Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Leanna Renee Hieber
94 Plays1 day ago
Leanna Renee Hieber is an actress, playwright, ghost tour guide, audiobook narrator and the award-winning, bestselling author of over Gothic, Gaslamp Fantasy, Supernatural Suspense and Non-Fiction books for adults and teens with publishers such as Tor, Sourcebooks and Kensington Books. A Haunted History of Invisible Women: True Stories of America's Ghosts, co-authored with Andrea Janes, was a 2022 Bram Stoker Award finalist for "Superior Achievement in Non-Fiction". The book explores the intersection of women's history and ghost stories. America's Most Gothic: Haunted History Stranger than Fiction, releases 9/30/25 from Kensington.
This is Something Rather than Nothing . . .
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:02
Speaker
You are listening to Something Rather Than Nothing. Creator and host, Ken Valente.
00:00:17
Speaker
Hey everybody, this is Ken Valente with the Something Rather Than Nothing podcast. We are in spooky season, which means I thought of Liana Renee Heber and...
00:00:31
Speaker
uh spookiness and a new book my goodness coming out at the end of september talking um gothic history and ghosts uh leon uh welcome back onto the show and tell us tell us about this new one Thank you so much, Ken. I'm so glad to be back with you all.
Exploration of Gothic Literature
00:00:54
Speaker
um I, along with my co-author, Andrea Jaynes, have embarked upon my favorite subject, which is Gothic literature. And for America's most Gothic, haunted history stranger than fiction.
00:01:08
Speaker
We're examining real history through the lens of Gothic literature, through the lens of Gothic tropes. So for the first book, for A Haunted History and but of Invisible Women, our first book, we examined women's history and asked the question, how do we talk about women alive and dead?
00:01:26
Speaker
And we utilize different stereotypes and expectations of women through history and then utilized and then gave examples of ghost lore, specifically of just women ghosts and how that did or didn't fit into those stereotypes or maybe how it defied them or maybe how it out withstood them.
00:01:45
Speaker
And for America's Most Gothic, we're kind of doing the same thing in that we are we're focusing a lot on a lot of women ghosts for America's Most Gothic because there is a very strong um expectation in Gothic literature that there are a lot of female protagonists.
00:02:01
Speaker
However, we're not exclusively. um we We have a range of ah of of different types of folks in our America's Most Gothic um ah cast of characters, as it were.
00:02:13
Speaker
um So what we're what we're looking at here is, okay, so here are these real things that happened, and here's our understanding of classic Gothic literature. Are the ways in which this real haunted history defies or fits those exact Gothic stereotypes and tropes?
00:02:30
Speaker
How does that make the real ghost story scarier?
Structure and Themes of 'America's Most Gothic'
00:02:35
Speaker
How does it amplify it? How does it give us another way to examine it? So it's another, ah ah all of our work kind of goes into three parts, sort of a social discussion, um a class and and gender and social studies examination.
00:02:51
Speaker
It also will examine real history. I mean, the foundation of real history is what all of our stuff is based on and and respect for the dead in there too. Real history, respect for the dead.
00:03:01
Speaker
Our third part of this is saying and sharing real experiences, whether our own or ah or often reported um ah paranormal happenings at these various locations ah that in anim and of themselves are unique experiences.
00:03:18
Speaker
historic events. So we love a good story. So we try to find that's how we chose things. We chose things off of the things that really spoke to us and then did our then did our deep dives across a bunch of different topics.
00:03:31
Speaker
But I think what i what I want to make sure that i I explain for folks is what do I mean by Gothic tropes? What do I mean by Gothic literature? um Gothic literature started 1764 when with ah Horace Walpole creating a his what what is thought by literary scholars to be the first Gothic novel called The Castle of Otranto.
00:03:50
Speaker
And then quickly, soon thereafter, it became ah relatively popular ah literary genre throughout the 19th century and then into the century and has gained a resurgence in the past few years, which is one of the right reasons why Kensington, our publisher, thought, you know, um there's a lot of interest in Gothic literature right now and what that means for our modern era.
00:04:19
Speaker
let's Let's dive into this. So when I consider what makes something a Gothic, it's not just something that's horror based. It's not just something that is spooky. It has to have a certain amount of elements. And one of the big elements is atmosphere and setting.
00:04:32
Speaker
Setting has to be a character. um you know in In a classic Gothic novel like Dracula, ah the castle of drag castle Dracula itself, that castle is ah is a character in and of itself. It feels alive for Jonathan Harker as he is in peril in that particular castle.
00:04:49
Speaker
ah So many of the great settings in very spooky, very atmospheric fiction and film um are utilizing this idea of setting as character. So atmosphere is really, really big in a gothic. So you kind of have to have that going.
00:05:02
Speaker
You have to have a psychological focus. You have to be in the mindset of the protagonist and the main characters. And their psychological focus, their psychological narrative can very often be very...
00:05:14
Speaker
unreliable You can't always trust your senses in a gothic setting. And so
Gothic Literature's Psychological Narratives
00:05:19
Speaker
the psychological focus allows for a real deep dive into what are the anxieties of the current moment.
00:05:25
Speaker
And gothic literature, gothic fiction, gothic art, gothic film has always had its finger on the pulse of the anxieties of the age in which it is written. And thirdly, you really have to have dread that is propelling the narrative, not necessarily a bunch of action back and forth. Yeah.
00:05:42
Speaker
um You have to feel the creepy slow burn dread. I believe that the engine of the Gothic is dread. ah So these three particular elements are kind of my three metrics. And we start the introduction with that.
00:05:55
Speaker
um these This is shorthand. I've been talking about Gothic literature now professionally for over 20 years. And I've been an actor in a bunch of different Gothic pieces. i am a Gothic novelist. my My books follow different Gothic tropes when I'm writing fiction.
00:06:10
Speaker
So going into nonfiction with this, this feels very much like home. um But these three particular factors, you can have a lot of subsets. You can have something that's a horror, but not necessarily a Gothic. Because if it's just jump scares and it's just nonstop violence or or murder or or gore, um then that then that's a splatter house film. And that's not a gothic because you have to have these, you have to have the setting as character. You have to have that psychology. You really have to have a strong ah central characters who are driving the narrative.
00:06:41
Speaker
And then you have to have that be this kind of creeping dread. um So in some cases, it can also be other subgenres. Gothic can be very malleable. It can be many different types of subgenres in and of itself.
00:06:56
Speaker
It kind of refuses to be completely pinned down, but you really do need to have these elements in play in order for it to be considered a gothic. And then and then the the the eerie stories go from there.
00:07:10
Speaker
Wow. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, not just call it gothic. now I love the, you know, there was something you said right there, but particular about the atmosphere, the atmosphere in, you know, as a character.
00:07:24
Speaker
and And it's the feel, right? It's it's it's the the feel. And I think that even pulling into the general tone of doom, right? Not necessarily like jump scare, not necessarily up and down race, although, you know, could have some surprise elements, but. Oh, yeah.
00:07:40
Speaker
Just just just um like when you feel in there, like you feel doomed like when you read. For me, it's like. ah Fallen House of Usher, right? Like you're there, you see what's happening, you get the feel there's cracks in the foundation, you're doomed.
00:07:56
Speaker
like yeah Exactly. And there that's such great example because Edgar Allan Poe is a master of Gothic literature. he is He is our American master of Gothic literature, which is why every single section in the book and our sections of the book follow the course of a Gothic novel.
00:08:15
Speaker
um So each section is titled a different thing here. i'll go i'll I'll share with you a couple of the sections here so you have a sense of what I mean by that.
Gothic Literature's Cultural and Historical Context
00:08:22
Speaker
ah Each section begins with a quote from Edgar Allan Poe because he really does set the stage for this. This is you know America's most Gothic.
00:08:31
Speaker
A lot of Gothic literature, the classics are are very much European and that informs. and that Gothic as a literary form really was ah a European import. um But we begin with a wild and foreboding landscape.
00:08:45
Speaker
So there you've got you've got the setting right there. Part two is a woman on a journey. Very often Gothic literature will focus on women in peril. um There's a whole subgenre, you know, those 1980s paperbacks of women running from houses.
00:08:56
Speaker
ah There's a house in the background, there's a lady in a nightgown running from it. There's your classic Gothic. um So we examine that and sort of, ah ah you know, ah we we give some stories that play right into that or that kind of defy that.
00:09:07
Speaker
um On third the third part, The Haunted House, because again, setting is character. a a haunted house, whether it's so House of Usher, whether it's Manderly from ah Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, another classic gothic that was also a very popular novel, continues to be one of the most popular gothic novels ever written, and it brilliantly adapted by Alfred Hitchcock.
00:09:28
Speaker
And in that, it's not really a horror film. It's just un deeply unsettling. The heroine is deeply unsettled by being overshadowed by the dead woman who is the the namesake of this particular narrative, even though that woman never appears.
00:09:43
Speaker
And it she's just looming over the house. it's that And that's ah ongoing dread. And everyone around is kind of creepy. and how they react to the situation. um Part ah four is the hidden chamber.
