah, I'm honestly, I'm looking forward to hear about places I could possibly go to myself now, because I don't know much about this state at all, So this is like research for me. And we got the Headless Giant. What is going on? My man? Thank you very much for being here as usual, and you're muted, just to let you know real quick. Thank you.
Yeah, so I'm the Headless Giant. You can find me on x and YouTube and if you want, if you've got any paranormal stories, I'd like to get them from you and put them on my show on Thursday nights. You can email me your paranormal stories at the Headless Giant podcast at gmail dot com.
Awesome, Thank you very much. And finally to the guest himself, Jason, you know, I'm sorry to ask you this. I play should ask you before. Is it's spooky CLT or spooky Charlotte? Is the celt just short for Charlotte? How do you pronounce it?
I say CLT, But spooky Charlotte is the message I'm communicating by saying that. It's the airport code for it. And it's like one of those things that you'll see on a T shirts and hats. It's just part of our identity.
Now, that's okay, all right, So yeah, after I screw that up, it's spooky CLT. Please let everybody know where they can find like your stuff, you know, or anything you want to advertise, all the shows you've even been on if you want to plug it.
Yeah, I mean, if you look for spooky CLT, that's me. No one else is doing it. So I'm primarily on Instagram at spooky clt, and then there is a spooky clt dot com as well. That's more so event postings.
Oh no, I did not even know that. I'll have to go check that out.
It's not as active. It's kind of my archive for like when I've been on the like different segments and stuff, I usually post about it there. Ok, just have a list going on.
Very nice and I will include all those links in the bottom when the show drops. I guess, you know, just to get into it. What even got you into the paranormal?
I've always been into the paranormal to you know, I say spooky because spooky is such like a broad term a versus the paranormal, and it's definitely a focus. But that's not it, you know, aspects of just real history are are spooky true crime. I consider spooky folklore spooky. It's it's a little bit of everything. And I know paranormal covers that as well, but yeah, I think I've just always been into that now. The reason i started
Spooky Charlotte specifically was because I'm not from Charlotte. I am a transplant. Sounds like you're a transplant in North Carolina. We are not alone. I grew up in Connecticut, predominantly York, although I was a Navy brat, so that had a part of to do with it. My family on my dad's side has deep, deep connections and roots in North Carolina. So when I went to when I was deciding where to go to school, I went to U and C Wilmington and I've just been here since, except for I
was in Florida for a bit working for Disney. I did their college program. But I moved to Charlotte coming up on ten years. It was twenty sixteen, and they instantly I understood that the culture, and like the personality, the reputation it had was like Charlotte has no culture. It's brand new in the eyes of a lot of people. But that's because there's a lot of like you know, skyscrapers that have just gone up in the past twenty years. It's just grown in a way that not a lot
of other cities can. And because of that, we have
lost a lot of our older buildings. There are still a lot around, but I'm doing my best to show people that shar it does have history, it does have culture, and I'm doing it the only way I know I can do it well, and that's by doing it through telling ghost stories and that includes true crimes Charlotte, North Carolina, and I've been collecting folklore things that you won't find in you know, history books, like the Urban Legends per se or we do have some like area specific cryptids.
So I'm just trying to be a source for people who are into that. So they they're interested in spooky stuff and they want to know more about Charlotte, they can do both at the same time. And it's the page became what it is is because I was trying to be the account that I was looking for when I was learning about Charlotte, and that's how I did it. And almost ten years later, I've been having the account
for eight years. I've learned so much, but also realized that, like I have not skimmed the surface, there's a lot more to go, and I'm going to be doing this for as long as i want to. I'm learning something new. So that was my long winded explanation of what spooky clt is.
Oh that's awesome, Just really real quick to ask you. I don't know if you happen to know. Have you ever been to Greenville in North Carolina?
But you know that area where ECUs?
Yeah?
Yeah, yeah, that's that's where my brother went to school, so I visited him there before, so I'm familiar with the college bars and that's about it.
I wouldn't even know which ones to go to.
Ten plus years ago, so I'm sure they're all different.
Now, would you say that's would you say Charlotte's more more of a city than Greenville? Oh?
Absolutely?
Okay, I thought, because when you said skyscrapers, I was like, I don't think of Charlotte.
Charlotte's always within like the top fifteen places of where people are moving toast twenty years.
Like going to city? Yeah, like how dare you? No?
No?
I like Greenville because he said it's less population. That's just be totally honest with you or it seems like it. Yeah, but uh so, like all right, uh, I know cemeteries is a big thing. He goes when you go to that about any of that.
Yeah. So I've gotten super involved with cemetery preservation just because if you're into spooky stuff, that's where you're inevitably gonna kinna end up. So luckily, our Historic Landmarks Commission has been doing events every like probably once a year, headstone cleaning events where you can like learn and we'll provide the equipment, like you know, and clean these historic headstones.
And I love that idea so much. I've kind of rolled with it, and I've been brokering, like the Landmarks Commission with other cemeteries to get them to do it there. The last one we had was just I think in March, and we are cleaning this two and fifty year old cemetery. There's hundreds of people buried there, but now it's right in the middle of the city, so it's gone through years of being around people. So there's not a lot of headstones left. There's probably one hundred or so, but
we got out there and we cleaned them all. So we're using like a type of solution where it's going to keep making it look better over the next few years. Personally, my favorite thing about or lately that I've done with cemeteries is I've raised the money to fix the headstone of a man named Charlie Hawk, and he was killed by a lion. And that's what his headstone says. It says Charlie Hawk killed by a lion. Happens in Charlotte, North Carolina. So I wanted to fix this headstone because
it's cool, you know, like it's a cool thing. Charlie doesn't have any family anymore. He died in the nineteen thirties. So I took it upon myself to raise the thirty five hundred dollars. And the way that I raised that money was I won. I portrayed him at a living history event out there saying like, Hey, I'm Charlie Hawk, killed by a lion. I don't have an arm asking for money that way. Yeah, his arm got ripped off,
that's how That's how the lion got him. He was the trainer for the circus and just one night it didn't go well. Way to die.
