Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Haunted AF: Ghosts Galore
32 Plays3 years ago
Let's take a haunted tour starting at the "Castles of the Rockies", the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel. Located in Banff National Park, Alberta in a valley carved out by glaciers, this haunted hotel has a long history marred by a few unexpected deaths. Some spirits are super helpful and some seem straight out of The Shining, so take your pick!
Next stop is Myrtles Plantation in Louisiana, which has a very violent past and tons of tragic deaths on site. No surprise some spirits stuck around after the trauma that happened here. There's even pics, so it did happen!! :P
Finally it's on to the Castle of Good Hope, how appropriate to begin and end with a castle! It's the oldest existing colonial building in South Africa, so it certainly has a long history as well. From the bakery to the torture chambers and dungeons, this historical site has something for everyone! Don't forget to visit the haunted bell tower, you might just see Lady Andy Bernard!!
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Technical Troubles
00:00:23
Speaker
you are listening to castles and cryptids where the castles are haunted and the cryptids are cryptic as fuck
00:00:30
Speaker
And I'm Elena. I'm Kelsey. And we're hoping we sound very crisp in your ears and not laggy at all. Yeah. Nobody likes audio issues. No, hopefully there aren't any.
00:00:53
Speaker
I was telling Kelsey I've had like technical difficulties all week and then that sometimes that's my superpower. Not trying to jinx it, I was just saying.
00:01:05
Speaker
Yeah, it happens. Hopefully my laptop does better. I helped my dad move my Wi-Fi, I guess, router or box. Right. So it's more centralized in my house, in my living room, as opposed to on the exterior wall on the floor behind my couch where stupid shawl.
00:01:32
Speaker
decided to put it because that's where the box like the cable came up before because that's the TV like used to be there
00:01:41
Speaker
And I have my TV on the opposite wall and my couch against that wall. So even I wasn't home, my old roommate was. So they refused to drill a new hole through the hardwood floor because it's from the 50s. They're like, we're not touching that. So we can't move your cable. We have to install there. So for eight years, I've had this stupid freaking Wi-Fi box on the floor behind the couch.
00:02:10
Speaker
Very annoying. So did you have to drill a hole then?
00:02:14
Speaker
My dad ended up drilling a hole basically through the baseboard, kind of angled down so that it bypassed it, which I don't care about. Not the hole in the wall. So it didn't mess up the floor at all. Oh, that's good. So now it's on my TV stand. If I need to do stuff with it, it's on the TV stand. I'm not pulling the couch out and trying to crawl behind the couch to do stuff.
00:02:43
Speaker
Yeah, that's good.
Cozy Chats: Halloween Cups and Hot Chocolate
00:02:45
Speaker
That's a very spooky-looking cup you got there. Yeah. It's got some pictures on it. Yeah, it's from my work. It's hard to see with the little sleeve, but it gets really hot. But it's like... Okay, yeah, I saw skulls and then I see snakes and stuff too. Okay. This is cute. Yeah. We have a bunch of different Halloween themed ones.
00:03:16
Speaker
I was drinking out of my plastic Halloween goblet earlier, but it's very light and prone to tipping over, so I just thought that I better switch it up to like a stemless type of wine glass. Yeah, I'm drinking hot chocolate because it was freezing cold earlier. I mean, it's cold. It was chilly today compared to another, like we've been having
00:03:43
Speaker
above average weather for the season. It was like 20 degrees the other day and rain in October. It was like a second summer.
Symphony and Homemade Wine Adventures
00:03:54
Speaker
Hello Gordo. I laughed all the time. It had been really cold was when we were doing the.
00:04:00
Speaker
we did the something called Symphony Under the Stars where like it was part of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra and they were playing but it was outside at night and then it was like right by the little lake so it was like it was it was chilly yeah we were like everyone had like blankets and yeah hot chocolate or mulled wine or oh that reminds me um speaking of wine we bottled the uh
00:04:29
Speaker
the red wine the very exotic fruit wine exotic fruit wine it's actually not terrible tasting it's very dark looking but it's not awful but it's not also not very strong yet yeah is it supposed to get stronger as it ages i think
00:04:59
Speaker
well you'd assume so but it also said that fruit wines are meant to be drunk rather young or whatever they call it with the wine so i was like well now you're just confusing me that could mean like a couple years i feel like i don't know they said they just said that it would make me lose its
00:05:22
Speaker
fruit flavor, so there's tons of it. There's no way I'm going through it that quickly. And I don't really like red wine as much. Yeah, no. So we tried some with supper the other day. It was like, okay, like this is palatable.
00:05:43
Speaker
you could always do like cooking wine and stuff yes yeah we ended up bottling it after i we had made a stew one day because just between making the stew and everything it was like we'll bottle it later but then yeah it's like you can use it for all sorts of stuff like that yeah and i do have some mulled mulling wine spices that i could try putting it in
00:06:13
Speaker
you know, December. Yeah.
Pets and Remote Work Antics
00:06:16
Speaker
So what's what was new with you this week? You got feeling a little better. Yeah, I'm a lot better. Saw a doctor got antibiotics and everything. So
00:06:32
Speaker
Gordo's just being very distracting. He has a foot out and he's leaning his back against my laptop and licking his paw. If you lean further back, you're gonna slide my laptop across the table.
00:06:52
Speaker
Yeah, he's always like by the laptop. He's never in your lap. He's going to be in the thick of things. I think it's because I'm sitting only a few inches away from the edge of the desk so he can't get at it and there isn't enough room for him to get between my lap and the desk either.
00:07:11
Speaker
like under the suit so i don't even think he tries but cats like being near you so do dogs so when i'm recording a lot of times he's right on your foot yeah a lot of times he's just right beside me i like it when he falls asleep like that because it's uh very non-disruptive yeah
00:07:38
Speaker
is not like kicking things when they do their like straight leg licking. Yeah. Yes. For the video I sent you of him like has his foot in the air and he's licking it and then he decided to sniff and like try and bite the mic because it was right by his leg and I was like Gordo, oh my god. You little dummy. No, my dog slipped a little bit into the
00:08:09
Speaker
the corner of the hot tub today because he kept walking but sorry just choked on air um he was walking between the side of it like in nice where it's a very narrow ledge between it and the side of the deck and then we always have the cover up there
00:08:31
Speaker
And so he was walking back and forth and my mom was like, what are you doing? And then he tried to like turn and do a complete turn there. But then he was like, you don't have enough room. And then he was like, what do you want? And he like goes back towards her and then his like front feet slipped in and I was like sitting by him and I was like trying to like keep him from falling in. But it was just, you know, there's a little shallow ledge. So he didn't go in much past his little paws.
00:08:58
Speaker
Oh my god. What are you doing? So funny. He likes to get, well you know, he gets right up there when you're in it and then he like, sends you babies and like tries to lick your face. He was doing that to me when I was in there. Yeah, I think I have a picture of him doing that to you. I think so, yeah. He tries to sniff people's mouths. He always wants to know what you've been eating. Yeah, it's just a thing.
00:09:28
Speaker
Tell us what your weird animals do people we want to know. Yes.
Horror Movies and Series Exploration
00:09:34
Speaker
We want to know what's wrong with your dog or your cat. What do while you're trying to remote work from home or do something what what shenanigans are they doing in the background that you have to just ignore and pretend aren't happening? Yeah.
00:09:50
Speaker
There is a subreddit though. It's called what's wrong with your dog. And it's peopled when they post their dog doing weird dog things. It's very entertaining. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Well, welcome to episode 78. Woo hoo. 78 feeling great. It's our last October episode. No.
00:10:21
Speaker
Yes, it is. October's going by so fast. Yeah, last regular one. It's crazy. This whole year just flew right by. It's going to be November soon, and it's Christmas around the corner. Spooky season. You can't go away. Barely. Right? I've been watching any horror movies or anything.
00:10:49
Speaker
So I'm gonna have to get on that. Oh, I've been watching a bunch and I'm watching the the Midnight Club on Netflix right now. Pretty good. Is it the one? Stephen King? No. No, this is from Mike. Oh, I can't remember his name. He's the one that did The Haunting of Hill House and then The Haunting of Blood Manor. Oh, OK. Oh, yeah, he's always on the
00:11:19
Speaker
horror movie tv series we're watching where they like go over the best horror movies and stuff yeah this is a show he did so every night like these kids and basically teenagers in a hospice care so like they know they're gonna die they have like this pact where the first one of them that dies is gonna do everything that they can to
00:11:42
Speaker
give them a sign that's very specific to them to be like, yes, this is me and ghosts are real kind of thing. So that's part of it. And then the other part is every night at midnight, all the kids sneak out of their rooms and they go into the library that's down in the creepy kind of basement and they share spooky ghost stories that they've written.
00:12:11
Speaker
and they do it every night and it's been like a tradition at the hospice they just figured out since the hospice opened in like the 1960s so it's been going for like 30 years this midnight club it's definitely a little darker than the breakfast club yeah but it's it's really good I like the characters and each episode they have one of the kids like shares one of their stories and
00:12:38
Speaker
Yeah, I could see the hunting of Hill House was so good. I really like that one. The Bligh Manor one. Yeah, I mean, I still enjoyed it. It wasn't as good. Yeah, they had the bent neck lady on. We were watching 100 best horror movie moments or something the other day. Yeah, that was on Netflix or something. Yeah, it was cool to hear them.
