Picking Your Niche | Ep 375

The sun shining, birds are singing and all feels right in the world. Until the season changes and suddenly you lose your motivation to get out of bed. In fact, one in five people experience some form of depression no matter the season or time of year. At the American Psychiatric Association Foundation, our vision is to build a mentally healthy nation for all because we want you to live your best life and be your best you all year round. Please visit mentallyhealthination.org to learn more. Today on Real Go Stories Online, we hear one of the scariest ghost stories ever heard. According to Carol Hughes, you're setting the bar high, Carol. Let's see if you can succeed. Welcome to Real Go Stories Online. To Real Go Stories Online, call in your Real Go Story now at 855-853-4802. Or write in at realgoestoriesonline.com. You will amount to them for the world of the unknown. If we possibly be dead, this is Real Go Stories Online. That it is 855-853-4802. It's our phone number at Real Go Stories Online to share your Real Go Stories with us. Of course, you can also write it at realgoestoriesonline.com. And if you want to share your Real Go Story with us, you can do so at RealGoStoriesOnline.com. I think I just said that. I'm being distracted in 50 different ways right now. So I got to keep my train of thought this way. It's Monday. I got to focus here. It's Tony and Carol Hughes. You're setting the bar really high on this one of saying it's the scariest ghost story you've ever heard. Okay, we can say one of at least. One of? One of maybe. Okay. But okay, so I'll give you some backstory on the story. Okay. Okay. So I have been doing some hosting on one of your other podcasts called The Grave Talks. Yes. And I did an episode on Colonial Williamsburg and I find that really interesting. I think when you look into the history of a place, sometimes you can discover information about the hauntings. So that's what we were talking about. And Colonial Williamsburg has one of from what they say one of the most haunted houses in the U.S. on its property, the Peyton Randolph House. So we talked about all these different places. And I interviewed a woman, Dr. Kelly Brennan. And she was great. And so she's a historian and she likes to and she teaches a class on about the supernatural at William and Mary College. And so she looks into the history. So she's also a historian at Colonial Williamsburg. So that's her specialty is to look into the history of these buildings and in particular the hauntings since that's her passion. So when she started there, she did ghost tours and go around the whole grounds and they still do them. It's now on my list of things I want to do. I think it'd be awesome. So she gave ghost tours at night. So she shared this story about something that happened to her and it involved other people. But it was kind of this multi layered story that just keep it just kept getting creepier as we went. And that's the one I want you to hear. So it takes place. There's some taverns obviously, you know, this goes back to the 1600s taverns or a big thing primarily men. And they had women who ran a couple of them, which I think is interesting because the guys hung out there, but that a couple women owners. So this one is shields tavern and Mrs. Shields owned the tavern and ran it. So that's a little backstory and she had a daughter who was kind of a wild child apparently. And this is the story. This is this. That's the backstory to the story. All right, here we go. Ready? Here we go. Are there other hauntings in that? Yes, because we don't think that's a Mrs. Shields thing. She is a, she's a stepdaughter who was thought to be in the little information we have kind of a wild child. And one of the reasons we say this, one of the reasons we say this is she we notice that she's not in the father's will. Now, of course, that can mean she died before him, but she doesn't show up. We decided we were going to only know look into this. Now we weren't going to do it scientifically by looking at primary sources. My colleagues at the tab goes, walk and decided they were going to look to it with the weedy board. It's always fun. It's always a great idea. And it set off like a strange, a very strange events. It was my night to give the tourist and I'm outside shields tavern and I start. And my boss Jenny and my colleague Lindsay come back into shields tavern and they lock themselves in the door locks from the front door locked from the inside. At this point, they know they're locked in the building for a long time. That was the protocol. If you were alone, the building had to be secured just for safety reasons. This is when they decide to go up to the second floor to the tavern goes walk office and make themselves a weedy board. Because they want to commune with the daughter's name was Francis shields. Well, very quickly. They had turned a glass upside down to use it as their plinchette. And they asked the question, is anyone here with us? It says yes. And they said, do you have a message for us and it moves to yes. And they say, what is your name? F are a door opens and slam shut. Oh, it gets better. It's opens and slam shut and their footsteps very clear footsteps that both of them immediately recognize my footsteps. So my boss, because the things there's a serious problem because I should be outside giving a tour. So she comes running down the stairs and she starts to follow the footsteps through the building. The building has got lots of rooms and the like. And she starts following it through the building. The more persistent she wasn't her following the heavier and faster. My footsteps quote unquote moved. And the first floor of the building is kind of a big circle. So she eventually comes back to where she where she had come down the stairs. And she heard the footsteps come to the room and when she got into that big room, all she was by herself. This was the first thing that happened. So daddy is really angry. She comes back upstairs to the second floor to where they had been doing playing with the Ouija board. And Lindsay, my colleague, points out the window and just whispers look. Across the street, myself and 45 guests on the ghost tour are happily engaged with one another. It gets worse after that event. Just about every time I would come into Shields Tavern to get ready for work. I'd have somebody in the staff come up to me and say, oh, I saw you yesterday. Okay. I said, where was I? They said, you were in the creepy room with all the broken furniture. I called your name, but you didn't turn around. And now there's something that looks like me. It gets better. I get told this