Though, hopefully he was quick, Yeah right.
No, it wasn't because he officially died of infection. So it happened over the course of a few days. But like his circus family who paid for the headstone, like they loved him enough to put on there, killed by a lion because they're like, people are gonna want to know, Like it's bad ass, you know, that's almost to be proud of, at least the way he was doing it. But yeah, so I got the headstone fixed by way
of raising money. And another thing I did was I did a historic tour and a paranormal hunt of a historic building in Uptown Sharp And that's the other way that I raised money to do that. And that's kind of been my thing because this past Friday the thirteenth, I did something very similar. Now this one's crazy, and I feel like I'm talking, like interject with your own stories at any time or else I'll keep the appen. But so here in Charlotte, North Carolina, is a company
called Morris Costumes. And Morris Costumes is pretty much like the what Spirit Halloween is a ripoff of? And I say that because you know Spirit Halloween seasonal, it's it's fast fashion of Halloween. Pretty much. Morris Costumes is all year round, and they're the ones supplying actual costumes for like movie sets, school plays, like theater productions. And over the years they've been doing that at a huge scale,
like I'm talking like the Burton Batman movie scale. They're the ones applying the costuming for that all the way down to you know, like East mech High School and Charlotte. That's kind of their focus now. And they have this shop on Monroe Road in Charlotte, and they've been saying for a number of years that they believe that it is haunted by Philip Morris, who was the creator of Morris Costumes. He was a showman himself, like he was
a ring master for the circus. He had his own like nighttime TV special movies like Elvira pretty much, but for like the entire East Coast, his name was doctor Evil. Like he was the greatest showman of Charlotte, North Carolina.
But now they're saying that he's haunting that location. So we I use that as an opportunity to do my next fundraising event for Old Settlers Cemetery, which is that one that we just cleans, but now we're raising money to fix the headstones But what the crazy part is is you' all believe in Bigfoot, Okay, Bluff Creek, Patterson Gimlin film. Do you think that it is real? I do? Yes, you do? Okay, So Philip Morris would tell you that you're that's the one who created the suit for it.
I posted on Twitter when people got.
Mad, so that guy. People on the internet still get heated about this. But he said that he created the gorilla costume and then Patterson modified it from the original case, and that's that's the suit that they used. They did not tell Morris that they were using it for Bigfoot. They said they just needed a gorilla costume. But then Morris he recognized his suit and he put two and two together. And then ever since then he was claiming that he's the person who made the suit for the
Patterson Gimlin film. So here we are going to the building he allegedly haunts. Figured let's ask him. So like the entire evening, you know, our groups, this was all
part of the spiel because it's a fundraiser. We wanted to sell tickets and we did sell out at eighty five, which now seems small, but at the time it felt like very big but we asked him, and then across the board, whenever he was asked like are you Philip Morris, he would give a detail about himself, like you know, playing pranks, he pointed he or he had this group led to a specific magic trick box of like the rings,
and that was like his main thing. And only his grandson who was there, who had not told anyone yet, shared with us after he said he loved whiskey, which the grandson like confirmed that was a problem he had. And then then when they were asking like did you do the costume for Patterson Gimlin, they had this like it's like an I've never seen it before. An EMF jump rope pretty much is like a one of those track things. So the idea is you can see kind
of is it over here? Is it over here? The entire thing lit up for the first time when they asked him like, did do you make this suit? And it said yes pretty much. So long story short is, we asked the guy who claimed that he made the Bigfoot costume if he made it, and we did so while raising money for sanitary preservation.
Double Spooky raising money to refurbish the headstones, all while making us all look like as is believing in the Bigfoot film and doing a paranormal investigation. That's I mean, because I always felt like that footage was the footage, like that was the Bigfoot, Like if you were ever gonna believe in Bigfoot, that was the video to watch.
I just want to I.
Just want to admire and thank you for putting the dead to work. They're always just loafing around, and now you're getting them to pay for restoration of headstones. That's perfect.
I agree, it's we We asked him, you know while we were there, like, you know, are you okay with us being here and across the boards? It was yes, and we did connect with multiple There was other spirits things going on as well in the building in different parts. So it was just it was a crazy night. And
it was on Friday the thirteenth. Like I mentioned before, doctor Evil, like he's a big part, Like he was like this big guy for spooky culture, and his roots were in Charlotte, North Carolina, Like what are the chances? So I did my best to teach the gospel of this guy a little bit, and I hope people walked away learning something as well as you know, at least hope they were spooked at one point.
It sounds like a good time. I do have a question for you about the headstones though, I mean, you guys are spending a lot of time going I would imagine to go and clean them and like preserve them and stuff like that. So I have I always get weird vibes when I go to a cemetery, and sometimes if it's a really old cemetery, if I'm driving past it, like in my car, i won't even look at it because I'm like, I don't want any passengers, like I
don't want any hitchhikers. I don't know, I'm superstitious, But have you ever experienced anything spending like that much time around the dead bodies?
