Abby & Alan explore the haunted rumors of The Bowery Hotel...while staying there.
CW: Themes of sexual assault.
Consider donating to Austin Mutual Aid (venmo @austinmutualaid) and take a look at this comprehensive list of orgs across Texas that need our help.
Lunatics merch, available here!
---
Consider helping Black Trans folks by donating to the Marsha P Johnson Institute.
Subscribe to Anti-Racism Daily - a daily email newsletter from Nicole Cardoza.
Also, consider donating to The Loveland Foundation, a fund that provides therapy for Black women.
Find out more about RAINN here.
---
Check out Abby's book Horror Stories. Available in eBook and paperback.
Music by Michaela Papa, Alan Kudan & Jordan Moser. Poster Art by Pilar Keprta @pilar.kep.
Lunatics Magazine is available here. Subscribe to our newsletter! Follow us on Instagram @thelunaticsproject and on YouTube - Films About Lunatics.
Abby & Alan explore the haunted rumors of The Bowery Hotel...while staying there.
CW: Themes of sexual assault.
Consider donating to Austin Mutual Aid (venmo @austinmutualaid) and take a look at this comprehensive list of orgs across Texas that need our help.
Lunatics merch, available here!
---
Consider helping Black Trans folks by donating to the Marsha P Johnson Institute.
Subscribe to Anti-Racism Daily - a daily email newsletter from Nicole Cardoza.
Also, consider donating to The Loveland Foundation, a fund that provides therapy for Black women.
Find out more about RAINN here.
---
Check out Abby's book Horror Stories. Available in eBook and paperback.
Music by Michaela Papa, Alan Kudan & Jordan Moser. Poster Art by Pilar Keprta @pilar.kep.
Lunatics Magazine is available here. Subscribe to our newsletter! Follow us on Instagram @thelunaticsproject and on YouTube - Films About Lunatics.
Hey, everybody at the time that this episode is being released, there is a pretty bad situation going on in Texas. A huge snow storm has come through and a lot of people are without power, heat, and water. There's a lot of really great organizations that are on the ground doing work to help people that are in need right now. So if you can please consider donating to some of the not-for-profits and organizations that we're going to link in the description of this episode, even just giving a little bit can help a lot right now. So thank you for considering
Speaker 2:[inaudible]. Hello everyone.
Speaker 1:And welcome to an extra spooky episode of the lunatics radio hour podcast. I'm Abby Brinker. I'm here with Alan Kadin. Hello. And we are on location at the Bowery hotel.
Speaker 3:You might've noticed that we sound a little bit different.
Speaker 1:I think that might only be your keen sound mixer. Yeah,
Speaker 3:Well, we've got that's cause we've gone mobile. We've gone mobile. We're away from our studio. We're away from our apartments. Yeah. And we're in a haunted hotel. Yeah. Yeah. Do you, do you feel the energy in the air?
Speaker 1:I do. I said that a lot. When we, when we first got here, I did, I do not claim to be clairvoyant or anything like that, but there's a vibe here. Could it be that I'm expecting there to be a vibe here? Sure. But there does, there's a feeling here, you know, there's something going on. You don't feel it.
Speaker 3:Uh, maybe you don't know what hypothetically. Yeah. Just so our audience knows what can be expected when one feels that whatever they're feeling.
Speaker 1:Ooh, well, that's, uh, that's a question. I think it depends on the person for me. And again, I'm not like someone who would claim to have any sort of psychic or paranormal powers, but it's a little bit of like an energy around you. Like it's not like I'm scared or I'm seeing things or hearing things, but it's like, it feels like you're in a historic place. And, and you know, it's almost like a little bit in your stomach. Like almost like anxiety, but not just kind of like that. There's something a stir around you. Some energy that you're not used to.
Speaker 3:I've been in historic places before. Yeah. And they didn't really, I don't know. I guess, you know, it just, it feels different,
Speaker 1:I guess, a good way to describe it as like, for example, you and I are in a relationship. Right. And so this is how you tell me, so sometimes you're feeling anxious or something I could pick up on that energy and I could feel that. Right. You know, if we're in your apartment and you're feeling anxious or I'm feeling anxious, it can make the other person feel that way. Right. And so coming in here, I sort of feel like I'm feeling somebody else's energy a little bit and it's not yours or mine. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. So we wanted to record in a haunted place and
Speaker 3:This has been on the to-do list for quite some time.
Speaker 1:Yeah. We've talked about it quite a bit and we're still just so everyone knows being a hundred percent COVID compliant. We are locked in this hotel room. We're not leaving. We're not going to indoor dining. We're not doing any of that. We are sticklers for COVID safety,
Speaker 3:But more importantly, how far did we travel from our homes to this venue?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Less than a mile. We, I don't know exactly how many city blocks it is, but we are still on the Island of Manhattan. We did not need to take any kind of additional transportation to get here.
Speaker 3:That's the beauty of just being in kind of an old city.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It, there is in there so much cool haunted and not even there's tons of haunted history in New York, but there's also just really fascinating history in New York. Again, the Bowery boys podcast is like the experts in that. Um, and I actually wonder if they have, uh, an interesting episode that might go with it. So if they do, if I find something, I'll link it below. But, um, it's in New York city is, is wonderful for this sort of thing. And it worked out really well.
Speaker 3:Some of our European listeners right now that it's like, I can walk to, I know I can walk a hundred meters and there's going to be this super haunted shack from like your,
Speaker 1:Yeah. I know, I know our history is a relatively recent and be full of colonization and awfulness, but this is what we're close to right now. So yeah,
Speaker 3:Our recorded history. Yeah. This place has tons and tons of history. Yes. Such as the little fun factor. Do you know why Broadway is all slanted? Tell me, do you don't know? I don't know. So, you know, Manhattan is a perfect grid yeah. Just about, of right angles. But then you have your right ankle. Excuse me. If I'm a right angle, you're just straight up square.
Speaker 1:I'm an isosceles. So Manhattan
Speaker 3:Is more or less a perfect grid of right angles. Yeah. And then you have Broadway, uh, that is just a big old slash right down through everything and just completely messes up the,
Speaker 1:Which runs the whole length of Manhattan in case you don't know. And do you know why that's like, that was something in the way. Yeah,
Speaker 3:No, it was just a grandfathered in native American trail.
Speaker 1:Well, that's interesting. We're actually going to talk about that because Bowery, which is the street that we're on was also a, it's the oldest, technically street in Manhattan and it was also a grandfathered native American footpath. They had that all the good ones already plotted. Yeah. And then the white
Speaker 3:Man comes in and just mucks it all up. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Seriously, one quick sidebar, before we get into the history of the Bowery, one of the fun things about doing a history podcast is that Alan and I get to learn about all of these really cool things that, you know, we, wouldn't probably deep dive into ourselves.
Speaker 3:No, no, not at all. So when doing a history podcast and not being historians or act collars epidemics or anything, we're merely enthusiasts for spooky things.
Speaker 1:Yeah. We're spooky amateur enthusiasts.
