A Haunting History of Fort Riley

First, I left the fucktastophy part from my editing because it was a lesson for me to continue to raw dog life and not rely on AI to organize my thoughts. But seriously though, this is a brief history of the events on post. There is so much more that we can explore later. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hey everybody, welcome back. My name is Vera. I'm Mia. And we are Spectra Homicide. Today we are going to do an episode about Fort Riley and several documented hauntings. And then we'll follow it up with some investigations and activity that we have personally documented and experienced ourselves. But before that, here is going to be Mia's album of the day.

SPEAKER_02 0:28

Alright, the album of the day is Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You by Ethel Kane. This is the fifth studio album of Hayden and Adonia, an American musician, and I don't know the lore of this specific album. I know the lore of um Preacher's Daughter. I love Ethel Kane. Um I had to go to Reddit for this because I did not have time to write all that down. She is a hell of a storyteller. But um the breakdown of Willoughby Tucker I'll always love you. Um in 1980, Ethel's father, Joseph Kane, dies in a fire. Ethel meets Willoughby in church, but they don't really connect much afterwards. Um in 1986, Janie Wait, hold on. What the fuck? Summer of 1986, Ethel turns 16. Janie gets a boyfriend, causing Ethel's insecurities to flare up, thinking that Janie will leave her, and Ethel has no place in Janie's future now. Willoughby's theme Um Willoughby and Ethel meet again in high school, their bonds strengthening now that they're all grown up. Uh the theme signifies how his entrance in Ethel's life felt for her. Soft with the piano but hard hitting with the guitar. Um It might also be a metaphor for how she sees Willoughby as a protective masculine energy in her life. Um Fuck Me Eyes, the song. Um Ethel, now attached to Willoughby, becomes jealous of a girl in her class, Holly Reddick. Ethel is convinced that Holly will take Willoughby away from her, seeing as Holly represents everything that Willoughby t tells Ethel to be. Or be mean. In turn, Ethel makes Holly out to be an escort, making herself feel better by putting Holly down. In nettles, Ethel and Willoughby officially start dating. Ethel is stricken with anxiety about losing Willoughby. She dreams of all the ways she could boost him and thoughts of his death consume her. Willoughby in turn is met with the challenge of having to think of life after school and having to deal with resentment for his father. Both of them have to figure meet their worst fears, which is life. 1987 and 1989, Willoughby's in the lewd. Ethel and Willoughby's relationship leave the honeymoon phase, now both dealing with a relationship that is at risk of falling apart. Willoughby's mental health is also starts to worth worsen here. Worth in. Dust Bowl. Um meanwhile, Ethel becomes more obsessed with Willoughby. Willoughby's fear of the weather is also revealed, as well as his drug usage with Ethel to drown out his fears and regrets. This song also details an intimate romance that Ethel and Willoughby share in a drive-in theater. Alright. Willoughby starts to hate his father more and yet knows he still has to face him even through anger. His father is sent to the penitentiary to improve, yet gets worse. Willie do Willie. Willoughby doesn't care whether he lives or dies. Ethel sympathizes with him, knowing that what's happening to Willoughby is unfair. Still she re Can you do that anywhere else, Norman? The fucking dog. Okay, we can keep that in. I don't care. Okay. Um still she returns to her love, however, now questions if Willoughby is really the person she makes him out to be. Maybe he was never this strong protective masculine energy in her life that she wanted him to be. Um a tornado in 1990, a tornado is announced to hit Shady Grove while Willoughby starts hating himself as he noticed that Ethel starts to see him differently. They both abandon each other when the storm is about to hit, the beeping in the song is potentially foreshadowing their relationship falling apart. Willoughby, now on his own, has to face his emotions and fears. Willoughby's greatest fear is the weather, something Ethel failed to truly understand through her toughened projections of who she thought or needed him to be. Faced with all this, god damn it, Ike.

unknown 4:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 4:19

Faced with all this, he now starts to resent Ethel, taunting her with the same sentimentals echoed on the Family Tree intro. Um, asking if she wears the curse of her lineage so openly in a bid for sympathy or rescue. Ethel was never able to help Willoughby because she never saw him for who he really was. He dismisses her um what? Efforts as a surface-level attempt of trying to get through to him. He's now on his own without Ethel waiting for his death in the tornado. Willoughby likely survives now moving out of town on his own. Ethel starts to realize what she did wrong, hating herself for it. She never meant to hurt him, yet somehow knew she would. She looks back, realizing that it wouldn't have worked regardless. Love is not enough in this world, and Ethel was being delusional by thinking that they really could have had a stable future together. Willoughby has no emotions towards her anymore, leaving her, she will never forgive herself. Dude, she's a hell of a storyteller.

