A Haunted House in Appalachia: Hinsdale House Part 1

Hi, Ghosties. I'm Macy. And I'm Natalie. And from July 1970 through 1974, the Dandy family lived in what it's considered to be the most haunted house in the entire state of New York. They endured years of psychological terror in the form of sightings of full-body apparitions, so clear it was shocking to see those people disappear right before their eyes. Disembodied voices whispering through their windows in the dark of night and chanting through the woods. Objects being moved and stolen from their home when nobody was around to commit the act, burns appearing on their bodies and belongings when they woke in the morning, accidents causing severe injuries, and an overall sense of danger and dread over the entire home. It had an energy so negative and so strong that even a church sanctioned exorcism couldn't stop it. Oh, they're home located in northern Appalachia, and now referred to as the infamous Hinsdale House was a source of great struggle for the entire family for some time, man left the lasting mark on all of them. What began as a family searching for a slower life and the country oasis turned dark and remains with them, some threw to the end of their time on this earthly plane. Their story, the story I want to relate to you today, lives on as a reminder at the land remembers. Oh my gosh, I've never heard of this. Really? Yeah, no, never. You asked me, you were like, oh, for, uh, do you have any haunted houses you know about anything? And I'm like, no. Every, ever haunted house I know about, I've learned about here. I feel honored being the one to bring this to you all the time. Well, literally all of my paranormal knowledge has come from this. Well, I hope to bestow some knowledge upon you guys today, and this will be a two-parter. So you'll watch today and then come back on Monday for part two. It was just, I tried to make it a one. There was just too much. Okay, there's way too much. I always say that because there is. Yeah, especially when they're entire books written about it, it's just like, how do I cut any of this out? It's interesting whenever there is so much that you're like, oh my gosh, I have, I wrote a 30 page research paper on it and it's like, okay, that is like already to me confirmed haunting. Yeah, it's real because there's so much. Yeah. And the book that I went by for this one was actually a book written by the mother of the family that lived here. Clara Miller. We'll put the title of the book in the description because I don't remember what it is right now, but it was very, very interesting. It was written just, you could feel, you could feel her feelings in the book. Okay, I love feeling feelings, but we'll go ahead and get started. Our tea today is a tea-peat, big, low Earl Grey. I have my cute one mug. Yes. This is Ombreon. Very, very cute. All right, let's go. The current owner of the Hinstell House, Paranormal Investigator, Daniel Klace, I think is how you say his name Klace or class, has spent some time looking into the strange phenomenon that has been reported about the house. He's convinced like many other people that it isn't just the house that's haunted, but the land it was built on and the entire surrounding area. Quote, it wasn't long at all before I realized that the spiritual issue, the problem I was feeling facing and investigating, wasn't just the building. The entire plot of land that is the Hinstell location is haunted. There is something wrong, something angry, something just plain evil, contained and living, and acting out that is present and active in the land itself. He has recorded strong EMF readings throughout the home and the property and has captured voices on other equipment that tell him that there is a great deal more than one spirit residing there. He believes that something truly evil happened near the Hinstell House and seeped through the veil even to this day. Though we don't have a comprehensive history of this old mountain farmhouse in Hinstell, New York, there have been a number of psychics who claim to have the answers. Many believe that a massacre of some kind happened on this land. We know that the land around Hinstell has been lived and worked on since at least 10,000 BC when the Clovis people took up residence after the glacial retreats after the Ice Age. Western New York was later home to the Lemokas and the Hopal Native Americans. We've talked about the Hopal people before in several episodes. They were the Mount Builders. One theory for this land's history is that the massacre had to do with the intrusion of Europeans onto the native lands. Regardless of whether this event actually took place, we do know that a great number of natives did lose their lives in the early days of colonization in some of the most brutal ways possible. There are some who believe that the home was built on a mass grave of over 800 people from hundreds of years ago. My gosh, why do people think this or is this just a rumor? So there is a newspaper article. I don't remember when the article was published, but stating that somebody back in the early 1700s said that someone from the Eroquonation wrote them a letter and said that they will not give up their land or something and they rode into the villages and killed every man, woman, and child. Now, is it proven? It's not proven. No. And I think the person who claims this is actually a psychic medium themselves or a proclaimed psychic medium. Okay. And so this might just be more vibes than anything. Okay. All right. So yeah, nothing proven. Nothing proven. But there are, and this isn't the only psychic who said this either. Yeah. So this psychic said this a long time ago. And there have been many psychics since who visited the Henselhouse since the 70s when the original family that we're going to talk about today moved in. And they've all said, yeah, a darkness happened here. I find it really interesting whenever someone says the land is cursed or the land is haunted. Because what parameters do the spirits or whatever have around? Oh, I'm haunting this land, but I'm only going around these like square miles. You know, like, why do they why do they have bounds? They have like a service area. Yeah, it's like operating. What makes what makes them stay just right there? Can they just freely roam? I don't have answers, but the way it works in my mind is that it depends on the strength of the spirit. Okay. And maybe the trauma that happened in said spot. Okay. I don't know. I just find it really interesting whenever land is claimed to be haunted. And it's like, well, if they can haunt this little patch of grass, why can't they go like three miles that way and haunt that patch of grass? You know what I mean? And in this case, they do. Like it's the whole, so Henselhouse used to be on a much bigger farm that was later like cut up and sold off, you know, divided and sold off to many different people's houses. So this particular haunting, yes, centered around the home, but it's all all over the like neighbors of the Henselhouse talked about seeing spirits and all that creepy, but it seemed to be concentrated here. Okay. There is another theory as to why the house and surrounding areas are as haunted as they are. And that was yet again, presented by another psychic who visited the home in the 70s. This psychic, who we will tunch on later in the saga, claimed that there were a number