00:13:07
Speaker
him talk about how he came up with it or he was showing like something where he got inspired by another movie um where this person sees like their doppelganger and he's like oh it really freaked me out and so that like kind of inspired him to do the oh cool the spoiler alert bent like neck lady being the girl that kept seeing her it was herself which was so
00:13:32
Speaker
creepy and messed with time and space and shit. And I like that. I like that. Yeah. And she'd been basically haunting herself for her entire life. Yeah. And it's like, oh my God. And she's really just screaming because like at the end when like
Haunted Banff Springs Hotel
00:13:52
Speaker
she dies, she realizes that she was the bent neck lady the whole time. And then, oh, it's just wild.
00:14:01
Speaker
Yeah, she was never meant to scare herself, but inadvertently, it's like one of those self-fulfilling prophecies or something sort of thing where you're like, you're so scared of something that you, yeah, you come to be the thing that you scare. Oh, so good. Yeah, I like that. It was one of the few things I ever watched, like compilation reactions of people like watching something else.
00:14:27
Speaker
Okay, I bet there would be some big reactions to that because you're like, oh shit. It's one of those moments. Yeah, that one was good. And the only other one I ever did it for was like Game of Thrones when Arya kills the Night King. Yeah, the Night King. I watched so many of those. Yeah.
00:14:51
Speaker
Yeah, those are like the only two things. Yeah, that's a pretty holy shit moment. Yeah, I've ever cared about like people's, oh my god, like reactions for on YouTube. Yeah, yeah, those are the kind of reaction videos I'm here for and not necessarily like paddle watch some where people are reacting to like,
00:15:06
Speaker
say bands he likes for the first time like people listening to different Metallica songs and that's cool don't get me wrong i like how enthusiastic some of these people are they're like whoa but like yeah i'm probably more down for that kind of reaction video
00:15:22
Speaker
Yeah, there's some wild ones. I liked all the, there's montages of people that did the last showing for the last episode of Game of Thrones and they're like in a bar. So there's like 300 people all of a sudden, it's like dead quiet. And then you just hear like, everybody's just like losing their shit. And you're just like, yeah. Yeah, Pat definitely lost his shit at the end of that one, but he more went on a tirade and then left the room.
00:15:50
Speaker
That would have been a very short and angry reaction video. Yeah. But that's okay. That was, yeah, we won't go there. I have opinions. It was not great. But the new show is good. Still recommending The House of the Dragon. Okay, I haven't watched any of it. My dad's recording it and he keeps saying, we'll watch it together. And then every time we get together,
00:16:19
Speaker
I think we forget or do any other stuff. Did you watch Game of Thrones with him too? Some of it? So I had watched it and I was all caught up and then he... I think I was in the last few seasons as it was airing on TV and he was a few years behind.
00:16:43
Speaker
and then I don't even know when he finished watching the show as far as I knew he like hadn't even finished watching it now he's watching the new show so I don't even know if he finished the other one okay no I just wondered if it was comfortable watching it with your family what was with some of the scenes you know he'd be watching it in the basement and I'd go downstairs and watch it sometimes with him but
00:17:10
Speaker
yeah oh yeah it's fine nothing you can't get through um but anyway i've got a ghost story for you today i know i want you to go first okay that's what i was thinking okay i was just like yeah i haven't gone first in a while why not yeah and then i can
00:17:37
Speaker
I already know what mine is, and I won't scare myself with my own ghost story, so if we do yours first while it's slightly earlier in the evening, I'll be less scared when I try and go to bed. Okay, well hopefully I live up to this now. You know, now it's gotta be scary. But yeah, it's got some good. If you're wanting ghosts, yeah, I think we're gonna help bring it. Let's just do it now.
00:18:09
Speaker
yeah man that's october's all about yeah well well you know us we carry the tradition all year and and not just spooky time or some people do it at what christmas time used to be a tradition i guess spooky stories i don't i've heard this once or twice huh yeah
00:18:37
Speaker
But it's something we need to bring back for sure. Not enough of us tell sweet stories like Christmas. So speaking as we were of, wait, where are we speaking of? Well, I'm trying to think what we just said on air and not.
00:19:00
Speaker
Well, I've got a ghost story for you that is, well, the story of a haunted hotel, which we haven't done, I don't think. Maybe. No, I think the only hotel-specific episode we've done was a true crime one, is that right? Yeah, episode four was horrors at the hotel, but it was true crime. Yeah. But I came across a lot of hotels when I was
00:19:29
Speaker
making up a shortlist, albeit I was grabbing it most from podcast episodes I listened to about ghosts and stuff. I was getting it all from one or two sources. It's like, okay, where have I heard some good ghost stories? Love a good ghost story, so want to make sure you do it right.
00:19:57
Speaker
All right. So the hotel in question is one you'll be familiar with. It is the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel. That's the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel. That's on the side of the mountain, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In Banff National Park, which is in our home province of Alberta. It's the one my
00:20:30
Speaker
Great somebody, I don't know how many greats helped build it. Oh, okay. Wow. The stone masons and stuff that they brought in to help build it. Oh, holy shit. That's cool. He used to have a plaque. My parents went a number of years ago and after they found out there was a plaque and they tried to find it and they met with like,
00:20:57
Speaker
The operators of the bounce rings, they toured all the way through there and then they toured through different libraries and records and everything and historical records in Banff to try and find out what happened to this plaque. Because it got sent somewhere, it's not on the bounce rings anymore.
00:21:16
Speaker
didn't find it um damn so yeah at this point they're basically just trying to find like even one of our relatives maybe that has a picture of the plaque or something but it had his name and everything on it oh yeah because that's so cool that's one of the things we like to go look at when we
00:21:41
Speaker
across the bridge that my dad worked on was everybody that worked on it had like a little stone with their name. Yeah, it's cool. But it's had a long history, so that might explain it. Not to excuse it, but it might explain it a little bit. It's an old hotel.
00:22:01
Speaker
It's like, could this have brought your, helped bring some of your, you know, ancestors to this area? That's so cool. Well he, his family, after that, sometime around there, he ended up building a stone farmhouse in Manitoba.
00:22:23
Speaker
and my mom used to stay there with my aunt and everything when they were like really young like around 10 and stuff so he also built that but that was in Manitoba and that's where like he lived so I don't know how much he was in Alberta it might have just been for this and then he went back to Manitoba oh wow he was supposed to be pretty popular and like sought after and stuff so
00:22:52
Speaker
Yeah, they might have brought them in to Alberta just for that. I mean, it's definitely a specific trade. I dated a guy that was going to school to be a stonemason one time and it was like, oh, okay, like, this is actually pretty involved, like being an electrician or something like that. Yeah. Yeah, it's a specialized skill.
00:23:17
Speaker
It's so cool. It's beautiful. It's a beautiful hotel. We drove through the little loop when we went up there. Just when we went up there recently. We did a drive-by because I hadn't seen it in a long time. It's so nice. Right? It's like we can't afford to stay there, but we'll look at it. Right? Oh my god.
00:23:41
Speaker
The Symphony Under the Stars was at a Fairmont property, which we have stayed at once, but only when we could get it for under 250 a night. It's crazy what those places go for.
00:23:58
Speaker
I found out a fun fact during my research. I didn't know that Banff is Canada's first national park and also the third in the world. The world's third national park. Yeah. That's pretty cool. Yeah, it's old as fuck basically. It was enlarged in 1887 and at that time it was just called the Rocky Mountains National Park.
00:24:29
Speaker
so okay I didn't know that um and the the hotel itself the Banff Springs was uh also it's also called the Castle of the Rockies which is cool I think oh that's great um and it was built in 1888 so
00:24:56
Speaker
hundred years before I was born. Yeah. It's real. Right? So it was kind of built during when the railway was being built further and further west much like in America all the people kept pushing further and further west. So that's how they came up with
00:25:20
Speaker
where I had to build a hotel out in what I'm sure was the middle of nowhere at the time. And it's still pretty like in the woods and whatever. Yeah, it's apparently considered to be built in the style of Canadian Chateau-esque with elements of Scottish baronial architecture and the arts and crafts movement.
00:25:44
Speaker
I mean, that's fair. The relative that built it is from a small area off Scotland. Oh my god. Yes, it's basically supposed to look like a castle. It does. It really does look like a castle.
00:26:08
Speaker
Oh, we have to stay there. Goals. So expensive. Yeah. Yeah. We'll have to get a deal. We'll have to get a deal. And speaking of castles, they've had royalty stay here, including Queen Elizabeth II. May she rest in peace. King George VI, and also people like Helen Keller and Marilyn Monroe. Yes.
00:26:39
Speaker
Yeah, Marilyn Monroe. Was it in Jasper? It must have been in Banff and Jasper like area. She was filming a movie. Oh, okay. Yeah. Anywhere they needed mountains and they wanted them cheaper than the US Rocky Mountains. Yeah, I don't know what movie it is because there's a picture of her at one of the hot springs and stuff as well.
00:27:07
Speaker
Yeah, I wonder if I can find that and put it on our social media. That sounds cool. Yeah, I see it because I follow a Facebook group that's I think it's called old timey Canada or something and they're always posting pictures about stuff but they have they always post like Marilyn Monroe and where she was in Canada like a bunch of other people.
