Hey weirdos, I'm Ash.
And I'm Elena.
And this is Morbid.
🎵.
This is morbid.
It's very dreary today.
It's a very fall, gloomy day and i love it.
Oh yeah, it's gloomalicious.
Yesterday was even more fall.
Yeah, yesterday was like super duper fall.
And then the day before that i was driving around at night and i was like, oh this yeah, it looked like the 90s outside.
It looks like 90s fall to me.
I love when it looks like the 90s.
Yesterday to me looked like the 90s.
Yeah, i agree.
And you know what?
Even today looks a little bit like the 90s.
It does look a little like the 90s.
I just long for a simpler time.
I have that word that we looked up like probably a couple of days ago that I don't remember, but I have it.
It's true.
We do.
We have that.
We have the nostalgia.
Or you have that.
Yeah, you have just regular nostalgia.
I just have sadness for the time that I came back.
Where's the word that started with an A?
You're probably yelling it at me.
Yeah.
But I don't feel like looking it up right now.
We're tired.
Yeah, it's been a tiring week.
Yeah.
We always have, you know, something going on.
There's always somebody in the hospital.
There's always somebody in the hospital.
Everything's fine.
It's always my mom.
Period.
She's okay.
She's fine.
She's okay.
She had the penome.
Yeah, she had pneumonia, which is not great to get when you're like almost 80.
No, it was freaking me out because Ma is Diane.
Diane Keaton and Ma are the same person, I think.
They are.
They look so much alike.
They remind me of each other a lot.
So when Ma got diagnosed with pneumonia, I was like really beside myself for a minute there.
Yeah, she was in the hospital for over a week.
So it's been a lot, but things are good now.
She's doing better.
She's home.
Just trying to get her on the road to recovery.
On the up and up.
But I'm going to make her some pastina.
You know, yeah.
Let me tell you.
I don't know if we've mentioned this.
I'm sure we have.
People want my recipe.
Okay.
I'm going to say it again for everybody in the back.
Tell them.
I fully believe that Ash has magical pastina that can cure what ails you.
I do.
Thank you.
I have this bitch make me this pastina.
I don't even have her do it.
She just says, you want my pastina?
It's, I know when somebody requires.
I said it to your one of your kids today and her eyes she was like she isn't feeling well.
Her eyes lit up and she was like, she nodded emphatically.
Yeah.
Like one of my kids has like just one of those small little like you know uh, cold and flu season viruses.
Like she's completely fine.
I think it was just like dry.
Yeah.
Literally.
It's probably allergies to be honest.
But, you know, everybody needs a little health day.
Yeah.
So she was home and Ash told her she would make the pastina.
And she was like, yes.
Like, hell yeah.
And then we go to Mars.
It cured my COVID.
It was the only thing I would eat after neurovirus.
Like, it's a delicacy.
Thank you.
It's a delicacy.
It's true.
I love that pastina.
I'm just like, I posted it the other day.
I don't know if you saw.
I think I'm a kitchen witch.
I think you are too.
You know how everybody's like a certain kind of witch?
Yeah.
I'm a kitchen witch.
I think you are.
That pastino alone.
Thank you.
Well, and I like to do like simmer pots and like that kind of thing, you know?
No, I think you are.
Thanks.
I'm going to make an apple crisp today too.
Oh, hell yeah.
Let's record this because I got to get baking.
I know.
I want to get baking too, because I got to make.
I haven't made my pumpkin loaf this year yet, and I always make one.
Can you please make that today?
Yeah.
And I know Ma likes that too, Ma and Peppa.
So i will trade you pastina for pumpkin loaf.
Yeah, i will do that.
You will trade the pea dishes.
And today is the.
It's the day before halloween.
Yeah, and i have been trying to make a super spooky lunch for the girls.
Every single day this week you've been killing over the top spooky.
What'd you do today?
I was running out of ideas, but i i really hit it out of the park today.
Let's say what you are did, so let's see.
So, for on monday mummy, i did um, an everything bagel, but i made it like a pizza bagel, but i made it look like mummies.
That was cool.
I should post pictures of these because they're real cute.
Yeah, this is easy to do.
This bitch is giving pinterest mom, but she's the gothiest goth.
I just i like to wake up early, so i that's when i do it.
Yeah uh because, like i just i don't know, it's fun.
Then you did Frankenstein.
I did Frankenstein wraps, which was just a spinach wrap.
And I put hummus cucumbers carrot, like matchstick carrots, apples and like a little bit of like spinach in there.
Yummy.
And I did like garlic hummus because they love that.
And I just wrapped it up like a burrito.
And then I took a food marker that I got on Amazon.
You can get them.
Get them.
And I drew Frankenstein on it because it was green.
I can only imagine all the moms out there listening to this right now like yeah Alina, my fucking kid's not going to eat matchstick carrots, red peppers, apple slices and garlic hummus.
Let me, before I come off as like, my children will eat that.
They will eat that.
But let me tell you.
They won't really eat anything else.
It's been a, like one of my kids is not picky at all.
She will eat anything.
She will try anything.
She'll tell you if she doesn't like it, but she will always try it.
And she's pretty open with shit.
My other one, 50-50.
Sometimes she's going to try it.
Sometimes she's not.
Sometimes she likes it.
Sometimes she doesn't.
She's the one you don't really know, but you have a shot.
It's a toss up.
My youngest, nothing.
Is in the pickiest phase I have ever been through.
And her favorite thing to do right now is to tell you something you made looks disgusting.
Yeah yeah and or, and she'll try to.
She'll try to like uh like, kind of couch it, because she'll be like.
She'll be like oh, it looks disgusting, but maybe it tastes good, and i'm like that's an awful thing to say.
She told me my apple crisp looked, and she literally goes that looks disgusting, and then she loved it, and then she loved it and she says that she's like it looks gross but it tastes really good.
She says that about my sweet potato streusel, damn girl.
But yeah, so it's that for some reason, that wrap it happens to have a mix of things that they will all.
They all do love cucumbers and carrots.
There you go.
And they love a hummus.
And they love apples.
These Mediterranean queens.
I love a Mediterranean food, so I think it's just in their blood.
I gotta get better at loving a Mediterranean food.
It's so good.
It feels good to eat.
I'm the most American bitch.
I also love very American food.
I love fried food and McDonald's.
I like a lot of shit.
But I like healthy stuff too.
Yeah, but it's on it.
So just so you know that I'm not being like oh my kids will eat vegetables all the time and they will eat everything.
No, they constantly won't eat things.
What did you do?
That just happens to work.
What did you do today?
So today I did pizza skulls.
So I had a skull mold that I got from Michael's.
As one does.
And it's like a little silicone mold of like skulls.
And I used crescent rolls as the dough and I put them in there.
Yeah.
Very easy.
Took me five minutes.
I took Hunt's tomato sauce or no, I put mozzarella cheese in there.
Yep.
Because you just like put them in the skull thing, but leave enough room around it where you can like cover it up.
Because it'll like pop out a little bit.
So you put the mozzarella cheese in there and then you put a little bit of Hunt's tomato sauce or whatever tomato sauce you like.
I just like Hunt's.
Hunt's is correct.
Put a little more of the mozzarella on top and then you just close it up, pinch it around, make sure it's all closed up.
And you just bake like the crescent thing?
