Farrar School | Is This the Most Haunted School in America?

In 2006, a young couple decided to buy a recently abandoned school and turn it into the house of their dreams. However, what they didn't bet on was the slamming doors, phantom footsteps, and sound of ghostly laughter that plagued their new home. They would come to discover this was an open secret that the quaint rural school had a much more interesting story to tell. So today, in combination with our ghost hunt video, we're investigating the haunted school of Farrah Elementary. This is Red Webb. Welcome back Task Force to another episode of Red Webb, the podcast all about unsolved mysteries, true crime, and a sprinkling of the unknown. I'm your resident mystery enthusiast Trevor Collins, joining me hearing this case for the very first time Alfredo Diaz. What? What has to come over a person to make the want to buy an elementary school per housing purposes? It's a good question, but I guess, you know, maybe it's cost-effective space, you know, the dollar per square footage is real low, but you're getting yourself like a heck of a remodel job. Yeah, the pie is a remodel it, but also, I mean, the bathroom isn't going to be a normal bathroom. Oh, that's right. Oh, like all of it's, you know what I mean? Like, do you want to sure you'll clean it out? It will be yours and everything, but it's still going to, it's not going to feel like living in a house or a home. It's going to feel like living in a dorm at best. That's a great, you know, I've seen couples do this and it looks really cool. Yeah, I guess it's like, it's like a trend, you know, like all the people that they move to France and get a chateau or something like that and turn it into something crazy. I mean, that's, that is a traditional house. But like in elementary school, you're right. It would feel a little bit like living in the overlook hotel. Like it's the shining to walk into like a locker room to go shower forever. There's too many deep corners and far away things like, I don't like that. Yeah, no. It's not set up like a house is set up like a house for a reason. Right. Right. You know, what are you going to put a bedroom in a classroom and then where's the closet and then the bathroom, you have to walk down a hallway and then the bathroom has stalls and there's not enough like sink space to put your toiletry. And so what you're just carrying your bag over, like you're again in college. I just know that sounds appealing whatsoever. That sounds like a, I'm not want to complain about having a roof over the head. But like that does not seem, I mean, again, these people are choosing to make this purchase and do this. So that's not even the same category. I also like, you're like, why are you attracted to doing this in a school in the first place? Let alone the fact that it ends up haunted. Yeah. Like that's just a byproduct, maybe in Frato's mind, that's what you get for moving into this. I mean, that's the, that's the true horror is the living situation. Yeah. You think about homework every day. I listen, you could put up walls, you could build closets, but to move all the plumbing is a bit of a headache, you know, it's again. A remodel nightmare to make it an actual home, you know, this place being haunted. I'm curious as to how scary, various visceral these hauntings are because I mean, they're kids. Kids can't be scary. Right. I mean, you just wouldn't think that if, okay, aside from movies in cinema, Hollywood, all that, you would think that in the reality of a real life ghost, it's an echo of their emotions and who they are as a person. And so an elementary school full of kids as haunted isn't going to have a bunch of people that are trying to kill you, I would think, you know, you wouldn't think, right? You wouldn't think. You think it'd be scary stuff, weird thing, granted there might be a teacher that was a terrible teacher or principal, that was a terrible principal, but you go to a present and you go, okay, this might be violent, right? These are echoes that people had violent tendencies or whatnot. Here it's like, it's what, the residual energy of a child that ate chalk like, what is he going to do? Yeah. The kid that fell off the swing set wrong, like, that nothing insidious to your point is going down in an elementary school. So yeah, I'm with you. So we're going to look at that. We're going to go through the history of this location because, Fredo, as you know, in real time, we're going to break the fourth wall task force in real time as of recording this episode, this weekend, Fredo and me and Christian, we're all going to go film the ghost hunt, but for you task force, it's available right now at youtube.com/redwebpod. You can watch the vlog of us going out there. That's a separate video, but we also have the entire investigation available right now. So yeah, Fredo, maybe this weekend, you can, you and I can start looking at classrooms and figuring out what the feng shui of this potential home would have been, but we're also going to start feeling out the energies of this place. So talk about the history today. We'll talk about some of the ghosts and hotspots that you and I and Christian are going to start exploring to figure out what might be going on here. Of course, there are lots of different entities and things that people experience. And then as we like to do, we're going to address the theories as to why a school might be haunted. What makes this school such an interesting hotspot out in the great plains of Iowa? And what's really attracting that energy in because I think you're on to, I really love your, your initial reaction here because you're on to the positive energies are definitely going to be something. You also mention a principle or a bad teacher or something. All of those will be cultivated when we talk about the ghosts and task force, if you want more from this investigation because it is our Halloween special, go to redwebpod.com. It's our Patreon