00:27:28
Speaker
But I feel like I run across pictures of her from Alberta like at least once or twice, like a week. I'm like, okay, picture something else. Yeah, we get it. She was here.
00:27:45
Speaker
and oh one more person that was there was the guy the guy the other royal edward prince of wales who i guess was the one that was like briefly king edward the eighth but then abdicated to marry wallace simpson a socialite and divorcee scandalous i wouldn't know anything about that well it's it's interesting to me because that's
00:28:15
Speaker
I think the one that was the uncle of Queen Elizabeth II. And so because he abdicated, then her dad had to become king. And so then when he died, then she became queen. I feel like it had kind of a direct, you know, I think it was her uncle, but it could be wrong.
00:28:36
Speaker
I didn't write that part down, relying on my terrible memory. I just watched the crown, so that's what I'm basing it off of. No, in general knowledge. And also in 1988, the hotel became a National Historic Site of Canada and is now considered to be a UNESCO World Heritage Site, so it's here to stay. Nobody can
00:29:03
Speaker
bulldoze it or anything now. Yeah, who would want to? Oh yeah. I'll have to put pictures. It's so pretty. To give you an idea for those that haven't been there, this little gem is tucked away in a valley carved out by a glacier amid the Rocky Mountains. This stone castle is surrounded by glacier-fed lakes of turquoise waters. My travel agent is showing.
00:29:34
Speaker
And, of course, the Banff Hot Springs, the main attraction to that particular spot and why they built right there, I guess. I haven't been to them, unfortunately. We couldn't even make it to the... Sorry. Oh, I was gonna say the Banff Hot Springs isn't as nice as the Jasper one.
00:29:56
Speaker
Oh, the Mayat Hot Springs? Yeah, the Mayat one's a lot nicer, because the one, the Banff Hot Springs is like a sulfur one, and it just smells like rotten egg, like extremely strongly. And the Jasper one doesn't at all, the Mayat Hot Springs doesn't at all.
00:30:16
Speaker
we keep trying to get to the jasper one i mean we literally were just in jasper but it was closed for the season because it's literally like october and normally by now we'd probably like be pretty chilly and maybe even have snow places yeah um my mom's
00:30:35
Speaker
husband Claude was just because she's out of town visiting me then he went to visit some of his family in Ontario and we were having a hot day and he was like yeah we just got like
00:30:48
Speaker
six inches of snow. Oops, Canada's weird. Yeah. So yeah, it's just a beautiful area. In my opinion, the Rocky Mountains, Canada side are probably even more beautiful, but I haven't really been to the ones in the US. So I can't really say that for sure. Yeah, they're very pretty.
00:31:16
Speaker
and I must point out especially because I'm you know married to a BC boy that the it's it's on the border most of these you know the mountain range is basically the natural divider between BC and Alberta and has all these crazy ski hills on either side yeah definitely a hot spot for tourists
00:31:45
Speaker
So it was originally wood but then it was rebuilt in stone after a fire in 1926 and was loosely based on a Scottish castle with towers and the lake. Yeah so of course I love it. Yeah I just like stone building so it's like my favorite thing. Yeah.
00:32:08
Speaker
Yeah, stonework and just beautiful architectural details. Oh, yeah. All the like rusticness of all the stuff in the mountain towns is like everything's like wood and stone and you know what I mean? Looks like a log cabin and yeah, gorgeous.
00:32:28
Speaker
So yeah it's definitely been a world-class destination ever since and this hotel has 768 rooms of various sizes so it's pretty big. And like when you're there you can definitely do all the skiing and the snowshoeing in the winter and the golfing, hiking, fishing, river rafting and horseback riding in the other months. Oh yeah.
00:32:54
Speaker
And then relax in the spa afterwards, because they all have a spa. And theirs is called the Willow Stream.
00:33:00
Speaker
Yeah, nice. And then the okay, this I have done because the Banff gondola I remember when I was a kid, we did a cross country country trip and we were so young, we were like calling it the granola. It's cute. I like that. Yeah, it's basically like the sky tram, which did I say that before we started recording or after but we you take the little
00:33:28
Speaker
car cable car thing up the side of a mountain and get all those gorgeous pictures basically yeah um the resident historian at the hotel is a man named david moberg so he could tell you all about the ghosts and stories of the hotel if he still works there hopefully
00:33:50
Speaker
And I came across a fun fact that said, the hotel was actually built backwards with the amazing mountain vista views available to the kitchen staff and not the paying guests. Oh, Jesus. But this was discovered partway through the construction by Van Horn when the guy who built it, I guess, when he visited to check on progress, bet he was pretty pissed. This is a quote, sorry.
00:34:21
Speaker
renovations fixed this to move things around, plus the addition of a gazebo. It didn't really matter though. And that's because this was before the fire. So it was going to be rebuilt anyway. So it's actually all facing right now. That's good. I'm like, oh, that sucks. I know. I was like, what now?
00:34:42
Speaker
They did. What is this? The Winchester Mystery House? Everything's counterintuitive. Yeah. All right, so on to the ghosts. There is the bride is.
00:35:05
Speaker
is going on downstairs. The bride, the cliche woman in white that you might see in her wedding dress. She was supposedly a woman in the 1920s that was staying at the hotel about to be married to her beau. But on her wedding day, as she swept down the staircase to the delight of the onlookers below, something tragic happened.
00:35:33
Speaker
whether she simply snagged her heel on her gown or she got startled and tripped or the dress just caught fire and that caused her to lose her balance. The stories are mixed. She tripped or she suddenly caught fire on the stairs. I was not expecting you to say that.
00:35:54
Speaker
Sorry, well there's apparently a lot of candles on the side of the staircase. So it's possible that what caused the incident was the dress catching fire. Either way it seems to be decided on that like she eventually her dress was burning and she fell and probably broke her neck.
00:36:18
Speaker
it's unconfirmed obviously and she became the bent neck lady no sorry full circle yeah i wonder if she saw her doppelganger
00:36:36
Speaker
Um, now she is often seen, like a veiled figure on the staircase going forever up and down. Or she's seen either dancing sometimes or dining alone in the cascade ballroom, waiting for her love to find her in death, I guess. I don't know. She's been waiting a hundred years. Right? Why can't she move on? He's certainly dead by now. Yeah.
00:37:05
Speaker
But fun for her, apparently she's so iconic, she was given her own collectible stamp as part of the Haunted Canada series. And a commemorative coin. I love Canada. Like what is wrong with us? And a commemorative coin. We talked about the cryptid coins. Now we have ghosts on her coin.
00:37:29
Speaker
We do like to put weird things in our coins and not just our animals. Yeah. And now in Alberta, we got dinosaurs on our driver's license, because why not? That's true. We're keeping it classy. We found our bones here. Yeah. Keep it classy with our- We found the Albertasaurus. Yeah. Our monopoly money that-
00:37:52
Speaker
People believe it smells like maple syrup and I have smelled it. I'm one of those people I believe. I think that's a myth. No, because like in our cash office, I'm counting like literally $7,000 and like you can smell freaking maple syrup sometimes. No, really? Oh my gosh. Yeah, it's weird.
00:38:14
Speaker
I was like I think that one is maybe they could talk us into it by telling us that enough but it's you can't rip it you could basically get it wet like it's like this plastic money it is really cool like it I don't know what I don't know what they can do to it I would believe they could do almost anything it doesn't hold up it can crack it gets like cracks in it weirdly in spots and then pieces will fall and it can be like the
00:38:43
Speaker
part of it can be worn off like all the silver that they put on it and stuff. That foily stuff can all get worn off. Yeah. Yeah. Because I had one and when I was counting the money that like all that stuff was worn off and like half of it was a $5 bill and like half the blue part was gone and I was like, wow, it was just like clear plastic. I was like, what is this? Oh, that is strange. Yeah.
00:39:12
Speaker
Just like all the color leached out. Yeah. All right, so this next ghost is probably my favorite. And his name was Sam McCauley. And we know that. And he's probably the next one that's seen the most by guests. He was a former bellman that worked at the hotel in the 60s and 70s.
00:39:38
Speaker
so kind of explains how they knew him yeah but yeah he was the head bellman um a very by the time he you know worked there and died elderly Scottish gentleman so i'm like aw i love him already uh
Spooky Castle Tales and Cultural Shifts
00:40:02
Speaker
so by the time he passed he was still working there in 1975 he like i think retired
00:40:08
Speaker
retired a few times but just kept coming back like one of those kind of people. He stayed on in his beloved post still helping guests who need help getting into rooms or turning on lights things that were always his duties and then I have another quote about Sam to say Sam loved working at the hotel would be an understatement. Retiring from his job on numerous occasions he was always drawn back to the role he enjoyed so much
00:40:37
Speaker
At one point, the aging Sam informed his friends and colleagues that when he died, he would return to haunt the Banff Springs Hotel. Well, he predicted that one. He's like, just so you know, I plan on it.