over and over again. I'm told by it. You know, I mentioned that big harsh next to it. They're very deep closets and they are creepy. And one of the servers who was setting up said that she opened said creepy closet looked in. I was standing there with my back to her. So now there's something that can do my footsteps and can look like me. He's me goosebumps. It gets better or worse or worse, depending how you feel about this. So that happened for a while. And it stopped and I was relieved. I've nights a week. Shields was a tavern. It was restaurant. It was open, but two nights a week. The tavern goes. Walk with the only people in the building. And on this particular night was my turn to close up the building. So I go through and I'm, you know, closing doors and I'm I'm locking them and I'm turning lights out and all that. And then I get to the basement. I have to go through the basement because it's the only way I can get out of the building. You can't walk out of one of those other doors. You have to go down through the basement. Through the kitchen. Through a tunnel that leads to the main, to the street, nothing makes right the street. And come up a back flight of stairs. The only way you can get out of the building at this point. And when I look down into that inky blackness. I almost panicked. It was one of those things where something that you've done a million times. And this time you have to do it. There's something not quite right about it. What made it worse? Was there was only one set of lights for the for the basement? You know how usually there's one. You know, one of your coming in one direction. And I have to turn those lights off. Knowing there's no other lights across the way. So I run down the stairs with my eyes closed, which of course is genius. And I get to the middle of the basement. And I hear laughter. I turn around and I say, who's there? And a voice says back to me. You should know by now. I'm racing through my head. I'm racing. I'm racing. I'm racing. Who could this be? Who could this be? And I realized it was my voice. It was mimicking me. And I did the strangest thing. And when I tell school kids the story, they love it because everyone has done this in their lives. I freeze. And then I panic and I look into the corner where the sound voice is coming from and I just yell, I don't want to talk about it. I don't know why that's the thing I yelled, but it was. So at that point I run through the basement. I run through the kitchen. I run through the tunnel. I run up the back set us there. I did come in to work the next day. And fortunately, after that, we never had none of problems. That is one of the best slash worst interviews. I know you look at it. That was crazy. And it gets better. It gets better again. I was training a new staff member for one of our ghost programs and she's a medium. And as I'm telling this story, I can see her watching something behind me. I'm like, oh no. She comes up to me, not whatever's behind me. It's definitely the staff member. And she says, you look just like her. I said, oh, and she said, Francis shields. You look just like her. Got goosebumps again. I still get creeped out sometimes. And I've told that story for years. That is a very creepy story. Isn't that so creepy? Isn't that creepy? Yeah. It's like, and it's multi-layered. And it's just it was interesting since it was first person. And her job is to study the history of these buildings and to know who lived there. And, you know, maybe who's you can never say for sure, but maybe who's haunting the building. So is it that she looks like the goat, like the person that used to be there? Or is it something that is taking her form? I'm trying to understand that part. I think it was a little bit about that it was she looks like the woman who had lived there, the Francine Shields. Yeah. And that Francine Shields was mimicking her. Okay. Get her attention, get other people's attention. And the fact that it was like laughing and spoke to her in the basement. Like that one really creeped me out. That is creepy. Is there more to the interview? Oh, yeah. It's an hour long and we talk about Mrs. Shields, the stepmom to her and how one night a medium told her that Mrs. Shields didn't like her at all. Because she'd had this weird feeling about the place and it wasn't right. And she's like, oh, yeah, it's because the ghost of the house doesn't like you at all. And we got into real kind of deep conversation about ghosts and how they, you know, I can understand why they might not like somebody. You know, so you could go in a place and you could get tormented. I might be there. Nothing happens to me. Because they don't like you. Maybe she was too loud for Mrs. Shields. Maybe she's too educated. Maybe she's too a number of different things. That lady is enough for her. But there's a number of things. But we talked about the Shields tavern. There's also the Peyton Randolph House, which is the one I mentioned that was one of the most haunted. They say in the US, I don't know how you gauge that. But that one they say has many different spirits in that house. There's also another one we talked about the George with house. Yeah. And it's real old stuff. Like George Washington stayed there during the Battle of the siege, the siege of Yorktown. That was his headquarters, this George with house. You know, so when you're talking history, it's not like where you and I live. Yeah. They get old. So it was really interesting like all these taverns that she talks about are haunted. And they have on the property there of colonial Williamsburg. They have 89 original buildings all from the 17 and 1800s. That got original buildings. And big signs in front that says not haunted at all. And then another one will always down on today. Yeah. But it was really an interesting conversation. But I just thought that was one of the creepiest ones I've ever heard where the ghost is mimicking her mimicking her voice mimicking the way she walks. And I could see boy, they're up there messing with a Ouija board. And then he hears somebody coming in. It's like, oh, it must be Kelly. Shout a problem with a tour. I get why you would think that. I like the well, you should know by now comment. I thought that was that was good. All right. If you want to hear more of that interview, you can check it out on the grave talks just to search for that. And Carol's got that up there for you. If you want to share your ghost story with us 855 853 4802 use the phone number. Get an ad free experience of the show. Therapeut podcast right now. Go check that out. Until next time for Carol and Tony. Thanks for listening to real ghost stories online.