Spirits of the White Dove of the Desert: Paranormal Investigation of San Xavier Mission

Gleaming white against the dusty Sonoran Desert, San Xavier del Bac Mission stands as both a religious sanctuary and a historical treasure with deep significance to Arizona's cultural landscape. When we approached this architectural marvel—known affectionately as "The White Dove of the Desert"—we expected to investigate well-known ghost stories but discovered something far more profound: a lesson in separating historical fact from paranormal fiction.

Our journey through San Xavier's sacred spaces revealed unexpected connections. While our digital equipment picked up curious responses—including a chilling mention of "Joan" that later research connected to a 1986 murder victim—the most striking discoveries came through historical investigation. We systematically dismantled long-standing myths that have circulated for generations: no, an architect didn't fall to his death from the unfinished bell tower, and contrary to popular belief, there was never a devastating school fire that claimed the lives of children and nuns in 1949.

What we uncovered instead was a forgotten tragedy that deserves remembrance: a 1964 tornado that tore through the reservation community surrounding the mission, claiming the lives of a mother and her 10-month-old son. This verified historical event has been overshadowed by fabricated ghost stories, demonstrating how paranormal investigation at its best doesn't just seek spiritual encounters but restores historical truth.

The mission itself remains a marvel of human achievement—constructed with volcanic rock carried for miles by native women, possibly incorporating meteorite fragments into its bell clappers, and standing proudly for centuries as a beacon of faith. Whether you're drawn by spiritual curiosity, architectural wonder, or historical interest, San Xavier offers profound connections to the past. Just remember, should you visit this sacred place where countless prayers have echoed off white adobe walls, to approach with the same respect we endeavored to show during our investigation of this desert treasure.

Chapters

• 0:00 The White Dove of the Desert
• 9:25 Personal Connection to San Xavier
• 17:52 Mission History and Construction
• 40:42 Our Investigation Begins
• 53:58 Analyzing Our Evidence
• 1:01:24 Debunking the Tower Legend
• 1:11:12 The Real Tragedy: 1964 Tornado
• 1:37:47 Reflections and Final Thoughts

Transcript

Logan: 0:00

Nestled in the dusty heart of the snoring desert, just south of Tucson, stands a beacon of faith and of history San Javier Mission del Bac. Built in the late 1700s, its white adobe walls have withstood centuries of prayer, promise and perhaps the paranormal, some say. The whispers of monks echo in the chapels and shadowy figures drift among the candlelit pews. Is it memory or is it something more? Either way, this is a sacred place and it's more than just a church. It's a legend, and they call it the white dove of the desert.

Logan: 0:37

Thank you Well. Hey everybody, welcome back. Hey everyone, I'm Logan and I'm Nicole and we are Generation X Paranormal. You know it's funny. Before we got on air today we can see out of our window of our studio and no kidding, we watched our neighbor. You guys liked it, especially Gen X. Our neighbor drove their trash from their garage to another driveway and then put it in there. I swear if they had gotten a stick out to beat it, I would have turned totally into Tom Hanks.

Nicole: 1:54

I know I looked at him and I said, hey, we're living in the burbs.

Logan: 1:58

I know it's like I want it so bad to say I've never seen that. I've never seen anybody drive their trash down to the end of the block or the end of their driveway and beat it with a stick.

Nicole: 2:07

I've never seen that and we just watched a movie like a few days ago, and that's what was funny oh my gosh.

Logan: 2:13

Anyway, guys, we've got a great show. Um, we're gonna be talking about something that's very important, um, really to a lot of people. But it's kind of got a special place in my heart because I'm from Tucson and I'm repping the Tucson hat. But if I can just for a second kind of be real with you guys, it is still a very active place of worship and at no time did we ever disrupt anybody's worship. We always we did everything we did with the utmost respect and we want to make sure that if any of you decide to go there, please show the the the place, the respect it deserves. Okay, that's our psa warning for this, um, because it is important, uh, it's important to cultures, is important to a lot of people in arizona. But, um, but yeah, it was quite an interesting trip. Uh, we've done a couple of shows for from our arizona trip. Yeah, uh, we did, of course, u of a um university of arizona wildcats.

Logan: 3:12

Thank you, um and uh we did jerome, jerome yeah so this is kind of the the end of that series, probably not the last time we'll ever investigate something out in that area but uh yeah.

Logan: 3:23

So this place is really important to me, um, honestly, for for one of the main reasons that my grandmother was an absolute staunch catholic, she, she, I mean she would go there every. We tried to take her every weekend, um, and anybody from tucson knows this, that, um, but heck, you don't have to be from tucson, but you would go to this place and you buy the candle and then you would. But you would go to this place and you'd buy the candle and then you would go and you would. You know, my grandmother used to make this whole thing about it where she would touch San Javier's head. So there's like a and we'll get into this later but there's like this, I don't know, I guess, effigy lack of better words of San Javier, it's obviously not his real remains, but effigy lack of better words of San Javier, it's not obviously not his real remains, but she would kiss her hand and put it on his forehead. And what a lot of people would do and we'll get into the history to why and it'll make a lot more sense here later is people would bring pictures of ill one, ill members of their family, people who needed help, and they would pin it to like a blanket that would drape over him and obviously was to signify prayer for people to to heal, and so it's very important culturally.

Logan: 4:31

Um, in my, I tell you, I can't tell you, I can't enumerate how many times I've been there, because it was such an integral part of me growing up, and anybody who's got brown skin or who doesn't have brown skin knows that it is just a place that you go when you're a Tucson native. It is. People have gone there for quinceaneras, people have gone there for weddings, people have gone there for well, of course, you know, for funeral processions. It is a fully functioning church, yes, but it is very integral to Tucson, even for as big of a city as Tucson is. Let me tell you something you can't miss it.

Logan: 5:09

When you're driving down the freeway I-10 or even I-19, and you look off to the left, you see this beautiful desert landscape and that white sticks out like a sore thumb. It does I shouldn't say sore thumb, but it sticks out like this beautiful thing in the desert, out like a sore thumb. It does I shouldn't say sore thumb, but it sticks out like this beautiful thing in the desert. So it is, it's very important to people in that area and to uh to our culture. So it is a. It is a place that holds a very dear place in my heart yeah, yeah, and we've been there several times.

Nicole: 5:36

I mean I I remember when I think we'd just first gotten married, the first time we went out there. You know, like I'm gonna take you to son javier mission and I'm like what's that? Like I understand why it was so important, but the first gift you ever got me when we were dating. Yeah, you brought me a piece of pottery back.

Logan: 5:54

That's right, I remember yeah, in fact, we still have the mission yeah yeah, yeah, that is actually the first gift I ever got. You remember that? Yeah, it's um and there's look, it's the same thing, you'd see it and most you know, uh, churches and stuff like that there's.

Logan: 6:10

You know, there's places where you get, where you worship and stuff, but there's also like uh, you know, I wouldn't say a souvenir, let's call it a gift shop yeah, because I mean they do give tours and stuff like that so right and it's important because in again we'll get into a lot of this history, but it's for the Tohono O'odham Nation and it really does help support their needs and stuff because you know they're trying to make it's on the reservation.

Nicole: 6:34

Right, it's on the reservation.

Logan: 6:35

And I also want to add that, as we talk about these things, nicole and I may reference to things that were written a long time ago.

Nicole: 6:46

And Nicole and I may reference to things that were written a long time ago.

Logan: 6:49

Well, and still somewhat called that today but we're going to try to say the correct name for them. But the name Papago is not the actual, correct way of saying. I shouldn't say correct, but it is not. It is a white way of saying Tahona, o'odham, tahona.

Logan: 7:02

O'odham is the nation that we're talking about. So, anyway, kind of important stuff. But yeah, please understand, we took the utmost care. We were respectful because we did hear a lot of things. I heard a lot of stuff growing up, when you're there, I especially I always get shadow play, and it's tough to tell because and you guys will see this moving on but there's a lot of places where you can catch shadows. There are statues everywhere. There's these, you know, there's these views.

Logan: 7:35

Dark corners Right dark corners so it's easy to let your mind and your eyesight wander. But there has been a lot of stuff. I personally have seen bright lights go through there that shouldn't have been there no flash photography, nothing. And as a kid I remember my dad taking pictures and if I find them I'll put them on here and I'll look for them. But he even caught lights and weird things in there. The mon here and I'll look for him, but he even caught lights and weird things in there, and you got to remember. It's tough because there are so many different things that you can catch shadows on reflective surfaces. Listen, if you look online, there is no. There is no shortages of people that have caught things or seen things. You know, of course, orbs, yeah, of course, a lot of that has been debunked as dust and stuff dust, especially in the desert right I mean, it is in the middle of the desert, the dry, the.

Logan: 8:32

The parking lot is not paved. No, it's dirt. So no, you know, just it is. It is part of the issue. So, um, but yeah, I it's. I'm excited to talk about it and, I'll be honest, at first I was a little reluctant to want to do anything on this because of how significant it is to me, not only culturally but as a native, both native in ancestry and in Tucson. But I wanted to do something that showed how respectful it is and I wanted you guys to know the history of it, because it does have some reported things that have happened.

Nicole: 9:11

Yes, and a lot more that we discovered, which we'll get into later.

Logan: 9:15

For sure.

Nicole: 9:15

Which, more than anything, I just want to tell that story.

Logan: 9:18

Yeah, absolutely so. Yeah, let's get into it. Let's get into it. Now. Of course, in anything that we do, we always try to focus in on the history. There's a lot of people that do investigations, that sort of research, the paranormal, and it's not that it's wrong not to People don't choose necessarily to do that. We do. We find it's important because not only are you paying respect in some way, shape or form, to the potential entities that you'll be dealing with, but it actually helps meld your and I use that word meld because it's important it helps to meld your investigation. At least for us it does, I think.

Nicole: 10:00

Yeah Well, we always do a mini, you know mini lookup of history. That's right, but we don't go full into it until afterwards, because sometimes that's when we discover the best thing. Kind of like University of Arizona. What happened there? It was very interesting. Extremely interesting, kind of like a parallel in some way with this.

Logan: 10:19

Yeah, that's. True, that came Pretty much so.

Nicole: 10:23

We're going to start with the history.

Logan: 10:24

Let's do it.

Nicole: 10:25

Obviously this is in Tucson, arizona. Okay, so it's desert southwest If you've never been there. Mountain ranges, lots of gritty, dirty sand, very windy. It can be flat in between the mountain ranges right, yeah, absolutely, that's what you're picturing.