of horrendous murders that had taken place on the grounds. It's believed that the home or at least a home that once stood on these grounds acted as an in along an old stage coach route after doing their own investigation. The Danny family was able to find that a road used to cut through that very area and very well could have been used for stage coaches. It very well could have been a stage coach. Okay. Road, at least partially, possibly true. The psychic believed that during this time, there were people who used this stage coach route and in as a way to rob travelers stealing their valuables before murdering them and burying their bodies out on the land. Oh my god. So what this psychic said and again, we'll touch on it. I think it might be in part two. He claimed that the owner of the inn didn't know about it, but it was other people who kind of stayed around in the area, who used this area as their hunting ground. Oh, that's dark. Whatever you said, they robbed them and stuff. I was like, Oh, you know, that's bad, but then I didn't realize they were killing them as well. Like I didn't, or I didn't expect that. Rob them of everything including their life. Jesus. Aside from these horrible circumstances, you can imagine that over the years, the home and land have seen their fair share of deaths. Accidental, like the death of a 16-year-old boy who was helping his father when a blood sauce snagged and shot out at him. Natural causes, and yes, maybe even murder. But we are still aren't sure exactly how many of these have contributed to do the numerous specters and the years of experiences had by those who lived at 3830 McMahon Road. The home we see today, that modest two-story farmhouse, is thought to have been built sometime in the mid-1850s, though records are unclear about who built the home. Everything here is just kind of like, I don't know me. It doesn't seem records were kept very well. Yeah. I mean, that's kind of a lot of things, especially very small town that are not like huge significant events. It's like you might find something about it, but probably not. Like I imagine our hometown, we probably wouldn't be able to find much just because it's such a small town. Yeah. You know, no one's thinking, oh, this is going to be very important one day. It's weird I was actually thinking about this exact thing the other day. Yeah. Because I was curious about some history, and I was like, I wouldn't even know where to find that. The land itself dates back as farm land to at least the early 1700s. Many families have lived in this home over the years, including before and after the Dandy family. It's believed that not many people lived in the home for very long, all for different circumstances, some left due to financial hardship, others to illness, or misfortune, and some from death. But records of the hauntings weren't documented until July of 1970 with Clara and Phil Dandy and their four children. Clara Dandy born in Buffalo, New York and raised as a Roman Catholic met Phil Dandy in her hometown in 1954. Phil was working at a local grocer after getting out of the air force. He was originally from Burden, Kentucky, raised in rural Virginia, but after his service, he chose not to go back home. And instead build a life further north where a buddy of from his military time lived. So I think his military friend's dad owned the grocery store in this area of Buffalo. Clara was taken by his southern accent, and by the summer of the following year, the two. married. They had their first child in 1956, a boy named Mike, their daughter Beth in 1957, their daughter Laura in 1960, and their last living daughter Mary in 1962. As you can imagine, a life with four small children can be stressful and even at times taxing on a marriage, though Phil and Clara were fairly happy in the beginning. Their relationship began to become a little rocky by the time their last child, a daughter named Christina Michelle, passed away after only a couple of days' Earth side. Their differing cultures and backgrounds began to take a toll on them. Phil was raised not very religious and just like very totally different upbringing than Clara had. And the couple was kind of drifting apart by this time. So in 1967, Clara suggested that the family take a vacation together to try and smooth some of the tension building in their home. Clara was working as an office manager at a local college and Phil was a crane operator for the more bored motor company, and with four small children the vacation was such a nice reprieve really for everyone. Some friends of theirs had recently purchased a cabin near Allegheny State Park and had invited the Dandy family to stay whenever they liked. So the family of six trekked out there for their summer vacation and they had a fantastic time. There was a sense of peace that Clara felt being out in the park and nature seemed to bring them all just comfort that they hadn't felt in a while. It brought the family closer together and was all around relaxation and bliss for them. By the time they got back home, they all kind of found themselves to be a little disappointed and missing it. That's the worst feeling coming home from a vacation. It's nice to get away. Regardless of where you go, every time I've come home from something I'm like, oh man, I'm gonna go back. Really? Well, this vacation made such an impact on them that Clara and Phil decided to buy a cabin of their own outside of the city so that they could spend all the time that they wanted within that 30 minutes of the park. Every good weather weekend for the next three years was spent at their cabin and Clara felt the entire family slowly becoming more disillusioned with city life as she called it. It became more and more apparent to her that they needed to live out there full time. At first, they were thinking of building a bigger home on the property that they owned. As the cabin they purchased wasn't big enough for full time living. I mean, it was good enough for a weekend away, but the kids needed six. Yeah, the kids needed their own spaces. But the person who sold them their cabin had reached out and let the Danny family know that they had a bigger farmhouse on acres for sale in the same general area. The house was over 100 years old and it needed some repairs, but Clara and Phil were all in at this point. Quote, "The day Donna took us to see the house, we were hooked. Later that tendency to be drawn, to be absorbed in and sometimes obsessed with the house became more apparent. But on this day, it really gave us hope or a brighter future." Little did we know." The home was two stories. The first floor containing two bedrooms, the living room, kitchen, a bathroom, and an enclosed porch. The top floor had the primary bedroom, another small bedroom, and a closet disguised as a bedroom, really. There were also two smaller areas in the home that would go on to serve as sources of fear for the family eventually. Quote, "Facing the dangerously steep stairs, as one descended, was the door to a crawl space, a feature of the house, with which I was not familiar. Having always lived in houses with addicts, the awkward crawl space was not my idea of a storage space. It was peak-roofed and almost inaccessible. The only way to enter was by balancing a plank on the narrow side of the stairway or on the stairs themselves and tightrope walking across. When the door was open, hot dusty air