Speaker 3:So, you know, we're, we're learning as we go. So, you know, as we are talking about different topics such as, like we just talked, we just released the Medusa episode. Yes. And, uh, we had a write in from, uh, Amber in Boston,
Speaker 1:From our friend, Amber in Boston. And I'm going to read, I'm going to read you an Amber said to us, because it's super interesting and really important perspective that we totally just didn't come across in our research. And so all of this is just to say a, we're going to talk about Medusa a little bit here, but also if this ever happens in there some topic we're talking about and we miss something, that's, that's cool for you. Like let us know
Speaker 3:Also, you know, on top of this, be just talking about normal history. This is the history through the lens of legends and folklore. Yeah. You know, everything is from word of mouth and depends on who's telling it, which I guess is, you know, history in general, but so much more fluid when it comes to things that aren't super grounded in reality. So as we go through these topics, if there's some aspect of something that gets overlooked or there's just like super mind-blowingly cool and we should have included it, um, please do what our good friend Amber from Boston, uh, did and wrote us and let us know. And she'd let us know about this really cool aspect of the Medusa legend that we just did not come across in our research. Yeah,
Speaker 1:Exactly. And we want to make sure, obviously that if this, you know, if you're listening and you're like, Oh my God, you guys miss this, or this would be really cool. And you didn't mention it, email me at films about lunatics at g-mail dot com or DME on Instagram at the lunatics project. Because again, this is, you know, we look at this as, as really a community collaborative sort of podcast. And we would love to make sure that we're, you know, including everything that you guys want to hear about and talk about, thank you, Amber again. So I'm going to, to hybrid read what Amber wrote in, and also paraphrase a little bit, but the general thing before I get into it is that Medusa is this big feminist icon. Right? And we sort of only picked up on part of that. And I want to make sure that we're representing that fully. So first of all, content warning on what we're about to talk about talks about themes of sexual assault. And obviously still go back and listen to the Medusa history episode, which was two episodes ago, if you haven't yet, because there's a lot more than what we're going to talk about. Right. But we just want to make sure we're rounding out, rounding out the, uh, the experience. So quoting from Amber Poseidon, rapes Medusa, because she refuses to break her vow of chastity and in Athena's temple no less. When Athena finds out she is furious, just livid. But, and this is the part that we had a different version of, but she's at Poseidon for having the audacity to not only disrespect her and her sacred temple, but for assaulting one of her most devout and beloved priestesses, just like righteous mama bear, anger, which we love. So she blesses Medusa with the greatest gift she can think of to bestow on a mortal woman, the ability to kill a man with just one look, she ensures Medusa is always protected. And we talked about this, but hence the reason why Medusa means protectress and that she will never again be touched by a man without her explicit consent. Medusa becomes a symbol of protection for all women, the mascot of women, supporting women, girl power and all that her image is used in what are believed to be ancient equivalents of women's shelters, women only spaces all over the place for years and years. The only reason she's ever depicted as a monster is because men wrote that down. She's a monster to the patriarchy because she is such a potent representation of how strong women are and rightfully men are afraid of her. So she's further demonized when the church rolls in and that is where the victim blaming and shaming and rape culture come into it. But a Thena loved Medusa and exalted, glorified her and promoted her because she was so loved and Athena took it personally when she was attacked. Men are the problem here on surprisingly end quote. And thank you again, Amber so much for, for sharing that with us, it's really important to elevate all the points of view. And especially, I want to say this because in this case, especially the points of view, that really means something to people, you know, and we can say like, yeah, there's a billion different versions of the Medusa story in Greek mythology in general, which is true. But this one is so important because Medusa means this to so many women, right? She is become this symbol of strength and women supporting women, which has been totally changed in different versions. And so it's important to elevate that and make sure that we're talking about that.
Speaker 4:Well, what I thought was so interesting was because she also sent the video how this isn't a new idea that she isn't just an image from modern feminism, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Th that exactly. So there's a Tik TOK user. And again, thanks Tamar for sending this called Hannah Tarrant, T a R R a N T. And she has a little series on Medusa and feminism. And so one of the things that she talks about is the fact that Medusa's image was used in ancient Greece on different homes and Senate buildings, as a way to an Amber said this in her text as well. But as a way to say, Hey, this is a safe Haven for you. If you were sexually assaulted, it's okay for you to come here. You're not going to be turned in. You have a safe place to stay. And so it became this sort of underground understanding if you were a woman and you saw the Medusa head symbol somewhere, which again, there's evidence of this and it doesn't make any sense that, that those symbols would be there for other reasons, right. That this was sort of like a way to like a beacon to say, Hey, this is a safe home
Speaker 3:In the very neighborhood that we are right now in the East village. Yeah. There are similar symbols. Oh really? Anytime you see a green light over a storefront, that means it is a safe Haven for anyone that feels in danger. Really? Yep. So these are things that I went to NYU, which is campus is very close by. There's a bunch of besides just, you know, the, the NYU facilities, which are numerous, there's tons of different storefronts and everything, uh, that are all part of this program. And they all just have this green little beacon over their door. So if you are feeling unsafe, for whatever reason, you are welcome to go into those spaces as a sanctuary. Wow. That's amazing. I didn't know that
Speaker 1:That's really cool. Is it, I assume it's sort of specifically designed for NYU students. Yes, that's right.
Speaker 3:So, because NYU doesn't have a campus, it's the campuses in New York city. Uh, you're having a lot of people that have no experience of what it's like being in a big city and all of a sudden you're just thrown right into it. Uh, so having just this extra layer of, if you feel in danger, you can go to one of these places just really helps out. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Good. Compare that to Hofstra the school I went to that has a really high sexual assault rate. And I don't know what the politically correct term for this, but we called them. They had to install because the rate of sexual assault was so high at the school. They had to install throughout the campus, these stairs called rape stairs. And I don't, again, I don't know what the official term is, but that's what we all called them at campus. And they were designed so that women could move up them much faster. Because if you have shorter legs, you could move up them much faster than men could so that you could outrun somebody. Yes.
Speaker 3:W yeah. There's still
Speaker 1:Like they're awkwardly designed so that if you are kind of like an average male height, you, you can't run up them as quick as women could. No way. Yeah. Yep. Who the heck figured that one out? Yeah. And again, why don't we instead of designing rape stairs, just give punish men. No, no, no, no, no Island. Okay.
Speaker 3:When, when anyone feels unsafe or in danger or, you know what, anytime they just hit a certain age. Yeah. They get their own Doberman. A dog. Yeah. Oh, that's cute. Yeah. I love that.
Speaker 1:If you're looking for more information on this, there's a really good article I found on media.org by McKenzie. Shork that outlines this exactly. And sort of the importance of looking at this quote unquote version, which again, it is not, it's not just, there's real history behind what we're talking about. Uh, the article is called the power to turn patriarchy into stone. The main thing too, that I really took away from that was in addition to what we're talking about with Medusa, there's other Greek legends, where women support women specifically after rapes. And I just thought that was interesting that this culture and Greek mythology has, you know, it's not the Medusa story is not a standalone story. We pick these topics because we're really, really enthusiastic about them. And we really just genuinely want to know more about them. And so if we miss something during our research, we're really, really grateful to anybody who would write in because we just genuinely want to know more and make sure that we're covering things in a holistic way. So keep, keep, uh, the channels of communication open, so to speak. All right. All right. Shall we talk about the Barry hotel? Here we are. Here we are. Here we go. We are here to talk about the haunted Bowery hotel and the surrounding region of the city, which is actually got quite a paranormal reputation, which I didn't know. We are currently, as we are recording this in hotel room at the Bowery
Speaker 4:On the, the spooky meter spoken meaner. Yeah. How, how high would you rank this right now? I mean,
Speaker 1:It's interesting. The hotel has a very vintage feel.
