Nothing gets a ghost hunter salivating like the opportunity to do an investigation in an abandoned sanitarium. It seems like we get our ideas of what life was like in a mental asylum entirely from movies like Return To Oz or Sucker Punch , where sadistic psychiatrists are hellbent and eager to perform lobotomies and shock treatment on innocent patients, living in squalor, surrounded by murderous lunatics and psychopathic nurses. The spiritual energy expended in such a place seems like a bonanza of pain and torment, which look great on a ghost’s resume. It’s usually cold, the lights are off because the power has been disconnected, the paint is peeling off the walls, anything metal is rusted, and sometimes the rooms are filled with antiquated medical equipment too big to move and not valuable enough to sell… it feels like you’re walking into a torture chamber set on a horror movie.

But what if it wasn’t like that at all? Author and paranormal investigator Sylvia Shults has written several books on the spirits of the Peoria State Hospital in Illinois and her latest work, Fractured Souls , talks about the history of the sanitarium and the ghost experiences that people have had there. But instead of the ghosts being traumatized, they’re grateful they were taken care of by a doctor who was more interested in compassion and healing than mad science and brain surgery.

Dr. George Zeller came to Peoria in 1902 and he had the bars removed from the windows and the mechanical restraints taken off the beds. He was a new breed surgeon that believed the “incurables” (and the hospital was originally known as the Illinois Asylum for the Incurable Insane ) would do better when treated with kindness than restriction.

One of the prime examples is the case of Roda Derry, who Shults also wrote a book on called 44 Years in Darkness: A True Story of Madness, Tragedy and Shattered Love. Roda withdrew from the world after the mother of her lover threatened to curse her if she didn’t leave her son and spent twenty years in a Utica Crib, which is like a crib for adults that locks on the top. Roda eventually clawed her own eyes out inside it.

When Doctor Zeller heard her story, he had her transferred to Peoria immediately and let her out of the crib. During her last years she was surrounded by people that took care of her instead of locking her away to forget and she flourished there. She might be one of the most famous ghosts of the hospital and people still see and hear her spirit today.

However, it seems that she was treated better by Dr. Zeller than some modern ghost hunters. When the team from the paranormal television show Ghost Asylum came to Peoria, they disregarded the advice from Sylvia and decided to use a Utica Crib as a “ghost trap” to try and draw her spirit out. Once again, humans are crueler than the supernatural.

Another TV show that tried to use the history of the asylum was Ghost Hunters. They were intrigured by the story of A. Manual Bookbinder, a mute patient who wouldn’t speak so they never knew his name (they gave him the name Bookbinder as a kind of joke), but he would attend every funeral at the hospital and he would cry his eyes out. “Old Book” wept for the people who had no one to weep for them and there’s a terrific ghost story that Doctor Zeller told about him. The TAPS team thought they might have gotten him on video, but Sylvia has some different ideas.

In this episode, Sylvia shares her favorite ghost stories from the Peoria State Hospital and discusses the investigations that led her to write Fractured Souls. We cover some of these questions in the interview:

• What’s the truth about the Old Book ghost story?
• Who was giggling in the autopsy room?
• What’s unusual about how Roda Derry’s apparition appears
• Who is the boy in the basement?
• What mysterious object did Dale Kascamarek from Ghost Research Society capture on video and call “The Thing”?

Probably the most shocking and cruel image for me of the whole conversation was Syliva discussing the Utica Crib. With a hospital bed in the crib, the patients only had twelve inches of vertical space to live in. It was a bed where you could never get up and you were never let up. They justified the practice because they said that they restrained patients who might be suicidal or cause self-harm, like Roda Derry did by ripping out her eyes with her own bare hands. And at the time, they might have thought it was more comfortable than a straitjacket.

Welcome to See You on the Other Mike, where the world of

the mysterious collides with the world of entertainment.

A discussion of art, music, movies, spirituality,

the weird and self discovery. And

now, your hosts, musicians and entertainers

who have their own weakness for the weird, Mike and

Wendy from the band Sunspot. Episode

272, fractured souls, the spirits of the

Peoria State Hospital with Sylvia Schultz

joining us from Illinois, the land,

the flatland. Sylvia, how are you doing today?

I'm doing fantastic, Mike. How are you? I'm freezing

to death. Yes. It is

not much warmer down south here in Illinois. No.

It's not that flat. We have a couple of hills

every once in a while. That's true, but being from Wisconsin,

it's my duty to at least get a,

and I married somebody from Morris, Illinois, so I did a

little state trader there, but, no,

it's my duty as a Wisconsin person to get a little dig in in every

discussion when it comes in. It's nothing personal, trust

me. All right.

So starting out, the Peoria State Hospital,

what got you interested in this place, originally? Why why did

you get so into it that now this is your second book, Fractured Souls, talking

about it? Oh, man. Well,

I I've always loved true ghost stories. And

when I grew up and started,

making my own collections of stories, to share with people,

I was working on a book called Ghosts of the Illinois River, and as I

was collecting stories, people kept telling me, Oh, did you

know that there's, there's a place called the Peoria State Hospital? Did you

know that it's an abandoned mental asylum? Did you know that

it's extremely haunted? And I said, I had no

idea at all. I did not grow up in this area, so

I was unaware of this historical and

haunted place that was so close to me. So I

started investigating it. And what I

discovered was that the Peoria State

Hospital is not only a treasure trove

of ghost stories and haunting experiences, but

it's also a real,

a jewel in the care in the field of mental health care,

which is something that's personally very important to me. Now I wanna

get to that I wanna get to that in 1 second about the jewel about

mental health care. First, I wanna say, where did you grow up and how did

you get into ghost stories originally? Oh, I grew up in the

Chicago suburbs. So I grew up with stories of

resurrection Mary and the screaming ghost of the screaming mummy at the

Field Museum and the U505 and I

grew up with all these stories. So, and it was my

father who told me all these stories because he grew up in the

Chicago area too and he just passed that love

of ghost lore onto me. I remember sitting at the dining room table and

having him tell me stories of, of Archer Avenue and the ley

lines and all these things that combine to make a

place haunted. He was very interested in that and he passed

that along to me. I see. We used to, we used to listen to

Richard Crow tell us ghost stories on WGN,

when I was really little and so that I mean, that was 1

of my my first memories of that. So I know exactly what you're talking about

and that's that's exciting. So how did you make it all the way out to

Peoria then? Well, it was a combination

of going away to college and grad school and

meeting someone who lived down here and marrying him. So I I

kind of had to stay once I got married, you know. It's right.

