[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] See for yourself why Buffy has over 50,000 5-star reviews. Upgrade your betting with the Breeze Sheet set by Buffy. Go to buffy.co and use code morbid for 25% off your first order. That's buffy.co promo code morbid for 25% off.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I used to scrub, dust, wash, shampoo, disinfect, and vacuum my entire freaking house. But no matter how much cleaning I did, I would still smell the cat's litter box, and it was driving me absolutely insane, and I felt so yucka. But then, that all changed when I made the switch to pretty litter.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Truly nothing beats Pretty Litter's ability to instantly trap odor. It's ultra absorbent, it's lightweight, low dust, and one six pound bag works for me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For up to a month without clumping. Do you know how big of a deal that is? That means no more wasting litter. And also,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You don't have to scoop the, the pee. I've told you that before. I hate that part. You don't have to do that if you have pretty litter. And that really gives me peace of mind. Also, pretty litters crystals change color to indicate early signs


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And if that wasn't enough, pretty litter ships free right to my door. I never run out, I don't have huge kitty litter bags taking up space, and even better, I don't have to lug those huge tubs from a store to my car and into my house. And my home has truly never smelled better. People have noticed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Make the switch today. Go to prettylitter.com slash morbid and use code morbid to save 20% on your first order. That's prettylitter.com slash morbid code morbid to save 20% on your first order. Prettylitter.com slash morbid code morbid. Terms and conditions apply. See site for details.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's a different journey, right? That must be such a different journey.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Maybe Jersey Shore is a version of it. Maybe it is.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you're hiring, you know that it's incredibly hard to attract top talent. And with the current labor market conditions, it's harder than ever. That's why you want a partner who gets it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Zip Recruiter! Zip Recruiter knows how tough it is right now, but they've figured out solutions for the problems that you're facing. See for yourself right now. You can try them for free at ziprecruiter.com slash morbid.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] ZipRecruiter is literally ready to tackle your recruiting challenges. To reach more of the right people, ZipRecruiter posts your job to 100 plus job sites. That means over 100, you guys. You need to hire ASAP. ZipRecruiter's smart technology finds great matches for your job sooner.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Want first dibs on talent? Well, ZipRecruiter lets you invite the most qualified people to apply to your job.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And their pricing is straightforward. No surprise costs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Team up with a hiring partner who understands what you need, ZipRecruiter. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just go to this exclusive web address to try ZipRecruiter for free. ZipRecruiter.com slash morbid. Again, that's ZipRecruiter.com slash M-O-R-B-I-D. ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's just when you have toes separated to the base, so it just means cloven-footed. Oh, okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was just storing it. Well, this has been amazing. Well, thank you guys so much for listening. Thank you Jodie for joining us. We hope you guys keep listening and we hope you keep it


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If I'm concentrating on something, I cannot do something else. I can't listen to you. I can't. Nothing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I can multitask in the sense that like I can have a lot of things going on at once and I can take care of them. I think it's a, it must just be like a focus thing. I can't focus on. Okay. Or like maybe it's a hearing thing. I don't really know how to describe it actually because I can't listen to somebody while I'm doing something else.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If I'm going to pay attention to somebody or I need to hear something, I need to focus on that thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Acts about you. Yeah. That's why I need to like, when I go downstairs, I put my phone away.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I really don't, I try not to look at it again because I won't be able to pay attention to anyone else if I'm even reading the...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Logically, this seems like you might have some mental illness that's going on and we should get you help. And they tried to. And nice that they tried to get her help.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A belief system that like trauma can attract. This kind of.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Always love someone coming to the door saying you gotta get the fuck out of this house because I lived here once, there's some shit in here, you're gonna die if you don't get out of this house and I love in the movie when the family goes thank you so much and then does not leave that house because that's what it sounds like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Menacing about that, but somehow it is. It's the most menacing in my body.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I've just like, oh yeaah, like things are getting thrown around.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One of those pans fly out of. Yup. Okay. So they were like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's there to really get the, the real deal here because they were like, we witnessed with our own eyes this pan fly out of this cabinet, so we're going to follow this and not what the other stuff.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hats off to photographers, cause I don't know the settings for a camera that like make, like I don't know what to do with exposure, what to do with like any of that stuff. No. So in the 70s, I'm sure it was even harder, cause you're like, I don't fucking know what any of this does. And the camera's one newer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She's holding like the side of her head and she looks like she's looking back at something.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well I think that's the thing, I don't think any of us can look at this very grainy black and white photograph where you can't see her face. That's the thing, you can't see her face. And take anything from it? She's sitting there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She's looking at it. That's all I can tell you is she's looking back at something that looks like she's looking at the light. But I can't say whether she's interested, uninterested, sick, healthy, sad, happy, scared, not scared. I can't say anything.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's what I was gonna ask, cause at first I was like, oh, maybe like, cause it's black and white, we can't really tell that those are like covered, but then there's like decorations on the wall. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Cause it almost, there's like a little other part of the, of the picture where there's like a slight bit of light in there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I wish there was some, you know, throw a fucking tape recorder on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you know what? This is a nice little break. We've had some pretty brutal cases lately. So we decided that we were going to do a listener tales episode that is completely based on haunted houses. Haunted shit. Haunted shit. We love it. And we've got some good ones coming at you. We're going to start this right off with a bang with one entitled listener tales.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I felt the English there. Uhm, so it says, hello ladies, I'll forgo the gushy stuff except to say you deserve all the praise you get and more. Wow. Oh, that's really nice. I've loved being on the journey with you and listening to you grow and become even more skilled as both ho- boasts ho- but wow, both hosts and researchers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Read this on the show or not, either way is cool. Hope you enjoy it regardless. And this is from Alan.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Same thing. This one's called a chicken wing named Frank.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So it says, I have one lengthy tale for you with one or two meandering but relevant detours. My favorite kind. I've known from an early stage in life that I have been, shall we say, sensitive to things around me that most people spend their entire lives in blissful unawareness of.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My first paranormal experiences came in a way it often does for bored kids growing up in a sh- in shitty neighborhoods. With no money for the real thing, an almost ever- an almost ever present concern for me and my friends we often took to improvising and making do as we could.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For my then best friend, that often meant setting fires and using a magnifying glass to torture ants and the like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As I moved from my hometown of Sunderland in the northeast of England, you know it, you're from Mass and you have one of your very own, and now live in Los Angeles.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Anyway, as I was saying, when we went kicking around causing trouble or running from the fires that had gotten out of control with the sound of sirens closing in, we used to cobble things together to keep ourselves entertained.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I cannot for the life of me bring its name to mind, so I'm just gonna call the little fucker Casper, even though he was anything but friendly. So as subsecrets? I like that word. Go, it is quite frankly, shite. What is it?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] During one of these idiocy-fueled communions with a denizen of hell, shit started to get wild. My mother, I love that denizen of hell.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You are, Alan. Speak your English. My mother, bless her innocent heart, liked to collect porcelain dolls for what I can only presume is reasons of closeted sadism as those fuckers are terrifying.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When I joined them outside, what was to me, at most two or three minutes, they swore blind I had been gone something closer to 20. Yay for lost time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When I was 21, I moved to the United States and via four years working on cruise ships and a wander around various states, I ended up in California, which is where I am now. California. There you go.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Here it is. Was living in a house in Temecula, which the landlord sold without warning, forcing me to move in with a friend one town over in Marietta at short notice.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The house was something of a menagerie, sprawling and home to assorted weirdos. I need to paint you a picture of the layout of this rather large cookie cutter deposit at the end of a cul-de-sac. Downstairs had a full guest suite attached to the main house but fully equipped as a functioning studio apartment.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Upstairs, my bedroom was directly above that and located halfway down an open hallway that overlooked an entrance hall.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Before coming to my room at the top of the stairs, you passed my friend C's bedroom and then her daughter L's room.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then after passing my room, separated by a shared bathroom, was my friend's younger sister Dee's room. Keep this layout in your mind as it becomes important soon.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Another important thing to note is that all the adults in the house, bar my friend's husband Em, who was a combat veteran with severe complex PTSD,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And D, who was trying hard to be a model and succeeding only at being a problem, were casino, were casino dealers or supervisors at the same time, at the same casino and as such, all worked nights. Okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now back down, now back to the downstairs studio. Living there was a lady named T, her teenage son and her toddler son. T, T, and T. There you go.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All in a studio, mind you, with one bed. Weird setup.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I am something of a magnet for neglected strays, which I don't mind as I love kids.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Lying on my bed one night on my day off, and with the window open for air, cause fuck the desert, I heard T's voice directly yelling below me yelling, If you don't shut up and behave, you're going back in the closet.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Apparently an old lady had come to her in her dream and led her to a house where she was told a boy was locked in a closet inside and was in danger.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] R's mom agreed to come to the house and try and help that night after work. Fast forward eight or nine hours and the three of us, me, R, and her mom are standing at the front door.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Opening said front door, and at this point, naively still not taking this as seriously as I should be.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I take off my suit jacket and walk straight upstairs to dump it on my bedroom floor.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Halfway up I suddenly hit a cold spot. Like beyond colds. The kind of cold that makes your chicken skin handbag pull your bollocks up into your abdomen for safekeeping. He's talking about a scrotum.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Chicken skin handbag. Pull your bollocks up into your abdomen for safekeeping. That is a phenomenal way of saying


