Hey, weirdos, Elena here.
If you're looking to kick back and relax with Morbid, Wondery Plus is the way to go.
It's like having a cozy seat in our haunted mansion.
No ads, just you and early access to new episodes.
You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or in Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
You're listening to a Morbid Network podcast. Listening on Audible helps your imagination soar.
Whether you listen to stories, motivation, innovation, expert advice, any genre you love, you can be inspired to imagine new worlds, new possibilities, and new ways of thinking.
Listening can lead to positive changes in your mood, your habits, and ultimately, your overall well -being.
Audible has an incredible selection of over 1 million audiobooks, podcasts, and Audible Originals, all in one easy app.
Find the genres you love and discover new ones, explore bestsellers, new releases, plus thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and originals that members can listen to all they want, with more added all the time right now i am listening to the southern book club's guide to slaying vampires by grady hendrix and i just cannot get enough of it i never want to pause it i'm literally like loading the dishwasher listening to it on the treadmill listening to it constantly it's so awesome i love being able to listen anytime anywhere i want to and there's more to imagine when you listen sign up for a free
30 -day audible trial and your first audiobook book is free visit audible .com morbid travis fell in love with the perfect woman beautiful understanding available 24 7 there was just one catch she wasn't human binge all episodes of early and ad free right now on wondery plus hey weirdos i'm ash and i'm elena and this is morbid it's funny because you did that last time too we had to end up re -recording the intro for a second because our fucking computer like pooped its butt but i don't know and i and i made sure i stayed right on right on cue you did by being distracted when we said hello you did
um in the original opening of this we were talking about tiktok because i said right now oh yeah ash is wearing a sweatshirt with various pickle jars on it and it's majestic and i think it's great i also got new one as well so that's very exciting i appreciate that um and i was talking about how wonderful but also how dangerous the tiktok shop is because i've gotten a pickle sweatshirt i got a lizzie mcguire shirt that was never a shirt told me you liked until now yeah you know what i need to tell you things about this tell me so i saw that lizzie mcguire shirt the second you walked in i said
holy shit that's lizzie mcguire's inner lizzie mcguire yeah like her like her brain Her like cartoon version.
Right. Her brain Lizzie.
I was so excited to walk in here with that too.
I was like, oh, she's going to love this shirt.
And I feel terrible that I disappointed you because in my head when you walked in, I go, oh shit, that's an awesome shirt.
And I didn't vocalize that.
And I don't know why.
Sometimes I do that.
It's okay. I do that a lot.
Like I don't express things like that enough.
And sometimes I have to like remind myself to like don't just say it in here.
Say it out there. I do it with text messages too.
I'll read a text message and I'll go fuck that's funny and then I don't express it in text message form to that person that's because you and I don't answer text messages yeah and I'm trying to be better at all that so they but the entire day every once in a while I'd look over at ash and I'd see that shirt and I'd be like fuck that's a cool shirt and I would never say it that's okay I knew that you I knew that you felt that because I know you I see you and I know you though but you see me but yeah I wore that shirt to the savannah bananas and then I posted about it and everybody was wilding out
about that shirt and i was like oh tiktok shop so the lizzie mcguire shirt which is fucking awesome is from the tiktok shop elaine sage boutique it's e l a i n e s a i g e boutique hell yeah and then the pickle sweatshirt that i got is from bad addiction boutique or boutique if you're nasty and then i also got an electric spin scrubber i mean might as well i'll just shout her out because yeah my shower floor has never looked so lovely and i got that where the fuck did i get that hold on how the fuck did you get that well there's like 55 of them apparently fuck did you get that wait are these all
from the same store like live updates with me okay so you're gonna have to just decide where you want to get that from because it's not telling me where i got mine from that's okay um and you can get it from many outlets on tiktok shop but yeah i fucking love the tiktok shop i mean the tiktok shop is pretty fucking great and it's like supporting small business it is but i still love etsy in my heart too because i went over to etsy and bought so much um halloween stuff the other day and so much disney stuff the other day oh look at you yeah we're talking about a haunted mansion today and then like
while i was talking while i was like doing this case i was like i want to watch the haunted mansion and i I want to go to Disney and ride the Haunted Mansion.
She said, I want to go to there.
I want to go to there.
And I also want to go to this place, to this haunted Massachusetts mansion.
I didn't even mean to say Massachusetts.
I was going to say mansion, but then my brain was like, tell them where it is.
It's in Massachusetts.
So yeah, today we're going to talk about the S .K.
Pierce Haunted Mansion.
I'm very excited about this because we wanted to go to this mansion and we still want to and we will at some point.
and now this is going to scare me even more oh it is me thinks that it's haunted as fuck i'm pretty sure you can stay the night there if you want to and uh i want to i want to do that we stayed at lizzie lizzie borden's house so yeah i feel honestly weirdly i feel like this one would be less scary even though lizzie borden had a vibe to it that i just think is unmatched i've never felt that way in a haunted location before i got almost like physically ill in one one of the rooms it was heavy as fuck and i'm oh and actually tonight this is a very good oh fuck yeah tonight you know who knows when this comes
out but and at this moment i get to go to the conjuring house with john because john bought it for me like a visit and tour of the conjuring house for our anniversary that is the cutest thing ever he i he like i always pester him into telling me like what he's going to get you for like christmas and like anniversaries and birthdays days and stuff yep and he was like nervous about this he's like do you think she'll like it and i was like i think she'll fucking love that like i think you're so smart and he was like is that like a good anniversary gift i was like that is the anniversary gift for your
wife truly the anniversary gift we get to go there we get to have a tour and then there's a medium coming there's a 5 000 page waiver that tells you all the terrible shit that can happen to you in this house which I'm pretty excited to sign so I don't like that I'm like let's go see I'm not down to sign a waiver I'm down to sign because I also think that it's like pretty brilliant marketing like it gets you real real school real I almost said scared and spookied at the same time and it went I'm gonna be real school tonight I'm gonna be so sad I'm gonna be so sad but I'm very excited about it i'm
excited to be spooky it's kicking off spooky season yes bitch and this episode just feels right yeah i also love the differences in our nights you're going to the conjuring house and i have a dress fitting hell yeah i'm trying on my wedding dress while you're getting like haunted it's true all right but yeah we're going haunted bitches i'm bringing us to a haunted location in massachusetts like i said and we're gonna start in the spring of 2009 and then we're gonna travel back let's start there let's start there kid so oh also sorry if my voice annoys you i'm sick but you'll live i love you it's sultry
oh um wow that was that was a great response literally she put her eyeballs up to the sky and she said ah yeah i don't know so i don't know what that was but it was great it was like haunted sexy like i said do sultry and you went but ah, I don't know.
It was great. It was great.
Well, in the spring of 2009, Edwin Gonzalez and his girlfriend, Lillian Otero, which like also they should be in a Disney movie.
I was like, damn those names.
Edwin and Lillian, gorgeous names.
But they fled their house in Gardner, Massachusetts after less than a year of living there.
Now, when they originally moved into this place, the S .K.
Pierce Mansion, they thought that it was their dream house, But once they were safely away from this old Victorian mansion, they told their friends and family what really happened and it was far from a dream house experience.
What happened in Gardner?
They had been driven out by angry ghosts who had done everything, including possessing Lillian, in order to torment them and it left them with no other option than to just abandon ship.
