Wisconsin Wonders

This week we have a special treat for you! Al from Point of Insanity podcast is hosting the show today and with some amazing research to share! Today we will talk about ghost towns, local legends, and the Outagamie Asylum in Wisconsin. Al  leaves us with curiosities that have us dong some research of our own. This week's crystal of the week is Chrysoprase. Stay Chaotic!

Al's links:

Poigamestudio.podbean.com
Poigamestudio.com

He is also on Threads and BlueSky at poigamestudio!

Transcript

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SPEAKER_02 0:17

Welcome to Contouring Chaos. We're two witchy weirdos with microphones. I'm Chase, and this is my co-host Allie. And I still don't believe that Jim Carrey didn't get cloned. And we're here to tell you something weird. Let's set the vibe. Wait, he when did they clone Jim Carrey here?

SPEAKER_01 0:37

You didn't see that whole thing on the computer where he went to go accept an award, and then his face was all weird looking, and then it was like, oh no, this guy, um who's like a makeup artist or something, has done stuff like that before, and he shows like a picture, like a video of him taking off that face. But then there was like another AI video of Jim Carrey also removing that thing. But I'm like, all like I don't think Jim Carrey actually responded to any of the videos, and I'm like, I'm sure he I don't know. It's it's just all weird. Wild.

SPEAKER_02 1:11

That's wild. I've not heard this conspiracy theory. No, uh, it's been all over my Facebook. Our algorithms are very different. Most likely. We're just comparing my you know what's in my algorithm? Cake decorating with icing.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Oh, that's cute. I got this little uh AI alien baby. Um I think I've got to be. Yeah, you sent it to me a few times. He's adorable. He is my motivational buddy.

SPEAKER_02 1:37

Motivational buddy. So um I'm gonna pull a finger so that we can um take our deep breath because we jumped into some pretty chaotic stuff before we can even breath for the week. And I kind of need that. So let's go ahead and take our deep breath in and out. All right, you wanna pull a finger?

SPEAKER_01 2:05

I'll pull a finger.

SPEAKER_02 2:09

Well, what's that do?

SPEAKER_01 2:10

That's the pulling of fingers at least.

SPEAKER_02 2:12

Oh you gotta pick one to keep one with the back.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

Alright, today's lucky number is gonna be number 46. Oh, nice.

SPEAKER_03 2:26

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

And today's uh badass affirmation is going to be less stressing, more fucking blessing. Yeah, it's very nice.

SPEAKER_02 2:36

What's chaotic in your life this week, Allie?

SPEAKER_01 2:39

So my chaos this week was actually just uh I don't even know how to explain it. So last week I had a mental breakdown and I thought I went crazy. And um I had one conversation with my boss, and like two days after, my brain did a whole 180, and I don't understand why I was going crazy.

SPEAKER_02 3:03

Um just awareness.

SPEAKER_01 3:08

So um that made my brain feel chaotic, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:11

Yeah, that would make that would make one feel chaotic.

SPEAKER_01 3:14

Um what's uh what's been chaotic in your life this week? I have a list.

SPEAKER_02 3:20

When my friend Ellie was taking me back from my gasoline issue a few weeks ago, I completely forgot to like include this in the story, but like I was grabbing something from the utility room, and as I'm grabbing something from the like it was like a trash bag, as I'm grabbing it, I hear a man's voice go, um, hello, like all Zach Began style, right? And I was like, I just kind of paused for a minute and I went, Allie, did you just say something? And she goes, Yeah, I said, Hey, let's go. And I was like, that's no, nope, that's not what I heard. I that it was much lower pitched, and it was a man, and it was a question, and so like I understand that like it rhymes. Go, hello, I get it, but it was a deeper man's voice, and he went, um, hello. So that was just really weird to me. And um, I told her, I just heard a man's voice say this, and I was like, it could be someone from like one of the businesses next door, you know. Um, it was like 3:30, 4 in the afternoon. Most of them had already gone home, but I don't know. And as I'm saying that, I hear it again, clear as day, as if it's standing right next to me. I hear, are you listening to me? Oh literally, like to my right. And I was like, what the f and so I walk over like to in front of some of the mirrors, like right there where the short mirrors are, and she follows me and she goes, Oh my god, it's so cold right here, and literally like goosebumps up both of her arms. And I'm like, really? Because it's like pretty hot in this building right now. And she's like, No, Chase, look, and she like picks her arms up and I can see them. And she had hardcore goosebumps, and I was like almost sweating. We were standing like four feet away from each other. That is so funky, right?

SPEAKER_03 5:19

Weird, weird, just strange.

SPEAKER_02 5:23

Like I said, could have heard voices from next door, but it literally sounded like the first time it sounded like it was in the middle of the hallway, right? Like right in the entrance when you walk from the hallway into the training center, is where I heard it. And then I walked out and turned towards the utility room, and as I'm like talking to her, I hear it in that same direction, but closer to me. And then that's where she was standing, is in that general vicinity from where I heard it from when she got weird coincidence. I think not. So yeah, that's what's chaotic in my life this week. That is uh that's some interesting chaos. Coincidence. Um, we do have a treat for y'all. We have a man named Al who's gonna come on and talk to us about some local folklore in Wisconsin, some ghost towns in Wisconsin, the Audogami Asylum, and the lost town of Dublin. Not to be confused with the lost city of Atlantis. Right.

