The Hinsdale House pt 2

Hi, Ghosties, I'm Macy, and I'm Natalie. We're jumping right back into part two of the Hinsdale House, and the story of the Dandy Family's time haunted by all of its ghosts. Oh, I'm so excited. Yeah, if you didn't catch part one, be sure to go back to our last episode so that you can get the full backstory. But where we left off, the apparitions have begun fully showing themselves to the family. Their belongings were being moved and even stolen in some circumstances. The family had their fair share of accidents and injuries for their first couple of years living in the home, and a number of people had so much car trouble just visiting the Hinsdale House. There was a darkness that descended upon the family from time to time, an umbrella of negativity that set the whole family pets included on edge. But they would go on to find that this was only the start of their troubles. 1973 would bring some of the most harrowing experiences and accidents culminating in their eventual move from Hinsdale, New York. So grab your tea and your coziest items like your blingies and your crafts. And let's get into it. - I am super duper excited. Our tea today is another one from the Old Barrel Tea Company. It's Picon Pie Poo Air Tea. I'm nervous about this one. I'm very excited. I love Picon Pie. - Really? - Yeah, see, I'm not a big Picon Pie fan, but all the ones that came in the little box that this person sent us have been good so far. - Yeah. - The smell of this one was questionable to me. - Was it? - So now I'm really nervous. - I know you can't smell, 'cause you're all fluid and, by the way, don't breathe on me. - Yeah. - But you can't smell it at all? - No. - Okay, hopefully you can taste it, 'cause I'm really nervous. - I hope so too. I really do, 'cause I'd seriously Picon Pie's one of my favorite pies ever. I'm sorry. All right, well, we'll see. Let's go. (gentle music) - Sometimes life gets busy and you begin to put off some of those important to-do items, like scheduling that long overdue doctor's appointment. It's so easy to procrastinate, especially when the task is so much trouble. Searching for the provider you need, getting up the courage to call in and make sure they take your insurance, and then trying to find an appointment available at a reasonable time can make a task like this frustrating to deal with. We've all been there, but our sponsor is here to tell you that you don't have to. Zock-dock is there to help you stop procrastinating and take care of yourself as you should, with Zock-dock, it's easier than ever to find a top-rated provider in your area that takes your insurance with only a few clicks. 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I don't have a spoon to stir my sugar, so I didn't taste it sweetened, but I think sweetened, it would be very good. - Yeah, I don't know. It's maybe I just don't like pecan 'cause there's a flavor that it's not bad. I'm just kind of like, yeah. - Yeah, I'm not a fan. But I can see that you would be. - Yeah. - I think mom and Kayla would like this one too. - Maybe so. - I really do like pecan, so. - Yeah, makes sense. - Also, before we get started, we have a giveaway going on, so. We are doing another limited merch drop. I think starting next Monday, so keep an eye out for that. But we are partnering with our network forward to give away two sweaters. We love this new design. We are really excited about it, and we hope that you all love it too. All you have to do is head over to our Instagram and follow the directions in the caption, posted two hours and forwards Instagram. And maybe you could be a winner. - Yes, yes. Sweaters, super cute, you're gonna want them. So just go check it out. - Yes, so keep an eye on that. We will definitely let you all know when they're already unavailable. - But yeah. - We have two variations too. You can get it in black or a cream color. - Yes, finally, we're stepping out. We're stepping out of just the black merch. We're gonna have a different color shirt. I'm really excited about this one. - Yes. - And I hope you all like it. I always get so nervous. - And like the previous drops that we've done, they are limited and they are shipping worldwide. So wherever you are, you can get one. - Yes, so excited. - But without further ado, we'll go ahead and dive back into the Hensdale House. I did wanna make one correction from last episode. I realized that I had one experience listed in 1972 when it actually occurred in June of 1973. I told the story of Claire, I was sitting at home while filming, had the kids in town. And she heard noises like newspapers falling and then the windows slamming. But all the windows were still open. That actually happened in 1973. Oh, okay. So just wanted to let that be known. Now that it's settled, let's start back in July of 1973. These experiences had slowly been building up to this point. Most members of the family had seen what they believed were ghosts. They'd heard the chanting in the woods and they had witnessed their belongings being moved to the ground, though nobody had been around to move them. It had all been a slow progression up to this point. But it was taking its toll on their mental wellbeing. On the night of July 2nd, around 3.30 AM, Claire was jolted awake by the sounds of screaming echoing through the home. Claire and her two oldest children, Beth and Mike, were the only ones home this night. So Claire, without even thinking, grabbed her robe and rushed down the stairs to help her daughter, weaving in the dark between their dogs and cats. Like we mentioned last time they had a lot of pets. They're iguana and they're bobcat. Yeah, they're snake, whatever else they had. When she finally made it to Beth's room, she found her daughter lying in bed with her hands pressed tightly up against her eyes. She was freaked to say the least, but eventually told her mom that something had just attacked her in bed. It must have been one of their mini pets. That's what Claire thought at first anyway, but Beth went on. She had woken in the middle of the night to get a glass of water. Their cat Fluffy had been sleeping with her, but didn't return to the room when she had. Beth lay down and immediately something landed on her stomach. The lights had just been turned back off, so it took a second to see what it was, her eyes were adjusting in the dark. And it looked to her like a cat at first, but it immediately leapt at her face. Beth swung her arms up to protect her and she could feel it was soft and furry, just like a cat, but it didn't make sense to her. It was soft and fluffy like one of their cats, but the size of the other cat, then she realized that she had never heard anything hit the floor and that's when she screamed. So there was no, she swatted it away, and there was no sound following. It just disappeared into the air. Claire knew that both of the cats were upstairs with her at that time, because she just came down the stairs weaving between both of the cats. Hearing the screaming, yeah. Oh my God. Do you think that it was presenting as cat-like? - A soonic? - Yeah, kind of. - Maybe. - And this one's weird. - I mean, this isn't the only time, and it won't be the only time that someone has seen a ball of fur like this. - Yeah. - In this room. There had to be some kind of misunderstanding. Maybe Beth was still half asleep when this happened, but Claire told her to come to bed with her and sleep there for the rest of the time. Beth was still shaken and her arms are covered in goosebumps as they made their way up to her room. The next day, Claire found what she believed was an accident from their pets outside of Beth's room, but the consistency didn't match any of their animals. - Sorry. - There was one other time prior to this in April of that same year when she remembers Beth waking in the middle of the night, slamming her arm against her nightstand. She had a cast on at that point. She had just broken her arm. And the same pile appearing outside her door. - What? - I didn't want to describe it to you, 'cause I know you'll probably throw up. - Yeah, but it just, it wasn't like a normal cat accident. Could it have been, well, no, I was gonna say, could it have just been an animal that got in, but that doesn't make sense because if it was an animal and she swatted it away, it would land on the floor. - You would find it somewhere, you'd think? - Yeah, like after the big commotion, you think Claire would see it running out of the room or something. - Yeah, strange. - Beth admitted to her mom that she thought something was coming for her that night too. It was night in April, but she just assumed it was a dream and now she wasn't so sure. - Oh. - Throughout that month, items kept being moved and broken like Mary's lamp in her room, which I might remind you, nobody slept in or stepped put in at this time. And when Claire went to clean up the mess, she found a playing card on the ground, completely out of place. Oh, their cards were put away, like downstairs, somewhere else. Did it say what like card it was? - Does that matter? - Probably not, huh? - I don't remember what it was. I didn't get might've said, but it doesn't matter, really. Or it might matter, but not to me. - As far as we have. - So Claire put the card underneath her alarm clock to put it away later, just set it down where she was. But when she went to show Phil the next day, it was gone. It somehow wound up back in Mary's room this time on her dresser. No one goes in there, no one goes in there. The next day, Beth had woken up with a burn on her leg, which Claire claims actually left a permanent scar that still remains there. day. There was nothing in Beth's room that could have caused this and Mike was shocked by it all. He too had woken up a week before with a very similar mark on his own leg. They're getting burns in their sleep. That's okay, that's really weird because the scratches you could ride off as they have so many animals. Burns? That's horrifying and I don't know an explanation. I'm trying to think of one. No. The family tried to continue on their days as usual and were intent on not really talking about all that had been going on but later that night, even more unexplainable and possibly even threatening things were to occur. Beth, Mike and Clara, the only ones home on this night as well, were sitting in the living room