Nicole: 10:42

It's not the Sahara like people always imagine, but you've got trees, you've got bushes. I mean, there was water, but over time, just like any continent, things have changed. Yeah, okay, so we're gonna go back way, way back. Okay, so the mission lies about nine miles south of tucson. Okay, so it's not right in the city. Now. There was a spanish colonial church that was built there. Okay, it has baroque altars and hand-painted frescoes on the inside. It's called the white dove of the desert and it is the heart of the tohono o'odham reservation. Yes, it is okay. Um, it's a beacon of spirituality for the natives who live in the desert. Yep, but before that mission was there many, many, many years back. We don't even know how far back. It was originally the area for the Bok, which is why they called it Okay. Now I think it was actually. That was a Spanish name, because it was actually W-A-K and I don't know how it was pronounced Okay In the native language, but it's like walk or probably sounded kind of like that and they changed it.

Nicole: 11:53

But it means where the water oozes from the sand.

Logan: 11:56

Oh, that's cool.

Nicole: 11:57

Yeah, so now this was the village. Okay, so it wasn't Tahona Odom, which is what they call papago, right, but it was this and I can't, I don't know, it's a native word, so I'm gonna try my best, but soba puri, soba puri. Yeah, odom people. Okay, so it's like a sanction of that I.

Logan: 12:17

I think that's the right way to pronounce.

Nicole: 12:18

I don't know even myself, to be honest now, the santa cruz river flows nearby, okay, now I knew you're gonna say this it did flow by at this point in time.

Nicole: 12:32

But I remember the first time you took me to arizona after we were married and you're like, oh, look, there's a river. And I looked over, I'm like where? Like I kept looking for this and he's like it's right there and I'm like, where there's not, I don't see any water. He's like, well, that's where it would flow if there's water. And I said there's water, but they call them washes. Yes, now, when, when it they have the heavy deluge of rain, like the monsoons, come in, then there's water, but it's usually like a flash flood type situation, dangerous, but you don't see rivers like you see, like I'm from missouri, okay, and so I'm, I'm thinking looking right, I'm like thinking, okay, maybe it's like way out in the desert yeah he's like no, it's like right there, and I'm like well, and what's funny is um

Logan: 13:14

it's like we always laugh about that now, every time, every time we go visit, it's always like, oh, there's the river. We even have a road called River Road in Tucson.

Nicole: 13:25

And it goes by, there's no water.

Logan: 13:26

I know Well, it goes by a different river, by the. I can't even talk today. Yes, it goes by another river, but yeah, there's no running water. It's underground, it's in the water table.

Nicole: 13:39

But, so going back to what we were getting to, Thank you the Santa Cruz River. There's actually water in the river at this point in time. Okay, so it was like the lifeblood of this village. Okay, now, the people of this nation were not. And when I say nation you're going to, I don't want you to get confused. Okay, I'm meaning tribe. What people would call a tribe, but they prefer to be Right. I'm meaning tribe. What people?

Logan: 14:05

would call a tribe but, they prefer to be called nation. Right A tribe, it is a word that isn't as evil, but you got to remember they're nations of people, different cultures, different languages, so it's preferred to be called nation.

Nicole: 14:23

Yeah, so that's what I mean when I say that. So when I say nation, think tribe what you've always heard. Okay, so this nation was known to be very generous in giving you know. You hear about different native nations, like there was the war fighting ones, you know, and there's the peaceful ones. Well, these were the peaceful and they spent their days, you know, like any other people would, providing for their family, and they also played games.

Nicole: 14:49

They had some games that they played. They worked together and cooperation was key for their survival. Right Okay, now, in the late 1600s there were Spanish missionaries that traveled up through Mexico into the Arizona territory Now Arizona is not a state yet Right Okay, still belonged to Mexico technically, so that's why they're traveling up there Now. The natives at Bach, okay, were experiencing a drought at the time and had heard of this Spanish missionary named Padre Francisco Esubio Quino, and they decided to invite him to visit them at their village. And so Father Quino arrived at Bac around 1692. And, in his own words, he found the natives very affable and friendly. He showed them a map of the world and showed them how far he had traveled to speak to them about God. Obviously, he couldn't speak the language, so he's like pointing and right, right, okay, here's the important part. Okay, they're going through drought. Right, he introduced livestock, grains, veggies and fruits to the village. So think about this they're living there, they're going through a drought, they can't grow their food.

Logan: 16:03

He comes with all this stuff. Right, okay, it's bountiful for them. Yes.

Nicole: 16:08

So this is a good sign, right, right, okay. Now Father Kino decided to make a Spanish mission and to name it San Javier after a Spanish Bosque missionary, san Francisco Javier, who he considered his patron saint after he was made well from a mortal illness after praying to San Javier.

Logan: 16:33

That's right.

Nicole: 16:34

Okay, so that's what the mission is named after, right? Not that San Javier was ever there, right, it's just he, you know, thought this man saved him. That's right, because in Catholicism it's a lot of saints. They pray to a lot of saints.

Logan: 16:47

Yes, yes, it is quite a different, a big departure from you know Christianity, where it's just prayer to you know Jesus, to God and all those things there are a lot, lots of saints for different things.

Nicole: 17:03

Okay Now, keno was there for a while. Okay, and and as I talk about this, you know, another, another, padre will come and relieve the other one and they'll work together and then, when one passes away, to pass the next. So I'm trying to there's so much history here that I can't spend hours talking in depth about it, so I'm going to try to, you know, speak about the most important parts and keno was very important, so it's hard to gloss over.

Logan: 17:30

I mean, there's keno hospital, there was keno parkway.

Nicole: 17:33

Well, he was the first one to come there and to establish this as a mission to the natives to bring religion to them okay, so after. So, after Father Kino's death, there was a Father Alonzo Espinoza, who actually built the first church that this mission would see. Okay, now, it was a flat-roofed, hall-shaped structure made with sun-dried mud adobe. Okay, so they use adobe to keep them cool in the summer, yep, and keep them warm in the winter.

Logan: 18:05

Yeah, it's an insulator.

Nicole: 18:06

Okay, so not much to say about I'm sure he did wonderful things, but I don't have anything to tell you about him. But after he died, this Father Valdorain came in and he actually is the one that constructed the plans for a new church to be built, because the original structure was starting to disintegrate. Sure, okay, so he's the one responsible for starting these plans, for the one that we know of today, right, okay, he knows that he wanted it to be a Spanish architecture, so he hired two architects this is important, very important. Ignacio Guana, I think so. Okay, along with his brother, to build this church. Okay, so, two native Mexican, however you want to frame that up, okay, people to build this church.

Nicole: 18:58

They began construction in 1783. They started excavating trenches for footings, they gathered large volcanic rocks for the foundation, as well as using it for the burned brick veneer walls. Yeah, okay, they used clay and wood in the interior construction of the church. The this, I, this, I thought was really interesting that I found. So the women of the village, so the natives were tasked with walking to the Black Mountain Range. Now, when you're standing here, those mountains are a very long way away.

Logan: 19:34

They are quite a ways.

Nicole: 19:36

I mean, it's not like they're right there, no, but they walked to the Black Mountain Range to collect these massive rocks for the foundation. They would walk for miles in the desert, summer heat, with large boulders on their heads, and these rocks were looked at as sacred to the natives because they were responsible for building this church for them. Yeah, so if they dropped one, they felt like the spell of the, you know, spirituality was broken and they'd leave it where it was and they'd have to go walk all the way back to the mountain and grab another one. Jeez.

Logan: 20:14

That is a lot.

Nicole: 20:14

That's dedication is what it is Now. I thought this was interesting too. So the bell clappers, which are, you know, basically the inside of the bell, that bell that, like, hits against the side, that makes the sound right right are? They're said. We don't know this for sure, but they're said to be made of meteorites that had landed close to the mission now that's not a big stretch, because no, I mean I don't know that that's verified but yeah that's the going rumor.

Nicole: 20:40

That's cool. That's cool. So so far we've got rocks, you know, volcanic rock. We've got who knows what all these rocks are and meteorites and the construction of the church.

Logan: 20:52

Yeah, we'll get to this later why this is important it's very important and for those of you playing along, you gotta understand that rock in materials very important to the paranormal.

Nicole: 21:03

Yes, it is okay. So we're, you know, starting to begin the the building of this church okay, now, on may 2nd of 1790, father veldering, who started this, died vomiting blood I don't know tuberculosis probably it's what it sounds like, yeah now he's rumored to have been buried beneath the sanctuary of the church, because they were still building it.

Logan: 21:30

Yeah.

Nicole: 21:31

They had built the foundation, but they hadn't started putting the flooring and all that other stuff in. So that's interesting. It's very interesting. He's buried there Now after 14 years of construction. The church was nearing its completion in 1797. However, the East Bell Tower was never completed, so there's two towers. When you look at the pictures of this, there's one on the left, one on the right, and this would be the right side. Now there are many rumors, legends of why this was never completed. The first one is and this is the going one that I found the most- Is that?

Nicole: 22:10

one of the architects of the two brothers that we spoke about before fell from the tower and crashed to his death.

Logan: 22:17

And this would have been Ignacio.

Nicole: 22:18

Yes, Now, after this happened, they said they couldn't get any other person to climb the tower and complete it. Well, that makes sense. I mean, I'm not going to rush right up there if somebody else fell, but the natives have a legend that he turned into a rattlesnake when he struck the ground and that it lives beneath the mission floor, under the tower.

Logan: 22:41

Hmm, I have heard that Mm-hmm.

Nicole: 22:49

Yeah, the tower. Hmm, I have heard that. Um, yeah, and there's something interesting with that reservation and like rattlesnakes in that culture, because I don't know if you remember this, when we were living out there, we I'd come home from work one day and there was a rattlesnake right in front of our front door and I I didn't get in close. I was like nope, not doing it. And when you came home we had called. What was it like animal control or the fire? Department or something, because that's what you're supposed to do out there and come get it.

Nicole: 23:17

Well, when the whoever it was, I can't remember who- it was.

Logan: 23:20

It was animal control.

Nicole: 23:21

Yeah, they came. It was actually dead because, it actually killed itself, like it had wrapped its neck, like around it behind and like stuck its fangs itself. All the tools have its fangs inside of its body yeah now, what's interesting is like we had went to the mission like that weekend and my mother was with us.

Logan: 23:47

Yeah.

Nicole: 23:47

And we spoke to one of the natives at one because there's these shops out front to one of the natives there and he had said well, that means something bad was supposed to happen. Your family and the snake did that to protect kind of a sacrifice like a sacrifice, and I thought that was a very interesting translation of that. Now, if you Google it, it says that the snake is already dying and they basically commit suicide before they starve to death. Or it's either that or they've been excluded from there, right, they've been shunned.