SPEAKER_00 5:13

And honestly, like her um I love her music, and I love the thing behind Preacher's Daughter, the story behind that too. Um, it's horrifying. It is. It is. I showed it is horrifying. I so I guess I don't love it, but it's real, you know. It is, and it's extremely raw.

SPEAKER_02 5:31

Oh my god, music and nobody makes music like Hayden.

SPEAKER_00 5:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:35

I actually I showed Ethel Kane to my grandpa, uh, and he actually really liked her, so she's kind of like a timeless thing, you know.

SPEAKER_00 5:44

I love the bond you two share with music. Yeah, it's really cool. So uh today we're gonna be talking about Fort Riley, um, some of the haunted tales um and voices that just aren't there. Um, so if if you have never heard of a mimic before, um you're gonna learn about it today. What do you know about mimics, Mia? What do you know about mimics, Leah? He's not a mockingbird. He's not a mockingbird. No, okay, no. Mimics are um spirits who can either appear as like a doppelganger of a version of somebody that you're close to, or it could be, or they could just mimic voices. Um they often use the voice of someone that you're close to to lure you out.

SPEAKER_02 6:32

Um, but I I've heard that their weakness is confusion. So I don't know. Yeah. I remember when we lived in Virginia, I swear to god I had an experience with one. You probably did. I had so many. I mean we were living in like the Appalachia part of Virginia.

SPEAKER_00 6:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:51

But um Yeah, no, I heard your voice so many times. Yeah, it wasn't you.

SPEAKER_00 6:57

I mean, it's it's something that you know some people experience and they don't realize they brush it off, but it's extremely common, and um we've had some documented experiences of it on Fort Riley with uh some of the females.

SPEAKER_02 7:11

Um my dumbass followed the voice because I was like, oh my god, wait, that's my mom. Thank god there was nothing there, but yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:20

I mean sometimes they're doing it just to be pranksters. Um I would do that. So the Mimic Zom Post that we've had reports of is um, you know, they say that there's uh something deeply unsettling going on in their homes. It's not shadows, it's not whose steps, it's um voices that are calling out in the voices of their children. And there's uh one woman who uh actually just a couple months ago had um reported hearing the voice of her child, but her child was actually at their grandparents' house. And so when they heard their child calling out for them, playing in the house, footsteps running through the house, they were like, Did they come home early? And they discovered that they weren't there. Um then there's another one where you know somebody's husband was deployed and they heard their husband's voice plain as day, like they heard a door shut and they heard their husband's voice, and so they went running to the front thinking you know, he's not supposed to be home for another few months, and nobody was there. So there's that one, and then um, you know, there's also like lights flickering off and then on, um, you know, just appliances just starting on their own.

SPEAKER_02 8:34

So I could never mistake my little sister's footprints for a ghost. Her footprints are way too damn loud. Yeah, no ghost can step as loud as I I don't know how she manages to do it, but she puts like all of her what 95 pounds into her fucking footsteps. I don't know how she does it, but she steps louder than her father.

SPEAKER_00 8:55

Yeah, yeah, she's uh a big one. Um some of the things that they're seeing just aren't just the voices though. Some of them are seeing actual physical um mimics of their of their somebody that they know, somebody that they're close to appearing right in front of them, and then um they're just gone. Um that's happened to me a couple times. Actually, I remember uh when I was actually a child, I'll never forget this, I was seven years old. We were at a family barbecue um event at uh Point Defiance at Owen's Beach. Oh yeah, and I went to use the restroom, and when I walked into the restroom, there was somebody who looked just like me standing in front of me. It was the most bizarre thing. I never forgot it. You sure it wasn't your twin brother? No, it wasn't my twin brother. I know, right? I know, right? Um, so then there's another thing. Um, we've had experiences here where I actually had to get rid of a doll because, you know, it used to be Mia's when she was little. Oh fuck, is it that Cinderella doll? It is. Oh my god, I hated that thing. So we passed it down to Taylor because I actually loved it. And uh one was creepy as hell. It was. I did not know that you had taken the batteries out of it.