So I have a story that I'll get into now because it's a bit of a whammy as well, But the answer is pretty much no. I'm not really sensitive in that way, Like I'm not the type of person that's gonna see apparitions very clearly. I have gotten vibes before, and like I can pick up on that type of stuff, But overall, and a lot of times when I'm going to cemeteries, like I feel like I'm going in like a like a contractor into a house that's not mine, Like I'm I'm here on a mission, like I know
where my business is. I'm going to stick to that. You know, don't bug me. I won't bug you. But anyways, here's my my next long winded story. Last summer, I get a DM on Instagram from this guy saying, Hey, there's a cemetery in this one of the neighborhoods called Biddleville and Charlotte. I've been getting told that they're doing construction nearby, and in the construction piles people have seen headstones. There's a cemetery nearby, So I'm like, ah, I should
probably look into this. I went out to the cemetery. It was near where I worked, checked on in every everything I did. See the construction piles, there's nothing in there, but in the like the cemetery, it's next to a public park. It's gated off, and it was clear that half the grass was mode half the grass was not because of a huge branch had fallen, and it was clearly a few years We're talking like eight foot to
alt bush. But there was headstones in there that you could kind of see, but like completely overgrown so I was like, man, like, all I would need is a couple of volunteers and I could get this cleared out. But like, do I have the bandwidth for this right now? You know, people do bring stuff like this to me, and like, I kind of have a bunch of projects on the back burner, so I didn't know if I
was going to pursue this one. But that weekend was con Carolina's, which is just like a regular you know, convention more specific to Charlotte, but it's pretty popular in the region and there's a paranormal track and I was on the paranormal track, so I was there speaking on a bunch of different stuff, and the guest speaker was a guy named Brian Denhausen. No one knows him and that's okay. He's from up north. His son is a
professional wrestler. He has mediumship abilities and he has his own stick that he does and he's got pretty popular from it. But his whole thing is that he'll do readings of you while talking to you, and like it's kind of like reading your tarot card, but he's painting it for you in that moment. So I had it done and it's not something that I typically do. But I was like, you know, i'll you know, have a chance to talk to the guy that it'll be fine. So here is the picture. Oh wow, And he was
like what does this mean to you? And I was like, man, I don't know. I mean that looks like Prometheus aliens to me, something something like that. And he's like, all right, here is here is a picture of like you in the center, like this is I'm the main guy, and there are intertimensional beings chatting with you, but you can't hear them. But you have the ability you too, but you can't hear them, so you just got to figure it out how to talk to them. And I was like, damn,
I don't know what that means. But whatever, I'm all around all these tower readers, mediums. I'll bring it to them to see if they can explain. And they're all saying the same same type of stuff, like you know you have the ability to talk to them. They're telling you to do something. These white orbs are opportunities like do it. And I'm like, okay, but what is it?
And then finally I talked to this one older lady and she said the same thing, but she stressed the importance of it's going to make an effect on the community. And when she said that, I'm like, damn Biddleville. Like there's literally a sign that said Biddleville Community, like right across the street from the cemetery. That's when it clicked. So I just, you know, made a flyer. Well, first I researched the cemetery, found out it was the Biddleville community.
It's the first post emancipation Black cemetery and Charlotte over two hundred and eighty people buried there. Only about twelve headstones are left, Like yeah, you can still see the indentations from people, Like it's very obvious to see indentations because it'll be in a clear road, but headstones nowhere to be found. You know.
I was just gonna ask that real quick, just just like show was there pieces of headstones? Like these things fell over or are they just completely gone?
That's what I wanted to have completely gone. But some stuff is scarried, some stuff is knocked over, Like there's these full, beautiful obelisks just like on the ground sideways, so like it's an abandon cemetery. But like I have found other articles where in the eighties someone founds it, cleans it up, said they're going to take care of it. And then again in twenty eighteen, someone founds it, said they're going to take care of it again. And now here I am founds it and now I'm gonna take
care of it again. Learned about the cemetery. There's all these different like important people for that community, reverends, professors, like just people of prominence. But anyways, I've had two events now where I've had people go out and do the landscaping for it, and like, we are looking good,
and it's the first time I did it. We were we'd whacking this one section and a lady came up and she was a medium, and she was like, hey, just want to let you know that there's this old black guy with a big, bushy white beard following you around and he looks pleased. So I'm like, great, I did it. You know, maybe these aliens will leave me alone. Now.
Oh my gosh, that's like kind of spooky in and of itself, right, even though you're you're not picking up on it, just to have somebody walk up on you and say, hey, just so you know, there's a ghost on your six And he really likes what you've been doing.
Keep it up. Yeah, And like I'm an I'm an anxious person to begin with, so like I had that Catholic guilt of like, man, I need to do something, it's my responsibility. And now I'm like, is that guilt or is it a ghost? Like now there's another layer to my anxiousness.
And I love the respect that you take for those of who have already passed on. I think sometimes not enough respect is given to the dead.
So you out here.
Raising money and helping keep those headstones looking nice and showing them the respect and also telling their stories. And the passion for your city definitely shines through. I love when people get passionate about their communities because there's so much in life that we can't change, but the impact that we make right where we're at is felt far and wide. So I love that you're doing this for your for your city.
I have I moved a lot overall, and like looking back at the places where I was like, man, I hated growing up in Connecticut, I'm like, I just didn't try to like it. It's the truth. I was just being a grumpy teen. So for wherever you are, I strongly recommend reading the history signs fine to some way to get like, you know, do something hyper niche in your community, and your community will get bigger.
Yeah, that's awesome because if you you could have had the reverse thing happened to you, and you could have got poltergeisted with the way that the cemetery was being treated and have some kind of portal open up in your backyard. But I mean, I just wanted to throw this out there because it goes along to your point. I grew up, Well, I've lived a lot of places, but I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, and there is a very famous cemetery there. It's called Lake View Cemetery.
There's been presidents buried there. All the Rockefellers are buried there. Elliott Ness a lot of people are familiar with him. He's buried there and right right, yeah, yeah, Elliott. And that's this kind of like a famous detective kind of guy. And so you can go anytime they close it at night so people don't get weird and like go leave burning cruixes and stuff like that. But anytime during the
day you can go and visit it. And it's actually really cool and of all places in the world for the Rockefellers to want to be buried.