Logan: 24:21

Yeah, the shunning, the shunning. Which, by the way, I arizona the majority of my life. I had never seen that before, ever it was really strange but.

Nicole: 24:32

I I love the explanation from yeah the native man at the at the mission about that on, so I, when I read this about him turning into ralph's on. There's something with yes, thelesnake there.

Logan: 24:44

It's easy to make that correlation.

Nicole: 24:46

Yeah. Well that's the first thing I thought of when I read that. But anyway, back to it. So that's the first reasoning, okay.

Logan: 24:54

Okay.

Nicole: 24:55

Second reasoning is that they never completed it to avoid paying taxes to the crown, because obviously the Spanish crown is responsible for sending these missionaries out. So they think, you know, they build this church. Once they complete it, then they are responsible for giving money back to the crown. They're like, if we technically don't complete it, we don't have to pay them. Yeah, that's a little weak, right, so we'll get back to that later, but those are the explanations. Okay, now at the church's completion at this stage. Okay, it was 99 feet long, 22 feet wide at the nave and 60 foot wide with the two side chapels, so it's basically like a big rectangle square at this point okay.

Nicole: 25:42

The ceiling was set with arches and domes, square right at this point. Okay, the ceiling was set with arches and domes. There were 38 full figure statues, with three figures draped in garments, and there were countless angels and seraphim gazing down from the walls above. And it's still there.

Logan: 25:56

You can still see this yeah, we'll definitely add pictures of it and and I hope, I hope they do it justice, because unless you're there, you don't really get just the dimension of everything and how awe-inspiring it is.

Nicole: 26:11

And I will say this is you know, not every podcast is do you need to go watch the video? But this would be one that would be very beneficial in doing so because, you know, during our investigation we filmed ourselves walking around. I took multiple pictures with my camera so you can kind of get an idea of what this place looks like um, so please go and look at that, because it's just, it's so beautiful inside. I agree it's absolutely gorgeous and it's I mean, look how old 1790s yeah I mean, how many buildings in the US are that old?

Logan: 26:44

and still together and functional.

Nicole: 26:47

Yes.

Logan: 26:47

Yeah, and to tell you the truth, I feel like I was kind of I don't know. I feel like that was something I took a lot for granted as a kid, because I'd go to this place and I thought, okay, this is, you know, this is how these things are done.

Nicole: 27:09

Now, I've traveled the world you know, we've done so many different things and I have yet to ever see anything quite like that. Yeah, there's something very special about it. You can definitely feel the history when you walk in. Absolutely Okay, so this is where we are. So the main part of the church is completed now. So now they have a place to worship. Okay, on August 4th of 1804, theucson, presidial command commandant.

Nicole: 27:28

I always say that wrong yeah, it's okay, you got it right. Jose zuniga, okay. Responded to a question about the reasons for them building this elaborate church in the desert, and this is his quote the reason for this ornate church at this last outpost of the frontier is not only to congregate Christian Pimas.

Nicole: 27:52

Pimas are this native group of the San Javier village, but also to attract by its sheer beauty the unconverted Papagos and Hila Pimas beyond the frontier. I have thought it worthwhile to describe it in such detail because of the wonder that such an elaborate building could be constructed at all on this farthest frontier, against the Apache. So we need to talk about that a little bit. Apaches Everybody knows Geronimo. Geronimo was an Apache. Cochise, Cochise was an Apache. They're one of those war-raiding tribes. They like to fight. Okay, Not just the American soldiers, but also other nations?

Nicole: 28:42

Yes, they do. They would come and steal you know, steal sheep, and they were always going across the border into Mexico, fighting them.

Logan: 28:52

They were nomads, and that was the whole thing.

Nicole: 28:56

So they were already coming against this nation all the time, and so it was like a collective, like let's bring more people together, you know, convert them into this religion, but also now we can protect ourselves against them, because they're always coming to trouble. So that's kind of what that meant.

Logan: 29:15

Yeah, I mean, look, it is what it is.

Nicole: 29:17

And you're related to them? Yeah, I am. That's what I think is funny.

Logan: 29:20

And I will say this of my blood. We're nomadic. That's what they were and they still really kind of are. But you know they would go on these long tracks and then, I mean honestly, they'd come back to find family members killed and all these atrocities done. You only do that for so long before eye for an eye and you know, blood for blood there's a reason for it.

Nicole: 29:48

So yeah, that was kind of. Yeah, it is funny especially since you went there so much as a kid.

Logan: 29:52

But then your other side of your bloodline is that, and I thought it was kind of funny. It is quite ironic, don't you think?

Nicole: 29:59

yeah, all right, we're not bursting in the song, okay fair enough, okay, so let's jump forward. Okay, in 18. Well, I don't know exactly when it started, but it was in the late 1860s. Okay, the smallpox epidemic started, yeah, okay, now it devastated the population of this odom natives at this mission. Okay, I mean, they almost completely wiped them out. So, with only a handful of them left, the nation became, well, the Papago Nation. So now we're talking about when I say Papago, it means Tohono Odom instead of the Sobapari.

Logan: 30:41

Odom Okay.

Nicole: 30:43

So the Tohono Odom nation now becomes the main population in the area of the mission, which is what is there today. Okay, in the following years, more natives from neighboring areas were invited to the mission to grow their crops. In exchange, they had to agree to Christian instruction, so they used the opportunity of them not being able to grow food to get them there, to convert them.

Logan: 31:10

Yeah, there's so much weight in that sentence that we won't get into. But read your history books, guys. So that's where we are.

Nicole: 31:21

Now, in 1870, the US Department of Indian Affairs decided that they wanted to open a convent school to start converting the children of the native population. So they invited this, which is just crazy to me of all the places they invited the Sisters of St Joseph Carondelet from St Louis, Missouri how about that which sent several nuns to Saint-Javier to become the teachers to take care of the native children. Okay, their journey west was an inspiration for the movie Lilies of the Field with Sidney Poitier.

Logan: 31:59

Yep.

Nicole: 32:01

And I'd never seen the movie. But I did look it up and it's pretty different. But I thought that was interesting, that it inspired that movie.

Logan: 32:12

I kind of want to go and watch it now.

Nicole: 32:13

But now the school was not open for very long before it closed down. Right very, very short time period. We're jumping forward to 1880. Now I found this because I'm like I wonder what else could be in the area and this came up. So San Javier also had like a mining and smelter company that opened the San Javier Western Extension Mine, which was several miles south along the Santa Cruz River. Yeah, they mined ore, which was so. Ore was made up of copper, lead and silver, yep. So this is important.

Nicole: 32:54

Yeah, I grew up Copper is very important, yeah With the paranormal community.

Logan: 32:58

Very much so, and what's interesting is, my family were copper smelters. My father was a copper smelter. Before we went to college, my grandfather was a copper smelter.

Nicole: 33:09

That is something that you grew up at around as a kid, so copper is is an interesting part of all this and there's something else there was a copper state yeah, well, there was also a white quartz farm, yeah, that opened in 1883 several miles south of the mission and they even had like a, a stone corral for like their animals and stuff. I'm like, so quartz and copper are right there yeah you've got volcanic rock, you got meteorites. I mean all this coming together, all that stone could be holding on to all this energy.

Logan: 33:48

You know what I'm saying we just talked to greg brissani, who makes his stuff out of big old copper and quartz. Yeah, so if you?

Nicole: 33:54

haven't listened to that episode. We explained that whole thing. But yeah, it can. It can help build that energy. They can use that to to manifest and to speak to us. So I thought that was really interesting and I I have a couple like newspaper articles here that I found that to prove that it actually existed yeah, it sure did, because there's not much out there, okay, so now um we are to may 3rd 1887. This is a big deal okay, deal.

Nicole: 34:24

So a devastating earthquake, measuring a 7.2 on the Richter scale, struck in the San Bernardino Valley in northeast Sonora Mexico.

Logan: 34:35

Yes, and 7.2, guys that's a big quake even by today's standards.

Nicole: 34:42

So the mission is about 140 miles northwest of this. Okay, so they had about, I guess, only like 30% of the intensity and, you know, out of the 100% that they could have had, but that's still.

Logan: 35:01

That's still pretty devastating. Yeah, yeah, and remember, structures weren't made the way they're made now.

Nicole: 35:07

Well, I mean 30% less is what I meant.

Logan: 35:09

Right, right, right. They got 70% of the.

Nicole: 35:11

I knew what you meant, yeah yeah, so I mean, still 70% is massive but that's a lot yeah. Yeah. Now the shock knocked down the mission's atrium wall and gateway in front of the church. It flattened nearly all but the eastern portions of the cemetery wall. It felled the far east lower column on the facade as well as the finial atop the upper west column and opened a floor-to-ceiling crack in the west wall of the west transept. Now a lot of this stuff is just unless you know buildings and how, the way they're built.

Logan: 35:43

I don't even know how you said it all, but yeah, wow.

Nicole: 35:47

But yeah, and I excuse you, I have been outside doing gardening stuff and cleaning stuff up, so my allergies are at the top. It's.

Logan: 35:56

Missouri.

Nicole: 35:56

Yeah, all the pollen. That's right Now there was 100 adobe buildings that were cracked and crumbled in this area, so the Adobe buildings would be what the natives are living in around the mission at this point. Yep, okay, and other like convent and stuff like that. So 100 of them cracked and crumbled.

Logan: 36:17

Yeah, I mean that's devastating to that whole community. I mean that is especially at this time and place. You know it's not like you, can you know? There's a ton of contractors out there. They can just call and say, hey, come fix our stuff or right you know they were living hand to mouth. So you lose 100 structures.

Nicole: 36:33

I mean that's, that's cataclysmic now the public school building um rocked to and fro the waves lasting four minutes long I mean four minutes is not long if you're watching tv, but if you're sitting going through something that scary, four minutes is like a lifetime I don't know. Four minutes of kardashians is pretty long well, I wouldn't know, because I don't never watch that I'm sorry if you're a fan, I apologize.

Logan: 37:00

Uh, from somebody who's been through earthquakes seen especially when I was in san diego, they, the they're very. I want to say they're short. It's not a very long amount of time, at least not the ones I've ever been through. So four minutes of it rocking, that is. It's a long that is incredibly scary now, thankfully.

Nicole: 37:21

Thankfully, there were no casualties reported from the mission or even the surrounding town of Tucson. So it was scary and it destroyed a lot of things, but nobody died.

Logan: 37:31

Well, the good news for that is because most deaths in earthquakes are from things falling on people, so out there in the desert they didn't have a whole lot of high structures.

Nicole: 37:46

So we do have a picture and we'll put this up here of the mission now. It's a very old crumpled newspaper um picture of, but you can see some of the rock around the mission that had fallen down yeah, and the picture that we put up, the, the, the mission isn't cut in half, guys, it's just.

