102 Moundsville State Penitentiary

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0:37 Welcome to Hillbilly Horror Stories.

0:40 And now here's your host, Jerry and Tracy Pauly and their dog Ninja.

0:52 Hey guys, I'm Jerry.

0:53 And I'm Tracy from Hillbilly Horror Stories.

0:56 I am Shane Waters from the podcast Out of the Shadows.

1:00 And I'm Justin Rimmel from Mysterious Circumstances.

1:03 Damn, Justin, did you hear how proper and serious Shane was?

1:06 I guess when you're a guest on Nancy Grace and have 1,800 people listening to you at CrimeCon, you get real serious.

1:13 Okay, Shane, I need you to tell the people why we're doing this commercial, but I need it just as serious as your introduction. You can see all three of our shows live in Indianapolis on Saturday, July 28th. All right, Justin, tell them what time to be there and where they can get tickets.

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2:30 Hey guys and welcome to episode 102 of Hillbilly Horror Stories. I'm Jerry and this is my wife Tracy.

2:36 Hey guys, hope you all had a wonderful weekend.

2:40 So this week, we've got a pretty well-known story to do for you. It's in Moundsville, West Virginia. It's the West Virginia State Penitentiary. So we'll get into that shortly. First, as always, we want to thank all of our military and civil servants all over the world, no matter which country you represent. Thank you, guys.

2:56 Amen.

2:57 Keep up the great work. We appreciate all of you.

3:00 Also, as usual, we want to remind everybody that if you're going through a tough time in life, you're going through some struggles, maybe you're thinking about taking a step that We really don't want you to take, just remember there's people out there that are willing to talk to you, willing to help you, lend a hand, and to try to boost you up a little bit so that you realize that there are reasons to live. There are reasons to keep going and to keep pushing, and there is a light at the end of that tunnel.

3:27 Absolutely is.

3:29 The phone number here in the United States, 1-800-273-8255. That's the Suicide Prevention Hotline. And there's plenty of people there that are willing to help walk you through and talk you through whatever struggles you may be happening. If you're not a talker and you'd rather text, 741-741, you can accomplish the same thing. Please feel free to reach out to me and Tracy if you need to. Join our Facebook group, Hillbilly Horror Stories, on Facebook, obviously. That is a very supportive group. Everybody is there to help everybody else out. We have a lot of fun there, have a good time.

4:05 But.

4:06 We're also there for each other, and that's probably the most important part.

4:10 We sure are.

4:11 I just love this group. I'm so excited we have it. We just have lots of fun and talk about anything and everything on there.

4:17 A lot of good things happening on the show, yeah.

4:21 Yeah, and even that awful picture of me with dreads. So if you all want a good laugh, just go on and join our group, and you'll see me with my dreads.

4:32 So, yeah. Yeah.

4:33 It's got my Coolio going on.

4:35 Yeah, Zach put Tracy's face on Coolio. And the rap of Gangster Paradise just won't seem to go away.

4:44 It was pretty, I don't even know the word to say the least. But you'll get a good laugh out of it. So thanks a lot, Zach.

4:54 Then I want to give a big shout out to Tanya, once again, who did a little research for us this week, helped us out. I said little. She did a lot of research for us. Yeah, she did. Helped us out with this story. I want to thank our administrators in the group, which is Natasha, Tim, and John. These guys volunteer their time and go above and beyond what we would ever expect anybody to do. And they are recreating hillbilly horror stories to a certain extent. I know Natasha is wanting to start a blog on the website. Tim has completely redone our YouTube page.

5:27 It looks awesome to you, Tim.

5:28 Great job. He's made this thing into something that looks professional, and he's also redoing our website. So there's a lot of good things happening on our social media, and I guess you could consider all that social media.

5:40 Yeah, and we appreciate all that you all do. I mean, it means the world to us. And so we just love you all.

5:47 To get into the show a little bit quicker, starting this week, we're going to do the Patreon shout-outs and the iTunes shout-outs. A little bit later in the show, after we finish this story, we do have a nice interview with author Dwayne Scott Cerny about his book. You heard the interview, right, the other day?

6:05 Yes, it was really interesting.

6:06 The book is pretty awesome. It's called Selling Dead People's Things. He was an antique dealer for years, and he's got some cool paranormal stories he's going to share with us and tell us a little bit about some of the instances he's had in his 30 years of selling antiques. Oh, my goodness. He's a fun interview, but we're going to have that one on a little bit. But in between the interview and the story, we'll go ahead and do the shout-outs for the Patreon iTunes at that point.

6:29 Okay, sounds great, man.

6:29 So are we ready to jump into this story?

6:32 Yes, honey, I'm so ready.

6:34 One more thing before I jump into the story.

6:35 Oh, okay.

6:36 Because it's getting so close.

6:37 Oh, yes, definitely.

6:39 Less than two weeks, we have the Indianapolis show with Mysterious Circumstances and Out of the Shadows. That is really close to selling out. I think there's under 20 tickets left, and as I put on Facebook the other day, we probably, between the three shows, have about 50 people saying they're coming. Well, if you don't buy a ticket, you're not coming, and everybody's going to try to wait until the last minute and get it, so if you want to make sure you get a seat, you might want to jump on there.

7:02 Oh, yeah. Please don't miss it. It's going to be great.

7:04 Yeah, it's going to be a blast. Also, we added another show. We've got the one for the 20th of October with Graveyard Tales, EVP Mediums, and... Macabre Melts. That's in Nashville, Tennessee at a place called Hale Nashville. That's going to be awesome. And we haven't worked the details out, but the following weekend, which will be right before Halloween, we're going to be doing a show in Cincinnati with Brohile.

7:28 Oh, yay.

7:29 So we'll be coming back to Cincinnati that sold out last time, and we're going to do something fun right before Halloween.

7:34 Man, we are busy.

7:36 So I'll get you details as soon as we know that. Let's jump into the story of the West Virginia State Penitentiary, which is in Moundsville, West Virginia. which is why some people will call this the Moundsville Penitentiary. Moundsville itself got its name from all of the Native American burial mounds that are there. Most of these were from the Adena Native American tribe. In 1863, West Virginia seceded from the state of Virginia at the height of the Civil War.

8:06 They became their own state and immediately realized that they didn't have hardly any state facilities. They didn't have any schools. They didn't have any penitentiaries. And here's an interesting fact. At this time, Moundsville was given the choice of being the home of West Virginia University or the state prison, and they chose the state prison.

8:30 Oh my gosh. Yeah, I'm with you. I don't think it was a great choice.

8:34 And the great choices just started right off the bat, because in order to build the prison, they had to level the remains of the Adena tribe's sacred burial ground In 1876 to build the prison on top of it. Great.

8:45 So that just stirred everything up.

8:47 Yeah. The Grave Creek Mound Archaeological Complex is located right across the street from the prison's central tower. And we're putting some pictures of that up on Facebook. Grave Creek features the last burial mound of the Adena left in the city, as far as the one named after him. There's all kinds of them in the city, which is how it got its name to begin with.

9:10 Oh, okay.

9:10 And there's pictures of that as well.

9:12 Can't wait to see.

9:13 What exactly is a burial mound? Well, various cultures would build mounds that are basically small hills from various reasons, including burial, religion, ceremonial, sometimes just for residential purposes. But this went on for about a 5,000-year period.

9:32 Is it like that mound that girl kept going out and laying on in that movie?

9:36 Yes, there's a movie called Mounds. It's based on that.

9:38 Oh, it's what's called a mound?

9:40 Yeah, sometimes you feel like a nut.