page where you can support us directly, a little indie show like us, but we also usually put up extended moments from the investigation. Static camera shots completely unedited and uncut for you to peruse through and see if you hear or see anything deleted scenes stuff. Sometimes that is too silly or doesn't make sense to put into the full edit. All that stuff usually goes up and we'll trickle those out over the course of this week for you all. So with that said, Frado, let's buckle up and saddle in. It's time to talk about for our elementary and right out of the gate, you know, we're going to do this as we normally do. There is a picture. I want you to have a visual as we start. So here is a picture of the outside of the school. Yeah, I don't like that more so because of the fact that we're going to go there. I don't like that. You know, three floors in a rooftop, yeah, bored up when I guess the windows are half boarded up. Yeah, it does look like that. I don't know if they are like that in current times, but yeah, it doesn't seem too large. It's not super big. I could see the chateau energy of it, you know, if you really, I mean, you got to gut it down to the sticks as they say, but this could become a really nice home with a lot of elbow grease. I see the potential here, but man, that's an undertaking that would just, you know, to each their own. But yeah, it's an undertaking that I wouldn't take on fair enough, having owned a home and dealing with contractors. Are you going to task force? You know, or even if you don't own a home, just dealing with a contractor in general. Right. Imagine doing that for just something goes wrong and it's something small. Imagine that for everything all throughout the place. Okay. So as you and I are about to find out, Fredo, this is in the throes of Iowa. And if you haven't been to the Great Plains, they are gorgeous states. But once you get out into the rural areas, it really is in a really almost beautiful way, very flat and very empty. And so looking immediately at where this location is, we're going to be very isolated. I don't know what the opposite of claustrophobia is, but that's what I feel when I think about places like this. Okay. So Ferrar is about 23 miles northeast of the capital Des Moines, Iowa. And it is actually a small, unincorporated community, 37 kilometers for our European friends. But in the early 1900s, Ferrar grew with the industrialization of agriculture and the success of farming regions prior to the Dust Bowl, the crash course history here, we're talking about pre-1930, the Dust Bowl was a period of severe drought. And with that drought came just dust and dust storms swept up by the winds and carried around and of course exacerbated greatly by the Great Depression, the economic downturn. And so it was just absolutely disastrous for the farming communities throughout the Great Plains. And this forced so many farmers to move, their families needed to leave those homesteads, etc. Now with the nearby then town of Des Moines, there was also an era of expansion there. So because of all of this expansion here in the central area of Iowa, there was a railway that was planned to go through here. And it was constructed to go through where Ferrar is down into Des Moines, etc. And this was I think around 1902. And so development was imminent. It was rapid as local promoters, business owners, people in this area who were really trying to drum up excitement around their small towns kind of expected Ferrar to turn into a bustling city. In 1919 there was local farmer C.C. Gettys, who donated six acres of his own farmland towards the development of a new school. Ferrar and these nearby communities at the time were using as you've probably seen in films and pop culture and what have you, these single room, like small school houses, where everyone kind of from the rural area goes to this one school house. A teacher teaches different grades. There's the chalkboard, et cetera. Now, these school houses were simply too small and too sparse to suffice for a now growing or anticipated growing community. So now we have this new school. It was aimed to consolidate all of the new students that were going to be in this area and bring them all kind of in something as you'd expected modern times into one single building. And this would combat that lack of adequate school houses in the rural towns, but also prepare for the expansion. And for context, the population of Ferrar in 1925 was 45 people, but a little spoiler alert for how the town kind of didn't grow and then eventually became unincorporated territory. The population 15 years later in 1940 was only 36. - Wow, investments did not pay out. I mean, the school still stood and attracted. Basically, it was the magnet for all students across the rural areas, but really, it was intended to be like, hey, Ferrar is going to be this big bustling thing. We have to build the infrastructure to be prepared for it. Now, the proposed school was going to cost $100,000 because of advanced technologies at the time advanced, but now things that you would come to expect. Electric lights, indoor plumbing, and boiler heating. Now, accounting for inflation, this is a surprisingly small amount for a then state of the art facility, $1.7 million in today's currency, which I think a school of this kind, just with rough research would be at least $10 million if not significantly more for a modern school. Now, despite some of the community members' feedback and the claims that the school was too much of an investment, it was too expensive to build. The construction went forward anyway. And on April 1st, 1922, there was a grand opening and a dedication ceremony that took place for the community to celebrate this new school. And it included things like an orchestra, banquet dinner, everybody from the area was kind of welcomed in. And the school served all students. I mean, it's called an elementary school, but it has kindergarten all the