It's it's the same story of a romance that was meant

to be but now you came to a place though that it

seems, you know, that you have a unique relationship

with the Peoria State Hospital. And, you know, here's 1 of the things that,

when people talk about haunted hospitals, they never

talk about haunted hospitals like it's a nice place. They

always talk about it like this is where people, you know, and they'll make up

stories, you know, even if there hasn't been a

history, you know, like that. I know speaking of

Chicago history, there's a certain place in

Lake Geneva, the guy that they named Maxwell Street days

after, where he moved his family.

And so he moves up, and when they were talking about

he's a former doctor, Doctor. Robert Maxwell, and instead

of saying Mike, will this doctor help people and stuff, you

know, his his his mansion is haunted, and they'll be like, we think it's

because of the experimental surgeries he did on people.

And I'm like, hold on a second, Do you have any proof that this person

did any kind of experimental surgeries? It seems like whenever we go

into hospitals and ghosts, it's always some

kind of mad doctor proposition. Is the Peoria State

Hospital like that? I am very happy to say that it

is nothing like that. People do make up

their own stories, but that's because they haven't yet

learned the actual history of the place.

I mean, you say haunted mental asylum and your

mind, just like you said, it goes all American horror story on

you and you assume that you know the stories that went on there. Right.

But at Peoria State Hospital, this was a place

where there were no bars on the windows.

There were no locked doors except for the violent wards

for the men and for the women. The patients were allowed to go

outside. They were allowed to leave if they wanted to. They did not have

anything like, oh, signing themselves out. If they wanted

to wander away from the hospital grounds, they actually could.

And sometimes they were picked up in Peoria and brought back by the police. I

mean, but their life sounds better than mine. But

3 meals a day of locally grown food, everything

that was produced yeah. Everything was everything was produced on the

hilltop. The only thing that was not produced or manufactured

by the staff and the patients was shoes. They

made everything else. They had breakfast and lunch in

their cottages with their fellow patients and dinner they had

at the dining halls with everyone else so they could socialize. And if you

look at photographs of the patients in the

dining halls, you'll notice something that's very subtle, but

once you realize it, you can't unsee it. The fact is that all

these patients are wearing street clothes. They're not

wearing hospital johnnies. They're not wearing scrubs.

They're wearing their own clothes. Doctor Zeller

felt that to take away a man's clothes was to take away his dignity, so

he refused to do that. And I wanna talk a little bit about doctor Zeller

because he I mean, you always think of I mean, I for some reason, I'm

thinking about Jon Hamm in the movie, oh,

what was I mean, oh, I can't think of the name of the movie now,

but it was fun of it's a Zack Snyder film, and,

it like, this girl's in a mental asylum, and she's about to get a lobotomy

from Jon Hamm, the guy from Mad Men. And Right.

Oh, it's killing me right now. But that's all you can think

of. Or you think of, Mike

the psychiatric hospital that Dorothy is in in Return to Oz. And

all those little things just add up to, we have this

vision, mostly from movies because asylums,

seem to be, you know, at least scary places in our imagination

instead of being something positive. Absolutely. Yeah. Be

be patients being being hosed down and beaten with rubber hoses

and and all these horrible, horrible things. Right. Nurse Ratched.

Yeah. Nurse Ratched, exactly. Right. From when flew to Cuckoo's Nest.

Now Doctor. Zeller is nothing like Nurse Ratched. And so what

was unique about his, his perspective especially

coming, he's the late 19th century, right? It's Doctor. Zeller and

his wife is just as much of a partner. Oh yes, a cool

partner. So what's a little bit unique about his approach

to helping people out with these kind of problems? Well, doctor Zeller was a

very interesting man. He was not trained as a

psychiatrist. He was trained as a surgeon and his father

was before him. They both had practices in Peoria.

And Doctor. Zeller was very proud of the fact that

he had no psychiatric training. He said,

well, just treat them with kindness and see what

happens. And what happened was that the Peoria State Hospital

became the premier institute for the care of the mentally ill in the

world. Now Doctor. Zeller lost his mother at a very young

age. He was only 5 years old when his mother passed away, but he

never forgot her influence. She was a very kind, caring,

compassionate woman. And he internalized

that and he put it into practice when he became

superintendent of the Peoria State Hospital. He

felt very strongly that women were to be

respected and listened to. He would

take long walks with his patients, with both the men and the

women, and he would encourage people to talk to

him. He would encourage reporters to come onto the

hilltop and ask him anything, ask his staff anything, get a

completely open door policy, but he also talked

to the patients. And can you imagine being in a

mental asylum in 1905? Women weren't

even allowed to vote. And imagine going for a walk in

the Illinois countryside and having the superintendent of

the hospital where you're staying ask you your

opinion on the care that you're getting. I wouldn't trust it.

I immediately think, like, he's, like, setting me up for something. Like, he's gonna come

in, strap me to a chair, and take out my lobes.

Well, fortunately, doctor Zeller was not like that.

So number 1, we're coming on to a different kind of situation. When people talk

about Waverly or the other famous asylums, I mean,

basically Terrence Allegheny. Right. Terrence Allegheny. Basically, you know,

they make it sound like it's a legal torture chamber, you

know, kind of thing. And I like that we're coming to the Peoria State Hospital

from a different perspective because immediately, that changes the

nature of any ghost stories that might come out of it. So I

wanted to go to first of all, there's several different buildings on the grounds of

the state hospital. And you do a good job in your book in kinda describing

the different ones. And I kinda wanted to start with because we're gonna talk about

ghost stories in the different buildings. You know, what were the grounds of State

Hospital and what were the different buildings in there so we can get a sense

of geography before we talk about, the different hauntings? Alright,

Mike. I would be delighted to do this. The

hilltop on which the asylum sits was very

compact. It was built before there were a lot of cars. They were just

you either took a horse or took a horse and carriage or you

walked. So this the hilltop was very

walkable. It was very compact. And

all of these buildings would they they would

be built and then repurposed for some else and then they

would be torn down and another building would be built. So this hilltop was

in a constant state of flux and change the

71 years that the asylum was open.

And Mike, going back to what you said before, you're absolutely

right. The ghost stories that come out of Peoria State

Hospital are absolutely different to

the stories that come out of Trans Allegheny or Waverly or

Pennhurst or any other of these asylums because

the treatment that the patients received in life was so

much different to the other asylums.

These are stories of most of the patients,

most of the phantoms at the Peoria State Hospital that we

encounter in our ghost hunting today are intelligent spirits.

They want to communicate with you. They want to tell

you how good they had it.