watching TV when Mike looked up and asked what was stuck in Mary's picture. Clara had hung all of their kids' communion photos on the wall in the living room and right in the middle of Mary's photo was a clear plastic letter opener as if someone had stabbed it through the young girl. Oh my god, the letter opener had somehow made it out of a bag that had been stored in a closet for over a year at this point. Clara would later on go looking for that bag, unable to find it in the room she knew she'd put it in downstairs. It too, like many other items, was found in a completely different place than she knew it to be before. The photo itself wasn't damaged thankfully but it felt threatening to all of them. Even Beth with tears in her eyes exclaimed, why is it picking on Mary? She isn't even here. Mike angry at not only this but encounter after encounter that they had been dealing with, stood up and took the letter opener away from the photo, breaking it into tiny pieces and throwing it in the kitchen. They were all just freaked that up. Angry, yes. And you said communion, isn't that like the Catholic thing? Yeah, they're Catholic. Isn't it, what is communion? It's like you devote yourself or something like that to faith or something? It actually might have been confirmation, not communion. Sorry, it's their confirmation. Communities like when you eat the cracker thing in the wine and stuff are the juice, I actually meant confirmation. So thank you for that clarification. Oh yeah, but I just wanted to make sure like that was, that's a big religious thing, right? Yeah, when you're usually like when you're young and growing up, it can happen when you convert Catholicism as an adult too, but yeah, when you go through confirmation classes and like you wear a white outfit, white dress, yeah. Okay, I think I've seen that and that just makes it seem even darker because it's like attacking their religious threatening to them. Yeah, that's so creepy. Yeah, the three of them were starting to feel a little crazy. Had one of them gone mad and done this themselves without remembering, maybe they had, but Mike jumped in at that moment. One thing we know, it's not one of us. We have more imagination. That night, they all slept in the same room together, even the pets and wouldn't even go to the bathroom alone. Quote, I wish there were some way I could convey the horror I felt as I lay in my own bed with my own kids surrounded by my own pets and listened to the sound of men's heavy footsteps downstairs, walking from one end of the house to the other all night long. Whoever it was or whatever was wearing hard, sold boots. At least that's what it sounded like. I found myself wishing he'd take them off. Oh, that's horrifying, but that's the only correct response. That's what I've been begging people to do when you're scared to take all the people in the pets into one room. Yeah, even Mike was like, I can't believe I'm a 17 year old boy and I'm asking my sister to go to the bathroom with me. Valid. Very valid. Our other would. More friends of the dandies had reported seeing the teenage boy walking out near their spring house at night. Phil still wasn't convinced that it wasn't a real flesh and blood boy. So he'd always jump at the opportunity to get the boy and ask why he was there. But every time he'd go out there, even in the middle of the night, he'd never find him. Clara was becoming increasingly worried about all they had been enduring and eventually reached out to her mother about a cousin that they had who was a priest. One tipping point came when she realized that a lighter that she knew she and left outside by the charcoal had ended up inside, uncomfortably close to their water heater. Oh, they're getting burned. I don't like that it likes to play with fire. No, there were burns across her good curtains and her plants and they all look suspiciously like the burn on Beth's leg and looked as though they were made by drops of acid. Like it was like a like a droplet of burns. Creepy. Clara met up with father Bob, her cousin at a family reunion that summer and asked him to come bless their home. She thought it might be time to do something more than hope it would all go away. Father Bob would eventually make it out to the dandy home and perform a blessing, but as you can guess, it didn't help much. So looking for more help, Clara reached out to St. Bonneventure University to get the name and contact information of a couple who had spoken there about psychic phenomenon. The person on the phone, however, told her that she should reach out instead to one of their assistant professors. Father Alfonzis tripled was a Catholic priest and lecturer at St. Bonneventure University on religion and the paranormal. It was something he had been interested in his entire life and was in and he was internationally known for his expertise in the matter. He believed that all power had to come from God, even supernatural abilities. And Clara thought that maybe there was a way that father Al could be able to or would be able to help the family live a more peaceful life in the home she thought would be their oasis. I like father Al. I like his approach. He's like very a lot of people will like fear monger about anything supernatural being all demonic all the time and he was just kind of like, no, there might be some other things out there that we don't understand. And if all power comes from God, how can the supernatural abilities not be of God too? And I like the way that he thought about some of these things. He's not sensationalizing everything. Not that I know of. The couple that spoke at the college was at Ed and Lorraine. I don't know. That's what I assumed though. I mean, it's in Northeast and they were traveling around lecturing and stuff. So maybe interesting. So Clara did what she was told and called father Al with a renewed hope. When the priest finally returned Clara's call, he listened intently and suggested at first that they might be dealing with a poltergeist. The objects moving, their sink turning on full blasts out of nowhere, the sudden cold temperatures, as well as the fact that they lived in a home full of teens and preteens all lends itself to the idea. But Clara wasn't too sure. She felt there was more to this. She felt that whatever this thing was had motive. All the same father allegory to come by and attempt to get a glimpse of this boy. He didn't witness anything unusual during his visit, but he did believe Clara and performed a small blessing in each room of the house, which was a little bit of relief to her already. Quote, "When something incredible happens, it's comforting when someone with authority can reduce it to even semi-scientific facts. I can't know over the next confusing months that father Al's own calmness and his ability to convey that serenity to others. Moe is perhaps his greatest gift. It took me a while to realize that, while he verbally reassured us that there would be no more troubles after he'd gone, it was more up placebo than a curse. Sometimes it worked, mostly it didn't." Clara was seeking help from anyone who would lend it, including a neighbor and friend, Charmaine and Maureen, who were a part of a psychic group. They told Clara that she and her daughter Mary seemed to have some psychic abilities, and that could be why it was affecting them so strongly. They were being used to channel the power that existed there already. Things had become quieter around the house since father Al's visit, mostly, not totally, and so it didn't all disappear completely, and Clara felt she was just nervously waiting for the other shoe to drop at this point. Mary's room seemed like it was getting stronger every day, and that oppressive feeling over the home was nearly overwhelming. The door that led to the cellar in the bathroom would constantly rattle. Clara's nerves reached a pitch so high that one day she yelled aloud for it to shut up. Like she was, she was over it. Yeah. And she was shocked to find that it did. Oh great. Just like her insistence. There you go. Yeah. Though she was brave enough to face things head on in this way, she was losing weight from stress, not only from their haunting, but also her marriage. She felt at times like the house was absorbing her, leaving her always on the verge of tears, exhausted and drained. She needed to get away to save herself, and so spent some time in Buffalo at this time. During her trip, she visited a psychic who's friends with Maureen named Wally. After speaking with the man, he believes she may have several types of hauntings, poltergeists and spirits from more than one source. Wally promised to come by to the house soon to see what he could do to help her. She was just asking pretty much anyone. Hey, do you know how to get rid of spirits? By the end of July, things were really starting to pick up in the house. They had the usual footsteps through the home and the knocking that came from the doors of unoccupied rooms. But the temperature changes in the house were getting very intense. And on the night of the 27th, Mary raised up to her parents room to let Clara know that one of their cats was tearing up the screen door on their enclosed porch. Remember, it's completely closed in. Clara knew it couldn't be one of theirs because she had just seen them. She brought them in at night, but went down the check anyway. She found that the door to the porch was tightly shut. And there were no animals on the porch, but the screen door had been ripped up. Oh, so something was tearing up their door trying to get in or trying to get out. And I'm assuming because the front door was closed. So I don't know if they have just this whole network of crawl space that animals can just go in and out of. They just have feral raccoons or something that live all up in the house. Yeah. They never saw any. And that's the thing is like if, like I'm trying to think of it in that way of like, oh, they could have just had an animal living in their roof or when they're sealing or something. Yeah. But it's like they would see droppings or food would be taken or it would get into the pantry and like digging bags. They think their own animals would have troubles with it. That too. Yeah. They would react to it. Yeah. And they weren't always, I mean, sometimes when the stuff would happen, their animals would kind of get a little