It's like not even a nice side of Cleveland, you know.
It's kind of like, uh, you better go with a friend and during the day and maybe I don't know, yeah, but it is like you were saying, though, if you look, there are some really cool, niche little things like wherever you live, even if it's like the crackheaded side of Cleveland, you will find something cool there. In President Garfields, he has like this big memorial built in that cemetery and it's like three floors and when you get to the top you can see all of Cleveland. It's it's actually
kind of amazing. But cemeteries have always fascinated me. I do think you can get haunted though, if you fuck around and find out if you know what I'm saying.
Well, a little aspect to that, so, you know, being a Hellenist, I look at people in terms of like archetypes and how they relate to the gods. And you definitely have archetypes like different story characters and you know kind of the similarities between them, right, and you have a real Hades type energy and a lot of people don't realize it, but the Hades energy archetype is still highly respected and revered in our society. If you think
about funeral home directors, they're usually adults. They're usually I mean, they're males, and they have that fatherly energy in one of the most destructive transition points, you know, and really having that ability to be calm in the storm. That's that's big because you know, even Polta guys say, no, I can't mess with that. You know, having the ability to to to be above the fray and on the outside is something that they really do respect.
Hell, yeah, you want to what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wanted to be a funeral director. Isn't that weird? I wanted to be an embalmer. I wanted to cut open dead bodies.
I hate the idea of embalming really, Oh god, people, but like the no, that ain't right. There's something very deeply wrong about that process.
When I was when I was stationed in Virginia, I I got to do a bunch of military honors for funerals and it's just, you know, it feels like you're you're really honoring that person as you're performing the duties at the funeral. But you know, it's it's it's something that's seeing from the outside, you can actually add a lot just by your presence. It's it's kind of an interesting thing.
Headless. I was not nearly as honorable as you'd think in my quest to become a mortician. I thought it was I thought it was creepy, and like, I'm obsessed with Halloween and I was. I was just wanting to be the creepiest thing I could imagine. And what's creepier than like embalming dead people? But I'm too much of a puss to be left alone in a funeral home
by myself. I would have needed a team of advisors to stay with me in case when of them bitches came up out of the grave or some shit like that.
And was.
They like to hire female morticians, right?
You know, I knew.
I knew one actually because you know what I knew one is creepy.
No, she was actually kind of When I found out that that's what she did, I was like, she was hot, wasn't she No, No, she wasn't actually, but no, she was like kind of normal. And I was just like, wait, what that's like? Wow, I never would have thought that's what you did. Yeah, not that there's anything wrong with it. I was just like, Wow, I just never would have guessed.
Like you do that right.
I do want to visit Charlotte at some point. I had a friend that lived there and she said it was one of the prettiest places she ever lived.
Good. That's a great thing to say about it.
Oh, I had a quod question for you, go for it. So when Julia was talking about having hitchhikers and things like that happen. I've done some investigations in this graveyards.
And we've picked up on a vibe.
I've been with other people who are more sensitive than I am, who have experienced some things, and we've set some protection prayers and things like that upon us leaving, just to make sure that we're safe, we're good, and that if anything did want to maybe come back with us, that it stayed there. Obviously, you're setting a good intention when you go in. You're not going in and desecrating the graves. You're doing quite the opposite, and you're in
respect to these people. Do you do any other kind of spiritual protection for yourself? Do you carry any sort of crystals or say any sort of prayers or anything.
Like that, just less. Yeah, so the answer is no, But I talk Dear Devil the entire time I am.
There in case anybody's listening.
And yeah, like I said, like, I'm going in with the best intentions, So I don't do any like specific prayers, but I'll say hello and goodbye.
Well. I also think like spirits in a sense, just like cats and dogs. I think they can tell like if you're a piece of shit or not when you're around.
I like to think so too. So that is what I'll say about that. I have looked into it, but I'm not that type of person who who does a lot of that. Anyways, I respect it and I find it very interesting and like I do think there's that power of intention will work one way or the other. But I haven't found my thing yet.
Oh god, when you were doing besides the guy? Oh sorry, go ahead and.
Nick, just real real quick question. Uh. And I guess maybe from like whatever, Like I guess however, you look at things and see it was there any things that you cleaned up and you notice like tombstones with like a cult symbolism on it, or or like secret society like freemason stuff on it. I don't even know if you'd know if you were looking at it, if that was it. I'm just gonna be honest, you may not even know what.
I haven't found anything like you written or weird like that. But in one cemetery I found rooms made out and flowers clear is so like whenever the wind blew, they were gonna be gone. So I just I was there at the right time. I guess that was interesting. One of the groundskeepers for the cemetery that I'm really involved with, he's told me about having to clean up a lot of chicken remains, Like chicken sacrifices are still huge, believe
it or not. Then there was this one one October when an entire altar was set up in one of our city cemeteries. We're talking like lamps and mirrors, and there were shells and a miniature like pin up doll type thing with a bunch of stuff pinned into it.
It was I guarantee you those mirrors were there to mind fuck some of the people that were there to actually believe something was going on that wasn't.
Yeah something.
I post a picture of it every now and then, and I always just got vastly different interpretations of it, so I don't have a nail down reason.
That's interesting if you ever come across that. I look for a mercury and batteries. There was another culprits for people being shady and pulling off tricks that aren't real. Believe it or not, it sounds cheesy, but yeah, mercury batteries and uh in magnets. You'd be surprised. I'm mer I could put a magnet magnet on my wrist with a battery on the tip of it and hold the bottle cap in my hand. It will float. You guys will think I'm doing something. You gotta watch out for.