They, they were very aware, most of

them, of the the wonderful situation they had landed

themselves in. So these spirits are

for the most part very friendly. They are very

intelligent. They will carry on conversations with you.

And they're very aware of their status as

spirits and as kind of

spokespeople for the asylum. They don't go out of their way to scare

people because that's not

what they're that's not why they're there. They're not seeking vengeance on

a humanity that left them behind. Exactly. Yeah.

There are some spirits there that do like to scare

people because they were very aggressive in life, and we can talk

about those spirits as well. But for the most part, these are

spirits that just want to communicate with you, which I think is

absolutely wonderful. Well, and that's why people go on investigations

because they they want to get that communication. They don't just want to

be grabbed, scared, scratched, things like that. You know,

you go there because you want to have some kind of,

well, acknowledgment from the other side. And

so the thing is, how big was the State Peoria Hospital? Because you talk

about there's a building for I mean, there's a graveyard there

that has hundreds of bodies. Right? There there's a there was a building

for tuberculosis. There was a building for the mental

patients. It seems like there were it was a it's a big grounds

where there were several different buildings. Absolutely. There were 63

buildings on the hilltop at the inside. Yeah. 12

of those buildings are still standing, including the very first 1 that was built,

which was the firehouse. So that's cool that we have the very

first building ever built. A lot of the buildings have been lost

or, a lot of them have also been repurposed

into other things. 1 of the cottages is now a dentist

office. There were actually 3

cemeteries on the hilltop and they're they're kind of

divided. So some people say 3, some people say 5

because of the way the cemeteries are divided. There are

4,132 graves out

there And that represents only about a third of the people who passed

away at the asylum over 71 years.

Most of the people were sent back to their family plots. Well,

sure. I mean, that seems to make I mean, that seems to make sense because

especially if you die from tuberculosis or something like that, like, the chances

are your family sent you there because they couldn't take care of you at home

or you were no longer able to, you know, live at home. And then, they're

not just gonna leave you there once you're dead. Right.

Right. You know, I think that we talk about you know, there's these different places.

Because first of all, if there's a hospital wing, if there's

a a mental wing and first, the name of it. Right? Wasn't it originally like

the Illinois Asylum? Illinois Asylum for the incurable

insane, which which doctor Zelda thought was an appalling

name, and he got it changed as quickly as he could. Right. He said, don't

tell my patients they're incurable. That's what I'm here to do. But it's that kind

of idea, though, that there's these these different buildings, and a lot of people might

only be familiar with the Peoria State Hospital, after they

saw, the, you know, the TV investigation of it when the ghost

hunters visited there and also the Tennessee wraith chasers.

Oh my god. Yes. Yes. And so if

they're only familiar with the with the Peoria State Hospital,

from television, as someone that's been there,

that's worked there, that has, you know, volunteered

there and spent a good deal of time there, What would you say

that the TV people got wrong? The biggest thing that the TV

people got wrong is not knowing the history. They were treating it just

like any other asylum. They did not focus on

the compassionate part. They did not they did not

focus on the fact that doctor Zeller only

hired people that he knew would treat his patients with

compassion. And Tennessee

race Tennessee wraith chasers,

they really get my blood pressure off. Sure. That's okay. Their

their ghost hunters did not do the very

best research on their history

before they came. I did my best to tell them about the

history, but to be fair, I was talking to them

on Friday after their investigation. So I

did a little bit of damage control, but, to be fair, they did

their investigation there before they interviewed me. Now was that a tactic, or

was that just a matter of scheduling? Oh, I have no idea. I'm sure it

was scheduling. Because sometimes you think about a tactic of that If they let's

say you go into a place and you just do the investigation where you're

saying, like, okay, these are the names we picked up. These are the,

the places we saw things. Where you don't have that stuff in your head in

the first place. That's coming into if you're just purely investigating,

and then you're trying to link it up afterwards

to, okay, we got the name, you know,

Bob Jones. And I guess Bob Jones was a patient here.

Bob Jones was the head orderly. If they even

called orderlies anymore, if they ever were called orderlies and not just a movie

starring the fat boys in, like, 1986. So I was

thinking that might be some kind of investigative tactic. But on the other end, it

also might just be a like, we can get her on Friday. Bring her out

on Friday. I really honestly don't know, but that's a very good

point. Yeah. III was I was interviewed for the

rape the Tennessee rape chasers, the ghost asylum.

Ghost asylum. Fuck, yeah. The stream, ghost hunting.

I was interviewed for that by phone even

before they were out there and we set up a date for me to

to be on camera and then they decided they didn't need me and it was

just local politics and that doesn't even deserve to be gone

into. But their shtick is

that they they make kind of a ghost

trap to attract whatever spirit they're seeking.

And the thing that they made for this

particular goat, they were in search of the spirit of Rhonda Dery

who spent over 44 years

locked in a Utica crib at the Adams County almshouse.

And she was eventually rescued by Doctor. Zeller and brought to

the Puritan State Hospital. And What is a Utica crib? The Utica crib was

developed at an asylum in Utica, New York, which is how it got its name.

It's basically a baby's crib that pretty much sits on the

floor, but the it also has a lid, a barred lid,

which locks. And patients some patients

would request to be put into the Utica crib because it made

them feel safe. There was 1 fellow that, he told a reporter, I

sleep walk and if a nurse puts utica crib at night

and locks me in, I know where I'm going to wake up the next morning

and that's comforting to me. But they were never designed for

use longer than overnight. And Rhoda was kept in hers

for weeks months on end and it destroyed her life. It

her hips atrophied. She could no longer stand. And

sometimes sometime during the first 10 years of this treatment, she decided

she no longer wanted to watch the world go by through the work bars of

a cage, and she clawed her own eyes out. And the story about Rota

Dari is horrifying. Here's here's someone who spent decades of her

life inside the Utica crib, Mike, inside

basically an iron maiden you can see through. She get I mean

Yeah. So, actually, she doesn't wanna see it. She claws her own eyes out.

But what led her like, I I think that, I mean, you went you read

a whole book about rotatory. I did. Yes. And so, like, how

did she get there in the first place? Like, was she born like that?

Right? Or did something happen to her

that that kind of triggered this kind of mental illness? Rhonda

Derry was the youngest of 9 children. She was born in

18/34. She was a beautiful, beautiful young

girl. And she ended

up in this mental asylum locked away from the cage, forgotten

by her family, her life destroyed because she fell

in love. That's a warning to you, everybody. When she

was 16 years old, she did the most natural thing in the world. She fell

in love. 16 years old, she did the most natural thing in the world. She

fell in love with the 16 year old son of a neighboring farm family, Charles

Phoenix. Now the dairies were extremely poor and the phoenixes

were rather well off.