00:40:51
Speaker
so be prepared he's part of the midnight club he's like i'm gonna do this and that and that will be me which i think is a good idea you should have a sign set up with your friends and loved ones like what are you gonna say if you come back after you die how are you gonna let them know it's you specifically like i think houdini had a trigger word with his wife because he was obsessed with it i've heard i've heard of that yeah
00:41:19
Speaker
Yeah, in the in the show what they do is they thought one person had seen a sign. So the next time they all get together, they were talking about it and they voted on whether or not they believed it was a sign. And they're like, no, not a sign because it was just for a second. They didn't say anything. And like all the medications they're on because they're kids with like cancer and terminal illnesses, some of some of them can cause hallucinations. Sure. Yeah, they're just like,
00:41:50
Speaker
they don't know and they they all voted and were like it wasn't a sign oh no that's sad okay i have to watch the show now it's good i'm really enjoying it it's like fun it's not too like scary and it's got like a now it's got like kind of a murder mystery going on like in the plot oh hell yeah yeah i'm digging it i just picked up a bunch of those from the library murder mystery
00:42:20
Speaker
Yeah. So for Sam, there's one story about him that people always tell about these two older women who were guests in the hotel that had rung for the bellman to help them get into their room. They were having trouble with the key. But the regular bellman at the time was busy with another guest. When he returned, it was actually 15 minutes later to his
00:42:48
Speaker
desk or whatever and he heard that this room needed help and so he headed to their room only to find out that they were already inside and so puzzled he like knocked and asked them how they got help because he was only the the only person on duty at the desk um and they said an elderly gentleman who was wearing a plaid jacket had helped them
00:43:12
Speaker
And that was the description of Sam. Yeah, that's creepy. Yeah, there was one tiny picture of him in another group of people and they were wearing plaid pants in that one. But I forgot to see if it or to download it to put it on the drive. Yeah, I mean, it's a helpful ghost. Yeah. Which is awesome. You just don't get that too often.
00:43:42
Speaker
No, we had one of our hauntings. I think we were talking about one of them who folded laundry or something, wasn't it? Oh my gosh. Do you remember that? No, I can't remember that right now either. I've listened to too many podcasts. I might have done it. I might have talked about it.
00:44:06
Speaker
Okay, it is always easier to remember the stuff that you talk about yourself than usually just because you wrote the notes. Yeah. So he would also help guests get to their proper floors in the elevator, perform wake up calls and help guests haul up their luggage. So he's still strong apparently. Yeah, like 700 guests. That's a lot.
00:44:35
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Guests describe seeing an elderly Scottish bellman in decades-old garb, or, because his old office is now a guest room, they'll see him there in that particular room, which is on the mezzanine floor, I guess. And then people will feel cold spots on the sixth, seventh, and ninth floors, the ninth floor, especially he's seen a lot on. I guess he likes it, I don't know.
00:45:04
Speaker
Maybe that's the one his old office is on. That wasn't clear to me. Yeah, but if you do try to start up like an actual conversation with him or try to tip him, then he immediately vanishes. That's why I guess he can keep helping people, but nobody really catches on in time. It's like, wait, that was a ghost? Yeah, that'd be creepy.
00:45:34
Speaker
But you're also like, eh, thank you. Helped me to my room. Carried my suitcase for me. Right. And if you do see the elevator doors opening on their own, one source said that it's Sam's way of saying hi. So maybe that was his sign. Because he liked to help people in the elevators. Yeah. I love Sam. Sounds pretty great.
00:46:03
Speaker
Yeah. And then just to end it off, because mine's not super, super long, we have some haunted rooms actually. So the one that we kind of know the room number for is actually the one that has a very dark history so that the room doesn't really exist anymore.
00:46:31
Speaker
it was room 873 yes so 873 yes i know and yes i came across a few things that were like ooh haunted rooms this was probably the inspiration for like the shining and i was like but it's not though yeah because the shining wasn't that that was the stanley hotel and it's like its own thing so exactly
00:47:02
Speaker
But I can see why people would get confused. There's some similarities. Yeah. Yeah. Like we got a haunted room. It's rumored that what happened in there was a family annihilation. A man staying with his wife and daughter and killed them and then himself apparently. Not that there's any actual record of it. Yeah.
00:47:30
Speaker
But who knows? Well, they definitely said there was investigations and then they closed off the room. So it might be something where they don't like to talk about it too much now because it's not maybe great for tourism or whatever. I should ask because my dad, I believe it's my dad's cousin, she used to work at the
00:47:58
Speaker
Banff Springs Hotel. She worked there for like a number of years. Seriously, you have so many family connections. I can't remember what my dad said she did there.
00:48:13
Speaker
Yeah, I can't remember. He was just telling me about it what just when we were like driving in the area to go look at it and stuff but I can't remember what he said because we never stayed there because it was before like you guys were born and but she would have gotten the rooms really cheap and we could have stayed there and
00:48:34
Speaker
They were talking about like, well, we don't know because it's been like decades since she worked there, like years and years since she worked there. If like, oh yeah, so-and-so used to work here, like pull any strings, but. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no kidding. But yeah, if she'd worked there for a while, I'm sure she'd heard some stories. So that's cool. It'd be cool to talk to her. Yeah. And now they hear screams you can hear around there.
00:49:05
Speaker
and sorry it's like the room's covered up now but either in that room or room's adjacent where people will always see these bloody handprints appear on the mirror oh creepy yeah
00:49:25
Speaker
And apparently they would either like disappear immediately, like before you could get the housekeeping to come up there and clean them, or they would just stubbornly refuse to go away at all and you couldn't scrub them off. That's creepy. I have a thing similar in mine where it's like mirrors. Yeah. Ooh, cool.
00:49:50
Speaker
Yeah. So yeah, I guess it's since been boarded off and it looks like a hallway, just a long bit of hallway where they're missing a room where it used to be. But you could tell because every other floor has a room ending in 73 except for the eighth floor. And yeah, they watched a little quick clip where like, yeah, 73, 875, you got all the other ones and then just a big long space.
00:50:16
Speaker
And apparently on that space of the wall outside the old room, sometimes a small girl's shadow will appear. And sometimes people have been able to photograph that too. Oh, creepy. Yeah, it'd be cool to find some of those pictures.
00:50:33
Speaker
Yeah. Um, and the last secret, the last room, there was a secret room, the last secret room, uh, that was built, yeah, during construction on the original wood structure. Uh, but basically just an error occurred and they built a room with no doors or windows. Um, oops, forget creepy. That's so creepy.
00:51:03
Speaker
Yes, it was an accident does the air quotes. But like, yeah, so they just tried to like hide it from the owner. They were like, oops, that's the wrong kind of room. Guess we can't fix that. Because I don't know why you couldn't just put a door in it. But
00:51:21
Speaker
They just kept it hidden and it wasn't discovered until the 1926 fire. And then when that broke out and they were like, hey, there was a weird room in here. So they, they hit it for 40 years. Almost. I guess. Wow. I mean, they succeeded. 40 years? Am I going to be 40 in 1926? Or I mean, in 20.
00:51:50
Speaker
crisis sorry I'm with you you're right yeah it was a while it was a while with had they kept it secret I don't know how they just bored like there's so many boarded up places it's like maybe yeah they're like what's to see back there nothing storage
00:52:14
Speaker
But ever since it was discovered, from what I could read, nothing happened in that room because it wasn't discovered until the fire. But then ever since the fire, apparently in that area, people see figures in that section of the hallway, like waiting outside the room. I know. Weird. And people also report hearing the burning bride, as they like to call her in the bridal suite.
00:52:44
Speaker
even when it's vacant. Aw, that'd be so sad. Yeah, that'd be so sad, isn't it? Yeah. You're like, damn, girl. Why is there always a dead bride or a dead wife? Like, I hear so many stories where they're like, and she was waiting for her husband to come home
00:53:04
Speaker
from, you know, being at sea and then he didn't come home with the first boat so she killed herself and then he like comes home the next day and you're like, no! You had waited. This ain't Romeo and Juliet calm down. Yeah, don't be so quick to offer yourself. Sleep on it. Yeah, just a man. Yeah.
00:53:30
Speaker
Okay, so this is kind of shining ask. A phantom bartender has been seen by both staff and guests. Yeah, very shining ask. Yeah, no word on whether he looks like Jack Torrance. Yeah. And he will cut you off saying that you've had too much to drink and then you should go to bed. All the ghosts sounds like
00:53:57
Speaker
I mean, I don't know about the Burning Bride, but everybody else sounds semi helpful. They're just continuing their jobs. They're very benign. Yeah, you don't feel like they're a evil entity at all. Yeah. Oh, and then there's a rumored headless ghost who plays the bagpipes just for good measure.
00:54:25
Speaker
How? How do you play the bank? Right? How do you do your headless? I don't know! But he's the one you can't find any more information on, so it's possible. It's just a story that keeps getting repeated. But it was in a lot of different sources, so... Interesting. I don't know. Yeah.
00:54:47
Speaker
There was an article I read on Canadian living and when the author went there to stay at the hotel, Aiden was the guard on duty.
00:55:01
Speaker
and he visited and this Tim Johnson guy who was writing the article asked him a few questions while on his rounds and the guard said we do regular sweeps of all the guest room floors and one night every time I passed the elevator it opened but nobody got off
00:55:20
Speaker
And so Tim asked him, who was writing the article, said, was it Sam, the bellman, do you think? And Aiden replied, the guy works here for decades. And what does he do after he dies? He comes back and works the elevators? No, I don't believe that. Right? A bit of a skeptic, I think, is he. The beatless, saddest afterlife ever. But he loved his job. Unless you super enjoyed it. Yeah.
00:55:51
Speaker
I can't imagine spending my life being in customer service. No, thank you. No, no. I'd come back and do the podcast though. So as Tim was heading back to his suite where he was writing this lovely article, which by the way was called the Vice Regal, ooh, da, da. The suite. Because of course it was.