Charlatan's My favorite is the Pepper's Ghost illusion, where you got the slanted glass inside of the container and then when you're looking at it, it looks like there's a hologram or some sort of hologram inside the space. So this is what they always refer to on you know, Scooby doing stuff where they've got the image shown through
the mirror and then it's refracted through the thing. But the Pepper's Ghost illusion, if you catch somebody with one of those in the graveyard, you better get your camera out.
So let me hit you with Charlotte specific a ghost story, a true crime story that encryptid.
Nice.
Nice, I'm gonna blow through these for you. So you said you wanted to visit Charlotte. To do so, you would have to stay at a hotel. Luckily, we have a haunted one right on Shrion Street, which is like the street that goes straight through uptown. It was built in the late nineteen twenties, opens in the early nineteen thirties as like a condo building. It's called the Dunhill Hotel today, but back then it was called Mayfair Manor and it had a bad reputation because it opens during
the Great Depression. The top floors were the hotels while the bottom of the condos. And Charlotte is a banking city, so during the Great Depression, people would loose their last dollar and then spend their last time on a hotel
room and then jump. And it happened a number of times, and that has stayed with the hotel where it's a common ghost story where people will be in their room and they'll see through the window a shadow fall to the point where the staff at the hotel can't expect these calls and know how to walk a guests through it. If you were to go to the Dunhill today, they would tell you a number of different ghost stories. There is a woman in white who walks through the banquet
holes who will disappear. When my friends investigated in the banquet hall, they actually hurt someone. Say hello on a Facebook live video during a typical both poltergeist activity that you'd find out a hotel, you know, people saying, doors slam behind them, lights flickering on and off. But the hotel always told the story of a ghost name Dusty, and they believed that Dusty was the spirit attached to a skeleton they found in the basement during their renovation
in the eighties. So back in the eighties, the hotel is shifting hands. It was abandoned for ten years. When they were doing the renovations, they found that someone had decomposed at the bottom of the elevator shaft. And then to this day, when things were happening, they would say, oh, that's Dusty the elevator ghost. What's crazy, though, is you
know that story has been told for decades. Back in the summer of twenty twenty three, there was a police report that went out that the Charlotte Mecklenberg Police Department was reopening cold cases because they got access to this whole different new database of DNA and they were running all these cold cases versus DNA. Well, they had Dusty
the Dunhill ghosts bones. They ran it through this new DNA and they got a hit from Morrisville, which is a town like two towns over thirty minutes away, and we found out that the skeleton at the bottom of the elevator shaft was in fact his name was Odell Mundy.
People called him Doc. He was a World War Two vet and even though he worked at a belk in uptown Charlotte, he was homeless and he would sleep in the Dunhill between his shifts and I don't know how he got in the elevator shaft or what happened, and forensics didn't really say there was a cause of death. That is where he died. And his family who was still around in Morrisville, they finally got some clothes sure about their family member who disappeared back in the eighties.
He was in the elevator shaft.
At the bottom of the elevator.
Shaft, maybe the elevator fell on his ass, crushed in the bones.
Weren't that crushed?
Still, that's crazy.
Just died from starvation or whatever.
Either way, I'm taking the stairs.
Part of the part of the renovations that they did change the stairwells. Now the stairs are where the elevator shaft was.
Long as I'm not stuck in the elevator, I'm okay with that. I could deal with the ghost on the stairs. But if I'm stuck in the elevator with a ghost, I'm I'm so out.
And Brooke, he was homeless, so you know, even homeless ghosts they stink you're gonna get all type of homeless booty hole up in that elevator and just stanking. But that is so crazy because it like you tested DNA and it was a real person. It wasn't Dusty, but it was doc which is closed right yeah yeah o.
D yeah, So Dunhill. There's podcasts about it you can listen to, or you know, visit yourself and the staff will tell you their own experience.
Is there any of that? To get off of the topic of a hotel, because I know you said, you know, if you're gonna go to Chelte, you're gonna need a hotel. Is there any known airbnbs that don't want it out there? Man, I'm sure I put you up.
There. So there's an apartment complex. It was called Tryon House, and I know at one point that there were airbnbs ran out of it, but by no means is it a destination spot. The apartment itself is from the nineteen forties, and there was this big fire that same year and a bunch of people did die. And like the lore was, if you're sleeping there, some people would have like dreams of like blood coming from the wall, or like they
would hear thumping on the other side. There was a story of like a woman who would come up and pray next to your bed. Try On House Apartments. They've changed the name. I'm wondering if it's because I was telling the story too much, Like like I was on the news talking about this apartment building that was actively leasing. So good on then.
It's so strange out ghost ghost tourism simultaneously increases property values in some locations and decreases them in other locations.
Yeah, yeah, I can't remember.
I can't remember the place. The place I stayed at but uh Brookenlle and so as headless. You both know Ron New England. When I went to go out by him to do like I guess our little ghost thing that it was fun, but we got nothing U When I went to his house, I stayed out at Airbnb. I can't remember the name of him, Like, I didn't
even realize. I just booked the place and I told Ron and he's like, you know that place is known to be haunted, right, It was like, get the fuck Addy, And I looked it up and I was like, Yo, what's the odds of that?
That's awesome.
Yeah, I was thinking about setting up my equipment. I was like, maybe I'll get more something to get something out of here. I didn't have a rounds, but you know, yeah, it was a really nice place though. It was pretty cool as shit.
Yeah all right, so have my true crime story as well. Of course we're a big city, so of course we have a notorious serial killer. I don't want to do hold too much onto it because I feel like you kind of have to go into the weeds when you're telling these stories to make sure you're being respectful. But he was known as the Charlotte Stranger. Strangler, but also
known as the Taco Bell Strangler. The reason for that is because he was working at fast food joints and he would like go home with his female coworkers and that's when he would did it. And he did in the means all black women. And it took police forever to admit that there was something going on because it was all apartment complex is very close to each other and they all were kind of connected. But he worked at bo Jangles and he worked at.