9:42 Sometimes you don't?

9:43 So kids, what have we learned about building places on Native American burial grounds?

9:48 I've heard it a million times. Just don't do it.

9:52 So the prison was in operation from 1876 until 1995. It was very imposing. It's a big Gothic structure. This prison's got definitely... seen its share of adversity and tragedy, including murder, suicide, executions, torture as punishments, and Satanism.

10:07 Sounds like a load of fun to me.

10:12 The condition of the prison worsened throughout the years and was listed in the U.S. Department of Justice Top 10 for Most Violent Prisons.

10:19 Gosh. I don't think that's an honor to have.

10:24 One of the more infamous locations of the prison is the recreation room known as the Sugar Shack. And you can only imagine how I got that name. There were several instances of gambling, fighting, and raping in this room. No deaths, though, that we know of.

10:41 Well, that's weird.

10:43 The cells here are 5 by 7 feet deep. and there were three prisoners to a room. What? At one point, there were 2,000 prisoners here, and it was only designed for like 600. With more prisons being opened in the state, the number eventually got down to under 700 by the time the prison closed in 1995. The eventual closing of the prison kind of started in 1986 when the state of West Virginia pretty much said that these little 5x7 cells constituted cruel and unusual punishment. And within nine years after saying that was the case, the prison was closed.

11:23 Which is odd because the room size was deemed cruel and unusual punishment. And considering the punishment that went on in this place, that seemed like the most odd thing that would get it closed.

11:37 Yeah, that's crazy talk.

11:39 Let's talk about some of the definite, I guess, ways of punishment that were way worse than small rooms. In 1886, which was 100 years before this, before that came through, prison guards were caught hiding whips and other items from the state inspectors. One of the superintendents resigned from the prison, and he turned around and decided he was going to do like a tell-all interview. And he did it with a paper, I guess, called the Enquirer that was in West Virginia. He exposed the violence and the torture that was happening to the inmates.

12:13 This.

12:14 is a brief description because the way he actually wrote it out, it was, I don't know, it just didn't come across the same way. So I decided to paraphrase a little bit. But this is a brief description of what he said in the interview. He described a torture device that they made there at the prison called Kicking Jenny.

12:32 Kicking Jenny?

12:33 That's the name of it. It was shaped, I need you to picture this. It was shaped like a giant letter C.

12:41 Letter C, okay.

12:42 Okay.

12:44 Just picture now if you took that letter C and the open part was flat on the ground. That part was on the ground and then you had the C coming out of the ground.

12:51 Okay.

12:53 At the highest point at the top of the C would be about a three to four foot off of the initial ground. Then the guards would bring you out and at the very bottom where the ground was, you would strap your feet by ropes onto it. And then you would lean forward over top of this C. So now your whole stomach.

13:18 Oh, on the outside of the C.

13:19 Yeah, on the outside. So you're rounded. Your body then is rounded. Then you would reach your hands out over top of your head, and there would be little cuffs further around that they would cuff your hands to it. So now you're basically in the shape of a C as a person. And they said that the arms and stuff, the way that you were stretched out, that if there was any pressure at all, they felt like your body was split in half. Ooh. That's not the punishment. Oh, what?

13:47 No.

13:49 So after the prisoner was actually placed on this machine, the person doing the whipping would take these straps. It was two pieces of sole leather put together, about three foot long, and they would dip it in water.

14:04 Oh, dude.

14:06 And then the prison guard would beat the prisoner until they were almost dead or until the guard doing the whipping was completely worn out and had to stop. Oh, my God. That was one of the devices. Oh, wait, there's more. The next device was called the shoe fly. This device, the feet were placed in a stockade, okay?

14:32 Then the arms would be put out and they would be fastened And then your head was put like in a device to where it had to stand still. So you couldn't move your head. And you also couldn't move your arms, so you couldn't do anything to protect your face. Then someone would take a hose, like a water hose, and they would turn the water on full blast and straight into your face. And there was nothing you could do except just take the pressure of the water hitting you in the face. So imagine a solid stream of water in your face from a one-inch nozzle, no ability to change the position of your face or to protect it, and on top of that, the water was freezing cold.

15:17 I think I like that better than the letter C. Just letting it out.

15:23 Did I mention that there were 94 executions from 1899 to 1959? In 1899, the state of West Virginia decided that all of the executions would happen here at Moundsville. 85 men were hung at this prison. These hangings were public hangings until July 19, 1931. That's the day that Frank Heyer was executed for murdering his wife. Now picture this.

15:51 You've got a big crowd assembled. Frank Heyer walks up to the 13 steps to the platform. They put the noose on his neck that's got 13 knots in it. And by the way, it's 13 steps and 13 knots in the noose to be symbolic of the 12 men of the jury and the judge. Oh, how interesting. So he's standing there on the trap door. Now let me first mention that Mr. Heyer is a slightly large man.

16:20 Okay.

16:21 So the trap door opens. The full force from his weight reaches his neck. And his head pops off. He was decapitated, and his head rolled into the crowd.

16:40 Holy moly. What in the world?

16:44 Needless to say, this was the reason that they stopped doing public hangings from this point on.

16:50 That was the reason?

16:50 Yeah. Because his head was popped, decapitated off?

16:56 Popped, decapitated?

16:57 His cap was decapitated.

16:59 Good Lord.

17:00 Yeah, so they quit doing them, and then from that point on, the only people, it was by invitation, and it was like the family.

17:06 Yeah.

17:07 Yeah. That's awful.

17:10 That's, ooh.

17:12 You just can't unsee that.

17:14 No, you can't. And this wasn't the only botched hanging, because you're not going to be able to unsee this either. In 1938, Paul Arville Atkins, who supposedly haunts the Gallows area, by the way, for one of these botched hangings, He got to the top of the scaffold.

17:32 The scaffold?

17:33 You know, the scaffold.

17:34 You said the scaffold.

17:36 That's what it is.

17:37 It's a scaffold.

17:38 Okay. Anyway, he got to the top of the scaffold.

17:43 And.

17:45 He's standing there and before they could get the news all the way around his neck, the door opened up. He fell down. Down through the hole. Landed straight on his head and was badly injured.

17:57 So....

17:59 They grabbed him and took him to the hospital, right? No, they didn't.

18:04 I was going to say, you're kidding me, right?

18:06 They grabbed him and they took him back up there and they hung him properly this time.

18:12 How can you mess up a hanging?

18:15 A hanging?

18:16 Yeah.

18:17 The state did away with the death penalty for a little while, but they reinstituted it in 1951 in preparation of future executions against The prison commissioned a prisoner by the name of Paul Glenn to build the prison's first and only electric chair, affectionately known as Old Sparky.

18:36 Old Sparky.

18:38 Well, and because of the fact that he built this chair, you can imagine it probably didn't go well with the other inmates. No, of course not. Because they're violent. So they put him on a place called Rat Row. Rat Row was like 36 or 37 cells that were in a different location that were pretty much for informants and stuff like that to keep them out of the general population. Now, this chair had three buttons to push to start the electrocution process. Only one of the buttons worked. The day of an execution, an electrician would come in. He would wire all three buttons, but only one of them would be wired to work. Nobody knew which one was the proper one, and this kept the guards from knowing which

19:20 one actually caused somebody's death, basically. So it was for a conscious thing. But seeing how some of these guards acted in the past, I don't think they would have minded so much.

19:29 Yeah.

19:29 They were kind of jerks to begin with. So at the time of the electrocution, all three buttons were hit at once.

19:37 Oh, that's cheating.