Speaker 4:It's very nice. Yeah. It's been, it's clearly been, uh, updated.
Speaker 1:Well, here we should set the stage, I guess. Right? Sure. The hotel is actually not that old, but it is made to look like it is from the 1920s. Oh really? Yeah. Oh, it was built in 2007 actually had me fooled the reason though, why it's got such a haunted reputation, Johnny Depp. Well, yeah, it is a little bit of a celebrity haunt, a celebrity joint. And there's also a restaurant downstairs, which is,
Speaker 4:You know, I, I know for a fact that he consorts with ghosts,
Speaker 1:He, well, he, yeah, he has stayed here. Robert Pattinson, like there's a bunch of, of, you know, celebrities who have stayed here. I think it's, it's got kind of like that funky Soho vibe to it. It's like the neighborhood too, that celebrities love to be in
Speaker 4:And you're not going to let me make my pirates of the Caribbean joke. Oh,
Speaker 1:Sorry. No, I didn't go. I wasn't, I wasn't aware it's got a historic vibe, even though it really isn't the reason why it's got a haunted reputation though, is because of the surrounding areas and the history of the block itself that this hotel sits on. So I have actually quite a few sources today. The first is the Berry hotel.com. The second is marble cemetery.org, a curbed New York article by James Nevis, hauntings@theboweryhotelonnycghosts.com, merchants, house.org, Manhattan, well murder and article on Atlas, Obscura secrets of Manhattan, a post by Steve matcha. And of course, Wikipedia, before we learned about its famous hotel. Let's first talk about the battery New York city's oldest streets.
Speaker 3:Hang on before doing this research, did you have any personal connection to the Bowery
Speaker 1:To, to this area? Do you mean like the street I fainted at Bowery electric one time. Oh God. Not, not exactly what I meant. Um, I don't know. Do you,
Speaker 3:So I've always romanticized the Bowery because I grew up, uh, reading spawn comics and that, you know, he, that takes place during, you know, eighties and nineties, New York when the Bowery was just the absolute pool of Manhattan where just like the, you know, absolute, rough and tumble,
Speaker 1:Even it always sort of has until recently,
Speaker 3:Very recently. Yeah. In spawn, the Bowery is like a magnet for all of the supernatural in New York. Cool. Which I think is really interesting,
Speaker 1:Sort of, I think not so far off, if you believe the Berry has, it's sort of like a paranormal hotspot in Manhattan. Well, perhaps Todd McFarlane was ahead of his time. Well, I, if I had a nickel for every time, I said that Bowery is just buried as a street is just about exactly one mile long. It's a street that's nestled in lower Manhattan, running through Chinatown, connecting Soho in the lower East side, it runs North to South. So even before Manhattan was settled slash invaded by Europeans, the Bowery was a footpath for the indigenous people, spelled L E N a P E and it spanned the entire Island. So at the time it was probably similar to Broadway where it was much longer. Now, now it's exactly one mile. It's not the length of Manhattan.
Speaker 3:Right? Cause then it just becomes third Avenue.
Speaker 1:When the Dutch moved into the area, they renamed the foot path, B O U w E R I J road. I'm not going to, I'm not pronouncing, trying to pronounce them today. Like a Bowery, um, with a J meeting farm at the time, this road connected farmlands and larger houses to the main city center, which was located in the financial district area of the city. We're going to talk about a few things later in the episode that are relevant to this basic history of New York, right? There's a time period in like the 16 hundreds when there was a lot of Dutch farmland called new Netherlands where we are right now. So just want to make sure that people kind of have a sense of the history of Manhattan, the Bowery boys, not talking about the podcast, but I am talking about the gang. Were they in of New York? Yeah. So gangs of New York was sort of based upon this period of time in history when movie, when the Bowery and this kind of downtown area of Manhattan was very rough and tumble. So to speak, the Barry boys were an anti-Catholic anti Irish nativist criminal gang, that this was like their turf. And this is just like to kind of give you a sense of the reputation of this area. It was very dangerous. There was a lot of violence.
Speaker 3:They were anti-Catholic what were they
Speaker 1:All it says, I I'm just doing a really quick search on Wikipedia. It describes them as non Irish Europeans. So they just didn't like the Irish, they don't Oh, they were anti my family. Why? Because there was a lot of prejudice back then. Like there was a lot of prejudice against Italians against Irish. Like in early days of the city, there was a lot of different stigmas, I suppose, against these different types of different people coming from different parts of Europe. The Berry hotel is located on Bowery and East third street in Manhattan. It houses 135 rooms and was brought to life by Sean MacPherson and Eric Good in 2007, the hotel is home to a lobby sound. Wow. Set the sentence. Amazing. What else you got? The hotel is home to a lobby bar and Gemma, which is a rather famous New York city restaurant and boasts many famous a list, actor guests, such as Johnny Depp, such as Tony Allen. So, okay. We talked about, we talked about the hotel, right? The, the visuals of it. How would you describe it?
Speaker 3:Oh, this looks very retrofitted because there are a lot of, uh, nuances such as like an exposed brick wall, old cast, iron windows that have since been double glass, double pane glass over, which is a, a very common style of retrofitting because, you know, it's, they're much more energy efficient. They seal out sound, but it keeps the aesthetic of these Florida ceiling, rod iron windows. Right. The fact that this was built as a modern hotel is very surprising.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I read somewhere online that it it's just it's described as a fake old factory building. I mean, yeah. You did a great job. Yeah. It's sort of, I feel like in some ways, like we're on the Titanic,
Speaker 3:Nothing about this feels fake. No. Which is kind of awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I came into this, knowing that this hotel is built in 2007 and I still, I think my first, like my first thought was, wow, it's so vintage and old. And I remembered like, Oh, it's, it's not, it just really feels like that.
Speaker 3:Did, did a good job. Yeah. Sorry. When you said it's like may it was made to look old. Yeah. It, you just reminded me of the Instagram post. You sent me, uh, about the guy bleeding out and how you just imagine you're there, you're bleeding out terribly. And he was quickly trying to throw on Victoria and clothes so that you are to blend in with the other ghosts.
Speaker 1:I have to shout out to Adam bastion for posting that I have to say, because Alan doesn't have an Instagram every time I want to share him something on Instagram, I have to take a screenshot of it and text it to him. And I can't share videos with him. I mean, it's a little insight in my life that
Speaker 3:You could just fax it to me.