Oh, there's Jangles of the Black for me. H, I love bo Jangles.
It's so funny.
Our buddy j J had a run in with a serial killer at a Hearty's.
Another brand.
H yeah, yeah, yeah, human Burgers.
He doesn't know, Yeah, nothing like that. There have been documentaries about him called like one was called Bad Henry I think once on Netflix now but you know, sad story.
You shouldn't know. These were women that he worked with. Yeah, and he was like not sorry, sorry to start asking. He just got me interested on how he was even pulling this off. You said into the teens, you know, like how he was learning, Like I'm just you know, just keeping a real was this guy? So I'm like just done. You know, whatever he's pulling, he's pulling bitches back to his house that easily. I mean, what's going on here?
I think it was more of like how they felt bad for him, and he was like the pushy coworker, like, oh, let's hang.
Out after what I'm just wondering, like just getting all.
These cheesy Gordia crunch in some cinnamon twists. He would have it, I would have to cause a rita, yes.
But he is still alive in a prison in Raleigh, North Carolina. So he's still out there. And that's something I like to remember when I posture I don't piss any active serial killers off.
And you said you said a lot of them are coming, Yeah, we'll go on.
Well sorry what you're saying, Well.
You said a lot of them were also coming from the same area as well, the same apartment complexes.
Too, right, yeah, same, like same neighborhood.
That's interesting, look at that. Actually all right, thank you peace.
But then a Charlotte cryptid story. So in Charlotte, right on the outskirts, there's Lake Norman technically Morrisville, but it's the largest man made lake in North Carolina. And I don't know if y'all know this, but pretty much every lake we have in America is man made, all for the dams. That's why they do it, so they can get their power. But Lake Norman is the largest in North Carolina, and since its creation in the nineteen sixties,
there have been sightings of a lake monster. Of course, I am if he on the idea of lake monsters. I think that there's probably a lot of huge things in there, but I think it's all things that are normal, Like if you've seen gar terrifying, yeah they have. They were dinosaurs. They get up to six feet, and catfish can be freaking huge. But it brings up a lot of reasons why there could be ENCRYPTID is number one. There is a nuclear power pant attached to the lake
that uses the water to cool honest reactors. If you go on that reactors like website and you go through a labyrinth, you can finally find the reports that they're legally required to share. And there are leaks all the time, all the time, and there are like sewage leaks into the lake to the point where like there are these
massive like announcements don't go in the water. And from this date to this date, and then of course it clears up for the fourth of July, and then of course it comes back right after the fourth of July. And then also you know, like naturally blocking a giant river, the Cataba, there's gotta be some type of now consequences for that. I mean, we're messing with the way the
world works. So whenever the lake and Roman monsters discuss, these are like kind of the fears that are attached with the lore and why people think that that's why we have a lake monster. Now I won't dwell on that too much because you know, everyone has their lake monsters, but that's ours. But another cryptid we possibly have. And this is just one of those wacky happenstances where I went to a live podcast recording at a deli, the
fun types of events you'll find in Charlotte. And in that live podcast recording at a Delhi, the lady host was asking questions to the crowd because it was kind of like a game show and she had two different guests that day, and each guest they would she would ask them like, have you ever experienced anything weird the unexpected that you couldn't explain. The two guests they did
not know each other. One was speaking like forty five minutes after the other, but they both answered the same way, saying the first guy said he was in the Starmonnt neighbor of South Or area of South Ends, which is a neighborhood in Charlotte, and he was driving down a road and he saw a cat walking into the middle of the street, and when the cat wouldn't move out
of their way, they were honking at it. They tried to like skirt up to scare it, and when they did that, it sprouted wings and started attacking them and looked more like an owl. That happened, and he's like, I still can't explain it to the day. Yes, we were smoking, but like we understand reality, and they just couldn't explain it. Then forty five minutes the next guest is talking, did not know the first person, and he's like, yeah, I haven't thought about it in years, but that guy
reminded me. When I was walking down the Metropolitan area of town there was an active construction site. It was the middle of the night, and I was walking by a fence and I saw an owl on it, just creeping on it into the whole like you know, neck is going to follow you the whole one eighty And as he got further past it, it went down on all fours and started walking along the fence with him with his tail sprout it up, so it went from like full bird to full cat. And he was like,
I've never been able to explain it. So I had just happened to be in the room when two people were talking about a cat owl hybrid and Charlotte and I've been talking about it and I post about it and I try to get people to tell me if they have seen it. On TikTok, a few people said that they've heard Appalachian lore about it, but on Instagram nothing, so I may So I've just been calling it to Charlotte cat owl, and I like that name cat.
Cat owl, pat owl, bird puss.
I guess in like Dungeons and Dragons or something, there's something like something called like the me owl. Yeah, yeah, there you go. I want to be taking in the crypti community.
Yeah so yeah, I guess you're not going to use that.
Yeah, well, foco pops that they make of it will be called.
The owl or the Charlotte Hoots.
The Charlotte Hoots Charlotte Cowl.
And then at least that explains exactly what you're talking about, you know what I'm saying. At least the name. You know what you're being told about the category.
And it's from Charlotte. You know, I gotta get it to stick. It's all about the branding, you know.
Well, one thing about me is I'm big into cryptids, big into bigfoot. I do research here in Florida, and I go other places and research as well, And of course with the territory comes other cryptids.
And that's the first time I've heard.
Of anything like that.
When you were talking about the Lake Monster, it did remind me of a couple of things. One the Lake and the Simpsons that has like the three eyed fish.
It kind of running me of that.
And also you do hear a correlation.
