Real Life Haunt: Kate

Join us on The Unrest Podcast as we relive our Athens ghost tour experience. We'll walk you through our adventure, sharing the newfound spooky facts and recounting the captivating tales we encountered along the way. It's an opportunity to join us as we delve into the heart of Athens, Georgia, and revisit the intriguing secrets of this haunted town.

What made our journey truly remarkable was the story shared by one of our fellow tour participants. Her personal encounter involving her grandfather was a chilling moment that blurred the line between the living and the supernatural.

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Transcript

Reak Life Haunt: Kate

Transcript

00:00:04 Speaker 1

The unrest, the unrest, the Unrest Podcast, podcast, podcast.

00:00:17 Speaker 2

Welcome to the Unrest podcast. I'm Madeline.

00:00:21 Speaker 3

And I'm Caitlin stansel. If you haven't done so yet, go ahead and hit subscribe so you can get all the content as soon as it posts. Even this on camera version of our episodes, you can subscribe on YouTube as well to check out the latest episodes for real life haunts.

00:00:39

So if you.

00:00:39 Speaker 2

Can't tell we're.

00:00:40 Speaker 2

A little spooky tonight.

00:00:42 Speaker 2

We are dressed as our mascot boozy.

00:00:46 Speaker 3

Yes, a little 2 little.

00:00:48 Speaker 3

Boogies here to say hello.

00:00:51 Speaker 2

So on today's episode of The Unrest Podcast, we're gonna jump back a few weekends ago when we visited our friend Madison, and she's actually been on the show before. So you can go back and listen to her story. But we visited Madison and she took us on a ghost tour in Athens, GA.

00:01:09 Speaker 2

I was telling Caitlin before we started this episode that, you know, we've done Ghost Tours all over from Charleston to Savannah, few other places, but it's very rare to do one in a really small town where you would think they didn't have a lot of ghost stories. And I felt like Athens did.

00:01:27 Speaker 3

This goes to a really.

00:01:28 Speaker 3

Rolled out when I think about Ghost Tours, I sort of compare them to the ones we've been on in Charleston, and this one was right up some of my favorite ones that we've ever been on.

00:01:39 Speaker 2

I felt like there was a.

00:01:40 Speaker 2

Lot of new.

00:01:41 Speaker 2

Fact, I don't know if I'd call them facts or just like educational parts that I had never heard on a ghost tour. So the first one that I really clued into and I was like, OK, that's different was the bricks of the foundry. He told us about how those bricks were handmade and you could see fingerprints.

00:01:59 Speaker 2

And some of those bricks and you could put your fingers like in those prints. And that was just really.

00:02:04 Speaker 2

Meet and I had never heard that from any.

00:02:07 Speaker 2

Other tour before?

00:02:08 Speaker 3

That that was.

00:02:08 Speaker 3

An awesome sort of connection to the past to get to sort of lay your hands where someone elses had been many many many decades before.

00:02:18 Speaker 2

There was even that one, like partial palm print that you could see, which was pretty cool.

00:02:22 Speaker 3

Yeah. Yeah. So it was. It was definitely like you couldn't write off that. It was something else besides someones hand or fingerprints. And what I loved about his ghost.

00:02:32 Speaker 3

Tour, too, is that.

00:02:34 Speaker 3

You could tell he had done a lot of research, like his own research. He had done his own interviews with people, asking them about their experiences and sort of leaving that into the stories that he was telling, and also a lot of research on historical events that happened in that area, and ghostly sightings could be connected to. So it really kind of felt a mixture of, like, a history tour.

00:02:55 Speaker 3

And those two are.

00:02:56 Speaker 3

All in one and those are honestly my favorite kinds.

00:02:59 Speaker 3

You know it.

00:02:59 Speaker 3

Didn't feel cheesy?

00:03:00 Speaker 3

See like some of the ones you.

00:03:02 Speaker 3

Can go on.

00:03:03 Speaker 2

I didn't feel cheesy at all from any of it. He was very, very like you said, knowledgeable about everything, but also us being skeptics like we usually are. We went and asked some of the workers at one of the hotels, like OK, is he jerking our chain or is he being serious with some of the stories and they agreed that some weird stuff.

00:03:23 Speaker 2

It did happen in the hotel that they couldn't explain, so I thought that made everything even more relevant.