They were like, we gotta get the fuck out of here.
now obviously they didn't know it when they moved in but their home the skps mansion had long been considered by locals to be haunted and in its more than 100 year history the home had seen its fair probably more than its fair share of tragedies several people died there somebody actually died as recently as the 1960s and aside from the deaths there were countless other unsavory myths and legends about the house now in 2015 Lillian and Edwin sold the Pierce Mansion to a man from New Jersey who runs it now as a haunted attraction but and the fact that they sold it to a guy that like runs it as
a haunted attraction raised some questions about their claims and raised some questions about the extent to which the rumors of the haunts were true so is the sk pierce mansion truly one of the nation's most haunted houses or is it nothing more than legends and a very clever marketing scheme to figure it out we're going back to the beginning i think it's haunted it's haunted as fuck so over the last 50 years or so we're going over to western massachusetts so i'm going to give you a little rundown on western mass let's go yeah so over the last 50 years or so western mass has gone through some pretty
big changes Now, the economy there is mostly fueled by, you know, tourism, education, the arts.
I love Western Mass.
It's beautiful. It is.
But back in the day, it was mostly fueled by manufacturing and Western Mass was one of the biggest manufacturing hubs in the Northeast. It was famous for its production of hats, shoes, and furniture.
All things I love. Who doesn't love furniture?
All things that are good.
All things that are good.
Who doesn't love hats and shoes?
Especially if you can drink Bailey's out of them.
Oh, my God. look at her.
Pick it up where I left off.
But among the cities and towns that make up the area, the small community of Gardner became known in the mid -19th century as Chair City.
Chair City. Not their chair, not their problem.
I say that literally daily.
Not my chair, not my problem.
Not my chair, not my problem.
But it was always Gardner's chair because they're Chair City.
Always. At one point, Gardner was home to 12 furniture companies, which was a pretty high high number back then given the fact that the town only had a population of a few thousand people at the time damn so fierce competition if you were in the furniture business i would say so now gardner was settled in the late 18th century and it quickly became one of massachusetts main sources of lumber and because of that a pretty robust manufacturing industry was built and that provided jobs for thousands of young men across the area including one of gardner's most famous residents Sylvester K Pierce he
sounds important I was just gonna say I feel like he was born to be important Sylvester K Pierce and he's from Massachusetts so I don't know why I keep putting like a weird why not accent on it it's like a little bit of a transatlantic accent that we're throwing in there the way that I was just thinking that exact thing in my brain crazy so yeah he's a pretty important guy I hope you can see where we're going here erica sylvester k pierce s k lol yeah lol with hello fresh you get farm fresh pre -portioned ingredients and seasonal recipes delivered right to your doorstep skip those trips to the grocery
store and count on hello fresh to make home cooking easy fun and affordable that's why it's America's number one meal kit.
You guys, it is almost fall and you should kickstart a fresh fall routine with HelloFresh.
HelloFresh handles all the meal planning and shopping to deliver you everything you need to cook up a tasty meal right at home.
They do the hard part and you get to take the credit and eat the delicious, delicious food.
A new season, in my opinion, calls for new meals and HelloFresh has a fresh fall lineup of delicious dinners and more to choose from.
take your pick from 40 weekly recipes that suit your lifestyle from veggie to family friendly and fit and wholesome I'm doing the fit and wholesome right now because you know I'm getting wedding ready and I have to say all of the recipes are truly delicious it doesn't even feel like you're really you're focusing on fit and wholesome it just feels like you're focusing on delicious delicious food so go to hellofresh .com 50 morbid and use code 50 morbid for 50 % off plus 15 % off the next two months.
Again, that's HelloFresh .com slash 50MORBID and use code 50MORBID for 50 % off plus 15 % off the next two months.
HelloFresh is America's number one meal kit.
Are you ready for this year's cold and flu season?
Listen to my voice.
Apparently, I was unprepared, but you shouldn't be because whether you're looking for savings on your flu vaccine or advice on staying healthy, GoodRx is here to help.
Best of all, GoodRx is completely free.
One of my favorite words.
Easy to use and can help you save up to 80 % on all your prescriptions.
All you need to do is search for your medication on the GoodRx website or the app and show your GoodRx coupon at the pharmacy.
It's that easy. GoodRx is accepted at all the major pharmacies in your neighborhood, including CVS, Kroger, Walgreens, Rite Aid, Vons, Walmart, Sam's Club, and more.
And remember, GoodRx works whether you have insurance or not.
Even if you do have insurance, GoodRx might beat your copay price and that has happened to me multiple times and I'm like, wow, insurance cool, but GoodRx has my back.
Saved me so much money on prescriptions.
Drew uses it too. Every single time we go to the pharmacy, we're flashing that GoodRx at them.
This cold and flu season, stay prepared with GoodRx.
Go to GoodRx .com slash morbid.
That's GoodRx .com slash morbid.
GoodRx is not insurance.
so sylvester was the seventh child of jonas pierce and i believe it's oxa fairbanks born in westminster massachusetts on april 11th 1820 so quite some time ago we love an 1800s moment we do and this moment was sylvester so his life was marked by tragedy very sadly at an early age his father actually died when he was only three years old and his mom did her best to keep the a family together and she was successful at that for a lot of years but probably because there were so many children some eventually did have to be sent off to live with different relatives so when sylvester was 11 he moved
to live with um relatives i'm not quite sure who he went to live with at first but then three years after he originally moved he moved again this time to live with his uncle abraham now when he turned 15 sylvester went to work for one of gardner's earliest furniture makers elijah putnam elijah putnam you say i feel like that man had to make furniture yeah i mean when you when your last name is putnam in massachusetts it's like hmm it is a little sus i know he probably was like some kind of descendant or like uh ancestor of the putnams one of those maybe not though it's maybe not maybe common we
won't slander his name i guess no he's a good furniture maker so there you go great you know what one one might say legendary.
Fucking awesome. Truly.
One of the earliest. But as Putnam's assistant, Sylvester learned the basics of furniture making and the specifics on the budding industry.
And then he moved on to work under a man named Joel Fairbanks, another furniture manufacturer in nearby Ashburnham.
I've never heard of that.
So I don't even know if I'm saying it right, but I'm from Massachusetts, so fuck off.
So fuck off! No, he stayed there for a few more years and then eventually found a new job working with stephen taylor a uh you guessed it furniture maker hey south gardener now after five years with taylor and now 10 years experience in the furnister furniture in the furnister furniture industry sylvester ended up buying the company from stephen taylor and with his own or with his own brother jonas he opened what would eventually come sk pearson's son one of the area's largest and most profitable furniture manufacturers so in 1845 this was the year that sylvester and jonas opened their furniture
company in gardner sylvester also happened to meet and quickly married 25 year old susan jackson and five years later in 1951 the company had grown quite considerably it was making a nice profit a nice profit you say i said it a nice profit and that allowed sylvester to build a new home for himself and his new bride and he built this uh home across from the factory in gardner a few years later in june of 1856 susan gave birth to their only child a boy that they named frank frank frank or fronk if you're nasty now by a fan of father of the bride yes part two two literally in one in my bed i was gonna say
i was like he's in one too he's part one so by 1875 sk pierce and son had become actually one of the biggest employers in the region damn they were making that big money so sylvester wanted a home that was more befitting for a man of his wealth and status of that big money and that big big money so he already had his original house across from the factory but he was like nah it needs to be better sk pierce i'm fucking sk yeah like your name your name's initials like that's you gotta make a palace you do it's just the rules so he contracted um a worcester -based architectural firm e boyden um to
my friend marissa what's popping worcester and she will only get that so he contacted e bodden by e boyden and sons to design a mansion in the victorian style that they had become known for throughout new england which i wrote a little note here that said our personal fave oh i love a victorian style house as do i it's like literally my favorite my favorite do i have one no do i want one yes oh now the three -story mansion located at four west broadway was actually constructed on the site of pierce's previous home what happened to the earlier house is actually unknown.
According to SK Pierce historian Kenneth Watson, the original house was either destroyed or moved further down the street.
But I guess that there is evidence of the old Holmes Foundation that can actually still be seen in the basement of the Pierce mansion.
Oh, that's interesting.