In Washington. It's called the klick a cat ape cat I'm probably saying that wrong, but it's outside of a nuclear facility that's up there, and it's been reported by the locals as something that has a product of the nuclear waste in the water ways up there. So I have heard stories of those two things coexisting. But I'm going to have to look into this owl cat thing that's really intriguing to me.
I want to see if I can find anything on it.
Please do I being completely honest, Like when it comes to cryptids, I think of them. I look at them more through the lens of like folklore. For most of them, like Bigfoot, I understand a lot of it, and I think there's aspects that we don't understand. But like the other ones like Mothman, like wampus, catchy, but copper, those are modern day folklore. Those are no longer cryptids. No
one is thinking that that's a specific species there. You know, we're talking about them like they're superheroes almost.
Well nature spirits.
That's part of the conversation. So I'm saying, like, the way that we talk about them shows more about us than about them, and I think it really reflects on like what our fears are so like the new like being affected by the nuclear power plant is a real thing, and we talk about it, but by way of saying like, yeah, if a fish is too affect it, it's going to turn into a monster, while also being like, yeah, of course I will swim in like Norman when I'm six
beers deep on the fourth of July, Like, you know, the same with like, yeah, that's my spiel is like the cryptids, it comes from a place of like you're going to learn about that society who's coming up with these legends.
Well, I think even nature spirits are intensely influenced by the type of people around them, too, so that it's only a certain type of person that usually interacts with these things, and they usually have multiple experiences. Not necessarily downplaying their experiences, but it seems like they're attracted to certain types of people. I mean, you see this with the bigfoot phenomena all the time. They're sort of, you know, drawn to I don't know, there might be a classification
for that if people actually studied this seriously. But I think actually headless.
I agree with you because my brother's one of those people. Like if there's a UFO within five miles, that asshole sees it every single time. I've never met a person who has had more UFO encounters than my brother, and I have seen maybe one suspicious thing in the sky, but nothing like it's like these. There are certain people that just weird shit happens to them all the time, and it's easy for people to say well, yeah.
It happened to him. Whoo, he's fucking crazy.
But like I do, I think you're right. There's like some people are more sensitive to seeing ghosts and some people are more I would love to see because it reminds me of The Fourth Kind.
Uh.
They talk about the owl turning into something and it ended up being extraterrestrial in nature. But I would be interested to see something like that for myself. I think it's curious.
Oh was the owl and not in the Fourth Kind?
Was?
I didn't know Whitney Striver's thing, Yeah, what was that.
In the It's all throughout UFO alien lore.
Yeah, well I could be getting confused, but I think it might have been that Whitley Streamer movie as well. I can't remember the fuck that's true it was yeh yeah.
Got the phenomena of owls being associated with bigfoots as well. There's like that that's sort of like crossover between bigfoot and aliens. Is this owl kind of image that usually it's larger than average and it's got really creepy eyes, but you know, it's slightly different from a normal owl.
But never turning into a cat.
So that's what makes this so interesting right, I've never heard that before.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you've definitely got to have to trademark that one exactly right.
See, here's the thing.
Nature spirits know who's who's been smoking, they know who's been taking LSD, and they know who they can get away with popping up in front of.
You.
Think, so that just sometimes they just troll people at a stone with somebody. Oh, I know, if I you, probably I would.
I mean, I tend to think that those types of things do help, when taken in the appropriate amounts, help people connect with nature better. I personally believe that, you know, what heightens some of your senses. You were to go take a microdose and maybe go out in the forest or something, I think you might feel a little bit more you know, connected spiritualated things. So I could totally see that it enhancing that experience.
Yeah.
There is also a lake monster where I grew up, called Bessie to Lake Erie, which is one of the Great Lakes. It wasn't like created or anything, So I tend to think maybe sometimes people see shit Besides dead bodies in Lake Erie, there is a lot of stuff that pops up that's weird that's coming out of Lake erie. So there could be. I mean everybody, it's like you said, everybody's got their lake monster or whatever.
But yeah, I don't know.
I tend to like to do like paranormal investigations and stuff. I don't even know how you would go about do an investigation to see if there was a lake monster. I feel like you'd need like equipment from the Discovery Channel or something like that to even prove that that was a thing.
That's the goal. That's the goal is to get a real expedition our boy Josh to come to Lake Norman.
Oh okay, I know you're talking about it nice. That'd be wild. Yeah.
Man, if you can find something, then then I'm a true believer.
I think there is something to the idea that genus loci. That's what the Romans called it. It was the spirit of a place, you know, and that spirit of a place comes through and the images that you sort of see in front of you.
So it's got Well, here, let me hit you with something spooky that will probably I feel like you'll think it's a connection with that, but this will also close
us close us out. But North Carolina, Charlotte, North Carolina, that area Mecklenberg County is the site of the first gold rush before California, and it happened because the teenager's name with Conrad Reid was bow hunting in a river behind his house and he found a fourteen pound nugget of gold and he didn't know what it was that his family used it as a doorstop for three years before finally they were like, you know, it's shiny, we need money. Let's go over to Fayetteville see if we
can sell it. And after being swindled and then bringing guns and their money, they got like thousands of dollars for this gold nugget, and that kicked off this giant gold rush in North Carolina is specifically the Charlotte area, and in Mecklinberg County there were seventy five active mines that are now abandoned underneath city limits. So we're sitting
on top of Swiss cheese. But also that gold community was the reason why we had the mint moved to Charlotte during the Civil War because we were printing money for the bad guys. And then now we are literally like the second Wall Street in the United States right underneath New York. Like if nine to eleven happens and Wall Street shuts down in New York. They're coming to Charlotte. We have Bank of America, we have Wells Fargo for
just these huge power powerhouses of banks. And so it's kind of said that because of our history of gold, there is a like spirit of greed in Charlotte that has that's like the spirit of the place. Like what you're saying, I don't feel that.