rushed out. Looking in, one could see the neat brick chimney among the angled rafters. Another feature of the house which offended my city sensibilities was a root cellar. Now I have lived in houses containing cellars all my life. I have always found them to be efficient storage spaces, convenient laundry rooms, and very good locations for children's parties, but the root cellar was something else again. The only entrance was through a rather narrow door set in the bathroom of all places, about a foot from the toilet. One would find it difficult to imagine a more awkward location. If the cellar itself hadn't been so dreary, perhaps the oddly placed door wouldn't have been so bad, but descending the rickety stairs and coming to the dirt floor made my flesh crawl. The sidewalls were rough, unestone. To the left of the stairs, as you descended, you could actually look under the foundation a good place for animals to hide. There was only a small area in which the ceiling was high enough to allow one to stand. The dungeon had no virtues that I could see. So you get the vibe. Yeah, very um, light and fun. Oh yeah, for sure. But before all of this occurred, they found that the home was not only perfect for them, but their menagerie of pets would have plenty of room. By the time they moved in in July of 1970, there were the six members of the Danny family, 39-year-old Phil, 37-year-old Clara, 14-year-old Mike, 13-year-old Beth, 10-year-old Laura, and eight-year-old Mary. But also two dogs, a cat, a litter-trained raccoon, four guinea pigs, two parakeets, two finches, and a wood chuck named Nipper. Why? That's so many pets. Why? They love their animals. My god. They needed the, they were like several acres with this property, and they needed it. Well, I don't think the litter box trained raccoon is going outside. They need the space. That was you said? Yeah. The litter trained raccoon. Yeah, it's like another cat. I guess, but oh my god. A wood chuck. Yes. Is that allowed? Apparently. What does, I don't even know if I can picture what a wood chuck looks like. I'm just thinking about on EZA when he's like, hang, hang, hang, hang. Yes, I know what you're talking about. This is a, I'm sure, much cuter wood chuck. Anyway, over the four years living there, they'd welcome into the fold another three dogs, another cat, and even a decented skunk named Dolly, which is very cute. Okay, sure. Unfortunately, for the family, not all of those pets would make it out alive. I won't go into great detail, but many of their pets disappeared or lost their lives out on the Hinstell property. When before this, they had never had an animal die outside of old age, so they took good care of their pets. Oh, okay. Ouch. Yeah, thanks for sparing the details. Before fully moving into their new home, the family took their time, moving their belongings bit by bit from their home and buffalo to their farmhouse in Hinstell. They took several moving trips out to the new house over weekends off work, and looking back, the entire experience clearer believes all of their troubles truly began on one of these trips. They were on their way out to the new house to get their telephone installed when the station wagon inexplicably overheated. It had never had any trouble before, it was fairly new too. But from that day on, their family and many others would go on to require fix after fix, not only the dandy family's cars, but their visitors as well would experience broken down vehicles, one instance where an entire exhaust system fell off, and worst of all, there were accidents too. Oh my god. Okay, I don't have any comments yet. I'm just like. Truthfully, I'm still stuck on the woodchuck. Yeah, really? I think you're actually like sure woodchuck? Yeah. I already think it's crazy to have so many animals, so many dogs, cats, parakeets, ferrets, whatever else you said, but a woodchuck, a skunk, and a raccoon. Yeah. Not all at the same time, but still very interesting. I think when they got out there, they released the woodchuck into the wild, and like so fed it when it wanted, if it wanted to, but it like went out and lived its life. Okay. But the time clearer and feel were ready to move the last of their things. It was July of 1970. I think they moved in July 18. Clara's parents and her brother Gordon were helping them that day. Gordon and their mother went on ahead of the rest of the family with some of the children's clothes, but when they arrived at the house that day, they were surprised to find that they weren't able to see inside the windows. They were pitch black and completely covered in bees. On the many occasions that Clara had been to that house, she couldn't think of a single time that she had even seen one bee, let alone. The thousands that were now inside her house. Gordon called an exterminator to help get rid of the swarms, and even he was shocked to see this mini bee swarming in this way at this time of year. He said it was very unusual at this time. Nevertheless, the man sprayed and got rid of the bees, and Gordon and Clara's mother spent their time sweeping up the mountain of insect bodies while they waited for the rest of the family to arrive over an hour of just sweeping. That's really sad. There were just so many of them poor bees. It is sad. I wish I could have been relocated. Yeah. A horrifying omen. I would say when you're moving into a house just to have that many flying things in the homes of insects feels very scary to me. I agree. And this wouldn't be the last of their family's bee problem. They would go on to have run-ins with these bees and they're honey until the queen and the rest of the hive decided to relocate themselves. Okay. So this wasn't even the extent of them. They would have honey dripping from their ceiling just through the combs inside the walls. That's more of just like a they should have found some kind of beekeeper person problem. I don't think that's a paranormal side note. One of my favorite types of videos is watching beekeepers move hives. Yeah. I like those. Love it. I could watch for hours them searching for the queen. And I could never do it. It freaks me out even with the full gear. Yeah. Freaks me out bad. The family also had more car trouble on their way to the first day last night living in their home. It overheated again. So this is the second time their car has overheated on their way to this house. They get their bees everywhere. Swarming covering your windows. Bad sign. Moving in was fairly smooth considering all that it happened so far. And Clara was really enjoying the first few weeks of life out in the country. They met their neighbors and the children were already making friends with some of the kids nearby. But one thing of note for Clara was that their dogs began bringing back very large bones after exploring their land. She thought they must belong to deer or another large animal. They were just kind of the long bones out in the wilderness and simply tossed them into the garbage. A mistake she would later regret immensely. Those are human bones, ma'am. We'll never know. Oh my god. My dog ever brought any type of mysterious bone. I think I would call someone just to be safe. Just to be sure. Because that would freak me out really bad. I agree. But I mean, I get it when you see deer. Yeah. You're looking at the one that you see deer on the way there. Yeah. You're like, okay, this obviously has to be, you