Nicole: 38:04

It's the stuff, the that was around the felt, it's just an old picture yeah, but we've got another one of like the cemetery wall falling down, which is just the left of the mission I just didn't want people to look at it and go oh my god, it took the door, the whole thing in half yeah now, the mission obviously needed to be repaired, right, um?

Nicole: 38:24

so they just decided to go ahead when they did that and reopen the convent school in 1889. But this time the Indian Affairs had nothing to do with it, so the government had nothing to do with it and it was all controlled and run by the nuns. Okay, so in 1946, now we just jumped a little bit further in time just to explain this A new school building was built for the mission at an estimated cost of $25,000. And it was opened on January 2nd of 1947 and had 70 to 80 students attending the first year. That's a lot. That's a lot $25,000.

Logan: 38:59

Mm-hmm, talk about inflation.

Nicole: 39:02

Yeah.

Logan: 39:03

Yeah, yeah, I mean, our Jeep doesn't even. You couldn't even buy that with that.

Nicole: 39:07

Anyway, I don't know what I'm saying. Okay, now, on October 9th of 1960. So we're jumping really far forward because I mean, yeah, did things happen in between that time? Did they add on to the church? Yes, they added all these extra buildings, they added walls, they added this and that. And you know, I've got a couple like newspaper articles here, some pictures I've got a picture of the nuns and the school children and just changes in the mission.

Logan: 39:38

Right.

Nicole: 39:38

But nothing that we need to go over, because it would take forever. But yeah, things happen, but life progressed as it does. Yeah, okay, we need to go over, because this would it would take forever. But yeah, things happened, but life progressed as it is okay, so on october 9th of 1960, the san javier mission was recognized as a national historic landmark. Yeah, and there's actually a little plaque which will show. That's the picture that I did, um it's a very nice picture yeah, well, yeah, okay.

Nicole: 40:02

So this is important. Remember this for later. In 1973, thieves stole a large statue of Saint-Javier, which was believed to be French and dated between 1850 to 1925. The cast plaster figure had appeared in both transepts, in the Soto Coro and in the niche above the tabernacle, which I don't know what any of that means, and I think we actually might have a picture of it.

Logan: 40:27

So the tabernacle, I believe and I'm sorry if I get this wrong is where the priest comes up and does his sermon. It's got that thing above him, and right above him is a niche.

Nicole: 40:41

Well, there's lots of niches, it's plural.

Logan: 40:44

It's not like cactus, it cactus, not like it's niche.

Nicole: 40:46

I yeah it's just there's a lot of yeah, okay now in february of 1974 two villagers received permission to repair the, so I guess they must have torn the head off or something yeah so they repaired the headless statue of san javier. Um no, I've got a picture of the repaired statue, right that we'll put up here. Okay, all right, so we're complete with the history for as of now. Okay, okay, for what?

Nicole: 41:14

what I kind of knew going into it, what we kind of knew, what I had kind of looked up whenever you go on a investigation, you always want to look up up and see what people have claimed, right, okay, what they've claimed to have seen, what they've claimed to have experienced, you know things that they got. You don't have to go in depth, but it's nice to kind of know what to expect. Sure, okay, and so these are the things that have been claimed at San Javier. Okay, okay, so this is what we knew going into it, okay, so, obviously, number one is the one that you see everywhere is the architect falling from the tower.

Logan: 41:55

Ignacio.

Nicole: 41:56

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Well, we you know. It's just the architect falling from the tower.

Logan: 41:59

Right.

Nicole: 42:00

Okay, and they say that it feels like someone is watching you from the tower. So this is him watching you from the tower, Right, Okay? So we are going in thinking okay, let's focus on the tower.

Logan: 42:12

Okay.

Nicole: 42:13

Number two around dawn and dusk, a white-haired padre has been seen around the church grounds, which would make sense, yeah.

Logan: 42:23

I mean, you have priests walking around.

Nicole: 42:24

I mean that would make sense. Yeah, I mean, we have priests walking around.

Logan: 42:25

I mean that it would be odd. It would make sense if there was a paranormal thing going on and that wasn't part of it.

Nicole: 42:33

And this last one, okay, and so we really focused on this one a lot, yes, um. So the story goes that in 1949, a schoolhouse so the convent school that was next to the mission caught fire in the middle of the night and burned to the ground, killing everyone inside. Witnesses said they saw a nun that no one recognized inside trying to get the trapped children to safety. Safety, to this day, a nun with a limp is sometimes seen leading a group of five they say pima children from where the school used to stand towards the church right. So I'm thinking, oh my god, you know we're gonna get lots of activity. You know, when we speak about kids, and right right.

Nicole: 43:21

So those are the three things we kind of focused on. Okay, this architect fell from the tower. You know I'm thinking with the Padre, we probably won't get much of that, but this schoolhouse burned down. All these children die, nuns die. Oh my goodness, we're going to get it.

Logan: 43:35

It's a big one, yeah.

Nicole: 43:37

So this is what we know going into it, right, okay, next our investigation. So we get there, we park in the parking lot, we kind of walk up and now a lot of this is going to be. We're going to be speaking while we're showing you the video, because we don't speak a lot in some of the video and then we'll kind of get to it. Um, so this first one and we're going to play. Well, you can kind of explain what we've got going on yeah, so real quick.

Logan: 44:08

Itc okay, I want to cover this real quick. Itc is is an app or a program or something that is that's not necessarily tangible in the sense of holding. Well, no, even some of itc stuff is. Anyway, it is digital recording, it is digital um, it's, it's all digital. So a lot of people I want to say a lot there is a fair amount of people in the paranormal community that don't necessarily like itc and and it's not that I fault that I get that um. So what we typically like to do is we like to run analog with ITC at the same time. We've gotten some incredible evidence doing that. But in this particular sense we didn't really do that for a couple of reasons.

Nicole: 44:53

One was to maintain that respect and not be there walking around loudly investigating.

Logan: 45:01

Exactly.

Nicole: 45:01

Staying on the down low because there's people worshiping, there's people coming to do tours. You don't want to do that, yeah, and be disrespectful. So we are very limited in what we chose to do at this place, right?

Logan: 45:15

and while we're doing this, I'm holding it up. A phone that's doing the itc which we're using is ghost, okay, and I think I'm even using like a GoPro. We've got some other things going on, so we've got a lot of different devices going, but for the most part, in the beginning you're going to be getting a lot of the GhostTube part of it.

Nicole: 45:35

Now you know, a lot of people say that it can just give you random stuff, and a lot of the time it does give you random stuff. It does you random stuff and a lot of the time it does give you random stuff. It does, but it's the things that hit that are interesting and like we got that in at u of a yes was very interesting.

Nicole: 45:52

So you know, when it comes to the paranormal and investigating the paranormal, not everybody knows everything you can't I mean, if there's new technology out there to try to be able to learn more and seek more truth, why not try it out? You don't have to say, oh, this is 100% what it is, because this said this, but use it. There's a lot of groups that, like you said that, will refuse to use it.

Nicole: 46:18

There's a lot of groups that really embrace it. Right, and I think we're in the middle, we're like it could go either way, but we don't not use it because, right. So with this place, as soon as you get out, I mean it's just, it's majestic, standing in front of you, you know there's a deep history there and people that come to this place are spiritual.

Logan: 46:47

So I think one of the first things that when we were walking in there, um, we got some some interesting stuff that came up on the itc yeah.

Nicole: 46:57

So we're in the parking lot. We, you know, start walking towards the church and it's you start getting this feeling from this place, and part of it is you're feeling the history, you're feeling all the energy of all the people that have come, because this is a place of worship. This is a place where people have celebrated people's lives that have passed on. They're celebrating marriages, quinceaneras. You know all these things over all these years right you can feel all that energy Absolutely, especially when you walk inside.

Logan: 47:27

But we're not to that point yet, so we're just walking up on to this church, yeah, and the other thing I want to add real quick is that there's something that happens with your eyes too, because you remember, it's in the middle of the desert, so there's this big, vast, open blue sky and then there's this real contrasting white.

Nicole: 47:49

That's there and it kind of it really kind of plays with your eyes a little bit yeah, it does, but I remember we were walking in and to the left is where the, the school is now. So I was remembering, you know yeah I'm thinking, is that where the original school was? And I'm thinking, okay, you know, but we're walking up and he's got the ghost tube thing on.

Nicole: 48:07

And I'm just taking pictures at the moment, so we're really not paying attention to it. We just kind of turned it on. But we're going to play this little thing for you and then we're going to talk about it. Laughing Love the veteran here.

Nicole: 48:26

Laughing robbery yeah, so it was supposed to match up there, and the legend goes that so that that was very interesting to me, because there were two words that came across there and this is what I'm going to talk about. So first, I had forgotten to turn my camera on before trying to take pictures. I'm trying to take pictures and I say, well, I guess it'd help if I turned that on and you laughed.

Logan: 49:07

I did.

Nicole: 49:08

But like right before that it came across the word laughing.

Logan: 49:12

It sure did.

Nicole: 49:15

And that was weird and at the time we didn't think anything about it, like we thought it was just one of those random words right. But I caught that going back there and I'm like laughing and then you laugh at me saying that and I'm like weird it was very weird totally weird, it's the timing of it, you know.

Logan: 49:31

Yeah, crazy crazy timing.

Nicole: 49:33

And then later on we get the word robbery right. And what are we already talking about? There were thieves that came in and stole the statue. That's right, yeah so, and that's just right outside the church.

Logan: 49:46

So I was like Weren't even there five minutes.

Nicole: 49:48

Could it be random? Absolutely, but I just found those two. The laughing thing especially was very interesting. Like they knew you were going to laugh.

Logan: 49:57

Say what you want about GPS or something like that. There's no way an app knew we were about to laugh about it, or?

Nicole: 50:06

maybe they were laughing at me being stupid. I think they were laughing at you Totally, Because most of the time I forget to take the lens cap off and I'm like yeah. But this time I forgot to turn the camera on.

Logan: 50:15

That does hinder your ability to take pictures.

Nicole: 50:17

So I thought that was pretty funny. Okay, so we continue on, basically, and we're gonna, we're gonna play some of this. Um, this is us walking, you know, up to the church around the side to go on the inside of the church right okay, in the um corner there's that yeah, the water right the holy, the water Right the holy water, the holy water.

Nicole: 50:47

Now, I am not Catholic and you didn't do it either. And when? We first started this investigation. We actually sat down on those wooden seats there Right and they are very loud and very noisy the pews and we sat down actually directly to the right of that of where the water is okay, um, right by, like behind the doors, but we were trying to sit in a quieter place to be respectful to be respectful, um, and we actually turned on the.