00:09:54
Speaker
There's a lot of secrets in the Gothic. There's a lot of a hidden passageways and and and a place that you think is familiar and that is instantly strange. ah Part five is a mysterious omen.
00:10:07
Speaker
You all very often will have some kind of warning sign, and something that is strange. indicating this dread that's propelling the narrative as something that's directly either warning the protagonist to run, or it is ah signaling something, foreshadowing something that's even more drastic.
00:10:24
Speaker
um Part six at open crypt, the concept of being buried alive, the idea of something that has been buried coming out from where it has been buried. All of these things are deep, deep fears that also a lot of the fears that are present in a lot of Gothic literature are also very much present in human anxieties in general.
00:10:43
Speaker
ah So the Gothic is really, really good at taking the things that people are afraid of and letting us work through them, exercise and exercise them much the way in the purpose of a nightmare serves to kind of let your brain work out and test out different situations.
00:11:00
Speaker
Exactly what Gothic literature does. And then we end with a family cursed because family curses and those generational curses are very much a part of a lot of a lot of Gothic literature. Going back to the first Gothic tale.
00:11:13
Speaker
um Oh, and of course, see that's the ghosts again. The ghosts are always. no I'm just watching. You know, they're just it's it's amazing. So, that you know, things falling, lights flickering, ah us having a hard time getting our cameras and our microphones working. It's like the listeners about this. We tried we tried one attempt.
00:11:29
Speaker
Seriously. Listeners. And they had a complete shutdown of forces much larger than I Freezing this recording. The heck with it. you're going to have to go to a different platform. Yeah. The minute I started talking about the ghosts, that this happened. So this is just.
00:11:44
Speaker
This is very directly how this works. So, see, you're seeing things in happen in in real time. So, yeah, you get to be part of our personal ghost story here. You just saw it, right? right you know You know, and i didn't even I didn't even pay the ghost extra for that. I probably should.
00:11:56
Speaker
um for tip Yeah, tip your ghost, everybody. Tip your servers, tip your ghosts. So, you know, we're all in the service industry. Let's be real. so So with all of that, and then we then we have a we have sort of a denouement with the story. We have a denouement story.
00:12:10
Speaker
called The Escape. The idea that, like, because basically we just didn't want to end with, like, a super, super, super sad story. Because these family curse stories are actually really tragic. And we're trying to not be too heavy with this to the point where it's we We're not trying to write a slog here, but we are trying to be real about history. And so um there are very difficult things in American history, American history.
00:12:34
Speaker
And you you can't you can't put your head in the sand about this. It's a violent history. It's a grim history. And if you're not engaging with the horrors of American history, then you're then you don't know anything about your country.
00:12:46
Speaker
And it's not going to make a better country if you pretend that. the violent histories, whether it was the horrors and the original sins of slavery, or whether it was the displacement and ah genocides of the Native American population as westward expansion continued.
00:13:04
Speaker
um You have to these these things are part of our history. Do we have to carry around that guilt all the time? No, that's not helping anybody. But what it is, what it needs to be doing, what that guilt needs to be doing is reminding you not to repeat those things.
00:13:19
Speaker
And that is something that I, as a historian, as somebody who is a New York City tour guide, who takes people through a beautiful and difficult city. ah full of all kinds of different stories. We can't run from these histories.
00:13:32
Speaker
So yes, we're dealing with, yes, we're dealing with grim stuff, but we do the great thing about the Gothic literature is it gives us a template for survival. It gives us a template for how to get out of the haunted house, how to, to, to figure out your own psychological narrative and what do you need to do to survive? And what do you need to do to protect those around you? Cause it's not just only about you.
00:13:53
Speaker
You're also in community with others. Yeah. Wow. um Yeah. The escape, the the the the the escape there um at the end. And when you're talking about the, you know, women fleeing, I was I was picturing those movies in the 80s. Oh, yeah. he' and the and And the novels and such. Is there.
00:14:11
Speaker
Like ah sticking sticking with with the Gothic, there's question that emerged in in my head um when you're talking about it reflecting, you know, fears and anxieties of a time. Right. So here's the piece I'm trying to figure out my head, like in my head, have Gothic conventions being.
00:14:30
Speaker
oh older or more tied, you know, more tied with age or you know spooky castles, atmosphere, things like that. um i think of modern times. And I was thinking about this with the, you know, the work, ah you know, in the big city there, New York City. Yeah. That that you do.
00:14:47
Speaker
um Is there like, yeah has let's talk about gothic right now. Is gothic transformed ah now or the the like a modern gothic or like is the is the atmosphere ah different? You know, like i does something fall out of the category? Is it is there gothic?
00:15:10
Speaker
gothic feel atmosphere absolutely yeah absolutely and and and we we do there not only are there modern gothic novelists who are doing great work in the field reclaiming those classic tropes and doing a completely new spin on it very often and very often it's authors of color that are looking at something that is considered um a gothic or a horror And sort of reclaiming the narrative. I mean, H.P. Lovecraft was famously racist. And so Victor Laval, a black author, he took Lovecraftian mythos and created The Ballad of Black Tom and really completely turns that narrative on its head. Silvia Moreno-Garcia with Mexican Gothic. She's dealing with a really ah classic um gothic premise, but she's talking about this from um Latina viewpoint.
00:15:59
Speaker
ah ah latina viewpoint And saying, here here are these historic tropes when you have these other cultural influences that are there. yeah um And the Hacienda by Isabel Cagnias, the Hacienda is very much that. Hacienda is the the haunted house, you know.
00:16:15
Speaker
So, that again, the setting is character. And the more that you have different voices in the Gothic, that's also how you can modernize it as well. And when you think about, okay, well... a Gothic setting is not necessarily just one thing. I have a chapter that I wrote about the Dakota building. It's a, it's an apartment building in New York city.
00:16:33
Speaker
Yeah. And the exterior was used for Rosemary's baby, a great Gothic. So, you know, you have setting as character that's, so not only is that a famous setting that just instantly fills people with dread when they look at it, it's beautiful building. It's one of my favorite buildings in the city. I loved writing this chapter.
00:16:50
Speaker
It's also a collection of haunted houses because each one of those apartments has their own ghost story. Not, not every single one, um the but but But a whole lot of them through the years have ah ghost stories have trickled out through the years from the 19th century onwards. the Some of the very first ghost stories from the Dakota building were of ah Edward Clark, who had been the the founder and that this was his baby.
00:17:14
Speaker
um And he died before it was really fully completed. And so he's still watching over the building. He was watching over the building right then, making sure that it was all finished. His ghost was seen everywhere. His photo was in the the lobby areas. people you People knew that was Edward Clark still from beyond the grave, watching over what specifically workmen, making sure that he they finished his building correctly. and And so there's all of this very, very modern history.
00:17:42
Speaker
um Whether it was the death of John Lennon just outside that building, whether it is um ah ongoing senses of what people are ascribing to these buildings, um the the disorientation.
00:17:58
Speaker
And sometimes the claustrophobia that a big city can provide um is in itself it is in and of itself its own gothic tale. um New York City can be very overwhelming. That's a psychological thing that really plays in to the psychological focus.
00:18:13
Speaker
um finding your own quiet peace in the city. um every Every New Yorker has their own stories of what is their spot that they go to feel calm in a bustling and at a beautifully bustling world. I love the energy of the city.
00:18:28
Speaker
wouldn't trade it for the world, you know. so But um I really do feel that ah the Gothic can be anywhere. A great example um of a modern gothic is Stranger Things. The show Stranger Things. Think about the season in a mall in a dere dick de like it's a it's a mall that is like disused.
00:18:50
Speaker
Think about places that have been abandoned. All of these modern strip malls um as as big chains are closing and you have these vacant buildings in for me an uncanny environment is suburbia i mean tim burton did that pretty brilliantly with edward scissorhands creating a completely pastel looking uncanny unsettling gothic environment in which the gothic is not as much i mean yes edward scissorhands is a guy who looks like a you know he's at a goth club right right but that's not really the gothic part the gothic part is all the creepy cookie cutter pastel houses that's what scares me i'm a goth and i'm like i don't know about all that pastel stuff i'm gonna hang around settling that those colors you know unsettling and
00:19:29
Speaker
Right, exactly. So the the point the point and counterpoint, that that there's there's so many great examples of the modern Gothic being point and counterpoint of our modern culture and a decaying mansion ah or a decaying department store, same rules apply. It's uncanny.
00:19:48
Speaker
it's it's There's something unsettling there. You're not sure what's lurking in the corners. um And one of the things that is through line of the Gothic is how wealth and capital will very often destroy people and families ah if if people are not trying to look out for one another. um That the idea that the ah the family curse will continue if you don't look out for yourself and also others.
00:20:18
Speaker
So the idea of surviving a Gothic novel really is in community um because um to very often the settings or or the wealth and ah that all of that, it won't save you.