way up through high school seniors from 1922 up through 1958. Then there was a district merger and the school strictly became an elementary school. That's why it's referred to as elementary now. Because when you merge all those districts, you have so many students, you kind of have to separate it out. And so now all the younger students go here and the older students go somewhere else. But it then operated strictly as an elementary school until its eventual closure and the not too distant past in 2002. Now the school closed because the district leaders chose to consolidate schools and move the declining student body from Ferrar to the brand new Anderson Elementary School, roughly 10 miles in closer to Des Moines. And honestly, just based on looking at hotels for us this weekend, it's kind of like there is a last stop before you head northeast out of Des Moines where facilities, gas stations, hotels, schools like this, they all kind of stop. And so they're basically moving the Ferrar School students from out in the Ferrar down into that corner of Des Moines. And that's where actually you and I and Christian will be staying in our hotel near this Anderson Elementary. - So is it in the middle of kind of nowhere? - It very much feels in the middle of nowhere. There's a church down the street, just a little bit down the other way, is kind of a small dare I say neighborhood where a street comes off and there's like five or six houses there, but everywhere else, you can see the horizon. - Okay. - Yeah. - I mean, we watch movies and we go that's a bad decision. And here I am going to do something and a, 'cause we have okay, it's an extra layer. We've gone to places that have been haunted. - But it's like, you know, it's in the Bay Area. It's, you know, it's in a small town of Texas. - Right, it's in San Antonio. - Not somewhere that's a little bit more remote. - Mm-hmm. - I'm gonna be hyper aware of what direction that church is. - Yes, yeah, yeah. - Just the case, you know, and I'll make sure eat light unless, you know, I need to be chopping wind. (laughs) - That's how it'll be. - I'm a Carbo load. Carbo load the night before. - You gotta be, you just gotta be ready for anything. Who knows, things have been escalating during our haunts. That's just weird. - Yes, they have. - And this is our third one this year task for us. So if you're looking at the other two, we did the Blacks one in. We did Mountsville, Penitentiary, and West Virginia. Frato's referring to Yorktown. He's referring to USS Hornet over near SF. We've run the gambit, but you're right. This is the first one that is truly in the middle of nowhere. And so there isn't really a, oh, there's just a truck running through. Like, you can't really, oh, that's just radio interference from a, you know, a popular city hub. I mean, we're kind of out there. - That's true, I didn't think about that too. When we hear different noises going, oh, that's just the street, the bustling on the street. - Yeah. - Now you hear something and you go, okay, I really hope it's a branch. I really hope it's the wind. - Yeah, yeah. This episode of Redweb is sponsored by Laundry Sauce. Task Force, I wanna put my experience right up at the front because it's not often I get very excited about a sponsor and Laundry Sauce legitimately does it. I'm about to geek out because I do a lot of research on what Laundry detergent I use. And if you're looking for a balance of effective cleaning and incredible scents, please look no further. I really enjoy their Australian sandalwood scent as well as their Italian Bergamott, but the cleaning power is incredible. 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It's time to make Laundry Day, the best day of the week. - Okay, so like, who owns this now? - This is a great question. There's a lot of little history here and there. I'll get to it, but-- - When we visit, who owns it? - When we visit, who owns it? That's a, okay, I'm so glad you asked because I didn't wanna bury that lead. So very interestingly, if you know them, YouTubers Sam and Colby, who they're well known for their ghost investigations themselves. They have like a whole squad that they roll around and do very, very popular investigations. They own this now, this is their facility and which is like kind of serendipitous because we're gonna do something different when we investigate this one. We won't be with Straybird with Shane. It's just gonna be us three. And because Sam and Colby are, you know, YouTubers, content creators, they're very in tune with doing stuff like this. And so, yeah, they hold private and public investigations but they also have all the kit. I'm very excited to poke around. But yeah, that's who owns it now. - All right, I feel good about that. I feel, that means people have visited, you know, they're well known ghost hunters. So there's been some traction and stuff like that. Not just a, I don't know, a family, that owns a farm, up the road, you know, type of situation. - What we've seen that, which is like, okay, we gotta get the whole of this family now. It's 3 a.m., they need to come lock up and-- - It's not. - Now they're safe on the couch, you know? - Yeah. So I think they actually like did a thing where they spent seven days in this place and, you know, they just, they experienced what they experienced. But in total, you know, this place ran for 80 years. It closed on May 3rd, 2002. And just like it had an opening banquet, it had another banquet to close the school honoring its final days. And after its closure, the school sat abandoned until 2006 when the couple named Jim and Nancy Oliver kind of moved in in hopes of turning this abandoned school into their perfect kind of dream home, their ideal place. However, this is when things kind of started to get weird. You know, when people start to remodel, that's when a lot of energy start to shift in these stories. And it was only once the renovation started that the couple realized they were