crazy, but not always. But not in a way that it was like like whenever another animal comes into your house, I bet. Then the girls were introduced to yet another spirit on their property. Mary and her friends Susan had been swimming in the pond when they raced inside to tell Clara that they had both seen a woman dancing on the other side of the pond. It didn't occur to the young girl that first that there was a possibility of it being a ghost as she looked as clear as a human, just like regular person. She had reddish hair, big blue eyes, buck teeth, and was wearing a dress made of curtains. How they described her. They could see her close enough to see her eye color. Yeah. That's horrifying. It said she was like 15 feet away, but her eyes were just like big and bolded. Oh my god. She spun around dancing kind of like an interpretive dance. Okay. I was about to ask. Before disappearing in the tall grass, Clara told Phil of the encounter, but when he checked all around the pond and surrounding area, there was no sign of any person. Quote. Strangely enough, although Laura had been in the pond with the girls, she had not seen the woman since she was facing the other way. The only other comment came from Mary and proved to be uncannily accurate. With the prescience of the young, she said, "I'll bet that lady hanged herself. Her eyes were biting out of her head." "Ahhhh. How old is this kid that's at that?" "Oh, I think of this once she's like 10 or 11." "Oh my god." Phil suggested that Clara call Father Al at this point, and so he came out to the house that later that evening with another priest named Father Dermott. Father Dermott suggested they, quote, "oh, some blessings are around, just in case." Even though the home had been blessed on several occasions and it didn't really help. By August, Clara had added another ghost to their roster when she woke up to the sounds of someone walking around below them. Thinking it was one of the kids, she looked over the banister to see who she thought was Beth walking into her room. Relieved it was just her daughter, she turned to go back to bed. Before she stopped dead in her tracks, realizing that the girl was wearing a flannel nightgown and had short hair, Beth had long hair, and that wasn't what she was wearing when she went to bed earlier that night. So Clara ran down the stairs and into Beth's room only to find Beth lying in her bed-fast sleep. Still not wearing a flannel nightgown. "Oh no." But they're more. They're just walking through their home. "Is it like multiple things going on at one time?" "Mm-hmm." "Do you think that there are multiple spirits? It's just like a bunch of random girls and then these animals and then a man stomping around." "Yes." "Why is it so many?" "There are theories." We kind of touched on it in the first episode about the burial stuff, right? "Yes." "That and there will be more guesses and explanations later." "Okay." "We'll get to it." "But yeah, it's horrifying." "It's too much." "It's so, so many." "Yeah, and you don't know which ones are, I guess, good or just neutral or if they're bad." It's like reminding me of the sixth sense almost, like they're just everywhere they turn. There's another spirit out there. "They're there." And I mean, so far we're only in through August, like from June to August, is what I've been talking about. "My gosh." "Of 1973." "Yeah, wrap it up." "It's time to go." "We'll get there." All of this activity was really taking a toll on the entire family in different ways. They were losing weight, losing sleep from all the sounds and sightings throughout their home on the daily basis. There were nights that didn't feel safe at all, and even occasions when Phil would stay home just from these gut feelings that he needed to be there for his family. They could all hear what sounded like furniture being moved throughout the home all night, and Beth had even remarked on a few occasions that it sounded as though someone was lying in Mary's empty bed because she had the room right below Mary's. Sadly, Laura seemed to be the most affected out of all, at least that's how it was portrayed in the book. She had just been transferred back to her school from the special classes that she needed for her learning disability, so she did have some learning troubles at school, and she was already kind of like had some issues at home, and this seemed to just amplify it. Super exacerbated, yeah. She began accusing every male around her of molesting her, just out of nowhere. Laura had some emotional troubles before, but had never made accusations like this. Clara and Phil were deeply concerned and questioned her about it all, but Clara had the feeling that it wasn't Laura who was answering them back. What? The way she spoke with a formal and old-fashioned vernacular, as well as the odd look in her eye that just didn't seem like Laura at all, and to make matters worse, Laura seemed amused by the entire thing, like she was like laughing about it. Has okay, before I even say anything about this, has Laura come out later and said like, this did or did not happen? No, we've never heard anything from Laura. I have weird feelings about that whole thing, that's very strange. Yeah. I agree. I agree. After not finding any of this to be true for her daughter, or so when they talked to Laura about it, she didn't tell them anything other, like she didn't, she didn't divulge any information or anything, didn't tell their, her parents said any of this. She was just accusing other people. Okay. Clara knew she needed to get Laura away from that house for a little bit. She said maybe just getting away going somewhere else for a little while might calm her. So she sent Laura and I think Mary end up going with her to her parents' house, so their grandparents' house. Their grandparents? And Buffalo, yeah. Okay. Wally, the psychic, did eventually come to their home to get his own readings on the situation. They, like many before them, had trouble getting out to the house. And once they arrived, Wally could feel like something didn't want him there. Wally claimed he could sense a family who lived there previously, a mother, father, son, and grandmother who didn't like the noise that the Danny family brought to the Hensdale house. She also sensed, without being told anything about the house, that Mary's room was the worst. He told Clara that those spirits he could feel would leave if she really wanted them to go. So she, if she was forceful about it and said, get out of my house, they would leave. Or so Wally says. I mean, she already did say, like, shut up and it listened. So I mean, maybe just be super aggressive and run around, be like, get out of my house. And knowing the whole story, I think maybe it would have worked for some of them, but not all of them. I would have done that. First thing, Wally also somehow knew that the home affected Laura the most, asking if she had undergone any great personality changes lately. He told Clara that she needed to get out of that home and that he believed she may be picking up someone else's thoughts, possibly the thoughts of a woman he believed had been violently attacked on the property many years ago. And he said all this without knowing anything, without knowing anything. So like many of the psychics who visited, he wanted to come into the home and not, yeah, find not no specifics about anything and make his way and figure out what he could feel. All while this was happening, Charmaine had gone out to the pond where Laura was swimming at the time. So Laura was going to go to her grandparents house in the next couple of days. Charmaine told Laura not to swim out too far, but Laura turned to her with cat-like eyes, very unlike her own, and said, it's okay. I know I'm going to die young, and it doesn't matter because I've seen everything anyway. Oh, okay. She has to go. This is so scary for her. She's like 13. That's really scary. Yeah. That's like dangerous. Very horrifying. My gosh. Beth had what seems to be another run-in with one of the many spirits who haunted the property, not long after Wally's visit. It all started with Phil's journey to work. He claimed to have just broken out into a cold sweat, shaking the rest of the way to work with a singing feeling that something was wrong with his family. He got about halfway to work and just felt it in his body, everywhere. And he finally made it to work he called, but Clara assured him that all was well. But just after she hung up the phone with them, the parakeets that were hung out on the porch began going crazy. They were flying around their cages and squawking as if they weren't danger. Beth and Clara ran out to the porch to get the birds and bring them inside thinking maybe it's an animal nearby. Yeah. Beth went to her room with her birds and Clara hung Mary's up in the living room on a hook they had in there. Just as she placed Mary's bird cage in the living room, Beth screamed out in terror from her room. Clara ran to her daughter to find Beth curled up on her bed, hiding her face in her hands and yelling, "She's in the window. Don't look." Clara was just as panicked as she ran to Beth's window to shut it and cover it with the curtains. She hadn't seen anything as she did, but her spine was crawling in the rush. When Beth finally calmed down, she looked up and told her mom what had happened. Beth was standing on the chair in her room, hanging her birds up on their hook. When she felt like someone was behind her. You know that feeling you get when you aren't alone anymore? Beth turned to look and saw the face of a woman staring at her near the window. That same woman? No. This is a different woman. The woman had long, dark, filthy hair, stringy and greasy as if it hadn't been washed in weeks. Looking back, Clara thinks it's possible that the air could have been wet. Maybe? And just looked greasy. The woman's face was sickly pale as if she were almost dead with big dark eyes to contrast. The woman was back in her to come to the window, and Beth wasn't sure if she was outside or inside the home. At this, Clara became enraged just at the fear that had driven her daughter into such a state. And with only will a protective mother can possess, she marched outside and called out to the woman, challenging her to show herself to her instead of bothering her children. Okay. Period. Their family