SPEAKER_02 10:09

Yeah. Um, I remember after I took the batteries out of it, and I think I stayed the night with my cousin. Um we um she woke up in the middle of the night and she was like, she woke me up and she was like, I swear to fucking god that doll just moved her head. Like it turned its head 180 degrees and looked at her. Batteries gone. Nobody else was there. We had a night light and everything. We could we saw clear as day. Well, she saw. So oh, when they stay the night with us. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That shit moved 180 degrees and looked her right in the eye.

SPEAKER_00 10:46

Well, I remember one night, um, because I had the baby monitor in Taylor's room and she was like four, and like I heard the dog giggling, and I was like, Is Taylor up? I go into Taylor's room, Taylor's still sleeping, so I went back to bed, and then I heard it um talking and I couldn't remember what it said. I just heard a pssst are you awake? Thank you. And then um then I I tapped my husband at and I said, Hey, did you hear that? And then we hear the dog giggling again. He goes, Yeah. And then it goes, bye-bye. And um, like I told Mia the next day, I was like, Wow, you know, I didn't even know that dog worked anymore. And she said, Mom, I took the batteries out a year ago, sure shit. There's no batteries in it.

SPEAKER_02 11:30

Oh no, I took the batteries out a while ago, yeah, like long ass time ago.

SPEAKER_00 11:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:35

Like when I was a kid, yeah, that's what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_00 11:37

Like, um, so it's it's gone now. That doll's gone.

SPEAKER_02 11:40

Uh yeah, yeah, no, that thing was creepy as hell, even when I was a kid.

SPEAKER_00 11:44

Yeah, so um, and there's there's plenty of things.

SPEAKER_02 11:47

Oh my god, that was like 15 years ago.

SPEAKER_00 11:49

Yeah, so long ago. Um, there's plenty of documented events of children's toys, you know, activating in the middle of the night when they're either off, they don't have batteries in them, or nobody's there. Um, there's some homes they wake up to a woman screaming directly into their ear, which would be absolutely horrifying.

SPEAKER_02 12:08

Didn't that happen to you at that old house you lived in with Maddie and my dad? Well or did that happen to Maddie?

SPEAKER_00 12:15

It well, Maddie had seen something, but you know, I'll have to have her come on.

SPEAKER_02 12:19

I think I remember um my dad telling me that he woke up to someone screaming in his fucking face.

SPEAKER_00 12:24

Yeah, that wouldn't surprise me.

SPEAKER_02 12:25

He has that he would have um you know.

SPEAKER_00 12:29

Um I can't say I blame them.

SPEAKER_02 12:33

So but um and he would go downstairs and the TV would be on. Nobody would be there, it would just be complete like on static.

SPEAKER_00 12:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:40

But he would turn it off, he'd go back upstairs, and that shit turned right back on. They were fucking with him so heavy.

SPEAKER_00 12:46

We'll have to do that one with Maddie.

SPEAKER_02 12:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

I mean, I wasn't there, so but here um they'll hear like you know, somebody talking, somebody yelling, somebody screaming, and then all of a sudden it's silent, we turn the lights on, nobody's there. Um, a big one that people talk about is Custer House. Oh god, yeah, Custer House is like a big one. Um, it's one of the most infamous locations on Post is Custer House. Um, oddly enough, that's not the original house of Custer. Apparently, the original house burned down.

SPEAKER_02 13:18

I'd be pissed if I was haunting the Custer House too. I hate that guy.

SPEAKER_00 13:22

Yeah, well, and the thing is, it's like there's a lot of artifacts there, which I think are what the entities are attached to, and so those are in that house. So um it's so they it was built in 1855, it's become uh the center of like chewing reports. Visitors and staff describe a teddy bear that moves on its own, a rocking horse that that sways with no chu with no touch. Um, and then there's like um they see the woman in a dark gown. Is he snoring? Yes, he's snoring. I love him. Um standing in a window just watching. They hear the soldiers used to go there to hang out and play like uh billiards and stuff and and have drinks. Well, oddly enough, it's um there was a place that uh gosh, what is the name of this place? Basically, it's a it's a it's an office now. Take your time. It's not a hangout. I know. I can't, so it's card. This used to be a place where soldiers would hang out and like um, but now it's not. Now it's like one of the offices that they use on posts. I don't know why it didn't transfer over into these notes. I always do like rough notes and then I clean them up later on, but my rough notes have like way better details.