00:03:28 Speaker 2

And and felt.

00:03:29 Speaker 2

Like he was you.

00:03:30 Speaker 2

Know very.

00:03:31 Speaker 2

Truthful in his ghost storytelling.

00:03:33 Speaker 3

Yeah. And so his tour sort of centered around this hotel there in Athens called the graduate. And I totally forgot about this. So I'm so glad that you brought this up, Madeline. But afterwards I went and talked to this lady that was working the front desk there. And I was like.

00:03:48 Speaker 3

Hey, listen, he keeps.

00:03:50 Speaker 3

Talking about on this hotel like people getting phone calls from hotel rooms that are empty, has that, like, ever happened to you here? And he was like, he's saying what?

00:04:02 Speaker 3

Like. Yeah, he on the ghost Tour said that, you know, you have a couple of hotel rooms. They're supposedly really haunted. And you guys sometimes get calls from these rooms and no one's supposed to be in.

00:04:13 Speaker 3

Them and she.

00:04:14 Speaker 3

Was like, I mean, I don't know what I've had.

00:04:16 Speaker 3

That from one of the rooms, but and.

00:04:18 Speaker 3

I was like, OK, please tell me more.

00:04:20 Speaker 3

And she said that.

00:04:22 Speaker 3

So the fitness center of this hotel was this like old house from like the 1800s that the owner of the hotel establishment.

00:04:32 Speaker 3

Had, like basically transported down this river to this area so it could be a part of the like the establishment, I guess. And so they had turned it into a fitness center and it's just like this house in the middle of all the rooms really kind of interesting how it's all set up. But she said one night, like, super late at night, phone kept ringing from the fitness center.

00:04:53 Speaker 3

And they would answer, but then no one would say anything. She finally got to a point where she was like, OK, I'm just gonna go over there to check it out, because, like, what if someone's hurt? And that's why they're not like saying anything? When I answer the phone when she.

00:05:06 Speaker 3

Goes in there and there is no one.

00:05:08 Speaker 3

There. So she was like, I don't know what's going on here and like I try not to really put too much thought into it because I don't want to sort of invite that thing in. But she was like, there's definitely some weird stuff that happens around this hotel in Athens, so.

00:05:23 Speaker 2

Yeah, I love that part of the Ghost tour. And he also said a bunch of other things that, you know, I had not heard of and.

00:05:29 Speaker 2

Caitlin actually did a little investigating herself on one of the things.

00:05:34 Speaker 3

That he talked about going into.

00:05:36 Speaker 3

I also loved how we like, really intertwined.

00:05:39 Speaker 3

Just interesting tidbits and like things that he found interesting in doing his research and I wrote down some of them like one was this quote he had from Margaret Atwood. He was talking about how what he loves about ghost stories is that it's sort of a way to live on after you die. And this quote from her said we all become stories.

00:06:01 Speaker 3

And I just.

00:06:02 Speaker 3

Think back when we started this podcast like.

00:06:04 Speaker 3

That was when.

00:06:04 Speaker 3

One thing that we just really loved about Ghost stories is just like these connections you make and how, like virtual and personal, these stories are. So I love that. And then I also wrote down who said Edgar Allan Poe called Ghost Visitants. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I love sort of that idea.

00:06:21 Speaker 3

Of ghostly experiences being visitors and calling them visitants, and then Speaking of things that he mentioned on this ghost tour that just we're sort of interesting tidbits. And before we get to our real life haunt. So this kind of leads into it. I'm doing kind of a little haunted history going back to how we started this podcast a little bit.

00:06:42 Speaker 3

But one thing he talked about was this idea of 21 grams and I've never heard of this before. Apparently there's this idea that souls have weight and there was this experiment that happened to find out.

00:06:56 Speaker 3

Sort of or like.

00:06:57 Speaker 3

To prove that souls exist in like a physical.

00:07:00 Speaker 3

So I'm going to give you a little back story on that first and where this 21 grams came from. So in 1907, there was this position. This is like real history that happened. There was even a story in the New York Times about this experiment that he did, but his name is Duncan McDougall. And you can really probably question the methods.

00:07:20 Speaker 3

Used for this experiment, but I like the idea in concept and where he.

00:07:24 Speaker 3

Was going with it.

00:07:25 Speaker 3

So his theory was that souls have this physical weight and he wanted to sort of prove out.