00:56:17
Speaker
And then the doors just swung suddenly shut in front of him. So he was a little bit puzzled and felt a bit eerie until he heard the fire alarm go off too. And then he realized it was just part of the fire safety prevention measures.
00:56:35
Speaker
So I guess that wasn't so scary. But Skeptic Aiden does share another anecdote from his time as a guard there. At the Waldhaus restaurant during one of his night rounds, he passed through to see a bar stool spinning round and round of its own accord. Nobody else was around. Everything was closed. Yeah. That'd be creepy. Right? How can you still be a skeptic after you saw that? You can't explain that. Yeah.
00:57:07
Speaker
Gordo just woke up from his nap. That's what I got. What? Oh, sorry. It's just like Gordo woke up from his nap. He was like stretching. Kicking his leg so it never should get like that. Oh, yes, the big stretch. I'm like, don't kick my mic. Yeah, the jiggle stretch. He's like, yeah.
00:57:31
Speaker
It's like, yeah, Fenrir does that. I'm familiar. Yeah, like, oh, that's a good looking stretch. Yeah. No, I don't want to buy Microsoft 365. Okay. That's it for me. So distracting.
00:57:53
Speaker
oh my god he keeps stretching and he's like literally slowly like turning so it's like stomach and he's half upside down so he's like oh on the dust slowest stretch ever okay we will be back after these messages yes for more spooky stories
00:58:20
Speaker
Perfect timing, Gordo. He's excited. He's shaking himself off. Yay! Okay. Well, our first one was only 104. That's short for us. Banter and Case. Right? Yeah. Well, see, mine's also kind of on the shorter side. It's only four pages.
00:58:46
Speaker
Mine was only like five and some of that was sources. I was going to like, I had a back, you know, of course there was other ones on the short list. You're like, I can do this if this isn't long enough. And then I was like, literally kind of ran out of time and also was like, well, it's okay. No one's ever complained that they've been too short. Yeah. That's funny. I do have two places I'm going to talk about.
00:59:16
Speaker
and oh yeah okay gorgeous pink so distracted sorry just like paid oh he's so cute though um yeah so i can't see him but i assume he's doing his dirty little face yeah he's got such a derpy face
00:59:42
Speaker
Um, that's like, my mom will be like, Fenrir, he's laying with his tongue half out. I'm like, yeah, that's his little blep tongue. Yep. He does that. Lots of dogs do. Oh, love it.
00:59:54
Speaker
Yeah. So I did for mine put a few pictures in the drive. Oh, damn. Both of the places and of the ghosts that I found. What? Yeah, it's actually kind of creepy. That's part of the reason I picked these is because I was like, oh, that like legit, you can see something like in these pictures. Oh, I love it when there's a picture to look up. Yeah.
01:00:24
Speaker
The first place is called the Myrtle's Plantation. That's what I had heard of in looking for a case. Yeah, you said you ran across it. This one is located in Louisiana, and it's a huge house or mansion on this plantation.
01:00:50
Speaker
that has 20 rooms sitting on high ground. So I think it was like maybe a hill area. It was... Okay, it's always good to have the high ground. Yep. It was owned by the Woodruffs. And Mr. Woodruff was a prestigious judge. And because it's a plantation, you can assume that there was numerous slaves
01:01:18
Speaker
uh that worked on the property and the family was known pretty well for their cruelty uh i assume in their treatment of these slaves so oh no yeah that's even worse because like having slaves was also something that like quite a few people did at the time but then it's like you're also known for being shitty to them yeah
01:01:47
Speaker
So one of the house slaves went by the name Chloe. So this is one of the ghosts that they say haunts the place. So when she was alive, she tried to protect herself from the abuse she was receiving by the family by trying to listen to the Woodruff's conversations.
01:02:09
Speaker
and using this to predict what their mood was like and would try and modify her behavior accordingly so pretty like abuse survival things oh yeah that's a total technique like yeah you just become attuned to people's moods especially if you know they're like gonna fly off the handle at any given moment yeah
01:02:34
Speaker
Uh, one time, however, she was caught eavesdropping and in just terrible, terrible cruelty, they, Mr. Woodruff decided to have Chloe's ears cut off. And yeah. That's a bit much. Yeah.
01:02:56
Speaker
Absolutely brutal. This disfigurement, she continued to work on the property, and at the request of the Woodruffs, she hid the disfigurement. I don't know who really knew about it besides them. It was hidden under a green turban that she wore every day. What the hell? Nobody knew they had done this to her, I'd assume.
01:03:25
Speaker
It wasn't even to scare the other slaves then. It's like... Yeah, I don't think so. Just to be especially cruel. Yeah. Wow. They're sadistic. Okay. I hate them. Yeah. So obviously this very traumatic experience stayed with Chloe and she began formulating her plans for revenge.
01:03:49
Speaker
So on the Woodruff's daughter's ninth birthday, Chloe decided to put her revenge plan into action and she put the poisonous oleander leaves into the daughter's birthday cake. Chloe says that her plan was to simply poison the family and just make them sick.
01:04:19
Speaker
and saying that she may have intended just to make them sick so that she could nurse them back to health. As in the South, in the US, local healers were more well respected. And if she was able to heal them back to health, this may kind of earn their favor and they may award her better treatment than they had in the past if she could somehow make them better.
01:04:47
Speaker
At least that was her story anyway. I mean, at this point you had to be like harboring some resentment or some PTSD from dealing with them. Other people just say that it was basically her intention to kill the family because Chloe did end up putting too much of the leaves into the cake.
01:05:14
Speaker
And she did end up succeeding in killing Miss Woodruff and the two children. So I think it was just- Oh, the two children. Yeah, I think it was just- They didn't do anything. Woodruff, who I believe didn't eat the cake and that's why he lived, basically. Yeah. Okay, well she had to have known that she was punishing the kids too by doing that. Like, come on girl. Yeah.
01:05:43
Speaker
So after this the word spread through the plantation about what she had done and through the different slaves that were also on the property and the other slaves were actually the ones to take revenge. Just like absolutely brutal.
01:06:05
Speaker
Uh, they like basically attacked Chloe and they ended up stringing her up by the neck out in the open for everyone to see like from a tree. And they left her there until she died. Basically, I don't know if it like broke her neck or like suffocated her or if they just left her there. But she ended up dying. Because she killed their...
01:06:32
Speaker
Masters or whatever. Basically. It didn't really have a thing just that they all turned against her. That's not what I was expecting. Right? Yeah. Like more happy about that. Yeah, I don't know if they were maybe punished for it or something.
01:06:55
Speaker
yeah or could be for the kids yeah it wasn't like you couldn't do anything as a as a slave to like a white person because you'd immediately get killed yeah uh so after she was strung up i assumed in a tree uh she was eventually cut down and they weighted her body down with rocks and she was thrown into the mississippi river holy shit okay
01:07:27
Speaker
Uh, not too long after this, the plantation was sold to a new family with the new owners consisting of a wealthy man and his five children who would all eventually pass away, I believe, in the house from tuberculosis. Oh no. Yeah, this property is just like crazy. Right, yeah. I couldn't, I didn't find much about the deaths in mine, but yours is like, no wonder this place is haunted. Right?
01:07:58
Speaker
So that family now all died as well. The plantation was then passed to one of the surviving daughters, along with her husband, they were the Winters. So this is one of the daughters of that wealthy man, Mr. Winter. Yeah, it's a pretty good name. Mr. Winter, her husband was a proud member of the community and taught Sunday school at the house. And
01:08:27
Speaker
One day Mr. Winter was teaching when an unknown man rode up on a horse on the property and was yelling for Mr. Winter to come out and talk to him basically. He came out of the house. The headed horseman!
01:08:50
Speaker
So when Mr. Winter came out of the house, this unknown man shot at Mr. Winter as he was kind of standing on the porch. Mr. Winter fled the porch and went back inside the house and was able to stagger up the stairs before eventually dying in his wife's arms. Damn. Yeah. That escalated quickly.
01:09:17
Speaker
uh what the heck the last bit of information i basically have that's all you have on that story damn
01:09:26
Speaker
Like the hauntings before I get to the hauntings and stuff. Yeah, I know. But that just another one is like, I wish there was more. I was like, what happened? Why did you do that? Yeah, no, that's all I have. Today, as far as I could tell, the plantation is operating as a bed and breakfast. It was recognized by National Geographic as one of the most haunted houses in America.
01:09:53
Speaker
They do some visiting tours for visitors on the grounds as well as through the buildings during the day and special ones at night. So even though it's operating, it's a bed and breakfast. It does do these like ghost tours. Okay, hopefully they don't keep you up when you're trying to sleep and they're investigating. Visitors report hearing heavy
01:10:23
Speaker
Footsteps from this staircase that from empty staircases that they think is mr. Winter I guess they're like kind of clumpy like angry footsteps Can't comment on whether or not he seemed like an angry person in life cuz all I had was like four sentences Right cuz he wasn't the one that was an asshole to Chloe no, he's the school teacher that got shot and
01:10:51
Speaker
Oh yeah, we don't know why he got shot. Yeah. No, I couldn't find anything else. Okay. This was a lot of this information also was from like the Myrtles Plantation website. They had a lot of the history and stuff too. Nice, right from the source. Yeah, they actually had a lot of stuff about the ghosts and everything and like some of the best like photographic ones. I was like, yeah, take that off their website. Cool.