00:20:28
Speaker
um Only sort of your own holding the candle up to to your surroundings and your own wits will save you in the end. And so that's that's kind of, an it for me, an interesting thing when you're talking about ghost lore, because we're still talking about we're still talking about characters. And and for us, the as authors, for Andrea and i we became really attached to these people that we're writing about, and they're very, very real to us.
00:20:55
Speaker
Um, thank you. Thank you for the example. i was was caught up on the on the setting band just thinking about all the yeah places shows up. I was thinking to um so Southern Gothic. I'm huge. giant You might know Yankee, but the Southern Gothic, the stuff in Faulkner, the curses, the yeah the the folks who are there and and and not their voices of others. Yeah.
00:21:20
Speaker
the the gen the rate The generational traumas of those who are have were enslaved there. And and that that's that's very difficult history. And when you start talking about that in in terms of... um Andrea has a really amazing, very powerful chapter about Florida.
00:21:37
Speaker
And the plantation ruins there of sugar i have sugar plantations there. It's extremely powerful. and and the And the North is not exempt from that because the the the sugar plantation ah mills were supplying sugar up North.
00:21:52
Speaker
So, you know, a lot of New York Stock Exchange money was built up into cotton, was built up into cotton. ah Various other, a of Wall Street was built on blood.
00:22:04
Speaker
And I talk about that when I'm doing a Lower Manhattan tour. um So I think, you know, there we we have to acknowledge these interconnected webs of things where America has such a rich, ah different type of biome and and foliage and flora and fauna and all these different kinds of settings in which setting is
Authors' Research and Writing Process
00:22:25
Speaker
character. And this isn't a travel guide. We don't get to every single place. There's no way we we could do every state. We weren't asked to do that. we were We were asked to collect some stories that we were really passionate about.
00:22:35
Speaker
um and And I got a chance, and this time around, I got a chance to to tell some of my own stories. And I tried, if at all possible, to set my feet down in the place I was writing about. That was not possible everywhere.
00:22:51
Speaker
But ah Andrea's Florida chapter that I find particularly powerful, she was ah she was taking her kid to Disney and was like, i what there is uncanniness about Florida. Let me kind of go find it and kind of stumbled across this plantation ruin and this whole other part of history unfolds to her. And it's, you know, no state or no place is ever one thing.
00:23:14
Speaker
And that I think is a is a is a beautiful thing about this country and also something we can always be learning something else about. I mean, as tour guides, we we love learning more history and and and and recontextualizing things.
00:23:26
Speaker
Yeah, I am. There was a piece in your work, ah you know, obviously i had the position of women and the the agency of women really important and in in history and, you know, the the works that you're covering.
00:23:41
Speaker
There's something I was thinking about, like within the realm of the Gothic, like that it is so dependent upon. Female female ah peril, ah blood being lost, male aggression, when it's visible or invisible.
00:23:59
Speaker
Yeah, I just wanted to ask a question about like there's so much that that they they you bring out with that. um and it's it's Speaking again about the about the modern, in you know is the Gothic like dependent upon that ah type of of peril? Do we see some some kind of like switching around of...
00:24:20
Speaker
danger you know like i'm so used to goths music songs pictures novels everything and like i had this expectation not that i want women to be in peril but they were in peril in the book and like like i'm drawn to like so what's going on with that like that for now just as far as you know from your perspective on like say gender dynamics or yeah yeah Yeah, the the Gothic heroine is a big deal. And it's been ah at the core of the Gothic ah history from the beginning. Anne Radcliffe, an incredible 18th century writer who who really took the Gothic and ran with it.
00:25:01
Speaker
um She was using the Gothic as a way to discuss women's domesticity as an and ah very often a trap. So a lot of times the woman fleeing from that haunted house is also a critique of society trying to keep her stuck in that sometimes abusive place and, or saying you have, this is your place. Well, what if the place is not good? What if the place is trying to kill you?
00:25:30
Speaker
um And so I think the Gothic allows for us to talk about these things. And it's not just one gender dynamic. I think it's, mean When you look at Gothic literature, you find all kinds of of queer dynamics. You find all kinds of different gender identity dynamics.
00:25:45
Speaker
You find all kinds of different um class dynamics and racial dynamics that are in play. What is what is the who has the power? is is that the is a core question of the Gothic. Who has the power and how is it leveraged?
00:26:00
Speaker
um And sometimes that will be be between one marginalized identity and another. But it is very often about the marginalized identity. So the Gothic heroine, as it were, is not necessarily always a woman.
00:26:12
Speaker
Very often it will be who is the most marginalized character and how can they try to survive in a hostile environment? Yeah, I love that. thanks thanks Thanks for your answer that question. I really wanted to...
00:26:24
Speaker
To know you yeah your thoughts. I just kept popping in my head on like the the reliance upon those dynamics. And I think now I think you're right. There's there's a lot of fertile ground in there and and a lot for it to change, I think, in gender dynamics and queer, too, yeah which you can see a lot within some.
00:26:42
Speaker
ah say maybe gothic vampire traditions now. OK, so you're talking about ah being in place. And when when you and I talk ah from the last time we talked, the the place having an energy, the place holding a ah energy.
00:27:05
Speaker
Now, you talked about within this that you, you know, on the spot and in in a couple of places in your chapter. Can you tell us about experience of like on the spot there, one of your chapters in what what you see experience or your experience there?
00:27:22
Speaker
Yeah, I was able to share a bunch of weird haunted stuff that happened to me when I was a kid, when I was first a professional. um i I worked in a haunted speakeasy in 19 it's a 1930s era haunted speakeasy in St. Paul, Minnesota.
00:27:42
Speaker
And I used to work there for several years before I moved to New York city. I was, I was working in theater out in Minnesota. It's a good, it's a good theater town ah in, in the the St. Paul twin cities area. yeah And ah I, I,
00:27:55
Speaker
They were looking for tour guides and I was really curious about the history of this place. And I thought, oh, well, it'd be really cool to work in a haunted speakeasy. That just sounds cool. and and it was And it was cool. It was a really neat building. It had it was in a cave.
00:28:09
Speaker
They'd put a 1920s, 30s era ah wooden ballroom and and some stucco finishing into a cave. Used to be mushroom farming caves in the 19th century, and then they finished it over. And then when when when liquor became illegal during the Prohibition era,
00:28:25
Speaker
and liquor became illegal, uh, um, speakeasies cropped up all over the place. Now on the surface, this was just sort of a place to go dancing on the surface, but it was very much a, you had to know it was their kind of thing. And they sort of, you know, in the, in the twenties and thirties, by the time that this was actually ah a, a uh, illegal nightclub, um, they were still kind of passing it off as it was still a mushroom farm.
00:28:49
Speaker
Um, but a caves are a great place to hold and store liquor and keep it, uh, keep it, um, cool between transport. So St. Paul, Minnesota was ah on the rum running route from Canada down to St. Paul and then over to Chicago, which was the big market. And all of this was under mob control.
00:29:07
Speaker
All of it was mob run. And, um, so there was sort of a, a, A culture of violence that ah it runs through all of the prohibition era.
00:29:18
Speaker
And um in St. Paul, we think of St. Paul, Minnesota, as like a very, you know, quiet. ah ah It is it is a very quiet, safe town. Yes.
00:29:28
Speaker
ah back in Back in the 1920s, 1930s, it was also still a very quiet, safe town on the surface. But below it, completely mob rule, as long as there were not murders or outright visibly illegal stuff in the city. It was known as a layover agreement with the corrupt people.
00:29:49
Speaker
police chief at the time. And the whole, their his whole deal with the mobsters was like, it's fine if you are here and doing your business, but I don't want to know about it and I don't want to see it.
00:30:00
Speaker
You can't do anything in St. Paul headquarters. And yeah, you can maybe get away with a couple of things in Minneapolis, but we also like that, that, that is still a, it's still too close.
00:30:14
Speaker
So here inside this haunted cave, And I am I give people tours through it. And um I would set up in 1920s, 1930s period pictures that the ballroom is still there. Really wonderful.
00:30:29
Speaker
Wait, it like bouncy wooden floor um it has this platform for a dining room. And then there's a back fireplace. And in that back fireplace, there's a bunch of bullet holes from a day that went south during one of the the mob disagreements.
00:30:43
Speaker
Now, this was not in the papers, and whoever was between the guns and those bullet holes, that is not something that was reported on. It's not something we could track down. It's not something we could trace as tour guides there. Because, again, if it would have become out that there had been a murder in this building, it would have violated the labor agreement, and then everything would have down.
00:31:02
Speaker
So there's no investigations, and it's thought by the tour guides. We didn't really, mean, we didn't have any other thoughts about how would you deal with this. You buried people in the back caves. That was just, that's just what made sense.
00:31:12
Speaker
Right. and so So we believe that there are bodies in the very, very backs of the caves, since a lot of which have were forcibly collapsed, So um that was sort of the question mark.
00:31:25
Speaker
And as I worked there for a couple of years, the ghost stories would just accrue. I say in the book that it was like ah creating a bar tab that we would keep adding our ghost stories to. And I'm somebody who's always been a believer. you know I've had weird stuff happen to me since I was a kid. And I try to be a skeptic first because I know how overactive my imagination can be. I know my imagination is very powerful. I am a fiction writer.