know, a wild animal. Yeah, but after like so many of them. Yeah. It'd be like, we're finding these. It was more than a more than a handful. Yeah. Clara and Phil eventually went back to work after getting settled in and their long commutes were already starting to weigh on them. Phil would often stay over at Clara's parents' house in Buffalo during the week, leaving Clara and the kids home alone most days, though he did work nights anyway. So they'd be home alone at night anyway. Yeah. When Clara came back home that first day, she found Mary had fallen from her bike on the way home from school and ended up needing several stitches. So she got home and she's like, you know, it's been a rough commute. I'd basically been out of the house for 14, 15 hours, but I'm home. Beth has made beef stew. Things are good. She calls in Mary for dinner and Mary comes riding her bike up, wrying her eyes out, blood spewing out of her chin. Oh my God. She had flipped over her bike and landed on a rock or something. Yeah. First day. First day back. It was then that Clara began thinking that it might be best for her to leave her job and be at the house for the kids full time, though she wasn't ready to quit just yet. I mean, they just bought a house. They sold out their other belongings. They, you know, need the money. This wasn't held by the fact that not long after living there, Clara arrived home to find the children scared. They were sure that someone had broken into their home. After unlocking the door, the family had found that all of the girls belongings, fills and mics things hadn't been touched were strewn about the house. Their doors just gone through and even Mary's record players smashed and laid on the other side of her room. Plenty of valuables like money and guns were left untouched throughout the home. So it didn't seem like a robbery. The three big dogs that the family had at the time seemed pretty unbothered by it all, even their oldest dog who was known to be quite vicious to strangers. Rather, they seemed more so to be slinking around the house as if maybe they were scared recently. Oh, really? Oh, rather than we just fought off an intruder thing. Yeah. Yeah. This would not be the last time that items moved around their home. On many occasions and written about all throughout Clara's book about their experience, she would find that their nightlights and lamps would be thrown to the floor. Small items and money wouldn't end up missing from their locked boxes and purses when nobody was around to take them. And one night, Mike's board games were thrown from a shelf onto his bed and floor from the bottom of a stack, leaving the top on move. So he had a stack of board games on a shelf above his bed. On top of the stack of board games was a precariously placed pile of magazines. And Clara had told him for hey, you might want to find a different place for that when she came in one night because he called for her. She found that his bottom two board games were thrown out onto the bed and onto the floor. Magazines unmoved. Very weird. And this is all within the first few years still. This was only the beginning of years of unexplainable things happening to them. A few months later, before Clara ultimately quit her job in the city, the children were out playing while Clara worked around the house. She heard shots ringing out in the distance, but initially didn't think much of it as this was the country after all. Plenty of deer hunters, you know, doing their thing out there. That is until she received a call from the neighbor's house. It was a sound of Mike's panicked voice that set off the alarm bells for Clara. He and Beth had been in the field hanging out with friends when someone began shooting at them. They dropped the ground. It made their way to their friend's house and it needed Clara to pick them up as they were scared to walk back outside. Oh my God. Very scary. Did I ever figure out who it was? Well, it was originally assumed that it was one of their more eccentric neighbors who had chased kids off. Like get off my lawn kind of thing. With a gun? Yes. Well, gun in hand never shot at them. That we know of. Clara called the police. I think the kids had even seen, maybe seen his car or something, not long before the shots were fired off. So they assumed it was, yeah, safely assumed. Yeah. So Clara called the police to report the incident. The whole thing was just brushed off as a mistake. The state trooper thought maybe the person with the gun believed the children to be wood chucks and Clara was incensed and replied, I don't know about your children, but mine don't look like wood chucks. Okay. What a stupid thing to say. Teenage children, this isn't like it's not an infant. Yeah. This is a fully fully formed teenager. What a dumb thing to say. But nothing else ever came of this. It wasn't long after this incident that Clara and the kids were introduced to one of the many ghosts known to haunt the property. They were first told about the man who walked down their road by some of the neighbor friends. And though they laughed it off at first, they were soon to find that it wasn't a joke. Mike would go on to see him first. He was walking home with a friend who lived nearby. A couple of friends. When they saw what looked like a farmer ahead of him, his friends told him that this was a ghost, but he didn't believe them. Mike chased after the man to catch up. And when he got about six feet away, it seemed as though the man stepped behind a tree at the top of the hill and completely disappeared. There wasn't a place that he could have gone without the boy seeing him. So none of it made sense to Mike. The entire family and even some of their friends would eventually see several full-body ghosts in and around their home, including a teen boy that a trooper would later say match the description of his own brother that we talked about earlier who had lost his life. What was really chilling about some of these spirits is that not everyone saw them exactly the same way. And I'll touch on this a little toward the end of this episode too. They could all spot the old man or one of the many others traipsing around the property, but where one would see them wearing maybe jeans and a t-shirt, the other would see an entirely different outfit. Or in the case of one of the neighbor girls, see them as a dark figure, like a shadow figure, which is a little darker, you know. Do you know of any like spirits or ghosts or hauntings where the entity wears different clothes? No. Right? Because it's always like you see the lady in white. Yeah. Exactly. Or the man that was wearing like jeans in a black shirt or something, you know. Yeah. This is probably the first time I've ever heard of that. Yeah. Me too. But the family didn't have a lot of time to think this over as they were getting used to their new life so far from where they had grown up. Come November. Clara had finally quit her job and was staying home to send to the house. And by the time winter came around, they were tasked with even more trouble when their first water line froze. It was the coldest winter on record at the time and they were given so much trouble from this. They would each have to carry a pile of water to the house every single day because they could not get water to the house. It was completely frozen over. But this meant that they only had enough water for each of the members