00:07:31 Speaker 3

That when you die, your soul leaves your body and he was going to prove this by attempting to measure or sort of way the mass that a human lost at the moment of death. He thought this was going to be how he physically showed and proved that souls are a real concept, a real thing.

00:07:51 Speaker 3

So he did this experiment.

00:07:53 Speaker 3

Again, back in 1907, so just sort of think about science at the time. Back then it was already a little kooky, but also like they didn't have.

00:08:02 Speaker 3

The sort of technological advancements we have today, so there's scales probably are not quite as accurate. There's probably not a real way to know the point at some at which someone like actually dies.

00:08:16 Speaker 3

So there's a lot of questioning about just how valid this experiment was in his method.

00:08:22 Speaker 3

It's. I won't go into all of the sort.

00:08:24 Speaker 3

Of nuances around it, because he probably is not the best scientist around. But anyways, he tested 6 patients and they were from this nursing home and they were all sort of on the verge of death when they were sort of getting to the moment of dying. He basically had the people helping him put the bed.

00:08:43 Speaker 3

That they were in on a scale and weighted well. How did those six patients 1 lost 21.3 grams or 3/4 of an ounce? I won't talk about the others cause that's gonna make you question the science of it.

00:08:59 Speaker 3

To just tell you how flawed it probably was, but he really held on to this one.

00:09:05 Speaker 3

Factoid I guess.

00:09:06 Speaker 3

That came out of the experiment.

00:09:09 Speaker 3

And that's sort of where this like 21 grams is the weight of a soul came from and.

00:09:15 Speaker 3

It really sort.

00:09:16 Speaker 3

Of popularized this concept that souls are sort of a physical part of our being because when this person died and they were on the scale, the scale change.

00:09:28 Speaker 3

Weights by just 21.3 grams, so again, he was obviously trying to to prove this out and there was an article written in the New York Times at the time in 1907 and I love the headline the way they wrote it, laugh, but it was like so has weight, position things.

00:09:49 Speaker 3

He sort of.

00:09:50 Speaker 3

Like popularized this concept of a soul being a physical part of your body that when you die it leaves your body and he sort of in his own way maybe kind of pseudo proved that.

00:10:02 Speaker 3

Out. So I just thought.

00:10:04 Speaker 3

That was such an interesting concept and they mentioned it on the Ghost Tour. And what's funny is like, as we were wrapping up the Ghost tour.

00:10:12 Speaker 3

You know, we were talking to a couple of these other ladies that were on there about how we have a.

00:10:16 Speaker 3

Ghost Podcast we like spooky things.

00:10:19 Speaker 3

And I was.

00:10:19 Speaker 3

Like hey, like.

00:10:20 Speaker 3

Do you have a ghost story that you?

00:10:22 Speaker 3

Want to share?

00:10:23 Speaker 3

And also, Madeline, chime in here. But I love when you ask people.

00:10:27 Speaker 3

That and they're.

00:10:28 Speaker 3

Like. No, not really. But and then they tell you.

00:10:31 Speaker 3

Like the best story.

00:10:33 Speaker 2

Of course, like he talked.

00:10:34 Speaker 2

About that on the tour he gave.

00:10:36 Speaker 2

Everybody an option like does anyone have a story to share? Of course there was this one little kid who shared a terrible story that I think was a lie, but.

00:10:46 Speaker 2

Same thing with these with these ladies that we were walking back to town with at first, she was.

00:10:52 Speaker 2

Saying, you know.

00:10:52 Speaker 2

I don't have a story and then.

00:10:54 Speaker 2

It turned into.

00:10:54 Speaker 2

Well, I did have this one experience.

00:10:56 Speaker 3

And and honestly like this was such a great.

00:10:59 Speaker 3

Story and we are.

00:11:00 Speaker 3

Bringing it to you here. Now, this is Kate's story and it has to do with sort of this concept of what happens at that moment of your passing. So take a listen.

00:11:13 Speaker 4

So when I was little, I was probably about like maybe 10 or 11. My grandfather was very ill, but we didn't know how ill we went to go see him in the nursing home and he looked horrible and that was the first moment we knew how bad it was, and he just looked really, like, shriveled.

00:11:33 Speaker 4

From what he would look like normally, and it was right before Christmas, and I remember telling him because we were.