SPEAKER_02 14:30

You said rough and the dog perked up. Yeah, I think you just call them a slur.

SPEAKER_00 14:36

So, but um they used to go, they used to play pool cards, you know, video games, whatever, and drink. And um, so there was a volunteer there one, and oh, and one of the things that the soldiers used to do is they used to dare each other when they've had enough drinks to try to leap from one building to another off the rooftop. And a lot of guys got injured that way. But what happened was one night there was a volunteer soldier who had stayed behind to close up the center for one of the ladies. This is before they opened up the like the boss area because now they have like boss, which is like this huge, well, maybe not that huge, it's a nice building, the more advanced. Um, and they try to keep all the you know actual businesses and offices together. But um, he was closing up one night, and when he was closing up, he saw a soldier who was like like getting ready to jump off the building, and so he's freaking out and he runs up there to try to tell the guy, stop, stop, stop, and there was nobody there.

SPEAKER_02 15:36

Maybe he already jumped.

SPEAKER_00 15:38

No, he looked, he looked because that's what he thought, you know, because he had to get up the stairs and everything. Um, but nope, nobody was there.

SPEAKER_01 15:45

I'll catch you.

SPEAKER_00 15:46

Yeah, the next well, he was trying to like talk him into like not doing it, but the next, I mean, he left, didn't even lock it. Nothing. He just bone the fuck out. Next morning he comes in, he gives the lady the keys, he goes, I'm sorry I didn't lock up, and he said, I'm never coming back. And he never set foot in there again. As a matter of fact, ended up kind of like losing it and uh being discharged.

SPEAKER_01 16:09

Shit.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

But it well, it's not confirmed, it was um there's unconfirmed reports that that happened, which is not what I would want for anybody. Um, and I could completely understand that, but he was like, hell no. So uh then there's another one, Susan Fox. So she is one that hangs out near Waters Hall. Um, what had happened to her was in the summer of 1855, she lived in a small frame house, she was in love, she and and she was engaged and she had her whole life ahead of her. Um, then you know, cholera came and like son of a bitch. I know, yeah, and uh she ended up dying alone while her uh fiance was tending the sick, he wasn't there, and it doesn't stop there. Um, what happened was she was buried in what should have been her wedding dress, and her grave was like they say her grave was lost to time. Apparently nobody knows where she's buried. Um, there is that so but Susan, I mean, everybody says they still see her. Um they say that she's Oh yeah, no, they found it. They did find it. When did they find it?

SPEAKER_02 17:16

Hmm. When was this? Hmm.

SPEAKER_00 17:19

Well, in 1855.

SPEAKER_02 17:22

Yeah, she was born in 1852.

SPEAKER_00 17:27

Hmm.

SPEAKER_02 17:28

Died in 1938.

SPEAKER_00 17:30

1938. Wasn't that that's when it didn't say that uh that's the part that I was like, what?

SPEAKER_02 17:35

There's probably like quite a few of them.

SPEAKER_00 17:38

Yeah, there is. So this is one of the ones. Wow, I'm gonna have to cut this out. I'll cut this part out. So basically this is really embarrassing. Yeah, it is. Susan Fox, she died, um, but people still see her, you know. Uh her fiance was away, he was taking care of the sick.

SPEAKER_02 17:55

Oh, yeah, no, they don't know where the real one is. That was that was in a different state.

SPEAKER_00 17:59

Yeah, yeah. Oh, okay. So they don't know where she's really buried.

SPEAKER_02 18:07

Yeah, that was Susan Fox in Florida.

SPEAKER_00 18:11

Oh, that is so fucking funny. I'm keeping this whole thing.

SPEAKER_02 18:17

Many of them, you would think that would be a less common name.

SPEAKER_00 18:20

Oh my gosh. Okay, no, that was really embarrassing. No, but I'm keeping that whole fucking thing.

unknown 18:24

I'm keeping it.