Put it in 350, 20 something minutes in the oven.
And then I took like an extra step because we happen to have extra time this morning.
You can just do it like that.
Yeah.
It's perfect.
It gets like golden brown.
And then when they bite into it, it's like a little crisp.
I can hear it.
It's very yummy.
And then you get the mozzarella.
The mozzarella pull.
And so today I did.
I melted a little butter in a bowl and then I just put some Parmesan cheese and some garlic, made a little garlic butter and I just kind of brushed it on top.
You're just the most casual bitch.
Today for you I've created a garlic spread of your pizza skull.
I can tell you that took like no time.
It really doesn't.
It really did the fanciest things like yeah, i mean some fancy things obviously take a long time but like, sometimes you'll be like people be like oh my god, i can't believe you whipped that up and it's like no, i genuinely did like yeah, it's not.
And i heard about this one on like tiktok and i all the moms that i saw do it were like this literally takes five minutes.
Yeah, like you're just using jar tomato sauce and mozzarella that's already shredded.
Here's my secret when i make my pasta sauce, my sundae sauce, oh yeah, It's just Hans tomato sauce that I like spice up.
Yeah, you put an onion in there.
Put an onion.
I do a bunch of garlic.
Yeah.
I put some wine sometimes.
Wine and tomato sauce is really good.
Yeah, you got to.
But then you have to cook it so much longer.
I get so scared.
You make it so it burns off.
Yeah.
But yeah, I mean, that's it.
I did say I really painted myself into a corner.
Why?
Because I told them I was really going to knock it out of the park with breakfast tomorrow morning for Halloween.
What are you going to do?
So I'm really going to come up with something fancy for that.
Oh, shit.
Go on TikTok.
Yeah, I'll figure something out.
And then I also kind of used up all my lunches.
So I'm like, I got to figure out what to do.
You can make cinnamon buns, dye the frosting black.
Oh, yeah.
And then put something as the little legs on top.
Oh, there you go.
And you could put the weird eyeballs on them.
And they could be like giant spiders.
Yeah.
Because honestly, your best friend during Halloween with kids is to get a little jar of those candy eyeballs.
Like just the white little ones and they're different sizes.
You can put them on everything.
Put them on brownies.
Put them on cupcakes.
I put them on the pizza.
Yeah.
I'll post that pizza, that little pizza bagel because it was real cute.
I put the little eyes sticking out of the wrapping so it looked like a little mummy.
I loved it.
It's so much fun.
I'm trying to think what else you could do tomorrow.
Oh, you could make breakfast sausages and use crescent dough to make mummies.
Oh yeah, that's a good one.
Yeah yeah, and this is the food network.
Now i'm also gonna set it up.
That's also my uh.
My little tip to you is anytime you can do it, like at night, like set it up at night, the best, so you can just throw it in the oven or you can like heat it up.
That's what i've learned.
For me works really well.
You gotta plan ahead.
Yeah, it's all trial and error.
And that was our Food Network segment.
It is.
So I'll post those pictures.
I can't wait for Halloween.
I'm excited.
Because it was real easy.
Yeah.
And it was super cute.
Oh, yeah.
And Drew and Ash are going to be Blanche and Sydney for Halloween.
The kids have no idea.
We always try to be something, like, that the kids will think is funny.
Yeah.
Because, like, what's the point otherwise?
Yeah.
And we always go trick-or-treating, too.
Hell, yeah.
Like, we don't go to the door and everything.
Let me be clear.
We partake.
Yeah, trick-or-treat.
Imagine my, my grown-up showing up at your doorstep as a dog trick-or-treat.
They'd be like are you okay?
I love it, but yeah, we're gonna be blanche and sid and i'm excited to see the kids reactions.
Yeah, and john and i are finally gonna be jack and sally.
The girls have been wanting us to be jack and sally, so it always makes me want to sing blink 182 at you.
I know it's true.
Live like jack and sally.
If we want, where you can always find me, We'll have Halloween on Christmas.
We could go forever.
Oh, great.
All right.
Well, spooky season isn't over yet, queens and kings.
Yeah, because, you know.
It's almost over.
It's almost.
Which hurts me deeply to my core.
Halloween is almost over.
Spooky season isn't.
Yeah, spooky season is a state of mind.
Yeah.
November is spooky, you're correct.
I think it's pretty fucking spooky.
Yeah, it is.
To be honest.
But because spooky season is not over yet, we have a haunting for you today.
A haunting?
We're going to talk about the Hinsdale House haunting.
The Hinsdale House, you say?
Yeah, it's like close to our neck of the woods.
It's in New York.
Oh, shit.
Upstate.
Oh, damn.
So we're going to talk about the Hinsdale family, which all starts with Clara and Phil Dandy.
All right.
Dandy.
Did I say we're going to talk about the Hinsdale family?
I think just the house.
Okay.
Hopefully I just said the house.
Let me say that because they're not the Hinsdale family.
It's just the Hinsdale house.
I think you said the house.
Okay.
Well, you can leave that in.
And listener, you tell me what I said.
So when Clara Miller met Phil Dandy in 1954, he was just getting out of the military and he was working at the local grocery store in Buffalo, New York.
Phil Dandy.
I know.
Phil Dandy sounds so much like phil dunphy.
Thank you, i kept wanting to say dundee dundee, the coffee hasn't hit honey.
So phil had grown up in rural kentucky and after he got out of the service he decided to, you know, give buffalo a try, instead of going back to kentucky where he probably would have spent the rest of his life working in the coal mines, which wasn't super desirable in his opinion.
Yeah, i think i have the black lung.
So Clara said she was immediately drawn to Phil's soft southern accent.
But she admitted, as a staccato-talking Buffalonian, I was impatient with a slow drawl.
I don't even know if she sounds like that.
But she does in my head.
So before long, they were seeing each other most nights a week.
And by July 1955, they were married.
A year later, she had their first child Mike, who was followed by Beth in 1957, Laura in 1960 and the baby Mary in 1962.
So they got a lot of kids.
They got a lot of kids.
Now, the first year or so of their marriage was very happy, but things started to get rocky, as you know.
More kids came into the picture and life challenges arise.
That'll do it.
You know, all that.
So in retrospect, Clara felt like the differences in their upbringings and their personalities were a lot more consequential than she wanted to accept when it was like, when they were in the thick of it.
Yeah, it becomes more pronounced.
Yeah.
Well, looking back, you're like, oh, now I can I can see clearly what happened.
Yeah.
So she said, I was a devout Roman Catholic.
I attended a Catholic grammar school and a Catholic academy.
And Phil had no real religion at all, which like those are big differences, you know?
Yeah.
I mean, yeah.
Yeah, they can be.
So Phil's time in the military and living outside of Buffalo he had, I was going to say, gave him and then I just said I like switched my thing.
So I said, yeah.
It gave him like a wider take on the world that Clara didn't have or he didn't feel she had.
So they just had simple differences.
Yeah.
Clara said I was a convent educated prude, while he was a freewheeling product of an entirely different upbringing.
Our relationship suffered from the clash of cultures and backgrounds.
Oh, that's sad.
Which can happen.
Having kids together definitely helped keep them on the same page though, and looking toward the same goals.
And in 1963, though, Clara gave birth to their last child, who was unfortunately stillborn.
Oh.