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Lost as to anything else to do and after checking on mom, I paced around and happened to pass the door to this clearly cursed guest studio.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now it was my turn to be roughed up a little bit as I felt a force on my shoulders pushing me to the ground.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Anyway, after much praying by mom and puckering a bunghole by me, the wraith left and it was all over. Or so we thought.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Soon after child services became involved and C made T move out, God only knows what happened to that poor toddler.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Slowly but steadily, a heaviness settled over the house. A brooding presence, one that was a fleeting glimpse out of the corner of the eye when walking through a door.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or the burning of eyes boring into the back of your neck when sat alone in the evening.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Tensions ratcheted up. M and C split, with M moving downstairs. D-D-D was a near constant shit-ster. L, a young teen, never left her room. And I did much the same.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Things continue to escalate exponentially. The hallway upstairs became heavy with a feeling of dread that clung to it in a thick miasma. Miasma is one of my favorite words.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I like my house a lot. Also a good ghost song.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, I said we all worked nights. This of course meant that whenever I got home, it was already dark, and C&M's sloppy housekeeping meant a lack of bulbs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, quick aside. For real, that house was both cavernous and unkempt. There was once a half-eaten chicken wing left by the front door that was there so long, I gave the little fella a name. Frank and I were tight. Right up until my desire to not have rotten food on the floor overrode my reluctance to clean up after a grown ass woman.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Anyway, the result of this was me walking the green mile to my bedroom with only the company of the light on my phone. At least I wish that had been my only company.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Every single time I walked that corridor, I did so with someone walking right at my back, inside my bubble of personal space, and close enough to feel hot breath on the nape of my neck. That made me have to do like a little like, ugh, like wipe it off the back of mine. When one night, and almost at my bedroom door with phone in hand trying to pierce the black, a text came through and I stopped to look at it. This caused the thing at my back to stop too.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And by this point, accustomed as I was to the lack of boundaries, I thought whatever let me reply- I thought whatever let me reply to this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was at this point that it touched me. Its hand, a macabre spider clamoring its way over my shoulder, up my neck, and onto my cheek.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now I admit, this is fucking horrific, and I was suitably terrified. It's just that writing this now, I know what is next, so it feels somewhat insignificant by comparison. Oh god.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Anyway, after that night, I decided it was time to speak up. Dee was, like I said, an instigator. But for some reason, her and I had an understanding and a weird connection. Not gonna lie, a good 40% of that was m-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As soon as we could, we tracked down C, and I told her we needed to fix this shit. Now remember, we were shift workers with different days off, and although we all lived in the same house, we could go days without seeing each other.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which will hopefully explain why we hadn't told each other what had been going on sooner. C said she wanted to get a priest involved. She was raised Catholic and well, she owned the house. Think back if you will, think back if you will to Frank.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Fuck you! Suck a dick. And he said fucking wank splat.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Wank splat. Wank splat. I like that. I'll spare you my retort and just say I left without looking back. Why did you spare us your retort? Honestly, tell me it. Tell me. Fuming.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I told C, we were gonna do this my way, and being the spooky fucker I am, we went to the witchcraft store in Oceanside. Hell yeaah. We need to be friends. I'm extremely anti-religion, but not anti-deity, and I do have a spiritual side. Relatable. I'm familiar with the tarot.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Having found an ancient rider weight deck behind a brick in an empty house a friend moved into when I was 16. That's cool.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As soon as we walked into that store, we were screeched at by what I can still only assume was a banshee who had given up on the whole death malarkey and found gainful employment.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And a D stood next to me and said, you, you cannot live together. Too much emotion. One of you needs to move out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So he said, make of this what you will, it's what she said, who the hell knows. She was right about one thing at least, there was for sure unresolved tension there. Uh oh.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Long story slightly less long, they agreed to send a team to the house to do a ghost busting after the upcoming weekend, which happened to be Thanksgiving. Being English, Thanksgiving is always a little lost on me, and as much as I enjoy it when I get together with friends for it, I never feel the lack if I spend it alone.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The rest of the house, being all family, went home to El Centro, leaving me, having declined their invitation to join them, and having to work anyway, alone for four days.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Thanksgiving night, the first fucking night, I get home from work around two in the morning.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I've never felt anything like it, and I knew if I went in that house, something terrible was gonna happen.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Not being a complete idiot and having seen enough horror movies, I knew well enough to back the fuck off and retreat to my car. Smart.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was already calling a friend for a place to stay before I got off the driveway. When I got to my car, I turned around to lean on it while I waited for him to answer and looked up at the window at the end of that fucking hallway to see. I'm still not sure how to describe it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was like I saw negative space where the shape of a man should be. I knew something was there, watching me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's a really good way of describing that. Unfortunately, I had to go back the next day for clean clothes, etc.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When I got back, making sure to do it in broad daylight, I parked on the driveway, which I never did, and ran inside and straight up to my room, slamming the door behind me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As I hurriedly changed into a clean shirt and tie, the entire house was shaking and crashing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I could hear banging and slamming against the wall facing that bloody hallway. I noped the fuck out of there as fast as I could and didn't go back until the following Monday, the day Ghostbusters were coming. It's giving Casita, right? The house is mad at you guys. Like angry Casita. The end of El Canto.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They explained that they had not been ready for how bad it was and needed to prepare more. I could have told you that. Yeah, you could have been like, hey, we'll be back. Shoot a text. I don't know. Or maybe they're believers in like the like, I'll be right back.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The one following me was a child killer in life who had been executed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He had attached to me because he had sensed vulnerability.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Here's where I tell you that I was abused as a child by an overly friendly teacher. I'm so sorry about that. That's so messed up. And that's really fucked up of that ghost. Yeah, of course it is. At the end of the hallway was a mischievous but harmless male ghost who missed being alive and made all the noise trying to get our attention. Oh my god. He had been who I saw at the window and he never left that spot as to do so would have meant he had to pass by the killer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Outside my bedroom was the ghost of my dad, who had sensed I was in danger and came back to protect me. My body is warming so hard.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There had been not one, but two vortexes in the entry hall downstairs, and that coupled with untrained abilities on the part of me and Dee had been a huge pillar of light pulling everything and anything in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They said they had closed them, but if neither myself or Dee or preferably both of us left, they would not stay closed for long.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That is my story. I'm going to include a couple of short things as a follow up just to show how often this shit happens to me. However, feel free to leave this part out in the rare event you want to read this behemoth out loud. We do. I just did. So let's see. Oh, there's not much on this, so I'll read the rest.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The place I live in right now is next to Sony Pictures in LA, on the same street in fact. It started, I started life as, uh, accommodate, it started life as accommodation for cast members way back in the day. When I moved in, I felt the familiar presence of not being alone and always being watched.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One night in the early weeks, I was woken up by a voice screaming LEAVE in my ear. I said I worked in casinos, well I left that, and I'm now working on a PhD in clinical psychology. Badass. Casual. My focus is adult behavior and survivors of childhood sexual abuse. You are a badass. You are. Due to that and COVID limiting my lab time, I was conducting interviews in my apartment with people I know, so I could pitch an idea for more formal research later.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I had a psychic out again for this, and it being LA, it was of course one of those TV ones. That's just how the ludicrous place works. She showed up on my doorstep beating a drum and dancing while chanting. Great impressions for new neighbors.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Lastly, I took a trip to Nashville recently as a friend's kid was about to give birth. And as I've known her kids since they were young, she had asked for me to be there. Somewhere in New Mexico I had dozed off in the passenger seat and woke up to a dude sat between me and the driver, where the middle seat would be in a truck with a bench seat.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He had a camera and was taking pictures. Turned to look at me and faded out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I said hello, and he turned to look at me and said hello back. When I asked my friend who he was, no old man was over visiting. Another ghost. Just smiling down at a pregnant lady. My most recent experience, as recently as last month.