experiencing a few things that they hadn't really known about. And then when they started talking to each other, they were realizing, oh, it's not just you, it's not just me. So these ghostly encounters begin kind of in haste. The couple started to experience things that they couldn't explain. Now, at first, they reported seeing shadowy figures. They would hear doors slam throughout the property. And they decided to do some investigation of their own. And despite buying the property completely unawares of these stories, as they poked around town, anybody that knew about this school or maybe people that used to work or attend the school, they soon discovered that the ghosts of Ferrara Elementary were kind of an open secret. Teachers and students alike often spoke of strange happenings dating all the way back to the 1980s. Throughout this time, there's countless things that people have seen or heard, many different tales. But if you look at all the experience is a few things kind of fall out as consistent. Hearing slamming doors, hearing loud footsteps, and hearing the echoes of children's laughter throughout the halls, which, "Child or not, positive or negative, that just gives me the hibi jibis. I don't need to be hearing laughs from the other side." - Oh, that most definitely. I don't wanna hear it. Ah, man, it's the whole other level in this episode, because the fact that we're gonna go visit this damn place. - Right. - And sometimes we do it at the location, the podcast itself. So I have a whole, like, half week to let this simmer. - That's true. Normally I spring this on you, because again, Shane's huge shout out to our buddies, Shane at Straybird. And, you know, we do the podcast there because of his gear. And you get to hear about all these twists and turns right in the moment. So yeah, you got to simmer with it now. So this might help though. Okay, as positive as children can be, you know, your instinct to kick them, drop kick them, and run away is like, you know, you cannot run a child. But also there's some positive energy. (laughs) So Nancy explains that she had a very vivid encounter one night. She's going down the stairs. And she says that she kind of loses her balance. She starts to fall over. And as she's wobbling for just a moment, she feels what she describes as a steady hand on her shoulder, keeping her from falling. Now this is the opposite of most stories we hear about, where people feel pushes, scratches. They kind of want to hurt you. They want to move you to the stairs and throw you down. Or they want to move you to a, you know, a fall of some kind. And you feel pushes. And because it was so vivid, and it kind of stopped her from falling, she turned around fully expecting her husband to be right there. But when she turns around, it's just an empty hallway. No one's there with her. I do have a photo of, I believe this very staircase, thanks to the paranormal investigators of Milwaukee, who had extensive coverage of this location. Oh, that's a deadly fight of stairs. Yeah. In this window list, you know, you can get a little disoriented in this. God, it feels like a back alley stairwell or something. Yeah, damn, man. Yeah, exploring a school is gonna suck. Yeah, I'm gonna be walking up and down those stairs constantly, testing my balance, seeing if a ghost will save me. Yeah, definitely gonna be at those stairs. We're definitely gonna see what's going on with the stairs for sure. Yeah. Now, despite this ghostly activity, the Oliver's learning about all this experience kind of continued on. They wanted to live at the school. And for whatever reason, whether it be cost, the ghosts, what have you, instead of converting the entire property, they converted one end of the first floor into their home and officially moved in later that year in 2006. So I'll be very curious for you and I to go there and see what we see as far as home renovation. What echoes of this still remain if it's been taken back or if it stays that way? Because again, there's lots of hallways, lockers, schools, auditoriums, but I'll be curious to know about this portion of the history. Yeah, I mean, I'm also just a sucker for seeing renovations and stuff like that, you know, looking at homes. I owned a home, I still looked at other homes. Would they do it their home? Yeah, why not? It's so fun. And so having talked about the struggles of making this a home, being able to go there and actually see if they pull it off or not, I'm interested in just that in general. You know, how would you have done this? Let me see, first hand. Yeah, and is that area also active? You know, with under the guise the believer's theory of like echoing energies or what have you, would they be attracted to this new facade or does it maintain itself in the old building? Like, I'm really curious how that might feel, but now I just can't stop thinking about an HGTV pitch. You and me, the haunted property brothers, you know? Yeah, we're selling haunted properties. I feel like that has to exist if it doesn't. Uh, what is it? Uh, always sunny, hue, honey, and Vick vinegar. Yeah, I think we're gonna have some TV show names like that. Yeah. (laughs) Sam and Colby, let us know if you want to hop the haunted property brothers. Oh no, we'll investigate, we'll check it out. Okay, so they kept the property, and I've already talked about this here, but you know, they kept the property there. They were hosting haunted tours all the way up until July, 2024. And this is when they sold the property for a reported $260,000 to popular ghost hunting creators, Sam Goldbach and Colby Brock. And under their ownership, the building has continued as a ghost investigation hotspot. They host these investigations. Their team has shifted slightly over the years, but currently it consists of manager, Anna Christensen, psychic Stephanie Pitts, and lead investigator Sonja Bell De Villa. And Anna is actually the one who we've been talking to. Anna or Anna will know when we meet her, but she's been just a treat to work with. Now, throughout the years and changes in ownership, many who toured the school reported their own ghostly encounters. And from those experiences, you can kind of start to decipher a few hot spots and ghostly regulars of this location. And this is where we have a really interesting twist here that I'll talk maybe more about in the theories, my own inclination going in. You know, we all have our preconceived notions, but there's an angle here that I'm curious to get your reaction on because child ghosts doesn't strike fear into the hearts, but there's another layer. I was like, oh, is this gonna be kind of just like seeing if we can count out the spirits. But also, why would there be child ghosts? 