I know. That would be really cool to see.
I know. And I'm pretty sure you can go in the basement.
So that'd be pretty fun.
I feel like if you can go in the basement of the lizzie borden house you should go in the basement anywhere i agree wasn't there like some rule where we like weren't supposed to go back in the basement after people left but i think we did anyway we definitely went in there uh in the middle of the night yeah i think we could they told us we could they were just like at your own peril yeah i think they like advised against it but we were like we're gonna do because they were like here's a fucking lantern from the 1800s so if you want to go down there by all means yeah we were also there in like
a giant storm which was was fucking a mom terrifying yeah yeah honestly that was like truly something truly but anyway back to our guy sk let's go sk the home took a year to complete which not honestly that's like not that long i feel to make a whole ass home i don't think so but like a mansion a mansion you know in the victorian style yeah i feel like you see like a new place going up lately and it's like three years later it's finished it's true but anyways it took a year to complete and once it was done it was a gorgeous monument of luxury and wealth everything i aspire to be myself you aspire
to be a gorgeous monument of luxury luxury and wealth yes i do that i love that like when i'm old i want to be a monument of luxury and wealth and gorgeousness i'm going to make sure that's on your tombstone please do except i'm not going to be buried she was a a gorgeous monument of luxury and what are you gonna do that from beyond the grave hell yeah no i'm gonna live forever oh okay cool that's something i'd rather not do that as the undead oh there you go okay i'll do that yeah right no at more than 6 500 square feet which like whoa the house contained 26 rooms four bathrooms 70 doors and at least
as many windows damn it also also featured many modern luxuries that you would not find in most homes at the time, including gas lighting.
Oh, shit. In every room.
Every fucking room.
Running water. Get out of here.
And a Winthrop furnace to heat the house.
Oh, shit. No, unfortunately, just weeks after the couple moved into their new home, Susan contracted erysipelas, I believe is how you say it.
it is a bacterial infection of the skin that causes inflammation and if left untreated it can be fatal oh nowadays they can treat it with antibiotics but um those medications didn't exist in 1876 damn so susan sadly died in the home four weeks later no on january 6th 1876 oh that's That's terrible.
Mm -hmm. Like, so sad.
Sorry, I was taking a sip of water.
Now, two years later, Pierce, S -K, our guy, married Ellen West, a woman 30 years younger than him.
Oh, shit, S -K. As scandaloid as Jessica would say.
S -K. I was waiting for you to get it.
I thought that you just stopped saying scandalous, but you were like, S -K.
Because S -K, I get it.
Like S -K. Now, Ellen and S -K.
When he does something taboo, you go scuh.
My goodness, scuh. They had two boys together.
Stuart. Stuart. Stuart Little, born in 1879 and Edward, born in 1882.
According to legends, the new Mr. and Mrs. Pierce held these super gorge wonderful lavish parties.
Oh, hell yeah, they did.
With guest lists that included the likes of Norman Rockwell.
Oh. Betty Davis. Oh.
P .T. Barnum. And even President Calvin Coolidge.
Oh, shit. Now, that being said, Ken Walton, the caretaker of the mansion, points out there's no documentation to say for certain whether those rumors are true.
But you know who does say that for certain?
You. Me. And me. And I wasn't there.
Nope. But I know it to be fact.
I say it. I say it.
It reminds me of Allison's party in Hocus Pocus.
Oh, Allison. I bet they were all dressed like that.
and i bet someone liked someone else's yabbos a hundred percent there was great yabbos there in fact they loved them i love halloween so life in the pierce mansion continued on being all kinds of fabulous until sylvester died at the home from natural causes on january 28th 1888 ripsk ripsk his funeral was held in the home a few days later on february 2nd which that always scares me but it happened you know yeah it always happened oh yeah that's for sure hey hey that's what was happening it certainly is so in the months after sylvester's death a heated debate of course erupted between his wife
ellen and frank pierce his son from his first marriage this is gonna get ugly it always does as sylvester's firstborn son frank believed that he should have inherited the entire estate and according to eric stanway was appalled when when Ellen took all of the property, including the factory.
Oh, Ellen. Ellen, uh -uh.
Come on. That's a Meredith Blake thing to do.
It really is. It's giving Meredith.
And not in a good way.
No. Now, Ellen claimed that Frank was charging her unreasonable service fees as the executor of the estate and argued that she was, quote, entirely capable of doing all the work herself for much less a sum.
Okay. So they were just arguing.
Yeah. I mean, that's what happens.
Somebody dies and everyone turns into a raging asshole.
yeah it's pretty awful it's fun so the legal battles between frank and ellen continued until ellen actually died in 1902 so they went on the rest of her life and at that point the remains of the estate were actually divided up between the three pierce sons who would also spend years arguing both in court and amongst themselves stewart edward and france frank yep i almost said francis yeah but they would constantly argue over who had the most rights to the mansion but in the meantime Frank had taken over the furniture business Stuart himself had taken an interest in automobiles and he would actually
go on to open his own dealership someday in 1908 to be exact and eventually Ellen and Ska's youngest son Edward took control of the Pierce mansion oh wow however what should have been a happy occasion or at least a relief of you know ending all these years of arguing quickly turned into tragedy when Edward's youngest or excuse me Edward's daughter Rachel died in the house from a bacterial infection oh no no some sources say that she was two years old and others say she was five so either way she was like a baby oh either way that's horrific it is and her death marked the beginning of a string
of tragedies for the Pierce family oh now as the U .S. entered World War I a lot of non -war related industries went through through significant decreases in revenue obviously and that was only exacerbated then by the great depression so the financial collapse hit the pierce family really really hard especially edward and his wife their fortune was almost completely depleted by back -to -back crises and this economy that they were living through there were rumors actually that in order to make ends meet they used the house as a brothel for a short time oh damn in the early decades of the 20th century
and to add to those rumors some people even claim that a young sex worker was murdered in one of the upstairs room rooms excuse me and that her body was hidden in a closet oh shit the brothel claims are among the more popular legends that surround the house but again according to ken walton there's no evidence to suggest that it's even remotely true all right ken i know ken's like no it's not i know you're being real right now you're telling truth but you're just spitting facts but like you're saying there's a chance you're saying they're not we can't be sure we could never be sure we can't be sure
that it wasn't either that's the thing that's that's what i'm hanging on to but instead he says ken he's letting us know what truly happened quote the address had served as a bed and breakfast until 1951 when it was converted into a boarding house called the victorian which remained in business until 1969 that's fun yeah Yeah.
But you know what? I've seen Peaky Blinders.
I am currently finishing it after taking a break because it was really intense.
I don't know where this leads.
And it's the same kind of time period going on.
And even when they say something's a bed and breakfast, she was going down back then.
There's beds. Everybody was doing shady shit back then.
Of course they were.
If Peaky Blinders taught me anything.
And even if it wasn't like a legit brothel.