Speaker 1:New York's marble cemetery was built in 1830. What is new York's marble cemetery. That's what we're talking about right now. Oh, it's nestled right next to the Bowery hotel on Bowery and third surrounded by a high stone wall and raw iron fence. When looking from outside the gate, it looks like a narrow alleyway, but it actually takes up most of the interior of the block. So at one time, the address for the cemetery was known as 41st and a half third street or third Avenue. It had like a little fake made up.
Speaker 3:Oh, like a, the, the stupid, uh, station.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly. Many people attribute the Berry hotels, paranormal activity to its proximity to this cemetery. So will you and I did a little walk by of the marble cemetery before. Yeah. Earlier today and on our way past seven 11. Yeah. It's right next to a seven 11. This cemetery was the city's first non-sectarian burial site. What does that mean? Meaning it belongs to no specific church or religious group. Oh. To make matters. More confusing. A second non-sectarian cemetery was built one year later in 1831. It's located at East second street between first and second avenues. And instead of new York's marble cemetery, it's called New York cities. Right?
Speaker 3:Well, cemetery direct competition, the cemetery business was booming. Right?
Speaker 1:So that one is also very, very close. But today we're going to focus on the one that's literally like a joint to the hotel.
Speaker 3:What, perhaps you can tell us why the cemetery business was booming.
Speaker 1:I am right now, new York's marble cemetery had just over 2000 recorded burials over the time of its life span. So to speak mostly from wealthy or quote unquote important figures of the time. There's a very interesting piece of history here. So at the time that this cemetery was erected, many people did not want to use coffins to bury the deceased because there were a recent yellow fever outbreak. The city law had also abandoned earth and burials, which I assume just means burying a body right into the earth. Oh. So thus enter Perkins Nichols who bought the land with the help of his two lawyer friends. Okay. He had the idea to construct marble volts that would sit below the earth. So Nichols had 156 marble vaults built from Tuckahoe marble, and they are arranged in a grid-like pattern. So there's six columns in the cemetery and 26 rows, the volts sit 10 feet below the earth. And they're in pairs with no passages connecting them. So they're not technically like catacombs or anything. They're just sunken volts. Huh? The volts were also built with locks and family members were given keys to open them. The marble, the website for the cemetery for New York marble cemetery is very rich in historical information. It goes into like biographies of all of the people buried there. So if you're looking for kind of more information, I would, they have like photos of the locks and how a lot of this stuff worked. But going back to the locks, most of them have been lost or the locks on the gray on the bolts have disintegrated. So if the cemetery needed to open a vault at this point, they would have to break into it.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Um, I'm not expecting some kind of metal locking mechanism to survive the open elements for 200 years. Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's a good point. And it's the keys though, are kind of cool looking. They're like these brass, brass, cool little weird looking keys anyway, on the website. There's pictures of all
Speaker 3:Right, because you don't want them easily duplicated because then everybody and their brother just has a key to the, your dead family, you know, and they just go and they just opened, they put their own dead family in there. It's too many people. And then it's just, you know, yeah. W how, how can you possibly, you know, be exclusive then
Speaker 1:Over half the original burials were that of children. In fact, the first person to be buried in the cemetery was a child of Dr. Post. At this time, there were no antibiotics. And so many people were lost, pneumonia, cholera, whooping, cough, Scarlet fever, a lot of illnesses that we now obviously have treatment for. Some people think that the Bowery hotel was built over some of them.
Speaker 3:I mean, it probably was th the, the space that we saw. Yeah. Pretty small.
Speaker 1:It is. Well, the thing about the marble cemetery is that you can't see, you can't see it from the street where we were, there's just kind of like an alleyway and there's gardens and stuff, but you, unless you have access to it, which they open during the warmer months, they open like one weekend
Speaker 3:A year, they opened the graves to get them
Speaker 1:One month, a year, but enjoy the summer sun. Yeah. Uh, but in the winter, it's not open, so we can't go into it right now. But here's the thing, what's the thing, because the vaults are sunk in just below the earth. Right. Right.
Speaker 3:So raccoons don't get in,
Speaker 1:There's this huge retaining wall like this huge, I dunno, 12 foot, 10 foot Stonewall around the edge of the cemetery. So from where we were today, we couldn't see past that wall. But on the inside of that wall, what they did instead of having grave markers is that on the wall itself, there are marble slabs that have, you know, the information that would normally be printed on a tombstone or a vault. So when you're in the
Speaker 3:Sign at the mall that tells you where all the stores
Speaker 1:Are, well, there's one there, they're sort of like all over the wall and, and kind like nearish where the family vault probably is there, there is a lot of information preserved. It's just sort of a weird and different setup of a cemetery. You know, it's, it's not traditional. Like if you just looked at it from above, it would just look like an empty field with this high retaining wall with writing on it.
Speaker 3:Oh. So the, the top of the
Speaker 1:They're sunken 10 feet down. So it's just like a piece.
Speaker 3:Oh, gotcha. Sorry. I just imagine that you'd still see the opening at the top. No, it's okay.
Speaker 1:So everything is printed on the Stonewall around it, but you, you would just walk over 156 volts and you don't know that they're below you.
Speaker 3:Gotcha. So are the bodies just in there or was there coffins inside?
Speaker 1:No, they're a vaults. So they're, they're fairly big. Like you could fit a whole family in a vault and yet they they'd be in coffins. Kind of like
Speaker 3:If it a whole family, any kind of vault, if you get creative,
Speaker 1:But you know what I mean? Like, like they're meant to be like, if you go to a above ground cemetery or like, if you go to like a normal cemetery and you see like the, the big sort of, what's the word for it? Yeah. Like a model it's kind of like that, but sunken, they just, okay. So they're not that big, but they're, they have like the shelves and whatever within them to fit all of the family members. Got it. So the, the idea of the keys is that at the time you could come in add family members, right. It was much more active. Now it's been 200 years. So people aren't coming in and out and the keys are all lost. But at the time, the idea was that you would add, as people needed, like this was your family plot.
Speaker 3:So basically it was like a crypt. Yes. But there wasn't that little, like house thing that leads you down into it, it's just completely sealed.
Speaker 1:And it was yes. And the reason for that again, was because of this yellow fever outbreak. So they wanted to make sure that there was a really thick wall between the dead and the living.
Speaker 3:Why you didn't, they just burn the bodies
Speaker 1:Because they wanted, they probably had religious, maybe feelings about cremation. I don't know. I mean, that's just speculation. I mean, it's pretty good speculation. If you are a yellow fever expert, let us know. All right. So why is this relevant? I'll tell you. I have no idea. We're going to now talk about the hauntings at the Bowery.
Speaker 3:Okay. Yeah. Guy with, I would love to. Okay.
Speaker 1:Right. The main point of interest here is the elevators. So we've taken the elevators a few times since we've been here already. W how would you describe the elevator visually? So people can envision there's three elevators. I believe
Speaker 3:They're the, the size of like phone booths. Yeah. They're very, very, very small. All wooden. It really feels like it was a re it was retrofitted. Yeah.
Speaker 1:They feel old. And Rick, they do feel old and rickety.