Nicole: 51:19

You had the ghost tube running. I had the actual recorder going to actually start asking questions, but we had to ask in a whisper. Yes, and when you walk in this place it's like any other respectful place People whisper to each other. Right, you don't speak loud and most people weren't talking at all.

Logan: 51:38

And if they were.

Nicole: 51:40

They were at the other end of the church from us like speaking by the altar. And you can hear creaks in the wood and stuff. But we, when we first sat down, you had the ghost tube on, but I don't, didn't have my recorder on or it didn't record or something happened.

Nicole: 51:55

I remember on that first go around and I'm so angry about that now because we you kept getting something about water and respect and something like that and I'm like what does that mean? And then you figured out. You never went over and did the Holy Trinity yeah with the water, because I started watching people walk in that were there to pray. They went directly to there and started doing that, and we didn't do that. We walked around the church, we this stuff. So they were very upset yes, they were we didn't do that.

Logan: 52:31

So, needless to say, I mean he turned around and did that.

Nicole: 52:34

So so the next clips that we have are us um, you know, obviously it's not. We were there for a good 45 minutes, probably easily um with the recorder. But what's interesting is we were asking all kinds of questions and we were focusing 45 minutes probably with the recorder. But what's interesting is we were asking all kinds of questions and we were focusing on the architect. I was super focused on the children, about the children burning and about the children, the fire and asking all these questions. So we're going to play this clip of us speaking about it and some of the um answers. We got on the ghost tube, but also we picked up something on the recorder, sure did and it's very faint, but we'll play that right now and then we'll speak about it.

Nicole: 53:19

Angel, I'm going to be one of the missionaries that came. Melt, I'm going to be your guest to hold this church. Melt, melt, melt, melt. Can you see Melvin Move?

Logan: 53:53

over.

Nicole: 54:01

Okay, so let's focus on the words on the ghost tube first. So we got the word angel which I thought was very interesting. It is very interesting. Where are we we're?

Logan: 54:13

in the church Right.

Nicole: 54:14

We got angel, and then we also got the words meld, yes. Now, at the time I'm thinking meld, okay, fire, right, right. But later, when I looked at the history, when I found out about how the building is literally made of burned brick sure is, that's what they did.

Nicole: 54:38

They burnt it so the definition of meld, if don't know, is to merge or to blend, to fuse. Okay, now it could have meant the burned brick to build the building. It could also mean the merging of cultures that were there the natives and the Spanish, we don't know, but I thought that was interesting that they used the word meld.

Logan: 55:00

Could have also meant the mine.

Nicole: 55:02

Yeah, but those were very interesting. And then, of course, we got the move over and we were sitting on the pew, which was really weird, and we did actually move over.

Logan: 55:12

And we listened.

Nicole: 55:14

Now, as far as the things on the recorder, we can play them again here, we'll play just that part, okay. Okay, so the first one. It sounds almost like humming or singing to me, yeah.

Logan: 55:47

And it's tough because you always wonder, because everybody does whisper and nobody carries on that loudly. But I can tell you that there was nobody around. No, one.

Nicole: 55:52

I mean, you're gonna hear voices when we're talking other times and we were aware of those people and you know I made notes on it. These people were talking at this time, or these people were here, um, there was no one singing. There was no nuns in there. There was no one singing. There was no one singing. There was no nuns in there. There was no one singing. There was no one humming. I mean, if anything, they were whispering to each other, but this is a clear like oh yeah.

Logan: 56:13

It's melodic.

Nicole: 56:14

Yes, but that would make sense, for like the nuns would probably Sure.

Logan: 56:19

Well, I mean anybody who's there for like a mass or something you know there's obviously their song. That's done.

Nicole: 56:27

And then we got a second time yeah, Very close in succession which I thought was very interesting For sure. So those are really the only things that we really kind of got on the recorder.

Logan: 56:39

Right.

Nicole: 56:40

Because we couldn't really use the recorder in many other places on the property because we're walking around. There's wind, there's bird noises.

Logan: 56:48

It was really windy that day.

Nicole: 56:49

Extremely windy. There are people walking all over the place and talking. So we learned our lesson from U of A not to even worry about it. It was not going to work. But in the church I thought, okay, it's going to be quiet enough. And I'm so glad we decided to use it, because we did pick up those those sounds what they are.

Logan: 57:08

I don't know I mean they're definitely up for interpretation.

Nicole: 57:11

It's just that we know, because we were there there was nobody there but and it's just my guess that it's probably a residual sound, yeah, of, like you know yeah, I would think worship probably, um, but you know, at the time I was like we're not getting any response when I talk about the architect, or like any response about the kids, and I was really hoping for that. Like no, we got some random words on the, but I'm like it doesn't, it really didn't match in the question, and that's what I'm talking about is like, if you get like a direct response using those things, then there's a lot more validity, sure to it. But there was not, everything was just random and I'm like, okay, yeah, you know we're not getting anything, yeah it really wasn't.

Logan: 57:55

There wasn't anything that that made sense, and at that point, why even bring it up?

Nicole: 58:01

right right yeah so this next one, um, I think we're in the back. We had walked through and we had walked behind um the back part of the church where the fountain is, and we were kind of walking around the only thing we had there because we were getting ready to go into the museum part. I think you just had your ghost tube thing on yeah, funny thing about that.

Logan: 58:26

That water fountain though I just wanted to add, first time I ever got stung by a bee was there okay memories.

Nicole: 58:34

But I remember at the time because we had went back there because there were had been some pictures I had seen of the school children, the native school children, and I could tell they were standing by arches. And I was like, well you know, because I was trying to figure out, I remember, where the original school was, to try to figure out where it had burnt down at right. And so we were back there and there's arches on both sides, like all the way around this courtyard where the fountain is, and so I'm trying to figure out where these students would have been standing when this picture were taken. And I'm like, and I remember saying something on the video and it, what did it come across? On the thing it says why must you know? And I'm like, well, I just, you know, want to know if the thing burnt out or whatever, but what was interesting is that it came across.

Nicole: 59:22

find me just like a little kid would be playing hide and seek.

Logan: 59:26

Yeah, like find me, it was playful, mm-hmm.

Nicole: 59:29

But you know, no direct like answering, like about the fire or anything.

Logan: 59:34

Mm-hmm.

Nicole: 59:35

But I was like I just remember thinking at the time that's like a kid, I know, like find me.

Logan: 59:39

And you do, you get concerned and it's kind of heart-wrenching because at the time the information that we had was about these children dying in this fiery you know school, but that's back in the area where the the school was, and where they you know the kids all hung out and so to get that find me yeah, you know it kind of like tore my heart a bit yeah.

Nicole: 1:00:05

Okay, so this next clip. So we decide to walk, so we're on. If you're facing the church to the left of it this is something which we'll talk about here in a second that we didn't know at the time. But you kind of walk down this little pathway and there's, like you know, desert plants.

Logan: 1:00:22

Yeah, it's a landscape, yeah On each side of it.

Nicole: 1:00:25

And then there's like this I don't even know what they call it, like a mortuarium or something like that.

Logan: 1:00:32

Yeah.

Nicole: 1:00:33

At the end it's basically just like a little building and it has an altar and it has candles on it. And so we walked in there and you had the. I was taking pictures, but you had the ghost tube going.

Logan: 1:00:43

Oh yeah, I did have the ghost tube going.

Nicole: 1:00:48

So we get in there and we're going to play this clip right here. Lower your voice.

Logan: 1:00:53

26 26 what.

Nicole: 1:01:00

Dig.

Logan: 1:01:02

Dig. Dig. Lower your voice. 26, dig.

Nicole: 1:01:10

Okay, so it's interesting that we get lower your voice. Yes, okay, because it's supposed to be a respectful that's right. Like prayer, you know.

Logan: 1:01:21

Yeah.

Nicole: 1:01:21

Place of prayer. And then I still don't know what 26 is supposed to mean. I never could find any anything about that it would I think well yeah yeah, and then we get dig and I'm like big what well, folks, later I end up finding out as I'm digging in the history and stuff. If you remember the pictures from the earthquake, it talks about the cemetery wall falling down. Yeah that's that wall true.

Nicole: 1:01:51

So that pathway that you walk, with those two walls where all the plants are used to be the original cemetery, and I don't think the bodies have been moon, I think they're all still there and that's where they place that, because that buildings in that photo yes, that's been there since the because, that building's in that photo. Yes, that's been there since the 1800s. Yes, so we were lower your voice as a place of respect. 26 does that mean there's 26 people buried there? I don't know. There's no way to find that right and then dig.

Logan: 1:02:20

That was weird that's very weird, I was like I don't know what.

Nicole: 1:02:23

This is, just another little private place of prayer. Had no idea that that's where the original cemetery was.

Logan: 1:02:28

Like I said, I've been going to this building since I'm what? Three, four years old and I've never known that.

Nicole: 1:02:37

Yeah, I don't know, because it's not a very big space.

Logan: 1:02:40

No, it's not. And it would make sense if there's about 26 people, that about 26 people could. Oh yeah, 26 in there, but not much more than that.

Nicole: 1:02:49

No, and there's no heads, I mean it's, there's plants there now yeah, it's, it is a very and there I remember, like in in the video, when we're first walking in, I hear you go oh, like that, like you weird.

Logan: 1:03:03

I got a very weird chill sensation. I don't know. It was like this charge of energy.

Nicole: 1:03:09

And see, you didn't say anything to me and I didn't even know it till I watched that back and saw you do that and I'm like I wonder why he did that.

Logan: 1:03:16

I just, I immediately felt it. That's so interesting, so that was pretty interesting.

Nicole: 1:03:22

Okay, so this next one. So if you go like facing the church, you go to the right and you walk that way. That's where you'll walk through like this. It's kind of like a patio area and there's this little arch and you walk through it and the gift shop is back there.

Logan: 1:03:39

Right, right Okay.

Nicole: 1:03:41

So we're going to play that right here and then we'll talk about it. That left ear's being really bad just started when I walked through that gate.

Logan: 1:04:10

Going forward where you here it's all necessary I don't know if there's just what is the whole thing. It went down the jib. I've climbed it as a kid.

Nicole: 1:04:44

Tradition good, tradition good, good, okay, so it was so weird for me, I bet and this does happen to me occasionally not very often, but now I'm starting to learn what it might actually be I just thought it was health problems understood, but it's always the same ear and it's really weird. So when I walked under that arch, as soon as I crossed like out from underneath it, my right ear starts ringing like really loudly and I'm like what is going on?