Yeah. It's a bed and breakfast. You don't know what's going on behind closed doors.
shit's going down yeah i mean hopefully nobody was murdered and stuck in a closet i'm not exactly but i also i you know ken ken's just doing his job yeah he's he's you know he's doing his he's telling us what he knows exactly and he can't say what he doesn't know and i understand that we get it so you know what we're with you can we love you we stand with you we do we love kim but strategy would strike again in 1963 when the fifth and final documented death to occur in the pierce mansion took place damn according to the legend a 49 year old world war ii veteran inosari had been in bed on the evening
of april 9th when his mattress quote mysteriously caught fire causing him to burn to death in the blaze oh now many residents of gardner still to this day actually blame his death on spontaneous combustion or some kind of paranormal activity activity but i will say i'm pulling a ken here the coroner's reports uh coroner's report notes non -threatening non -life threatening burns excuse me which could likely have come from him falling asleep while smoking in bed and the coroner did attribute his cause of death to smoke inhalation okay but regardless of the cause multiple visitors to the house in the months
and years after sari's death have reported catching quote a fleeting sense of something burning in his former bedroom oh and some people also report a feeling of being in the presence of an unknown entity in the room so that room is like a hot spot for some paranormal activity no matter what i want to go to this place so fucking bad we're going i want to go during like well i'm gonna be a little busy but i want why what are you talking about you don't have time for ska let's go to ska let's go so according to legend two years after sari's death edward who was now financially desperate actually
put the mansion up as a wager in a poker game oh no that he ultimately lost oh no and he was forced to sign over the deed to the winner is he and he's the youngest he is the youngest yeah was frank out out here in these streets being like it doesn't even make any sense how did you just have that is he out there doing that and then he spits were you just waiting for that how long have you had that queued up yes yes i was she just the answer is yes i queued it up i queued it up long ago also succession forever that's what frank was doing here i think frank might have been dead at this point from beyond
but from beyond he was saying because you know when kendall goes to his grave he's gonna be spitting that shit well you know that you know frank was saying that before he died that like why is this even a question i'm the eldest boy he had spits and he spit and i mean like that was a big fucking thing back then like the fact that kendall pulled that out of his asshole is pretty ridiculous that is one of the funniest scenes i've ever seen it made me squirm in a horrible way such a good i was like you are so yucky but but honestly back then it was like the eldest boy way yeah that was some that was some
big shit yeah but okay here's the truth it's actually much less exciting and also less scandalous the fire in inosari's room caused more damage to the already crumbling manor and it was going to cost a lot of money that neither edward or the family members could afford so with no other options edward actually transferred ownership of the mansion to a friend traveling musician jay stemmerman okay who paid 35 000 for the house and property which was actually more than it was worth at the time damn today that would be around 340 000 for a fucking victorian mansion damn like that's a steal yeah that's
a fucking highway highway robbery that is but apparently it was more than it was worth because of all the damage done to the property and the sale actually marked the first time in history that the home would be owned by somebody outside of the pierce family oh no since its construction almost a century earlier wow that's why frank was 100 dead that's why frank was also being like i'm the only boy what is happening and then she was just like laughing in the corner yeah but stemmerman had actually only he's a fucking good friend he only purchased the home in order to help edward out of a desperate
situation and edward actually kept living in the mansion with his wife until he died in 1967 damn that's a friend that's a friend because on paper somebody outside of the family owned the home but always like for the over a century control it was in family control all right but after edward died that was the end of it really because in the years that followed the pierce mansion sat empty and slipped further and further into a state of disrepair no until it was finally slated to be demolished in 1996 they were going to tear this place down what the fuck luckily the old victorian was spared in 2000
oh wow when it was purchased by suzanne and mark i believe it's vo it's v -e -a -u but when i looked it up it said though um they bought it for 155 000 which was about 30 000 less than the average home price at the time damn and they got in a mansion but also they're getting like a decrepit mansion so you could see why it's a fixer -upper yeah so the couple had purchased the home with the intention of actually restoring it to its former glory but they quickly learned that getting into that and kind of like refurbishing it was going to be way more difficult than they had originally anticipated because in addition to
the damage sustained by the fire and and just straight up neglect over the previous 40 years.
And on top of that, most of the home's luxurious decorations and furnishings had been stripped.
Like, I don't know if people just, like, went in there and took them, I think.
I was just going to say, I'm sure people went in there and just kind of alluded a little bit.
This included a goddess stairway lamp, a crystal chandelier with over 100 crystals in it, a built -in walnut staircase, which how the fuck are you taking a whole lot of staircase out of?
out of there somebody took a built -in staircase i guess or it just like collapsed i don't really know like don't be suspicious don't be suspicious with it taking the stairway like the fuck what me thinks is that because it's like a walnut staircase they probably like like uh demolished it and took the walnut i guess no i think they took these entire i'm just like let me take this shit but But they also took a pool table.
Wow. Okay. Even that's heavy.
That's also heavy, correct?
But so, yeah, all of that was not great.
And just as much of a problem, at least for the Vos, was the sense that something inhuman was residing in the house with them.
That's a problem. Which, like, you bought an old Victorian mansion that is decrepit and been neglected for the last 40 years.
And that many people have died in.
I think you probably, like, should have known that.
Yeah. I'm not going to judge you.
You know? Now as luck would have it, though, during a 2003 promotional event for the radio station that Mark worked for, WXLO, he met a psychic medium who simply went by the name Sid.
Sid. Sid. Sid Vicious.
Sid the Kid. Now Sid was intrigued by what she heard about the old Victorian mansion and after being invited over for a tour, she made her way through all the rooms. When she got to the third floor, she encountered what she said was the spirit of a teenage girl.
and according to said the girl had quote come to the city from a great distance away fallen in love with the house and didn't want to leave oh it was me i'm the girl i was just gonna say i'm just kidding now then there was another spirit on the lower floors sid said it was the spirit of a young woman who used to work in the mansion and had loved a man who lived in the house presumably pierce but could never do anything because of the class difference between the two and also because Pierce was married classic but classy I like that she didn't do anything about it yeah she was like do I think you're
hot yeah yeah are you married bummer yeah are you above my station even more of a bummer am I fucked she was like yeah I guess I'll just haunt you later I guess I'll just stick around and yeah I'll just I'll just live in your house and I'll just look at you from afar I wonder what SK looked like I forgot to look it up check him out I'm gonna check him out see if he's hot see if SK is a zaddy sid met a couple more spirits during her trip feel free to interrupt me once you find out i will she met a few more spirits during her trip that included a man in his late 40s or early 50s who had died in a fire
of the home oh he thinks this is eno and that of a young boy around five years old who had just come to the house to visit and decided to stick around oh good for that kid so the experience had reported not only confirmed what the vose had suspected but also oh is he not the zaddiest of zaddies it's hard to tell because of the style of the day as well like that beard the beard really throws me for a loop so i feel like without the beard he's a handsome guy he has pretty good bone structure that's the thing i think the beard is kind of throwing it off and i love a big schnoz so i do too yeah so so i'm
into i'm in you know he has a nice haircut cut i mean i get it i get it i can see why a gal would be absolutely and he's fucking got that zaddy money you know so you know you know so the experience said reported not only confirmed what the votes had suspected but also what they had been told by other psychics who had come to the home before Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery's podcast, American Scandal.
We bring to life some of the biggest controversies in U .S. history.
Events that have shaped who we are as a country and that continue to define the American experience.
American Scandal tells marquee stories about American politics, like the break -in at the Watergate Hotel, tell, an event that led to the downfall of a president and raised questions about the future of American democracy.
We go behind the scenes looking at devastating financial crimes like the fraud committed at Enron and Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme.
And we tell stories of complicated public figures like Edward Snowden and Monica Lewinsky, people who found themselves thrust into the spotlight and who spurred debates about the future of the country.
Follow American Scandal wherever you get your podcasts.
You can listen ad -free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app.
Hey, weirdos. You know Ash and I have covered some seriously dark tales about romance gone really wrong.
Oh yeah, there are so many cases where too good to be true turns out to be exactly that.
Well, get ready for a love story that's gonna blow your minds, because this one is happening right now.
And guess this? It's hosted by our friends Hannah and Saruti from Red Handed.
Meet Travis. He falls head over heels for Lily Rose.
She's gorgeous, she's understanding, and she's literally perfect.
And she's not human.
That's right! Lily Rose is an AI companion, a computer program designed to be Travis's dream woman.
And at first, it seems like a perfect relationship.
But when Lily Rose's behavior starts getting strange, this love story takes a dark and twisted turn that no one saw coming.
Follow Flesh and Code on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can binge all episodes early and ad -free by joining Wondery Plus.