Speaker 3:It feels like, you know, old elevator cage.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Without the cage. Yep. One of the most common reports of the paranormal at the Bowery hotel is the elevators. Almost every article or review I found that mentioned ghosts at the hotel mentioned that the elevators are known to go wild, especially around 1:00 AM. The elevators are known to go up and down at will stop at random floors and kind of like generally go haywire around specifically 1:00 AM. There's also this one TripAdvisor review that somebody wrote that really was sort of haunting to me because it was just this normal, like totally normal review of the hotel. Right. The first, it was just like a paragraph, 90% of it was just like, yep. You know, that it was good service, whatever, uh, you know, XYZ. Then the last sentence just says this hotel, I think is actually haunted question, Mark, question Mark. Have you stayed there? Let me know. Like, it was just like this weird thing of like, I really think this hotel is haunted though. Right? So anyway, that one, that one left me with chills. Another common paranormal encounter at the Berry is the woman in white. Oh, multiple guests have reported being greeted by the woman in all white clothing as they enter their room for the first time. And I have to admit, I, we were kind of deciding originally if we were going to come together, like meet here or, or come together. And I was a little bit afraid at the idea of coming before, like getting here first and, and coming up to the room by myself in case the woman in white was waiting for me. So I'm glad that we got, we arrived together.
Speaker 3:I would have loved if I had got here first. Yeah. And then during this episode, you tell me about the woman in white and I'm like, Oh, wow. Yeah, that happened. It didn't happen. No,
Speaker 1:It didn't. And you also went out at one point to get some seltzer. And I was a little afraid, but I have to say I haven't had, I have not had an experience yet.
Speaker 3:I got to say my, my, uh, my spooky meter is nearly in the negatives.
Speaker 1:Well, but isn't that always the case for you?
Speaker 3:I mean, yeah. But how often are we in a haunted location?
Speaker 1:That's good. That means if something happens, we'll have to believe it. Yep. Yeah. Open minds, open minds, open hearts. Many believe that the spirit or spirits haunting the Berry have a Poltergeist quality, meaning playful and somewhat sinister energy poltergeists are known for their ability to move physical objects. If you've seen the movie Poltergeist from 1982, you may be familiar with this type of spirit. There's a scene where in the movie, all of the kitchen furniture keeps getting rearranged. The chairs get kind of like stacked in funny ways. And that's a little bit similar to some of the reports. So the spirits at the Bowery are known to use the lights to cause chaos, flickering them on and off to move around and hotel furniture. And they especially like to interrupt parties or events. So the Berry is used fairly often for, it has like a really gorgeous event space that they sometimes hold like award ceremonies at, you know, it's like a very, or weddings. It's, it's kind of like very swanky award space or event space. Hang on. Yeah. If you were a ghost, what kind of ghost do you think? You'd be probably like a really sad, angry one.
Speaker 3:So like the type, like the grudge?
Speaker 1:No, just kidding. No, I'm just kidding. Um, I don't know. Probably playful. That sounds fun. Right. Poultry guys can get a little dangerous though. You know, they can take things too far. Sure. Why, what kind of ghost would you be?
Speaker 3:I feel like I'd be the type of person where some new tenant in an apartment, uh, is talking to one of their friends and says like, Oh yeah. It's so, you know, like I it's, I got to meet the other roommate. He's pretty nice. Uh, we had a, you know, we had a cup of tea, all this stuff we hung out and then person number two is like, Oh, you saw him. That's the ghost.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Like, you'd be, you wouldn't realize that you were dead or it's just like a yeah. Or you'd be really casual about it. It'd be real, real cash.
Speaker 3:And they wouldn't. Yeah. They wouldn't know I was dead. Okay. But then like, no one would believe them.
Speaker 1:I liked that. I did have, I don't want to give away anything about the movie, the others, but when we first got here, I sort of had a others feeling. That's all I'm going to say about that
Speaker 3:Though. I also might be a bit Poltergeist, Poltergeist,
Speaker 1:I think. Absolutely. Your Poltergeist in real
Speaker 3:Life. Yeah. Cause like I changed the channel to what I want to watch.
Speaker 1:I feel like you're making a dig at the fact that I accidentally bought the music channel when we got here. Uh, the pay-per-view is haunted. Pay-per-view is haunted. Listen, it was not my fault. Okay. The event space is also known as a place within the hotel where there's elevated activity. And sometimes like the chairs and things, when they're set up for events can get rearranged. But there have also been reports from guests that they'd be having a conversation with someone and that that person would disappear mid sentence. Oh, that'd be me. Yeah. That's what it's like texting you. And that one might be harder for us obviously to test because we're being COVID compliant and we're keeping to our room. But I like the idea of, of that happening.
Speaker 3:I mean, there we were there, you know, there, we would be just having a normal conversation and all of a sudden I'm telling you a really cool story.
Speaker 1:One of my early managers, her and her mom had the ability to like, they thought that they saw ghosts around them, like sort of ParaNorman style. And I love the idea. I don't, I don't know what her feelings on that worth. I don't remember if she was into it or not, but I love the idea of ghost. Just sort of being like fully, like you don't realize really that they're like, they're so opaque that you're just like, Oh. That person just did. Like, if you were actually talking to a fully opaque, not transparent person that you believe to be a real person, right. 13 goes with the goggles.
Speaker 3:No,
Speaker 1:No like, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Cause there's no like effects on those actors at all. They're just normal people. But so you're talking to like, if I was talking to who I thought was how I described them, but go ahead. Why, how would you describe them?
Speaker 3:I mean, sorry. They're they're I mean, they're just not opaque. They're still like completely like chopped up and bloody and have bits,
Speaker 1:But they're not transparent at all. Definitely not transparent. Right. So that's what I mean, you're talking to somebody that's not transparent. That's not shadowing that you believe to be a human. Yeah. You're talking to them and then they disappear in the middle of a conversation. Like you would that's that's so upsetting. Like that's not just like, Oh, I think I saw a ghost. That's like, Holy. Like where are the security cameras? Yeah, that's right. That's like, that's like something that you could, you don't recover from. I dunno, like picture it though, picture that you, or you meet someone in the lobby, right? Yep. And you are talking to that person. Maybe she's the person checking you into your room or whatever. And then as you're looking at her and she's saying something, she just disappears. How would you react in that moment?
Speaker 3:Um, do I see her fade or is it just like a blink and gone? Whatever, does it make a difference? It does.
Speaker 1:Well, give us each reaction then. I mean,
Speaker 3:If she fades away, then I'd be like, what, what the?
Speaker 1:But if she is blink and gone, you would think she like fainted or something? No.
Speaker 3:Well maybe it's just like, you, you look around like, where'd you go? And then you just think that he had, you know, some kind of mental lapse you'd double check your water, you know, maybe you're on drugs. Yeah.
Speaker 1:All right. So because many believe that this area is, this area of New York is sort of like, again, this paranormal hotbed. Oh yeah. We're going to touch on a few other heavy hitters quickly just to kind of give everyone a flavor of the neighborhood.