So that really only led to the tensions in their marriage coming back.
Oh, that's terrible.
Yeah.
If you're already having problems and then you go through something so traumatic like that.
That's really sad.
That's going to be really tough.
Yeah.
It's tough no matter what.
Yeah.
I can't imagine.
I can't even fathom that.
So eventually Clara was like, we've drifted way farther apart than I ever even thought.
So to try to get some good vibes going again, she was like, you know what?
Why don't we take a little like family vacation together?
I think we need some, you know, slow down, reconnect, change the scenery time.
So by that point, it was 1967.
And some friends of theirs had actually just bought a small cabin near Allegheny State Park in upstate New York.
And they were nice enough to offer it up to the dandies to enjoy whenever they weren't there.
That's dandy.
Yeah, if we're not there, dandies, go enjoy the dandy cabin.
Hell yeah.
So, just as Clara hoped, the time spent together on this you know quiet, cozy trip it actually did wonders for her relationship with Phil.
And in time it started to feel like their marriage was, you know, spiced back up again, like how it was in the early days.
Yeah.
The kids also seemed to thrive in the more relaxed atmosphere.
And, you know, it was the mountains up there, so there was a ton for them to do and explore.
And when it came time to head home to the city, everybody was actually pretty disappointed to be going home and like leaving the you know the nature behind.
So in the three years that followed the Dandy family pretty much spent all of their vacations in upstate New York.
And every time they would go it became clearer and clearer that they were all much happier when they were away from the city.
I was going to say, it feels like there's a common denominator here.
Yeah.
So finally, in 1970, they decided that, even though they both had jobs in Buffalo, it would do the family a world of good to get out of the city.
And so they were like, let's find a house in the country.
We can enjoy a slower pace.
Let's do this.
Like, we're committing.
That's very selfless of them.
It is.
They already had jobs.
They were already like, that's not easy to do.
No.
To just pick up and leave.
But they saw like, you know what, this will be so good for our family.
Yeah, this is good for the gander.
Let's figure it out.
It's the greater good.
Yeah.
So they hired a realtor and they started looking at houses in the western New York area.
At the time, like we were just saying, they both had reliable, pretty well-paying jobs in Buffalo.
But if they moved to a more rural part of the state, one of them was going to have to quit their jobs to stay home with the kids.
You can't just like leave your kids in a cabin in the country.
Why not?
So many reasons.
Okay.
I'll trust you.
Okay.
I'll take your word for it.
Now, since Clara obviously made less money than Phil because we hate wage gaps that person was going to be Clara.
Yeah.
Living on only one income limited their options, obviously, for housing to a degree.
But to their surprise, once they got far enough outside of the city, housing prices obviously dropped significantly.
Yeah.
So ultimately, they determined that they could afford a house price a little under $6,000.
Wow.
Which today would be about $50,000.
Holy shit.
And then I wrote in my notes, inflation is really a bitch, huh?
The bitchiest of bitches.
When I read, holy shit, they could afford a house a little under $6,000.
I was like, what the fuck are you going to get?
Yeah.
Today it would be under $50,000.
It's not a thing anymore.
But like that was a thing?
People used to buy houses for like $3,000 and they'd be like sick ass like cape houses.
Yeah, damn.
Yeah, life is tough, holy shit, i mean.
Yeah, it sure is so.
Back then their budget didn't seem like much, but the dandy's realtor had the perfect place in mind in the small town of hinsdale, about an hour outside of buffalo.
Clara remembered when we saw the house.
I can't really describe the feeling we had, because it was so peaceful and the air was like breathing in champagne.
Wow, i was like i think that would be lovely.
What a What a way to describe that.
I think it's just like saying that the air is crisp, but in the most poetic of ways.
It is because my like blunt ass was just like, that's a good way to aspirate.
I was like, that feels uncomfortable.
Don't breathe in the bubbles, Clara.
Don't breathe in the champagne.
I think she meant like the smell of champagne.
Yeah, poetically that makes a lot more sense.
Crispy, you know, okay?
So the house was over 100 years old and it definitely needed some repairs, but it was big enough for their large family.
It was in their budget.
And more importantly, it was exactly the kind of rural environment that they had all envisioned.
Hell yeah.
Yeah.
Looking back, their son Mike Dandy said he remembered having similar feelings.
He said, I was very much into wildlife so this was just perfect for me.
It was where I wanted to be.
So everybody's happy.
The house was situated on eight acres of land with the nearest house about a half a mile away.
And it was like a typical 19th century American farmhouse.
It's beautiful if you look it up.
I was just looking it up.
It really is.
Yeah, it's gorgeous.
The top floor had a large bedroom, a bathroom, a large closet.
So that would be Phil and Clara's area of the house.
And downstairs were the remaining bedrooms, a living room, and a nice large kitchen.
The only thing that Phil and Clara hadn't expected was the crawl space underneath the stairs.
Clara had always lived in, you know, modern homes that had attics.
So she had never seen a crawl space and she really didn't like it.
Yeah.
She said it gave her a funny feeling.
And the other strange thing was that inside the crawl space there was a brick fireplace and a chimney that like seemed to go up into the staircase above.
Hmm.
It was like very strange.
Yeah.
Crawl houses I think are very like, obviously New York isn't New England, but.
Yeah.
It's like a very New England-ish vibe.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
So the Dandy family moved into the house on July 18th, 1970.
And Clara's parents and her younger brother Gordon was there to help.
That morning, Gordon, her brother, got ahead of the moving truck.
He just had like some small items packed up in his car.
And when he got to the house and went inside, he was horrified to find that almost every room in the house was swarming with bees oh, just bees, like there were so many bees that you couldn't even see out the windows.
He said bees on bees on bees.
That'd be scary, that'd be terrifying.
Yeah, and in the handful of times that they had visited the house between the first time they saw it and moving day, clara said she couldn't remember seeing a single bee in the area, but now the house was like infested with them.
I hate that a lot.
It's just very random and yeah, really gross on like well, I don't like that at all.
And also on a side note.
I was looking at the house and I was like what does this house remind me of?
It reminds me of Zaliska Axe Murder House.
Yeah.
It's very similar looking.
I could definitely see that.
And it's got a little bit of vibes of Hinterkaifeck as well.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Just had to put that out there.
Fun.
Yeah.
Not good vibes.
And bees.
And bees.
Bad vibes and bees.
Yeah.
Oof.
Swarms and swarms of them.
Oof.
So according to the exterminator who came later that day, it was actually completely unnatural for bees to even swarm at that time of year.
So this was even weirder.
Like that wouldn't leave you feeling really good at all.
No, because it's like if this is because because when was this?
Do you know?
Like what time of the year?
Yeah, it was July.
July.
Because I was going to say, like certain times of the year you would expect to see more bees, but you would not expect to see swarms of bees in the house.
That's the thing.
Swarms of them is crazy.
So he was like, yeah, like, this is not typical.
But he left and Gordon and Clara's mother spent more than an hour sweeping up piles and piles of dead bees that were now just covering the floor.
Now, in the weeks that followed, there would actually be several more run-ins with the bees, but eventually they managed to evict the hive completely.
Luckily.
So after moving a mass of insects from inside the house, the move-in got underway and things actually went smoother after that.
And Clara was like, yeah, I should have known it was too good to be true, especially after the bees.
Especially after the bees.