01:11:21
Speaker
I love that. It's like lean into it. Yeah. So yeah, they think that's Mr. Winter. The plantation has been used as a film set in a few movies, such as the movie Long Hot Summer. I don't think I've ever watched that or could tell you anything about it, but it was filmed there. Sounds familiarish.
01:11:45
Speaker
It's interesting because when they were filming, the cast and crew witnessed furniture moving around the house on its own. Maybe they filmed that this summer. It was long and hot. It's new. The activity continued and then in the 1970s, it was purchased by the Myers family.
01:12:11
Speaker
Uh, I think Michael Myers. That's what I thought too. No. Uh, we got into the Myers. I think who were the Myers to recognize the name. I don't know. I think they're the ones that operate it now. Maybe that's why I know the name. Um, okay. Yeah.
01:12:38
Speaker
So they purchased it by the Myers family. Multiple guests and residents have reported seeing transparent and ghostly apparitions of a young girl wearing a green turban on the property. Oh no. So they believe that's Chloe.
01:12:54
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. There's also- It's very specific. It's like it's too specific not to be clear. Right? Yeah. There's also, so if you go through the pictures that are on the drive, I did kind of put them into order so that it wouldn't give too many spoilers. So yeah, the first picture, and then if you go to the second picture,
01:13:24
Speaker
The first picture is just kind of like up the grounds. They're always those big sweeping white houses with wraparound porches, aren't they? Yeah, that's a big thing. They were talking about everybody loves the porch.
01:13:38
Speaker
uh so there's to one on i'm sorry uh i know they went to like a plantation on ghost hunters but i think it was like rose hall i don't think it was this oh but maybe yeah you'll tell me i don't know yeah i didn't run anything so the second one
01:14:01
Speaker
There's this, when I said, oh mirrors, there's a thing about mirrors in mine. There's this reoccurring issue with a mirror in the ground hallway where this antique mirror sits outside the dining room. Visitors report seeing the Woodruff's children appear in the mirror near the room where they were actually poisoned. Oh no.
01:14:24
Speaker
Additionally, what you can see in the photograph is one researcher said that each time the mirror is replaced or re-silvered, the same handprint or handprints reappear in the mirror, which is what that picture is of. And you can see it, like there's markings on it very clearly and it looks like palm and fingers. It's just kind of smeared a little bit, but you can definitely see it.
01:14:52
Speaker
like in dust like yeah from muddy hands or something yeah oh gross yeah i could see that immediately when i opened up the picture and then you said you could see the kids in the mirror sometimes and i was like ew yeah you were in that picture from what i could find i couldn't find that one but the handprint one is from i think that's i don't think that was from their website but the next few pictures are from their website the myrtles plantation
01:15:20
Speaker
Um, so there's a picture, you can go to picture three, there's a picture of two girls that were taken on the grounds that appear to show a young girl referred to as the ghost girl that they say is wearing a red, a red dress and standing in the window behind them. So like the picture, it's kind of like the two pictures and the one zooms in. And then the picture after that is even more zoomed in and you can actually see like her silhouette. You can make out her supposed face and even the details of her dress.
01:15:49
Speaker
It's pretty creepy. Second one. Okay. So there's the picture of the two ladies and the one zooms in and then the picture after that picture four is like really zoomed in. Yeah. Oh, yeah, it is easier to see there. That looks
01:16:11
Speaker
wow yeah i can see your face and stuff now and yeah like you can see the pattern of the dress and everything like yeah like it's got stripes on the bottom and then on the waist and then some sort of collar i would say yeah wow um shit so yeah those were creepy that's from the myrtles plantation website um man yeah you don't ever get clear
01:16:39
Speaker
pictures yeah like yeah that's almost like there's one called like the demon boy i forget where it is now but it's like yeah where you could actually see like a head and face and you're like okay yeah that's yeah
01:16:55
Speaker
The next one is a little hard to see but in 1992 the owner of the plantation took what is referred to as a famous photograph that they say is a picture containing Chloe's spirit. The picture was taken to document the property for insurance purposes so it's kind of like a wide shot
01:17:21
Speaker
And when I think I can't remember who said that they noticed that there was a figure standing against the white siding kind of in the middle. So that's picture five.
01:17:34
Speaker
Um, if you look almost dead center, there's like an arrow pointed to it. Um, I forgot to say like zoomed in or anything. Oh, okay. I was like, captured her spirit. Let it out. You know, like how some cultures think that like, yeah, take their picture. Yeah. It steals their soul.
01:17:55
Speaker
Yeah, there's something up against the side of that house. Yeah, there's better ones that are zoomed in. I didn't realize I didn't save any of them. But you can make out when it's like zoomed in super close, you can make out like the arm, you can make out their head and everything. And you can clearly see. Yeah, sorry.
01:18:20
Speaker
Sorry. Like a person leaning against the wall with their arms kind of crossed in front of them or something. Yeah. So from the Myrtle's Plantation website, I liked their little write-up they had about this picture. It said, the National Geographic Explorer filming crew determined that the photograph definitely contained what appeared to be an apparition of what they believed to be a slave girl.
01:18:47
Speaker
The slave girl appeared in the breezeway between the General's store and the butler's pantry of the mansion. The horizontal exterior boards of the mansion were clearly visible through the body of the apparition. That's easier to make out in the zoomed in ones. The National Geographic Explorer used the photograph and their documentary and suggested that a postcard should be made of the photograph.
01:19:15
Speaker
Mr. Norman Benoit, a patent researcher, visited the Myrtles Plantation in May of 1995 and requested permission to research the postcard. After enlarging the postcard and doing a shadow density procedure, Mr. Benoit discovered that all of the physical measurements of the apparition were of a human dimension and proportions, and the circumference of the head, the length of the shoulder to the elbow,
01:19:44
Speaker
And the length of the elbow to the wrist were all indicative of a human. This postcard is referred to as the Chloe postcard, which I think is what this picture was. This is the postcard that they did. That's why it's not zoomed in. It's the postcard with the arrow or something.
01:20:10
Speaker
Yeah, because there's a very fancy script on the upper corner that says the Myrtle Plantation. Yeah, I think this picture is supposed to be the postcard. But yeah, the zoomed in ones are pretty creepy. Well, no, you can see it pretty good even in this one. Yeah, like you can tell the arm like resting on the side and it's kind of like a bit of a side profile. It's not quite like straight on, but
01:20:40
Speaker
Yeah, it's pretty creepy. Yeah, and it's, I don't know, it's different than when you just see kind of a shadow outline of a figure and all you can see is like a head and two shoulders, say. Like this one just, yeah, it looks much more solid. Yeah. Yeah. Really good pictures. Wow. Yeah, I really liked that one. The pictures for the next one aren't like pictures of anything haunting.
01:21:06
Speaker
Oh, I know. Most places don't have any good pictures. That's why I didn't even bother to look. I was like, I don't know. It said some people might have caught the little girl figure, but that was the only one that really said people had pictures of. So I was like, yeah. Yeah. My second place also kind of has
01:21:29
Speaker
Not like a cool history, but a history and then some hauntings. History is fraught with all sorts of problems, yeah. This place is called the Castle of Good Hope and it's in Cape Town, South Africa. Virtual high five, we both did castles. Or like castle nicknamed. Yeah, I feel like
01:21:58
Speaker
Castle of Good Hope, I hope is what they named it recently and not what it was originally named because if it was originally named that, that was pretty shitty of them to do, but... Oh no, okay. You hope? No, I'm just kidding. I hope it wasn't called Castle of Good Hope. And the place is not called Good Hope? No, it's Cape Town.
01:22:29
Speaker
Which I've heard of before. Yeah, yeah. So this is described as kind of a fortress. It has like an exterior wall and everything like that. It definitely is very castle-esque. Lots of stonework.
01:22:53
Speaker
It was originally built from clay and timber in 1652.
01:23:00
Speaker
So it's old as old could be. Yeah, that one wins old AF of the episode. So this like fortress housed a church, there was a bell tower, a bakery, there was living quarters. There was also shops, like little stores, as well as cells and dungeons.
01:23:26
Speaker
Those all go together perfectly. Yeah, shops dotted in between the dungeons. Bakeries, dungeon, we'll get into the torture chamber in a bit. Ooh, okay. Yeah, that's why I'm like, if you guys named this the Castle of Good Hope when it was first built, you guys suck. It was a hopeful name. They were aspiring to be that one day.
01:23:57
Speaker
So yeah, it was later repurposed from 1666 to 1679 by the Dutch East India Company.
01:24:11
Speaker
They're always doing stuff. And it is in South Africa. It's the country's oldest colonial building and was originally built to serve as a replenishment station for ships that were going to be passing through the Cape. So it was supposed to be. OK. Yeah. OK. Yeah, so it was going to be like a. Yeah, barge like shopping dungeon.
01:24:41
Speaker
church i don't know it's a nice stopover town yeah you're on your way to somewhere else and you got to fuel up and it's like maybe it's at the bottom of the horn or the gate yeah yeah um if you look at the first few pictures it's kind of cool it shows like the exterior wall that was kind of built surrounding it and it shows the bell tower
01:25:07
Speaker
And then the second picture is an aerial shot of it above, and it looks pretty intense. It kind of looks like the Pentagon. Just intense. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a Pentagon shaped fortress. Very cool. Yeah, it looks very cool from above. Kind of looks like it has some sort of hedge around it too.