Speaker 3:You couldn't see her hand motion, but it was very good. It's kind of like kind of like drizzling some spice,
Speaker 1:Drizzling, some spice. Okay. In addition to the marble cemetery, there are quite a few haunted landmarks that are very close to this hotel nearby at 29 East fourth street, you will find the old merchant house on the website for the merchant house museum. They even have an entire section dedicated to their hauntings. Again, another very good historical website. The merchant house is the only example of a 19th century family home within New York city that is still preserved and intact from its heyday. It was built on spec in 1832 by Joseph Brewster and then turns out what does that mean on spec? It means that it was a spec home. So it was built before there was a buyer and then somebody bought
Speaker 3:It. So like most, most homes,
Speaker 1:Like I only know the term because when I was, uh, in third grade, we moved from the oldest dairy farm in the United States to a development called strawberry fields. And then you could choose
Speaker 3:The oldest dairy farm was built on spec before there was people,
Speaker 1:Cows. No, I don't think so. I bet it was built by the family that owned it. But the, or I know that it was, but moving into this neighborhood, there was options. You could either work with this construction company to build a house or you could buy a spec house to build your own house. Well, no, you, you would sort of pick out like, Oh, I want these lights and this layout and whatever, you know, it's like a catalog.
Speaker 3:Gotcha. That's what you mean by work with the construction company?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Not that you would like build it or you could buy one of the houses that was like what they would call a spec house that were already built that they just built in. They assumed someone would move into, and it also helped them like market the neighborhood because they had these example houses that were already built.
Speaker 3:You're buying a demo model.
Speaker 1:Right. But it's not like interest development where it's like all fake. It's just like a house that they it's like, it's like a spec script. You, you know that term, right?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So like a spec script, like I would write an episode of the Simpsons to show my abilities as a writer. I wouldn't pitch it to the Simpsons. Right. It's just within a framework of a universe that people can relate.
Speaker 1:Right. But th the, yeah, but it's the same idea. Yeah. You, you would actually, hopefully someone will move into the house, but it it's kind of like your example house of like, yeah. Someone will move in here. Eventually. Again, the house was built in 1832 by Joseph Brewster. And it was turned into a museum just about a hundred years later in 1936. The ghost story here is a classic one. The Treadwell family moved into the house just after it was built and lived there for almost 100 years. Quoting from the website. Some say they never left again. Here is an extended quote from the website because they can tell it better than I could. Okay. Many believe it's Gertrude Treadwell in particular, who is watching over her family home, born in an upstairs bedroom in 1840, the youngest of the Treadwell's eight children, Gertrude never married and lived her entire life here until she died at the age of 93 in 1933, she was the last member of the family to occupy the house since the 1930s, when the house opened to the public as a museum, strange and inexplicably happenings have been reported, like what sounds sightings smells by staff, volunteers, visitors, neighbors, and even pastors by even pets and even pets. Yeah. So the idea is, is kind of that this home was occupied for a hundred years by this family. And then when they died was immediately turned into this museum that preserved it as it was at the time. So it's never like it was this legacy home. And then that was it.
Speaker 3:Well, if you're saying that they never left and now guests are reporting strange smells. You got to bury the bodies. Got it. That's that's body management. One-on-one gotta put them in the marble. That's right. Bury them 10 feet down in volts.
Speaker 1:Waltz. Yeah. Okay. So the Manhattan, well is another nearby haunted spine hat. Well, yeah. And we could do an entire episode on this one and I actually think it was on my list because somebody told me like, somebody requested an episode on this. So this might be something we explore.
Speaker 3:Well, let's, let's just, just scrape the surface here. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So here we go. The Manhattan, well, which is literally a, well, it is now beneath a cause clothing store in Soho was the site of a truly horrific and highly scandalous murder. And this is at one 29 spring street for all of you, a paranormal freak.
Speaker 3:That's close to the, um, the bubble tea spot. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:On December 22nd, 1799 Gilmore Elmore sands was strangled and thrown into the, well, a few days later in early January, 1800, her body was found she had been last seen on the night of the murder after leaving her cousin's boarding house, dressed up Levi weeks was accused of the murder. Someone who sands had been seeing romantically in secret, Oh, behind the sands family placed her coffin outside of her boarding house in an effort to shame weeks. It became this sort of witch hunt for him that where everybody was like, he did it.
Speaker 3:He did it. They placed her coffin there. Yeah. With her body in it. Yes.
Speaker 1:They also passed out pamphlets in the neighborhood accusing him. So they were really like drumming up. The revenge of this person killed our beloved sister, daughter, whatever it was later found out that sands and weeks had planned on a loping that evening that she disappeared in many kind of thought that this was the final nail in his coffin. Like that something happened when they were about to elope and he killed her. This where's where it gets interesting weeks had some famous lawyers, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. Oh,
Speaker 3:Th those guys, those guys from the duel,
Speaker 1:He owed a favor to his older brother. So they agreed to represent him at trial. And because of their savvy weeks was acquitted. The jury only took five minutes to deliberate and found him
Speaker 3:Guilty. I mean, they just did the old song and dance
Speaker 1:From the musical Hamilton. Despite this weeks was still considered to be guilty by all of the community and was forced to leave the city.
Speaker 3:So he was acquitted, even though everyone knew, including the jurors that he was guilty like Donald Trump. Oh, how history repeats itself. Yeah.
Speaker 1:There are some additional complexities here. For example, Aaron Burr started the Manhattan well company. And again, this could be an episode on its own, so we're not going to, we're not going to go too deep into the history, but let's talk about the haunting in the 1990s, a restaurant called Manhattan, Beasto decided to expand their cellar space and rediscovered the well. So it's interesting because back when I was going into the office before COVID, I would walk once week from my office, which is in the lower Manhattan to therapy, which is in Midtown. And I would pass by Manhattan bistro. And I would always say, this looks so cool. Like it has a very cool exterior look to it and I'm not familiar with it. It's like along sixth Avenue. And I would always be like, you know what? This was when my friend Sam was about to move. And we were actually going to go there as like a final dinner, which I think fell through. But anyway, it's like always been on my list to go. And when I found it in the research and now that I know it's haunted, even more, even more opportunity in the 19 hundreds, this restaurant Manhattan beach store decided to expand their seller space. And they rediscovered the well ever since then, the male employee specifically started to feel uncomfortable in the basement of the restaurant. And of course, as traditional haunting seemed to go glasses and dishware would fly across the room and smash into walls. Sometimes even wine bottles, people started to report getting locked in the wine cellar when they were down there alone. And most terrifying. Several people started to see a woman in the basement who was totally soaking wet.
Speaker 3:Huh? Wow. That's a little spooky.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's like the ring it's with the, with the well, and the
Speaker 3:Jerry much like the ring, which makes me question. But the ring is based. It's Japanese. It's exactly on the buck. So it's sings. Well, it's simply just a coincidence
Speaker 1:Wells or a hotspot. I mean, yeah. People, I think Wells are used often, especially around this time to kill people, right. Or to dispose of bodies and things like that.
Speaker 3:I wouldn't say as a way to dispose of a body because it's absolutely going to get found out. It's absolutely going to be found.