friend, Jeff, was there and he muttered along to Clara, like, don't call her. Don't call her here. But it didn't matter. Nobody was outside of their home that night. Quote, I didn't expect to find anything, but the activity did keep me from getting even more upset. I also hoped that some action, no matter how ineffectual, would serve to reassure Beth. When we returned to the house, Beth was trying to get her seeds from the bird and spilling them all over the floor. She was just shaking that badly and still crying. For a long while, just as Mary would not swim in the pond, Beth would not enter a room after dark unless the window was closed and the shade pulled down. I mean, valid after seeing something like that? Yeah. It was around this time. family began to notice strange smells around the house and property. Sometimes it would smell like a dead animal and would move from room to room in an instant with no clear source. Other times it would smell like cigar smoke, or even a flowery perfume. Alarm clocks would go off at unusual times, even clocks that no longer worked, and the back doors would blow open with no wind outside to do this. Clara was becoming more and more worried for her family safety when she saw that their electric stove would turn on and off on its own. She was afraid it would start a fire in the night. Justifiably so, as soon she woke up at 3am to Laura gasping by her door, and just like very shortly after this all started. There was a red glow coming from just down the stairs, and when Clara descended to check on it, all of the burners returned on in a white hot. In the book she said, "I'm just glad nothing fell on it." Yeah, that's so scary. Beth began complaining about feeling as if someone was sitting at the end of her bed at night. But when she turned on the lamp, nobody would be there. She would often complain of whispered voices coming from just outside her window. She couldn't make out what they were saying, but it happened so often that she knew it wasn't just her dreaming. Father Al returned, once more, to say mass on their kitchen table and even perform a simple exorcism, he carried the host around the house and all over the grounds where people had spotted the spirit. People were spotting the hidden cell house ghosts far beyond their home, too. One night a group of people were driving down the road near the Dandy home when they thought they hit a young teen boy. He ran out right in front of them and flew over their car. They got out of the vehicle to search for him and get him help, but he was nowhere to be found. Just in case they got a, got to a phone and called the police, and even the fire department couldn't find any signs of him. But it wasn't only the boy. Charmaine's mother, who lived just right up the road, believed that she spotted the dancing woman near her own camper window. She was so sure that there was someone on her property that Charmaine grabbed their 22 and ran outside. Of course nobody was there. Yeah, but in the world did, I mean, I don't know if you'll know, but were there markings on that car from where they hit the boy? It didn't say there were. Because imagine if they're, they're actually, I mean, I guess which is creepier, or if there are marks or if there are none. Labor Day of 1973 sticks out in Claire's mind as, quote, "the day all hell broke loose." It all began that night, Beth couldn't sleep because she kept hearing sounds coming from the crawl space. It sounded to her like someone was moving something from one place to another, grunting and moving back and forth as if really exerting an effort. The day went on as normal, but by the time Phil was supposed to leave for work, he told Claire that he wasn't going. He knew they needed the money and that he'd be losing the holiday pay, but he just couldn't shake the feeling that something was very wrong. Claire tried to talk him down, telling him that they'd be all, that they'd all be okay, but suddenly Phil thought he saw something near the tree line outside. He and Clara walked outside, Phil wanted to check the ground, it's before he made a decision on whether he'd actually leave for work or not. As she followed behind, Claire thought she'd seen someone dart around the house and toward the porch, but she didn't say anything at first. Instead, she began following Phil once again to the pond. Something in her gut told her to avoid the tree line, and she was just trying to persuade Phil to go back to the house with her. Finally, he gave in and they made their way back, but Clara looked up at their home, seeing a girl in Beth's window. She had strawberry blonde hair and a pink dust cap. She thought at first it must be someone sitting on Beth's bed. Clara called Phil's attention to the window, but just as she did, Beth and her boyfriend Jeff ran out of the house and down into the front lawn. They both claimed to have been sitting on the front porch when they saw a figure dressed in a white cross in front of them really fast. They asked Phil and Clara if it had been them, but they were just coming from the opposite direction, so it couldn't have been. The sun was setting by this point, so it was like pretty dusky outside, and Phil thought they should go to the neighbor's house to get a better flashlight so that they could really check the grounds. Phil had found a path in tall grass that he was sure was made by a trespasser at this point, and he was still always looking for natural explanations to their experiences. Phil carried on his search while Jeff used the headlight from his motorcycle to sweep across the yard. Mary had come down to meet Beth at this point, and then she began screaming. Clara and Phil raised back toward the house where Jeff had begun to honk his horn frantically. Mary in a panic state told everyone she had seen someone looking at them from her own bedroom window, and Beth claimed that by the time she looked up, she didn't see anyone there, but she could see the curtain drop as if someone had just walked away. So Phil took off inside the home, just everyone racing behind him. He's like, "I'm going to catch this person in my home." That's tormenting us, and they walked in to find that somehow all of the lights upstairs had been turned on when Clara knew that she hadn't turned any lamps on yet, because it just got turned dark. It was turning dark. In fact, nobody had even been upstairs for hours, but all of the lights were on upstairs. Phil turned to Clara, telling her to keep the girls in the kitchen while he searched the rest of the house. He checked everywhere upstairs, found nobody. Next, he went to the cellar door. He found it had been standing wide open when it was typically voltage shut. Mary was hysterical, and Phil couldn't understand what was happening or why. At this point, Mike called because he was at a friend's house, and he was like, "Hey, can I stay longer at my friends?" There was like, "No. Come home. We need you, but please be careful on your way home." What? I'd be like, "Yes." She wanted the whole family together. She was scared. Stay away from the house. Stay at your friend's house. What the heck? Just after Mike and one of his friends arrived home, Beth and Jeff yelled out that they had seen a man in the yard. Phil ran to the door and out to the look knowing it had to be a trespasser. Somebody was messing with them, but just as he made it to the spot, somebody else screamed that there was someone or something in the yard, so a little further away. It was so much. So much was happening. Quote, "Mike and Randy, his friend, got in the station wagon and drove down the road to make sure we had no trespassers and to satisfy Phil." As they drove, they looked at the back seat and were startled to see a depression in the cushion, as if someone were sitting there. What really made it frightening was that every time they hit a bump, the depression changed accordingly. Needless to say, they came right home. But at this point, Beth decided to turn on the TV to have some normal noise in the house. She walked to the living room and let out a scream that would curl your hair. I ran in, and she said a girl was sitting on the foot of her bed. She described the same girl I had seen earlier in the window. A girl I had told no one about as yet. I went to check there was a depression on the bed as if someone had just gotten up. I felt it. The spot was warm. For ghosts, warm? There was absolutely no way anyone could have gotten out of that room without being seen. Just then, Phil called. He had gone upstairs again and found all the lights out this time. On his way down the stairs, he opened the crawl space and nearly fainted. Our chimney, which had been neatly mortared, was taken apart. Brick by brick and carefully stacked against the other wall. What? So, Beth had heard something. When Beth saw the chimney or what was left of it, she began to cry. They just took the chimney apart. Tonight before, remember, Beth was hearing someone moving things back and forth in the crawl space. But why? I don't know. What is the purpose of all this just to elicit fear or. I truly don't know. And nobody does. It's so much. She just kind of doesn't make sense. This was all in one day. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Clara tried to comfort Beth, but was getting fed up. She left her with Jeff and went to call Father Al. She felt as though they were under siege on this night. Father Al answered and said he'd be right over, and so they all gathered together in the living room to wait. Nobody moved. Clara was afraid to look out any windows, afraid to see something more. When Father Al finally arrived, Phil explained to him all that had gone on that night. He was incredulous. And Father Al and Phil checked the entire house together, still found nothing. Then he pulled Clara and Phil outside to discuss further. He shined his flashlight around the yard, and when the beam stopped at the pond. He turned to Clara asking what she saw in his light. They all looked on at what appeared to be a young girl wearing a long sheer gown and walking the path that sat on the other side of the pond. Phil ran out to the pond after the girl, but she had vanished. There was nobody out there. When everyone finally calmed down, Clara sent her children to bed, and Phil and Father Al kept watch until the early morning. Why are they still here? Are they moving soon? Not soon enough. I mean, it's just there's so much that it feels like I don't know. Why is it so much? Every time they turn around, it's something new. There's another person, a different haunting, a different ghost. It's not like there's the one or two spirits that hunt the home. There's like 17. What do we even do at that point? Burn it down. Burn it all down. Start over. Well, it seems this night changed a lot for the family. Their belongings were going missing or breaking at greater rates. My kid's seen a type of fog in his bedroom as if something was over the entire room, making it all out of focus. Beth's room seemed to be growing colder and colder, and those voices outside her window were sounding more insistent. But she did claim that once she smelled the flowery perfume in her room, it would warm up as if the darkness was being seen out. So their thought is that maybe there were some protective spirits. Yes. Okay. Yes. I mean, the odds, some of them have to be good. Someone's got to be nice. With the amount that there are, at least one or two have to be good. Yeah. Beth had another very unusual incident in her room on the night of September 8th that she didn't realize was weird until after she woke up the following morning. So she claimed that she had just turned her lights out and rolled over in bed when she heard one of her drawers opening behind her. She turned around to see a woman with reddish hair and a long night downstanding with her back to her. She thought it was her mother Clara in her room looking at her diary. with the drawer open in front of her. She asked what was wrong and the woman responded, "Are you sure it was June 29th?" Beth assumed she was talking about a fire that had happened just up the road as she and her mom had just recently been talking about it, but coincided with all the activity picking up in their home coincidentally. So they were just talking about how weird it was that this fire happened over there and everything started picking up in their home that very day. So Beth responded, "That's what my diary says. The woman simply replaced the diary, closed the drawer, and walked out of the room without another word." Beth realized later how odd it all was. Clara didn't wear nightgowns and would never read her diary or even know where it was at this point. On top of that, the room was so dark there was no way anyone could have been reading even a single word on that page. Clara believed this could have been the same woman she mistook as Beth the month before. Clara was at her withs end, "Each day had become something to be endured, each night something to dread, and each thought something to be mistrusted. Would anything ever get back to any semblance of normalcy? And perhaps more importantly, would we survive until then?" Beth asking the right questions, but also the answer is, "Leave." I am so like, I'm blown away that it's gone on this long and there's that many. I just don't even know what to do. It's scary, isn't it? Yes, I'm horrified and I can't believe that they stuck around long enough to have all of these experiences. I know. I mean, yes, I know. Logistically, you can't just up and leave whenever you want to, but again, they were only on one income. They were struggling as it was. They couldn't leave. We'd be going to live with friends and grandparents and cousins and that's just so scary. No, I agree. It's horrifying. Well, Clara and Father Al spoke again, this time making plans to talk with a psychic named Alex Tannos, who was giving a lecture at St. Bonaventure University soon. She wanted to ask him about all that they had been going through to see if he had any other perspective or could help in some way. As I said, she was looking for help everywhere. After his lecture, Alex had promised to come by the house and see what he could pick up. Without hearing any of the particular details about the home, Alex took a walk around with Father Al before coming back to the family who was waiting in the living room. This is where one of the big theories on the home's troubles originated. Alex sat down across from Clara and Phil and asked if they knew that a mass murder had happened on this property. He went on to explain that he saw at least seven spirits at least, some more clearly than others, who had lost their lives here over the last 100 years. He believed that one was a man who had been stabbed, one was a woman who had been hanged, another woman was drowned, another man who had been beaten to death, as well as a young girl of about 18 with strawberry blonde hair, who was attacked, beaten and tortured to death on this property. Okay, so it's all adding up to the people that they've been seeing. Yes, so to clear it, it made so much sense. Yeah. The drowning is the girl with the wet hair, the bulging eyes. Yes, the girl with a red hair. Alex, I'll explain the original owner and builder of the home knew nothing of the murderers, but someone had used this house to take victims along in an old stagecoach route. And in some cases, hide the body until they could be buried inside the home. The psychic claimed to see piles of bodies like stacks of firewood inside the crawl space when he first opened the door. So he was envisioning all of this. Oh my god. He believed that there were graves nearby that had been disturbed, and this was the catalyst for all of this activity. Thinking back, Clara remembers the barn being torn down to put in the pond, and all of those large bones brought up by the dogs. Oh, yeah. He also claimed that there was an elderly woman of about 90 years old who died recently and lived at the home before. She wasn't involved in any way with the murders, but she knew what happened and wanted to tell someone about it. Her flowery perfume. Maybe. She's the protector. It's possible. Clara believed that this was the former resident who died just that summer. Maybe this was the grandmother that the other psychic had seen at the house. But Mike's friends, Tim and Paul had another twist for everyone there. Tim and Paul had been coming up to the house at night to keep watch and try to catch any of the paranormal activity for themselves. And recently had captured one of these ghosts on camera. So they would patrol, quote unquote patrol the area at night. Just teenagers, you know, they claimed that they were on patrol in the middle of the night when they saw a man standing at the pond. The two with their polaroid camera in hand raced after this man believing he was a trespasser at first. They almost cut up with him when they reached the tree line. The man turned and threw himself against a tree with his hands in the air and Paul lift the camera and snap to photo trying to identify the prowler even if he got away. So he was thinking, well, at least I'll have a picture of him even if we don't catch him. Do we have the picture? No. Tim lunged at the man just as he ducked around a tree and disappeared without a trace. It was at this point that the boys realized this was an ordinary man and they ran back to the house. They eventually produced the image for Clara and her family and Clara described it in her book though they don't have the photograph anymore. Oh my god. How do you lose something like that? I don't care how often you move. How do you know? They mailed it out to Alex or like him to look through and they didn't make a copy because they didn't know that one of their friends had a polaroid copy machine. So they mailed it out and it just never got back to them. Dang it. Yeah. In the photograph, he looked as though he were a middle-aged man dressed in a navy blue jacket and seemed to be hurt. His nose was pushed to one side, his jaw twisted and it looked so blood was running down the side of his face. In the photo, his mouth was open like he was screaming in terror and he wasn't looking at the boys. It was like he was looking right behind them. There was a blue glow around him and father Al suggested this meant he isn't evil. So he said the blue aura in photos is that they're like non-an evil spirit. They're neutral or good. Yeah. Okay. Alex asked for the picture and the boys would eventually get it to him though it was lost to time like it told you. He also gave them all some homework. They should start looking further into the history of the house and the land and look for those disturbed graves. He was sure that there were graves somewhere nearby. Alex's presence at the house helped lighten the atmosphere for some time and brought a much needed comfort to the dandy family. So he brought answers or possible answers and his energy somehow cleared out the negativity for a little bit. That and I feel like things are scarier when they don't make sense or it's just more unknown. When you kind of put that you know maybe oh this person died here and this is the spirit we see okay we know that that's just Joe or Bob or Tim or Mary or whoever you know. It's like oh okay so that's not as scary because it's not unknown. Yeah. So I feel like regardless of his energy or whatever, just him saying and kind of giving answers. Making it all makes sense would take away the fear I think a little bit for me at that unknown factor. The boys seem to take this job very seriously. The searching for graves and history as they were able to locate eventually a road that looked as though it could have been used as an old stage coach road. The first time they drove down it at night Mike had the distinct feeling that he brought someone home with him from the road. It took some time to get the courage back up to explore the road once again and it seemed that each time Mike and his friends went near the backroads they would endure a strange phenomenon. Some of the boys would drop into transes or collapse or even lose control of their bodies. It seems to have a great effect on each of them and Clara wished they wouldn't go out there anymore. She's kind of like hey maybe I should stop. She did later on say that she was kind of distrusting of some of the boys transes and thought maybe they were just playing around. Yeah, but still yeah. If any of it's real I don't want you to mess in with it. Yeah. October 21st 1973 brought the most harrowing incidents the family had endured this far. Even more so than Labor Day. It's worse than Labor Day. Yeah. In part one we talked about all the car trouble and