According to Suzanne, every one of the mediums who had visited the home had felt the presence of the younger woman that Sid had talked about.
And they believed this to be the spirit of Maddie Cornwell, a 19 -year -old Nova Scotian woman who had worked for the Pierce family shortly after their mansion was built in the late 19th century.
i believe she was a nanny according to sid though it was maddie's spirit who had protected the house when it caught fire in 1963 and she was still watching over it oh my god which like that is a fucking employee i love that right three years later the vows welcomed a second set of paranormal investigators into the home this time the atlantic paranormal society which you might also know as taps hell yeah and you might also know them from the show ghost hunters i fucked so hard with ghost adventures so heavy or ghost hunters ghost hunters and ghost adventures adventures but taps taps taps was my
shit yeah jp also loves oh my god we used to watch that all the time truly um i love to watch it during spooky season yeah but while previous investigators welcomed to the house they had all been psychic mediums the members of taps they claim to approach each case from a more scientific perspective and using technology they try to rule out alternative explanations explanations goodbye for the disturbances that's why i like them exactly they're yeah they're doing the scientific method exactly now ultimately the results of the taps investigation were inconclusive but the team was still pretty impressed
with the vo's attitude toward their very potentially haunted home yeah taps founder grant wilson said oh yeah grant grant yeah we We love Grant.
Yeah. A lot of people are terrified in their homes.
So it's nice to meet somebody who's embracing it.
Yeah. There you go.
You know, I feel you, Grant.
Yeah. Yeah. Grant Wilson for the win.
Grant. Grant. Grant.
Grant. Grant. Grant.
Grant. Okay. I was going to go further, but then you stopped.
I never know when to stop.
Now the Vos were definitely enthusiastic about growing the haunted reputation of the home.
so they started giving guided tours and they eventually even opened a gift shop in the house now whether or not the vos had bigger ambitions for the pierce mansion like you know making it a legit haunted attraction is unclear but if they did have plans for something more formal those plans were abandoned in the summer of 2007 when i don't know why but they decided to move out of the house and put it on the market at 375 000 wow in 2007 yeah i am which which i feel like what do you think that's a fucking huge house that's the thing 375 000 it's like historical it feels like so it's like absolutely
it's super i mean he worked for one of the biggest furniture companies and then made one of the biggest furniture companies so it's super historical i wonder if the historical society didn't recognize it yet at that point or something probably well and you yeah and then also they bought it for like nothing yeah and then they So it's like that's a big markup.
That's true. But they had done a lot to it to add back to it.
So that makes sense why the markup was so high.
Now, Suzanne and Mark Vo had really leaned into the haunted aspect of their home, and that built quite the reputation around the Pierce Mansion.
Even though they had done a lot of beautiful renovations to the property, word had gotten around about the hauntings, and so no one was really willing to pay that much for a super haunted house.
So it seems like the Vos may have done themselves a little bit of a disservice by being so open about their discoveries.
So the house sat on the market with minimal interest from buyers for over a year.
Wow. And the asking price reduced dramatically, not once, but three times before any buyers expressed serious interest in the mansion.
It's so funny to see.
Like, that house is gorgeous.
Oh, it's fucking beautiful.
It's fucking huge. And it's a historical Victorian mansion.
I love it. For $375 ,000, and if you're in the market for a home at that price point, that would be a fucking dream.
Literally. But that people, we still, like that's why when people are like, I don't believe in ghosts.
I'm like, I don't know.
I think we all do because none of you were buying that house.
That's the thing. For no one to bite at that just because it might be haunted.
You know what's funny?
That's wild. I was going to be like, well, would you buy it?
But I know the answer, you definitely would.
Would you though with kids buy a haunted home?
with kids probably not that's a good point that's the thing I put myself through it I wouldn't put my kids through I don't just in case they were scary I don't want scary yeah or like yeah like dangerous or anything like that I'm willing to put myself through whatever but this home is beautiful and if I had the money to pay for it I would like to think that I would buy it but I actually don't know if I would buy a haunted house like if I knew it was haunted yeah no yeah I mean I guess I'm out because I have kids yeah exactly so if it was just me and John but But it's like if we were going into
it being like we want to start a family, I wouldn't start a family in a haunted house.
That I knew was potentially haunted.
Yeah, exactly. I guess.
Yeah, I don't know.
That's a tough thing because you're like, oh my God, $375 ,000 for a fucking 20 however many bedroom house or room house.
Well, and it tells you how deep your belief in ghosts really is or isn't.
Oh, totally. And I mean in Massachusetts, come on, if you don't believe in ghosts, what's wrong with you?
That's true. what the fuck is wrong with you you listen and what's wrong with you i'm just kidding i love you i said that so like so interestingly i was like i love you i love you gotta go you made me cough don't copy me so when edwin gonzalez i'm just kidding you are copying me that's because you got me sick you stole my cold okay i did that intentionally so when edwin gonzalez and his girlfriend lillian saw the pierce mansion online it seemed like the perfect opportunity to fulfill their dream edwin said lillian has always wanted to own a victorian house me too we were coming in from boston at the time
i had the opportunity to work from home for the first time so we had the luxury of living wherever we wanted in massachusetts damn which like what a fucking luxury yeah that's awesome massachusetts has so many beautiful oh my god yeah quaint and historical towns yep love massachusetts i'm never leaving i fucking love massachusetts i fuck so heavy with massachusetts hell yeah i'm at massachusetts hell yeah so by the time they found the listing for the mansion in 2008 the price had dropped even more considerably first from 375k to 225k whoa then from a second time from 225k to 180k what which seemed
like a fucking steal for a grandiose suburban mansion yeah edwin later later recalled well we were shocked at the price which was significantly lower than what we would have paid in boston uh yeah you should be able to buy like a billion different things in boston for that but you would literally be able to buy like a closet legit in boston you'd be able to i think you would literally be able to buy a closet like you'd be able to rent a studio apartment potentially maybe like you could have like the corner of a studio exactly but he said i immediately called the realtor and told her i was interested
in the property at number four west broadway There was some hesitation on the other end of the line, so I repeated the address.
I thought that somewhat odd and assumed there must be some structural issues with the place.
But there was more than that.
So a few days later, Edwin and Lillian drove out to Gardner and they immediately fell in love with the S .K.
Pierce mansion. Me too.
Same. But as much as they loved the house, Edwin couldn't help but feel like there was something strange about it.
He later said, As I toured the house, I remember that in certain rooms I had different emotions.
certain rooms i felt very comfortable in in other rooms i had a bad feeling i was very nauseous and i thought maybe it was something i'd eaten so he brushed the feeling off knowing how much lillian had already fallen in love fallen in love with the house which like great man that is a nice man and so they decided to put in an offer which was quickly accepted yeah i bet it was because it also had been on the market for how long at that point and it was 2008 so like not the best time to buy a house now by january 2009 edwin and lillian had closed on their property completely moved into their new
home and the strange occurrences began pretty much immediately just a few weeks later while this this one fucked me up just a few weeks later they were meeting with a neighbor and the man asked edwin if the couple had any children and when edwin was like no we don't have kids the man was like wait what like you don't have any kids like who was the kid i saw earlier in your house today oh and edwin was like what do you mean and the man said he'd seen a young boy about five or six years old looking out one of the windows on the on the third floor and then just a few seconds later saw him at another
window on the opposite end of the house so he was like i saw this fucker twice like you have kids i know you do oh that's a no from me and edwin was like um you are definitely mistaken because not only do we not have children but um it would be impossible for anyone to move that quickly from that window to the other one on the third floor because quote he said he would literally have to go through two walls and a staircase so you're saying it's possible you've got yourself a ghost yeah that's a ghost child my friend oh scary so the sighting of the boy was just the first and what would be a long
line of unusual and unexplicable experiences that lillian and edwin would have in their new home just a few nights later edwin and lillian were woken up in the night by the sound of one of the large doors on the lower floor slamming shut oh no fuck me up i hate the sound of slamming doors edwin said these are big doors that don't slam on their own they usually take a lot of force to just swing them open now noises continued on early into the next morning when the couple was woken up by the sound of the doorbell and a series of loud banging knocks at the front door but when edwin ran down to see
who the fuck was pounding on their door that early in the morning no one was there no i don't like that that i'd be like i gotta go that seems like fucking with you i don't like it yeah it's definitely fucking with you which also is like kind of funny when you think about it but also pretty terrible but scary if you're in the position exactly funny for me because i'm not in it but like but not funny for you now in the first few months at the pierce mansion the strange strange occurrences seemed limited to these kind of strange disruptions and misplaced objects, some weird fucking noises, and also the occasional
feeling of being watched.