19:39 No. They all three hit at once because if somebody, only one of them hits and starts electrocuting, you know it's you. Or if nothing happens, you know it wouldn't you. So all three hit at the same time.

19:48 Oh, I know what you're talking about.

19:50 Saying now.

19:50 And in that way, none of the three knows who actually electrocuted the guy. Okay, I got you. So that's why they do that.

19:55 Okay.

19:56 When this button is pushed, 1,700 volts would go through the prisoner inducing a heart attack. That's typically how it works. Then it would pause and send another 800 volts through them again Another pause, and then it would deliver another 1,800 volts into the body. The first 1,700 did the job. The second and third was to make sure that your brain was completely cooked.

20:21 Oh, my gosh.

20:23 That's really terrible.

20:25 It was terrible for nine people because nine people died before West Virginia banned the death penalty in 1965. This is a horrible place with lots of violence and death. Keep in mind, 94 executions, 988 murders.

20:41 Wow.

20:42 That's how you land yourself in the top 10.

20:44 I guess so.

20:45 And then we were talking about as high as that number sounds, some say that that number was much higher because of their shoddy record keeping back then.

20:55 Oh, no kidding. So a lot of deaths went unknown? Yeah, unreported. Oh, wow.

21:01 47 people committed suicide. So let's talk about some Satan worship in the Charles Manson.

21:07 All right.

21:09 Charles Manson's originally from West Virginia and he spent some time here at the penitentiary. And in 1983, Manson asked for a transfer here because he said he had family in West Virginia and he wanted to come back. What most people will tell you is that the reason he wanted to come here is because of the prisoner in cell number 17. He took the authority to court on several occasions because he was a Satan worshiper and he wanted the right to be able to sacrifice goats and chickens and was denied but used human blood to draw some pentagrams and some cool designs on the prison wall.

21:43 What the hell is wrong with him? You don't get what you want.

21:46 He also had followers at the prison, and the penitentiary ended up becoming a hub of Satan worship.

21:53 Well, that's the last thing they needed.

21:55 There were also some gruesome murders here. Let's talk about a few of them, and then we're going to tie on to some of the paranormal happenings here and talk about some of the best paranormal occurrences here.

22:03 All right.

22:05 October 8th, 1929, R.D.

22:08 Wall.

22:09 He snitched on some of his inmates and they put him in charge of the boiler room, mainly to keep him away from the other prisoners. Some prisoners bribed some of the guards, as usually happens in prisons, and got into the boiler room where he was sitting on the toilet.

22:24 Oh. No privacy whatsoever.

22:28 Right.

22:29 The three of them all had, and I stress, dull, homemade knives.

22:36 Oh, no.

22:37 They hacked him to death and decapitated him.

22:40 While he was sitting on the toilet?

22:43 While he was sitting on the toilet. His body was extremely mangled. For that reason, the boiler room is one of the most haunted parts of the prison. People report seeing an apparition of a headless man in the basement. They also see strange faces appear on the wall and a green mist swirling around the room.

23:00 Maybe it's a poop emoji.

23:02 It could very well have been.

23:03 That is sick.

23:05 R.D. is the most commonly seen ghost on the premises.

23:11 Golly, it's just hard to imagine that.

23:14 Here comes another one. If you think that one's hard to imagine. William Reg Snyder. Now we're going to get into some background on Mr. Snyder here because he is a class act. He spent some time in the penitentiary for committing arson. Got out and wasn't even out a month and was back in jail for killing his father.

23:32 Now the murder of his parents was what landed him You know, there for the rest of his life. So after he got out of prison for the arson deal, he goes home and he finds out that his 15-year-old sister was dating a neighbor boy by the name of Grog.

23:47 Grog?

23:48 Well, that was his last name.

23:48 Oh, okay.

23:50 And on January 5th, 1968, Red grabbed a rifle. He went to his dad's room and said he was going to go after that Grog boy. Why, I don't know, but apparently he didn't like him. When his dad tried to stop him, Red shot him in the head. And then fled the house and went down to the Grog house. He gets down there. There was nobody there except for the siblings. And the boy's parents came home. And when they did, they found that Red was sitting there holding the eight children hostage at gunpoint. So the father of the family decided that he was going to try to intervene and got into kind of a wrestling match with Red.

24:28 And Red shot him in the chest. By this time, there was already... police and stuff showing up and uh they end up getting there and and he comes out and he's shooting at the police.

24:42 Man he has got issues right so they.

24:44 Obviously get him they found him guilty of killing both of those men and they gave him life without parole good while he was in there he became leader of the aryan nation which is the uh for those of you that aren't familiar a huge white supremacist group he was highly feared amongst a lot of the other inmates He was also known as a straight shooter, though, with the guards. He would be 100% truthful with them and was known as a straight shooter.

25:11 Right.

25:11 So he just felt like, you know, hey, I just went, in his mind, from bad to better.

25:18 I guess.

25:18 Because he felt like people were respecting him.

25:20 I know.

25:21 They just said that they could tell. If he told you something, it was true, and he just wanted the same respect.

25:27 Mm-hmm.

25:27 So he didn't bother you. You didn't bother him. That was kind of the motto around there. But if he wanted you dead, you better make peace with your maker because it was going to happen. He played a major role in the 1986 prison riot that killed three different inmates there and had 16 people held as hostages. Now, as a result of his involvement in the riot and several other inmate deaths going all the way back to 1971 and several other things that they decided to throw in there on him, him and Rusty Lassiter We're assigned to the North Hall where the most violent offenders were held.

26:00 In 1992, Rusty and Red were getting ready to go out to the recreation room when the cell doors opened. Rusty ran straight into Red's room, jumped on him, and stabbed him 37 times. Whoa. It was so violent that Red was choking on his own blood and bled out right there all over the cell.

26:25 Sounds like he was waiting to do that for a while and got that aggression out.

26:29 Yeah, apparently. Now, we didn't talk about it much in here, and this might end up being a little extra for the Patreon for the week. There's a cemetery that was established back in the 1800s, and it's pretty much all just people from the prison.

26:47 Oh, I got you.

26:49 A cemetery for just the prisoners. Because some people were embarrassed. And they wouldn't claim their loved ones, especially if they were executed.

26:57 Yeah.

26:59 And so that basically was like a pauper's filter. They didn't have any family or they were just poor or whatever the case was. Well, this cemetery was, like I said, you got a little bitty grave marker and that was it. Now, as we talked about, he was well-respected here in this prison and they didn't want him buried here. So what they did was, They took up a collection to have him buried into a cemetery that was on the other side of town called Riverview. And Riverview, they weren't going to have that. Pretty much a lot of military there, a lot of well-respected people.

27:39 Were buried there.

27:39 Yeah, you don't want to throw that.

27:40 And they're kind of like, yeah, we don't want this piece of crap in our thing. Well, eventually they accepted him, but nobody knows where he's buried at because there's no marker.

27:52 Oh, my gosh.

27:54 Some people think because of this treatment that Red is said to haunt the prison. Former garden tour guide Maggie Gray said that this is a spiritual aspect of this whole place with everything that's going on, but there's definitely something there that's not human. She said that Red was there when, or she was there actually when the day Red died. Okay. And she said it was so horrific at just the sight of what went on. She said it may have been the even with the guy getting decapitated and all that, she said this might have been the most vicious crime created inside the prison. Oh, man.

28:31 And it's funny that he thinks, like, even in his afterlife, that he gets pissed because they didn't honor him the way he feels like.

28:40 He should have been.

28:41 Right.

28:43 See, now that's a sick mind.