And Nancy Phoenix, Charles' mother, was not about to let her baby

boy Charles marry 1 of these dirt poor dairies. So she

confronted Rhoda and threatened to curse her. She said, if you do not

release my son from this engagement, I will curse you. And Rhoda

took her seriously, and it drove her mad. That that

like, just that in itself is,

you know, you never hear about curses actually working. Like, that's that's

an evil eye. And this is this is what really got me about the story

because Rhoda Derry's story, I mean, what year was she born in

again? 18/34. Okay. So 18/34. So this is

right before Illinois's state. This is only a couple years after the

Treaty of Chicago, which, you know, kind of that

kind of opened up Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota to settling.

Yeah. So you get families coming right out, you know,

basically just getting like, for the first time, settling in a

new place. You have a young girl falls in love, the evil

mother-in-law, drives her mad,

and then, you know, she's stuck in a cage. Like, she goes so

crazy that her family has no choice but to put her basically in a cage,

this Utica crib. And how long does she spend in there?

44 years. 44 years in

there? Yes. She was she was put into the Adams County asylum

in 18/60 when her mother passed away. Her father could no

longer care for her, so she he brought her and dropped her off at the

Adams County almshouse. So she was there from sometime in

18/60 to, September

of 1904, which was in what not December. Now what's an what's

an alms house? Like, you know, we don't just I can't just go to the

alms house today, can I? Like, what is Not today. No.

No. Alms houses are poor houses. Every county in Illinois had

1. And it was simply a place where if you were down on your luck,

you could go and get 3 hots and a cot. They were not designed

to care for the mentally ill, only the poor, but

mentally ill folks are poor too. So that's, sometimes that's where

they end up. And this almshouse was absolutely

unprepared to care for someone with Rhoda's depth of

crazy. So, the the interesting

thing about doctor Zeller is that he

believed 1 of his bedrock beliefs was

that no 1 is incurable. He prided himself

on caring for what he called the worst of the worst. Now

you might assume that means violent, but not not necessarily.

He prided himself on taking care of the patients that

every other institution had given up on, the people

that were locked away and forgotten. And he

really firmly believed that no 1 was beyond help. So how do you prove

that? How do you prove that no patient is beyond redemption?

Well, you go around to the almshouses and the poor houses of the

state, and you cherry pick the worst cases, the

most neglected abused cases. And that's what he did. He

went to the Adams County Palms House, and he found Rhoda there,

and he rescued her. He brought her to the Peoria State Hospital. And

so she got this I mean, so 44 years. So if she's 16,

when she, you know, all of a sudden, it this triggers a

mental illness. Mike, okay. Let's say it wasn't a curse. Let's

just say she had a like, the the curse story is pretty good.

But, you know, even if the curse could have been, like, you believe in it

kinda thing, almost like voodoo sometimes, seems like it. It

the curses happen to the people that believe in them. And so she believes in

it. It triggers, like, some kind of, you know, mental illness where

she can't get out of bed or acts crazy, eventually claws her eyes out.

When she gets to the Peoria State Hospital, what in her life changes?

Well, for the first time in 44 years,

she sleeps in a bed with clean white sheet.

She is cared for by compassionate nurses who knew

her excruciating history. She could no longer see, of

course, but those nurses made sure that she experienced

the hilltop in any way that was left to her. They let her

sit out in the gardens and feel the sun on her face

and listen to the birds and smell the flowers whose colors she could no longer

see. The nurses took her to dances where she could listen to

the music. An interesting thing about

Rhoda's spirit is that

I talked to the historian of the Peoria State Hospital

and That's Christine Morris? Yes, that's right. Yes.

And, she she experienced

Rhoda's spirit very early on in her exploration. She was in her

late teens when she started exploring the hilltop

and, the first time she saw Rhoda Dairy

spirit, which she later recognized as Rhoda Dairy spirit,

she thought she was Glenda the Good Witch because

Rhoda appeared to her in a bubble.

Now Rhoda can't see. All she experiences

is the sensation of rolling because she's in a

wheeled chair being rolled about. So that is her

conception of her first moments and her first

months at the Peoria State Hospital is rolling. So that's

how she presents herself as a spirit, is this

spirit. In a bubble. Yeah. Kind of like a big hamster cage. And not to

be flippant. Well, no. I mean, they're like a big hamster wheel, like, rolling

across. Like, they got that for kids now too. Like, they got hamster wheels that

can play in a roll. I'm on a water at, like, fairs and things. But,

no, it's that idea. If that's how she's experiencing the world, that's a

really interesting part of, you know, the apparition. Yeah. I've never

heard of her presenting before. And that Christine,

obviously, you know, she used to lead does she still lead

tours around? Because she led tours around the hospital for a long time. Right? She

certainly does. She still does. Yeah. And and so it's cool when the

tour guide has a ghost experience. You know, I can tell you that straight out

because it's like sometimes the history people don't like to play with the haunted history

part of it. So it's it's exciting when they do. Yeah. So but that's

not only the only like, if we talk about that, you

know, Rhoda, her spirit or her

recording or haunting or or whatever it is that appears to

people inside the Peoria State Hospital grounds appears as a

hamster wheel, oh, in you know, inside this bubble. But,

also, wasn't there something about her arms, like,

that people saw, like, her arms were extra long? Why why would they see an

apparition like that? Well, the reason for that is because

Rhoda was a very tall, beautiful girl in life

before this tragedy happened to her.

So she I mean, she didn't lose that arm length when her hips

atrophied. It was just that she could no longer stand up,

but she used her arms for locomotion. I

mean, she would if you if she was placed on the

floor, she had no choice but to ball

up her fist, use her feet as, or her

hands as auxiliary feet. Almost like gorilla walking? I mean, I

feel really bad for her, but she was able to get around under

under her own power and that was probably really important to her.

But the thing is she was very tall. She didn't lose that,

those beautiful long arms. But whenever she

presents as a spirit well, okay, let Mike, let me rephrase

that. Some of the times when she presents as a spirit,

she presents sitting down but reaching

out to whoever it is that is looking at her with

these long graceful arms. But she's sitting.