It didn't take long for them to get settled in and even though she had spent her whole entire life in the city up to that point, Clara actually found that she liked being a homemaker.
Wow. in a more rural area.
Because remember, she was working before this.
Within a few days, they met their neighbors and they found that they had a lot in common.
They had children around the same age, this, that, and the other thing.
And Clara.
You know she had some initial reservations about the move, but she was starting to think that they were going to be better off in the country.
Unfortunately, that was very short-lived, that little comfort that she felt.
The first bizarre incident, aside from the bees, came about a month after the move.
Clara was still working at the office, actually finishing out her last week, when she got a frantic call from her son, Mike.
He and his sister Beth had been out in the field behind the house with some neighbor kids when somebody started shooting at them.
What?
Yeah.
Somebody started shooting at them.
What the fuck?
Apparently, as soon as they all heard the shots, they all dropped to the ground and crawled back to the neighbor's house.
What?
Where they called Clara.
According to Mike, none of them could see where the shooting was coming from.
They just knew that it was close.
And Mike told his mother that just before the shooting they had seen the car of a man who lived about two miles from them and was known locally as an eccentric, and he would chase people who got too close to his property.
So he was like, maybe it's that guy, and he was upset with us or something, and he's shooting at us.
So Clara reported the shooting to the state police, but nothing ever came of her report.
That's fucked up.
Yeah, so she was like, wow, maybe I don't love real life.
Yeah, because it's like wow cool that I just reported that somebody shot at my family and nothing happened.
Yeah, like my family and my neighbor's young kids, too.
Very cool.
The hell?
Yeah.
About a week later, Mike was walking home with his friends Bob and Matt when they spotted what Mike later said was a tall teenage boy in the woods just walking by the road carrying a rifle.
That's too rural for me.
It's so rural.
You know, way too rural.
Much too rural.
At first, Mike was like, oh, is that like a farmer, like a local farmer or something?
And when he pointed him out, the other two boys were like oh no, that's that ghost that lives around here and is like, known to walk up and down the road.
I'm massively obsessed with that because I really like how casually they dropped that lore.
Massively obsessed.
Lore like that should always be dropped first.
With not a fuck to be seen.
Yeah.
No, that's just that guy.
Oh, no.
That ghost.
That?
That's just, that's a ghost with a gun who just walks up and down.
Like, what the fuck?
Obviously.
What, you think that's a corporeal being?
No.
Over there?
That's just a fucking ghost.
Not out here in these rural streets.
That would put me weirdly at ease.
That says a lot about you.
That everyone's so – they're just like, oh, yeah, that's just that ghost with a gun.
I would just think they were fucking with me.
Why do you ask?
Like, I'd be like, you know what?
Why do I ask?
Like, why am – I should mind my fucking business is what I should do.
I would just probably cry, I think.
I just love that.
Yeah.
The casual lore drop will get me every time.
Well, they were very excited.
They started running to get a better look at the ghost.
But the ghost always managed to stay about six or eight feet ahead of them.
But then, when they finally got close enough to touch him, Mike said the mysterious teenager stepped behind an apple tree and disappeared.
As everyone should.
Which I am also highly obsessed with.
Yeah, that's how I'm going to be getting out of situations when I'm a ghost.
I'm going to step behind an apple tree and I'm gone.
I'll throw up the deuce at you, and then I'll step behind my apple tree.
It's always going to be an apple tree, too.
You've got to find the nearest one.
Yeah.
You might be running for a little bit, but it's worth it for the exit.
I'll find the apple tree, yeah.
You've got to.
So afterwards, Mike ran home and told Clara about what he'd seen.
He's like, Mom, there's a fucking ghost, and he disappeared behind an apple tree.
Sick.
And Clara was like, yeah, cool.
You kids are just so silly.
Yeah, that's fun.
She obviously didn't take it very seriously.
I wouldn't either.
Well, I am who I am, so I probably would, but I get why Clara did it.
Absolutely.
So she might not have taken that story about the gun-toting teenage boy, but it turned out that the other children had also seen the ghost too, like her other kids.
Either out on the road or walking along the tree line at the edge of the woods.
And the neighbor's kids had also seen him on multiple occasions.
So everybody's talking about it now.
Like he was like.
Like burnt.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And she was absolutely terrified of him.
That's scariest.
Like the other kids were like, oh yeah, like there's a ghost.
And like, I think he's a farmer.
Like, isn't that so crazy?
She's like, nah, he's charred.
She literally said he's charred.
And like she was so scared of him that her parents were like okay, like is something going on here?
Oh, that's awful.
I hate that a lot.
Yeah.
That I, I'm not massively obsessed with that.
I hate that.
No, I'm like, I'm the, I'm not even a little bit obsessed with it.
I'm the least amount.
I don't like that at all.
So to clara, the early experiences could have been written off as kids just being kids and adjusting to moving into a more rural area, but a few weeks later she had her own experience in the woods that she simply could not explain.
Oh no, stay out of the woods.
I know what the hell are you doing in the woods, but they just moved there, so they're obsessed with the woods and they're just in the woods yeah, like there's nowhere else to go.
Yeah, So it was an early fall afternoon.
Oh, love to see it.
And Clara was just taking the dog out for a walk in the woods behind the house.
I can't get mad at you for that.
I would too.
I would too.
She was about a half a mile from the house when she started to hear what she said sounded like chanting.
Like chanting you might hear in church.
Yeah.
Oh, turn around.
Yeah, get out of there.
Get home.
For the life of her, she said she couldn't figure out where the sound was coming from.
And somehow, she said, it sounded like it was coming from every direction all at once.
That's because it's none of your business and you should go home.
When things are coming at you from every direction.
It is terrible.
All it was.
It's pave had no mind.
Mama, that's not for you.
You did not see something.
You did not need to say something.
No, just get out of there, take that dog and run.
I'm also like what was the dog i know?
So later, after she got home, she casually mentioned the sound to mike and moments later he was like yeah, cool me, bob and matt are gonna go investigate that.
Peace out.
That's awesome.
So he just ran out of the house.
Another casual lord rap.
Yeah, we love the 70s.
Send him into action.
Yeah, just go out in the woods, figure out what that was.
So on most occasions the boys, like the other two boys, were game for whatever investigation that Mike wanted to undertake.
Hell yeah.
But this time, when they got to the woods, Bob said he got an intense feeling of dread and he was like yeah, I'm not going any further into the woods.
I'll be here.
Good for him listening.
So the other two were like, okay, we'll head in without you.
And they just left him standing at the edge of the woods, which is almost worse than going into the woods, I think.
Because that charred kid is patrolling the edge of the woods.
Exactly.
I'd be more scared of that.
Me too.
I don't want to run into a charred kid.
No.
So after about 10 or 15 minutes they had reached the spot where Clara said she heard the chanting and they stopped to see if they could hear anything.
They stood quietly.
They closed their eyes so that they wouldn't be distracted, and they just listened as hard as they could.
At first, they didn't hear anything.
But then, out of absolutely nowhere, they heard the loud, sharp sound of a woman screaming her fucking head off.
That has got to be one of the scariest things to hear out of nowhere.
Out of absolutely nowhere.
And especially when you're like... In the woods.
And you're locked in, like you're 10 toes down in those woods just trying to hear what's happening.