'Cause as of right now, there hasn't been like a huge, there's a fire or whatnot, like, so why would children be haunting this place? - Exactly the question to ask, because you and I, you know, we want to believe, desperately want there to be ghosts. But of course, we're gonna come in pragmatists. We're gonna debunk everything that rightfully should be debunked. So that way we're left with that very slin, thin layer of, well, there's some weird stuff happen that we can't explain. And in that is, you know, is where we search for the truth of Argos, or are they not? But it's a very valid question because a lot of places usually feature death. And when people die there, the idea is that, oh, their spirit stays on. But there's a few other theories that attempt to explain why ghosts might haunt the halls of a place where someone might not have died. And we'll talk about those. But before we do, we've got the ghosts and the hotspots. And first up, you have the most often seen entity at for our elementary, and they've been named the principal. Now, the principal is a horrific figure. Picture this as I describe him, okay? All the visitors who have seen the so-called principal, he's more than just a shadowy figure. He's tall. He's lanky, like almost an uncanny version of a human type of lanky. Some have even described him as nearly nine feet tall, needing to bow through doors and the ceiling. By many accounts, he mainly resides in the office of the school's third floor. Those who see him describe his presence as very domineering that they feel a very intimidating energy that emanates from him upon witnessing this figure. One paranormal investigator who visited in the early days was so taken by this entity that he decided to sketch a portrait of him of the principal and hang it. And it still hangs in the school to this day, though I couldn't find this sketch online anywhere. Our researcher, Kat also did the same. And she couldn't find it. So you and I will hopefully see this if it is there, that sketch of the principal. It will be in our ghost hunt investigation on YouTube. And we'll also post it on our social media @redwebpod. But you can imagine, right? Kind of like very hat man or the crooked man, you know, just like, pulling his way through doorways and being way too tall. I don't like, see, that's, that's the part that was worrying me, you know, so caught up on the decor. I was, I briefly mentioned it, it was, you know, it was a thought there. I was like, oh, you know, the principal or teacher or something. And here we go, of course. There it is predicting the future five minutes at a time. Can't just be like, a haunted playground in the middle of the day, like in a bustling city. Yeah, you know, we do the haunts. Then we go get pizza afterwards or something. I don't know, man, it's always that night. It's always been broken down in place. It's always someone that was doing some creepy thing or is it creepy themselves and yeah. And now, like you said, the added layer of just being in the middle of nowhere, there is no sense of, you know, like if you're scared and alone, but somebody joins you and suddenly you're way less afraid of the dark, there is no sense of that and no real population around you. No. Now, according to those who have witnessed this entity, it doesn't seem like the principal is a specific apparition of any previous principles or staff member that for our had. So perhaps it's a spirit that's taken on some sort of cursed uncanny valley version of who once worked there, like a weird copy mimic or like shadow of someone once there. We'll talk about that angle more in the theories, but Ivy Reddinger, who was a previous manager and paranormal investigator at the school, has shared the theory that some believe the school itself is alive. She explains that the school in its kind of absorption of energy, again, I kind of harken back to the shining and the end. overlook hotel, which is a place that is said to be alive in that story. The school itself has somehow conjured three paranormal beings, kind of to keep itself alive, keeping itself going because it didn't want to close or air quotes die. And so one of those is the principal, with the stern commanding presence to kind of keep order at the school. The second entity is known as the librarian, but much like any library, this is a quiet spirit and isn't often talked about, isn't often seen. In fact, there's not much else to say about this particular entity. And then the final is that of the janitor. So the spirit of the janitor is one of the commonly made appearances during various paranormal investigations. The janitor is most often seen in the school's boiler room, but has also been seen roaming the gym, both of which I have photos for thanks to the beginner's photography group, if you want to take a look at those two spots that we will be in always a boiler room, man. Always. Always. Never been to a boiler room and then we start going on ghost funds. I'm going to every single boiler room I can. Right. Damn it. Okay. So yeah, looks like a terrible boiler room down in a basement somewhere, which is unfortunate at this place as a basement. Again, a lot of places that have basements. I grew up with Sarah