28:45 See, Maggie... Like I said, she's a tour guide now, but she was a prison guard for a long time. And she said her and Red were friendly. They weren't friends by any means, but they were friendly. She would talk to him on a regular basis. She said she would come home. Come home. She would go by his cell.

29:01 For him, it was home.

29:01 Oh, I'm sure.

29:02 But she would go by his cell every day. And he would say, morning, Mags. And she would say, morning, Red. And that would go on on a regular basis. Now, after he passed away and the prison was closed... in 1995 she became the tour guide and she was walking one day she was getting ready for one of the tours and she heard from a couple of cells away morning mags oh she was the only one in the place she said she got goosebumps and she called a woman named polly who was like a expert on the prison and she came down there to help them out and what happened is after that night i it was closed down for the tours and everything, they went back in after hours and decided they were going to go to Red Cell, and they wanted to try to take

29:49 a tape recorder and see what they could get out of it. Well, Rusty, the man who had killed him so many years before, back in, well, 92, wasn't that many years ago?

29:59 Oh, yeah.

30:00 Was getting ready to get out of jail. Now keep in mind, this was still years later, because that happened in 92, and we're already into 2018. But this guy got released from jail, and she said that she felt like that Red should know that. So they go into the place. They're sitting in the cell, and she says, I've got to tell you something. Rusty was released from prison today. Now, she said when she said, I've got some news for you, there was nothing. They went upstairs and they started listening to the recording and she rewound it back to where she said, I've got some news for you. And afterwards, just as plain as day, you can hear her say, I've got some news for you.

30:50 And he says, I already know. I mean, it's one of these that it's really plain.

30:57 Oh, my gosh.

30:58 Yeah.

30:59 She also said, so they went back down, and they're talking, you know, she wanted a sign, and she said she could feel a finger run across the back of her neck.

31:09 Oh. Well, you know what? How did that guy end up out of prison for such a horrific crime?

31:18 I have no idea. I mean, he was already in prison for something. He'd been in there for years to begin with.

31:22 Well, that's messed up.

31:25 Yeah, because, I mean, you figure they moved both of them to the north Sat at, what, 1986? Yeah. So he'd been in there for a while to begin with, but like I said, I don't know what year this was.

31:37 So I bet old Red's about to haunt old Rusty's butt.

31:42 He probably did a little haunting of his butt while they were in there. That might have been why he stabbed him. So anyway, there are many places in Moundsville known as hot spots. Some say the violence and the deplorable conditions obviously added to this and makes it a perfect place for residual hauntings. which, as we've discussed before on the show, is basically a replay of tragic events.

32:02 Dang, that is crazy.

32:06 Some of these hot spots that have more than an unusual amount of paranormal activity. What's a usual amount of paranormal activity? Yeah, I mean, seriously. But these places are the chapel, the showers, as you can imagine, the death row, the north wagon gate, which is where they used to do all the hangings. While they were public and all that is where they did those at. And a sugar shack, of course, everyone. Another one of these spots is supposed to be the circular entrance gate, which is used to separate the arriving inmates from the warden quarters. Now, this circular gate kind of moves on its own to give the appearance that criminals are still coming and going to the prison.

32:47 Oh, that's pretty cool.

32:48 This is like a mechanical gate, so it's supposed to have some buttons pushed in order to work.

32:52 Yeah.

32:52 So that still happens.

32:54 So not like the revolving door.

32:56 Right. So the wagon gate where the hanging still has the trap door there. So you can actually go there and see the trap door and all that. People see a headless ghost slumped over looking for its head. Can't imagine who that would be.

33:10 That's not funny, really, if you think about it. But it kind of is now.

33:13 It's good he's still hanging around, though. So visitors here claim to hear sobbing and they feel themselves getting touched. And they see strange mists and orbs right there in that area.

33:23 Yeah.

33:24 The sugar shack. It was used in the wintertime when they couldn't go outside because of weather conditions. No homicides ever did take place here, but there was a lot of violence. People claim that you can walk through here in the complete darkness, and you can't walk through without bumping into something.

33:41 Hell doesn't know.

33:42 But when you turn on the lights, there's absolutely nothing in there. It's empty. There's nothing you could have been bumping into.

33:47 Oh, wow. I would not ever do that.

33:52 Then you've got the infirmary. And the infirmary, obviously, was the place in prison where if you were sick, you went to. And prisoners have this myth or superstitious belief that if you die in prison, that's where you're going to stay for all of eternity.

34:09 Oh. Hmm.

34:10 So.

34:12 Ninja. Rude.

34:16 So a lot of them, when they were in the infirmary, sometimes you just couldn't get people out of there quick enough to get them to the hospital. And they did pass away there. So a lot of people think that their souls are now thought to be haunting the infirmary. Witnesses hear crying and moaning there. And there was also a psych ward there, and that always turns out good, to where they did lobotomies on prisoners. People hear screaming and a gunshot in that room.

34:45 That damn place was just full of everything.

34:47 Then you got the North Hall. That's where Red was. Some called this place the Alamo, fitting to be doing this week. This is where Red was murdered at. Some people claim to feel a sticky substance still on the floor and smell a sickly sweet smell in the air.

35:03 Oh.

35:04 There's a second ghost in there, a guy by the name of Danny Lemmer. He was a very talented artist, and you can actually see his work all over the prison. There's a bunch of his paintings and stuff all over the prison. But he was also a member of a motorcycle gang and was stabbed through the eye in a revenge attack.

35:22 Stabbed in the eye?

35:23 Stabbed through the eye.

35:24 Yep.

35:24 Killed him.

35:25 You stabbed him in the eye and that killed him?

35:28 Yeah, I mean, it can go through your brain.

35:30 Oh, well, yeah.

35:33 Another ghost is Harry Powers. Now, he was the inspiration for a movie, Night of the Hunter. He was kind of a brutal man, so. He was executed in the 50s and he's the only unmarked grave over in that cemetery we talked about. The reason is kind of unknown on why his grave was unmarked.

35:52 So nobody knows, huh?

35:55 Then you've got the hole. Of course, you would expect that to be haunted. There's just screaming and crying is what people hear there. But last and definitely not least, you have the shadow man. He's the creepiest of all the ghosts and he's been caught on video and on camera. And I'm posted a picture of him a little bit earlier.

36:14 You did?

36:14 Yep.

36:16 He's clearly a powerfully built male figure. No ifs, ands, or buts about that based on his shadow. He has no substance, no features, but is obviously a man. He's been seen on several different spots around the prison. Those who've seen him said they can feel his eyes staring a hole through the back of their neck. They turn around to catch a glimpse of him.

36:37 Wow.

36:40 And that.

36:41 is what I've got for the Moundsville Penitentiary.

36:44 Man, that's really, that does sound like the worst thing I've ever heard.

36:47 It's a pretty messed up place.

36:50 And you know, it's like all those people did die and they get, I mean, they got what they deserved for whatever they did. Okay.

36:56 But to think that of all the places they haunt, it still has to be in prison.

37:01 A thousand homicides in that place almost.

37:06 That's just unheard of.

37:08 That's, Decapitations.

37:12 I mean, it is... I don't know.

37:14 I guess, do you think the guards just, like, gave up? I mean, there just wasn't enough guards. There wasn't enough people to.

37:19 Well, I mean, the guard problem started back in 1870-something when there shouldn't have been any issues at all. They were just jerks. I mean, granted, I don't know the type of people that were in this prison, but they couldn't have all been murderers and rapists and stuff like that.

37:33 No, I wouldn't think so.