00:31:48
Speaker
So I try to separate out what's fact from fiction. Sure. And in these cases, we really honestly were just trying to go about our day and just tell the stories of the caves and the history of St. Paul and all this kind of stuff. And inevitably, the lights would go out and we were the only staff working and the lights would flicker.
00:32:05
Speaker
um ah The the. and at this point, this is dating me, of course, this is in the, night um, the early two thousands, but the sound system was still a five disc CD changer, right? Um, that thing would start like kissing and moving almost like an old, like record player, it would sound. And then, you know, you could like hear some big band music playing or whatever. And, but, but,
00:32:28
Speaker
then you realized, oh, it's not even plugged in. oh So you would hear big band music. and And I never had the clear audience hauntings, but even even our like boss, the guy who ran this construction company, the owners at the time, run ran a construction company and that this they were using this as an event space and storage space for their construction equipment in the back caves. And then they kept the...
00:32:51
Speaker
the the setting really beautiful um to rent it out as an event space. So people would see, ah you know, fedora hatted figures in the mirror and, and stuff would get moved all the time. So that, this was a thing that really, that did happen to me is that um I, I'd given a private tour and at the end I'd been tipped a $50 bill. And I was, at the time I was working in theater.
00:33:16
Speaker
I was a starving artist. I literally yeah. That's a million dollars for an actor in 2003. And so i i was so grateful. I was almost in tears receiving this tip because that was going to feed me for two, like two weeks of worth of ramen. Right.
00:33:33
Speaker
yeah And so I, I fold up this $50 bill. I tuck it in my back pocket and I, and I button the pocket of my dress slacks and I go to, uh, after I see our clients off, I go to pack up everything and put the beautiful easels away that were holding these period photographs, put everything turn off the lights twice because they went back on again after I turned them off. We always had to budget an extra 10 minutes just to turn off the things that the goats would turn back on again.
00:34:00
Speaker
It just became something you just would do, and it just was part of the job description. and And then i as I go to... Grab my coat out of the coat check and put my $50 bill in my wallet. It is not in my back pocket.
00:34:16
Speaker
And I freak out and I retrace my steps and I retrace my steps and I retrace my steps. And it's nowhere to be found. And I'm like, how in the world I buttoned it in my back pocket, where in the world?
00:34:26
Speaker
And so at this point I'm thinking about like, about interactions with ghosts, because at this point I'm like, i could not have fallen out of my back pocket. You were so deliberate in placing it. It was so deliberate. There's no way. And I wasn't like bouncing around as I was doing stuff. There's no way.
00:34:42
Speaker
And I, ah for me, it's an Occam's razor thing. If you, if you ruled out every other thing, then it has to be, you know, the, the, the ghost took my money.
00:34:53
Speaker
Yep. and And this was also like, these were mob... We would call them the boys because we just assumed, you know, the the folks working in the mob and someone who was going to be on the other end of this of this violence there was going to be probably young men um and in a deal that must have went south. The mob yeah so goes, snicked you out of 50?
00:35:12
Speaker
they Well, I wasn't going to just let that go. All right, let's go. So i stood in the middle of the ballroom and i This this moment changed forever how I would interact with spirits because I thought, all right, I have to communicate and I have to kind of set my boundaries.
00:35:34
Speaker
And a lot of times with ghost lore, one of the things that I've been even just like really mundane stuff, talking to people about they'd had ah a weird, disturbing thing in their house and they would just tell the ghost to knock it off. And then generally speaking, if you just tell the ghost to knock it off, unless you're dealing with particularly negative energy, they'll knock it off.
00:35:51
Speaker
So i just said, boys, i know that money was your thing. I know that this was like your trade and youre this was just how you lived and literally how you died. i respect that. However, I am a corporeal being and I need to eat.
00:36:04
Speaker
And I need my $50. Boys. i was like please i was like, please, please. And so I made my last pass. And then I allowed out of the corner my eye as I'm walking towards the back of behind the ballroom onto that dining room section. i see something.
00:36:20
Speaker
bright laying out and there is my $50 bill lying flat as if it had never been folded right below the bullet holes. yeah yeah make Right below the bullet holes. I mean, it was very specific. It was very, and I, and it was, it was the strangest thing that I, that I had ever experienced with a tactile item.
00:36:41
Speaker
You know, I've heard weird things. I've seen weird things, but in terms of like something literally pickpocketing me, it And I thanked the boys for returning my money.
00:36:53
Speaker
And then I stuck the money that time in my bra, which I really, because I was like, I want to feel this against my skin. Then I realized that was probably actually a little provocative for the boys. But, but, um and And after that though, the the interesting thing for me about about this kind of stuff is like I end up being really relational then to whatever spirits are in a place. After that, I started like, and would i'd be alone i would i would be alone packing up. So I just started to kind of talk to the boys about my day. i i kind of thinking, gosh, if you're if you are a spirit that's lingering here and you are kind of a prankster and you are kind of moving things around,
00:37:28
Speaker
It is pretty clear with how often it happened that there was a desire to be interactive with the living that were there. So I started like talking the boys and, and that just kind of became pastime that I really kind of loved. And what it did was it humanized things for me. And now, and because every time that people would be going up to that fireplace, they would just be focused on the violence.
00:37:48
Speaker
And I realized that like, they wanted to touch the bullet holes, right? You know, they want, you know, it and it was, it was just focused on the violence. And I was like, I i reminded people there were young men, who didn't come home from a night in the underground here.
00:38:01
Speaker
There was a body between these bullets. And like just driving that home for people so that they wouldn't just fetishize mob violence. that you know i know we love stories of stuff. It's like everybody loves The Godfather films, of course.
00:38:12
Speaker
And there's there's such a mythos about mob violence. But for me, it was like, can can we also humanize the victims of that, that were doing what they needed to do at a time that was the Great Depression?
00:38:24
Speaker
Yeah. Or they're delayed on their insurance payment or any of the you know. Yeah, absolutely. A lot of folks who are in in a situation like that are in it because they're trapped. So that goes exactly like to what you're talking about, about the person in peril.
00:38:38
Speaker
And and in this case, the folks who were under the gun literally of mob control paid the price that those were the people in peril. oh ah trip over to the midwest right uh saint paul um uh oh gosh that's uh fascinating you know one of the things when i reading your stories and and um as you told them one of the pieces i really dig is um
00:39:09
Speaker
You got that ah skepticism. Like you lay it out. You lay it out as like your experience and what experience. And I like totally vibe with that too. But I also like the vibe you got of being like even in recognize a place like that, you know, a place has these things. And sometimes we build it up a little bit more. And sometimes it's right there. And sometimes it's it's it's both. It's like part of the human experience.
00:39:34
Speaker
And very often actual ghost stories. are very mundane. And so most of the ghost stories that happened in the Wabasha Street Caves were very simple little things. You'd see something of the corner of your eye, the shadows would move and there was no one there.
00:39:50
Speaker
Glacierware would be not where you put it, the lights would flicker. Small mundane things, those in and of themselves don't make for an elaborate story. I'm i'm kind of grateful that the the boys took my money because that made for a good story.
00:40:02
Speaker
But that was one thing that happened in years of working there. And, and it didn't happen again, actually, because now then I started talking to the boys more. And so because of that, there was actually less trying to get my attention by flickering the lights or moving our, our big pictures, turning them upside down, just knocking them over stuff like that. You know, stuff like my, you know, my, um,
00:40:26
Speaker
This thing falling over? That stuff. that We were telling the listeners before this stuff happened in the background. I'm going rewind the video to talk about me. I'm going to rewind the video.
00:40:38
Speaker
and Absolutely. And see, dad there's no cats over there. No, I don't have a cat.
Modern Gothic and Cultural Trends
00:40:43
Speaker
I'm allergic. That's what thinking so anyways uh it's it's i just i just i just love this stuff so um you got the book coming out uh during uh creepy season which i think nowadays for me is like one of the things i noticed culturally and tell me if you've seen this as well is um i noticed like around the pandemic man people stretching out that halloween period from like september and october there's been more of a like uh
00:41:11
Speaker
diving into post-summer horror gothic uh don't know it's like some type of like horror cozy core that seems to start earlier nowadays do you have that feel of like oh it's true it's true we what's going on with that Well, I think because it's like there's a lot that we that society doesn't let us talk about very easily. I mean, I think folks were forced to move on and act like a pandemic didn't happen and act like millions of people didn't die or get sick.
00:41:40
Speaker
um And I think that I understand that some people just don't want to talk about it, but we can't act like it didn't happen. That's not healthy. It's not healthy to not have a grieving period.
00:41:52
Speaker
And it's not healthy to act like scary things don't happen. Yeah. So I think a certain amount of making spooky season be kind of fun and or cute and or, okay, let's think of the veil between the living and the dead as something that can be conversational.