Nicole: 1:05:19

yeah and then I don't remember who it was that I spoke to or I don't know what was saying that that can be a sign of spirit making contact and you can tell something's around. And it was loud and it lasted for a while, like I couldn't get it to go away.

Logan: 1:05:36

Well, it's pressure. The pressure keeps playing on the eardrum, and that's very lucky it was really, really weird, and it was just in that right.

Nicole: 1:05:45

When I walked under that and when I turned to the right, there was actually like a little water fountain that had like a jesus with the kids painting there, because I remember my main like thing was like I want to connect with the poor kids that burned alive here. You know, like that was my main thing and it didn't happen. Um, now, as far as getting anything, I thought it was interesting that you were telling me about, because I was like what's that hill over there? Well, we did find out, it's a you can walk. If you walk up the trail and walk around to the back, there's like a like a place of prayer. That's like kind of in nature, it's kind of in the hill. Um, but I was asking you about it and you're talking about. Oh yeah, my dad would take me up there.

Logan: 1:06:26

Absolutely hated it when I was a kid, Because you would always go there and it was it's Arizona, it's hot, we would always go up there and I'm like dad no we're going yeah.

Nicole: 1:06:39

I'm like all right, but then we get the two words tradition, good, yes, that see. I think that applies. I think so too. I thought that was really really cool, yeah, yeah.

Logan: 1:06:51

It was a very interesting. It was interesting for me because I mean, honestly, that whole time I'm there, I mean I got my dad in one ear, my grandmother in the other. You know it's, you know they've both since passed, passed and it's just. There's so much history of mine attached there.

Nicole: 1:07:10

So and I just kind of want to mention this and I don't know if I've got I've got the picture somewhere and I can't I can't quote it for sure, but we'll put it up here. But as right as we were getting ready to walk into the gift shop, I took a picture of it. There's like a little um tile thing that's kind of embedded in the wall and it says it's the um verse from the bible.

Nicole: 1:07:30

Talking about you might be entertaining angels unawares and I thought that was so interesting for what we were doing and where we were, and it was just like bam and my ears had just been ringing and that had just come talking about. I was like wow.

Logan: 1:07:46

That was kind of like timing, perfect timing.

Nicole: 1:07:48

Yeah, okay. So here's kind of a very interesting one.

Logan: 1:07:56

Yeah, this is the record scratch moment.

Nicole: 1:07:58

Mm-hmm, this is the one that I said. That kind of parallels our U of A investigation, because I was a little blown away by this. Um, I'd say so and this, I believe, is we're just walking around somewhere, I don't remember where it was.

Logan: 1:08:13

They're just out in front yeah, and nothing significant happened.

Nicole: 1:08:17

You had that on while we were walking around the whole time and most of the time we're not even paying attention to any of it because we were in transit, I think from one place to the other um and honestly I had left it kind of running for this very reason and we might actually have been out in front of the towers

Nicole: 1:08:33

I think I remember we you know on each side, because I remember I took a million pictures of the tower, you know, hoping that something would show up and hoping that you know you might, and I remember you. Do you get any feeling from that? And you're like, not really.

Logan: 1:08:47

No, I really didn't.

Nicole: 1:08:48

Yeah, from up there, and I'm like, okay, and I think this was in that transition, right, so we're going to play this here and then we're going to talk about it. Okay, why am I here? Joan, joan, okay, so the two things we got that I'm going to talk about, why am I here? And in quick succession, right after that, we get the name joan and I'm like that's a weird name to get, okay, and when I think of anything related to religion with joan is joan of arc. Right, sure, it's the only thing I can think of. I mean makes sense, but I'm like this is not gonna apply to this, it makes no sense. I said, and'm thinking why are we not getting, like Spanish names, latin names, native names, which and I don't know if people know this, but especially in the Southwest, a lot of natives have Latin, spanish names Because they adopted what was around them.

Logan: 1:10:02

Right.

Nicole: 1:10:03

Yeah, okay, so I'm expecting to get names like that. If we're going to get a name, it would be, and I'm like we get the most white woman name. Like it makes no sense to me. I'm like this is and at this point, I'm like this is a random right Right right.

Nicole: 1:10:19

But out of all the little things, because I went through every word that we got and I'm like, okay, it's a name. I look at stuff that sticks out. So I'm like I remember I went a Joan associated with San Javier Mission. Okay, now there was a Joan that wrote an article about it.

Logan: 1:10:41

Right.

Nicole: 1:10:41

Okay, I'm like that can't be anything.

Logan: 1:10:43

No, that doesn't make sense.

Nicole: 1:10:46

But then ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, this big, massive thing like just jumps out of the screen at me.

Logan: 1:10:52

Yeah, it is, and.

Nicole: 1:10:53

I'm like holy cow.

Logan: 1:10:55

Yeah, it's definitely. It is where things take a big turn.

Nicole: 1:11:01

Mm-hmm. So on the morning of Aprilil 27th of 1986, there's a 25 year old woman named joan marie archer who went on a bike ride, like she always did, along west san javier road. She passed by the mission. Okay, this is the road that passes right by the mission. Her boyfriend had went to her house the next morning to care for some puppies that she had and found she had never returned and her bicycle and helmet were missing, right. So she became a missing person and we're gonna.

Nicole: 1:11:39

I I verified this. I got the map of where the road where the mission is, where the road is where this other road is, articles about her missing in the tucson papers. This is provable information. Okay now, her body was found on july 22nd of 1986 in the area of west san javier road and south mission road, a little over a half of a mile from the mission. She had been stabbed in the back and neck and sexually assaulted. Her death was linked to another attempted abduction and murder of two women on Mount Lemmon, which is the mountain you can go up in.

Nicole: 1:12:18

Tucson in July by an Air Force Sergeant, stephen Skaggs. The wounds on Joan's body match the wounds on one of the women he raped and attempted to kill. I've got her picture up here and then finding her funeral and obviously her funeral wasn't at San Javier she's not buried at San Javier Right, but she was killed right down the road from San Javier.

Logan: 1:12:44

Yeah.

Nicole: 1:12:45

And we don't know how this works in the afterlife, but if you're missing or you've died and there's other souls close, wouldn't you go to that?

Logan: 1:12:55

That's what I would think you would do. I mean, it would almost look like a beacon.

Nicole: 1:12:59

And she's familiar with it. Sure, but we get the two things. Why am I here, joanan? Joan and we were outside. We weren't inside the church when we were walking around, we were outside we sure were on the property literally facing son of your road I honestly couldn't believe it because it reminds me so much of what happened. Because, just like with u of a, he wasn't. He was killed. You know a ways away from where we were, but had wandered.

Logan: 1:13:30

I mean we know they can travel. I mean we know these things?

Nicole: 1:13:33

well, we don't know, no we assume we assume these things yeah um, I just couldn't believe it. I'm like of all, and we've got her, you know her headstone her headstone and all these things, and she was Catholic, yeah.

Logan: 1:13:47

So that's interesting and she had definitely gone there.

Nicole: 1:13:48

She had, yeah, she had to have. And she was raised in Tucson.

Logan: 1:13:52

Well, she's got rosary bleeds on her headstone, so she was obviously a devout Catholic.

Nicole: 1:13:59

I just it floored me, it honestly floored me yeah.

Logan: 1:14:04

It is one of those where you can research till you're blue in the face and then sometimes, every once in a while, you get oh, by the way, research this.

Nicole: 1:14:17

Right, I'm like. What other explanation is there for that?

Logan: 1:14:20

Yeah, I don't know. It's way too for the proponents that don't like ITC you can say GPS, but that's awfully Well.

Nicole: 1:14:30

they say GPS can then go to Google and search things that happen in the area and then give you like yeah, no, I'm sorry, I think that's too.

Logan: 1:14:40

It's wild it's just why. Why?

Nicole: 1:14:42

am I here? Yeah, joan, and that, and that's why I like those. Those well, because they happen in succession and I'm like some. There's something about this, right, you know that. And it's not.

Logan: 1:14:54

It's not a spanish name no sense of all that history yeah, and you, some of the, some of the Mexicans and natives will laugh when I say this, because it's in every family you always have like a Juan Ignacio and you got all these really interesting names and you always have like a Brandon for some reason thrown there and it's always really weird. But no, she was. She was not of Mexican or native descent.

Nicole: 1:15:15

No, no, she was actually, I think, blonde-headed, and small like more kind of looks like me, but yeah it just crazy, crazy stuff. Okay, so that was basically our. You know, we couldn't go in-depth investigation because this is what do we really want to?

Logan: 1:15:39

No, I mean this.

Nicole: 1:15:39

This is we wanted to be as respectful as possible right to the people involved. So, um, let's get on to our thoughts and evidence that you know, you presented this to you and what we think sounds good, but there is more to come that we discovered very much. Okay, so we talked about the architect right falling from the tower. We got no responses. When we talked about him, we said his name, we asked questions about if he was still there. All this stuff, right, and I'm like.

Nicole: 1:16:09

I don't think it happened, but let me tell you, when you look this up, this is the story that has happened.

Logan: 1:16:17

Yeah, it is the story.

Nicole: 1:16:18

I mean it is literally everywhere. I mean story that has happened, yeah, it is. I mean it's literally everywhere.

Logan: 1:16:22

I mean you've even got which I guess I shouldn't say it, we'll just say a very reputable yes place in the area saying this is what happened.

Nicole: 1:16:32

And this is not the only thing they said and I'm like do your research, don't put that out there. Okay, so there was a a.

Nicole: 1:16:43

I guess they call him father now, but like a padre, like a priest, um, and his name was father mccarty. Okay, that did some research on this because he wanted to find out for sure. Okay, and he's like, okay, I'm gonna look at the descendants of this family and see, you know, and try to contact them and see if there was ever a couple of brothers that went and one died falling off a tower, and he looked into it, okay, so he finds, um, the family, the descendants of these, and he said that the two brothers, who were architects and builders, came to mexico in the last quarter of the 18th century. He said in an interview, um, they were sent to work on missions in california. Then the family said they came to tucson to work on the mission. Yeah, okay, but from here they moved. They moved to caborkaca and helped build our twin mission there.

Nicole: 1:17:44

One brother returned to Mexico City and the other remained in Caborca. There is no mention in the family history of either of the brothers falling from the mission tower. And there's also a University of Arizona field historian who has spent years studying this church. That and his name was Dr Bernard Fontana. He says there's a very easy explanation for this unfinished tower the builders simply ran out of money.

Logan: 1:18:14

I mean it's.

Nicole: 1:18:15

Occam's razor Right, which you always like to bring up 100%.

Logan: 1:18:18

Yeah.