accidents that people had while driving to or from the Hensdale House and nobody endured as much trouble as the Dandy family. Like all of their cars were having trouble. The worst came on this fall day though. Clara and Phil had gotten a early expecting Mike to be home from his friend's house soon to help around the house but he was nowhere to be seen. They assumed maybe he had slept in and would be home eventually but the next person to arrive wasn't Mike at a state trooper. Mike had been in an accident and was being transported to the hospital in pretty bad condition. The family raced out of the home and off to the hospital to see their son driving by Mike's car on the way. It didn't seem as if it should have been a bad accident but when they arrived at the hospital Clara learned the extent. Mike had severe internal injuries that required several very serious surgeries. He was bleeding internally. They needed to like crack his skull a little for the swelling pressure. His eye was like super swollen. He like went blind in his eye for a little while while it was healing. He had to be put in a like a medically induced coma. Did he live after a surgery? He did live. Oh my god. Okay. You're like giving me all the details and I want you to to get there. Relief my stress. Mike spent several weeks in the hospital recovering but luckily he was finally able to come home in early November. Thank god. It was very sad because Clara talked about her going up to the hospital all the time and seeing other moms and grandmothers and stuff who were there for their kids and lots of car accidents. They didn't make it. One 16 year old boy didn't. Yeah. It was it was very sad. I can't imagine. It was a very tough time for the entire family. Somehow a rod had slipped loose and jammed Mike's steering wheel in the left term position forcing him into the tree so he couldn't avoid it. Yet another unfortunate mishap with a car connected to their haunted house. But there was one other strange connection to Mike's accident. After finding out what all was going on with Mike as he was transported to the hospital, The police asked Claref if they knew of it. anyone who would be riding with Mike at this time. Clara knew he had to have been alone, but was curious why they would ask. Mike kept asking the firefighters in EMS if they had gotten the other guy out. They never found anybody else at the scene, and Mike was supposed to be in the car alone. But Clara believed his insistence that there was someone, what quote, "elce meant that the family was being attacked not only in their home, but wherever they went and nowhere were safe." Yeah. Oh, that's horrifying. There was even a like Mike hit the rearview mirror and broke off and that's why his eye was so badly damaged. There was an indent, an indentation of some kind or like scratches or something on the passenger window. Oh, Mike did not get into the passenger window. He was stopped by the rearview mirror. So do we think that the spirit caused the accident or it saved him? I don't know. Because he's asking, like, did you get the other guy out? Yeah. And the way Claire wrote about it is that they had these code words for things like the room is really jumping today. Yeah. Like, you don't need to say it or like there's a someone here or like, you know, our, our special someone and she thinks that maybe Mike was saying that in his confused state. Whoa. Even though Mike was home, it took some time for him to completely heal. And in that time, his friends tried to come visit him often. Unfortunately, there were several incidents down the road where Mike's car crashed where some of the boys would suddenly lose control of their vehicles in the same area. Once at home, some of them seemed to become very affected by the activity in the home, passing out and acting like someone else entirely. It was an outright stated in the book, but the description seemed to indicate that there was some level possession happening from time to time. And it was escalating. Oh my God. Now, Claire didn't use the words possession. Yeah. But very much so described it. That's boyfriend crashed his brand new car only five weeks after Mike's. And he was also like, ends up spending time in the hospital. The danger that the home was putting everyone in was taking a toll on the entire family. But at this point, there was no way for the family to afford to get out. They were making less money than they were before and had sunk so much into the home that it was nearly impossible. Yeah. Like they spent all their money fixing the pipes and, you know, all the little things that need to be fixed up because it's a hundred-year-old home. They had they couldn't get out. That's horrible. Beth had spent some time in the flow and away from the home and Jeff was in the hospital. But when she finally returned home in December, the voices were back and this loud and threatening is ever right outside of her window. They had been they had even begun calling Beth by her name. And it was getting to Beth so much that she was having symptoms. Her mom, believe, may have been ulcers from the stress put on her. It wasn't only Laura and the boys who seemed possessed by the spirit of someone else. Soon, Beth was affected in the same way. There were multiple instances where Beth would leave her room at night acting like a totally different person and not even realizing what was going on around her. I have a question about what's the dad's name? Bill. Is like, did they stay together? Was he still around at the end? Through the house? Yeah. And afterwards? Yeah. They eventually get divorced. And I'll talk about that later. But yeah. They say the whole family stayed together until they moved out of this house. Okay. Is this all from Clara's point of view? Just because she wrote a book. Clara wrote the book. Yeah. Okay. Clara Miller. I just have questions about Phil. I don't know. Well, maybe I can answer some later. Yeah. I'm going to wait. Quote. A few minutes later, out she came. So the boys, Mike was having a sleepover with some of his friends and she had come out and was acting weird like sleepwalking almost. There was Beth. Beth. And so Mike let her back to her room. And then a few minutes later, she came again. This time, kicking everyone in sight. She sat on the couch, extended her arms, began fondling. It seemed like a large ball and visible to all except Beth. When the boys tried to divert her attention, she went into the bathroom and began emotion, resembling needing bread over the bathtub. We found out much later that the bathroom had once been a pantry. By now, the boys were following her closely, worried about disturbing her. She tried to get out of the back door. And when they stopped her, she fought like a wild cat. When they finally got her calm down, she went into her bedroom and tried to climb out the window. Again, they grabbed her and made her sit on the cot in the living room. I must explain the cot was made of heavy aluminum, was fairly new and had heavy duty springs. It had easily held many heavy people. We always used it when we had company. Beth weighed 110 pounds and yet when she sat down on it, it bent and both sized cracked and broke. At this point, Mike, woke Phil and me. We raced downstairs and found her in a day's. She sat quietly sobbing on her bed. Phil told me to take her to bed with me and he'd sleep in her room. She was trying hard to laugh at the instant, but since it was a complete blink to her, it wasn't having much success. She was very embarrassed. The report that bothered me the most during the whole episode, Beth's brown eyes were a very definite blue. It wasn't heard at all, yeah. Oh my god. Okay, so she's not saying possession, but she's saying possession. Yeah, got it. Yeah. Beth was stopped on several occasions trying to hurt herself while at school attempting to jump from a window and even trying to strangle herself in the chorus room. Luckily, she was stopped, but this was all very unlike Beth. Everyone was worried about her. She would fall into these trances where her eyes would go glassy and look bright blue and a strange smile would spread across her face. Kind of like her lips would be in a straight line except the corners turned up. Very unsettling to look at when they could get her out of those trances. She wouldn't remember anything that happened and things were continuing to take a turn for the worst for Beth. It all came to a head on the night of New Year's Eve of 1973. The kids were planning to throw a New Year's party with their friends at the dandy home, but once again, it ended in a very stressful evening, particularly for Clara and Beth. Beth had hurt her back while pulling out cots and sleeping bags for everyone, so Clara had given her a muscle relaxer and a heating pad and just had her go lay down in the couch. It seemed as though she had fallen asleep. When very suddenly she jumped up and insisted on joining the boys back to one of their homes for more supplies. It was very strange to switch up and I'm sure you can guess later on they noticed that Beth's eyes were blue at this point. She was acting so odd and very like boisterous. Eventually the boys or eventually she told the boys that she had taken 10 of the pills instead of the one that Clara knew her to take. And if you take 10 muscle relaxers, you're not up and running away. You're not getting crazy. No, no, not the heck. Everyone was worried about her behavior. She was laughing and talking very loudly, which was very out of character of her seemed to be incapable of lying still. Then very suddenly she went limp and slid onto the floor. Clara was worried out of her mind when Phil returned home with the car. They took Beth to the hospital to have her stomach pumps because she was like, if she didn't take 10, yeah, Clara looked into the bottle and was like, no, it does not seem like 10 pills are missing. Yeah. But if she's saying that and she's struggling like this, maybe she did. I would take her regardless. And they did. Yeah. And they did. On the way there, she continued acting erratically and then going limp once again needing to be held up in the back seat. When they finally made it to the hospital, Phil tried to take her inside when her body became very stiff, like very suddenly and like merely knocked both of them over. They rushed her inside, got her through