00:42:11
Speaker
Yeah. yeah That helps make a very difficult thing more palatable. And so ah horror and ghost lore is is a way for people to grapple with their own mortality in a safe way.
00:42:23
Speaker
That's the purpose of watching a horror film is to is to grapple with something really scary because we are as humans, we're we're a little bit thrill seekers. there isnt There is an element in our our entire being that is...
00:42:35
Speaker
sometimes titillated by and drawn to the idea of danger that's inherent in human experience. And in the way to do that safely is through horror, is through fiction. The thing about ghost lore that blurs that line is that ghosts are of us. We could become them. they're they They're the closest paranormal creature to our actual beings. And just about everybody has a ghost story or knows someone that does. Even the most confirmed skeptics would be like, Yeah, I don't believe in other stuff. But then there was this one thing and my grandpa said a thing and I believe him and he wasn't, you know, he wasn't a guy that would, you know, women would make that up.
00:43:07
Speaker
and And we don't have those kinds of things about any other paranormal experience. It's just ghost lore that's like, hmm, it's just, it's, it's so, prevalent that something in there has to be real sifting through it is for me whether it is real or it isn't real is less important than what does this story tell us about the living and the person who passed what what what is that telling us about how are the dead teaching us how to live that for me is relational and so i think history and everything Yeah.
00:43:45
Speaker
And i think we're in a period where you know I've seen a bunch of different um types of articles out about ah people are living in more and more isolation. Now, certainly that was true during the the height of pandemic.
00:43:55
Speaker
but But folks haven't necessarily recovered from that. And friends of mine who are dealing with myriad different kinds of disabilities or who are extremely immunocompromised, Because, you know, COVID is still out there. It's still a thing. it's we Again, we can't pretend it's not happening.
00:44:12
Speaker
um I just got my booster the other day. So it's, they don't feel always safe to be out. So there is a period for different types of people, whether it's financially, whether it's health wise, whether it's um people can't afford to go out because the cost of living has gone up so much.
00:44:29
Speaker
There is increasing isolation but for a lot of teenagers. It's like, there's no place for these teens to go hang out. Because because people don't want to create a safe space for teenagers anymore that, you know, a lot of public spaces, you know, will will will ah will not create spaces for teens actively be kind of hostile about it.
00:44:47
Speaker
So in all of that, that that isolation that creates a need for there's a disconnect there. And I think sometimes these spooky stories can kind of speak to that unsettling nature of our increasing isolation. Yes, the digital age can bring us close together. And I'm so glad we do things like Zoom and all these things.
00:45:05
Speaker
But there's still very often a screen that's leading a lot of our interactions. You know, algorithms are driving what people see, not human interaction. And that to me is also uncanny. And that to me is also sometimes a horror story, a horror premise, as as the show Black Mirror has very often made quite frighteningly real.
00:45:22
Speaker
Yeah, um I find that, no, I think, you know, just talking about maybe like, you know, what's underneath gothic in the heart. i think of a pandemic. I think of like mass death and things like that. And I found like I found i found that there was something, you know, even prompting the question about, you know, are we like extending our.
00:45:43
Speaker
curiosity socially into the the macabre or the gothic uh in in the fall as a way to deal with you know recent mass death and aura being scared anxiety type of things like it seems like i i have a feeling that the people's kind of settle into that space more which isn't uh in and of itself um Of that bad because I've had been influenced um like in the past, I think like. All right. So we can talk about this. Right. So like I'm younger. I'm a kid who loves like ghosts and all the spooky stuff that makes you weird. Right. And like you're you're interested in that. And there's a period where like I think socially like.
00:46:28
Speaker
maybe as like a moral thing, you think things are wrong or or good or it's psychologically healthy or otherwise. But for me, the macabre and the gothic and everything has always been just an endless source of fascination, um a way of the expression of morbid curiosity curing the blues, right? Like these things are around us.
00:46:49
Speaker
Let me go and explore and and see. So I've always loved that space. And I find to this day just that little ick feeling people get when you drop down into this type of stuff where, you know, maybe don't bring it up or it's weird or how much time are you going to spend on it. It's still this this great well of fascination to me. And even on the points that you do with like ah what it says to us about today and socially, the Gothic, right, like of the dangers faced by workers. And so I just
00:47:23
Speaker
I um part of the reason i really love chatting with you and and talking about this is because it's like for me, it's not. It's not negative. It's not it's not a moral piece of it. It's not ah like a kind of disaffected ah brain. It's like, holy shit, we die.
00:47:42
Speaker
Holy shit, people go missing. Holy shit. Like, i feel good and unsettled in the fog and in the light. I feel comfortable but uncomfortable at the same time. It's all of that.
00:47:53
Speaker
you so And and what what this allows us is to be real. Acting like bad things never happen is not realistic. It's not realistic. So the the these types of things, what I love, so so there being a goth, and I am also a goth, I self-identify as a goth.
00:48:11
Speaker
I do too.
00:48:14
Speaker
that's ah that's a subculture for those who who who ah ah just to sort of separate these things out gossic as as an architectural style or as a literary style that is a separate thing very often will find goths who really also like gothic architecture and also really like gothic literature i am one of those people but goths who are who usually will dress all in black um who listen to gothic music um who will have a certain interest in these more morbid topics.
00:48:43
Speaker
And for me, being a goth was the best thing that happened to my mental health because I was letting myself explore the darker, sometimes depressive angles as I was battling with my own depression.
00:48:57
Speaker
And Edgar Allen Poe, famous, you know, gothic icon and goth icon also, he was usually always dressed in black too. um That was an exor exercise for him, too. He was exercising some of thoughts and anxieties through that. He was fascinated by human culture. But there's so much more to him than just his scary stories. He was also doing theater criticism.
00:49:17
Speaker
He was doing literary criticism. He was examining every aspect of life. He was writing science fiction. He was writing fantasy. He was writing all these different kinds of genres. He became most famous for his scary stuff um because i so I think that is some of his best work.
00:49:31
Speaker
but But here's a guy who really understood the the the enormity of the human condition. And I think that that is what the gothic can allow for us, is that it lets us acknowledge that things are unsettling. And in letting us acknowledge that is the reality.
Realism in Gothic Literature
00:49:50
Speaker
And pretending that that doesn't happen, it for me, is what is most uncomfortable. So for me, I'm most comfortable in a Gothic setting because it's acknowledging that our perceptions are going to change, our settings are going to change, and we're going to have to continue to be aware of our surroundings.
00:50:06
Speaker
I think that Gothic literature prepares prepares you to be a pretty well-adjusted person. You just have to be careful you don't get paranoid. Because there's lot of paranoia in the Gothic. You know, like, don't get paranoid. but But let the Gothic, like, really teach you about your surroundings.
00:50:19
Speaker
And about how, what can you do for yourself and those around you? How can you all escape the haunted house? How can you, like, lead take grab the hand of the person next to you and be like, let's get out of this. um And that, to me, is is how you kind of solve a Gothic novel. Because very a lot of times in a Gothic situation and in some of the stories that we see here, the most miserable stories are in isolation.
00:50:42
Speaker
And it really is kind of like I feel like both literature and also just human survival is saying we can't really do all of this alone. and And we shouldn't be doing all of this alone. We also should be acknowledging that life is full of ups and downs. And so this literature is just kind of and and these stories and this ghost lore.
00:51:01
Speaker
It can provide the necessary warnings. um I have another story about something that that specifically happened to me about a a a ghost of a a motorcycle ghost and and having seen this ethereal light.
00:51:15
Speaker
ah That changed how I drive because I thought that I can't explain. I was in the car with four other people. We saw this. It was it's a pretty, ah you know, known.
00:51:27
Speaker
I thought it completely urban legend. ah So we just we didn't really even take it seriously. We're like, all right, we go to this one spot in the road and you flash your lights three times and you're gonna see the motorcycle goes ah a light really honest to God showed up.
00:51:39
Speaker
And it was the weirdest thing where all of us are like, are you seeing this? or And we're looking around it's at at like, is someone fooling us? Is there somebody who just waits at this that the house at the top of the road and waits for, you know, teenage assholes to like go and like do this.
00:51:52
Speaker
um And there was nothing that could have made that light. It dissipated right as it passed the car. But as it passed the car, it dissipated. Yes. But if it had continued at that same speed, as it passed the car, there was this loud crash.
00:52:06
Speaker
on the top of our roof. Oh my God, did we scream? we i've never i've I've never been so scared in my life by something that was so unreal. It sounded like a car wreck on the top of her car. And my and our my friend, the driver, like peeled out of there in her red Jeep. And then we and we drew and we were in the middle nowhere in southern Ohio where i grew up.
00:52:26
Speaker
And And we drove to our parking lot and we got out and we looked at the roof, something that loud had to have made a dent, a dentic could scratch, nothing, nothing on the roof, nothing on the roof.
00:52:37
Speaker
And we all, none of us knew what to make of it. And I, and even years later, I still don't know, I can't explain that, but what it did do was I was like, that was a warning to be careful on the road. And I think about it every single time I go down a big hill or every single time I turn around a sharp curve. I was like, yeah i got the motorcycle ghost was warning me to be careful.