SPEAKER_00 18:26

I am because I was like, wait, what? Hang on, my notes, they really got fucked. So, no, uh, basically what happened is nobody knew where she was buried. And, you know, because I couldn't find that it was confirmed, you know, and that's part was really confused me. So, but they still see her, they still see her. Uh, they she'll she's knocking on places around Waters Hall. Um, she still shrieks in the night, she's staring through the windows around and in Waters Hall. Um, and one terrified maid, um, upon seeing her reflection in the glass threw a hot iron right through the window.

SPEAKER_02 19:03

I would have done that shit too. That's scary as hell.

SPEAKER_00 19:06

So they actually Because what are you looking at? They actually ended up calling a priest and having um a priest come and perform an exorcism at Waters Hall. And it was from so he was uh he was from St. X Catholic Church. Um, so basically what happened was she said that uh uh Father Carius from St. X Church in Junction City, he came out and performed an exorcism on Waters Hall. Now, that is actually documented. Um, it doesn't say, you know.

SPEAKER_02 19:48

How many exorcisms has Saint X done?

SPEAKER_00 19:51

I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 19:52

We could ask.

SPEAKER_00 19:53

Yeah. We could maybe we could, I don't know. So, but uh for a long time it was quiet, but even today they still say a woman in a dark dress, well, still walks the area looking for something she never found. She's looking for that D.

unknown 20:13

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_02 20:15

You gotta cut that out.

SPEAKER_00 20:16

No, I'm not leaving it. Segment five. Take your time. Segment five, take your time. What is in building five? Okay, couldn't have said it better myself. That's what it was. Building 405 was a former billiards room. This is when uh the man doing nightly checks couldn't explain it. Wow, I'm gonna have to like, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:40

Huh?

SPEAKER_00 20:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 20:42

Take your time, couldn't have said it better myself.

SPEAKER_00 20:44

Fuck my life right now. Okay, so building 405. This is the building where that they used to have billiards room. Now it is like one of the offices that they currently use there. But one night there was a guy, a soldier that was doing his um nightly checks. You know, he was just kind of volunteering for the night. He saw a soldier in a blue uniform standing by a pool table. He said it was closing time. The soldier looked up and smiled. Um, and then he dissolved into smoke.

SPEAKER_02 21:14

You know, I would never volunteer for anything ever again.

SPEAKER_00 21:17

Yeah, like they've had a lot of people leaving us. So that is what the old warrior zone used to be, basically.

SPEAKER_02 21:24

Okay, wait, are they hiring? Because I need something exciting.

SPEAKER_00 21:29

Well, the warrior zone is run by soldiers by the boss program volunteers.

SPEAKER_02 21:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 21:34

So, um, no, they don't hire, and and it's not in this building anymore.

SPEAKER_02 21:39

Um, this is there anything like super haunted on Fort Riley that's like hiring?

SPEAKER_00 21:43

Because you can volunteer for the custer house.

SPEAKER_02 21:46

Fuck no.

SPEAKER_00 21:48

Okay, now the next one is the week.

SPEAKER_02 21:50

Volunteer.

SPEAKER_00 21:51

Um, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:53

Dude, you couldn't pay me enough to work in something called the Custer House.

SPEAKER_00 21:57

I don't even like Custer. That much.

SPEAKER_02 22:00

No, it's nasty.

SPEAKER_00 22:02

Okay, so post-sematary, there's a guy called the Weeping Man. Um, he's a grieving man seen kneeling in a grave and he's weeping. Um, so he basically they give him they describe him a good good detail.

SPEAKER_01 22:18

Couldn't have said it better myself.

SPEAKER_00 22:20

Um so the man that they keep describing apparently had died decades before. So some believe it was the the cholera cholera col cholera?

SPEAKER_02 22:30

Cholera.

SPEAKER_00 22:31

Man, my my thing. So a husband, you know, lost. Did you take your meds? I did take my meds.

SPEAKER_02 22:37

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 22:37

I know.

SPEAKER_02 22:38

You should just start doing crack at this point.

SPEAKER_00 22:41

So basically he never recovered from his loss, and so he haunts his wife's grave. Um, but they didn't, you know.

SPEAKER_02 22:48

Oh, that's sad.

SPEAKER_00 22:49

That is sad. I think I'm gonna stop using I think I'm gonna stop editing stuff and just just raw dog it when I do this because quite honestly, um when I edit this, this is why, you know what? This is why you hate AI.