of the family to take a single bath once a week because they all carried a pallet and that was one bath. That's it. Yeah. Clara was boiling water from these pales for dinner and cleaning and the howling winds and cold chill proved difficult for the entire dandy crew. Not only was it more and more work for the family, but it was costing them a lot more money than they had intended for this time with only one income. During all of this time, the family was suffering from more and more accidents as well. They were by no means a clumsy family before the move, but it seemed now that every time they turned around, another injury was occurring. Mary, with her chin, Laura fell from her bike and ended up with a staff infection and later a broken foot while exercising two different injuries. Mike had scolded his stomach with boiling water. Then he cut a tendon in his hand while cutting glass for a school project, I think. Then he broke his toe while playing basketball. Clara broke her finger and had it in a splint for months. Phil cut his thumb to the bone while trying to push a car that got stuck in the snow. Beth fell at school and broke her arm. Clara's mother was even suffering the consequences of her daughter's home breaking her leg falling down the stairs after returning home from a visit to the Hinsdale House. Oh my god. So she got home and then tumbled down the stairs and broke her leg. Oh my god. Okay, this is all within when is this still the first year? This is still the first year. Pack it up. This is the first winter. Pack it up. That's that's too much. Yeah. Well, some of this might have happened a little later on, but yeah, that's still still these injuries. Even all of this within a four-year time period, the entire time they were there is a lot. A lot. Yeah. And this is only a portion of it, too. Jesus. Before we carry on with the ghostly activity, just like with other cases we've talked about, particularly the conjuring house, the family had their fair share of sightings in the night sky as well. Quote, one evening while carrying in, yet another pale of water, I saw an object in the sky approaching me from the south at a high rate of speed and incomplete silence. Quickly, I called to the kids. All five of us watched as the craft or whatever it was, hovered for a few minutes overhead, having always laughed aggressively at reports of flying saucers. It was hard to admit what I was seeing. The object for I refused to call it a UFO was large and round and appeared to have lighted windows outlining it. As we watched, it veered suddenly and disappeared into the night sky to the north. Do I have an explanation? No, I still don't know what it was. The kids reported seeing similar objects many times in our night sky. Sometimes they appear to be executing intricate maneuvers. Writing this is difficult because judging from my own reaction to such reports, no one is likely to believe me. Which is sad. I believe you. I believe you. A hundred percent. But that's kind of how she felt about a lot of this. I remember just so much. I could see myself feeling that way, too. Yeah, well, writing this, she was like, I know, I know some of this sounds wild, but this is what we experience. And I'm glad that she was able to say that. Yes, and be like, believe me or not, whatever I don't care, because I feel like it would take a lot for me to even tell anybody anything that ever happened to me because I would have that fear of being like, what are you talking about? You know, I see it. Yeah, but this wasn't the end of the UFO encounters either. The next summer, about a year after moving in, Clara woke to find her room was covered from floor to ceiling in a bright fluorescent light. It seemed to be coming from above the house. And at the same time, she heard Mike calling her from downstairs in a panic. Boat, mom, do you see it? The whole house is lit up. I think it's right outside my window. She tried to calm him, telling him to ignore it because it was coming from the sky above, thinking, I don't know, maybe it's a plane of some kind. Right. She didn't want him going to the window. She was worried as Phil was in Buffalo at work, because like I said, he worked nights at the time, and she was there all alone to turn to the children. And she was like, don't go to the window. We're also begin one bed. This went on for about a ten full minutes before it went out altogether. Clara peeked out her front window and could see a similar round object that she had seen before moving away from their home towards the mountains. Reports of UFOs in the sky that night were so numerous that it made it to the local paper, actually. Oh, okay. So they weren't the only ones seeing this one. Yeah. So that makes it a little, a little easier. Or around this time. Yeah, the family made it through that harsh winter, but Clara was beginning to notice that something just wasn't right. The oppressive atmosphere was building around them. Quote, "The area is saturated with some kind of power I can't define. The times when it's quiescent, you couldn't find a better place to live. Then it seems to build up and needs a place to vent." If you're at that point, God help you. The whole nature of the area changes. We call it nights like these, umbrella nights. I've yet to find a better description. That's exactly what it felt like. An umbrella descended on the house, condensing the power into something very tangible. You didn't have to be psychic to feel it. It affected different people in different ways. Some grew increasingly restive. Some became contentious. Some felt their nerves jumping like out of control acrobats. There was a sense of expectation of waiting for the other shoe to drop. See, it's hard to describe. I guess you had to be there." Mary's room was probably one of the most oppressive in the whole house. There were always these unnatural chills inside, no matter how hot it got in the summer. She became very much afraid of her room and would eventually refuse to sleep there. Mary's room is also the location where three of their animals in a two-month period met their end. It got to a point where their vet even told them to just keep animals out of that room. Whatever's happening to them in there, just they don't need to go in there. That's really sad. And as Clara put it, quote, "It wasn't long until we had to keep people out of that room." So people animals, everyone just kind of stayed. They would go on to keep Mary's door shut at all times, never going inside unless they absolutely had to. If Mary needed to get something out of her room or for some reason needed to be in there, otherwise the door shut. Yeah, we're not hanging out in there. Exactly. Mary didn't even sleep in there. I would actually either. Mary spent a lot of time at her grandparent's house. And I would too. Mary and eventually Laura would too. In the spring of 1971, Clara would have an experience that really pushed everything to the forefront for her. She was out walking with one of their dogs along the camproads because they lived, like I said, the original farmland was broken into a bunch of pieces. And a lot of people used them as like cabin campuses, RVs, that kind of thing, around the area. They were rented out for people. So she was walking along these camp routes right outside her property. When they reached the top of the road, her dog Lassie stopped in her tracks and perked her ears up