So you don't notice the fact that she has long pretty legs too. You

only see these long scary arms. So it

is a bit disconcerting. But also though, if she couldn't see,

then, I mean, that's the way when you, you know, when a blind person looks

at your face or whatever, they, you know, use the hands as a sense

to see the face. So it almost makes sense to me that

when, the apparition, who you don't

think they'd be limited by the same senses that they were in life, but you

also don't think they'd be hanging around the hospital or whatever, Mike, if you can

fly anywhere. Yeah. You know, that they would use that same kind

of sensory experience that they had in

life, to try to touch the person,

you know, that they see in the room. But so

several people have seen Rhoda's apparition. Have you ever seen

her? I have not. I dearly wish I could.

Sure. I have I have

recorded an EVP, which we think we might be

able to ascribe to Rhoda but I have never heard. What what did

EVP say? Well, this was captured

in conjunction with, I was down in the basement of the Pollock Hospital with a

psychic medium who can see spirits and talk with them. Was the Hospital with a

psychic medium who can see spirits and talk with them. Was the Pollock

Hospital the mental institution or was it the tuberculosis hospital? I can't

remember. That was the tuberculosis ward. Okay. And it was built the

Pollock Hospital itself was built in 1950 and

it was built on the site of a previous tuberculosis

hospital, which was in a batwing shape. And that hospital was built on

top of the land where the original tent colony

for the care of tuberculosis victims was situated.

So there were 3 different edifices

for the care of tuberculosis patients on this particular plot of

ground, which makes that just soaked in

death and and suffering because tuberculosis is very

painful. Now when people talk about, old styles

of medicine and stuff or old styles of diseases, when they're talking about

consumption, that means tuberculosis. Right? Equals

tuberculosis. Yeah. It's basically where you

you drown in your own blood. It causes lesions on the lungs.

And when you cough, those lesions rupture and you cough up blood. You basically

drown in your own body. It's it's a horrible, horrible way to

go. Okay. Thank you. So,

we were my my psychic medium friend and I were having a conversation

with Christopher, who is 1 of the spirits in the basement of the Pollock

Hospital. That's the boy in the basement. You have a whole chapter about him in

the new book. Right? Boy in the basement. Yes. And I have 2 lights

out programs about him too. You can hear our

conversations. We'll have a link to that at othersidepodcast.com/

273, where you can, if you look in the show notes,

we'll have links to, Fractured Souls, Sylvia's new book, as well as her

podcast Lights Out. Thank you, Mike. So, yes.

So we were having a conversation with Chris, and

Diane said he was very young when he died.

He she said he was he was young, about Wendy.

And we captured an EVP right afterwards that

said, I thought at first listen, it's it

was Chris saying, that's right, 22.

But as I listened to it further and I had other people listen to

it, they discovered that it was not a

male voice. It was not the voice we associated with Chris. It was a

female voice saying he was Wendy.

And he has spoken of Rhoda being in the basement with him

just hanging out, I guess. So we think that

might be Rhoda say popping piping in saying he was

22. And since you mentioned fractured

souls and we're talking about EVPs, If you

get either the print version or the ebook version of Fractured Souls or

Fractured Spirits and you see a little cartoon ghosty in the

margin, that's your signal that there's extra stuff on the

Internet. If you go to silviashelts. Wordpress.com

and click on multimedia links for books, you can

listen to those EVPs or watch those videos as you're

reading the book. And I will get to 1 of those, 1 of the

links that you had in in just a second. I wanted to talk and

ask you about, 1 of the things that people saw at the asylum.

But so we have this Rota Dery. Yes. She

comes in. The last few years of her life are much

better than those that preceded. Even though she's still not well,

she at least is in a place where people aren't abusing her. She's not stuck

in in the Utica crib. And so why did when

the Tennessee rates chasers set up their ghost trap, why was it so

offensive? Oh my gosh. Offensive is the right word for it.

The reason it was so offensive was because the trap they built

was a Utica crib. And for someone

to expect that Rhota Derry's spirit would come

within a 100 feet of that thing,

even after so many decades of being

dead, is just foolish and offensive

and just really appalling. And this was

this represented over 4 decades of hell

for her. And I don't see why they made the choice to

make that their trigger object and make that their

their their their object to draw

Rhoda's spirit in. It it it baffles me

why they've made that decision. Well, I mean, it probably because it looked

terrifying on television. Like, I could tell you why they made the decision because,

whoever was there was like, Mike is gonna look this is gonna look great on

TV. Yeah. This is gonna look so badass. Yeah. Well, good luck trying to

get Lord of Spirit to get anywhere near. It. And

so there's a couple of stories from your book that I wanted to make sure

we talked about. And number 1 is so you mentioned

that you can hear some hear and see some multimedia on your site,

of the EVPs and videos that people have experienced in the Peoria State Hospital.

1 is, I mean, Dale Kaczmarek, the Chicago ghost hunter,

and he's I mean, Dale Kaczmarek's been around for well, to me, it feels like

a 1000 years. At least I've been reading his stuff. Ever since I was

interested in ghosts on the Internet and stuff like that, I've been on his

sites and watch and listening to his EVPs and everything. And

so Dale, he writes the, foreword to your book.

And he mentions Yes. That he you know, that they catch this

video while Chris Morris is doing

a lecture, while she's, you know, kinda guiding them on a tour.

And somebody's got an old school video camera, and they're taping

that. And then all of a sudden, like, something appears

behind her? Yes. Yes. Oh, and

we call it the thingy, and that gives me the giggles every

time I watch that video. It is so hilarious because

Christina is doing her lecture at the beginning of the ghost hunt in the

Pollak Hospital and what she is talking about at that particular

moment was I mentioned that, most of the

people who passed away there were sent home on the train system

to their families for burial and family plots.

And at that point in time, Christine was speaking

about bodies being wrapped tightly in sheets

and put into the basement of the Pollak Hospital, which is actually built over

a natural spring so it stays nice and cool. And they did that on purpose

so that they could keep the bodies cool before they were sent home on the

train system. And as she's talking about wrapping bodies tightly

in sheets, all of a sudden, this white

thing, it looks for all the world like a sock puppet.

Yeah. And it looks like somebody has a

sheet over their hand, over their arm, and it pops up

behind Chris and it hangs there in the air

for a while and wavers back and forth ever so

slightly. And then it kind of, it looks like a muppet. It

kind of skitters away behind her and everyone is looking at it

going, wait, what, what, what was that?

And she finished what she was saying because she's a professional speaker

and then she turns to look and by that time it had it had skittered

away and, people were trying to tell

her what they had seen. And she said, oh boy, wouldn't it be

great if if we caught it on camera? And they did and you can see

it. You can go to YouTube and you can watch it And it's it's

just delightful. We'll embed the thingy video in the show notes. But

what it looks okay. So you're watching it, and it doesn't appear,

like, ethereally or whatever. It doesn't fade in or fade out. It, like, pops up

from behind the screen. Not not really a screen or whatever she's standing in front

of. It's Mike a pile of lumber. Yeah. It pops up from behind

it. And you can see it Mike, you know, it's it and it

almost looks like 1 of those inflatable

guys that you see at a, like a car dealership.