00:53:00
Speaker
And like, and I think, I think that ghost in the book is like making me a better driver. And I've been thinking about that a lot because I'm on the road a lot for work and for this book tour. I'm going to be on the road all the time.
00:53:10
Speaker
And the wayside ghosts and the roadside ghosts, all of that, that is my warning um to always be vigilant, especially in an era of increased distractions. so love that. I mean, you do you modify your behavior, and I think there's a great wonder of you know you whether you avoided something there that was building up or any of I'd like to think of it because otherwise I'm just scared.
00:53:32
Speaker
Like you got to use you got to use that because otherwise what's the point? You know, you got to use something that terrifies you. ah Otherwise, it just terrifies you. And for me, I can't move on from something scary unless I figure out how to what do I do with that?
00:53:47
Speaker
um Because I don't want something to just sit in a fear place. I want I want to I want to be able to to work that out. More ghost stories, more ghost stories. Love it, Liana.
00:53:58
Speaker
America's most ah most gothic haunted history, stranger than fiction by you and ah Andrea Janes. ah Tell us ah ah we have it coming out ah September 30th. And folks listening to this, there should be right on time or right around the time of the release of this September 30th, 2025.
00:54:19
Speaker
twenty twenty five ah Tell us a little bit about the book tour. Tell us about how this thing's going to go into the and into the world and your hopes and dreams for it. Well, we we we really appreciate everyone's support. um Everyone who orders, it especially ordering a book on its first week.
00:54:38
Speaker
First week's sales are particularly helpful for publishing in general. um In traditional publishing, ah um those first week's sales ah measure a lot of how ah the publishing house will continue to support the title.
00:54:53
Speaker
So, so, and reviews, online reviews, um if you enjoy the book, ah leaving a review on whatever your favorite retailer is, we would love it if you'd go to support your local independent bookstores. Independent bookstores have been really, really great about supporting our nonfiction work.
00:55:10
Speaker
um supporting them, you're supporting a local store, keeping their business alive. um And also that's a particular help of ah of us too. And also go to your local library. If your library doesn't have a copy on the shelf, if you request it from your local library, libraries buy books.
00:55:25
Speaker
So you get to read the book for free. And that library is buying a copy that's supporting us. um You know, the just the
00:55:34
Speaker
the way in which libraries support and academic institutions have supported our nonfiction has been particularly wonderful. So, you know, the book is in hardcover. It's be out in digital. It's also going be an audio book with Andrea and I narrating each of our chapters. Both of you?
00:55:50
Speaker
Yeah, we narrate each of our chapters. So because it's all in first person. we're Andrea has her own chapters. I have my own chapters. The only thing we co-wrote was the introduction. um Everything else is our own personal experiences and our own personal pet project.
00:56:04
Speaker
And because it is first person, we're like, this is what this is what happened to me or this is what fascinates me. And and so we dive into all of those things. And so I'm going to be doing a lot of stuff around the East Coast. Now we're launching in New York City.
00:56:17
Speaker
So we have two events, both her and I together. ah we launch at the Astoria Bookshop in Queens. And then the next day, that's on September 30th and October 1st. We are at Word in Brooklyn. And then I go on the East Coast to to Massachusetts, to Rhode Island.
00:56:30
Speaker
ah um And then I'm going to swing down to Ohio, to my hometown, because I have a ghost story about Helen Peabody, President Helen Peabody, who was the women's college president at Miami University before it became before the women's... ah Seminary became part of Miami University in the 1970s. So it's a Victorian ah stern sort of headmistress spirit that's ah that's watching over the flock there at Miami. So I get to I get to go back to my to my alma mater and tell ghost stories there, which is really fun.
00:57:01
Speaker
um And then I'm going to head up to in Ann Arbor, Michigan with ah an event with a haunted mitten podcast. um So there's we've got a bunch of stuff I'm going to have on my website. I'm going to have ah a tour calendar, um but I will be several times in Massachusetts because I have several Massachusetts chapters. I was working in Massachusetts ah for quite a bit ah during the time I was writing the book.
00:57:24
Speaker
And um and what what we were talking about um earlier, um if we have time, I can tell you a little bit about the yeah the the bloody pit, because there's you have to tell me about that.
00:57:36
Speaker
There's a particular story there that really, really, really struck me. um And this is where it gets into some of the plight of um a lot of times the the the person in peril in a gothic tale is the person who has the least amount of power.
00:57:51
Speaker
And in this particular case, um so there was a tunnel excavation that was nicknamed the Bloody Pit. And I can't make this up. I mean, that that was historically what it was called. It sounds like an Edgar Allan Poe story.
00:58:06
Speaker
um It was being built right after Poe died, actually. So it's being built through the Yeah. yeah and And it was built at the Housac Tunnel. So H-O-O-S-A-C, the Housac Tunnel.
00:58:19
Speaker
um And it was called the Bloody Pit because ah page just people died building it. And that's the thing. ah Mine excavation, whether it's coal mines or whether it's excavating tunnels, ah you know, New York City building the Brooklyn Bridge was incredibly deadly, going down below the surface of the river to to lay the foundations, any of these kinds of things. Any of this work is deeply, deeply, profoundly dangerous.
00:58:42
Speaker
Right. And there were there were no worker safety protections in the 19th century because we did not have our modern labor laws until the 20th century. And we have a great discussion about that on our other. The last time we talked about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911, which set our modern labor laws.
00:58:59
Speaker
But before this, there were striking workers. So the Hussack Tunnel was the first tunnel to be to utilize nitroglycerin explosives to excavate the tunnel. And that first explosive.
19th-Century Labor and Ghost Stories
00:59:12
Speaker
The guy who set the set the charge said it too early and his ah co his co-workers, his colleagues died under falling rubble in that explosion.
00:59:23
Speaker
The guy who set the charge himself died about a year later under mysterious circumstances. No one was ever found for that. He was found dead at the site of where his colleagues had died. And everyone in that tunnel said it was the ghost's of those who had fallen under that early charge, explosive charge, that were wreaking their their revenge. And so this was all contemporary. like this This tunnel was immediately haunted upon the first rock strike, basically. Yeah.
00:59:55
Speaker
And um the interesting thing ah the that the the interesting thing that we can take away from this and the thing that I think is the takeaway is what I said about the Triangle Fire. um The only reason to tell these stories and talk about the sort of this psychic imprint that these tragedies leave on these spaces is because it's a reminder for us not to take our labor laws for granted.
01:00:17
Speaker
yeah It's a reminder to not let things like unionization be undermined because those unions are there to protect the workers as a group because the the foreman and the managers and the owners and all of that, they're looking at profit margin and the people, the workers are just a part of that margin. They're not humanizing them. They're not humanizing them. And we're seeing this increasingly increasingly.
01:00:37
Speaker
in our modern workplaces. So that's not something that's just of the past. That's happening right now in the people versus profits situation ah that's happening in just about every single industry.
01:00:48
Speaker
So here are these workers that are that are working these very dangerous conditions, not only to excavate the rock, um And they're creating a tunnel that's going to ah join New York State, upper New York State, mid ah mid-upstate New York with western Massachusetts to connect all of the industrial centers of the East Coast further along the coastline in with central New York and across the Erie Canal down into the Midwest and on.
01:01:14
Speaker
So was this enormous ah commerce corridor that this particular um ah railway between this just only like two mile section. And it is still used as an active freight line today. It is still an active railway through the Huzak Tunnel.
01:01:30
Speaker
And ah in addition to the nitroglycerin, there also is naphtha gas that was being ah released underground gas that was being released as as the excavation was continuing.
01:01:43
Speaker
And there was a naphtha gas b explosion. And one of the rigs that was meant to pump out water because there's groundwater in there, too. uh, immense groundwater, there was, um, an explosion, a bunch of things happened in the same case that like everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong in the case of the triangle fire. Same thing happened with the snap gas explosion, um, in in the eighteen fifty s And it' um ah it not only did it create a rising water scenario for ah the workers who were trapped down below, but the nap, the gas suffocated them before they could even rise to the surface.
01:02:21
Speaker
And someone was lowered down to try to, to to check the the situation. And he almost, he himself almost died from gas fume exposure um and, and came up and said, there's, there was no hope. um And there was ghost stories at the time, the year after about the restless dead figures seen walking around, controlling the woods in this very dramatic, the Hussak tunnel is tucked into these two sort of mountain ridges. So it's entirely in shadow.
01:02:51
Speaker
It is very spooky even in and of itself. And it's, and it's just a small kind of tunnel, not lit. It looks very unsettling. And, And the the stories of this time were of these figures walking in the snow without footprints because they were specters. And that all they were they were hearing moaning.
01:03:10
Speaker
ah Workers were hearing moans from within the tunnel. Workers were hearing. ah And locals were were, whose loved ones did not come back because of this explosion and their bodies were not yet recovered. The lack of recovering of the bodies, and we find this a lot in ghost lore, where if the body is not recovered, there is additional propensity for ghost lore and sightings and things because it's it's unfinished business.