And it's quiet and it's quiet and then you hear...
Oh my god.
I would poop my pants.
You're out there trying to figure out what the woods are trying to say and they're just saying.
Like that's.
No.
Too scary.
No.
So they ran the fuck out of there.
Good for them.
And went back to the dandy house and they were like Clara.
Help us.
And she was like, I don't know what to tell you.
She's like, fuck that.
So since moving to the Hinsdale house, several members of the Dandy family had now had really fucking weird, inexplicable experiences.
And they had mostly brushed it off to that point.
Mike's story about hearing the scream in the woods was different, though.
At that point, they wanted to see and they started to realize that something was off.
And, you know, Clara was like, is it like the house or is it the entire area that we moved to?
Yeah.
Now, the swarm of bees on moving day turned out to be just the first of many problems with the house itself.
During their first winter, the main pipes leading into the house froze and broke, which was obviously super expensive to repair and very annoying because while they were getting fixed they had to carry water from a well to the house.
Which also if you think your house is haunted and honey, the land is also haunted and you've got to go down to a well.
Oh, that's fucked up.
I'm not going to a well in the middle of a haunt.
No.
What are you asking of me?
Honey, the land.
Honey, the well.
Honey, the well.
Honey, Samara.
Yeah.
Uh-uh.
Exactly.
Honey, no.
Uh-uh.
So after that, it seemed like things were just going wrong every other day.
Within a two-month period, the kids' four pet birds, a dog and two guinea pigs, were found dead in Mary's bedroom from unknown causes.
Oh.
Which, like...
I'd be looking at Mary.
Yeah, what the fuck?
Like, what's up with our kid here?
I'd be real worried about Mary, first of all.
And also... Second, I would want to square up with whatever entity did that.
I don't even know if this entity has hands, but it's got to figure out some way to square up.
Four birds, a dog, and two guinea pigs.
Guinea pigs.
Guinea pigs.
I hate those poor guinea pigs.
The guinea pigs.
Not the guinea pigs.
Not the guinea pigs.
Clutch of my pearls.
So that's the other thing.
Things were constantly going missing, including small sums of money and jewelry from Clara's lockbox, which was locked.
That's a good detail to have.
Holy shit.
Yeah.
So she said she started to feel like they weren't wanted in the house.
Like she just got this distinct feeling.
What gave you that idea?
I don't know.
Was it when they killed your pets?
Was it when they killed literally every pet you've ever had?
Every living thing that isn't a human in that house.
And stole all your money?
Yeah.
Yeah.
But because it seemed like a lot of the unfortunate mishaps had reasonable explanations, maybe the more bizarre occurrences didn't stand out at first.
But, like, they were getting more and more bizarre as time went on.
Yeah, that many animals end up dead in one of my kids' rooms.
I'm calling someone.
It's going to stand out.
I'm probably going to call a psychologist first.
Yeah, it's going to be top of mind.
Yeah.
That's someone you have to write down to remember.
No, you'll remember that for sure.
And there was things even in the beginning that they were – like, after all these bizarre experiences had happened, they were looking back and being like was that also like a weird fucking?
– Oh, of course.
Like what was that?
Yeah.
So there was the time, a few months after they moved in, where Clara and Phil came home to find that, even though all the doors had been locked while they were gone, it looked like somebody had broken into the house and thrown the family's clothes all around.
Like the entire family.
Oh, I hate that.
Mary's record player had also been smashed, but money and valuables were all untouched and in plain sight.
So it wasn't like somebody had robbed them.
Yeah.
They just like ransacked the house.
Came in and threw clothes around.
Yeah.
Then there was the time in early 1971 when Clara and Mike were home alone and something outside was emitting such a strong light through the windows that it lit up the entire house.
What?
And they both were like, what?
A few nights later, Mike said he was woken up from sleep when a board game on the shelf above his bed fell on his head while he was sleeping.
Oh shit.
He was like that was weird, rude.
It didn't seem like that unusual, but when he looked at the shelf, everything that was stacked on top of the board game was still in place.
So it had literally like slid out, slid out from the bottom of a stack of other things and fell on his head and everything else had stayed up there.
Yeah yeah, that's weird.
It's like when you like pull the tablecloth out and everything stays on, the table stays on.
So that was weird.
And he said there was absolutely no way i could come up with an explanation for that.
No, i wouldn't be able to.
And then, of course, there were the frequent sightings of the farmer on the road and all the strange noises both in and outside of the house.
Yeah.
On one afternoon in 1971, Phil took the kids into town to do some shopping and he just left Clara at home to relax and enjoy some quiet time.
You mamas know you need that.
In the haunted house.
In the haunted house, I know.
Well, that was before they really realized how haunted it was.
She said it was a warm day, so she opened up all the windows on the first floor to, you know, clear the house out.
And she was just settling on the couch to read a book.
And she started to hear all the windows slamming back shut.
Oh, fuck that.
But then when she went around and checked all the windows, they were all still open.
I hate that.
Yeah.
I hate that a lot.
Like first of all I'm trying to relax.
I'm just sitting down with a book.
I'm like all my kids are gone.
Yeah.
Like when does that ever happen?
It's finally quiet in this house.
And then I need some fresh air, even though it's for dead people, and you're like pretending to close my windows and you make me get up and look, and then they're not even fucking closed.
And then they're not even closed.
Like that's some fucked up shit.
Come on man.
I don't like that.
Come on.
I don't like that teasing.
So now that they were looking back at all of this, they were like okay, there's definitely a pattern of like, there's an escalating pattern here.
For sure.
So it was only when the inexplicable things started to enter the home that Clara and sort of Phil started to take things more seriously.
Clara definitely took things more seriously than Phil did.
One evening in July of 1973 so they'd been there for like a few years.
At this point Beth, one of their older daughters, had some friends sleep over, and they were all sleeping in sleeping bags in the living room.
By that time, Mike was already sleeping most nights on the couch, because he found the atmosphere in his own bedroom disturbing.
So he was down there and the girls are down there.
And a little before midnight, after they wound down and were trying to sleep, they all heard heavy footsteps walking around the kitchen, like somebody was angrily pacing in the kitchen.
So Mike was like, okay, it's probably just one of the dogs maybe angrily pacing around the kitchen.
Yeah, as dogs do.
So Beth got up to check and there was no one in the kitchen, human or canine.
Imagine if it was just a dog on like two legs angrily pacing.
He's just pissed.
That's... I hate that.
I hate it.
That also used to happen in our house.
That's really scary when that happens.
But we would hear them coming up the stairs, which would be even scarier.
And it was like heavy boots.
And then you'd look out in the hallway and there would be literally no one there.
Nothing there.
But you could feel it.
Yep.
So after two years of increasingly aggressive encounters with things that they couldn't explain in and around the house, Clara was like yeah, I have nothing left to explain.
Like, I'm trying to explain this all away, but I don't have anything.
Yeah, there's only so long you can explain it away.
Yeah.
So a few days after the sleepover, she was speaking with their local priest, Father Bob, of course.
Father Bob, yeah.
And she was telling him about the activity.
And he suggested that she get into contact with, are you ready, Father Alphonsus Al Trebold.
Honestly, yes.
Alphonsus.
If your name is Alphonsus, what the fuck are you doing going by Al?
Yeah.
Missed opportunity, my guy.