triage only to find that there were no drugs in her system. Beth was kept at the hospital overnight and at midnight Clara received a call from Beth. Ma, I just woke up in the hospital. What happened? The last thing she could remember was falling asleep on the couch. What? The heck? Yeah. Have we heard from Beth either? I know we haven't heard from Laura. I mean, she's not. She doesn't say anything in the book or anything. Have we heard from any of these people? Let me just tell you and I will talk about it at the end. They went on to have normal lives. Mostly. Okay. They did not see any ghosts for us in their lives as far as we know. Okay. All right. Yes. I'm just so shook. The next day when Clara returned to the hospital to pick up Beth, she had a chat with her doctor. He confirmed that there were no drugs of any kind about the system. Quote, he then asked if she was the same girl he had seen the night before. He explained his odd question by stating that her eyes, which today were an obvious brown, were just as obviously blue the last time he had seen her. When I explained the situation, he very seriously asked, why don't you get out of that house? Thank you. Not quite as seriously. I asked, do you want to buy a house doctor? I don't have to tell you what he answered. I mean, at that point, if I was the doctor, I'd be like, come stay with me because that's so scary. That's very scary. That's so scary. The night still wasn't over. So it would still after Beth went to the hospital, after all the kids who were going home, take that back. If I was the doctor, I'd be like, okay, get out. Stay away from me. Stay far away from me. Never see me again. Don't ever come back here. Yeah. Actually, that's really scary. Okay. So after all the kids, you were going home for the night. So Clara really wanted everyone to stay as much as they could because of all the danger out on the road when they people leave their house. But there were some kids who couldn't. So they would, they left. This is that I think on this night, even Phil, that's when he had his injury where he cut his finger to the bone and had to go get several stitches at the hospital. So he ended up going back to the hospital to that night. Some of Mike's friends were stayed over and they started falling into one of those familiar traces. They were trying to get him to calm down. But as Clara, Phil and Laura made their way into Mike's room, they found Craig, Mike's friend, jammed in the narrow space between Mike's bed and his chest of drawers. Quote, every piece of furniture in the room was dancing. His wardrobe, chest of drawers, and his heavy raccoons cage, not to mention his bed, were all bouncing around as though they weighed nothing at all. As soon as they were able to not Craig out of it, the furniture returned to normal. He was jammed in between the bed and the dresser. Yeah, he's like squeezed himself in. That is a horrifying image. I really don't like that. Craig would not be allowed in the house anymore. All of the furniture was moving on its own, Natalie. I'm not even worried about that. I'm worried about the image of him crammed in between the two things. Craig is having an episode. from the home. Okay. Oh my God. The New Year brought a period of relative quiet to the Hinstellhouse aside from the usual footsteps and wrappings on closed doors. Psychic Alex finally reached back out to the family, claiming that in a state of astral projection he could see influences and possessions in the home. Again, without hearing anything, he had plans to get an investigative team together at their home and try to make contact with whoever was tormenting them. He sent them a lock of his hair for their protection, which actually seems to help slightly. Did not. That's what Clara says. And he even relayed to Clara that he was particularly worried about Beth, even though she hadn't told him anything of the events that had transpired yet. Beth began wearing an ID bracelet with a protection talisman inside to keep herself safe. So he was like, just wear some of my hair. That's actually really creepy. It apparently really helped, but if it weren't sure, but the voices were still tormenting Beth and Clara had finally heard them in January of 1974. She walked quietly into her room one night. Quote, "My hair stood on end. I could hear two distinct voices. The one, a male voice said, 'What do we do now?' She's taking her to the doctor.' The other, a woman's voice replied, 'I don't know. It's easier when she's sick.' I couldn't tell if it came from outside the window or from the cellar stairway, which would have been on the other side of Beth's wall. Quietly, I checked both the cellar. It was hard to force myself to open that door. And outside her window, I found nothing. So it wasn't just Beth. Clara heard it. Actually, they had a family friend. I think his name was Keith Stain at the property while he was waiting for his own like campgrounds or whatever to come up. And he heard it first and he called Clara over like, 'Hey, there's voices.' There's voices. Oh my god. So they're not internal. They're actually happening. And they're worried about Beth getting well. It's easier when she's sick. They want to take her. Yes. Oh my god. The investigation team did come to the Hensdale House in mid-April. They conducted interviews with the family and Alex attempted to rid the house of its spirits. Alex was burned in the process of cleansing Mary's room. And Father Al had to hold Alex up in the process because it was so spiritually draining for everyone there at the house. It was emotionally taxing on everyone involved. The following day ended with a ceremony to rid the house of their unwanted guests, a full-on exorcism. Quote, "In the evening, the family knelt in the center of the living room floor with Father Al and Alex, and we all held hands. First, Alex drew all negative powers present in himself and dispelled them, and then Father Al read the church's simple exorcism right. When they were finished, we expected to be able to rise. My knees were beginning to give out, and I began to have visions of fainting dead away. Glancing surreptitiously around, I could see no one else in the circle was in much better shape. We were all wobbling. Finally, when we had all about given up, they told us to relax. It seems that during Alex's ceremony and the whole time Father was performing the age-old exorcism right, there were horrible screams and groans outside, which seemed to be coming from the house itself." This is insane. The exorcism seemed to help, or a little bit, but there remained a nagging feeling for Clara that maybe they had gotten it wrong. Alex seemed to pick up on different spirits the second time around, and she felt that maybe the darkness in the area was manipulating them all. Quote, "Was the welcome respite only temporary or worse, an illusion? I felt like Demacles. I wish there were some foolproof way of knowing. Over time, I've come to believe that different entities enter the area at different times." Over the next few months, the family experiences continue, the activity was ramping up again, so it helped for a little bit, and then right back up it was, and slowly everyone's circumstances were changing. Mike had decided to join the Navy, allowing him to finally leave the instill house. Beth graduated high school, before she even graduated, they're her friend and boyfriend at the time. She'd broken up with Jeff shortly after his accident, actually, or before his accident, and then took care of him. Actually, we're still broken up. Started dating a boy named Tim, he asked if he could marry Beth, and so right after she graduated, she married Tim, moved away to wherever he was stationed, or based at. Phil finally changed jobs to something closer to home, and their finances were extremely tight at this time. Though the older two children were out of the home, Phil, Clara, Laura, and Mary were still being tormented. Phil walked into his room just to see a book floating three feet in the air with no explanation. Laura had an encounter with whatever was bothering Beth at night, because she moved into Beth's room because Laura's room was so small. Saw the hairy ball of spookiness, and moved back to her room, and it was like I just won't live here anymore. It even grabbed her ankles beneath her bed, or so she claimed. Clara had a very intense experience with sleep paralysis, and while this was happening, Mary said she saw a young boy standing at the foot of her bed. The whole time that Clara was frozen in the state of sleep paralysis. The local paper had run a series of articles on Father Owl and the family's experiences in their home. Though there were no details about the family in the paper, many were able to figure out exactly which house it was. They were able, they were really trying to sell the house, dealing with their financial difficulties, but nobody seemed interested in living in the haunted house. The Dandy family was headed for bankruptcy. Oh man. By the end of September of 1974, they couldn't take it anymore. Clara and Phil did declare bankruptcy and began moving out of their Hanzel home. They had most of their belongings taken out of the home, and Mary and Laura were spending those last weeks with their grandparents up in Buffalo, while Clara and Phil finished everything up. But the house still wasn't letting up. During those last few nights in the home, they both had endured those same noises and disturbances, lights and the sounds of the car coming up their drive, plagued them, though nobody was ever there. It happened so often, like Phil kept getting up and going to check in, like, who's here? Finally, Claire's like, "Nobody's here, Phil. Just sit down. Nobody's here." Then, just as we started to relax, a gong started in the cellar. Again, Phil raised downstairs despite my protests. Again, nothing. In rapid succession, we were subjected to sounds of a baby crying, a whistle, a siren, bells, and more gong sound. Eventually, the couple unable to put any more effort into it, settled on choosing to ignore it all that night, and eventually, the sounds did stop, aside from those familiar footsteps. It's like, "Is it having a freak out because it knows they're leaving?" So, it's just like, "Dah, just like letting it all out, or is it trying to keep them there?" I don't know. I don't know. Maybe