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I woke up in the middle of the night to someone stepping on my bed as if they were going to climb up between my legs. Not scary, I just said stop that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Stop that. Uh, just doze back off. I think it was just an entity not used to being perceived. My gift, if you can call it that, seems to be getting stronger as I age. I've now progressed to being able to see what before I could only feel, and I'm not sure how I feel about it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Thanks for taking the time to read what is way longer than I had planned. Feel free to use my name, Alan.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Your fucking stories are astonishing. When you write so, like, beautifully. I love when I can see it all in my head. I can see that place in my head. That's like my favorite thing ever. And those ghosts, like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Write a book about that, please. Please! Because that sounds like such a cool idea, like you should write a book about those particular ones, it would be cool to write something about like a gaggle of ghosts in a place. A gaggle of ghosts! You know?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's really cool. I know, I'm nervous for you, Alan. I'm nervous for you, but I feel like you've got a handle on it because you were like, stop that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No. That's bullshit. Don't tell a little first grader they can't go to the bathroom.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, it is. Watch the rewatcher if you're not watching it yet.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, should I read? Cause you'll read the other one. Should I read?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] About the time I bought a demon house? Yea. Or living in a notoriously haunted house?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Notorious. That's what I was thinking, I was like, Duran Duran.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, living in a notoriously haunted house. Hope you guys enjoy this listener tale about the five years my family spent in the most well-known haunted house in our county. Oh my god, I thought that said country, and I was like, dang. Like, what the fuck?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You can probably tell from the title that this story is a doozy. I can. Let me tell you, my life has been one hell of a wild ride. The five years my family spent in this house is just the icing on the cake. But first, allow me to introduce myself.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hey y'all, my name is Mary Grace and I'm from a small town in South Carolina. That's such a pretty name, Mary Grace. I know, Mary Grace. Feel free to say all that out loud. I found morbid about a year ago when my commute to work was an hour and I desperately needed to kill time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You guys were exactly what I was looking for. I've been hooked since day one and now I listen to every one of your episodes while I'm going to bed at night. Side note, not the best time to listen to stories of people being brutally murdered.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It all started in August 2011, about three months before my 12th birthday, November 6th.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My family had grown tired of the violence that had surrounded us in our Charlotte, North Carolina neighborhood. The last straw was drawn the day my mother was held at gunpoint in our front yard after bravely confronting the man she saw running away with my brand new bicycle.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] However, my parents needed to heal from the violence and fear they had endured and somehow mostly shielded my sister and me from. Good parents. I know right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A Victorian home in the heart of a small town seemed like the place to do it, hell yeaah it does. So in we moved, box after box we made the nearly 200 year old house a home.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I remember feeling like I was in a castle. We went from a thousand square foot home to a nearly four thousand square foot one seemingly overnight.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] From the grand entryway to my massive bedroom with six windows, I couldn't believe it was all ours. I remember wondering how my parents could afford a place like that, but I didn't want to question it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I wouldn't find out until much later that the rent was extremely low due to the inability to keep tenants occupying the space.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He figured they had fallen from the candle holders on the mantle, so he simply picked them back up and put them back in the candle holders. As he walked out of the room, he heard something smack the window.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He turned to look and the candlesticks were on the ground again, but this time on the other side of the room. Things like this continued.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The candle sticks were moved or thrown so frequently that my mother eventually put them in a drawer in the butler's pantry. Chairs would often slide across the room, glasses mysteriously fell from the cabinets and shattered.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Lights turn themselves on and off at will, and playing cards would often be found spread neatly across the living room floor.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was shocked to find, and honestly I never had a gerbil, I don't know, are they soft? They're probably soft.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I remember being paralyzed in fear until the next morning came.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was still shaken when I came down for breakfast and my mom said, do you remember sleepwalking last night?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was confused as I'd never done that before. She continued, yeah, you came to my bedside and told me there was a man in your room. I told you it was a bad dream to go back to bed. You turned around and left the room.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My dad then added, It's the weirdest thing. Mom told me about the sleepwalking and it happened at about the same time that your dog came flying downstairs and curled up in a shaking ball in my lap.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I feel it is important to note that dog hated my dad and never ever sat with him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Night after night I would sit in my room awake with the lights on until eventually exhaustion would take over and I would crash until time to get up for school.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One night, I sat awake in my bed rereading To Kill a Mockingbird when something outside caught my eye.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I looked out the window next to my bed to see a woman in a red dress standing on the sidewalk across the street.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She had her hair fastened in a neat bun and her dress seemed old timey. I guessed Victorian style. She had stood there as if she was waiting for a ride. I watched her for a minute or two and then her eyes shifted up to my bedroom window.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I ducked down as quickly as I could hoping she hadn't seen me spying. When I sat back up she was gone.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I had all but forgotten about her, oh excuse me, I had all but forgotten her about a year later.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I signed up to be a storyteller at the town's Halloween cemetery tour. That's fucking awesome. That's really fucking awesome. I went in a week before Halloween to find out which person buried in the Confederate cemetery I would be impersonating. Her name was Mary, her name was Marie Wallace.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The older of the Wallace sisters. During the war, her dad left home to fight with the Confederacy. One day she received correspondence from him that he would be returning.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Marie became known as the woman in red. That was the lady outside your window. That's so scary.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Before I had even heard a whisper of this story, I saw Marie Wallace clear as day, stuck in a loop of hopeful anticipation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As I grew older, I became more and more accustomed to our living situation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I never did sleep with the lights off in my room, but many nights I would fall asleep with the lights on and wake up with them off.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As I laid awake, I would hear the laughter of a little girl in what sounded like a ball bouncing outside of my door. We believed the little girl to be Marie Scott, very popular name at the time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Marie was a five year old, a five year old who died in the house. She was cooking over an open flame with her mother when suddenly her dress caught fire and she burned to death. Jesus Christ. There are accounts from the town's doctor in our historical library that read no amount of morphine could stop the screams of little Marie.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're right. Many of the deaths were of course mothers and babies. However, one death in particular happened in my bedroom. A woman was struck by a car in 1930 and was put in my room to rest. It is said that she died before the doctor could arrive.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Eventually due to matters out of our own hands, we were told to move and given very little notice to do so. The sweet landlord that we had fostered a friendship with passed at 94 years old and her strange son got the house we were living in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So once again, we packed up our lives to move. When we started packing, the activity in the house got insane.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just women cackling out on the bed. Just vibing out there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] On moving day, I loaded all of my things to the foyer downstairs and did a quick sweep of the upstairs. After all the boxes from the foyer went on a trailer, my mom told me to do another sweep upstairs. Imperfect teenager, I rolled my eyes and stomped back up the stairs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You would never believe the way my heart started racing when I found a pile of moving boxes neatly stacked in the center of my once empty home. A room.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I quickly loaded them onto the trailer and then told my mom that I was going to walk to the new house two blocks away, still in the historic district.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It wasn't until then that my mom realized all the hair on her head was standing up straight, as if someone was above standing above her and pulling it. Oh my god! She quickly reached up and started smoothing it down. At this time the front door swung open and then slammed shut and the old timey manual bell started ringing like crazy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So that's my story. There's so, so much more that happened while living there, but I just picked out the things that still stand out in my mind. I hope you enjoyed and that it didn't freak you out too much. It did. Nowadays, I get to sleep soundly in the dark, snuggled up to my soon to be husband. June 4th, 2022, baby, you're married. Oh, it's your husband!