You go by Alphonsus.
I would shove my hand into everybody's face and say, hey, it's me, Alphonsus.
I would never shut up about who I was.
And also, if your name is Alphonsus, what is the full name?
Alphonsus Al Trebold.
Yeah.
If your name is that, you better be a priest that can perform some kind of exorcism and get rid of demons in a house.
You better be.
You better be.
You better be.
Not only was he a priest, but he was also an assistant professor of theology at St.
Bonaventure University.
Yeah.
Obsessed.
So throughout 1973, Father...
He goes by Father Al, but I gotta call him Father Alphonsus.
Father Alphonsus had given several lectures on the paranormal and had invited other experts to speak.
So if anybody could help Clara, it was probably him.
So she called and she left a message for Father Alphonsus.
And in the meantime, Father Bob blessed the house, which made everybody feel a little bit better.
Two days later, Clara finally got her Alphonsus call.
What?
The two of them spoke briefly, and Father Alfonso suggested that they were probably experiencing a poltergeist.
Okay.
Which kind of sucks.
I don't know.
You don't know if it sucks or you don't know if it's a poltergeist?
No, I don't know if that's a poltergeist.
So far, nothing really sounds poltergeisty to me.
It doesn't give poltergeist to me.
I also think this was the 70s and like they didn't have a lot of Yeah, like research on this stuff.
I guess like the clothing everywhere and stuff is kind of poltergeisty.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But I don't know.
I wouldn't have immediately said poltergeist on this one.
Well, he said they had two adolescent children in the house.
And their heightened energy might be causing the problems.
And poltergeists do feed off of that.
They do love the whole puberty thing.
It's weird.
I hate that part of it.
Such a weird connection.
It is.
It makes sense when you think about it.
It really does.
But it's like, oh, fuck!
Fucking fuck!
Oh, fuck!
Fuck.
Oh, my God.
My heart.
Holy shit.
I wish you could feel how hard my heart is beating right now.
Oh, my God.
I actually just started crying.
Fuck.
All right, so now that we've recovered from that, let's find my place.
So like, yeah, adolescence, puberty, weird poltergeist feeding off of that.
By then Clara had done some research and the suggestion of a poltergeist also didn't make sense to her.
She said, I felt like there was more to it than that.
From what I've read, poltergeist had no motive, no mind behind it.
And this seems to have motive.
Yeah.
Which is true.
I agree.
But given how stressed Clara sounded and the fact that she wasn't reassured by his advice, Father Alphonsus said you know what,
I'll come out tomorrow.
That's really Alphonsus.
It's so Alphonsus of him.
So it took Father Alphonsus much longer to get to the house than he expected, because he got lost along the way.
Lost in the woods.
Who among us?
Alphonsus.
So by the time he arrived there really wasn't as much time for him to explore before he had to leave to get back to the church again, which kind of sucked.
Yeah.
So Clara and the kids spent about 20 minutes explaining everything they experienced.
And to their surprise, Father Alphonsus did not seem phased at all.
And he also didn't seem to doubt anything that they were telling him.
What a good guy.
So after hearing them out, Father Alphonsus got a tour of the house and the immediate property by Mike and Clara's brothers, Gordon and Craig.
They didn't see or hear anything unusual on the tour, but in each room Father Al said a prayer, and he said one in the yard too.
And then he performed a blessing before he headed back out for the night.
He was like, good luck with that.
Bye, bitches.
Who knows if it was the blessing or just the simple fact that somebody had listened to them without judging them.
But Father Al's visit did have a calming effect on the house and the family, it seemed.
Mike said, it bonded us in a way because we were more together for support.
Which is nice.
Yeah.
Everybody realizes something's going on here.
I like it.
Now, not only did he validate their experiences, but Father Alphonsus also explained that they weren't defenseless against whatever they were dealing with, and there were people who researched the scientific basis of experiences like theirs who might be able to help them get rid of whatever it was that was causing all their trouble.
So for the first time since moving in Clara was like okay, maybe this nice country life is possible without all these disturbances.
Without the ghosts.
Maybe we can move on from this.
For a few days after Father Al's blessing.
Like I said, things felt better in the house, but it didn't last very long.
No, it never does.
No.
One night, less than a week after the first visit from the priest, phil was away on a business trip and everybody else in the house was asleep when clara was woken up by the sound of somebody walking around on the first floor.
She thought it was one of the kids, so she looked over the banister at the top of the stairs and she saw what looked like a teenage girl walking down the hall on the first floor toward beth's bedroom because remember, all the kids bedrooms are on the first floor.
So she was like, oh okay, must be beth.
Like maybe she went to the bathroom, she's going back to her room.
So she turned and started to walk back to her own bedroom.
But then she realized that the girl she saw was wearing a flannel nightgown.
And she knew for a fact that Beth had not worn that to bed.
So she was like, what?
And then she was like, also, she had shorter hair than Beth now that I'm thinking of it.
Like, who the fuck is this girl?
Oh, that made my hair stand on end.
So she ran downstairs, tore open Beth's bedroom door.
And when she got inside, Beth was just fast asleep and there was nobody else there.
Oh, that fucks me up.
I would light the house on fire.
That fucks me up.
And leave.
Yeah.
No, I don't want anything to do with that.
Like who is that?
And just be like being half asleep and just like seeing that and being like oh okay, that's just one of my kids.
And then just being like wait a second well, that did not look like my child, like i would lose it.
When that happens and you're and you realize like okay, like that's not one of my kids and i just saw that person, like i saw their form.
Where are they now?
That's the thing.
Like are they still in the house hiding and what the fuck?
Yeah, like it's like um, with the sally house.
It's like yeah you, probably part of her was like is that an intruder or is that a ghost?
Like i don't know absolutely.
So the experience of seeing the unfamiliar girl in the house was pretty fucking unnerving.
Yeah.
But Clara tried to put it out of her mind because she was like, no, the blessing worked.
I'm going to have my nice country life.
Fuck this.
God damn it.
But the next day, she heard a scream from Beth's bedroom.
And when she ran in to find out what happened, Beth told her mom that she was just sitting at her vanity when she saw a teenage girl behind her, reflected in her mirror.
Oh.
And she said when she turned to look, the girl vanished.
She was gone.
Oh, no, no, no.
And Clara said, I thought, wait a minute.
I've been taught that this worked, that a priest could come in and say a blessing.
It did not work.
It did not.
She's like, what?
This is supposed to work.
Because remember, she grew up religious, like super religious.
So she's like, I went to the priest for help.
The priest came and he did his thing.
It's supposed to work.
Yeah.
I mean, he can do that.
Yeah.
Ghosts have other plans.
But the ghosts can say fuck off.
Like they, you know.
The power of Christ doesn't always compel them.
It's not always compelling.
Unfortunately.
Yeah.
So that night, Clara called Father Alfonso.
She said, 911, Alfonso.
Alfonso.
And he said, on my way.
She said, the blessing didn't work.
They were still experiencing the frightening phenomena.
So he was like, okay, I'll come back with a paranormal expert.
Like, we're going to get this done.
Bring in the big guns.
Exactly.
Yeah.
So a few nights later, while Mike was staying with friends and the other kids were in bed Clara and Phil, who was back from his business trip they were just watching TV and they heard a loud thud just outside the living room window.