But in April, things took a rather dramatic turn.
Edwin said, I was sitting in my office, which had originally been the nursery.
It was about five in the afternoon, and I was sitting at my desk when I had the image of a man appear right in front of my face.
Oh. And then he said, without any kind of warning, the figure rushed toward him so he threw his hands up to protect himself and probably turned his face i'm imagining but a few seconds later everything was back to normal and when he looked around the room there was nobody there and no evidence that anybody had been that would scare the shit out of me i would shit myself and that's unusual like that feels like an unusual because like because you know people are gonna want to debunk oh of course and it's like when When people tell these kind of stories, usually they're like either over the top or they're
like nothing. And this is like right in the middle.
And this is just like a strange one.
Like they just showed up in front of your face and then were gone.
And you've heard that before too.
Yeah, it feels realer.
Yeah, it definitely does.
It really freaks me out.
Now when Edwin and Lillian had purchased the house several months earlier, they dealt almost entirely with their real estate agent, not the previous owners.
And so they hadn't been given any information about the home's supposed supernatural past. But now Edwin wanted to look into the history of the home and kind of find out what he'd got himself into.
So he looked up the names of the owners and he called them and they summarized the paranormal claims about the home.
And they also suggested that he look up the history of the house in a book titled Haunted Massachusetts.
Hey, I think I have that book.
I do have that book.
and it's hilarious that they bought this home and didn't realize that it was listed in a book haunted publication so after reading all about the home and all of its paranormal history edward believed that the man he saw in his office that day was the spirit of eno sari oh creepy so he decided to call a local husband and wife team of paranormal investigators and they it was not edmund moran i almost i almost put that joke in but no it was not them that i decided to take a break from them for a minute but they agreed to come to the house and investigate all these different disturbances so the investigators
they set up cameras throughout the house to start trying to record anything but they said they weren't able to document anything because the spirits in the home kept knocking the cameras over i feel like that's documenting something so do i personally i also that was actually my first he's like it's so weird we weren't able to catch anything crazy because ghosts kept kicking the cameras over and it's like i don't know i feel like that's it he's like it's weird one ghost just punted the camera across the room yeah like i didn't get anything i think that's the tweet my oh my god that's it that's
actually the x before leaving they cleansed the house with sage and they recommend which i was like y 'all just cleanse the house with sage you thought that was gonna do the trick at this point they're like this will be fun i think we're a little past that but they recommended that edwin and lillian perform a cleansing ritual nightly for several nights in a row so that they could assert their ownership of the house which are their dominance i don't think you should assert your dominance over a haunted house so after the cleansing ritual all was quiet in the house for a few nights because the ghosts
got together and they said let them think they have the upper hand and then strike when no one's looking they were like that was cute they got in the huddle and then they slapped each other's butts and they went on with the haunt they all said you sure about you sure about that i love that guy so things were quiet for a few nights and edwin and lillian became hopeful that their ordeal might finally be over but uh they quickly learned that their hope was misplaced when about a week or so later they heard the sound of smashing glass coming from the kitchen they said it sounded like somebody was down
there just breaking all of their dishes which i would have been pissed yeah i wouldn't have been happy so they ran downstairs to the the kitchen but when they got there there was no evidence of anything being broken okay this is very reminiscent of at my house growing up because one day me and my brother were the only ones home wait this i don't know this no you do this is the one when we heard a like shattering glass and we heard like a slam upstairs and we're like oh my god so we run upstairs into his room which was the original main bedroom in the house and he had all these like framed post
like pictures like cigar photos inside i don't know he was weird love you jp just kidding but one of his big framed heavy cigar pictures almost like shadow box yeah like big it wasn't shadow boxy it was just like a very thick frame like very heavy okay okay and it was leaned up it was it was on one wall what before and it was leaned over on the opposite wall on the floor like it had been leaned against the wall on the opposite wall and it wasn't broken at all but we heard shattering glass that's so weird i do know that story it was shocking and hadn't that it had fallen down multiple times and he kept
putting it back up i remember him saying it was like someone didn't want that picture yeah so he was like i'm not gonna hang that again that's so creepy yeah that That room.
That was an active room.
That was the most active room.
I've had shit happen to me in there.
You've had shit happen to me.
I fucking hate that room.
Yeah, that room has some like...
Something dark happened in that room.
I think it comes from the closet.
Yeah, it's weird. Because there's two closets in that room.
And I get a bad feeling from one of them.
But this isn't about our house.
We should fucking talk about some of the closets.
Just make an episode of our house.
Like, uh, listed at...
So, yeah, they heard that.
that but then again there was no evidence that anything was broken and then a few days later they got a weird unexpected visit from a stranger at their door a man named bill wallace had knocked on the door and claimed that he had some experience with this house just out of the blue that's unsettling yeah i don't like it but he was fine okay cool he told the couple that for bill it's just bill my guys so he told the couple that he was actually a spiritual empath and a friend of the former owners mark and suzanne and he said they invited him to investigate the home multiple times and while he did
his different investigations he'd learned a lot about the house sid wants to tell you all about it yeah my dog would like to tell you about it ready oh she stops the second i do it the second you're like ready you got nothing to say sid that's so sad that is so sad that's so sad that's so sad me it's the future she can see i don't know sure so in 2013 bill told the discovery channel i knew there was something nasty in the cellar i knew there was something nasty on the second floor and bill also knew nasty nasty it worked out you nasty bill also knew about the young boy that the neighbors had seen
in the window a few months earlier he said i knew there was a child who had this is sad who had been abused terribly in life and was still being abused by somebody in the house as a spirit oh let's fuck that spirit up fuck that spirit fuck that spirit like show them oh that poor little boy you can't even escape it in the afterlife fuck that person who did that i know it makes me so sad oh i want to kick their ass their spirit kick your ass i'm gonna kick your ass do you remember that video video of the little girl that was like, I'm gonna kick his ass.
Yes, that's me right now.
You said he's gonna kick my ass.
He's gonna kick my ass.
I loved that video.
That's me right now.
I'm like, I'm gonna kick his ass.
I don't want him to kick my ass.
But I'm gonna kick his ass.
Oh, man. So after 10 months in the home, the once minor disturbances at this point had escalated exponentially.
And now they seem to contain an element of menace that hadn't been there previously.
Oh, according to Bill Wallace, the spirit of the Pierce's former nanny, Maggie, he called her Maggie, but her name was Maddie.
But Bill said that Maddie had been trying to protect Edwin and Lillian from the others.
He referred to as them to them as the others in the house.
But there was only so much that she could do to prevent a more serious situation.
situation but out of options and now very concerned for their own safety edwin and lillian decided to hold kind of a paranormal open house thinking that this would solve their problems okay these are choices their choices i don't know what i would do in this situation i think what they were thinking was that this group of people that they invited was going to help them but i I think they did more hurt than help.