Nicole: 1:18:20

So when I was researching, like the spanish crown, okay, they would pay missionaries regardless of whatever condition of the church was, it made no difference. So them holding out to not have to pay taxes. It's not the us government, it's, it's the crown. So they've given them their allotted money to do whatever they need to do with it, but then once that money, they're not getting more that's just how it is so they ran out of money before they got to that part, and that's just essentially what happened.

Nicole: 1:18:54

Yep, so nobody fell from the tower, nobody crashed, nobody turned into a snake and went underneath it I shouldn't laugh. I mean, that is a belief, I know, but I'm just saying like none of that stuff happened so it was easily found, is all I'm gonna say.

Nicole: 1:19:12

I need to be found I remember when you found it there were some swear words oh, it was, like you know, because we focused so much on that and it was a lot of energy, yeah yeah, okay. So the second claim right is people saying they see this white-haired padre okay now, obviously, when I heard that and I know you thought the same thing this is a residual thing, okay it sounds residual because there's no interaction there.

Nicole: 1:19:39

But I was like, why is it dusk and dawn? But I found out that at dusk and dawn the priest would go and light the candles in the church for prayer, because that's when people would come to the church and pray. Okay, especially back in the 1800s and those time periods so residual. He's lighting the candles.

Logan: 1:19:58

It checks out Absolutely.

Nicole: 1:20:00

That 100% believable, that they see that. Okay. Now this next one is my soapbox I'm very irritated at, I'm just going to say very irritated. Another allotment of cuss words and this is the place that I was already speaking about. That is the utmost important. Should not be putting this out there, because they do historical research.

Logan: 1:20:30

Yes, they do.

Nicole: 1:20:31

And they're. I don't know where they got this from, however. So the third claim, that is, that there's people are seeing a nun lead children from the old schoolhouse to the church. Now that I don't think is false, necessarily because that happened. You know that. That, I think, is residual as well I think that it's probably just something that's there and it's couldn't care less if you're there. It just does what it does and I believe that people have probably seen that.

Nicole: 1:21:12

Sure, okay, however, guys, the pause is here, there is literally no evidence that there was ever a fire that destroyed a schoolhouse and killed a bunch of kids yep, and I even asked.

Logan: 1:21:31

I went up to one of the workers there and she was an older lady, an older and I figured this event had supposedly happened.

Nicole: 1:21:39

A native lady Right that works and lives on the reservation.

Logan: 1:21:43

Even if she wasn't there at the time, by just the math of her age and where she was, she would have known about it. She would have been alive yeah.

Nicole: 1:21:53

She'd probably been a kid.

Logan: 1:21:54

Right.

Nicole: 1:21:55

Going to the school.

Logan: 1:21:56

That would be my assumption as well.

Nicole: 1:21:58

Yes, and she kind of looked at me like we asked yeah, I said very quietly and respectfully have you ever heard of a fire that's happened here at the mission? That I didn't say about deaths of kids, I just said that, right, could have burned down the schoolhouse. And she looked at me like she looked at me like she's heard it before and she thinks it's ridiculous and she's like no, there's never been a fire like that here, not while the last few generations have been alive, and certainly not she goes. All my kids have gone to that school. There's never been a fire. There was never a fire when I was a kid and this is said to have happened in 1949. Right, and this lady was older.

Logan: 1:22:43

Yeah, okay, so she would at least been a kid yeah, I mean, when she said that, I just kind of was like, yeah, I was like, oh, great okay so when we got home and I did the research, I dug deep, deep, because this is something you don't spread around, no, I mean something yes, well, it's children, I'm sorry, I don't have animals and children, you don't mess with me

Nicole: 1:23:10

that's right, children. I'm gonna get to the bottom of it because you know I was heart-wrenching to think something like that could have happened, sure, you know. So here's what I found now. Was there a tragedy? Yes, but it is not a fire. So I looked up newspaper articles in tucson and I'm thinking, okay, they reported, they could report on the earthquake in 1800. They're going to report on a fire. Sure, nothing, no, fire, nothing. I mean I looked in every kind of used, every word I could use that could possibly nothing, yeah, nothing. And then I started thinking, well, are they covering it up? Because a bunch of kids, I'm like, because they've covered it up, and I'm thinking, no, that would have, there's no way it would have gotten out, right? So this is what I did find. So there was a fire on friday, may 13th of 1949 at the tucson dog track.

Nicole: 1:24:07

Yeah, it was a daytime fire that destroyed the track and a house trailer belonging to the caretaker. Yes, okay, so I have the newspaper article right there. Fire is emblazoned on the screen for you to see.

Logan: 1:24:24

And a picture of something emblazoned. The fire yeah.

Nicole: 1:24:26

Yeah, so this is what's being reported in 1949. Okay, next one, another fire, another fire. So the Metronome Ballroom, which was a nighttime fire, they completely destroyed the building on Saturday, september 17th 1949. And I've got the paper, the date, what page it was on pictures of it. Right there there's another fire. Yep, didn't take that much Okay so they were reporting on fires, it's not like they were reporting on fires, yeah. Here's the next one. Okay, this didn't happen in 1949. This actually happened in october of october 25th 1948 it's an entire year school was a school drachman elementary school fire in tucson.

Nicole: 1:25:14

It was a night fire, yes, of a school, like they were saying. There is no one injured because it's nighttime. It's never really made sense to me, but it did. It destroyed the school. You got it right there for everybody to see, okay, and it's got the picture, everything. It's got how much it cost, yeah it's so how much it cost?

Logan: 1:25:41

Yeah, it's so there is a school fire.

Nicole: 1:25:43

None of this happened. No kids were hurt, nobody was hurt. But it did destroy a school, Sure, Because you know, some of these rumors start somewhere. So I'm like, could it be it started with, oh, this elementary school in Tucson burned at night? Let's turn this into oh, this happened at the mission.

Logan: 1:26:00

Yes, burned at night.

Nicole: 1:26:00

Let's turn this into oh, this happened at the mission. Sensationalism yes. Oh, now we're going to kill a bunch of kids in it and make it really dramatic right, yeah. This should not be done, okay, because it's messed up.

Logan: 1:26:12

Yeah, it is messed up.

Nicole: 1:26:13

Nothing else. Yeah, opposed to a fire, but I'll tell you what I did find. So I said, okay, there a fire, but I'll tell you what I did find. So I said, okay, there's no fires at the mission, so let's just look up deaths, maybe it'll come.

Logan: 1:26:28

only smiling guys because she was pissed and the whole time she's researching this mf and this and son of a bitch and this and that didn't say, well, I'm, I'm making it, but she was really pissed about this whole thing. I understand Nicole does the research. She's the brains behind the operation and when we went through all this we spent so much time on that it took me.

Nicole: 1:26:52

Well, let's see, we were in there of October of last year and we're just now doing the episode because-. And it's April. I really dug because I'm like you shouldn't. You shouldn't tell false things, you shouldn't just go on hearsay. You need to actually do research and tell the truth. I mean, these are people's lives, right? Yeah, this is historically important very important.

Nicole: 1:27:15

I mean this is and you shouldn't misrepresent it. And and you know, because people on the internet they Google, right, and this is the first things that pop up yeah, that's a terrible story. A bunch of little native kids dying in a convent school. I mean, that's messed up.

Logan: 1:27:31

It is, and it's heartbreaking.

Nicole: 1:27:33

But thankfully it didn't happen. So I looked up deaths. I'm like, okay, around the mission, Like what could be perpetuating some of these things, okay? So according to the Tucson Citizen Edition of Tuesday, October 23rd of 1945, there were six natives who were killed nine miles from San Javier when their car hit a slow-moving locomotive pulling six ore cars on the San Javier Mine Spur, and they are buried at the Mission Cemetery.

Logan: 1:28:04

Okay.

Nicole: 1:28:04

The new cemetery, not where we were walking Right, which we don't have. We couldn't and I wouldn't have done that anyway, because that's yeah.

Logan: 1:28:12

And if you ever go there, you're not allowed there.

Nicole: 1:28:14

No, it's only for people at the reservation, but they are buried there. But we didn't get any kind of interaction. The names of the people I'm not going to mention because we didn't get anything and like that's what I thought.

Nicole: 1:28:28

This is the type of thing I thought we might get like if they're trying to interact, but I've got the newspaper article here, um, and of course they call them papa. Go right in the newspaper. So that was one and this one. Actually, I ran across and I didn't know this. It was pretty surprising and I know when I told you you were surprised by it too.

Logan: 1:28:49

I didn't, I'd never put that together, yeah.

Nicole: 1:28:51

So, according to the Arizona Daily Star edition of June 11th of 1939, there was a Miss. Wildfire Lockett was her actual name, also known as Agnes Nacho who was a miss? Wildfire locket was her actual name, also known as agnes nacho, who was a native american lakota actress. So when I say lakota, you're gonna know it as well. Sue, sue, people call it. Yeah, it's actually lakota, okay, um, and she was the granddaughter of Sitting Bull.

Logan: 1:29:17

Yeah.

Nicole: 1:29:18

Yeah, but she had grown up in Tucson, okay. Didn't know that either, and yeah, she became an actress but she contracted tuberculosis with her, you know. But she was. I guess there was a no, when I say sanatorium, it's not a mental asylum. It's a hospital. They meant hospital, so San Javier had a hospital, and they still have it, I think. I think it's a hospital. They meant hospital, so san javier had a hospital.

Logan: 1:29:44

um, and they still have it. I think. I think it's still there. I don't know if it's an operation, I think, yeah, it's still there, but she's actually buried at the mission cemetery as well. Yeah, I know that now.

Nicole: 1:29:53

Didn't know that then though but the granddaughter of sitting bull, it's wild, it's interesting. Yeah, so I've got a bunch of um. You know there's some articles talking about her roles and she's been in some of those really old Westerns and stuff.

Logan: 1:30:05

I didn't know anything about it.

Nicole: 1:30:07

I mean, well, I never watched any of those, but some of the original ones, but she's a very beautiful lady, she's very beautiful. So I've got some of those. I found some pictures of her and stuff like that we'll put up. Now here's the thing I'm talking about. So those are the main. I mean there's been multiple people buried. I mean multiple funerals here. I mean this is over a period of history.

Logan: 1:30:30

Yeah, very long.

Nicole: 1:30:31

There's so many possibilities. Now we did not necessarily that I'm aware of any interaction from what I'm about to talk about, but I wanted to talk about it because, for one, I'm trying to correct some misinformation and I need to shed light on this because I think it's very important to the reservation and the community that people know that this happened.

Logan: 1:30:59

I agree.

Nicole: 1:30:59

reservation in the community, that people know that this happened and that when they go there to take a moment of silence because you're going to be standing right where it happened and we didn't know that at the time and nobody talks about well, I knew of it.