37:34 There had to be some petty thieves.

37:36 Yeah, yeah.

37:37 So.

37:39 I don't know.

37:39 That's the most crazy thing I've ever heard. Just crazy.

37:43 Well, it can't be the craziest.

37:44 We've had plenty of crazy things. I don't know. That's a whole lot of crap going on in one place.

37:49 Well, let's switch gears for a second.

37:52 Okay.

37:52 And go from the bad to talking about the good. So we've got some Patreon supporters this week.

38:00 Thank you.

38:01 You guys are telling us how much you love the new Hibbley shorts we're doing. And we're glad you enjoy them.

38:07 Yeah, we do.

38:07 Because we're putting forth some effort on them.

38:09 Yeah, they're fun.

38:10 So here's some new ones for this week. Jenny Sendercott, Christy Hager, Peter Cowan, Matthew Harp, Paula Johnson, and Matthew and Paula, they both were already patrons, but they raised it to the higher dollar amount.

38:23 Thank you, guys.

38:24 You guys, we appreciate you so much. We just love you guys so much, and we appreciate that you take the time out to listen to our show, number one. And now we just feel like we're a big extended family, and we couldn't be happier.

38:39 And there's more to that extended family because Tracy cut me off.

38:41 Sorry.

38:41 There's also Dina Marie from Twisted Philly Podcast. And Laura, please, if I butcher your name, it looks like Hervonen.

38:50 Hervonen.

38:51 And that's probably wrong. So I'm sure that I butcher names more than anybody does. Then we've got.

38:56 A crap ton.

38:58 Crap ton.

38:59 Of reviews.

39:01 17 iTunes reviews. That's one off from the best we've ever done.

39:04 That's just unbelievable to us.

39:08 So we got Josh2481, LimeGreenYeti, that's one of my favorites, TinaMFoto, ZForce400, DallasTanya, ShakeAndBake91, ShelbyNewYork, Marcus Leonidas, FrancisTheHousekeeper, Skittles, Shelby New York, Marcus Leonidas, Francis the Housekeeper, Skipping Jen, Disney Mansion Fan, Three Mellow Cat, Ebras, Tanner Boo, Taybay97, Amanda P. Noble, and I think this is KGBAVK. I have no idea what it's supposed to be, and I apologize.

39:50 Woo-hoo!

39:52 All right.

39:52 That's amazing. Thank you, guys. Keep them coming.

39:55 I was running out of breath.

39:56 I know.

39:56 I took a breath over here for you.

40:00 So I wanted to, real quick, just play this interview for you. Dwayne Scott Cerny, he's funny as all get out. I had a good time with him, and his book is phenomenal. We posted his link a couple of times in the Facebook page earlier this week, and we'll post it again tomorrow. But go ahead and give a little bit of a listen to Dwayne. Okay, kids, it's interview time, and this one's a fun one. It's a unique book out, and I see these TV shows and stuff all the time that talk about antiques, and there's some of these ghost hunter shows out there where they talk about buying and selling these articles that may have some kind of attachments or something like that. Dwayne Scott Cerny has written a book based on his time dealing with antiques and

40:48 some situations that he's run across. The book's called Selling Dead People's Things, which, catchy enough title to begin with. It had my attention. The cover on it is pretty badass, I'm going to say. Another thing that'll catch your attention, even if you didn't see the name. And I'm glad to have Dwayne Scott Cerny on the show. Dwayne, thanks for coming on.

41:07 I'm thrilled to be here.

41:08 Dwayne, as most artists that I know, and I say artists because you are multi-talented, you have this book out, which is awesome in its own right, but you've been involved in music way before you picked up this writing habit. And you've actually had some success doing this, which a lot of people don't have the fortune of having. So tell me a little bit and briefly about your music career before you get into this.

41:33 Sure.

41:34 So when I went to college and my folks didn't have much money, I applied for every scholarship I could get. And I just got turned down, turned down, turned down. And just as a lark, I went and I like, Wrote like half a dozen poems.

41:48 It probably took me like a night.

41:50 Whereas the other ones, you know, for the playwriting scholarship, I wrote a play. For the fiction scholarship, I wrote a novel.

41:56 All this work.

41:57 This other stuff, I basically, you know, excuse the expression, crapped out in a night. Darn if I didn't win that poetry scholarship. So I got a four-year poetry scholarship. And it was given to me by Glenwood Brooks, who at the time was the poet laureate of Illinois. So right away, I kind of became a trained monkey. in that they dragged me out and I'd have.

42:17 To do these poems.

42:18 But I did some poems that were a little, made people uncomfortable, which was probably why.

42:23 I won the scholarship.

42:24 And when I got out of college, my dad had said, well, what are you going to do with that? Go sit on a mountaintop? You know, what good is a poetry scholarship? And I had a friend of mine who managed a band and he said, you know what? We've got all these guys who do these great riffs and they can't write lyrics, you know, save their lives. Why don't you write lyrics for us? So that's how I got started.

42:43 So I started writing lyrics for all these different bands. And as it progressed, this is now, you know, very early 80s, yeah, 1980, 81.

42:56 So it got into basically house music.

42:59 And that was the beginning of house music, if people are familiar with that, something that came out of Chicago. And it would become house music, a global phenomenon, a billion-dollar business. Unfortunately, I didn't make any of those billions. But I was there at the beginning of it. And we had a band, and it was called Danny Alias.

43:20 Because people, my nickname was Danny, and we couldn't figure out a last name. We said, well, it would be an alias. So again, before the TV show Alias. Started releasing things out in Europe and did some music videos. And to this day, Danny Alias is available online.

43:35 All over the place. I've been bootlegged around the world.

43:38 It's kind of crazy, because I'm now certainly an old guy, and most of the band members have gone on, left this planet, and it's still going on. And I'm still doing music, and people still ask me to write lyrics for songs.

43:51 But it was writing. In the end, it was writing.

43:56 And this book is very much, I'll use it with a small p.

44:01 poetic.

44:02 So I think a lot of people could write. I think I write well.

44:07 I don't think I'm great, but I think I write in a way that people seem to respond to it.

44:11 And that has a lot to do with the music.

44:15 Let's try to sell some books here. So starting off by saying you don't write great, it's probably not the best salesmanship, but we'll move on.

44:22 I'm being honest.

44:25 No, let's call it what it is. I think that's refreshing to Because, yeah, sometimes you can pick up something by, you know, Stephen King or something and it's written in a way. But sometimes you just want to see something that's, you know, written in a way that everybody can acknowledge. And like for this podcast, I mean, there's some podcasts out there that really just knock it out of the park writing wise. Unexplained, Lore, you know, some of these other shows, Pleasing Terrors. And I listen to those shows and I'm amazed. But I could never do something like that.

44:53 That's not my skill level. So I do what I do, and there's a market for that also. So no, I'm 100% on board. You're the writer's equivalent to what we are at the podcast.

45:03 Why?

45:03 Because you're honest, and that's the difference.

45:06 And you can't fake that.

45:08 If you're just legitimate and you're you, and it comes through to your listeners or readers, people appreciate that.

45:14 I think they're always rewarded for being you.

45:18 I can agree with that. So let's go to what inspired the book. I know you spent a lot of time dealing with antiques, and I think you had your own antique mall at the time. So talk a little bit about that and how that inspired this book.

45:33 Sure.

45:33 I would write about a lot of different topics, but I never really wrote about antiques, which, I don't know, just kind of didn't occur to me. I didn't really think it would be all that interesting. And Then I kind of stumbled on that. I said, you know, I get into so many curious houses and.