Like the crazy inflatable arm waving things. And

Yeah. It kinda looks like it's blown up like that. You know? And

it just sits there, and it kinda quivers a little bit like those crazy

inflatable hand guys. And then it just goes back down

like the inflation like it's being deflated. You know, it kinda that's that's what it

looked like to me. And so I'm looking at this, and I'm thinking, like, well,

what can it be Mike a a balloon or something? And then the air conditioning

or the heat kicked in and, you know, had it up. But you think that'd

be something you'd see all the time if you were there. Mhmm.

And I just I was want you know, I gotta ask Dale. I gotta be

like, did you, like, go back there and see if you could find the sock

or the balloon or it it really isn't the video is

really interesting. You know, I don't know if it's a ghost, but it's pretty weird.

They actually did afterwards go back and well,

right after it happened, Christina encouraged them to go

back. As a matter of fact, I don't think it's on the tape at all,

but everybody went back to where Christina had been

standing and it was basically a solid pile of

lumber. Right. There's no balloon or sock or condom or whatever that

thing was. No. No. There wasn't anything like that. It

was just wood back there. It was crazy. And

so that's it's it's it's great video footage of of at least some

strange anomalies that people have seen in the hospital. But then I like the fact

that you're, you know, 1 time you had a presentation of

Dale's, and you're listening to his EVPs.

And you had a chance to almost turn the narrative,

you know, turn his narrative of who he thought the spirit was

around. And I kinda wanted to get in that story too because I think that

story is emblematic of your research and experiences in the

hospital as well. Can you can you tell us that 1? I know exactly what

you're referring to. So I was at a conference

with Dale and he was giving a presentation on the Peoria State

Hospital. This is the at the point in time when the Bowen building was still

standing. And the Bowen was the

nurses dormitory and classrooms for a very long time.

Then in the mid 1960s, there was a big remodel and they turned

it into the administration building. And all those big beautiful

day rooms and classrooms for the nurses got kind of chopped down into

offices and whatnot. But for most of the hospital's history, it

was dormitories for the nurses and

classrooms for the nurses and,

doctors' apartments and whatnot. So Dale and his

group, Ghost Research Society, were down in the basement

of the Bowen, and they were recording, and they were told

that they were in the morgue, which is

there there's more to the basement than just the morgue, and

the morgue was not in the basement of the Bowen anyway.

And they caught an EVP of a girlish

giggle. And he said during his presentation, I have no

idea why we caught a giggle on

our recorders when we were down in the basement in this place we

were told was the morgue. And I I'm not

that kind of person. I don't I didn't interrupt his his

presentation but I came up to people afterwards and I

said, I have a theory as to

who and what it was that you heard. And he said, please

tell me. We have spoken to nurses that used to live

there and study there and they have told us

about the fact that down in the basement was the

storeroom for some of their food. And they would tell us

about sneaking down from their rooms after lights out and

nicking a can of peaches from the pantry and

taking it up to their room to snack on, have a little

midnight snack. So I told Dale what you heard

was the little giggle of a young nurse getting away with something.

He said, that makes a lot more sense. Right. Done like a giggling dead

body in the morgue. Right. Right. And, and Wendy know the history, when you know

the circumstances of the EVP that you

catch, it does make a lot more sense. That really

to me, taking something where it's very traditionally

Mike, so we were in the morgue and I was asking questions

about how did you Mike, and then turning it around and being Mike,

no. I mean, whether it was a recording of something in

the walls or an energy or a spirit, you know,

what you you heard girls having fun and, you know,

people nurses who were living, well, the difficult life the

nurse lives when you have to take care of people, and

having a spot of brightness in their life. And the idea

that every time, like, you have a ghost thing, they're some tortured

creature, that is, you know, calling out from

beyond in pain and

regret and all these kind of things. It's just easy to get lost in that

narrative. So when you can turn it around and turn it into

something fun and positive, I don't know. It's just a lot nicer. I mean, of

course, I'm you like that it's not nicer, but I just feel that it

creates a different kind of you know, a more playful

atmosphere of the paranormal than the scary atmosphere

of the paranormal that we're fed constantly by, you know,

movies and TV, because it obviously works. It's a lot more

satisfying too. Right. Because life is not just eternal

misery all the time. And so you would hope that afterlife would not be

eternal misery all the time. There's 1 more guy I kinda wanted to get

to, a, Manuel Bookbinder.

Yes. Yes. And he's a really I thought it was a

really interesting character, and it really ties in also, to the kind

of character that doctor Zeller was as well. So I I think just

a little bit on a Manuel Bookbinder, I really enjoyed his

story from the book. Of course. So,

in the very early days of the asylum, we would take people

from all over the place no matter what their their

issue happened to be. And this fellow was brought to

us by his, I don't remember if he was just dropped

off or coworkers had brought him here, but,

this fellow was dropped off and his he had a mental

breakdown at work and his breakdown was so total and so

complete that he was rendered mute. He was unable to tell the intake nurses his

name. So the only information they had was

that he had worked in a book bindery. So

they wrote his name down in the intake booklet

as a manual bookbinder.

So he became known as bookbinder or old book for sure. So I was

using Manuel. Like, I look at this. It is Manuel. Right?

Yeah. Alright. So 1 of doctor Zeller's

genius ideas was that he gave every able-bodied patient

a job to do. Nothing strenuous or anything. Nothing backbreaking.

Just something to fill the hours of the day, to give them a reason to

get up in the morning, give them a sense of purpose to their days.

And Book was put on cemetery duty. His

duty was to keep the cemeteries nice and tidy and to pick

up any fallen branches and to also dig the

graves. So he started doing this, and he attended the first

funeral for the first grave that he dug. And as he stood there,

he started sniffling and his shoulder started to hitch and a

tear tracked down his cheek. And pretty soon old Book was just sobbing

openly. So not to disturb anyone. He wandered over to

a big Elm tree that was in the middle of the cemetery and he leaned

against it and just poured his heart out to this tree, just sobbed

and sobbed. When the funeral was over, he collected himself and

wiped his face and came back and filled in the grave. He did this for

every funeral he attended and he attended every funeral

on the hilltop. He got to be sort of an urban legend on the

hilltop. When a person, when a patient realized they were near

death, they would grab a passing nurse and say, make sure old book cries for

me or I won't get into heaven. So he was quite

the character on the hilltop. He had been with us for,

just a few years when he himself passed away.