at attention. Clara didn't know why at first, but soon she could hear the faint sound of a choir singing out in the woods. Oh, no. To her knowledge, there wasn't a church anywhere nearby. So she wasn't exactly sure why they were both experiencing this, because it wasn't just her, it was the dog too. She continued walking, continued hearing that singing and chanting. It was so clear that she was sure she'd be approaching a camp of some kind soon, but she never came across another person while out there. Eventually, she wasn't able to hear the music anymore and decided to shake it all off. But on her way back home, along the same route, in the same area, she began to hear it again. And once again, Lassie was on full alert. It sounded to Clara like the sound was coming from behind some of the nearby campsites. It sounded exactly like a kind of Gregorian chant that she had heard growing up as a Catholic. She still couldn't place it. She finally made it home and told her children about it, her strange encounter, kind of laughing it off at first. The next evening, she went back out trying to see if it was just her imagination or if it would be there once again. But this time, with Laura Mary and three of their dogs in tow, soon after they started their walk, Beth and their neighbor Pat joined in. And all of them were able to hear it this time. None of them could come up with. Yes. And that's what gets me about this whole case. So many witnesses to all of this. Everyone's experiencing it. Yes. So it's not just one person being like, "I think this happened and I wrote a book about it." It's like, no, I had. Paul, Sarah, Henry, David, Macy, everybody was with me. Yes, exactly. Scary. And the kids had a lot of friends coming over all the time. It got to a point where I was like, I don't know who this person is, because there were so many kids over there all the time. And they all were experiencing this. Some of their friends would even stay overnight, sometimes patrolling the area to see if they could catch a prowler or a ghost or something like that. Yeah, they were very invested. So none of them on this walk could come up with a rational explanation as they continued on the trail. This time on their way back, they heard the chanting again, but it abruptly stopped. Before a single male voice began, a monotone prayer. The entire group was spooked and raced home. And this would not be the last time that anyone heard the chanting either. It went on for a while. They heard this from far away. Yeah, like just beyond where they were. I would feel like if I heard that one voice, they were watching me and like putting some kind of curse on me or something. No, they said something kind of like a prayer, just like this chanting to go along with the singing. It doesn't matter. It would freak me out so bad. It's really creepy. I mean, they ran. I would feel like he was looking directly at me. I feel that way right now. I'm creeped out. No. Mike decided that he was going to go out and investigate all of this with one of his friends who wasn't afraid of those haunted woods. He asked two of his friends and one said, "No, I'm not going out there." Another one was a skeptic and was like, "Yeah, of course, there's nothing out there." Quote, as they climbed the steep slope to the top of the mountain, suddenly Matt said they shouldn't go any further. This was the skeptic friend, by the way. He was frightened. My intrepid son talked him into going all the way to the top. And just as they had almost reached their goal, what sounded like a woman's scream stopped them cold. They must have broken all existing track records to get back to our house. Now, it may have been a bobcat they heard, but the fact remains that it ended are nightly concerts. I heard from time to time of different people hearing this mysterious singing. The last time in October of 1974, just before you left. Most people assumed there was a church nearby. There isn't. At least not one you can see, unquote. Clara dropped a lot of these little. Little bangers. Yeah, little one-liners at the end. Yeah. I feel like a lot of their experiences, or at least some of them, and we'll talk about a couple here soon, could be chalked up to animals and they're in the country. They're in the wilderness. There are predators out there. There are strange things going on out there, regardless, like biologically. But there was just so much, so much, and so many people experienced, even people who grew up here their whole lives, that it's just hard to say everything was animal. Well, I mean, the UFO stuff is already like. Well, yeah. Hello. And also, if all these people around here grew up here are familiar, you know, they've been around, and this place is still drawing them in. Still drawing their attention. That tells me it's more than just like, "Oh, we heard a bobcat," or, you know. Speaking of drawing in, something I found really interesting reading this is that Clara mentioned, and maybe I put it in a quote earlier, that the house drew people to it. Oh. They would leave, and think about it all the time. Visitors would hear these stories, and feel compelled to come back. Yeah. Clara, even to this day, is like something. It still kind of calls to me a little bit. I guess, but no. Look at how you know. If I experienced anything like that, I know for a fact I would not want to go back. And if I felt any type of pulling, or any type of interest, I would be like shutting it down. I would be so anti-that feeling that I would not feel it. I imagine it's kind of like a scary movie. You know, you want to look away. You want to look away, but it's so thrilling. And even if it's having to you in the moment, and you're really frightened, sometimes you want to go back and watch that movie again. That same thrill, that same kind of like rollercoastery type feeling. But not in real life, no. No. Not for everyone. I don't think I would feel this way, but I can see that. Like, I kind of liken it to that. I mean, I guess so. But not me. Especially, I think it could affect me because getting those glimpses of proof. Yeah. And then telling yourself, "But what if?" Let me just mix it again. Let me see again. Let me see again. Yeah. Let me double check. Yeah. I could see that. I could understand that happening to me, I think. So it was all continuing to escalate for the family. That dark feeling, descending over their home, continued on. And many of the family members and even animals would become restless and agitated for no apparent reason. Clara had another encounter this time inside her home while relaxing alone before heading off for a doctor's appointment. So Phil had taken the kids out, I think, to grocery shop. This Clara had an appointment very soon. And she had just settled on the couch to read a book. When she heard what sounded like a window slamming shut. But when she walked around to find the window, they were all still wide open. So noises throughout the house were very intense. Later on, maybe this is in part two. Lots of footsteps. Lots of walking around pacing around the home at all hours. And she was there alone. Yeah, never. She was there alone a lot. I remember. And the kids were at school. Could not be me. She did. Or a moment in the book stop and say, you know, it wouldn't be very interesting if I kept in all the, and today we had a party. And she may win off. There was no issue. So there were a