45:50 Intriguing situations, compelling situations.

45:54 And I thought, you know, I'm not a big fan of like reality TV. There are some things that are good, you know, like the Antique Roadshow. I think, again, it's legitimate. But I thought, you know, what I don't see is that shows that really take you in to the experience because so much of, I go back to reality TV because it's just, how people are brought into the experience.

46:16 And so much of that is, it's set up, it's fake.

46:20 And so I thought, you know, what would be interesting to really bring people into the hoarder house? And there's both low-end hoarders and high-end hoarders. And they're equally fascinating and very similar personalities.

46:32 Whether you have any money or not. Crazy's crazy, you know, 24-7. And I think....

46:40 I think that's what makes the book different is because you're there with me. I take you on the house call. We go to the estate sale. And it's from.

46:52 Attic to basement.

46:53 And what I found through all of these is people are their stuff. When the person's actually there, it's pretty clear how these things happen.

47:05 Sometimes they'll actually explain it to you. why they ended up with all these things, but what they collect and why they collect. But even more.

47:11 Intriguing is when the person isn't there that they've passed on, you have to become.

47:17 A bit of a detective to figure out what the heck happened here.

47:22 Why are there a thousand monkeys here? What's all that about? And I found that very compelling. And when I started writing about it, what I realized is people wanted to read about it, too.

47:33 I think it's very real, again, because it's true.

47:36 So I related, there's probably, the book has probably about 50 of some of my best stories over 30 years. And I don't want people to know, too, like, I don't stumble onto paranormal things every other day, even once a year. But every rare once in a while, so there's probably half a dozen stories in this over 30 years, there have just been some inexplicable situations.

48:00 And I present them just as that.

48:01 That's, you know, I think the whole thing's interesting. I've always had a fascination with antiques. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not one of these people who love antiques. I'm not somebody that wants a bunch of antiques in my house. Not for other reasons that I'm just not that type of person. But I've always wondered, kind of like you said, antiques, sometimes when you look at it and who had it, especially if they're not around It is cool to kind of imagine why they were interested in that piece. What was the reason why that piece stood out to them to where they had to buy it? In some cases, it's been a lot of money to get it. And to me, that's just always been fascinations. You know, I'm like that with artwork. I've never understood the fascination of, oh,

48:42 I want to have this million dollar Da Vinci.

48:45 Why?

48:45 It's going to hang on the wall. You're not going to sell it. I guess that's just me. I'm not a collector of any kind, so this hoarding fascination that some people have, and I know in some cases it's a mental illness, and in other cases it's taking them back to a childhood memory or whatever the case might be.

49:02 Exactly.

49:03 Right. It is fascinating to me nonetheless.

49:06 Well, I always say if you look around your surroundings, how did everything get there? I mean, in your house, your listeners should do the same thing. Look around.

49:17 I always say, unless you've been on some redecorating reality show, everything got there via you.

49:24 You inherited it. You bought it. Maybe you found it. You're driving down the street one day and saw that on the curb and said, hey, that looks cool. Why did they throw that? There's that.

49:35 And of course, people gravitate towards things thinking it is a value. And then they get it home and say, well, you know, I'll just keep this. Maybe this will be worth some money someday.

49:45 So people kind of get hung up on the word antiques, like we're talking about, you know, some 18th or 19th century artifact, some rare Frank Lloyd Wright chair. No, not necessarily.

49:56 It can be almost anything, especially when you talk about antiques and, you know, collectibles moving into that.

50:02 I mean, look at the interest now in vinyls. which is a good example.

50:05 Vinyl has come back. And people have huge collections of vinyl. But you talk to them and say, well, I don't collect anything. I've got 10,000 records in my basement, but I.

50:14 Don't collect anything. Right? We all collect stuff. A lot of us just don't want to admit it.

50:19 It is funny you say that, especially with the vinyl thing, because I'll never, I don't understand that. Look, I'm all about progress. CDs came out, fantastic. Digital came out, fantastic. Why would I want to go back to vinyls? It's just... but it's a nostalgia thing.

50:33 I'm with you on that.

50:34 Yeah, I totally, but you know, you talk to these people and the audio files and that crack.

50:38 And that pop, you know, you put on that Sinatra record. There's something about that record. Yeah.

50:45 I'm, and again, I, I'm, I'm with you. I'm totally, I'm always, I used to call myself a futurist who happens to be an antique dealer. So I totally, I totally appreciate this. And, and even what we're doing today. Oh my God, podcasts are amazing. But, There are certain people who just want that experience for some reason, especially with music.

51:06 And music is like food, right? I mean, it speaks to you.

51:12 That's true.

51:12 There are certain things that are just visceral.

51:15 So you can kind of understand why people kind of can get hung up on that.

51:18 Even if you or I don't, we can understand.

51:21 Yeah, but, you know, they don't do that in other things. I don't see anybody saying, man, I sure wish they'd come back with silent movies. I think Mel Brooks tried that, didn't work.

51:29 That's true.

51:33 Though, that being said, I remember about last year I went to see a six-hour presentation of Greed, Eric von Stroheim's Greed.

51:44 So it's a six-hour movie, two intermissions. It was packed.

51:48 I mean, so there's still a fascination with the medium. It's not coming back, but it's still there. And I would kind of pose antiques to be the same way. Now, these antiques aren't coming back. We're the antiques of the future. But they're here, and you can experience them by owning them, collecting them, or just appreciating them, you know, like in a museum if it's something really valuable.

52:13 So they're still in our life, whether we like it or not.

52:16 What did you hope to accomplish with the book, and do you think you succeeded?

52:19 I think this is pretty early on.

52:20 You know, honestly, what I hope to accomplish is that there are other people who write about this. because I think there are people who have some amazing stories out there. I know dozens and dozens of dealers who are great storytellers and some amazing situations.

52:35 I'm always going, you got to write that down. You got to write that down. Other people need to hear this.

52:39 So as this goes along, I would, this might be a little boastful, but I think this is a genre that's new. I think this is a different kind of, it's a different genre, really not like anything else. I'm calling this kind of a hybrid memoir. And because it's something that just isn't written about. And it certainly seems from the response I've gotten, I mean, the book's only been out a month, but it's been doing really well.

53:04 And people are contacting me from all over the place. So I'm hoping more people write books like this.

53:10 So let me ask you this. We like to have our guests come on and tell us some stories that they ran across. I know you've had some paranormal experiences, so I'm going to ask you to get into a couple of them. Before we get into that, though, I want you to tell people how they can find the book and how they can contact you or keep up with you on the Internet.

53:27 Sure.

53:28 You can go to the book's website, which is sellingdeadpeoplesthings.com. There you can read a sample chapter of the book.

53:34 There's all kinds of blurbs from some actually famous people, which is fun.

53:38 You can interact with me. You can send me a story. Of course, it's available on Amazon.

53:44 But I also say support your local bookseller.

53:47 I'm a great believer in brick and mortar. So you go to any bookstore and have them ordered for you because it's available. And then you can follow me on Facebook, and that's Dwayne Scott Cerny, C-E-R-N-Y.

53:59 Of course, we're going to put links to all that on our Facebook pages and Twitter and stuff like that, too. So if you didn't have your pen and paper handy, you'll be able to access it pretty quick and click on a link and get straight to it. I haven't had a chance to read the whole book yet, but what I have read is completely fascinating. It's not, like, you know, it's not 100% paranormal-based stuff.

54:20 At all.