And Old Book was a very well liked character on the

hilltop, so his funeral was very well attended.

So they, they sang a couple of hymns and Doctor. Zeller

gave the eulogy because he was there at the funeral.

And they went to put the coffin into the ground

and there were some ropes slung onto the coffin and the coffin was sitting on

a couple of boards above the empty grave. So

4 guys on each end of these 2 ropes, and they heaved on the coffin

to lift it up so they could slide the boards away to lower the coffin.

And as they did so, as they heaved on these ropes, the coffin bounced up

in the air as though it were completely empty. And at that

very same moment, everyone heard a wailing and

howling coming from the cemetery elm at the middle of the

cemetery and there was the ghost of old book. He was

standing by this graveyard elm leaning against it, just

howling and carrying on as though his heart was breaking.

People didn't know what to do. There were nurses there that fell to their knees.

Doctor. Zeller, he said, I want that coffin open right

now. And he sent somebody for a crowbar and

they they jimmied up the coffin lid and opened the lid and as soon as

they opened the lid the wailing stopped

and the voice, the the the ghost disappeared. And

there in the coffin was old book,

absolutely undeniably dead. And we know about this because

Doctor. Zeller wrote about it in his memoirs. He said, It was awful, but it

was real. I saw it. 100 nurses and 300

spectators saw it. Now

the story of old book doesn't end there. The, after about

6 weeks or so, the tree started to die. And this was

old books tree. Nobody wanted to see it go.

So doctor Zeller had people watering it, had patients taking

care of it, but no matter what they did, the tree was definitely dying. It

was about he was dropping leaves. And doctor Zeller

was a very safety conscious guy, so he didn't want the tree coming down and

hitting anyone. So he sent out a true a crew to chop the tree

down. And at the first stroke of the ax, they

swore they could hear the voice of old book coming from the tree as they

threw the ax down and they said, Oh, we don't want any part of this.

So the tree was allowed to die on its own. And legend has it that

when it fell, it fell right between the rows of tombstones and didn't

damage a single stone as it fell. That's a great legend of the

Peoria State Hospital. Right.

And people always ask, is it is it true? It's a marvelous ghost

story. It's it's it's not true.

Doctor. Zeller was a very fine fiction writer.

He was known as the Rudyard Kipling of America and the

Rudyard Kipling of England actually wrote to him and complimented

him on his short stories and superintendents of other

asylums got to hearing this story of old book and

they would write to Doctor. Zeller and they'd say, Hey,

we've been hearing this weird ghost tale coming out of Peoria.

What's the deal with that? So he actually wrote a blanket

letter to a lot of journals to which he

was a contributor, including

interestingly enough, the journal for psychical research. And

he admitted it. He said, he fessed up. He said, we've

got a lot of wonderful characters at our asylum.

Some of them make it into our fiction, my fiction.'

And he said, Old Book was such a wonderful character and he cried at

everyone's funeral and I just thought it was really too bad

that no 1 would cry for him. So that he made that

happen. He made Old Book cry at his own funeral. Now there's a very

interesting postscript to this. Okay. When ghost hunters visited

the asylum, they spent most of their time at the Bowen building, of course, but

then a couple of fellows went out to cemetery 2, which is where Old

Book was buried. And this again made my teeth

itch because they were wandering around. They found a big tree in the middle of

the cemetery. Oh, this must be Old Book's tree. No. No. No. That's part of

the legend. The part of the legend of the tree dies. Remember that part? But

I'll let that slide. I talked to them. I told them the story on Friday.

They investigated Thursday night, so we'll let it slide. But they

did do a very interesting capture of a shadow

figure. They were they had their camera pointed towards Old

Book's grave, but it also looked beyond the

grave over the cemetery to the tree line

where it drops into the ravine. And they captured a shadow

figure coming out from behind a

tree in the middle of the screen, walking towards

the right and then disappearing before it got to the right edge of

the screen. Very interesting capture and probably the

best piece of evidence they got from their entire visit. Right. But

we've just decided. We've just found out that doctor

Zeller made old ghosts book up old old books ghost

up. He he was a patient there.

He cried at every funeral. He was buried there. He was a perfectly wonderful

patient, but his ghost story is completely made

up. So if it's not old book, who is it? Right. Well, maybe the ghost

hunters called him forth. You know, maybe he did you know, he's

still, like, he's like, well, I'll come to visit. He's like, there's some cameras.

You know? And obviously, he's kind of a ham because he cried at he's a

mute that cries at everybody's funeral. He was very theatrical.

Yes. But we did have another patient

in August of 1910. There was a patient there

named Charles Jones, an elderly man. He was in his early seventies.

He came from Hannah City and he he he had

himself committed to the Peoria State Hospital. He was suffering

from depression and he was he was

well liked. He made himself pleasant to the nurses. He would

have conversations with other patients. And I mentioned before

that the patients had the full run of the hilltop. They could go wherever they

wanted to. Well, before the asylum was set up on the

hilltop, it was the site of a mining community. And the miners

had left a lot of their equipment behind, including

their dynamite and their blasting caps.

So mister Jones was wandering around and

he happened upon 1 of these blasting caps and he put it in his

pocket. And a few weeks after he came to the asylum,

he decided that the demon of his depression

was too much for him to go on fighting. And he went into 1 of

the ravines and he put that blasted blasting cap

into his mouth and either bit down real hard or

punched himself in the jaw to close his mouth really hard. Either way, that's

gnarly. They never found any bit of his head. It

decapitated him just as neatly as a guillotine would have done.

Phew. Yeah. So

since he did the deed in 1 of the ravines, it's

entirely possible that that the ghost hunter's

camera did not capture old book but instead captured mister

dynamite. You know, and mister dynamite would have been a great story on TV too

if they'd have known that. You know, Mike, they could have known that story. Oh,

what what interesting things have happened in the ravine or in in the cemetery, and

then you could have told them that, and then be like, oh my like, them

screaming mister dynamite would have been totally sweet. The you

know, there's some really good stories, and, you know, you have so many of them

in Fractured Souls, but there's a couple of different things. Last

questions I had for you. 1 was the haunted infirmary,

that's a haunted house that you guys put on every year?