So Phil grabbed a flashlight and they both went out to see what the fuck was outside.
After looking around and finding nothing, they were like okay, it was probably like an animal going through the trash.
It's rural out here, it's rural, it's rural out here.
So they turned, they went back inside and as they rounded the house in the direction of the front door, clara casually looked up at beth's bedroom window and saw the same girl that she had seen a few nights earlier just looking out at them i this is okay, this and the farmer, the charred farmer kid, you gotta go.
That would send me into orbit.
You gotta go.
I don't know.
Please stop being in my space.
Yeah that's, we've crossed a line here.
So they ran back inside because she pointed up and phil also saw it.
He was like what the fuck?
So they ran back inside to check on beth and when they got to her room they found her sitting at her vanity, completely unresponsive and just straight up disassociating.
What the fuck?
It took a few minutes to snap her back into reality and when she did, she said yeah, i saw her too, but she struggled to describe the girl, saying all she remembered were her big dark eyes and her filthy hair.
Oh, Why is her hair so filthy?
Why is her hair dirty?
It's full of secrets.
Oh, my God.
I hate that.
It's full of darkness.
Oh, that's so much worse than her perfectly clean hair.
Perfectly clean hair is the best.
Why is her hair dirty?
It's washed in.
Why is it filthy?
Filthy, filthy.
I don't know why that fucks me up so much, because you picture just like like a greasy stringy.
I hate it.
Oh, i can still feel my heart beating from when the alarm went off.
That was like 42 minutes ago.
I'm scared.
Right now i'm in fight or flight.
Telling these stories gets me into a stored place.
Apparently it gets both of us in there, i know, damn.
So as they stood in beth's bedroom just trying to comfort her, they all started to hear scratching and thumping noises coming from the room above them.
Oh god damn.
And then all the lights in the house went off, like somebody had cut the power.
Come on.
Like, that's horror movie shit.
What the fuck?
So the lights came back on a few moments later, and the scratching sounds had moved from the upstairs and were now.
Coming from the crawlspace.
Oh, that fucking crawlspace.
We gotta learn about that crawlspace.
You knew the crawlspace was coming back.
You knew the crawlspace was coming back.
There's some shit that went down there.
Clara, Phil and Beth reluctantly approached the crawlspace and after a few moments Phil gathered the courage to open the door.
Just inside the door, there were loose bricks from the fireplace stacked in small piles.
Oh.
They'd been in there before.
Oh.
And that hadn't been there.
Oh.
And then they open the door and like somewhat Blair Witch style, there's just small piles of bricks.
Oh.
Ew, period.
No.
And Clara said, I can't fight this thing, whatever it is that's too strong.
She just succumbed to the beast in that moment.
She just succumbed.
We all succumb at some point.
She was like, okay, stack the bricks, I suppose.
Into the road for me.
Okay, look at me from my, come to my window.
That's what she said.
She was like whatever, eventually you gotta just go, melissa atheridge, start singing.
You just gotta all you can do.
So the next night father alfonso said i'm back.
He said here I am.
And this time he was in the company of a well-known psychic medium, Alex Tanos.
So not Cynthia Brown.
No, no, no, no.
He introduced everybody and Clara started to explain the history of the house, but was immediately cut off by Alex.
Of course.
Who told her he actually didn't want to know anything about the house before walking through each room, which i respect.
He was like this is, this is before.
He could be looking this up on, like on the interwebs.
Yeah, there was no interweb.
He could go look it up, like elsewhere obviously, but it would take a little more effort it would.
So father alphonsus took alex throughout the house, letting him get an impression of each room before returning to the family in the living room.
When he walked into the living room, he just casually dropped.
Did you know you had a mass murder here?
Again, a casual lore drop.
I love it.
I love it.
I would sit down, tea would materialize, and I'd be like, tell me everything.
Tell me everything you know.
Did you know you had a mass murder here?
Do I look like I know I had a mass murder here?
Do you think we'd be calling you if we didn't know that?
Babe, you're here with a priest.
Yeah.
Do you think I know that there was a mass murder here?
I say, no the fuck I did not.
No! whoever knows that there was a mass murder hoops come on so clara said she was stunned and she just said uh no no i don't according to alex tanos there were seven spirits in the house whoa some much stronger than others he said there was a man who had been stabbed to death on the property dang a woman who was hanged by the pond out back a woman who was drowned a man who had been beaten to death a young girl of around eight years old who had also been beaten to death oh Which is awful.
Oh my God.
And then two other spirits who he said he just couldn't really get a read on.
Like he couldn't figure out who they were or why they were there, but they were there.
And one he described as an elderly woman whose death was recent.
And Clara wondered if that was maybe the previous resident of the house who had died in the house at age 90.
Holy shit.
So he was like kind of onto something.
Yeah.
So he explained that over a hundred years ago, before the house had even been built there, there was a general store and an inn on the property and it was a regular stop along a popular stagecoach route.
Okay.
So he said the original owner knew nothing about the murders but he believed somebody else used the space to find victims that they would rob and kill, like on the stagecoach stop.
Okay. and they he said they would sometimes hide their bodies in the crawl space under the stairs until he was able to bury them this is very bloody benders it is like coated you know it is super you're so right with that so when father al showed uh medium alex there the crawl space he said he quote saw bodies piled up like stacks of firewood What the fuck?
Which it's like, is that why they're stacking bricks?
Like they just like to stack?
These love to stack.
They love piles?
Doesn't matter what it is.
Bodies are bricks.
They just love to stack.
Makes no diff.
That was it.
That was the reason.
Or were they trying to like show like?
This is what i do.
I stack.
This is my thing, this is, and i could stack you.
This is kind of my thing, i'm a stacker.
I'm kind of known for this.
I stay stacking, he stays stacking.
That's fucked up.
So he managed to identify a lot of the spirits in the house, but he was alex was visibly drained by the end of the night and he said he needed to rest before he could go any further.
I don't blame him.
So he dipped And he told them he'd be back soon to let them know how or if they even should proceed with anything.
In the meantime, Clara and Phil started to consider the options if he wasn't able to get rid of the ghost in the house.
The strange occurrences and annoyances that they experienced when they first moved in were one thing.
But now in recent months, the ghost had actually gone after specific family members in ways that were very scary and unsettling.
Yeah.
But the problem was, like it is with so many other cases like this they were living on a single income and they sunk all their money into this house because not only had they, like you know, purchased the house, there was all these things that had gone wrong with it that had cost a lot of money.
Yeah.
Over the past three years.
So they didn't really have the money to move.
Yeah.
It's not that easy.
What the fuck do we do?
So a few days after Alex visited the house, the mood and the air in the house felt better to Clara than it had in some time and she was again optimistic about the future.
But then, one afternoon in late October 1973, that all changed with a visit from a state trooper.
That morning, Phil and Clara woke up early.
They had gotten on, you know, with some chores around the house.
Mike had stayed with a friend the night before and he said he would be home early the next morning to help with the chores.
So his parents were really annoyed when late morning rolled around and he still hadn't returned.
A few minutes after Clara came back from a trip into town, there was a knock at the door.
And when she answered it, there was a New York State trooper standing there.
So he explained that Mike had actually been in a car accident about a mile down the road and he'd been taken to the local hospital.
And the doctors explained when they got there that Mike's injuries were pretty severe and they actually wanted to transport him to Buffalo once he was stable enough to move.