SPEAKER_02 23:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:07

Are you serious? You use Chat GPT?

SPEAKER_00 23:10

No, I mean I used um my editing stuff from uh it's like through Microsoft, you know, the AI thing that I know it's a rainbow thing. I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 23:21

Just don't fucking use it.

SPEAKER_00 23:22

I'm not gonna use it anymore because it keeps cutting out a lot of my information.

SPEAKER_02 23:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:27

And it sucks.

SPEAKER_02 23:28

So it also takes water. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 23:34

Well, I'm gonna take some water right now, anyways. So I'm just gonna I'm just gonna go in here. All right, so now we're gonna go over here. Um where are we going? So, Mrs. Armistad, this is the woman who died. Um, it goes back to the first cholera outbreak, um, and it ultimately claimed the life of post commander and Major Edmund A. Ogden, between and between 75 and 125 soldiers, um, construction workers and military and family rates, and almost everyone who remained on Fort Riley by August 2nd, uh 1855, had contracted the disease, including Mrs. Armistad, who was proclaimed dead at 6 that evening. Major Armistad was successfully located and returned to Fort Riley to the news that his children were alive, but his wife had passed. The next day her body was placed in a coffin and buried at the cemetery. Before returning to his command, Armistead paid a young Mormon stonemason to carve his wife's tombstone. Later that day, another officer went to check on the stone cutter's work and found an epitaph finished and the young man laying dead across her fresh grave, dead from cholera himself. Um, Armistad never got over his second wife's death, and his thoughts would often wander back to her grave on the Lonely Prairie. And in 1863, um, Armistad was actually shot at uh Spangler Farm, Pennsylvania, and passed away. And so he is the one that they keep seeing at this graves. So Major Armistad is the weeping man who is cal is commonly seen at this grave site, and they just keep seeing him, you know, there. And so people are like, oh my god, who is that guy? And they describe him and they're like, Whoa, he's been gone for a long time.

SPEAKER_02 25:16

We need to go somewhere super fucking haunted. I'm so bored right now. There's the morning not like I'm not like bored with the podcast, like not like right now, right now.

SPEAKER_00 25:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:26

It's just like I just I need to go somewhere so haunted.

SPEAKER_00 25:32

Well, and well, if you want to look through my blogs. Um in Oh yeah, I remember. No, no, you weren't here this day. There's been a lot of activity to shit. Over a hundred yeah, over a hundred conversations in 30 minutes on April 3rd. Or was it April 8th? I don't even know. It was a lot. So, anyways, so now we're gonna talk about uh the Spanish flu pandemic, which is uh which actually originated with an RV cook, um Albert Gitchell, on March 4th, 1918, at Camp Bunstan. Um, so what happened is he had reported to sit call. Um, they called him Patient Zero, because what happened was he goes in and he's like um he came in with an with 103 fever, sore throat, headache on March 18th. By noon, 100 soldiers had similar symptoms, and um with and then within a week it was like 500 soldiers. Um the spring wave resulted in 46 to 48 deaths in Fort Riley, and they with the causes like pneumonia, basically. Um the initial response, the hospital was overwhelmed, and officials used the barracks as makeshift wards. Um the virus appearing relatively mild initially spread to Europe and through all of our American troops were being sent all over the fucking place. And so basically, what happened is that it got stronger and it created a global pandemic. That was our first pandemic, it originated here. Weird flex, but here we are. Um, so basically what happened was um there was another book called The Uh Great Influenza Local Physician Loring Minor found people in the sparsely populated county of 1720 um people, and they only had 578 square miles. Uh, he was the one that said, Hey, you know what? He reported it to the public health administration before it was even seen at Fort Riley, and they completely disregarded it. They said it was just a virus, they said it'll go away, but then you know, that was the reason why they kind of blew it away was because blew it off is because we were at war in 1918 and people were moving around the country more than ever, and they figured that the scene would uh burn itself out, but it didn't. No, it did not. Instead it burned everybody out that got it. So um within three weeks, 1100 of the 56,222 troops at the count were sick, and that's because they were constantly moving all over the place. And on March 18th, uh Camps Forest and Greenleaf in Georgia reported influenza cases by the end of April 24th, um 36 of the Army's main camps were um taken over by this pandemic.