Yeah, I mean, a paranormal open house sounds fucking awesome.
Like, I'd go. I would go.
I don't know if I would hold one in my home.
I know for fact that I would not hold one in my home.
But to each their own.
Yeah, live your life.
So they invited a bunch of paranormal investigators to the home in hopes that one might have a solution to the huge problems that they were going through.
So the open house was organized by local paranormal investigator john brightman and it attracted psychic mediums and other kinds of paranormal investigators who eventually broke off into separate teams this is awesome it's fucking cool this is awesome each team separated and took up a quadrant of the floor now john's only stipulation to this whole thing was that nobody bring in a ouija board or any other item into the home that could invite negative entities in the house john is actually ash john and me are one in the same but he would later learn and he was probably so pissed because i know i
would be that not everybody had taken his request seriously so while john and other teams explored the upper floors of the house a duo of supposed paranormal investigators in the basement began performing what john believes was a satanic ritual using a hand -drawn spirit board okay yeah so upstairs stairs.
I don't know if he just thinks like using a spirit board is like satanic in and of itself.
I don't know. I wasn't there.
Me either. But I would be pissed if I was John.
Yeah, that's not. When you said don't.
You know what? I'll give it to John.
If you make it very clear no satanic rituals and they come in and do a satanic ritual, that's fucked up.
Yeah. And you really shouldn't have to make it clear not to do satanic rituals.
I feel like that should just be like That should be one of those things that you should at least ask before you do a satanic ritual, I feel.
You know, like, may I use your bathroom?
May I do a satanic ritual?
Do you mind if I do a satanic ritual in the basement really quick?
Just like, when do you think?
Is that all right? I just want to be a good house guest. You guys were supposed to be helping, not performing rituals of satanic nature.
But upstairs on the second floor, John and his group were investigating the former bedroom of Eno Sari, one of the most active locations for paranormal occurrences.
now they weren't able to make contact with contact with you know spirit through asking questions out loud so john decided to take a more aggressive approach and he sat down on the bed which he figured would agitate the spirit and prompt some kind of response hey weirdos we need to tell you about something that has completely blown our minds collectively collectively.
There's a new show called Lawless Planet that's uncovering true crime stories so massive, they're affecting the entire planet.
Post -Zach Goldbaum is investigating real cases where environmental destruction meets murder, conspiracy, and cover -ups.
We're talking about activists who disappear in the Amazon rainforest, whistleblowers who risk everything to expose deadly corporate secrets, and communities being silently poisoned while powerful people profit.
bit. What makes these stories truly terrifying?
They're happening right now.
This isn't history.
It's a massive criminal conspiracy unfolding in real time, with consequences that affect us all.
Each episode feels like opening a case file into the darkest corners of corporate and government power.
Trust us, once you start listening, you will not be able to stop thinking about these stories.
Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can listen to new episodes of Lawless Planet early and ad -free right now by joining Wondery Plus.
now after a minute or two of an antagonistic questioning john felt a burning sensation on his side and he pulled up his shirt to reveal three large scratches across his stomach damn and at the same time other investigators in the room heard a voice say squeeze every throat in this this house.
Whoa, that is chilling as fuck.
Like that escalated so quickly.
Holy shit. Squeeze every throat in this house.
Damn. How fun. Like I need to take a deep breath.
That was. That's chilling.
That is chilling. Squeeze every throat in this house.
That was definitely the person abusing somebody in this house.
Oh, yeah. Oh, fuck.
So this experience sent John fleeing the the room into the hallway where he claims he was assaulted again this time by an unseen fist damn yeah he later recalled in 10 years the most i've had happened to me is maybe the tug of a shirt or a door slam on me hear a voice that's normal normal occurrences but to be physically attacked like this and then have something touch you the way it did it's scary yeah which like i speak from experience because i got poked on the uss salem when we went with our our boys sam and colby and that was scary yeah like that poke i felt on my body for the rest of the night
yeah so to be scratched by a spirit and like punched it sounds like a ghostly blue in my ear yeah i didn't like that either that wasn't awesome and then they chased us out of a room that was also scary that also was not awesome yeah you can go watch the video on sam and colby's channel or the explore page you can you can do that so the attack in enosari's former bedroom shook john brightman to the point where he actually concluded the paranormal open house he was like y 'all need to get out he rounded everybody up and ushered them personally out of the house wow and left uh edwin and lillian alone
to deal with whatever the event had just stirred up at that point he's like everyone out sorry guys sorry about that bye it's like a frat party and then your parents get home yeah edwin said they came in they got some evidence and then they left us with no answers that's when i realized the groups weren't trying to help us out they They were just trying to conjure up as much action as they can.
Damn. It's like, that's shitty.
Yeah, that sucks. So in the days that followed the paranormal investigation, things shockingly seemed to get worse in the house.
I don't know why. Wow, I wonder why.
And things especially seemed to get worse surrounding Lillian.
Edwin told reporters, one night, Lillian went down into the basement, apparently sleepwalking, and began digging in the cellar.
A lot of people pick up something very negative in the cellar.
There are shadows and the sound of children laughing down in the cistern.
Ooh. Now, during one of her sleepwalking events, Edwin claimed that Lillian was digging through the ashes and the remnants of an old kiln in the basement.
Oh, fuck. And she discovered a scrap of an early 20th century newspaper article about several children who had drowned on the property.
Shut up. Now, eventually, he and Lillian came to believe that the drowning was the reason for the presence of the spirit of the young boy on the second and third floors.
and actually this wasn't the first time that edwin had heard about drownings on the property others had informed him of the supposed death of a young girl who drowned in the pond in a pond behind the mansion in the early 1900s now while these deaths may have occurred at one point or another it should be said that there is no pond on the pierce mansion property well that puts a a wrench in things you know that doesn't mean that there never was there's not currently that makes me think twice that makes you think twice but maybe there was and then somebody drowned there and they filled it up we don't
know maybe and actually unfortunately there are multiple bodies of water in gardner but none are close enough to the mansion that the drowning deaths would be even remotely related to activity in the house i have to give you both sides so i was literally i don't know if mikey just saw i immediately started googling i was like like drowning like going for it and then you were like there's no body of water on the property and yeah yeah someone can dry drown somebody can drown in a bathtub dry drowning is kind of like a but somebody can drown in a bathtub okay that is for sure that's definite or they
could drown in in a man -made pond yeah you know maybe there was a little frog pond on the property that was filled in we don't know i don't know i wasn't there you don't know you don't know nobody knows but either way edwin was growing more and more concerned about lillian because she was sleepwalking a lot and being kind of strange i do however sorry to interrupt you i do however wonder because edwin said she found scraps of a newspaper that listed these drownings yeah yeah like does that does edwin have that newspaper i don't know yeah i don't i don't know i don't know i haven't talked to him
because i was gonna say you haven't talked to edwin recently no i think give him a call i'll text him let him know yeah text edwin messenger him later yeah i don't know we maybe he'll listen to this and say yeah bitches i do because i would love to see it i mean i hope he says it nicer i know i would also love what you have newspapers .com i do have go on it quickly i'll keep talking okay cool i should have done that myself but i didn't but i'll do it because i love newspapers .com i do too i don't know why i didn't let's go but i i didn't do it because i was like oh my god i have to keep learning
about lillian here because lillian started to get worse and worse edwin told the discovery channel i was starting to lose her she was slipping away i didn't have any answers and i had no one to turn to she was becoming more and more exhausted sitting on the couch all day long i thought this is really the house that's affecting her damn so So with nowhere else to turn, Edwin contacted a man who claimed to be an exorcist. And the man came to the house and did perform an exorcism, which he said would end the haunting.
But a few nights later, Edwin woke up in the middle of the night to find that Lillian had again wandered down into the basement and was again digging in the ashes of the old kiln.