Cisco. There was no basements. Texas are no basements. Now we're going to places that have basements. You miss an out basements rule. That's where things get spooky, man. Oh, no way. The way it would be running up those stairs on lightning speed. If I had to pick something or drop something down a basement, the gym. Okay. Yeah. I shoot some hoop. You can shoot some hoops with the ghouls and hang out there. The ghouls. Yeah. It's a gym and, man, it's a school. Schools bring their own energy, man. As old as you get, it doesn't matter. It harkens back to those like there's nostalgia for the positive sense. And then there's like nostalgia in the sense of like, oh, I remember needing to go to school and do homework and struggle with studies or whatever. And it's just like a weird. And also elementary schools. Yes, this was built for like all students. But when I go to an elementary school, when my brother was a little, I'm like, everything's just awkwardly small. Everything's just too low. It sets you off. It just, it just feels wrong. I agree. Okay. So I do find it fascinating. You know, and yes, I could be cynical about the idea that the school is alive. And therefore, it conjured spirits. But before we get too far away from it, we got the janitor still, you know, some have reported seeing him right in the gym in the boiler room. Some have even reported that when in these locations, they have heard a menacing voice that they would then attribute to the janitor. Usually that voice yells get out while visiting these areas. And I don't know how to feel. If someone says get out, if we do an estus method down there, I'm not going to know how to feel if one of us says that. I agree. And I think it's crossed my mind. When we went to Yorktown, it was for the second time that we heard stuff. And those are true. First, I'm saying counter of things of like, this is doesn't add up. We already had shot things there and done enough. And so we went, you know what? That's it. That's all we need to do. That's our content. I'm leaving. Yeah. What happens if we go there? We go the first room and then within two minutes are like, get out, leave. And then like, I don't know, we hear noises. We can't just be like, does the episode? Yeah. Oh God. Right. You think about that. No. It's kind of just like, we're going to be in a dilemma of we don't want to be there. Yeah. Yeah. But also we haven't filmed enough. I love the idea of like, we build this up because we don't even know what we're about to have this weekend. And test forces like, great podcast is over. Let me click, click, click. They go over five minutes. And it's like, they open it up. It's this cold open shots of the building, us outside, it's asked for us. We're about to do this. It's all one shot. We walk through the front doors. All right. We're going to start in the boiler room, one shot. Go down the stairs, boiler room. Go down. We're all right. We turn right back around. And that's the end heard. Bye. Yeah. Got it. You know, I think what I would do is I would go to like a best buy or just get some sort of RC car or a remote vehicle. And then I put a camera with a mic on it. And that's how I investigate from then on out. I'm just like, moving an RC car through this building. I gotta get material. Can an RC car be like, yelled at by a Google? I don't know. I mean, it might push it over. Well, happens if you drive it inside. And then after a big it's pushed over. Oh, it gets pushed over. And then the impression has to go in and flip it over. And Chris is not about that. But he's going to do it because he's brave. He's so brave. He's like the bravest one of us. And so it's like, well, of course, he's going to go in and he's not saying anything. So you know, he agrees, you know, he's the most qualified. He's the most qualified technically speaking. And his silence is complicit. I couldn't find my mute button. The man's panicking. I want it on the record. I don't agree with any of it. Yeah, his silence is complicit. I'm like, here it is. We turned to Christian very slowly. He pulls out another RC car. But this one's got a coat hanger on it so we can grab the other one. Dude, absolutely not going in there. Oh, no, man. Dude, okay, I was thinking about this while I was researching this, getting into the weeds of the town's history and things, looking at Google Street View. And I'm like, broad ass daylight. I'm like, I don't know if I feel the CBGB vibes here, but I know when I get there, it just feels wrong. And we'll, again, we'll talk about it in the theories, the psychological effects of priming and fear and all of this stuff. But it's just like, I'm like, cool. I can't wait to be brave at this one. You know, but now I'm just like, I'm going to these photos. And I'm just like, I don't know, man. We always again, like you've said before, we're always the bravest because it's a day where it is. There's daylight. Right. And so I'm thinking of us outside alone looking at this at midnight going, I dare one of you to go in there. It's just not going to happen. I'm going to try. I'm going to, you know what? I'm going to do it. We're going to try. We will try. But also at the end of the day, like, you know what I mean? Again, I can only be so brave without there being some kind of a officially sanctioned handbook on how to handle this stuff. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. Maybe we run in, have to tag something in the gym and then run out. Or maybe maybe we play hide and seek and the kids will come out and play with us. We'll figure it out. Okay. The boiler room is not only host to the janitor, but for some reason, it also seems to be a hot spot for a wide array of activity, including that of the children, hearing, talking, playing, laughing. I also think this extends to the rest of the school. There is a room. Well, let's talk about the kids, you know, because unsurprisingly, with so many 80 years of kids going through this building, you've got the kids giggles, you got the running footsteps, but some have reported there to be a ballroom on the third floor, just like not like a dancing ballroom, but like a ballroom. And in this room, it is said that people have seen balls rolling, bouncing, moving on their own as if being played with, I believe people hear it when they're not in there, they can hear it echoing down the hallway. But it's said that the children are also very active on the second floor in rooms 206 and 205 specifically. So you know, we're going to get well acquainted with that second floor. Remember for movie club, we covered gongium haunted asylum and they have the specific room that you shouldn't go in and then they dream out and then. I was all I was saying, you know what I mean, I'm just, it's just things that we're gonna, like I don't like the whole idea of like this specific room with this number. Don't like that, don't like that. No, when it has a specific number, it creates an idea of of reality. I don't know what it is because if you're just like, oh, the classroom might be like, okay, the classroom still sucks, but okay, but you're like classroom 215. I'm like, I don't want to go to classroom 215. Right. That's too specific. Right. I don't want to go in a, you know, a hotel 708 like, mm-hmm. No, man. Like the idea of a unnumbered ballroom, I'm like, great, that could be any room, maybe we'll find it, maybe we won't, but now we have room numbers. Now, overall, the kids are described as having a more playful kind of trickster energy to them as you would kind of expect, rather than the sinister feeling coming from the previous trio. I'm curious if we'll find ourselves the librarian, but maybe we'll be yelled at by the janitor, maybe one of us when setting up cameras, Christian who's so brave and volunteered silently to do it. We'll see the principle, but jokes aside, I mean, Christian and Shane have both separately seen shadowy figures when setting up our static cameras, so they've seen me. They've seen you as well, like as a mimic of you when I knew you were over there on the street corner on a phone call. That's messed up, dude. That's, I mean, the thing, and we talked about this a ton of times, like they did tell us about that, and then we went there, and then I experienced something. I don't know if it's real or not. I still, I'm still really on the fence. I'm leaning towards one way a little bit more now, but it's still on the fence. But you look back and you go, well, should've known, right? Because if that's a Christian and chain we're seeing, and I trust Christian and chain, the trustworthy people, they wouldn't just be like, oh, I saw that, and then, you know, trying to rally us up, or anything like that, that's just not in their character. - Yeah. - And so, that's, it's like, yeah, so you should've seen that coming. So now I'm more hyper aware, like if, if things are happening to Christian or something like that, then it's like, oh, okay, put Christian, you know, in the hot seat. You know, let's see if anything comes out with him and talks to him or anything. - Put him on the remote control car, roll his ass in there, see what he sees. - Yup. - Just give him a walkie-talkie, put him on a remote control, like a little set of wheels or something, and we'll roll him in there. Here's the thing about that shadow entity too, is that like, I remember when they mentioned it. We're in the middle of the investigation, and they dropped that bomb on us. And my heart sinks, because I was just kind of strolling the hall, the main hall there at Yorktown, while remembering, I was going over my notes as far as the history of the place, to remember the kind of details, the names, who was there, who was where, what rooms, et cetera. And while I'm going over my old notes, I do hit that intersection where they told us, and I happen to look down one of the dark hallways, and as I look, something dark kind of, is in the middle of the hallway, and it darts to the side and moves away. And I was like, oh, God, and that's what I, I just quickly high-stepped it right back outside, and that's when I continued to go over the notes, while you're on the phone call. But like, it created this sense of like, a shadowy figure that's kind of evolving. Like mine was kind of like that, and then I forget between Christian and Shane, one saw more of a shape, more of an outline, and then the other saw, like, your skin tone and your face, or like your eyes. I don't want to see that. I don't want to see this principle. Now when it comes to the theories, we've discussed throughout many different episodes over these six and a half years or so, about whether ghosts are real or not. And of course, we want them to be real, but we're going to be very scientific about how we approach. And we've also talked about what psychological effects might be the origin of a large swath of these paranormal cases. But regarding this location in particular, many are stumped just like you, Fredo, as to why, for our, seems to be such a hotspot for paranormal activity. So there's a few kind of brief explanations that might work. Historical records don't show any deaths or major accidents in the school, and it's entire 80 years of operation. As you pointed out, there's no fire, there's no accident. But some believe that the cemetery located across the street from the school could act as a sort of spiritual energy conductor, attracting, or maybe even anchoring, spirits to the school. So, you know, they come out out of the grave, they're wandering, and then this school just happens to be a place that they gravitate to. - Who, like, who, who, but a cemetery next to, or a school next to a cemetery? Like, why would you do that? - Yeah, it's, I don't know which came first, but in it, you're in the middle of nowhere, I'm looking at like the Google Maps, right? And there's the church, there's the cemetery, there's a few houses, and on the south side of that road, central to those three things