00:11:38 Speaker 4

Trying to think.

00:11:39 Speaker 4

Of things to help him cheer him up.

00:11:41 Speaker 4

We're like, we'll bring you a little Christmas tree and all this type of stuff, and then when we left him, I went with my mom in the car and my two sisters went in another car and we were driving away and I was just closing my eyes and I saw my grandfather. But he was not old. He was young and he.

00:12:01 Speaker 4

Didn't speak to me like his mouth didn't move, but I could feel him saying it's gonna be OK. You're gonna be OK. I'm OK.

00:12:08 Speaker 4

That's all I.

00:12:08 Speaker 4

Just remember happening and so I got home and I told my mom, you know, as soon as we got home, I.

00:12:14 Speaker 4

Said, I think.

00:12:15 Speaker 4

Granddaddy just passed, and I told her about this. And then when?

00:12:19 Speaker 4

I talked to my sisters. They said that.

00:12:21 Speaker 4

That they had the same vision of him as really young and that he was saying the same things. And then the next morning they, the nursing home called to tell us that he had passed in the night.

00:12:31 Speaker 4

And I think being little too, I was more open to the idea of, like seeing, like, you know, and telling my mom because I was like, this is sort of weird, but you don't think about, like, death when you're little. You just don't. And I mean, we had assumed he was going to live till at least Christmas. So it was just sort of a unusual thing. And my mom says she's like, I know that he died. Right.

00:12:52 Speaker 4

And we left, even though they we don't think anyone checked on him because it's like a nursing home. You know, no one checked to see if he was still alive until probably the.

00:13:00 Speaker 4

This morning. But she's like I really.

00:13:02 Speaker 4

Think that that's when.

00:13:03 Speaker 4

He passed.

00:13:04 Speaker 2

Yeah, it's almost like, you know, he like.

00:13:06 Speaker 2

Saw you guys and he was like, OK, like.

00:13:07 Speaker 3

We could let go.

00:13:08 Speaker 4

I'm ready and that's what we think too, is that he was waiting for us to come and like he was holding on. And yeah, my sisters and I and my mom, we all have the same thing like, well, you know, we'll, like, call each other. Like we'll be like, I was just thinking about you or we.

00:13:20 Speaker 4

Try to call each other at the same time, just like weird.

00:13:23 Speaker 4

I was like, I don't know what that is, but it's like some weird connection. You know, I I think there are like energies and I think that.

00:13:32 Speaker 4

Like that, the energy gets trapped. So I do believe in Ghost. I don't really like. I mean, I say it and then like, even at this experiment or like this thing that happened to me, I'm always like, did it really happen? Like my brain tries to rationalize it away. I'm just like, well, he was old, he was getting sick. He was gonna.

00:13:50 Speaker 4

Die. He was in a nursing home.

00:13:52 Speaker 3

Anyone would think that right?

00:13:53 Speaker 4

So I think that, I mean I do.

00:13:55 Speaker 4

Believe in it. Just.

00:13:56 Speaker 4

Because too many weird things have happened to me in my life that I I think that there's some type of energy.

00:14:01 Speaker 4

That connects.

00:14:01 Speaker 4

People and that we can, like we have some.

00:14:04 Speaker 4

Type of form after we die.

00:14:07 Speaker 4

And I don't know if that like dissipates and goes away after a while, or if it's like for a long time.

00:14:16 Speaker 2

First of all, I absolutely love that we got this story on the side Rd. of Athens, GA. I mean literally cars driving by. We're headed to go get another drink at the bar and we get this amazing ghost story. But I can definitely relate to it because.

00:14:32 Speaker 2

I talked in past episodes about having an experience like this when my aunt died and I didn't know, you know, at the time that she had passed away. But I had had this very, like, overwhelming sadness.

00:14:46 Speaker 2

You know, just kind of come over me and just I was just all of a sudden very, very sad and I couldn't explain it. My husband at the time, he was my boyfriend was like, you know, what is wrong with you? And I'm like, I honestly have no idea. I just feel extremely sad. And then.

00:15:01 Speaker 2

The next day I wake up.

00:15:01 Speaker 3

And this was.

00:15:02 Speaker 3

Like middle of the night, wasn't it?

00:15:04 Speaker 2

Yeah, I was like I.