Yeah. Mhmm. Every October, the Pollock is

turned into the haunted infirmary. The

lore behind the haunted house is that,

there has been a portal to another dimension opened up

and this is what has spewed forth. But we are

very, very, very careful to keep the

history of the asylum and the haunted infirmary

completely separate. 1 has absolutely

nothing to do with the, with the other. They're in the same building

and that is as it goes. We get

a lot of flack for putting on a haunted house in a haunted building

that happens to be in a haunted asylum. But we

say, you know, they're they're absolutely separate. And we also point out

that during the asylum's history,

they had parties. They celebrated

Halloween. They celebrated Christmas. They celebrated holidays. All

of these cottages where the patients lived were decorated for

every holiday and for every patient's birthday. These people loved to

party. They had movies every Friday night. They had dances

every Saturday night. They would have been absolutely thrilled

to be celebrating Halloween with us, and some of them do celebrate Halloween

in our haunted house. So there's no there's nobody playing, like, rota dare

playing rota dare in the Utica crib at the haunted infirmary isn't like

Peoria's version of the May Queen or anything like that? Never

ever, and no. Alright. Just an idea for

next year. No. No. Okay. But

okay. Now when you the haunted infirmary sounds like a lot of fun and really

interesting. And, you know, where I grew up in Mukwonago, Wisconsin,

there was a place called Rainbow Springs, and that was, I've talked about that

place a couple of times because it had a whole bunch of haunted stories. But

the developer of the hotel and resort ran out

of money and killed himself inside the hotel, and that's in the newspaper and

stuff. It's not just 1 of those urban legends. And, you know, people have

seen ghosts and weird things in, you know, in because it's it's a half built

hotel, and they just never finished. And it was there

for, oh, 30 maybe 40 years

before, eventually, part of it burned down, and then, like, got rid of the rest

of it. But the Mukwonago JC's, they would hold the haunted house there

every year in the, you know, because it was just

they did open a golf course, on the site, but the hotel never

opened. And so the people that ran the golf course were, like, sure. We got

this hotel, that's mostly built. You might as

well do something with it. And they had a a really great haunted house there.

And that that idea of, like, you got a building, nobody's using it,

might as well do something cool with it. And if it's got haunted stories

already, you know, give it, you know, make it a make it a

haunted house, and they did that. So I understand the haunted infirmary sounds like a

lot of fun. But in the book, you mentioned that well, during the haunted infirmary,

the men's ward wing is you know, we're never supposed to

open the door because it's rented out. Right. Who's renting out the

men's ward wing of the haunted hospital? Mike, is it there some kind

of satanic cabal in Peoria, Illinois that's renting out this

men's ward wing? Oh, no. Okay. So so the

Pollock Hospital is built kind of in an H shape. There's a long

corridor, with little rooms off to the each side for

blood draws and physical exams and oxygen therapy and whatnot.

And then the 2 ends are the women's ward and the men's

ward. And those are further, divided

as the H part. Each wing

is divided into the recovery ward and the death ward.

Now, on the women's side, the JFL,

Limestone High School JFL owns the building and they

keep stuff there. They store football

equipment in part of that building part of the women's ward. Wait. What's

a JFL? Junior Football League. Okay. Junior Football League.

Alright. And then the men's ward is divided into the death

ward and the recovery ward, and the death ward is on our Mike. And

that locked door that mysteriously came open during the

haunt 1 year, leads to it is

the the recovery ward is rented by,

I wanna say this, 1 of the Catholic dioceses in

Peoria, and they just store stuff there, like

pews and religious artifacts. Wait. It's a place used

for storage. Like, they're storing stuff in the like, I was like, what are people

working in? Like, what are they doing in that place? Like, oh, no. We can't

go in there because it's rented out. To who? So

okay. Okay. So it's just rented out for storage. It's being used. I get it

now. Yeah. But, no. That was 1 of my burning

questions. I'm like, what kind of weirdo? And then you're like, oh, Catholics. I'm like,

I get it. I grew up Catholic. I know. Alright. So, you

know, Sylvia, I gotta thank you for joining us very much. If people

want to find out more information about you, they wanna check out your books,

and they don't have time to go to othersidepodcast.com/273

to read my thoroughly well written show

notes, you know, where can they go find you on

the interwebs? You can find me at sylviasultz.wordpress.com.

That's SHULTS. There's

a load of wonderful stuff there. There's, the page

that leads to my Lights Out podcast. There is the

page for the multimedia links for both books, Fractured Spirits and

Fractured Souls. And I do a,

a blog there too that you can follow and all sorts of wonderful

stuff. You can also find me on Facebook at, Ghosts of the

Illinois River or Fractured Spirits. So I highly recommend

Fractured Souls if you guys are interested in, learning more

about the compassionate side of mental health care in the late

19th early 20th century, which is something you almost never hear about, and

also to hear about some really interesting ghost stories, from

Peoria. It's a lot more than just John Deere.

Probably the most shocking and cruel image for me in the whole conversation

was Sylvia discussing the Utica crib. With a hospital bed in

the crib, the patients only had 12 inches of vertical space to live in.

It was a bed where you could never get up and you were never let

up. They justified the practice because they said that they restrained patients who might

be suicidal or cause self harm, like Mortidaria did by ripping out her

eyes with her own bare hands. But the thing is, did they ever think that

maybe they wanted to hurt themselves because they were in the crib in the first

place? At the time, they thought it was more comfortable than a straight jacket,

but it shows how far we've come in the treatment of mental illness that we're

horrified by such a device. But it also shows that even our better

natures need to be checked sometimes. The proverbial road to hell

is paved with good intentions because what starts as compassion

can turn into cruelty. This song is called the Utica

Crib.

Thank you for listening to today's episode. You can find us

online at othersidepodcast.com. Until next

Mike, see you on the other side. Hey,

everybody. The Thanksgiving season is upon us,

and before the holiday hits, we have a very important event that I

hope you can make it to, and that is the see you on the other

side Patreon hangout. And that's gonna be this

upcoming week right before Thanksgiving, either Monday or Tuesday. So if you're

a Patreon member, please make sure you check-in and vote on the preferred day

that will work for you. But we are looking forward to chatting with

everybody, and we want to thank you all for being such great supporters of our

show and everything we do here at See You on the Other Side and the

Sunspot Camp. A huge shout out goes to our Patreon supporter

Ned. Doctor Ned is pledging us at a level that

he gets this shout out every single episode, and we sure do appreciate you,

Ned. So thank you for that. If you are interested in becoming a

Patreon member, please check out othersidepodcast.com/donate,

and you can join our community and be part of the hangout all the way

up until the day of the hangout. So we'd love to meet you and talk

to you about your favorite paranormal topics. Have a great week

everybody and we'll catch you next week.

Ghost asylum. Extreme ghost hunting.

These people love to party.