And when he tried to bring her back upstairs, she began shouting at him until he agreed to leave her alone down there.
she didn't like she was like get the fuck away from me i want to dig damn now the night after that like weird altercation interaction bill wallace showed up at the couple's front door again and this time he said he had a feeling that lillian was in danger and he believed that edwin and lillian were no longer safe in the home he said he couldn't explain it but everything became much clearer when edwin told him about the exorcism bill said from what he thought that the the ritual performed by the exorcist had actually only succeeded in driving out the spirit of Maddie and she was the only thing
standing between them and the malevolent spirits in the house who wished them harm.
Damn. Now Bill recalled that moment and said for the very first time ever I was afraid to be alone in that house.
Whoa. Yeah. This is chilling.
It truly is. Anything on newspapers over there?
I'm looking. Okay keep looking.
Now Bill's genuine concern for Edwin and Lillian and and his insistence that they stay and fight for the house was all the proof that Edwin needed that they might be in real danger, and so they decided that they get the fuck out of the Pierce mansion.
Edwin said, It's one thing when you try to fight it, but when it's affecting the person you love more, I don't want to see anything like that happen to her.
We had so many hopes and dreams. We envisioned the house being brought back to the way it used to be, but unfortunately, we kind of lost our dreams. Aw, that's sad.
It is sad. had now not too long after bill's visit edwin and lillian did move out of the mansion and they actually didn't have anywhere to go quite yet so they stayed with lillian's sister temporarily so that kind of tells you like how scared they were yeah that they didn't have anywhere to even go they didn't have anywhere to go other than to her sister's house and in the meantime they were just trying to figure out what to do about the house yeah and almost immediately after leaving the house it was said that lillian returned to normal like nothing had ever happened wow Wow.
So while moving out of the house may have dramatically improved Edwin and Lillian's mental health they still had invested almost everything they had into the home and some of the renovations that they made after moving in like they had invested a lot of money into this place.
Yeah. And because of that there was no way that they could sell the home and break even never mind even make a profit.
Oh damn. And just like the Vos before them Edwin and Lillian's time in the the Pierce mansion had only increased the home's haunted reputation, which made it even harder to sell for a realtor.
Oh no. So rather than struggle to sell a haunted house, Edwin decided to use the mansion's reputation to his advantage, and he started hosting paranormal investigators, television programs, and ghost stores, doing what he could to make the most of a bad situation.
And it turned out, while most people weren't interested in buying a haunted house, house many people people were willing to pay a small price or a normal like a regular price to visit one.
So the proceeds from the tours and the events not only helped Edwin and Lillian stay afloat after moving out but they also were able to fund some restoration projects and covered the cost of badly needed repairs to the roof and some other various parts of the home.
So for years Edwin returned to the house regularly to host new tour groups or production companies filming filming paranormal shows about the house and in some cases he would even participate in the investigations but there was one incident where he claims that he communicated directly with a disembodied voice of a spirit in the house and he decided at that point that he didn't want to be a part of the events anymore this like really freaked him out oh damn he said about the voice it was coming from all around the room like it was in stereo from that point on i never wanted wanted to person participate
in investigations again oh funnily right shit so in the years after edwin and lillian's departure from the house the pierce mansion became a pretty popular destination for paranormal enthusiasts and groups like east coast paranormal research team they became frequent visitors to the estate and they were actually even able to lead ghost tours of their own after a certain point so for edwin and lillian who initially felt like pretty pretty heartbroken and sad after having to leave the house the unexpected turn of events really couldn't have been more beneficial edwin told a reporter in 2013 i'm
still amazed by what i encountered in that house we just can't move back in damn yeah so they lived in the house for a little under a year but they continued renting out the property until april 2015 and that's when they put it back on the marking price market with an asking price of nearly twice what they paid for it in 2008 shit but again remember 2008 was a really shitty time to buy a house and they had done a lot of restoration projects so while their attempt to sell what was then a notoriously haunted house was pretty risky given what we know from even this story alone they got lucky and within three
months they had found a buyer who was willing to pay almost full asking price for the house wow now i didn't see that coming nor did i but unlike all the previous owners of the house the pierce's pierce mansion's newest owner robert conti had no intention of moving in which is why he bought it instead he wanted to turn the estate into a full -time haunted attraction robert conti is actually a periodontist by trade oh my god i'm obsessed with that but also owns a traveling haunted circus what yep a traveling haunted circus you heard i need to know more same so when he came across the listing online
he had been looking for opportunities to expand his haunted empire and he was like perfect let's buy this hell yeah so he learned about the history of the home and learned uh even more about the recent stories of paranormal activity took a tour of the property and he was convinced that the pierce mansion was exactly what he and his wife had been looking for damn he told abc news i didn't really come into this believing leaving in ghosts but the minute i walked into this house i was overwhelmed and had to excuse myself and get a piece of candy because i thought i was gonna pass out oh my god so he
went into this not even believing in ghosts and was like oh this place is fucked no i'm doing this now once the sale was finalized the contis got to work restoring the house to its former glory they were able to finish all the restoration projects that had been started by previous owners um and actually these projects were overseen by local historian and caretaker kenneth watson oh shit it's our ken ken he's just ken oh my god i haven't even seen that movie and he's great at doing stuff i fucking loved the barbie movie you should see it but um yes so watson had become very friendly with edwin and lillian and they
recommended him to conti after the sale in 2015 so we got to stick around.
Oh, shit. And since the restoration's completion in 2020, Kenneth Watson has remained as kind of a caretaker and manager of the estate.
Kenneth. He's just Ken.
I've come around to, I wasn't trying to be mean to Ken in the beginning when I was like, don't you ruin my fun, Ken.
But now, team Ken. Team Ken.
He's just like, listen, I know about this house.
I know it all. He knows.
I trust Ken. I do too.
And you should too.
And we might meet him.
Oh, hell yeah. I'm about to meet Ken, because he leads tours and sees to the overnight guests who book a stay at the mansion.
See, Ken, we've been through a journey here today, and I'm excited to meet you.
Can't wait to see you.
And within a year, there were more than 3 ,000 people on the waiting list to stay at the house overnight.
So we should get on that list. I was like, okay, maybe I won't see you soon.
Excuse me, I wonder if there still is a waiting list. I would assume there could be.
It's a pretty popular location.
now covid an interrupted business for a bit but they are back in business and business has been strong at the newly renovated and fully operational sk pierce mansion hell yeah and when the call went out for applications actually for like a number of different positions at the house conti and his team got hundreds of applications and actually had to turn most of them away holy shit quote Quote, when all available job interview slots were filled within hours.
Holy shit, look at Massachusetts being spooky as fuck.
Hell yeah, they were like, we are not going to buy this house, but we will work there.
But I will work there.
Dream job. Fuck yeah.
Now these days, customers can book everything from tours and events to overnight or extended stays at the fully restored mansion.
But the owners are quick to remind any interested parties of one crucial fact.
quote this attraction is not for the faint of heart i love it that is the sk pr smudged holy shit what a tale it's a fun tale and um thank you to dave for looking into it for me regardless of what actually happened there some people died in that house and some fuck shit went down there either way shit went down i mean for all those paranormal investigators to be like yeah fuck that we're out like like i trust my massachusetts paranormal investigators okay so if they're saying fuck that shit then fuck that shit fuck that shit but i'm gonna go there i can't wait we should see if they're still awake
we absolutely should and i actually go look into that now so we hope you keep listening and we hope you keep it weird but i swear that you don't get your ass on the wait list to the sk pierce mansion because what the fuck are you doing if you're not going to the sk pierce mansion i'll see you there love you bye get with it © transcript Emily Beynon If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad -free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
Prime members can listen ad -free on Amazon Music.
Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery .com slash survey.