01:03:30
Speaker
No one can have closure in that case. And so these striking workers, there had been worker strike just prior to this explosion happening.
01:03:40
Speaker
The workers were trying to tell people this is a dangerous thing. We need better protections. We need another way out. If one shaft fills up, we need another way out. So and the all of these various things, the safety precautions and requested were denied. They were forced back onto the work line or lose their job at a time when jobs were ah very ah hard to come by in that particular area. So this was, um ah you know, that there was this sort of, you know, work or die ah mentality. And at this point it was, it and it didn't, it, they they were crushed within literally crushed in this venture. And, um,
01:04:20
Speaker
it it's For me, what's so interesting about this particular story is that the ghost lore, the more modern ghost lore about it, is actually where these people who who died in the tunnel or the imprint of, I'm not sure if it's what was known as an intelligent haunting, which is something that's ah really interactive with ah with the living, or if it is more of about what would be known as a residual haunting, which is like a psychic imprint of stuff.
01:04:45
Speaker
Well, I think sometimes workers who are modern living workers who are working there um end up interacting with intelligent hauntings because we've got a great story from the 1970s and it's one that was um ah carried in a couple of different papers at the time. And then it was it's been reprinted in a bunch of different ghost lore books through the years since then.
01:05:06
Speaker
um A worker known as Joseph Mpoko, who wrote ah to his local paper that he had been working on a line and he, for whatever reason, didn't realize that there was a train coming. And he he heard a voice, a disembodied voice. He didn't hadn't seen anyone else in the tunnel at the time. He felt he was the only one working in the track at that moment.
01:05:27
Speaker
And he heard a voice say, run, Joe, run. Holy And it was really insistent. And he did. He just didn't question it. he You know, you hear a voice and run and you do. and he And thank God he did because ah train came around the corner that he just hadn't heard. And the acoustics of that area are really weird and wild.
01:05:45
Speaker
Sometimes you'll be hearing you know rumbling and you don't know if it's the mountain. You don't know if it's the wind. You don't know if it's the tracks. So there's a lot of things that you can misinterpret there. um and the and And again, if it's coming around the bend, you don't always hear the sound of things coming.
01:05:59
Speaker
um because of the stuff stuff curves around the tracks. And... um this So he he didn't question that because then he got another directive maybe about a year later or so. Some time had passed.
01:06:13
Speaker
And he heard a voice go, drop it, Joe, drop it. And he was holding a crowbar at the time. And he dropped the crowbar. And as he dropped it, an enormous, multi, like hundreds of voltage ah jolt from a failing power line zaps the crowbar. Holy shit.
01:06:35
Speaker
That had he been holding, he would have been elector absolutely killed by that amount of voltage. No way he'd have survived it. And he would go back, even after he retired from that job, he would go back every year to that place to kind of thank the ghost, basically, to like feel like he was paying kind of homage to these voices that had saved him. And he had seen, but on on one of the, one of the two cases, he had seen a worker in kind of like faded sort of overalls. It looked a little dated. He was carrying a torch and he thought it was just some other worker who just looked a little antiquated, just had a little, you know, he just really think about it. And then later as he, as he was thinking about it, after the voice he'd heard,
01:07:22
Speaker
You know, he'd seen this figure walk by. he didn't see the figure when he heard the voice, but he thought about that figure. And he's like, I wonder if that's one of the guys that had been a part of any of these accidents before. It just you know he he he was very, very sure they saved his life. And, you know, I love I love nothing more than a helpful ghost um because they were looking out for their fellow worker. Because you know what? If you don't look out for your fellow worker, who will?
01:07:47
Speaker
Heck yeah. You know, like I tell you the the conversations I have with you, I end up thinking just ah unique thoughts. And I'm like, you know, the idea of solidarity here, you know, like. Really across the veil, across the veil, solidarity. It's I mean, I'm a member of three unions and I, you know, that's it means a lot to me to hear stories. I have enough to have enough of a time in my day to day, making sure everybody signs their union card amongst the living. My goodness, I don't want to. Right.
01:08:15
Speaker
Right. Right. Sign you sign your union card now. Right. Right. For real. And well, and and joe Joe himself would have been a part of a union, but not the not the men in the 19th century that was not allowed to be formed yet.
01:08:27
Speaker
They were working on it. You know, 19th century labor law was a was an active concern. Folks were trying um and some some were able to to unionize across a bunch of different trades in the 19th century. But it was a constant battle.
01:08:39
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. There's ah early labor, of course, having a very clandestine ah feel to it, that if workers, the idea of workers would ah come together, that they would create an unnatural, and natural barrier on the movement of capitalism by raising labor costs, etc. But so ah always, always clandestine. It even still has a little bit of ah of a feel to that. No, that's such a it such a we're still We're still seeing that stuff today where where where where union busting ah efforts are happening all over the place where you know where where folks are trying to meet and trying to get to talk with one another and they're being forbidden, whether it's on warehouse floors or in coffee shops or whatever.
01:09:26
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, talking about this. This is still happening. And talking about the, in the in the in in the private sector, and what you would talk about when we talked last time, talking about the labor law that had come into into the foreign, ah you know, and in the 1930s formally under, you know, under their federal law, still ah kind of a new thing. But the dynamics that you and I talk about, there's some of the same dynamics going on, right? Like the bosses breathing down my neck. We're supposed to have the ability, the two of us, to talk about.
01:09:56
Speaker
Combining our resources and our labor together and, you know, demanding what we need, say, to live and health insurance and all that stuff. So active labor law. Yeah. and And child labor um ah has been completely undermined ah in many states now.
01:10:14
Speaker
um And this was starting to happen right as we publishing the first book. And the yeah the the youngest victims in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire we were 14 years old. um And we're seeing, you know, kids, teenagers and younger working in plants now um because child labor has been repealed in many places. And i and these are dangerous jobs. And that's no place for a kid.
01:10:37
Speaker
yeah like it begin yeah I mean, what is there to be surprised about? But I think, you know, back I remember back in 2011 being in Madison, Wisconsin, and part of the. My local being part of the resistance against Scott Walker and.
01:10:52
Speaker
and Oh, yeah. Austerity place there. But, oh, yeah, no, it was it was the whole it was the whole package, you know, this stuff. It was the whole package. It wasn't just like what is just like an attack of front, you know, frontal attack on workers at the time. It was.
01:11:06
Speaker
Like everything that else that came along, it was like public works projects that would provide jobs. It was it was um it was ah child labor ah opened up for child labor. Right. This like almost it felt when it first came out like this kind of super antiquated. baby Like, come on. I thought we were past kids working.
01:11:24
Speaker
No. No, like they had kind of refangled this and say, hey, these kids are good. It teaches good skills and stuff. 14, 15 years old or even even younger. These are in semi legitimate considerations that we're talking about, not even the illegitimate ones where the kids aren't on the books or whatever is going on there. So I tell you, yeah one of the pieces as far as, you know, the the work that you do and and in talking about this is that.
01:11:51
Speaker
For me, it helps me mentally because it feels like there's a while things are the same and or feel the same and the dynamics can feel the same. There's always like this kind of constant reengagement, like workers will figure out how to fucking organize if if there are structures that says they can't. They'll find out weird to organize. And, um you know, so it's it's overbearing like the the maybe it's like the dread of the whole thing feels overbearing. But a there's these sparks that always keep you going that that the humans are thinking more creatively than than they have and
01:12:25
Speaker
Absolutely. That's yeah. And we don't like there's no our in our work. It's not one note. It's not it's never hopeless. That's not um that's not what we're interested in. We're interested in telling these stories because I think they are providing hope and they're all they're illuminating. And they're also saying, hey, let's try to keep doing better. And I you know, and I'm not I'm not saying that like kids can't have summer jobs or whatever.
01:12:45
Speaker
um But but nine year olds, if they're in an unsafe plant, that where where where the safety laws have also been undermined, that's the stuff I'm concerned about. I don't want a kid working in a plant to lose their fingers or their hand or something like that. And these things have happened. This is this is a dangerous environment.
01:13:06
Speaker
And if some if if some kids want to work there because they want to have those skills and various other things, that's fine. As long as there's not a coercive situation and as long as it's safe. The problem of it is is that a lot of these places, ah part and parcel, it's it's if your safety isn't there, then you're putting...
01:13:29
Speaker
kids who don't necessarily always have as much of a literal physical strength to stop something unsafe from happening. Um, you know, and they don't always know when they can and can't say no ah about a given situation that they don't feel safe in.
01:13:42
Speaker
So in in it's not that I'm ah anti giving people skills. I just want people to be, be able to be in safe environments in it. When I also want kids to be safe in school too. So. That's another story. No, and this, you know, absolutely. And, you know, I think I think the the biggest the biggest piece about it that I've seen is is those incentives and drives, right, which don't take into account.