SPEAKER_02 28:35

Shit.

SPEAKER_00 28:36

I know, and it started here. And honestly, if they would have just listened to that doctor in that tiny ass town, it wouldn't happen.

SPEAKER_02 28:42

Yeah, yeah, because he's let's not listen to the guy with the medical expertise.

SPEAKER_00 28:47

And the thing is, it's like he came from a small town. There was only like 1,700 people in this town, and he was like, Hey, there's a shit ton of people that are sick in our town, and and I think this is pretty serious. He reported it to the health administration and the public health administration, and they completely ignored him. They're like, dude, it's just a virus, they'll get over it. And uh, they didn't. As a matter of fact, not a lot of people got over it, so it was just horrible. So I mean, it's crazy, but that's another thing, is like because that started here, there's like a lot of like um, a lot of like spirit activity and all that other shit. There's also a doctor um who I'd heard about from other things, but other stories and other books and stuff. I actually heard about it in my uh Kansas history class. The instructor at the time had told us about there was a doctor here who was working during the pandemic who was trying to come back and get his family off post, and like you know, he bait he got um kicked out of the army for it and he got prosecuted for it too. When he died, they mar they buried him in a marked grave on post. A lot of these fucking people who died, you know, like are still all over post. Um oh here we go. Um here's the scrap house. Um so the scrap house also required an exorcism.

SPEAKER_02 30:20

Same church?

SPEAKER_00 30:22

Yeah, yeah. Well, you got two we got that's two exorcisms that are documented from Saint X. So, like I mean, there's seriously two exorcisms that are documented on post right now.

SPEAKER_02 30:35

Um, I actually have a story about an exorcism. Um, this it wasn't me yet.

SPEAKER_00 30:40

Well, yeah, not yet.

SPEAKER_02 30:41

Not yet. Not yet.

SPEAKER_00 30:42

It's coming.

SPEAKER_02 30:43

Um, you know what? I gotta do it someday.

SPEAKER_00 30:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:46

Um, but a friend of mine had an old roommate that um he was jacking off so much that he had to like what the fuck?

SPEAKER_01 31:01

He went and got an exorcism because he was convinced that a demon of lust was possessing him because he was jerking off so much.

SPEAKER_00 31:11

Jesus fucking Christ.

SPEAKER_02 31:13

Ooh, ooh, and then I met the guy and I was like, oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:18

Okay, so I found out some more details in my original notes about Susan Fox. So they can't find her grave because she was buried behind her house. So if we can find the residence to Are we about to break into this poor dead lady's house? No, no, I think that we should go visit where her original grave was because um, so John Price was her fiance, and he was in the nearby town of Pawnee City, and he couldn't check on the welfare of her. She died, and then uh the next day she was buried nearby in what she had hoped to be her wedding dress, um, and she was buried behind the house where she and two other victims of the core the c cholera epidemic. He buried her at the foot of a tall tree across the ravine, back of the quartermaster employees' quarters. Oh, shut the front door. What um this would one day be the trolley master's station. A wagon road, dude. I know exactly where that is, so we should go check that out.

SPEAKER_02 32:31

We should. Same day we did them.

SPEAKER_00 32:33

Okay, so we've been there on those haunted Fort Riley tours.

SPEAKER_02 32:35

I I haven't.

SPEAKER_00 32:37

Oh, you haven't got you haven't done the haunted roof. I've done them a few times, and honestly, like it is fun and stuff like that, but it's it kind of takes away from the experience because the last time I went, it just seemed like a bunch of people like just really getting excited and want to be included, which isn't a bad thing, but it went on forever. So some of the stuff we didn't get to hear about. And this was one of them. So now I know why they have us meeting up at that trolley center. Shit, I took your sister sledding there last summer, or not summer, winter. Sledding in the summertime is wild, yo, especially because there's no snow. Yeah. So, um, so that's you know, that's a lot of the history that we found on Fort Riley and some of the issues that we've seen there. We're gonna go into um some of our investigations in the next episode. So I'm gonna cut this out real quick so we don't go over on our time because I'm already gonna have to cut a lot of shit out of here that I messed up on, anyways. So uh that being said, thank you guys so much for listening to the Tales of the and the History of the Haunted Fort Riley, and we will see you later.

SPEAKER_02 33:50

Bye.