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Your love is beautiful. I love your love. Thank y'all for enduring my lengthy tale. Keep it weird.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I, like Mary, Mary Grace, that was compelling, it was amazing. Incredible. I can't believe you endured that. Seriously. I'm amazed by you. That was such a cool story, holy shit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It kinda looks like everybody ended up in the right place though.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] On an episode of The Office. Like, is she fucking serious? Like she waited till we signed the papers. Like Stanley, is he the fucking serious guy? Come on. Oh wow, you just looked like him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Why do they sound familiar? I know. Well, this is special because it's the five-year anniversary, like, month, and you're our, like, special guest of the month.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It is. This is, this is really fun. We're really excited for this. And I know everybody has been obsessed with that was pretty scary. People are loving it. Including me. And me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think that's awesome. Get the inside scoop. Yeah and I think what works with your show is that it's like


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Such good perspectives, like it's a different perspective than just ta- like-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like even like we have Scream and it's just like three, you know, us three idiots talking about horror movies, but it's like it's fun. We have no insight whatsoever. That's fun, but like it's really fun to hear it from like professionals on either side of the situation. So I think it's like a brilliant idea for a show.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, you guys are like the sweetest. Freddie, that really was what it was. We had like a random meeting with him and we were like, he is so kind. The kindest. And so nice. And it was just such a good idea. We were like, how do we not


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes. And we heard you have a tale to start us off with.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's what I was kind of thinking, that they were like surrounding your car to be like, hey, you should go back. Like don't go.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Shelby is part of the squad as far as I'm concerned. Hell yea. That's our girl right there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, should we go on to some random listener tales? Hell yea brother, you want to start us off?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, so the one I'm gonna start off with is called Boogieman Birdie and the Haunting of Room 118. Obsessed. By Sarah. Brought to you by Sarah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It says, what's up you wonderful weirdos? My name is Sarah, spelled the correct way with no extraneous consonants, little winky face. I love the pod and have been skipping around the episodes for the last several months. I've never been much into true crimes, into the true crime genre, but decided to give it a go when your podcast was recommended to me by a coworker.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I love spooky shit but tend to gravitate more towards ghost stories and paranormal type things rather than true crime because honestly the real life shit is way more terrifying because real life or real death. Accurate. And it freaks me out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't always have nightmares, but when I do, it's the kind where you can't distinguish between dreaming and being awake. Yes, I said that like the world's most interesting man from the Dos Equis commercials. Stay boo- space- bleh. Stay spooky, my friends. Will do. Anyway.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Being a teacher in these scar- in these times is scary enough. I don't need some psycho killer thrown into the mix. Sheesh. And you are right, being a teacher is scary enough now. And we appreciate you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They don't pay me enough to deal with that level of bullshittery, and you would think that the terror would stop there, but plot twist, my mother decides to make an appearance in the scholastic hellscape my subconscious has so elegantly designed and is waiting in my classroom to convince me to sit down with Mr. Ramirez for a nice chat because he is, and I quote, a lovely young man.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So needless to say, I stepped away from the pod for all of about, uh, 24 hours. Eh, what can I say? Y'all are just too good at what you do. Thanks. No need to fully hold onto your butts, but maybe make sure they are secure in case we encounter any turbulence.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm quite proud of the fact that I've lived most of my life free from supernatural encounters. It's somewhat of an achievement considering I grew up in uber rural Georgia and spent a few years of my young life involved in a Pentecostal church where belief in the supernatural is very real.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think speaking in tongues, spirit possession, all that sort of carrying on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Stabbed, right in the chest. I attended Carson Newman College in another rural town in the foothills of the Appalachian or Appalachian Mountains. Which one is it? I think we've been told more often that it's Appalachian. I'm gonna go with that. I think that is, yea, Appalachian.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I had a softball scholarship, not super relevant except to denote my tough girl status into late blooming lesbianhood and subsequent detachment from my alter conservative religious upbringing. Shug, shrug. All female athletes were, uh, housed in Butler Hall, named for the late Bertie Maples Butler.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's a grandiose three-story brick dormitory complete with classical Grecian facade. Ooh, that sounds beautiful. That does, I was just thinking that. And in the lobby of the dorm hung Bertie's portrait. See the first attached image, and they put an image of him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, note the creep factor of the eyes. Bertie is a woman. Or I meant her, sorry. So, oh Bert.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, old Bert, a former graduate and faculty member of the college, had made a sizable contribution towards the construction of the dormitory in the early 50s, apparently bestowing a ludicrish


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Ludicrous amount of cash to an institute of higher learning.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Side, side, sidebar. The threat of dead bodies didn't deter my friends and me from sledding down the cemetery hill behind the dorm on cafeteria trees. Oh my god.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Also, the dorm shares a property line with an abandoned hospital. Insert heebie-jeebies.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So when I moved into Butler Hall my freshman year, I managed to snag a sweet sweet on the first floor of the east wing of the building, room 118.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Most residents lived on the east wing floors because the west halls were always vacant and we were told a myriad of reasons why. Mold, electrical issues, plumbing problems, hauntings, etc. I love that it goes from mold, electrical, plumbing, hauntings, you know, like just what have you. Throw that in there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, naturally the little asterisk about hauntings caught my attention, and after some light reading through the annals of the college's history, I discovered that many of these stories that cropped up over the decades featured the ghost of the one and only, Bertie Maples Butler. Gasp.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it really wasn't too big a deal because no one lived in those halls, right? Well, sort of. A few years before I arrived, a fraternity on campus had managed to obtain permission to host an annual haunted house in those abandoned halls of Butler Dorm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That was actually quite surprising because Carson Newman is a conservative Baptist school in this particular haunted house dubbed Frightmare Manor.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Was not some light-hearted cheap-ass carnival funhouse. I'm talking scenes of demonic conjuring. Dismemberment? Gore and abundance. Chicken gizzards and livers. Sign a waiver type haunted house. Damn.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Every weekend in October, in the entire week of Halloween, residents of Butler Hall were serenaded with screaming, wailing, chainsaws, and other spooky sounds that emitted from the rooms of the West Wing from the basement to the second floor. That sounds awesome.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sounds rad. Sounds fucking rad. Aside from the general creepiness of the scenes in The Haunt, there always seemed to be a presence that most of the actors, myself included, were aware of.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like something was watching us from just beyond the next shadow, and occasionally we would catch drafts of icy wind blowing down the corridors, despite the fact that the AC units on that side of the building had not worked in years.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You bet I noped my Reese's Cup ass right out of there as soon as the haunt closed for the night. He bee's and G bee's galore.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I thought for sure I'd be rid of those heebie jeebies once the haunting season ended, and I went back to my comfy heebie jeebie free zone on the East Hall. Nice wish, you naive child. I didn't say that, she did.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That Christmas, in keeping with the spirit of the season, I decided to help decorate the lobby of the dorm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Remember the creepy portrait of Dear Sweet Birdie? Yea, I hadn't forgotten her either.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With the confidence, confidence of Pablo motherfucking Picasso. Had iPhones existed at the time, you best believe I would have plastered my handiwork all over the gram. I stumbled my way back to my room, pleased as could be and filled with, dare I say, Christmas spirit, and promptly passed the fuck out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay. Birdie just has that vibe, that you don't lol at Birdie. No.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] About three weeks after my little craftcapade, the spooky started. The portrait looked like some, looked something like the second image after I added my festive decor. I can't talk. Here's the second one. Birdie Santa Claus edition.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Mind you, I didn't have a roommate at the time, because the girl who had been my roomie got a promotion to RA on the second floor and moved out. Which, fist pump the air, heck yea, I'll take the solo room that's gonna be sweet! Bwa ha ha, oh my sweet innocent summer self shaking my head.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That night upon the stroke of, you guessed it, 3am, dun dun dun, I was rudely awakened by distorted muffled screams coming from the massive 20 inch box TV on my dresser.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The same massive 20-inch TV that I had turned off prior to going to bed and whose remote control rested peacefully on my desk five or six feet away from the bed where I sat now rigid and heart racing confused as fuck.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The white static illuminated the room just enough for me to see my way over to the desk and retrieve the remote to turn the TV back off.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It took a few minutes, but I managed to fall back asleep. Still too disoriented to think clearly about the incident.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So she just woke up to like blood curdling screams and static on her TV and she was like