54:20 So it's not that type of a book. But like you said, there are some mentions in it, some occasions that came up. But it's super fascinating regardless. It really is written in a way that draws people in. And I'm not a reader. Most people know that. But I didn't really have a problem with what I have read on this as far as keeping my attention. So that's always a plus with me.

54:42 I'll tell you what, some of the best reviews I've gotten, there's been the people that said, I picked it up and I finished it in a night or two. and say, I never do that with a book. Or a really cute quote, you know, that it's old chestnut, you know, I.

54:55 Couldn't put it down. And people say, I actually literally couldn't put it down. That's great. I just love that. Because, you know, in the end, this needs to be entertaining. That was my goal. I mean, I want to convey these experiences of these 30 years of being in the business. But in the end, it's got to be entertaining. It's got to be worth your time. And I appreciate people's time.

55:20 Well, this is the moment that some of us have been anxiously awaiting. I'd like to hear some stories that you've ran across in all your 30 years of dealing with antiques.

55:30 Well, let's see.

55:30 Like I said, there's probably about a.

55:33 Half dozen in the book that I think are pretty strong. I'll tell you one that I think is kind of curious. I had a gentleman come in the store. This was back in the 90s.

55:41 An older gentleman, and he says that, He says, I got a desk I got to.

55:45 Get rid of. That's not exactly the way to sell something. I got to get rid of this. So what do you think? Let's take a look at it and go out in the truck. And he's got this great, this is kind of a midsize partner's desk. I don't know if your listeners know what a partner's desk is, but.

56:03 It's where the desk where all these little drawers on each side, partners and one would sit on one side of the desk and one would sit on the other. And then you've got this middle center drawer. That could slide either way and their partners could like slip a document to the other, you know, while they're still seated.

56:18 It's kind of a turn of the century, you know, teens thing.

56:21 Nice looking desk. 200 bucks. I got to get rid of it today. 200 bucks. That's a deal. I can make money off this. In the end, you know, I'm a business guy. So I buy the desk. I didn't really think much of it. I had my guys bring.

56:35 It down into the basement of my store, and it's kind of a very modern store in Chicago. We do a lot of mid-century stuff, so that's kind of an earlier piece for us. I tell them, you know, you should go just clean it up like you usually do, and I'll price it over the weekend.

56:52 This is where it gets a little weird.

56:54 I don't have the desk maybe a week or two, and it sells, and that's great. And wow, like 24 hours, 48 hours later, Woman calls me up and she goes, I need to bring the desk back.

57:08 Oh, no. So what's the problem? I don't want it. Is there anything wrong with it?

57:11 No, I don't want it. I'm bringing it back. I want my money back. Now, this is pre-Yelp. I always point out to people. But still, you know, I'm new in the business. I want people to be happy. If you're not happy with it, absolutely bring it back.

57:26 And I thought, man, I really didn't think anything of it. But again, I have it for a couple of weeks. It sells. This time it's gone maybe a week or two. Guy calls me back, calls me up, and I just know. I know you know what I'm going to say, right? This desk is coming back. Well, I'm getting a little annoyed here. And again, well, what's wrong with it? Gives me the creeps, right? Makes me uncomfortable. You're a grown man.

57:54 What's wrong with you?

57:56 But he goes, man, I want my money back. I'm bringing this thing back. You're going to give me my money. And of course, he brings it back.

58:02 I give him his money. All right. Again, a couple of weeks passed.

58:09 A woman comes in with her husband and she said she'd been looking for a desk just like this, that her grandmother had had a desk like this when she and her Sister used to play Tea House of the August Moon. They'd set up their little tea sets, little Occupy Japan tea set that they put in the drawers. She had a whole story of why she wanted this. Again, when people talk about buying back their childhood, that's what she's doing. Now, I remember, too, her husband says, well, how much is it?

58:36 I said, well, it's $ 6. 95.

58:37 And the guy's like, for this, I could get a desk like this at Ikea for $ 200. You know, are you crazy?

58:42 And you know the wife. We're buying this desk. She wants this one. If you want to have dinner tonight, he's buying this desk for her, right?

58:51 She asked me for a better price, and I think I went down to like $ 300.

58:55 It was like, I want this thing gone. And she buys the desk.

59:01 I hope you wrote, as is, no refunds on this one.

59:03 Oh, I really did. This is also why you're getting such a deal here, you know, because now I'm making $ 100. Yeah. honest.

59:12 This has been a lot of grief for nothing. She has the desk maybe a month, and she calls me back. But then here's where it gets really peculiar. She says, I don't really know why I'm calling, and I'm not calling to return it. I like the desk. I just need to know more about it. And I said, I really don't know more about it. Guy came in, I bought it off the street. And I said, you know, is there a problem with it? And she goes, well, the drawers don't seem to stay closed.

59:41 Okay. To check the glides.

59:42 Yeah.

59:43 We checked the glides. We checked the level of the floor. Yeah.

59:45 The drawer, the drawers come out and she goes, but sometimes they come all the way out and they'll like just fall out of the desk. Now we're going to, this is a desk where on either side, there's like 12 little drawers, kind of like a, kind of like index card size drawers.

59:59 Yeah. Well, that's, That's a little strange.

1:00:02 So, and I said, you know, I really don't know what to tell you on that one. I haven't run across that before, but, you know, if I find out anything, I'll let you know. Hang up the phone, and I thought, you know, I'm going to ask the two guys who cleaned the desk, my employees, if they just know anything.

1:00:20 And it never really occurred to me even to ask them about this. Now, I've got to say this.

1:00:23 These are two guys who did not know one another and did not like one another. which I think is an important part of the story. It was Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Nice guys, great guys, but they just did not get along. I ask about the desk, and they look at one another like I've said the F word.

1:00:40 What? What? And they're each other going, well, you tell them. Well, I don't want to tell them. You tell them. What? What? And they said, well, they said, you know, sometimes those drawers would open. Really?

1:00:51 Sometimes the drawers would open. Then again, there's even a longer pause, and he goes, you're not going to tell them what we saw. What did you see? Now, again, remember, this thing was in a basement. There was no natural light. There are no windows.

1:01:03 It's all just fluorescent lights in this in this basement.

1:01:06 Well, one of the times on a Saturday afternoon when these goofballs are working together, some of.

1:01:13 The drawers apparently open.

1:01:14 And they said these little balls of light flew out of the desk and then bounced all around the basement. It hit pillars and hit the walls. It's all just a concrete basement. And he said it was like the little balls were like, they were looking for like a place to go. And I'm like, when were you planning on telling me this?

1:01:33 Because you're going to save me a lot of grief. It doesn't take long before that woman calls me back. And like, I now have a story for her. But I'm in a spot because do I tell her this? This is the thing.

1:01:46 And I'm the kind of guy going, oh, it's going to be more trouble than it's worth if I don't tell her the truth.

1:01:53 So she calls me back. Inevitably, because she wanted to know what else I knew about the desk.

1:01:59 And I told her the story as I'm telling you this today, right? And she was kind of asking if I could guarantee that that was going to happen.

1:02:10 Right.

1:02:12 Right.

1:02:13 And it was like, no, we're going to go back to what you had just said. Remember that all sales are final? All sales are final, and I'm not guaranteeing something's haunted.

1:02:23 Oh, she said her husband was upset, going, you know, did we bring something unearthly into the house?

1:02:28 And it's like, well, you know, probably wouldn't be the first time. You adopted that cat, didn't you? And she was actually very, very sweet. And I told her the story, and I never heard from her again. I don't know if she then had those same experiences or she just had problems.

1:02:49 Keeping the drawer shut on that desk.