Speaker 1:Can I, can I say, sorry, a quick sidebar on this note. So there's a new four-part documentary out on Netflix right now and I'm bringing it up because it's very relevant to our talking about. And because we've talked about this true crime case, many times on this podcast, it's the case of Elisa lamb, who is the woman that went missing in LA at the it's. We talked about this elevator when we, when we had our, Oh
Speaker 3:No, the, the, the night games episode. Yeah.
Speaker 1:The elevator game episode. So this documentary it's produced actually by Brian Glazer and Ron Howard, I will say it's a little bit drawn out in there. Some tone deafness to certain parts of it, but it is a very good look at this case, which has become, because it's one of those cases where I feel like it's like season one of the serial podcast where it's so addicting as like someone who's into true crime because you, it doesn't make sense. And you really want to understand and figure out what happened to this person. And so it became this really huge thing for like Websleuths and, and they became Websleuths and they became somewhat problematic actually in as they often do. But I just wanted to shout out that because we've talked about this several times and essentially how they find her body is that she's in the water tank on top of this hotel. And people start to report that the water is tasting funny and looks funny, but
Speaker 3:Oh, right. Well, yeah, yeah, exactly. The whole thing behind you, can't hide a body in a well, right.
Speaker 1:Oh, itself. Yeah. So anyway, check that out because we've talked about it and it's a very sobering look at the case. And I think it's, I recommend it,
Speaker 3:You know, a, a very common way of sabotaging enemies water supply would be to slit the throat of a goat and just throw the goat into a well, really. Yeah. Wow. I mean, he didn't have to be a goat, but there's it's right.
Speaker 1:That's like what we talked about with Miranda or Zelle on the Southwind episode, the history of Halloween where you butchered animals and the home people knew, they didn't know why, but they knew even in ancient times that that would lead to bacteria and infection because the blood could get into the water. Right. And so they blamed it on, on something magical, I believe, and kind of like made a superstition around it, but it was like basic hygiene. Right. That they, they knew that, yeah. If we do this in the home, we're going to get sick. And they thought it was like a curse or whatever, but it was really, you know, like they were right on the nose that, yeah. You're going to get sick, you know? Okay. Final haunted hotspot in the Bowery area did hotspot. That's right. St. Mark's church also known as St. Mark's church in Barre. We walked by this as well, who was just hours ago,
Speaker 3:Who is Saint Mark? Cause he's got a lot of things named after him. Well, he's got the street, which is a street. Multiple streets. No, yes. There's two St. Marks. There's wondering your hat and one in Brooklyn. Oh boy,
Speaker 1:Here we go. Mr. History,
Speaker 3:You know, there's more than one second street. Oh three here.
Speaker 1:If you live in New York city or you've been here often enough, you may be familiar with our next ghost, Peter Stuyvesant
Speaker 3:Of Stuyvesant Plaza
Speaker 1:And sty town. And there's so many things named after the Stuyvesant family Stuyvesant, the last Dutch general of new Netherlands is now thought to haunt St. Mark's church. His body is buried in a vault below the church. Saint Mark's church is the second oldest church in New York city.
Speaker 3:Second oldest. Yes. What's the oldest Trinity churches. Oh, the one in Tribeca.
Speaker 1:Yes, exactly. And it's funny because it's actually right next to my office and you can see like, there's, there's a really cool graveyard there, which actually is where Alexander Hamilton is buried. It's kind of a wild thing, not to get too grim here, but when nine 11 happened, the towers fall pretty much like right around Trinity cemetery, intimidate church. And it's in the, the graves are, you know, hundreds of years old. It's totally still intact. So it's kind of like a weird little slice of history in that area.
Speaker 3:Do you know that Trinity church is one of the largest real estate developers in the world? No, but I believe it. Yeah. They're horrendously evil. Ooh. That's good to know. Huge, huge protest target during occupy wall street.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah. I forgot you were a big occupy guy. So St. Mark's church again is the second oldest church in New York city. It's split from Trinity church, the oldest in 1799. And it's actually built on top of where the family farm, the Stuyvesant family farm was located back in the days of new Netherlands, which I think is, I just love picturing the days of, of when New York city was not a city.
Speaker 3:Yeah. When it was just, I don't know if this was a as an art project or as, or whatever, they just started putting some farmland in Manhattan and restoring it to the original crops that were grown before colonization. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, you can you see it? The, the photos that they took where it's just like very traditional farmland with the New Jersey skyline in the background.
Speaker 1:Yeah. There's, there's also a photos I've posted on Instagram that I've found that are, are of very traditional farmland, probably taken from maybe even Brooklyn or Queens. And then on the horizon is the empire state building. So up until even that point, it was just, there was so much farmland in the area. You know, it was this huge agriculture area and even the empire state building. And it's so absurd looking because compared to like this very flat land, is this huge, huge building. Now, when you look at the New York skyline, it doesn't even look that big compared to the buildings around it. But at the time it was literally like shooting into the air above fields. Like it's crazy. Yeah.
Speaker 3:So yeah. Kudos to whoever build the empire state building. Mr. Empire,
Speaker 1:Mr. Pyre, back to St. Mark's church, current churchgoers report, hearing Stuyvesant singing along during services quite loudly and always quite loudly and always in Dutch ringing bells at inopportune moments. And I quote stomping around just dumping around overall. He seems to be quite a chaotic ghost. One of my favorite reports is that Peter loves to take inventory of Rome at the top of his lungs in Dutch, during services. He just likes to count his rum bottles. You know,
Speaker 3:What's the word for ramen Dutch. Right.
Speaker 1:And I dunno, I just liked the idea of a ghost counting his liquor, you know, in the middle of a church service.
Speaker 3:I mean, if your income boreal yeah. And you can't enjoy your stock. Yeah. I might as well count. It
Speaker 1:Might as well. So yeah. I mean, those, this is the tip of the iceberg, even just for this section of Manhattan, there's a lot of supposedly haunted areas. You know, I don't know if anything is going to happen tonight. I don't know if we're going to have some sort of crazy paranormal experience. I imagine
Speaker 4:We won't. I was going to say,
Speaker 1:I imagined because I have with such a huge skeptic, we probably won't. And even if we do, he won't believe it, but if we do, we'll come back and we'll let you know about it. And if you don't hear more from us, just assume
Speaker 4:Or we're we're okay.
Speaker 2:[inaudible]
Speaker 1:Okay. So here we are. Next day. We're back at home.
Speaker 4:We're back in the studio, back in the studio, you probably noticed the change in the, in the quality of the recording.
Speaker 1:Okay. And did you have an experience?
Speaker 4:Uh, maybe you go first. Okay.
Speaker 1:Okay. I, I will say I, we didn't have, or I didn't experience anything that was overtly. Oh, this place is haunted. There were a few things though. I want to talk about, there is one thing that happened when you were still awake and you were watching the metal beast, our friend on Twitch. So you had headphones on, right?
Speaker 4:Yes. Quick plug for our good friend. The metal beast. Who's consistently streaming all these really cool retro games on Twitch. Uh, yeah, just check it out. It's really cool.