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sarah's a tougher chick than I. I would have burned my house down. And I also played softball. I can't claim to be that tough. I played softball, but I was not good.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, it took a few minutes, but I managed to fall back asleep. Too disoriented, of course.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Only this time, the closet light was on. No. Nope.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now I'm someone who requires complete darkness to go to sleep because ADHD be fucking around when there's any kind of illumination. Dumb. So I don't sleep with any kind of light on and the closet was on the opposite side of the room from my bed and again the TV remote was on the desk.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This time I managed to game some modicum of mental coherence to weakly vocalize


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Great, nothing says happy holidays like a good old fashioned haunting by the ghost of Christmas past.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I love how that was just like, yes, I will just burn the bones and salt them. It'll be fine. So I spent the next few nights anticipating her return to my room and sure enough, 3am on the nose, TV static, closet light, and oh lovely, the mini fridge is now opening on its own, like birdies rooting around for a snack.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That one doesn't feel as threatening. No, it's- that just feels silly. It's because it's small. Yeah, it's-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And swear to dog, in the midst of the static buzzing from the TV, I hear, Santa Claus is coming to town. She said get that hat off.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I scooted my flannel-clad ass out the door down the hall and skidded to halt in front of the damn portrait, ripping off the construction paper hat and beard in one sweeping yoink.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I love that they did it that night. They were like, you know what? I got you, girl. I'm not waiting. I'll take care of this. I trashed the offending paper and tape and slumped away to my room, the eyes of Bertie Maples Butler burning into my retreating backside. Bertrude!


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I peered cautiously around the doorframe into my room into my utter amazement and relief. The TV was off.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I gotta go pick up my kids and take them to a haunted road.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Mid morning. It's afternoon, it's 12. Early afternoon.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're living in an angry tummy world, you know? I know! Unfortunately.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, no, it is not. It's in, uh, it's in America and it's in, you know, our neck of the woods a little bit. Yeah. Okay. Just a little bit. Okay. We could drive there, I guess. Okay. It's there. So this is a wild one. It has to do with, you know, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How shitty the death penalty is and how really shitty it was back then. Okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It has to do with mental illness and how it was handled back then. And it has to do with whether or not


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Somebody was executed for a crime they potentially didn't commit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So we're gonna be talking about Elroy Kent and the murder of Delia Congdon. Okay. Now Elroy Kent is our convicted murderer. Okay. Here.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I want to talk about him first just because he's the one that...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We, we're gonna talk about Delia of course, but I just wanna bring up Elroy because you should know


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What we're working with here and why it was such a shock that he eventually receives the death penalty. Okay. Because, whoa. Like he had a lot going on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So Elroy Kent was born in Rutland County, Vermont in 1878. He was born to George and Caroline Kent.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] According to the 1880 census, he had one sister, Belkent.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But later he would end up having six more siblings. Oh shit. The big family. That sense has really popped off. It really did. But for back then that was just like normal. You know, that that's a family. Yea, that was like having two kids. Exactly. So Kent himself said that he always hated school when he was younger. He was kind of a trouble maker. He couldn't really focus and he would run away from home a lot. And probably just to get some peace and quiet.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But each time he did this, he would either be tracked down by the local constable and just returned back to the family, or he would just take it upon himself to come home. He was like, I never really ran away for a long time. I just did it all the time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, exactly. No, when he did bother to show up at home or school, he spent a lot of time, like I said, getting in trouble, he liked to prank people, he just liked to cause havoc, he liked to cause a lot of trouble for people. Okay. Once he actually set fire to a neighbor's plow,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When he was younger, like a kid. That's a dick move. Uh, and it was being stored in the man's barn, and he only intended to do it. This is why, like, his reasoning skills were not great, even from like, you know, childhood. Kids' reasoning skills are not great anyways, but like, his were shockingly bad. Okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was somewhere in like the 12 range. Okay, I feel like he should know that. Yeah, yeah, you absolutely should. Now, not only was he a pain in the ass at this point, getting into trouble, running away all the time, just causing issues for everybody around him, but Kent's actual criminal career began way earlier than this. He began his criminal career when he was just seven years old.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes. At seven years old, he and his friend from school stole a cooking stove for a hut.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How the fuck did they manage to even move a cooking stove? No idea.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And rode it for several miles, but then just jumped off it, let the horse go, and hopped a train bound for Townsend.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, I feel like he's running from something. Yeaah. And that's the thing, you can't really find out a lot about that, there's just not a lot about his family life. Yea, I mean, 1800s. But once he was in Townsend, he found a shor- he actually found work there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He found like short term work chopping wood. And while he's there, he breaks into the train station at night and steals three mileage books that he later gave to friends and people he knew.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now mileage books are books that dry, like uhm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, it's like they just stole shit that's important to you because you need it to like, function. Just function as an adult. Like do your job. It's like that's all. And it's like he couldn't sell those, he wasn't making any money off of them, he just stole them to be a dick. Yeah. You know?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and they're also very clearly marked as property of the railroad, so like, I don't know a lot of people that are gonna wanna take those off your hands, cause like, that's bad. Right. Uhm, so they were quickly recovered, luckily. Okay, well that's good. Because people like, that he gave them to were like, I don't want this, and would just leave it somewhere, like that's not mine. Cause why would you want that? It's just such a strange thing to do, so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And because he did this, he was quickly arrested and sentenced to 20 months in the House of Corrections. Damn. He stole shit and he broke into a train station. Yeah. Wrong.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The casual theft of a horse, which by the way was quickly recovered as well.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He's just Elroy. This is Elroy. This is who he is. But in 1896, when he was 18 years old, he was brought before a judge for something different. He was brought before a judge for trying to burglarize a store in Brookline.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he claimed that he was like, I did not try to rob this man's store, that wasn't my intent.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He did admit to the judge that he had destroyed several of the man's beehives. That's fucking rude. Which again, just rude shit. And like, wow, you're really, you're playing with fire there, buddy. Yeah, like that's just really rude. And he had broken a light in the store. He admitted to that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But only two months later, he was caught again trying to break into the home of a man named Royal Mars. Yes. His name is Royal? Yes. Mars. Me too.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But for this one, he was sentenced to jail and I don't know how many months because I couldn't find the exact, it just said many months. Many, many months. Many months. However you feel is many, that's how many he had.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That could be anything. So at this point, he's just a pain in the ass. He's kind of an asshole. But so far, sure he's escalating, but he's not really stealing again anything of value. He's not reselling things. He's not hurting people physically yet.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Why you keep doing this? Why are you taking random shit? Because it did seem at times that the act of stealing