lot of good moments. There were a lot of heavy moments. There were a lot of, like, I'm sure. I'm sure we would happen moments. Yeah. Until the end. By the end, it kind of was like every day. But, okay, we're the most part. Then, one night, one of their cats wouldn't come back in for the evening. And Clara really liked for all of their animals to come back in at night. She didn't want them out there, you know, possibly getting hurt. Or really, you know, by a bigger animal. So she went out to call for the cat. Its name was Chinks. She found that she couldn't move any further as she walked out. As if an invisible force were stopping her in her tracks when she got to a certain point in the yard. There wasn't anything unusual or menacing in view. So she stood in confusion for a moment. Then, she tried again, raising her flashlight to see a pair of eyes staring at her from the trees. She thought, this is Jinx, the cat. So she walked in that direction, keeping the light pointed at those eyes. But just as she approached the eyes, disappeared. There was nothing in the grass. She searched around with the light. Now, she was beginning to feel that pit in her stomach again. And her hair stood on end. She slowly backed away, back toward the house when the eyes were appeared in the same spot when she got about eight feet away. I don't like that. She went back into the house feeling a little silly for being afraid didn't tell anybody because she's thinking this is ridiculous but went back to look for the cat again half an hour later. This time, asking Beth to accompany her. So the two of them went back outside, flashlights in hand, when Beth stopped dead in her tracks. In the exact same spot Clara had before. And without turning around, yell back to her mom, let's get in the house quick. There's something wrong out here. The two raised back inside the house just as Jinx came in from the other side of the home. That came around the house from the other side, but they were looking. Yeah, something was out there. And it was watching. And it was watching them. Yes it was. And reacting. It knew that she was coming close with the flashlight that, oh, and there was that animalistic feel for them, that instinctual, I can't go any further. Oh, I don't like that at all. That makes me sick. That is, and I keep saying this, but we're going to get into it more. But there, there was thought to be a spirit there that was more protecting than some of the other more ministering spirits. I hope so. I think in instances like this, if it wasn't just that instinctual hunter predator, thing in us that maybe it was one of the good spirits there, stopping like, hey, you don't want to go any further. Something dark is out there. I sure. So in that case, yeah, sure, I'll go with that. Things were definitely escalating in the day. And he household. And it wouldn't be long before there was something horrifying happening nearly every day with the family. Like I said, in her book, Clara included a letter she received from Beth near the end of their time in the Hinstell House, that she thought summed up the intense feeling that lead over the home that umbrella feeling. Feeling quote, the first time I noticed something strange about the family or the house, it was funny because it was before homecoming in my sophomore year. This was the second year that the family lived there. I came home from a football game and you were doing the dishes and I walked over to ward the sink and it was like a wall of hostility. You said you aren't mad, but I felt something was wrong. It was funny because I remembered how you always used to sing when doing the dishes. Mary was uptight that day too. Pat was there and that weekend and she kept waking me, saying someone was quote, breathing down her neck. Oh, two days after that was the first umbrella night. I remember. I don't know why I didn't remember before. I guess maybe I never let myself. I kept trying to shut everything out of my mind, but it really didn't work. I guess someday I'll tell my kids and the laugh and it suddenly won't seem so horrible. I think the horror started when I noticed you seldom sang anymore. Well, now you can send them in and the white coats for me. Unquote. Things like this continued on for the family over the next year, but in early 1972, Clara had an experience that could actually confirm some of these theories that future psychics had about their home. Mike and Beth were attending a dance at their school, but Mike still wasn't old enough to drive, so around midnight, Clara headed out to pick them up. There wasn't much snow on the ground on this night, but it was still very cold. As she drove out, she could see lightning flashing through the sky on a constant rhythm. It was just very full of lightning, random spurts. On this night, she once again had Lassie there to keep her company. So a good companion, really scary times. Quote, we reached the bend in the road just before it began to dip to a low point. There, it crosses a small stream in a gully and then climbs around to meet the main road. A flash of light suddenly lit up the sky in front of us. Just before the dip in the road is a dead tree next to an old broken down barn or shed. The fallen branches of the tree frequently blocked our way after a windstorm. This night, however, it was not fallen branches that frightened me, but the silhouette of a body hanging from the dead tree and swinging in the wind. Oh my god. As the lightning flash. Oh my god. I saw it long enough to notice that it had a hood or hat over its head, but not long enough to know for sure whether it was a man or a woman. I slammed on the brakes so hard that poor Lassie wound up on the floor. Even though the next lightning flash showed the figure to be gone, no one will ever know how hard it was to drive under that tree. My scalp was prickling and icy fingers were playing havoc with my spine. Unquote. That is such a dark image. I would find it very difficult not to crash the car. Well, yes. Yes. Thank you for reading my mind because and that is not an exact like I would be so scared. I couldn't drive under the tree. I couldn't. I know that I couldn't. I would just reverse the whole way home. I'm sorry to find another way home. Yes. That's you said reverse the whole way home. Yes. Yes. Oh my gosh. Not take my eyes off of that area. No, very spooky. Before we wrap things up today for part one, because yes, this will beat two parts. I needed to mention once again that there was so much trouble with cars by this family and many of their friends and visitors. Clare's mother and father had three separate car accidents on the way home from visiting their daughter and grandkids and hisdale. Clara had a car accident in which she suffered from whiplash in November of 1971. By 1972, the family station wagon had so many issues that they finally had to just get a whole new vehicle. The servicing agent from like the service department said, all right, you're done. New their voices. Like, oh, hey, Clara. Just by her saying hello. Yes. It was a lot. People's breaks would often stop working. Their exhaust system, like I said, would completely fall out. Yes. Their transmissions would go out just by visiting the home. They would have perfectly normal time getting there, park the car and then boom, exhaust out. This is this is feeling dark. It gets dark. It gets pretty dark. Like, I'm ready to hear the the