my guess is one final for raw. I felt it appropriate to tell the last moments that Clara had at the house in Clara's word. Okay. So, the book was written, kind of like, in diary form. Okay. It was listed like, "Here's the date, here's what happened, here's the date, here's what happened." Thursday, October 17th, 1974. It was time to go. The tension grew almost palpable in the air, making our movements hurried and uncoordinated. Slowly, the house grew colder. The cold, reaching within and clutching at our mid-sections with a death grip. We felt like mice scurrying through amazes, never quite sure what we'd see at the end. The house was silent, waiting, making our sound silence even more pronounced. Finally, the last box loaded, the last dog settled, we got into the car, and with a sigh of relief drove away. And yet, my feelings weren't all of relief, but of a gnawing sense of failure and sadness. A deep, heavy feeling I've never experienced before, and with the help of God, never will again. I asked Phil to stop the car, just pass the driveway, and looked back. The scene appeared so normal. I looked at the house, sparkling white, with the beautiful New York Hills as the backdrop. The pond, twinkling in the autumn sun, reflecting the tapestry of the leaves, my beloved garden now stripped and forlorn, and stately pine tree guarding the entrance to the drive. The ache in my heart started a pressure behind my eyes, and I knew I would soon give way to tears. My mind screamed. It doesn't even look haunted. And, as I watched, the face of the house became malevolent. Was this shifting, pulsating metamorphosis in my mind? Or was I seeing the place as it really was? I turned to face the windshield and didn't look back again. Oh my gosh. The family was now free of the home, but it remained in their minds. Clara and Phil did eventually divorce after everyone moved to the west coast. I think they all felt they needed a fresh start. Far away from the troubles that had allied ailed them for the last four years, which Mike was on the west coast for his military. I think it was in the Navy. And then Beth and Tim were on the west coast because Tim was also in the military, and they were stationed over there and they thought everyone was over there. We're just going to go move to San Jose, I think is where they ended up. Okay. Eventually, I know Clara and Mike lived in Oregon. I think I don't know where Beth and everyone else ended up, yeah. They were all free of spirit influence after leaving, never to be tormented by anything from the ghostly realm again. Articles continued to be written about the Hensdale House. Some fictionalizing the events adding unnecessary details on the story on its own was more than enough to make your skin crawl. The house stuck with them all of this time. Phil, Laura and Mike are no longer with us, and unfortunately, Laura seems to have carried the trauma from that time until she lost her life to an overdose at only 31. It seems her predictions of an early death were true. Oh, that's horrible. Subsequent owners, even the skeptics, have seen and experienced those strange events. In 2011, the house went back up for sale listed as one of the nation's top 10 haunted houses. In the year since, interest has remained for the house. Subsequent owners have reported seeing unusual things, hearing the screams, et cetera. The next family to live in the home moved out in less than a year after first making fun of the dandy family's stories. The next family disintegrated after moving in. The wife and children leaving the dad to live alone. In 2011, it was sold. And in an article about the home, the listing agent said that they were hoping that someone who respected and believed the paranormal. would buy it and remodel it. It was purchased by Paranormal Investigator Daniel Klase, and he uses the home for his research today. The house is still very much active. It's been the subject of many TV shows and YouTube channel investigations. Daniel even wrote a book about the home in 2016. I wanted to leave you though, today with another quote from the revised version of Claire Miller's book, Echoes of a Haunting. That's what's called. I was very circumspect in the original manuscript, because I know too well the price you pay for the doubts of others. But I've decided to trust you and include some of them in this edition. I will ask you to please put aside your preconceptions and prejudices as you read. We too were normal. We too were doubters. We too led nondescript lives interchangeable with millions of others. We too might have scoffed at the following story. So this is a kind of cautionary tale. Keep your mind open to things you can't see or hear. Know that we are not omniscient. In my other books, I frequently quote Shakespeare since he really got it right. Quote, "There are more things in heaven and earth ratio than are dreamt of in your philosophy." I feel strange. Explain. And I have questions about Phil. I feel like we didn't hear much about him. And then the whole Laura thing made me feel really weird. And then her struggle with addiction in her early adulthood and passing away at 31. It was nond addiction. It was prescribed pills. Okay. Well, yeah. Just I don't know. I feel weird. I feel like yes, there were some hauntings, but I want to know more about Phil. Why? I don't know. I don't know. I just have questions about him. He wasn't there most of the time. I don't know. It just seems like the girls were really affected. And I don't know. Like, Laura's claim really like rubbed me the wrong way. And I just feel very. I don't know. I feel weird about it. Well, Phil wasn't home most of the time. Okay. The majority of these events happened without Phil. So he. So maybe that's why he's not included a lot. Yeah. He didn't believe in a lot of it. I also think he wasn't included a lot because they were divorced. There's stories. Claire didn't want to divulge Phil's life. Yeah. Talk about him. Yeah. I don't know. But he wasn't home. Overall horrifying. Horrible. And I don't understand how it was so much. I agree. Laura's claims did make me uncomfortable. Beth's whole ordeal made me uncomfortable. Yeah. It makes me think that there was a lot more going on in their personal lives outside of the haunting. And maybe the haunting was exacerbating online. Yeah. The negativity. That's what I was kind of thinking because we don't know for sure. And Laura. Laura did struggle. I mean, she had. She had a disability which she struggled with greatly. It was the early 70s and having a disability in the 70s. I can't imagine. It wasn't as. I don't know. She wanted to help or understand it. She wanted to help. Yeah. As they are today. Yeah. I mean, she was getting help but just not as much as she probably needed. Mm-hmm. Just because that's the way the culture worked back then. Yeah. And so she did have struggles already. She did have behavioral issues already. Yeah. The whole Beth thing. I don't know. I don't know. And Laura, she did struggle. She did struggle a lot the rest of her life. She. she got married and she had two sons and then at 31 like a few days before her 32nd birthdays when she passed. And in the book Clara said we still don't know if it was an accident or on purpose. Oh no. Yeah. It's just all bad. It was really sad. I mean, I'm glad they got away from it. But I don't know. I just feel a really strong pull towards just feeling like, I don't know, like I'm sick to my stomach over it. Very sad. I am glad that they didn't have any other spirit troubles after. I know. That's really weird too because you'd think who was it? Some of. I don't remember which episode we talked about this on, but a family moved out of their house and then continued to be plagued by spirits. Yes. Maybe a sandwich. Which. I don't know. I know what you're talking about. It was like one of the last ones we did. Like a haunted house type things we did. But yes, I don't. I can't remember what it was. But yeah. It is interesting. They move on and they have more experiences. They have more stories. This. They're like, no, we moved on and our lives went. We're completely normal. It was only that. We had just our regular, you know, family turmoil. And that's why I think it's. And that's another thing that I'm like skeptical about Phil. I don't know why I'm on Phil's. Phil was barely there. I know. I just feel. I know. I just feel. In the book, Clara even talked about how Phil stayed most days, like through the week with her parents. Like with his in-laws. And he wasn't even there. It was mostly Clara and Clara felt like their relationship was falling apart because they just went together. And they were already clashing, you know? Okay. I don't know. Maybe I just have my own distrust in my own issues. But the whole thing is weird. The whole thing. All of it. Every single aspect. So if you don't want to read the book, it's called Echoes of a Haunting by Clara Miller. The whole thing was so spooky. It was so chilling. Yeah. There's just so much. I don't even know what to focus on on what was the scariest because it was. There was like 19,000 ghosts there. The Labor Day incident really spooked me. Yeah. How they were just like once here and then like screams over here and then another sighting over here and then all the lights are on up here and there's someone in the window over here. I wonder what was going on like spiritually, spiritually, energetically, even like astrologically. Like what was happening that day? Like what? Why were they all out? That's very interesting. I don't know. I didn't like it though. Me neither. But that is the Hensdale House. Let us know what you think about it. If you have any theories of your own or any circumspections or whatever you would like, you can leave them in a comments. Like this video if you liked it, share it with your friends if you feel compelled to do so and subscribe for more. We've got a listen stories episode coming on Friday, a very fun collab episode coming next Monday. Did you want one of this? Yes. Very excited. You could follow us on Patreon. It's patreon.com/ghosties. And you can check us out in social media. It's ghosties pod everywhere. Pretty much, I think. And don't forget to go to our Instagram @ghostiespod to join in on the giveaway for our new shirts. Yep, you will want to miss it. Yes. We'll see you on Friday. Goodbye.