00:15:05 Speaker 2

Want to say three or four in the morning? We were on our way home from Canada.

00:15:10 Speaker 2

And you know, at the time I didn't know. But the next morning when I woke up after.

00:15:14 Speaker 2

We finished our our.

00:15:16 Speaker 2

Driving because we had to do like shifts of driving back home. So when I wake up I had like 10 almost 20 missed calls and I'm like, you know, something bad has happened and that's, I don't know if anybody has experienced that, but that's the worst feeling too.

00:15:30 Speaker 2

And so, you know, I called my stepmom, and she told me that my aunt had passed away and she was telling me, like, exactly when it was. And and it was around the same time that I had that feeling.

00:15:40 Speaker 3

I'm like.

00:15:41

Wow, that's just.

00:15:43 Speaker 2

So strange, and since then I've realized I'm very susceptible to people's feelings, and I can feel people's emotions. I never really thought about it before until then. And it's almost like people's emotions just overwhelm me. And sometimes I have to be like, take a step back.

00:16:01 Speaker 2

And make myself not fall into, you know, just being overwhelmed by somebody's emotions, whether they're sad or happier or whatnot. And so I can definitely relate to her story about her grandpa.

00:16:13 Speaker 3

It like immediately took me to that experience.

00:16:15 Speaker 3

That you had and I was.

00:16:16 Speaker 3

Just like, Oh my gosh.

00:16:17 Speaker 3

Like there has to be something to that too. That it was like validating kind of that someone else had had had an experience like.

00:16:25 Speaker 3

That you know.

00:16:26 Speaker 2

Well, and when you think about, think about a life that you live on Earth, you know, no matter how long or short it is like.

00:16:33 Speaker 2

It's a it's a life. You're a person. And so it. It's so sad to think that people don't have that type of feeling when you do die, like you don't actually feel it physically. You know what I mean? I don't know. I I felt that way.

00:16:47 Speaker 2

Few other times since then too, so I feel like there is definitely something to it and I follow a guy on TikTok who goes into like detail of.

00:16:56 Speaker 2

You know the different ways that people feel things, whether it's physically, mentally.

00:17:01 Speaker 2

There's just a.

00:17:02 Speaker 2

Bunch of different ways that you can.

00:17:04 Speaker 2

Feel certain things.

00:17:05 Speaker 2

And I guess mine is physically, I guess, right? Or would it be emotionally? I'm not sure maybe.

00:17:11 Speaker 3

I'm one of those well and also like.

00:17:15 Speaker 3

And you and you can obviously speak towards this, but I would think it was sort of like a closure moment too, like you sort of had this moment of like a goodbye.

00:17:26 Speaker 3

Because you weren't there when it happened, you know? But.

00:17:28 Speaker 3

You sort of.

00:17:29 Speaker 3

Had this like connection to her in that.

00:17:32 Speaker 2

Moment of passing right, and whether it is or isn't, or whether you believe it or not, it is definitely something that when I think about her and think about her passing and how, like, devastated, we all were and still are to this day.

00:17:47 Speaker 2

Like it's something special that I kind of hold dear to me and her relationship and it's.

00:17:52 Speaker 2

Just something sweet to.

00:17:53 Speaker 2

Kind of look on and be like ohh, you know, maybe she was trying to tell me goodbye.

00:17:58 Speaker 3

Yeah, like you were sort of one of the last people that sort of felt.

00:18:01 Speaker 3

Her as that moment was.

00:18:03 Speaker 3

Opening. I love that. Well, if you out there listening, have.

00:18:08 Speaker 3

A spooky story a.

00:18:10 Speaker 3

Real life haunt, if you will.

00:18:11 Speaker 3

That you'd like to.

00:18:12 Speaker 3

Share with us guess what? We are all ears. Even though these boozy ghosts here recording don't have ears, you can reach out to us at the Ms. podcast.

00:18:17 Speaker 2

Don't have ears.

00:18:23 Speaker 3

At gmail.com or.

00:18:25 Speaker 2

Check us out on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, we have all the good social media things that are ruining today's society, so check us out there. Also, we are super excited about our upcoming Halloween episode, so make sure you check in to the Unrest podcast for Halloween.

00:18:43 Speaker 2

Until next time.

00:18:46

Unrest in peace.

00:18:47

Thank you.