1:02:52 That's the occasional conflict in the antique business, is keeping your customer happy in a very peculiar situation.

1:03:02 It's kind of funny in the fact that there's people out there who doubt the paranormal. And I don't know if you were a doubter before you've ran into some experiences or if that's what changed your mind or if you always believe.

1:03:14 Yeah. Yeah.

1:03:16 But the reality of it is when you hear so many people, like in this instance, that the guy wanted to get rid of it badly, it goes out to, it goes out twice and comes back without anybody knowing any backstory on it. Then you've got the two, the two helpers that cleaned it, that have a story. And you've got this lady saying something's happened. At some point in time, you've got to be able to say something really weird is going on with it. You can't have like this mass hysteria thing going on when none of these people know each other and none of them know the story.

1:03:50 Correct, correct.

1:03:51 And you know, another reason that it made the book was because of those two employees. If I had said, you know what, these guys were buddies and all that, it'd be like they're pulling a prank on me.

1:04:02 They're telling me it's baloney, right? The fact that.

1:04:05 These guys didn't get along, didn't agree on anything, that to.

1:04:09 Me validated the story more than anything else.

1:04:11 So I think it's kind of interesting that just people's personalities can give credence to an incident because there was no value in this at all.

1:04:21 In fact, they just didn't even want me to.

1:04:22 Know about it because how is it going to make them look? How could it make the other guy look bad?

1:04:29 Where they were coming from.

1:04:32 Which means we've all had employees or worked with other people.

1:04:35 I'm sure we all have. You can kind of relate to what human nature is like. So that's kind of what I liked about the whole situation is.

1:04:45 That And there's more to the story. I've given you the Reader's Digest. Anybody who buys the book, you'll see. There's some things that really make it super sweet and super scarier than that. It was a lesson on a lot of different levels for me. Because in the end, I made a customer happy. And I actually made customers happy by taking the thing back.

1:05:09 So... clearly didn't want it in their lives. Why thought about this?

1:05:15 Like I said, I've been selling things for ages, and I've been selling on eBay for 25 years, and for a while there, people were putting out all these possessed dolls and haunted dolls. I don't want to say I don't believe in it. It's possible, but not by the thousands. I don't believe there are thousands of haunted dolls.

1:05:34 I just don't. I just don't. I think I'm right on that. So that's where it kind of becomes baloney to me.

1:05:39 And I think it's, in a way, and it's just people cashing in on it. And here's my final point on this, is that dealers, when they come upon something that's a problem, and let's be honest, a desk like this, as cool as it is, it's a problem. You want to get rid of it. You want it gone. You want it sold. You want it out of your life so that you can go on and try and run your business. It's really not about, oh, great, I've got a wanted desk. Now I can make.

1:06:04 $ 300 more.

1:06:07 Most dealers, that's not it at all. So I kind of call baloney on a lot of those things. Not that they can't happen. I'm sure they can. But most dealers want to get rid of something like that.

1:06:20 So let me ask you this based on that. How often have you ran across situations like that where you came across an item that was such a headache because of similar situations? in your 30 years of doing this?

1:06:33 Well, I think that's probably the biggest example and probably the best example.

1:06:37 There have been things that, and I mean, I'm.

1:06:40 Not, I've always put this out there. I have no psychic abilities. I feel, I think I'm a good listener. I'm a Pisces.

1:06:51 I'm empathic.

1:06:53 But beyond that, I'm nobody special. But I am sensitive to situations. And I will say it seems like when i'm in a house where let's just say um particularly in these hoarding situations as you mentioned earlier there's obviously some you know mental illness involved it can kind of permeate the house and i think a lot of the the objects in it and i don't necessarily mean that in a haunted way i just mean that there can just be a certain kind of negative vibe to the whole thing you know we go to the extreme and say if there's been i know of a situation where um there had been a suicide gentleman had hung himself in the closet. Unfortunately, there was all this great vintage clothing there, which, I'm going to be honest, you can

1:07:43 dry clean it all you want. It's going to be a hard sell. That stuff's going to be a hard sell. And I do believe in that. I do believe when there can be kind of an impression, when there's just a sadness.

1:07:55 And probably, too, there's the opposite of that, if there's a....

1:07:59 There can be a good vibe to things. I mean, there have certainly been houses where, like, everything I bought, I sold, and sold very quickly. And then you just kind of chalk it up to, well, that was great, that was pleasant, that made a quick buck. And others where I could buy almost the identical merchandise, priced identically, and I can't sell it to save my life. And I always kind of think back to, like, well, where did that come from? And I'll go, oh, that house. Yeah, that was a weird one. And so I think there's kind of a, and again, this is just me, my two cents, that and two dollars will get you on the bus. My impression is that there's a certain energy, the positive and negative, that is connected to everything. I

1:08:51 think we, certainly we are, and people's exposure to these items. So I think things can be kind of negatively. or positively charged. I don't think it retains it forever. I just think it's, we're all just molecules and, you know, it's how these things go on. I always say like, we're the temporaries, you know, humans, we're the temporaries, the objects, they go on and on and on.

1:09:18 And people don't really think about that.

1:09:20 Some of the objects probably have more interesting lives than we do.

1:09:24 That's probably, you know, it's as stupid as this sounds. I'll be walking along and I'll see like an old building and I'll see a little crack in the corner where nobody goes. It's like just the edge of a building. And I'll sit there and wonder about that crack. And it's inanimate, but I'll sit there and wonder about, you know, the things that went past that crack, things that, you know, bugs that might have crawled. And I know that sounds incredibly stupid, but I think about stuff like that all the time.

1:09:51 No, it's not.

1:09:51 It's like, why is that, though? There's something about that. That's that crack. Sorry you couldn't have used a different analogy. But something about that is speaking to you, is connecting to you, and there's a reason. Again, my guess would be that there's just some kind of residual energy that you're being drawn to and kind of fixating on. And again, everything else that's going on in your life at that moment, why are you staring at that?

1:10:25 Why are you obsessing about that?

1:10:27 I think it's as much about you as it does about that physical location or that object.

1:10:33 Maybe so. Dwayne, it's been super fun, brother.

1:10:37 This is great.

1:10:38 So the book, again, Selling Dead People's Things. It's going to be a good read. I think you guys are going to like it. Pick it up. Dwayne Scott Cerny, the author. And like I said, if that story is just one of six you've got in the book on the paranormal side to go along with all the other cool stuff, that's just going to be icing on top of the cake.

1:10:59 I think you'll like it.

1:11:01 Well, brother, I'll talk to you soon. I wish you the best of luck with this book. And I don't see any reason why it won't continue to be a huge success. Can't wait to see you on the top sellers list.

1:11:13 If so, you made it happen.

1:11:16 Hey, don't put that pressure on me, Ricky Bobby.

1:11:20 All right, brother.

1:11:21 Well, I'll talk to you soon.

1:11:22 Okay. Take care now. Bye-bye.

1:11:25 I bet he's a fun guy to hang out with.

1:11:26 Oh yeah, definitely.

1:11:27 He'd be somebody you'd like to take to the peddler's mall or something.

1:11:31 Oh my gosh.

1:11:33 Yeah.

1:11:33 That would be great.

1:11:34 All right, guys, we thank you so much for being a part of this. Uh, we, can't express how much it means to get these reviews that you give for us and, and just basically interacting with you in the group. Once again, if you're not a member of the Facebook group, come on, join in and have some fun with us.

1:11:51 Yeah.

1:11:52 We'd love to see more of you in there.

1:11:53 All right guys. And we'll see you next week.

1:11:55 Have a great week guys. Love you.

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