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] 21 years old. He said it's the brink of the 1900s. And what's crazy to me exactly, he's like, we're entering a new era. But what's crazy to me is he's getting older and escalating and I'm like, so your punishment gets greater the older you get. So why are you escalating your crimes so that the punishment you get is going to be far worse?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So he's 21 years old, 1899, and that year he was caught robbing a store in Milton, Vermont. No, he just broke a light. He just broke a light. No, he stole seven gold watches, a suit of clothes, a hat, and a pair of shoes. And he thought he was going to get away with that?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah. Damn. And the thing that's, well this one's wild to me because during the, while he was in the middle of robbing this store, um, a night watchman saw him and the night watchman fired his double-barreled shotgun at him, hit him in the leg and the back with buckshot.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What? I was like, woah. In the back you said? Yeaah. Holy cow. He was left in really bad shape.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So after his release from Windsor in 18, uh, I think it was, so the timelines between these ones get a little hairy because this was in 1899, but they say like after his release in Windsor in early 1900.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They say it was a three year prison stint. I'm not sure if he actually served the whole three years.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because it seems like it's about 1901, like somewhere around there that this happened.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, so either way, he was sentenced to the three years in the state prison in Windsor. He did serve some time. Yeah. Now, after he was released from there, he traveled to Brattleboro. Where's that? Brattleboro and uhm, is that in Maine? I don't know. Brattleboro? I need to look it up now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Vermont's cool. Yeah, I liked it. Yeah, we like Vermont. Anyway. Brattleboro, Vermont. Okay. Uhm, so he traveled to Brattleboro, and he was traveling there to visit his cousin, W. G. Kent.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, nothing will beat that. And I obviously know that like they had real names and that those are initials. Wait, what? They did? Yeah. Oh, like I'm not saying like, oh his name was WG. Like that's, I know that, but I like how they referred to them as that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Elroy Kent just goes through his cousin's shit, looking for that money.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't like you. I'm saying, so the next morning when WG realized my cousin has stolen all my money and that he's gone, or $12.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, so the chief of police traced Elroy's movements back to his mother's house in Manchester. Now he's getting his mama involved. So they call Caroline Kent and they're like, hey.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Your son, who has been a jackass his whole life and has been up tainted all of our asses. He was like, what? We know he's there. We like traced him here.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And Caroline was like, no, he's not home. She's aiding in a bedding. But oops, because they searched the home and they found him hiding in the basement. Oh my god, it's giving good fellas. Right? And he was taken to New Fane jail. So by the time he was sent to New Fane for


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Taking $12 out of his cousin's belongings. Oh wait, also I meant blow, not good fellas. Don't yell at me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's okay. I'm sharing Goodfellas, Somebody Hidden in a Basement. I love that movie. But, uh, but Kent had become kind of a notorious local criminal.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like I said, all his shit that he's doing is more just like...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Indeed, he relates his experiences on occasions with considerable gusto. So they're basically like, that man loves to talk about his shit. Like he's just running around being like, yes, dark passenger, that's me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he also just kinda like loved that everybody was like, oh, that's that kooky criminal Elroy Kent. Like, he loved his reputation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They're definitely more violent, I would say. Well, they're more violent than him at this point.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But, uh, yeaah, so, but I would say like, you're right, like the kind of like- Like that attitude. He's walking around like he owns the place. Yeaah. You know, so, yeaah. There you go. The red right hand is playing at all times when he's walking. Love, love, love.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He said the two things I love best are whiskey and railroad rides. Let's go baby, he's living life. Now we're right now being like Elroy Kent, he's a kooky guy. Yeah. Ooh, it's gonna change. Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna quiet down. It's gonna change, but...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I believe there are extenuating, extenuating factors that come into play later that I think were a little ignored. Okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I also wonder if he actually committed the crime that he is, um, was convicted for. And I wonder what you guys will think. So the paper said, poor, poor Elroy Kent finding enjoyment only in whiskey and railroad rides and seeing nothing before him but prison life.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay. So everybody just kinda gave up on him too. They were like, this guy's a loser and he's just gonna be in prison forever. That's sad. Which again, he didn't really give them much of a choice but to look at him that way. Truth. So, the theft of the money from his cousin actually resulted in him, so he went to prison, he was sentenced to the three year prison stint.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He didn't serve the entire thing, like I said, I don't know exactly how much he served of it, but.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He ended up having to go back to prison because they had given him, given him parole for the cousin stealing thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He broke the parole because he robbed a store in Milton while he was on parole. He's gotta stop it. And actually, this was the first example of someone violating parole in Vermont's history. Whoa, look at that!


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Good old Elroy. So it was actually Governor William Stickney who was the one who insisted he be sent back to prison to finish his sentence out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because he said he just had a flagrant disregard for the law.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he did. Yeah. So 100% I'm on the governor's side. Go, go, go.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Once he was released finally from Windsor again, Kent found Brattleboro authorities waiting for him with a warrant for his arrest right away because they said, hey,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You violated parole after we let you out for stealing your cousin's $12, but now you have to go back to jail and finish that sentence.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because they were like, we got you out, we paroled you, you broke the parole, you went back to jail for violating the parole, and now you've come out, we're gonna make you finish off that sentence. Yeah, that sucks. It was only a few more months in New Fein at this point, but now he had to go back. Okay. So we just got out and they were like, ding ding ding, you're going to that one now. Goodbye.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now on December 6, 1902, he actually escaped from prison.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, that was the obvious next thing. He has the vibe of somebody that escapes prison. He does. Now this is where shit gets wild. And this is where his life changes again from being a petty criminal who we can all go, oh my goodness, that Elroy, he's so kooky, that's funny.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is when it turns. And this is when something happened that makes it turn. In my opinion at least. Yeah, sure. So, he escapes from prison and he hops on a train in West Dummerston, headed away from the city.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Everything's going according to plan, everything's smooth, he's hanging out on this railroad car, he's thinking about the whiskey he's gonna have, he's like my two favorite things, I'm excited, I'm free.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then someone on the train car looks at him and recognizes him. Uh oh. And calls him right the fuck out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He freaks out thinking everyone else is going to hear this and everyone else is going to recognize him and he does not want to go back to prison because now he's thinking like I'm just going to get away from here and start living my life. So he jumped from the moving train.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it was as it was approaching Williamsville station. He jumps out and his head hit one of the railroad ties.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Elroy had sustained a skull fracture when he hit the tracks. Holy shit. He had a skull fracture and he lay unconscious on the tracks for several hours. Oh my god. Before he woke up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No one helped him, he just woke up and he wandered away to a nearby farmhouse. And when he got to this farmhouse, the owner of the home called the local doctor, Dr. PP White.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I know, I saw Ash's face. I had to.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, when he, when the doctor came, he saw that Kent not only had a skull fracture,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But he was like, uhm, this man has a piece of rotten wood that was driven into his brain when he fell. I'm sorry, what? This man has a skull fracture from diving out of a moving train.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And when that happened, somehow a piece of rotten wood had been


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Driven into his brain. Not just his skull, his brain. He basically had like a road pick lobotomy. Literally. Holy shit. So the doctor took out as much wood as he was able to and dressed the wounds and just kind of like, was like, you're gonna die. I hope you're gonna survive this. And the next day the doctor saw him again.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he was there to kind of examine the wound to make sure it was something was happening, like drain everything, do what he had to do.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] During this whole thing, he discovers that quote, the wood had been driven through the top of the head diagonally, through the brain, to the base of the nose.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And a piece of gauze just a yard square was packed into the opening.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They put gauze into his brain. Soooo, as you can see, anything that happens from here on out,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I know, it's true. It's very true, especially back then.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We, it's, obviously it's impossible for us to sit here and say for sure.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That any of this, that this injury that he got when he jumped out of the train affected his behavior and like. Impossible, but like. Impossible for us to like totally sit there and say 100%. Yeah, we're not doctors. But like, come on. It seems like that would have a pretty big-ish like effect on what was going on here. Like, please sit there and tell me with two inches of wood stuck