01:25:35
Speaker
Yeah, they've kept it up. It's like places where they are actually still recreation like the one there's the one in hell. Yes. Citadel Hill. Yeah, that's a big. Holy shit, though. Yeah, I see the bell tower in the first one and lots and lots of stone walls, which are so yeah. It's definitely been kept. They're using it for like a totally different purpose now, which we'll get into the end. But
01:26:05
Speaker
That's good. I hate it when shit like that gets like bombed. Yeah, no, this one's still under operation. It's being used as like a headquarters by like a group. It's kind of cool. Okay. So in 1899 to 1902, the Castle of Good Hope was used as a prison during the second bowler or farmer war.
01:26:34
Speaker
in South Africa. Yeah, so there was this war for three years. One of those little wars. That was famous as the big ones. Nope. But still shitty. So while it was used as this prison, there was a prisoner who was trying to escape by digging his way through the thick cement wall using an iron spoon, and he did nearly escape.
01:27:02
Speaker
However, just as he almost got out, there was a large stone that moved and almost crushed him to death, so he was basically trapped. Oh no! Yeah. That sucks. He was found the next morning unconscious but still alive by a guard. So that's all I have about that.
01:27:27
Speaker
There's so many little snippets of- Yeah, his fingertips are like tasting air and the guard's like, oh, we found you with the stone in your head. Oh my God. Yeah. That sucks. As I kind of quickly mentioned, the fortress also had a torture chamber that was called the Donker Gatt or the Dark Hole. Oh no. Yeah.
01:27:55
Speaker
Not a good hole. Not the good kind of hole. Well, that is what they call it when they throw you in like the dank, solitary shit on most prison shows. The hole. Yeah, this is the dark hole. It was a windowless room and it sometimes flooded in the winter. And when it flooded, it actually ended up drowning all the prisoners that were trapped inside.
01:28:25
Speaker
I can't imagine just how horrific that would have been. It's like a literal hole. Holy shit. No pun intended. The next few pictures, I think, show the kind of prison. There's one, I think, that just talks about the prison. There's some shackles.
01:28:51
Speaker
and stuff, talks about the dungeon light rooms and these little blurbs. I think the whole, I think the one of prisons, a prison cell, it looks pretty small. But the 10th picture is a picture because they say it was, after it flooded, the walls, I think it's like a wooden wall or wooden door. There are some of them are lined with like etchings that people scratched in.
01:29:19
Speaker
Um, so there's a picture of that, uh, one of the Scratching Inn says, quote, in this place, a man has been five months and more without a crime. Uh, so he was probably falsely imprisoned for something. Okay. That's like really neatly written. Yeah. Like someone did that with a knife. It looks like a font.
01:29:46
Speaker
And it's in English in South Africa, so I don't know how much I believe that. So prisoners were locked in these rooms for months to years sometimes. And they basically said that while the castle was operating as a prison, if you even made it to the prison as a prisoner, you were just believed to be already guilty. It didn't matter if you had had a trial or anything.
01:30:20
Speaker
Yeah, there's a tour guide Shamir Robertson at the castle who said, quote, if they were even just suspected of their crime, they were punished. He adds that even if it was put to trial, they were always found guilty. So like, what's the point? Oh, it's just a farce. Okay, great. Yeah, basically. Yeah, it's a trial, quote unquote.
01:30:48
Speaker
Yeah. Punishments at the castle could include dismemberment being dragged through the castle by a horse. Jesus. Yeah. Sorry. Spit take. Joked a little bit. Wow. That's great. Yeah, so you get dismemberment being dragged through the castle by a horse. You could be pierced with a stake in the gallows.
01:31:18
Speaker
good old-fashioned whippings and beatings and then just long periods of isolation in the prison cells or I assume in the the whole like seriously made the evil shit this one yeah started they were originally the 1600s what was it this is the old one you're talking about
01:31:41
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know how when all this took place that it said it was just a prison from 1899 to 1902. Oh, yeah, that's way too late for this kind of crap to be going on. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know if this was but it did have like the prison cells in the dungeon from 1652, I think so it could have been before then. But
01:32:07
Speaker
The timeline was a little hard to piece together on some of this. Right, but it's like whatever they've been doing there, they've been doing it for a long time. Oh yeah. They're like, oh yeah, we just learned that. This is the way we've always done it here. We can't change. Yeah.
01:32:27
Speaker
Um, so the last bit I have for the history of it, it's just that in 1936, the fort or fortress or castle, like grounds was all declared a historical monument. So it's been a monument for almost a hundred years. Oh, just like yours was. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, I think I said it.
01:32:55
Speaker
Yeah, it was 100 years old when it got its national historical site, whatever. And that was the year I was born. Yes, very similar. That's awesome. So getting in, obviously you can assume there's probably lots of ghosts, but there's some specific ones that are talked about most, I guess.
01:33:22
Speaker
The ghostest with the mostest. Yes. The first reported paranormal occurrences started in 1915. Once were said with the apparition of a tall gentleman that was seen on one of the castle's ramparts, part of the defense wall.
01:33:45
Speaker
And so he was witnessed in 1915, and then the same man was seen again in 1947. 32 years later. Wow.
01:34:00
Speaker
And in 1947, he was seen regularly over a two week period where people witnessed him jumping off the side of one of the castle walls and then disappearing just before he is supposed to hit the ground. Weird. Yeah, they've also seen him just walking around the grounds in the wall area kind of patrolling maybe.
01:34:29
Speaker
okay it's like why that one year even if it was the anniversary of his death was around those two weeks yeah uh yeah some of these are just little tiny ones like this one saying there's a man and woman that can be heard arguing near the guards room
01:34:51
Speaker
And it said when people try and go to investigate like the arguing, they see, and to go see them, they only see kind of like a shapeless figure where the people would be, I guess. Oh, weird. I wonder if they're always saying the same thing. I don't know. What are they forever arguing about? That sounds like hell. Right? Yeah.
01:35:18
Speaker
There's also a Lady Anne Bernard who is said to haunt the castle and while alive in the 18th century, she was the first lady and was required to entertain the important guests that visited the castle. Anne Bernard, did you say? Yeah, Lady Anne Bernard.
01:35:46
Speaker
It just makes me think of Andy Bernard. I want to be like, did she go to Stanford? What is it? The school he went to? Oh, the office. Stanford? He's always like, ever heard of it? No, Cornell. He went to Cornell. No. Lady Anne.
01:36:11
Speaker
Lady Andy Bernard. Okay, got it. Yeah, so she was the first lady. She was required to entertain important guests that visited the castle. And they say to this day she appears in the castle when it's being visited by really important people. So they say she shows up to like continue to fulfill her duties of entertaining the important guests that show up there.
01:36:38
Speaker
Oh, she's continues to be ambassador. She stayed on like Sam the Bell Man. Yeah. This one's the shortest. One source said that there was some sort of electrical bell that could be heard somewhere in the castle when no one was around. I don't know anything more about that. Electrical bell, okay.
01:37:07
Speaker
This next one is pretty popular. They talk about this guy's ghost all the time. It involves the Governor General, Peter Geisbert Van Neut. Oh, wow. That's a mouthful. I think that's how you say his name. I didn't look up how to pronounce anything. Sorry. I like Van Neut.
01:37:36
Speaker
Yeah, it's like, I don't know how else to pronounce that. It's N-O-O-D-T. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Sounds almost Dutch, Danish, something like that. I think so, because the first name is like Peter, but it's P-I-E-T-E-R. It's like Peter. Okay. And the South Africa, I feel like there is quite a bit of Dutch there. I think so, yeah.
01:38:05
Speaker
okay so he died on April 23rd 1728 and this day that he died he had actually sentenced seven soldiers to death after they were caught trying to desert the military and then he died yeah it's believed that one of the soldiers he sentenced to death put a curse on him
01:38:34
Speaker
And part of this curse was that he demanded that he come witness their executions. So when Peter failed to show up, he was found dead of a heart attack, one source said. But he was found later that day slumped over his desk with a look of terror on his face.
01:38:59
Speaker
Yeah, they think the curse succeeded. And visitors to the castle say that they can hear him cursing and swearing. Good. What is that? Yeah, it sounds like an angry dude. That's awesome. So the cool picture of the bell tower, like in the 1700s, there's a soldier
01:39:25
Speaker
This isn't so great. Was found hanging from the bell rope inside of the bell tower that overlooks the entrance to the castle. The bell tower. The rope that the bell hangs on. Yeah, he was found hanging from that. I think either that or like inside the bell. I don't know.
01:39:49
Speaker
okay yeah yeah um so he was found hanging the bell tower was constructed in 18 or 1684 and the original bell was sent from amsterdam in 1697 and that bell in the bell tower actually is the original one and it's still there today um amsterdam there's those Dutch again yeah
01:40:18
Speaker
So after the soldier's death, the bell tower was sealed off. However, the bell has been heard ringing on its own. So it's completely sealed off. You can't access it in any way. Yeah, it's like bricked out like you can't go up there. Yeah, but they can hear it ringing.