So as they drove to Orlean Hospital a few miles away, Clara and Phil passed Mike's car and they literally saw it like leaning against a tree on the side of the road.
Oh my god.
That must have been horrific.
Yeah.
As far as Clara could tell, it really didn't look too badly damaged though.
So she was like, okay, like maybe, maybe he's not in that bad of shape.
Like maybe they're making too big a deal out of this.
But unfortunately, when they got to the hospital, she realized things were a lot more serious.
Mike had suffered a head injury and he was also bleeding internally from a torn spleen.
Holy shit shit, which is crazy when you think about the fact that they saw the car and they were like, oh yeah, it's probably not that bad, but like i mean that's oh damn awful.
So they said they needed to operate as soon as they could to reduce the swelling and that after they were done with the operation he was going to have to be placed in a medical induced coma to let his brain heal.
Oh my god, like things were.
This was pretty dire.
So they gave their permission obviously, and mike was put under.
So while they waited for him to come out of surgery, they were approached by another state trooper who wanted to know if either of them knew where Mike had been coming from and who was in the car with him.
And they explained, like, he was probably on his way home and he must have been alone.
And that caught the trooper off guard.
Because, according to the paramedics who brought Mike to the hospital, he kept saying there was somebody else in the car with him right before the crash.
But they searched the area and they didn't find anybody.
And like nobody had come to the hospital with injuries from a car crash like that.
So the trooper and paramedics were like, you know, I mean, he has head trauma.
Like it's probably some kind of injury that he thinks somebody was with him.
But to Clara.
She took it as proof that whatever had been attacking them in the house had now managed to get Mike in the car.
Holy shit.
So it took several weeks before he came out of a coma.
And when he did, he was suffering from temporary blindness, which is awful.
Holy shit.
He's really going through it.
He is.
So eventually they were able to bring him home and obviously they wanted him to rest and recuperate.
But as soon as he was well enough, they said they were going to contact Father Alphonsus to do something about the haunting once and for all.
So by the time Mike was starting to feel like himself again you know had recovered mostly it was early 1974.
And the paranormal experiences had taken such a toll on the kids that Beth had actually started to see a specialist for stress-induced ulcers.
Oh my god.
Things were so bad she was getting ulcers, holy shit.
And to make matters worse, bob curran, a writer for the buffalo news, had written a series of articles on father al and his work with the paranormal.
That ran in late february, and the article didn't name the dandy family specifically or provide like super easy identifiable details.
But a lot of the locals were savvy enough to know that they, like they, could point out some of the details, and they figured out that it was the hinsdale house.
Oh shit.
So now they're being like attacked by the press, which is the last thing they need.
Father Al had told the outlet.
I visit there a couple times a week and they're always glad to see me because nothing ever happens when I'm there.
Oh, shit.
Sort of like a read to me.
I know, right?
Yeah.
The articles in the news kicked off a growing interest in the house and, with permission from the family, Father Al came to the house with Bob Curran and Bob's son, the reporter.
Nobody experienced any ghostly happenings at that point in the house during the visit, but Bob's interviews with Father Al gave people a unique window to look into about just how taxing this whole thing had become and how defeated everybody was feeling.
He told Curran, So it sounds like he just never went back.
Wow.
Which is pretty.
Tells you something.
Yeah.
Like he was exhausted.
Yeah.
So Father Al was referring to the last time that Alex had been to the house.
He tried to clear some of the ghosts.
But by the end of the visit, he said he was so exhausted and he had to leave.
And then later on, he called them and was like, yeah, I can't come back again.
Like there's nothing I can do for you.
Holy shit.
So they all hoped that the efforts of Father Al Alex Tanos and some of the other experts who had come in would finally get rid of the spirits haunting the house, or at least make it livable.
But just a few weeks later, the activity started to ramp up again.
And Clara and Phil were like, we're out of ideas.
We're completely defeated here.
Yeah.
By that time, Mike had recovered and he had joined the Navy, so he was out of the house.
Beth had married her high school boyfriend, so she was out of the house.
And now they really didn't need this big place anymore.
Yeah.
So that August, they put the house on the market, listing it at just $20,000.
Wow.
Which, remember, they bought it for like... 50?
I think it would have been today's 50.
Today?
Yeah.
So by the time they listed the house, the news about the haunting had been spread far and wide in all the articles.
So there was no point in trying to hide it from anybody.
You might as well lean in at that point.
And they did.
They actually even started getting calls from out-of-state news outlets who were interested in buying the house.
Oh, shit.
So by the end of October, Clara and Phil moved out.
And without the kids or the ghosts to distract them, it seemed the problems in their marriage had returned.
And this time it didn't seem like there was going to be room for resolution.
So they ended up separating and they did eventually get a divorce.
And the year since the Dandy family moved out of the Hinsdale house.
Interest in the house and the story of the haunting has remained.
People are super interested in this house.
Subsequent owners throughout the years have reported seeing super unusual things, hearing things, hearing the screams that Clara heard.
Like this house is very much still active,
In 2011, it went up for sale and it was listed as one of the nation's top 10 haunted houses.
Holy shit.
And in an article about the sale the property agent told a reporter.
I'm in hopes that somebody who really respects and believes the paranormal will buy it and remodel it.
But in the end the house was purchased and turned into a haunted attraction that is still active to this day.
We will be going there.
Yeah, it's not that far.
Oh, it's really not.
We could go.
It's like yeah, let's do it let's, let's grab sabrina and corinne and go, and we're going, but that means we have to go in the woods too, because honey the land, honey the land.
Uh honestly, we gotta do it.
I love that.
The psychic was like yeah, all this shit happened here and like i would love to come back and help you, but i can't.
It's too exhausting, too much.
That's big for a psychic.
And he was like yeah, renowned too, he's very highly respected.
He said, honey the house.
He said, honey the tired.
Yeah, he said absolutely not, Damn.
Yeah.
For me, it's really the charred teenager and then the filthy haired girl.
The filthy haired girl.
The filthy haired girl takes the cake.
She's getting me.
She's in the house.
She's just walking around in her fucking flannel nightgown.
And she's just looking at people.
Something about that.
Something about a flannel nightgown and filthy hair.
I'm like, not only do you have filthy hair, but you're probably hot, and then maybe that's why your hair is so filthy, because you're so sweaty sweaty betty, like.
I can feel how hot you are yeah, at night yeah, and that makes me feel sick.
It makes me feel like this and i don't like that.
You're just like looking in my mirror while i'm looking.
No, i hate that.
That would freak me the fuck out.
No, i don't like it at all Yeah.
That's a fascinating and terrifying story.
It's a spooky one.
I love that it really had no resolution whatsoever.
None.
My favorite thing is when there's a haunt and there's no resolution.
And they're just like, yeah, I don't know.
It's still haunted.
Like Alphonsus couldn't do anything.
Alex couldn't really do anything.
Nothing slowed down.
It was just like.
Yeah.
The ghost said, I'm here to stay, bitch.
Yeah.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
And we're going to go there.
Damn, we're going there.
So we hope you keep listening for when we do go there.
Yeah.
And we hope you keep it weird.
But not so weird that you're a ghost with filthy hair.
Wash your hair in the afterlife.
Goddamn.
Goddamn.
Thank you.