Nicole: 1:31:10

I didn't know it was right there where it happened right and you don't think about what I'm about to talk about when you're in arizona, and I'll you do here but not there. So during the afternoon of august 27th of 1964, a terrifying tornado swept through the desert, descending on the mission and the families who live near it. The tornado had at least 50 mile per hour winds and it cut a three and one quarter mile path through tucson.

Nicole: 1:31:43

The tornado uprooted saguaro cactus and debarked mesquite trees along its path so people don't think about being in a tornado when you're in arizona no, and they don't happen very much and growing up.

Logan: 1:31:57

It's actually something that we've most kids and most people growing up in tucson know about it, because it's really the only time that's ever happened right.

Nicole: 1:32:06

But I mean, and we've actually got a newspaper and somebody took a picture of it in tucson, so we're gonna put that up here. Um, but this was before it got to the mission and and it's one of those, if you're just listening, it's one of those like very thin it's a roper, yeah rope tornadoes, but very, I mean like it's huge massive yeah, um, I don't know, at least probably an f2, f3, I would think yeah, probably good solid f2 yeah yeah, um, but we've got that up here on the video podcast.

Nicole: 1:32:40

You can look at it Now. The mission itself, the church, when I say that luckily came away unscathed.

Logan: 1:32:49

Yeah.

Nicole: 1:32:50

But it did hit the convent okay, that was built next to it, and it ripped away the second floor of the convent okay, away the second floor of the convent. Okay. Now there was a nun there, sister martha, that described the twister as, quote, very black from the top down. It continued toward the mission school and it blew out 20 windows and whipped away the shutters. There was a nun and a six-year-old girl, um, hunkered down inside the school but survived without injuries. So see, even the tornado didn't, so nothing happened.

Nicole: 1:33:25

I mean, besides that little cosmetic stuff, nobody died in that part in the actual yeah and we've, you know, we've got, I've got so many newspaper. I mean, and that's what I'm saying, if something massive like that fire would have happened, it would have been in the newspaper oh, it'd been.

Logan: 1:33:39

Well, this is in the newspaper there's.

Nicole: 1:33:41

I mean pages and pages and pages and pages and pictures. So we're going to put all these up as we're speaking, as I'm speaking. So the now, when you go there today and I had to kind of figure out where this was in conjunction so if you pull in from the Mission Road, san Javier, mission Road into San Javier, you're going to see shops at the very back and then there's going to be a lot of ground and then on the left, there is a parking lot that you can park in.

Nicole: 1:34:24

Is a parking lot, yes, um, that you can park in? And this, where the parking lot is, essentially is where, kind, of the start of the adobe houses of the natives that lived at the mission right this time, lived, okay, and this is the area that I'm speaking about. Okay, so the natives living 200 yards southwest of the mission, in what today is the parking lot and shops, took the most impact and devastation from the tornado. It damaged seven homes, three of which were completely destroyed. The homes are made of adobe and partial plaster. They were built for intense heat, but not a tornado. No, because they don't build for tornado, sure, the way we do. Now, out of 500 natives that had lit, that lived around the mission, 40 of them had become homeless when it was done, ripping through the reservation. Eight people were injured and two members of the norris family had been killed.

Nicole: 1:35:18

Yeah, it was the state of arizona's first. Yeah, hmm, this is very hard for me to talk about, so I may get a little emotional here, but, like I said, we're putting these, putting these. You know, the headlines in the newspaper and just the pictures themselves are extremely, um, traumatic. Just to kind of look at, yeah, they are um, but in, in some of these and I'll describe some of them to the listeners um, you can kind of see them, the mission in the background, standing tall and proud, but in front of it all you see is rubble and partially you know partial walls on some of these buildings. Yeah, destroyed.

Nicole: 1:36:10

Mm-hmm Anyway. So that's a lot of what we're going to be showing and I mean, if you you want, go to the video podcast and you can, if you want, just go to the end and look at all these. But right, there were 13 members of the norris family living in the adobe house when the tornado struck and I read the account of what happened. It's just, it's hard, hard to listen to and I'm not going to recount it now, but, um, the paternal grandparents lived with their son, manuel norris, his wife lucy norris, and their nine children that's a lot of members in one of those houses. After the tornado struck, the majority of the family had been buried under debris. After the tornado struck, the majority of the family had been buried under debris. Manuel, the father, injured his hip but continued to dig for his family. 200 members of the community helped clear debris to help find the rest of the members of the family buried. Lucy, his wife, and Marcian, his 10-month-old son, were pronounced dead on arrival at the San Javier Indian Hospital.

Logan: 1:37:28

And the eight other children in the family were admitted to Tucson hospitals.

Nicole: 1:37:29

So these newspaper article pictures show his house, it shows the debris, it shows the dad digging with other people digging through the rubble. They've got a picture trying to revive the son and the wife and putting his little body on a stretcher. It's hard to look at.

Logan: 1:37:50

I'm actually looking at it right now.

Nicole: 1:37:54

And other members of the community trying to hold the father up grieving. And we've got at the end. They rebuilt the house for him, um, anyway, but they, you know, the members that were torn apart lived in the church, you know, and the members of the community and tucson brought, you know, stuff for the family, so they did take care of them at the time when this happened. But that's the tragedy that happened. I mean, there's probably stuff way back we don't know about, but sure you know.

Nicole: 1:38:25

Closer to time there was no fire that killed a bunch of kids in the school, but two people died yeah, they did by this tornado, and I think that is the story that needs to come to light, and not this fake story that's being spread all over the Internet.

Logan: 1:38:45

And.

Nicole: 1:38:46

I mean who? Why do that? I don't know.

Logan: 1:38:50

Well, you know, when it comes right down to it. You know we went there investigating the paranormal, but we also went there to see the history, to see the building, to get to know what it actually like. I said, I've been to this building so many times in my life that I just always thought it'd always be there in my life and I took it for granted. Um, but it is. It is literally a beacon in the middle of the desert. It is white, it's beautiful and there is such a storied history. Is it paranormal, sure? I mean, if you are at a building and you pray and there's so much energy built into that wall or those walls, I should say there's always going to be some measurable amount of energy in that building. You can feel it.

Nicole: 1:39:42

Like I said, you can feel it in the parking lot when you get there. I mean, it's just emanating. If you could, you know, see energy. If you had like a, if we could, if we could see that.

Logan: 1:39:55

If we had the PK meter, that did the.

Nicole: 1:39:58

Yeah, I mean, you know, and there are some mediums that can actually see auras and stuff like that, like this church has got to have an aura. I mean, all that time, thousands of people that have come and and people used to, you know, migrate across the the states and across mexico to come to this church yeah, they sure would to worship so actually, I think a lot of them still do.

Nicole: 1:40:21

Yeah, I mean, it's almost like for Christians going to Israel. It's that same thing. Where it's very special to them, it's very special to the natives on this reservation.

Logan: 1:40:36

And it's very special to Tucson.

Nicole: 1:40:37

Yeah, I mean it's a beautiful place If, for anything, you go to visit just for the historical I mean it's beautiful to just walk through and the museum at the back is really cool, which I didn't even know existed for a long time.

Nicole: 1:40:53

Yeah, I've always known yeah, but they've got you know old statues and they kind of tell you the history of the native peoples that were there. And we, we had thrown some of those up during the um, the podcast, right um, but it's just really cool to feel that and to see the area. Please be respectful though I mean, if you know you go to do any kind of investigation, don't go in there and provoke and disrupt people and do things like that.

Nicole: 1:41:28

But I know I'll definitely have a different feeling the next time I go, now that I know that this happened.

Logan: 1:41:36

This is just devastating yeah guys, If you get a chance to go to Tucson, go Go to this place. It is amazing. In fact, I don't think you. I don't know many people that go to Tucson that don't go to this.

Nicole: 1:41:50

Well, it's, you know, when you go the TripAdvisor thing, it's one of the top things to go visit because it is it's very cool. But also, you know, know, they've got, and I don't we didn't go back there this time because we I don't even know if those shops are still open at the very back of the oh yeah, they're still there, but they've got native made, you know, jewelry and all that stuff, and that's actually where we talked to the guy, that about the snake yeah um, but even more so on the side.

Nicole: 1:42:18

what do they call those things, the wooden constructed table-like things that they have to the side?

Logan: 1:42:27

I don't know what they're called, like the wiki-up type thing. Yeah, I don't know that there's a particular name for them or not.

Nicole: 1:42:31

Well, they have them all set up and the natives come and they sell things. Well, they were selling fry bread, so good. And I was like we're getting fry bread. If you've never had fry bread, you, it's so amazing. And I think we got the fry bread with the honey on it yeah oh it was so good and we took a picture, so we're gonna put that up right here for you to see, and I, we barely made it back to your mom's house before we ate that because it was so good it was warm and but yeah, instead of going to places like that and going to you know these, we have indian made things.

Nicole: 1:43:09

don't go to those places, right, you need to go the reservations to straight to the people, because I'm going to tell you a little known secret here. Those people that do that yeah, they buy it from the natives but they don't give them any money for it and then they charge you probably you know six times what they actually paid the native person that made it and they make all the money off of it.

Logan: 1:43:31

Yeah, the markup is all on their side. Yeah, the natives don't get the money from that.

Nicole: 1:43:34

So it's something that we always make sure and do that we go straight to the source. We always make sure and do that. We go straight to the source. We give them the money, yep, and they're always so grateful and they're always so kind, and that's what we do on every trip. That's what we did up at. Canyon, de Shelley, mm-hmm Canyon de Shelley and they are so grateful for it. I mean, it's art. It's art. Artisan made things and they're Frog bread's the best.

Logan: 1:43:57

Yeah, I am tasting it right now. Well, guys, thank you so much. We had a great time, Obviously very special place for us. You know we'll obviously continue to go there All my family's there. But if you get a chance to go, go. And if you're going to investigate, be respectful, Know that that is still a very active place of worship. It is. It's a historical place. Make sure you do place of worship. It's a historical place. Make sure you do the right thing. That's all you need to do. And yeah, I mean, what a great episode and what a great amount of history. Thank you for digging in. That was a lot.

Nicole: 1:44:35

It was a lot. It took me forever, forever. But once I found out that that was not valid, I was like something it's got to be no yes, some something happened here, but I gotta figure out what happened and I just I still don't understand why yeah that's being reported that way, like where are they getting their information?

Logan: 1:45:02

I think somebody got some bad history and it's just kept perpetuating through the years I can't name the place, but if you're what you are, you don't do that.

Nicole: 1:45:10

No, you don't well, guys.

Logan: 1:45:13

Thank you so much. We had a great time and, uh, we look forward to seeing you guys next week I'll see you next week.