is the school. So, they're kind of, in the middle of nowhere, but all in a cluster tight together. And so, I don't know if that's the remnants of a small town kind of having what they need, but it does, you know, it's a great question. - Why are you putting the cemetery literally like you leave and the road looks right at the cemetery? If I recall correctly. - That's wild. That's so wild. - Especially because it wasn't like a super PAC place, right? It was up and coming, and so they had room. I mean, the land was donated. - Right, and six acres, big, big for a house, especially, especially. But in the grand scheme of things, relatively small track to land when you're surrounded by other owned property by farmers itself. - Yeah. - So, that probably explains it, to be honest. - Yeah, I would think so, I think it does explain it. Across the street, though, it's still a little close within eyesight. - It's a bit close. It is a bit close, but yeah, it's unfortunate. Again, now, I'll clock where that is so I make sure I don't run over the dare. - So, another theory comes from Readinger, who I mentioned before, a previous manager or co-manager. And she has said that she believes that it could have to do with the indigenous tribe of the Mesquaki. Now, legend says, per her claim, that there was a tree, or maybe is a tree on the school's property that is considered sacred by the tribe. And while this claim is unconfirmed, people still pay respects and offer gifts to the tree as a way to express gratitude. Not much more beyond that, to be said. Again, we kind of talked about the idea of indigenous tribes and peoples being at the heart of these paranormal cases. And I think the last episode, or maybe two episodes ago. But in general, believers claim that the paranormal activity here is due to a large buildup of human emotion that the school has seen over these years. You know, years and years of formative memories, kids and drama and the relation you have with the adults and authority and conflict and learning and just like just a lot of energy. And this kind of reminds me of the pseudoscientific idea known as the Stone Tape Theory. The idea that buildings or in this like stone rocks or just in general objects can absorb and replay emotional energies of places over time. A lot of people point to courts as being a big absorber of that emotion and then kind of emanating that out over the following decades. But skeptics, on the other hand, consider the psychological effects of things like priming, pattern recognition and fear among other things. You know, you go into old dark places that are riddled with haunting tales and this could explain someone's experiences once they find themselves there. You know, you and me coming in, knowing about these stories, knowing about the principle and where he has said to have been seen, you know, in the dark your eyes can't see super clearly. So you might start to fill some gaps in your mind with what you expect to see. That's why we try to keep a level head because we want to we want to find something. We want to see something. We're not going to go in white blanket style. But we also want to come in with a level head and try to figure it out because the unknown is so interesting that you can't just throw it out, but you also can't just blindly believe it all. - Mm-hmm, that's a balance, man. I mean, we just want to be true to ourselves and true to everyone watching, so. - So all in all, we may never know why for our elementary school has become such an interesting hot spot. And thanks to its modern owners who bought the school to preserve it from demolition and also continue to honor its haunted legacy, I suppose, in-depth ghost hunting tours are still offered to this day. And that's where you, me and Christian, are all going to take to the cameras and the tools at our hands and fingertips. And we're going to get to the bottom of this. Any final thoughts before we sign off, Fredo? Get in there. - I mean, it's, this is another, you know, another big one, whether we find something or not, we only do a handful of ghost hunts every single year. This is the spooky time of the year too. And this is task force favorite thing that we do. For one of them is going to ghost hunt. So we have a good time. It's a little weird sometimes. It can be a little scary, but it's nice traveling together. We get to hang out and quality time, eat, chat, talk, work, doing what we love. So thank you guys for the support. But damn it. It's like, damn it. This is what I do for work to help. - Yeah. Yeah. - It's awesome. It's awesome. But damn it. - Yeah, dude. It's awesome until you need to go out and go do it. It's like, oh man, it's just, and then when you leave, you go, why didn't I explore more? Why didn't I do more? Why didn't I go poke around that corner? It's like, it's so hard to really truly, and that's why I talk about the psychological effects all the time, whether you're a believer or a skeptic. There's something to be said about the energy of these places and the feeling that dawns upon you, when you really are alone in a place like this. - Yeah. - It's so hard to convey. So task force with that said, join us at youtube.com/redwebpod to see if we find anything during our time at the school and then head to redwebpod.com for many exclusives, including uncut footage from this very investigation. And if you want even more, we're gonna make a vlog out of our travels going out to Iowa. So a little bit of the lead up, a little bit of the tension building that we experience on the way out. We're gonna see Iowa for perhaps the first time, the three of us, and kind of like react to the location, the church, the cemetery, all that sort of stuff. And that will be, I think that came out actually yesterday. So before any of the investigation, but yeah. All right, well task force, we'll see you over there during the investigation and Fredo, we'll see you right back here next Monday for yet another mystery.