But it's so agre is below a zeitgeist. The zeitgeist would be like a spirit of an age, and then an is kind of like a thought form that's created by different groups of people.
This podcast, that.
Idea that there could be this Judas Loki agrigor of greed, I can totally buy into that.
A lot, by the way, right, but the.
First thing they did with this chunk of gold is trying to swindle them. That leaves the mark.
Yeah, they brought it. They brought it to Fayetville and they were given fourteen dollars for it, and instantly and instantly the guy was like no, no, no, go back in there with a gun and demands more. And then he walked out with like thousands. So history would have been very different.
Yeah, that kind of goes into our buddy Mike Wand's theory is that the first stories of a place about certain stuff generally have an impact on the rest of how how that place is seen.
Oh yeah, yeah.
When you add that folklore as an aspect to culture, you end up finding that it influences a lot more than just the mindset.
Yeah, well, i'll hit you. I'll hit you with one more thing that I'll hold on to. But when the British came into town during the Revolutionary War, they there was the Battle of Charlotte. They went into uptown and like everyone, the militia fought back, survived three volleys even
with like the minimal people. But then when they took over Charlotte, everyone in town was so hostile to them, like constantly just bombarding them with ship, not being like cooperative during any of you know, they're trying to set up camp where corn Wallace, which if you saw the Patriot, he was like the main head honcho of the civil ar of the Revolutionary War, but he called Charlotte a hornet's nest of rebellion because he was ready to get
out because he was pissed off. How unwelcome. He was there, and now we have the Charlotte Hornets basketball team. And then also we are no strangers to rioting, so that spirit of rebellion has stuck with us. So I'll take that over the greed one any day.
Well, it's the perfect dichotomy.
Yeah, all right, that's all you need to know about Charlotte Spooking. Make sure to make sure to follow the page Spooky Colt. If you haven't our, that's awesome. Yeah, we'll try to teach about history like if even if you're if you don't like Charlotte, Like, if you keep up with my posts, you're gonna know a bunch of ship and it's a good thing.
No, it's definitely interesting. Like I said, you had you do have a lot of like even the history, there was things that I didn't know about wanted to go out there.
So you just need to have someone super passionate about making it sound interesting. And the cheat code is making it a ghost story.
That's that always helps. I agree real quick before we wrap it up, what like, I know you said before you want to get you know, expedition out there. But what all like some of your goals are going forward? You have, like anythings that you're trying to do.
Or want to write a book, for sure. I just supplied this afternoon to be on the Historic Landmarks Commission. So I'm trying to get more work involved with local government. I'm already the board of I'm on the board of the cemetery that I'm always helping out at. So just trying to get more involved, get more people involved. Lately, I have been seeing more accounts that are Charlotte based, doing videos about Charlotte history and ghost stories, and I'm like, great,
this will make my work easy for me. Yeah, I'm just trying to as my whole thing is as long as I have having fun, I'm going to keep doing this. I'm still having fun, and I have fundraising goals for certain things. My October is already booked up for events with what I can handle, so I'm keep them busy. It's just the goal is to always be just be having fun while I'm doing this, because once it's not fun anymore, I'm not gonna not gonna want to do it.
Right. Yeah, No, I totally know what you mean, man, I totally know what you mean. That's awesome. Yeah, as long as it stays fun. I think you're kind of doing like your willingness. Yea, real quick, do you want to remind everybody where they can find your stuff?
Out again spookyclt dot com or as spooky clt on Instagram And I have been on a number of podcast episodes and I try to tell different stuff, but sometimes it gets hard. If you just look on Spotify for spooky clt, you'll find interviews.
Awesome, awesome, and then real quick, let just let everybody plug their stuff as well, Julia, real quick, you want to remind everybody where they can find your amazing work. Please?
Thanks for having me Nick, Yeah, this was a really interesting one. I love all the creepy spooky stuff Cosmic Beach podcasts wherever you listen to podcasts, and yeah, thanks for having me of.
Course, no, thank you for coming on and broke from Dark Florida. Please let everybody know where they can find your amazing stuff.
Yeah, you can find me on Instagram at Dark Florida podcast And this was an absolute pleasure. Thanks for having me on, and I got to learn so much and I can't wait to look into more of what we talked about. And keep doing what you're doing. I highly respect the work that you're doing up there and how you're honoring the dead and people who have passed on.
Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on, Brooke. I always appreciate when you can make it real.
Thanks for having me, of.
Course and less join sure.
Thank you so much, Spooky. I love the work you're doing. Historical preservation in a town that's you know, bank or focused is one of the more important things you could be doing because it's only so long until they get hungry for a new spot to set up shops. It's really easy to keep you are not kidding, easy to keep history preserved out here in places like Black River Falls. We're known for the Wisconsin Death Trip. Have you ever
heard of that? But uh static X album. He called his album Wiscod's the Death Trip because his friend had a book on the table that was documenting the troubles and around the nineteen tens, and so it was a book all about these people who were starving to out and shooting each other in the face because there was no more logging industry. It was horrible. It's kind of stayed that way ever since.
Seems like a good reason to shoot someone in the face.
No more logs seems just yeah, but thank you, thank you. He liss yo, you want to remind everybody about your Thursday show one more time?
Oh?
Absolutely yeah. You can message. You can email me your spooky stories and we'll analyze them on the show on Thursday nights. You can email me at Headless Giant Podcast at gmail dot com.
Thank you, awesome, Thank you so much, Hellis, thank you so much, Broking, thank you so much. Julia and Jason from Spooky CLT. Thank you so much for coming on. Man, I really appreciate it. That was an awesome time for me. Yes, and please, uh the listeners go check out his stuff. His links are in the bottom and his Instagram tag. And that is the end of another Recult Rejects and until the next one, everybody be well.