01:14:04
Speaker
you know the the you know, the age or it's it's just grist it's grist for the mill and that dynamic still still stands. But, you know, and the thing is too, what's a kid... Like I'm an adult and I'm around adults when there's a safety situation. And I can tell you the general dynamics, nah, it ain't that bad. and I mean, there's something about us where it's like, yeah you know, it's just part of the job and stuff.
01:14:26
Speaker
And when you're talking about... I know, I feel when that stuff comes up on ah on a strike or there's so much... Yo, that shit's going to collapse. Yo, that thing's going to cut off somebody's arm.
01:14:37
Speaker
Yo, that thing keeps going down. That machine keeps going down. And when we put it back up, I think it's going to blow. And they'll keep saying, you know, and so it's I think it's um I think it's like one of the things of like when we're talking about safety and we're talking about work, if one thing I say, just like, like, let's listen to each other, maybe you know, and let's not have it be where we go back and calculate if this would have happened, if this would have happened, if this would have happened.
01:15:02
Speaker
Yeah. Listen to your instincts, too. I mean, there's there's some really interesting parts of our of the ghost lore stuff where it's like this this uncanny moment where you're not seeing you're not sure what you're hearing or what you're feeling or what you're seeing.
01:15:17
Speaker
But something isn't right. And that is your instinct kicking in. And we know that instinct was developed in our brains to try to keep us safe. And again, I'm not saying.
01:15:29
Speaker
not saying anybody needs to be paranoid about stuff, but I do think folks should listen to their gut if they feel like they're in an unsafe environment. Yeah. So, Leanna and I believe that when you go to work, you should come back alive. That's your ability. I do. Well, otherwise, going to have to write about you in ah in an and a next book. In due time. There's certain personalities going to haunt the shit, whether there's a scientific, haunt the shit out of people.
01:15:54
Speaker
I'm going to make an amazing ghost. i a i so I'll still have a lot to say. The literal ghost writer. Well, there's one thing I still want to do when I get out out east is is is is to take one of your tours because you know this has been great to to to to talk with you. but um I mean, I think, um you know, your skills, yeah you know, as an a historian, as an actor, as a storyteller, and you know, I think that's, you know, in doing the show, what's a podcast that kind of keeps you listening? Just, you know, the stories, the human stories. And so I just appreciate, um really appreciate your talents. and and And like I said, when I get um out that way, I want um to take one of those, ah
01:16:38
Speaker
Burroughs of the dead. bre Look up burroughsofthedead.com. So if you are in New York city, Burroughs of the dead, and that is Burroughs as in the New York five Burroughs. So that is a B O U R. And so, yeah, Burroughs of the dead is the company I work for. And it is founded by Andrea James, who is my coauthor for all my nonfiction.
01:16:57
Speaker
And, um, uh, I love being
Book Promotion and Events
01:17:01
Speaker
a tour guide. I can also assure you that every single guide that Andrea has hired is really stellar. So if you get me on a tour, fantastic. I'm to tell you the truth. I'm not doing very many tours this fall because I'm going to be on the road promoting our book.
01:17:15
Speaker
Yeah. Andrea is going to be kind of holding down the fort in New York City, making making sure the tour company keeps running. um I'll be giving you a few a few tours. We've got a new one coming out called the Uncanny Upper West Side.
01:17:27
Speaker
And I'm really excited about that one because I love the Upper West Side. And then I get to talk about my Dakota building chapter, um which is, you know, beautiful apartment building. And it's a It's a treasure trove of these, you know, of of hauntings within this larger space, which is really interesting. So that's a new tour um that we're launching this fall. So I hope folks will take that and and any of our classic tours.
01:17:48
Speaker
um A great deal of New York City is covered. So if there's a part of the city that you're curious about. A lot of our our of our attendees are also just locals, East Coast locals who are like, all right, I'm curious about seeing my city in a different way.
01:18:02
Speaker
um And of course, we welcome folks from all over. so check out brosthedead.com i love it and and and thank you thank you so much for your time and for putting out uh this new book um kicking off our so ah spooky season now spooky episodes all the way through um halloween but um man i've i i leona i just learned so much from you talking talking to you and and and thinking about these things so really appreciate it um for all my folks you know i'm originally from rhode island all my folks family friends out there you heard some of the places leon is going massachusetts i know a ton of people mess over there in rhode island over in rhode island heartleaf you my providence people come come see me at heartleaf books on october 3rd from uh five to seven i'll be there with a great rhode island author krista carmen we're going to be
01:18:53
Speaker
We're going to selling our new books there when we sign and we're gonna be meeting and greeting with people. Heartleaf Books is an incredible Providence independent bookstore. We love it. It's a co-op bookstore. So good. um So yeah if you've never been to Heartleaf, please go. And then i'm going to be at the Ashaway Library, which is also in Rhode Island.
01:19:08
Speaker
The Ashaway Library on on October if at 2 p.m. also in conversation with author Krista Carman about our latest work and that is a free event and and there's going to be they're going to have like refreshments it's going really fun atmospheric there so yeah that's for the Rhode Island folks for the Massachusetts folks I'll be doing I'll be signing at Wicked Good Books in Salem Wicked Good Books it's it's such a great it's such a great sort of double entendre there I'll be there at Salem in the heart of Salem and if you're from
01:19:41
Speaker
If you're from Massachusetts, you know that you probably shouldn't go to Salem in October. did that once. I did that once and once only. Tried to do that once and once only. i ah it's I'm lucky that I have family in the area because otherwise. So then logistically, if you're up for it, I will have signed books at Wicked Good Books. in on ah I'll be there on October six Um, I'll also be going back to October 2nd, uh, all she wrote books on October 2nd, that's in Somerville.
Audiobook Narration and Listener Engagement
01:20:14
Speaker
So that my Boston, my Boston peeps, uh, come, come see me on October 2nd at 7 PM and all she wrote books in Somerville mass.
01:20:22
Speaker
Uh, that's another great independent bookstore that I just adore. It's been a wonderful partner through the years. So, thank you so yeah, that's my bookstores. I love it. Uh, we have our,
01:20:32
Speaker
ah Local bookstore, browsers bookstore, a couple blocks from us bringing up a up a lot on the show. um Oh, good. Well, I'm sure they'll have copies. Order in through them. So, yeah. put it abe is if you If you're in Albany, Oregon, and you want something rather than nothing authors, there's only one spot.
01:20:51
Speaker
to go on that browser. So exciting. um Great. ah Have a great time. of Good luck thank you with the tour. in And everybody, grab grab grab this book. Listen to audiobook.
01:21:03
Speaker
The last ah ah but last one, I want to make sure, last one was an audiobook. Thank you. It was. It was. And we did not narrate that one. That was a wonderful narrator. We loved her. i remember that. Her name is Linda Jones. It was very good narrator. Yeah. She's very, very good.
01:21:18
Speaker
um For this one, because this one is more personal and ah really has some of our own personal experiences and made a lot more sense for us to be the ones reading it because ah there's just some – There's just some deep stuff in there that's really coming from our own experiences. So the Tantor team agreed like, yeah, no, let's have you guys do this. And so I went into this soundproof room in Manhattan, which is the funniest thing that like, you know, it's just no sound gets into this place. It's incredible.
01:21:50
Speaker
It felt like I was in a hermetically sealed space and this really and like high end equipment, everything. ah is ah It was really cool. um And so so that'll be that should be out simultaneously with the book. So you should be able to you you are able to pre-order that it'll arrive on your device's release day.
01:22:09
Speaker
Yeah, everybody ah listen to pre-order. and i so It's so helpful. That first week. And I want to thank you ah finally, Liana, for coming back on Talking Books.
01:22:24
Speaker
talking, talking history. um I've learned a lot. So I've learned a lot by the end of like here, just sitting around on on a Sunday and, ah you know, even inspired on the labor thing that there's labor solidarity beyond the living and breathing. I, you know, I've done this work for a while, but you've reinforced it again, that the solidarity, like truly like solidarity forever.
01:22:51
Speaker
I'm literally solidarity forever. Literally. And metaphysically. So on that note. On that note, we'll catch you on the flip side. Good luck. Safe travels.
01:23:04
Speaker
Thank you. and appreciate you all. Take care
01:23:19
Speaker
care. This is something rather than nothing.
01:23:29
Speaker
And listeners, to stay connected with us and our guests, visit somethingratherthannothing.com. Join our mailing list for exclusive updates and access to guest-created art.
01:23:40
Speaker
If you enjoyed this episode or any episode, please like, subscribe, and leave a review on your podcast platform. People really read that shit. Your support helps us reach more listeners and spread our community across the planet.
01:23:55
Speaker
This is a global show and we like to give a shout out to our many listeners across the world, including many listeners in Canada, Spain, Germany, UK, Argentina, Brazil, India, Thailand, and so many more places.
01:24:10
Speaker
Be sure to follow us on Instagram at something rather than nothing podcast for behind the scenes content. And the best way to help the show is to tell your friends about us.
01:24:22
Speaker
If you love it, they'll love it too. Tell your friends who love it. We love you. This is Something Rather Than Nothing podcast.