actual. I don't know. Well, this is the build and part two is big. Oh my god. Carrying on Mike had a terrible accident that nearly took his life. We will talk about next time. He lived, but it was it was very bad for a while. Beth's boyfriend crashed his new car only five weeks after Mike crashed his the next few happened in a matter of only two weeks. A family friend named Keith crashed Phil's car after running off the road being run off the road by a car with no headlights. A few days later, Mike was taking the car out and got into yet another accident this time less serious. After buying a new car, the boys borrowed the car again and were t-boned by a man who ran a red light. Mike was able to get a new car with his insurance money. And a week later, Phil was run off the road rolling three times and becoming pinned upside down trying to drive to work. So this was everything two weeks. Stop all for those everything. You have to just stop. Never drive again. In general, everything has to stop. And Phil lived, I mean, Phil worked in Buffalo. Yeah. So they were he was driving like over an hour every night. Yeah. Remember that all of this and more was only in the span of four years and all related to the house in some way towards the end of 1972. And before things for the family, really began to ramp up. Believe it or not. But this was only the beginning. Like seriously, there's so much more. The family had several run-ins with entities around the property. The first time anyone in the family saw the aforementioned 16-year-old boy, Mike, Laura, and Mary were home alone while Clara and Beth went for checkups for their injuries. The whiplash and the broken. I think it was. They were sitting in the living room together with the dogs when the animals jumped up and began barking like crazy. Just 20 feet away from the front window, they saw a young boy of about 16 walking the property line. Mike kept an eye on him, making sure he didn't cross the boundary onto their property. He was like, oh, he's keeping his distance but still he's too close. Keep an eye. Yeah. But it seemed to him as though the boy hadn't even noticed their house at all. He was just kind of looking past everything. The boy went toward their pond and then very suddenly disappeared right before their eyes. The three had no explanation for what they had just seen and were shocked to say the least. At first, Mike was like, maybe he fell in a giant hole. Yeah. And the girls were like, no, he didn't. What are you talking about? Yeah. He just vanished. They're one second gone the next. And if you didn't want to take the word of three scared kids on this matter, then you only need to look a short time into the future while the entire Danny family was gone for the day. Clara and Phil had given some of their camping neighbors permission to use their outside water faucet to fill up their water bottles as long as they promised to turn it back off. And that's exactly what they were doing when they too witnessed something strange. They had both looked up at the same time, a husband and wife, and saw a young boy walking near the Danny family's spring house. He looked as though he were headed toward their own cabin. They thought maybe it was a friend of the Danny family so they didn't see one of the kids. Yeah. And just like when Mike and the girls had seen him, he seemed to not see anything around him as well. They didn't think much of it. But as soon as they realized that he might be going toward their own cabin, the husband jumped into his car and made his way back. The boy was walking through an open field, but by the time he made it to their home, he had vanished. The wife even went to the top floor of their barn to get a better look to see if it's bottom like she could see for miles from it. Yeah. Nothing. He was just completely gone. And what's stranger is that when the two were talking about it later, they realized that they both saw the same boy, but wearing like I said, completely different clothes without that's weird. Very weird. I don't understand that. I've literally never heard that. And maybe it's just a recollection problem could be because witnesses notoriously don't remember very well. Oh, that's a good point. But I feel like they weren't the only ones. How different are the descriptions? Like in this case, I think the husband saw him wearing jeans and the other one saw him wearing chinos or something like very different pants. But yeah, I mean, I think it just depends on the the severity of the difference. Like this, okay, but with Pat who sees the farmer as the dark man, the like shadow man versus a real person to me, that difference is scary. I don't like the the ringleader feel of like a one dark shadow. Yeah. It feels like it's orchestrating all the other stuff. Oh, or like, you know, keeping any good spirits in the area like scared. Like the man of the hat, like in Ghost Whisperer. Yeah, that's exactly what that is exactly what I was thinking about. Yes, I could not think of what his name was, but that was you just read. Yes, you were just in my brain. Yeah. Well, without having known of the previous sightings, the two of them, the Danny's friends, had become yet another witness to all of the unexplained events unfolding there in the small town of Hinstell. As I said before, things were only beginning to escalate for the family. Over the next two years, the final years they spent in their Hinstell farmhouse, the family would endure voices was spring outside their windows, full-bodied apparitions beckoning them outside, burn marks and other injuries physical and emotional, and so much more terror the family could hardly manage. It reached such a pitch that they had to call in a Catholic priest and exorcist just to get a little bit of peace for such a short time. It's an incredible story that I know you aren't going to want to miss what comes next. Okay, I wish we could do that one right now. I was gonna try and make this into one episode, but that was already so much to set the scene. That was just the scene setter. But on a positive note, we did switch the episodes this week. So you don't have to wait a whole week. You just have to wait the weekend. Yes. That makes me feel better. Yes. I can hear this tomorrow. You can probably. But we hope you enjoyed it. We hope you'll come back for the finale. It's such a spooky story. I'm ready. I found myself gasping, sometimes during the book. Yeah. Okay, I'm excited. So we hope we'll come back like this video if you liked it. Share it with your friends. If you feel compelled to do so and subscribe for that new episode. Also, we have tons of fun things planned for spooky season. It is our season. So we're very excited about that. You won't want to miss any of that. You can also follow us on patreon is patreon.com/ghosties. We've got extra things over there. Plenty of extra episodes. If you want to go check out our back catalog. If you want to hear, it's just chat and be weird. You can check out our loose leaves. We can have lives. Lots of fun things over there. It's a cool community. It also started something new that may or may not come to the real world later and feed later. We always test everything through patreon. So if you want to be a lab rat, come on over. Join. Join us. You can follow us on social media. It's @ghostiespod. Pretty much everywhere. And other than that, we will see you on Monday. Goodbye.