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Feels like this is, and what we know is that by 1903 his behavior and his thinking


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Was becoming very disordered and very unpredictable. Enough for officials at the prison where he was brought back to after this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But the officials actually had him transferred to this, uh, from the state prison in Windsor to the quote unquote, this is what they called it, Hospital for the Insane in Waterbury.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That was because the officials at the, uh, prison were like, something's wrong. He's a different, like, this is a different beast, like, that's gotta go that way. Was he, like, violent now? I think he was becoming so disordered, he was, like, unpredictable, he was bizarre. And he still, I mean,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And pieces of his brain were taken out. Oh my god.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How, you know, executing the, like, what they referred to as the criminally insane back then.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Also, just like, what we're gonna see is like, this was kind of a circumstantial case. Yeah. So it's like, and it's kind of based off of stuff that it's like, you executed this guy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So they did bring up a lot of discussion and it did also lead to like the death penalty in Vermont like stopping. Like this was at least part of the discussion. It was cited many times while people were fighting to get the death penalty.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Abolished. Abolished, that's what I was looking for, thank you. No problem. And it also gets brought up now, as like a way of being like, the death penalty is barbaric. Like, look what happened here. Wow. So this case really did have a lot to do with that, which I guess is the positive that comes out of it, because-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It does. And it's like, this was before the forensic, you know, science boom that had happened. Right.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's interesting to see the scrappy way in which cases had to be solved and what happened when you didn't have the tools to solve it correctly and what comes out of that. I just think that's really interesting. Don't worry, my case this week has a lot of forensic DNA involved. There you go. So you know, we're balancing it out. I like it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And we haven't even talked about Delia yet, we're gonna get to Delia, who is the victim in this case, and it's like...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But sometime in the evening hours of, cause he's been transferred to the hospital now, in the evening hours of August 12th, 1905, he had spent 18 months in confinement at this point in the hospital. He escaped from the hospital. Disappeared out into the night.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The press went wild immediately. They're really terrified. Pretty terrified. Again, at this point he hasn't been outwardly violent in his crimes still.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now according to reports, quote, in order to make his escape, this was in the Rutland Daily Herald, by the way. Uhm, or excuse me, no, it was in the St. Albans Daily Messenger. The next one is in the Herald. Excuse me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, he said in order to make his escape, he was obliged to unlock three doors and make his way out through an attic window, which was not barred.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, unfunctioning, you know, at this point, like he was functioning, but his behavior and his thinking was definitely scattered and mightily different than what it was before.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, so once he had escaped and they had discovered that he escaped, Sheriff F.H. Tracy was sent from Montpelier to Waterbury to lead the search for him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He told reporters a basic description of Elroy. He said his height is 5 feet 4 inches, weight 160 pounds, he has hazel eyes and brown hair, he wore a light mustache when last seen, has a deep scar on the left side of his forehead,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I bet he does. Two inches long, one inch, one half inch wide and one half inch deep at lower end. He also has scars on the back, remember from being shot with a buckshot, and six shot scars on the left leg, or on the right leg. Six?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like several pieces shoot out. Like it explodes a little bit. I'm gonna look it up. Absolutely terrible. It does sound pretty terrible. I keep feeling that in my egg.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, uh, basically it says the most commonly produced buckshot shell is a 12 gauge, which we've heard of.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they hold eight pellets inside of them. So when they hit, it's like the pellets explode. It's one of those things. Or when they shoot it, the pellets explode, I think. I'm not completely familiar with all that, but I believe that's like a very rudimentary way of saying it. Oh, I like that word, rudimentary.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But basically when you shoot someone with a buckshot, they're gonna be, they're gonna have several scars. They're gonna get fucked up. Yeah, it's not gonna be great.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So he had, they explained his description, but unfortunately investigators lost his trail pretty quickly and he didn't really come back into their focus until like two months later. Oh shit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's when his brother, uh, Llewelyn, I think it's called, Llewelyn, it's called, I said it's pronounced is what I meant. Uhm, his brother Llewelyn reported that Elroy had attacked him. Oh no. Reported it to a police.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, according to news reports on the morning of September 29th, both of them, the two brothers, apparently Elroy had been like, with, yeah, uh, they had been transported a load of potatoes to the market in nearby Rockingham.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And had returned with supplies and some provisions like flour, sugar, and apparently liquid fire?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think it could mean many things, like it could be like oil of some kind, like I think it's something like that, but they called it liquid fire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which sounds like, it sounds like wildfire from like Game of Thrones, like I feel like it's like this green, glowy liquid that they have and I'm like, why do you have that? For real. It just makes me think of Baked Alaska.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There you go, like wood fire. I don't know. No, later that evening, uh, I guess Llewelyn's young son George said he heard shouts and groans outside the house. So he went out there to investigate what was going on. And according to him, he said about quote, 40 rods from his house, which thanks to Dave, I now know is 220 yards.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, the wagon flipped with him underneath it. Oof.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now when that happened, the force of that drove an iron bar into his neck. Dude, what the fuck? Yea, and when he asked Elroy, he was like freaking out asking Elroy to pull the metal bar out of his neck. Can we stop with the impalement of everyone? He said that Elroy quote, tried to drive it in still farther.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then he said he lost consciousness and couldn't remember anything after that. But when he came too later, he said Elroy was gone and he had taken Llewelyn's wallet.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's your brother, dude! So after all this petty theft, generally non-violent crimes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Everything is turned now. We're getting violent. Because if his brother was to be believed, Elroy didn't just attack his brother and steal his wallet, he had tried to kill him. And it kinda seems like maybe he thought he was dead when he left. I think he probably did.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now luckily Elroy was arrested about three weeks later in Hadham, Connecticut.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's still in his head. Accurate. So the constable questioned him and during the course of the questioning, he determined that Elroy was definitely responsible for a burglary that had also occurred the day before in town. Oh, another one? Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, he was confirmed to be Elroy Kent, and the constable contacted Sheriff C-uh, Tracy, who traveled to Connecticut and brought him back to Vermont.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then he swam down the Winooski River until he felt like he was far enough away and he just got away. This man has lived a life and he's probably like 25 at this point. Truly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, when asked about the assault on his brother, Kent said, he was like, I don't really have any explanation for that. So he was returned to the hospital in Waterbury pretty quickly. Okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Once he was brought back to Vermont by the sheriff, he spent several more years in the hospital in Waterbury.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that wasn't until the, that wasn't until the early, I don't know why I keep, can't say until. That was until. That was until. Yea, it's hard. I haven't had enough coffee, and it's tiramisu coffee, it's making me excited, so I can't speak.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This was until the early morning hour, see that worked, of July 11th, 1908, when he and a fellow inmate named John Keenan escaped again.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He's escaped once. Yeah, he's escaped again. This was years later. He's escaped again and he even told you how he did it the first time and you're not checking this out. Oh and this is even worse. He escaped using a duplicate key.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What? You have a 3D printer out there in the streets? Yeah, in 1908. They created a ladder using pieces of Kenan's bed sheets and used it to climb over the wall surrounding the hospital.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh Roy's like right this way. Just this way. Hospital administrators said they were confident that both men would be recaptured within a few days.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Confidence is a nice thing to have. Yea, especially at that point. It's a nice thing to have. I think that's all you have at this point. It's really all you got because that confidence was pretty unfounded. You fookin' idiots. Now let's talk about Delia Congdon. Yea.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So Delia had a lot of struggle in her life as well, but she was, seemed like she was kind of thriving out of it, which is really cool. And sad though. Yeah. She was born into one of Wallingford, Vermont's founding families. Oh wow. Um, but she contracted scarlet fever at age eight.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, back then, scarlet fever is a oof, that was really bad. And this rendered her completely deaf at age eight. Oh wow. So until then she had been able to hear and it was like a...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like just boop, that happened all at once. Terrible. And it also affected her speech to such a degree that it was difficult for people to understand what she was saying so she would get frustrated and like, it was tough. Now several family members also said that Delia had actually been born with a cognitive impairment. Okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and scarlet fever kind of exasperated that whole thing. Exasperated, excuse me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] By the time she had become an adult, Delia's parents and several of her siblings had actually died from various illnesses and her remaining siblings had just moved away.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I think that, I don't know what the whole story was, but it made me sad too. But she made the best of it though, because of all this, she inherited the family home, which was this large farm on Sugar Hill.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But in reality, Delia was never alone and she was never lonely. She mostly was surrounded by friends, her neighbors were like all