01:40:44
Speaker
Yeah, because it's like on top of that like walkway type area, you'd have to be able to specifically get up there somehow, unless you're Spider-Man. Yeah, I'm sure they can get up there for you really need to from like a like a lift or like ladders or something. But yeah, you can't just like open a door and get up there.
01:41:10
Speaker
There's visitors that report hearing voices and footsteps in the dungeon as well as through the narrow corridors and hallways. So that's creepy. Oh yeah.
01:41:27
Speaker
Don't love the ghostly footsteps. No. There's a ghost of a black dog that is known to pounce on unsuspecting visitors and then vanish into thin air. Oh no. The Grimm. Yeah, the Grimm. Totally. The castle. Oh, this is kind of like yours. The castle is also haunted by the Lady in Gray.
01:41:56
Speaker
always gray or white. So she's witnessed running through the castle holding her face and then crying hysterically. This apparition has been seen since or has not been seen actually since they did some recent excavations on the property. I don't know if they were doing renovations or what
01:42:21
Speaker
they were doing the excavations for. But this apparition specifically hasn't been seen since there was a woman's body that was found during these excavations and like removed. So they think this body might have been hers and now it's been like released from like haunting the castle grounds. Right. Yeah. That's what it sounds like.
01:42:46
Speaker
also no that's pretty crazy and i was gonna make a joke about the gray lady from like the hogwarts and she also was murdered because i was like it's not the gray lady then i was like whoa
01:43:03
Speaker
creepily murder person like if that's so crazy when stories with ghosts that they come back and I were like this is how I was murdered can you please just yeah help with this I don't have a body anymore thanks bye yeah so how I said they are like keeping up with kind of the grounds and maintaining it
01:43:34
Speaker
The castle is now being used as the castle military museum and ceremonial facilities for the traditional Cape regiments. Oh, okay. Yeah. Not super open to the public, doesn't sound like. No. I think you might be able to do tours there, but I don't really think it's much.
01:44:03
Speaker
Uh, cause it didn't really talk about anything like that, but it did keep saying visitors. So I don't know who these visitors are supposed to be. It might be like officials.
01:44:17
Speaker
Yeah, special special VIPs. Yeah. If you go to picture 11, though, it's kind of cool. So these officials that are in charge replaced a bunch of the colonial symbols and artifacts in that were inside the castle with different displays and statues of great leaders, including ones that had previously been imprisoned at the castle.
01:44:45
Speaker
or even executed there. Oh, that's what statues are. So I think from what I remember, I don't have their names, but three out of four of them were imprisoned at the castle. And they're different like Zulu warriors and leaders and stuff in South Africa. Oh, okay. Yeah, they are very...
01:45:08
Speaker
yeah very different garb all of them are wearing very different outfits i almost thought it was like different time periods at first or something yeah um so these warriors are from they also have different uh cultures and symbols of south african history now that they're incorporating into the museum and then just like on the grounds so they have these statues they've also replaced a bunch there was like a hallway of
01:45:35
Speaker
Basically, you just, I'm gonna say a whole shit ton of white people. They've like slowly replaced it with like a lot more South African like leaders and things like that. But they also did say that they replaced it with a lot of like Dutch people and stuff as well. Yeah, different like historical thing. Yeah.
01:46:00
Speaker
Um, so there's, uh, on the grounds, part of one of the rooms has been turned into a new center for memory healing and learning. Uh, that was, I don't really know what it's supposed to do. Uh, didn't really say, but it said it was something I need memory healing. Right.
01:46:26
Speaker
It's sponsored by the Military Veterans Department, and it rests between a torture chamber and the jail cells. Well, that's appropriate. Right? And it's the last picture. It basically looks like a fancy boardroom. There's a whole bunch of computers, desks, there's like the inter-conference mics, and then there's like a bunch of TVs on like little kind of stand-up carts.
01:46:56
Speaker
Yeah, standard conference room. Yeah, very conference room in between your torture chamber and your jail cells. I mean, it's just calling people. Sorry. Oh, no, go ahead.
01:47:13
Speaker
Um, I like when they repurpose old jails, it's it can be and like, where I used to live in Fredericton, my mom kind of did that. Well, she made a science center into where there was an old historical jail that wasn't wasn't used anymore. So
01:47:32
Speaker
Yeah, we like, yeah, made most of it into a science center, but then kept a few just little rooms where you're like, look, this is the old jail cell. And they're like, kept the bars and everything. And I like to go in in the little cells and be like, this is creepy. Yeah, it's so neat.
01:47:51
Speaker
uh yeah they hope uh just on their little burb they have right up they said that they hope to use 21st century technology in this 17th century building to help tell the history of the area both the good and the bad um yeah yeah because it's it's always there good and the bad of history you can't wash it out then you don't learn from it or whatever yeah
01:48:21
Speaker
My very last thing was just saying that even today there are soldiers that have to guard the castle at night, so I assume it's pretty empty, the soldiers are guarding it at night, and all of these soldiers will avoid passing through the castle's archways. There's a bunch of archways. They say in fear of the restless souls that roam the castle.
01:48:46
Speaker
what yeah so they won't even pass through like the castle's archways at night when they're guarding it like when nobody else is there yeah and these are
01:49:02
Speaker
presumably yeah pretty brave people they're yeah okay they are soldiers too okay yeah it was reminding me of I was like I ended with a night guard security guard story
01:49:19
Speaker
people at night being like nope uh-uh this is i'm guarding this but this part is too creepy it's so yeah so similar yeah i don't know if it's open to the public really at all um it doesn't really seem like it is but yeah that's okay we got lots of places on our itinerary already for haunted tours yeah
01:49:50
Speaker
the wish list yes the dream road trip where we do live shows all across america oh my god north america because everybody else what they never come to canada the concerts it's gonna say somebody else has to foot the bill for that i don't want to pay that's too expensive
Milestones and Future Episodes
01:50:19
Speaker
No, I know, I know. We're not at that level yet. But, as of today, we hit a milestone of, you know, some thousands that we were hoping to get to. Yes, I was watching that when I looked at it this morning. I was like, we will be seven more plays to go. Yeah, we don't want to give you guys the impression that we have seven million followers because we don't. We're happy to hit our little
01:50:49
Speaker
We got 5,000, you know, 10,000. Like, we are just happy to hit our little milestones as the little podcasts that we are. Yes.
01:51:00
Speaker
Very cool. And it's all thanks to you. Yeah. Yes. Everybody who comes and listens, whether you're a repeat or just a one time, appreciate every lesson. Oh, totally. My kid was jokingly telling my mom, yeah, she talks about spooky things on her podcast. And I was like, telling her, oh, she knows. She listens. Don't you tell her what it's about.
01:51:29
Speaker
she knows you better than you yeah yeah she's a little behind she's on ukrainian folklore so she's got a few episodes to go to catch up but that's like we don't care how you listen as long as you listen you better listen alana says
01:51:50
Speaker
She was going to put us on in the car on the way to Jasper. And I was like, I can't listen to myself again. Editing the episodes once is enough. Right. Yeah, I put the kibosh on that. Oh, well. But next time we're back for some in honor of the, you know, Day of the Dead, we're going to do some días de las muertos slash
01:52:19
Speaker
Mexico crimes, at least that's what I have it written down as. Yes. Yeah. So we haven't done much with Mexico, so no fun. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Well, let's see what you got, Mexico. Everybody's got crazy stories. Yes. Yeah. Every country does. There's always
01:52:50
Speaker
Bucket load of crazy. Oh, yeah. And speaking of which, the next crazy one that we are going to record is going to be the Patreon, which is catfish crimes. And those can get real crazy. So I'm excited for that one. Extremely crazy. Yeah. And people don't always involve murder, although sometimes they do.
01:53:18
Speaker
so we'll see yeah i'm i'm trying not to say much about mine because i know you don't know it and it's like really don't think i do so i'm excited i'm so excited it's like crazy cat absolutely bonkers people can be anybody on the internet that's true ain't that the truth don't know yep
01:53:46
Speaker
All right, we'll stay cryptic, but not so cryptic that you catfish people into thinking you're not who you really are. Don't do that. It's not cool. We may joke about it and be like, oh, it's like so interesting, whatever, but it's not a nice thing to do to people.
01:54:09
Speaker
No, not the same as when chat rooms first came out and people were like, yeah, yeah, we pretended to be someone else when the internet was a baby. It's like, no, now people are very intelligent and crazy and a lot of bad things can happen when they have access to the internet. Yeah, scary things. So we'll hope to see you there on Patreon, patreon.com slash castles and cryptids.
01:54:39
Speaker
Catfish crimes. All right. Until next time. Thanks for listening. Bye bye. Bye.
01:55:13
Speaker
This has been Castles Encrypteds. You can listen to our podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, Pocket Cast, and our YouTube channel.
01:55:24
Speaker
Please rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Reddit. On our website, you can listen to all of our episodes as well as view pictures for each of our segments. Check out our Patreon page to view all of our tiers and become a Patreon supporter today to unlock monthly bonus episodes and behind-the-scenes content. We are working on and ask us anything. You can submit questions by social media or by email at castlesandcryptids at gmail.com.
01:55:53
Speaker
Do you have a spooky ghost story, a creepy cryptid sighting, or a thrilling true crime tale you would like to share and have us include in a future episode? Send us your listener story by social media or by email. Please include the name that you would like mentioned. Our music is by Cobia Fair. Our logo and artwork is by Antonio Garcia. Thanks for listening!