Speaker 1:She was a lot, so he's a good person to follow and he's, he's very fun. But this was, so you had your headphones on, you had the retro game music in your ears and I heard a woman scream. It sounded like it came. It was, it sounded like you've heard different room. It wasn't like in our room and that could have totally been another hotel guest right there. It doesn't necessarily mean that it was paranormal, but I heard it. And I, and there wasn't like, we didn't hear other people's voices at all. Like not once when we were in the room, we heard some noises like hotel noises, but it was pretty quiet. Like our whole corridor. I never heard somebody staying near us at all that. I heard that. And who, again, it could have been a kid or something who knows, but that is something that I heard. Was it a ghost? I don't know. It could have been somebody ghosts. I know. I'm just saying it had a quality to it, you know? Yeah. I didn't hear it. I know, but you, I said, when it happened, I said, did you just hear that? And he said, no, you're crazy, but you had headphones on. So yeah,
Speaker 4:That's fair. A lot of times I have headphones on and I don't hear things. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So it's not my fault. I was very tired, but I couldn't really sleep that well for awhile. And so I was, I was laying in bed a little bit fever, dream ish. Like I didn't have a fever, but I felt like I did a little, like, I just felt a little uncomfortable, you know? So had some like weird visions and things like that, but this might be silly, but every night, so every night I listened to thunderstorm or ocean noises while I fall asleep. And Allen graciously brought a Bluetooth speaker to the hotel so that I could listen to the noises, all your sleeping. And I noticed, I didn't really notice this during the day, but maybe it was happening. But I noticed there was a lot of interference, like, especially after you came to bed and it just kind of like got worse and worse throughout the night, coming through the speaker. And I, it freaked me out a little bit. And then this morning when I was on my phone, I noticed when I did certain things on my phone, it caused similar interference on the speaker because the noises were still playing. And so I acknowledged that's probably some sort of interference or whatever, like elect electric thing, but it was a little spooky during the night, you know?
Speaker 4:Well, you know, RF interference is super, super common in Manhattan. Uh, and it varies from block to block. You know, I deal with wireless microphones every day at work and you move to a new location, you do a spectrum scan. And even just being in different parts of a building can give you very different scans depending on what is causing. Depends on, we know what devices are broadcasting. Oftentimes, you know, even if you're in a seemingly fully residential area, they'll put some kind of like TV broadcast, uh, antennas, because they rent out the space on the roof. There's a million different reasons why a space can have RF interference.
Speaker 1:Got it. So you don't think it was Gus?
Speaker 4:Um, no.
Speaker 1:Fair enough. I mean, I will say there was nothing very obviously like, Oh my God, that that's so freaky. You know, like there's, there was a Airbnb or like a house we rented a while ago. Like my friends and I for someone's birthday. And like that house had a ton of very like creepy things happening. And this wasn't that, you know, so it wasn't like the most haunted place I've ever been. But like, you know, during the night I heard some noises coming from the bathroom, like things like that, that could be explained by their things. So there was nothing, you know, conclusive. I would say about our stay. We didn't, we did not though. I will admit we were too tired at 1:00 AM to go survey the elevator situation, but, well, okay.
Speaker 4:I wasn't, cause I was up, did you go? And I, it got to be one and I thought to myself, should I go do the elevator? But you were asleep. Yeah. And I was thinking like, what if it gets spooky?
Speaker 1:You were scared. Well,
Speaker 4:I wasn't scared. I was having a great time. Like, Oh, what if it got spooky? You know? And well, I'm going to just like wake you up. And then you're just going to be afraid all night. That was already the case. So no, I didn't do it. Yeah. But, um, the only, the only weird weirdish thing that happened to me. Yeah. So the way that the room was set up, you know, cause a spacious room,
Speaker 1:Right? Yeah. We got upgraded without us having to do anything because nobody was staying at the hotel. So they just gave us a really nice room. They gave us the Johnny Depp suite.
Speaker 4:So I was on the couch. Yeah. And you were in bed fast asleep. Yeah. I kept thinking that I saw you just like sitting up in bed, looking at me
Speaker 1:And you're going to freak me out.
Speaker 4:And every time, you know, like out of the corner of my eye. And so I would look over obviously. Yeah. And you would not be sleeping very clearly. Yeah. And so I was like, okay, whatever that happened, probably six or seven.
Speaker 1:Oh my God. That's freaky.
Speaker 4:Eh, I mean, it, you were not
Speaker 1:Looking at me, but there could have been a goat. The woman
Speaker 4:It's always the corner out of the corner of my eye. It was just you sitting just like, Oh, it's weird. Cause like, it wasn't even like what you were wearing. It was like, now you're freaking me out it Debbie. No, it's just, it looked like, but I think it's cause like the white sheets and stuff, but just like,
Speaker 1:It looks like white clothing. Yeah. Allen, are you making this up? Making it a whole? I'm so glad you didn't tell me until now. Yeah. The woman in white I know is, you know, it wasn't me. I was wearing a black tank top. Yeah. And I've dark hair, Brown hair. Brownish. Wow. That's freaky. Yeah. I had like some weird dreams. I, there was like, definitely weird noises from the bathroom, like in the middle of the night where it was like, it woke me up a few times. Like it wasn't because we heard some, the pipes were like loud, this was different. It was like something moved, like nothing moved. We didn't come in and be like, Oh my God, that moved. But it sounded like somebody moved something. Those were kind of like the bathroom noises I heard. But again, all of that could be anything. So it's hard. I will say to this, I do not believe is paranormal, but above us, you know, when you're like in a space where there's like a gym above you and somebody drops away, you know that noise, but it's like above you. I heard that like multiple times and like really like late like three, 4:00 AM. And it's just like, whoever was above us, like doing whatever they were doing. But I kept being like, what are you doing all night? Like, it sounded like somebody was like dropping away again. I don't really think it's paranormal, but it was just a weird, weird, I'm sure people were like partying or whatever, but you know, it's kind of a weird noise. It's the city that never sleeps. Isn't that Vegas? No, let's Newark. It's probably any major city really. Okay. So anyway, all in all, it sounds like Alan had, do you believe that that was paranormal or do you think it was a trick of VI? What?
Speaker 4:I think it was a trick of the eye. It was just suspicious that, you know, like we've all like seen something in the corner of the room that gives us a fright. And then you it's the coat rack. You know, it was just weird that after debunking it, it kept happening. He was like, I just, I looked over at you very clearly and you're just sleeping in bed very, very clearly. And then I'd be going back to watching, not thinking at all about anything. All of a sudden, like you're looking at me and then I look over and you're not looking at me.
Speaker 1:Huh? Sounds like maybe the little paranormal seeds are being planted in your brain maybe. Yeah. Well anyway, as expected, no concrete evidence, but Oh, we did have, like, there was a weird elevator thing. This is very small, but whenever you and I were together, the third elevator came and whenever you were alone, the first elevator came every single time. Doesn't mean anything. It's just one of those synchronicities in life that is, uh,
Speaker 4:An unimportant factoid.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That now, you know, thank you guys so much for listening. This was a fun one for us. It was nice to spend the night with some alleged ghosts and each other, see a new space and yeah. Everyone stay safe, stay well until next time. Goodbye.
Speaker 5:Right?