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like, I'm a cool person and everybody knows that. Yeah, it sounds like it. Also, she had local school children at her farm all the time because she would bake them cookies regularly. Oh my god, shut your fucking face. She's just like this nice person that's like, I was dealt a tough


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So while they're working, they said they were approached by a small man who said he was looking for work.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Five-four. Five-foot-four, exactly. Uhm, according to the Sprague brothers, they said,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they noticed, they saw that he noticed this and he said, who's that woman?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they were like, why do you need to know that? Yeah, who's asking? And then they said he, quote, proceeded to say what sort of things he would like to do to her. Oh, I don't like that. So horrified by these statements, I guess the brothers looked at him and said they would, quote, shoot full of holes anyone who tried such a thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Neighbors of course notice this immediately because like I said, they all love her, they're looking out for her.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So they went right to her home to knock on the door and see if she was okay. And I'm sure even more so those two brothers now. Yeah, of course. So when they entered the home, they found Delia lying dead on the pantry floor.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They said quote, in a condition which indicated she had been ravished and with several deep cuts upon the head. Oh no.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, a large amount of blood was coming from her head. It had pooled next to her. There was blood spattered on the walls and the pantry.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sheriff E.C. Fish was immediately called out to the scene. He started talking to anyone who was on the farm, around the farm, all the neighbors. After a pretty quick investigation of the scene, he actually arrested a man named Frank Rogers, who was an occasional farm hand and was known as a pretty tough character.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's a quote, tough character. Sure. Uh, Rogers had actually served three sentences at the House of Correction. Damn. And people said they saw him on the property the previous evening. Okay. So that's why he was taken in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So they did a little examination of the scene and they determined that Delia had been probably preparing breakfast for herself in the pantry.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Her false teeth were in the adjoining room and it appears as if she retreated into the pantry when attacked.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now the killer had then taken the handle of the axe and wrapped it with fabric.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh my god. The body also showed signs of bruising and what they referred to as criminal assaults.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Indicating that she was very likely raped. Um, Lawrence, the, uh, the state's attorney, he also told reporters she had evidently put up a fierce fight for her life, but, and this is his words, not mine, remember we're in 1900s here, but as she had been deaf and dumb from an early age, it was impossible for her to cry out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Obviously cognitive impairment was treated and discussed rather differently back then, so we would never say deaf and dumb.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know? Like we know who Delia is, like people in the area know her. Just put it simply. Like you don't need to make it sound like that, but it's like, you know. It's disrespectful. Stupid times basically. Stupid times, stupid statements.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's important to say them because that's the time period and it's important to look at it and go, my, how far we have come. But. Sorta.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What he was saying was she put up a fierce fight, but she was unable to cry out. She couldn't get the words out, she obviously probably didn't hear the person coming up behind her when they attacked her.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To incapacitate her. And she's in her own fucking house. Like she's in her own house making breakfast. Like, what the hell?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So after killing Delia, the killer then went through all the drawers, went through all her stuff, and the problem here was that she lived alone, so nobody could say whether anything had been stolen or not. Right, because they didn't know exactly what she had.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So based on this, they did conclude that the motive was likely robbery because of the ransacking.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But again, with no evidence that something is stolen, that can be staged.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah. And to me it looks like she was raped and brutally murdered. That looks like the motive. That's what I was gonna say is like the rape and the murder of the doll.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the way he said it was, evidence was found to indicate robbery as the motive, some of the furniture being ransacked and drawers being found open and the contents of the drawers thrown about. Which I'm like, that to me sounds staged. Definitely. The content of the drawers thrown about. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The evidence against Frank Rogers, the sometimes, uh, farmhand, was not great. Okay. Flimsy and circumstantial might be a better way to put it. Okay. Uh, he'd been seen in the vicinity the night before. There's that. Couldn't easily account for like all his movements in the days leading up to the murder.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it was really just them going, will you have a reputation for like being a criminal and being violent sometimes? So like, it's probably you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yikes. Like that's about it. That's really all they had. Right. It was only after examining his body and the clothes he was seen wearing that day on the day of the murder that he was actually released because


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was no evidence of blood, there was no evidence of a fight, he had no scratches, there was no blood on his clothes. And there would be. And it would have been next to impossible to achieve coming out of that with no wounds, defensive wounds, no blood on your clothing, and he would have been covered.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So two days later on July 27th was the autopsy of Delia Congdon. Uhm, and this was to determine the cause of death and hopefully the order of events that had happened.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So doctors BH Stone and William Stickney reported that Delia had been attacked in her home by an assailant who sexually assaulted her first in the main home of the house. Then she had run. She had fled into the pantry to hide.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So also, what's like a really strange thing here is that, and this also worked in Frank Rogers' favor of them being like, it's probably not him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Next to a pile of hay that was clearly recently disturbed were the initials EK.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, no, police had no luck tracking Alroy Kent, so like they found those things and they haven't been able to find him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that was since he escaped the hospital two weeks before this. For the second time. Yeaah. But several people in the area said they had seen him at least in the area of the Congen farm a week earlier. I bet they did. So residents of East Wallingford believed


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was kind of harmless, because up until this point...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They didn't know, like they didn't know what the brother thing was, like they were kinda, you know, so in their words, they called him quote, a half-witted tramp who had drifted in. Jesus Christ, they really knew how to insult people back then. I'm saying.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, there you go. But they figured he just drifted in to find work. And so they were like, eh, when they saw him out and about, they were kind of just like, huh, yeah, I guess he's supposed to be in a hospital, but like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We can't keep him there. Which I'm like, did anyone know what he did to his brother? It doesn't sound like it. Like did you all, that didn't come up? Apparently it was not widely reported. Apparently not.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and Elroy Kent, he definitely matched the description of the man the Sprague brothers described seeing the day before Delia's murder. And like you said, he's looking for work wherever he is. So that's why, to me,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I, most of me believes he did this for sure. I think it just, I think there, when it comes to the execution is where my...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Problem wise. Sure, yea. Is like, there were other things happening here that I think he should have just been put back in the hospital.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now investigators searched, um, like abandoned buildings and other areas that they said they knew that like people who drifted in and out would kind of hang out and use like unused buildings. And there was one on a, an unused outbuilding on a nearby farm that they looked at and they found an area of, you know, disturbed hay, kind of like in the barn. And they said it looked like it had been used as a bed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And on the wall near it was carved E. Kent.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, another one. Another one. Okay. Another one. Another one. Now this is why it's like...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So he did it here, he did it there, it's clear he's sleeping in these places and then leaving his initial on the side. Yeah. Which also I'm like, why are you leaving your initials? Yeah, that's the thing. Now the carving matched that of the one found in Delia Congdon's barn and investigators were like, okay, so Kent had definitely slept in her barn the night before the murder.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That barn we can, we can see is connected to this next one, we can trace his movements that way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But they also noted that from the barn, he could probably see into Delia's bedroom.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And would have been able to track her movements the next morning from that barn. That's freaky.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So they theorize he probably watched, he waited for her to unlock the door to the house, and when she did...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that's the part that really stuck in my mind is like, ugh, you know. But again, it's based off of somebody's, somebody's saying.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's the only thing. So this is a matter of like, do I think he did it? Yea. Do I think they had enough to convict him and execute him? Probably not. But this was a different time.