SPEAKER_03 6:31

Which you were about to mention something. Oh, yeah, you can find a Dublin merch. Yeah, so you know it's not space. No, it's not definitely real.

SPEAKER_02 6:43

But let's go ahead and get chaotic. I am I love the background.

SPEAKER_00 6:50

Oh, thank you.

SPEAKER_02 6:51

So um, we're Chase and Allie from Conjuring Chaos Podcast. We like weird stuff, talking about weird things. Um, our favorite is paranormal and supernatural things like ghosts, encrypted, and aliens, but the list goes on of anything that we'll talk about and be interested in hearing about. So the last episode I recorded was what the true crime, yeah. I and I had said for the longest time we're not gonna do true crime. And then um there we were reading about the Amazon review murderer.

SPEAKER_00 7:21

So yeah, even heard of that one.

SPEAKER_02 7:25

I I didn't either until I think I saw it on a TikTok video, and I was like, Well, I have some research to do now. So um, when we were talking on Facebook, you had mentioned the lost city of Doveland.

SPEAKER_00 7:39

Uh yes, the lost town of Doveland uh is something uh an interesting urban legend that I like talking about. And uh also while I was preparing for the show, I found out about another interesting ghost town in Wisconsin that when I was looking that up, it's like, okay, I'm gonna have to do my own episode on that. So, you know, I can go into that as well. Um, also, there used to be uh a mental asylum in the city where I live now, so I've done an episode on that and I'm happy to talk about that too. And um, you know, I know other little ghost stories and cryptids and stuff in Wisconsin, so I'm always happy to talk about uh those kind of things.

SPEAKER_01 8:20

That's okay. I've always wanted to visit Wisconsin. Um, it always seems like one of those places where, like, you know how like there's just certain areas where supernatural stuff seems more like prevalent, and it's one of those like that New Mexico, right? Utah, Utah, yes, yes, I think all the plants are aliens.

SPEAKER_02 8:37

That's um Utah, I believe, is where the Dulce base is.

SPEAKER_00 8:40

So yeah, and well, you don't want to visit uh this Sunday and Monday because right now they're predicting uh 20 to 25 inches of snow on Sunday, and then another like 9 to 11 on uh on Monday. So yeah, this March is generally not a good time to visit Wisconsin because last week it was like in the 50s and 60s, and now it's gonna be snowing again.

SPEAKER_02 9:07

Wonderful, wonderful. Uh yeah, you're right. I don't want any part of that. I hate snow. I'm probably the only southern person on the planet that hates snow, but it's not my favorite thing. I really want their cheese curves. Oh, everyone, yes, yep, yep, that is a fame of theirs. So, real quick, before before you um really start diving into anything, uh, shameless plug. What where can people listen to you?

SPEAKER_00 9:33

Well, you can find my podcast at poigame studio dot podbean.com. I recently I've been doing mostly creepypasta narrations, but I also have a show I do called Strange and Interesting, which is about folklore, the paranormal, uh urban legends, and just other things that I happen to find strange or interesting. Um, and what I used to do a lot of were shows about like uh geek stuff like Dungeons and Dragons, role-playing games, movies.

SPEAKER_02 10:06

Oh hey, we're uh we're on the same campaign. That's our that's our favorite thing right there. It's just always exciting when someone else has a similar interest like that. So go ahead, keep on talking. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you.

SPEAKER_00 10:21

Oh, that's okay. And uh, because I self-published my own role-playing games uh under Point of Insanity Game Studios. So I've focused mostly on original systems as well as I have a few systemless settings I created where they're just the sit the settings, so you can use them with whatever role-playing game you want. So, you know, if you are a Dungeons and Dragons fan, you could use it with first edition, fifth edition, third edition, whatever edition you prefer.

SPEAKER_02 10:50

We yeah, we're we're fifth edition newbies.

SPEAKER_00 10:54

Well, I've been playing DD since Elf, Dwarf, and uh Halfling were races and we're we're classes and not races. So I I go back to the 80s.

SPEAKER_02 11:04

Oh wow, nice, very nice. My my current character is uh Wood Elf Druids, so of the moon circle, and she was my original character, so I'm really glad that she's come back.

SPEAKER_00 11:15

Yeah, I'm currently playing in two games a second edition game where I'm playing a dwarf cleric, and then in a fifth edition game where I'm playing a uh fighter rogue.

SPEAKER_02 11:27

Nice, nice. I forgot what Ali's character is, but I know turned myself a trash push. I'm an osteomancer, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

Well, my my fighter rogue is uh a swashbuckler, so I just try to find lots of interesting and annoying ways to annoy my DM.

SPEAKER_02 11:49

That's what my I I played a rogue who was a puddle, and not really, it was an accident. I made so many jokes about my water. I'm I always say it wrong, my water genassi being a pot made of water and being a puddle. So eventually our DM was like, fine, she's made of water and a puddle. So a fun time, but she was a she was a squash buckler, and she was raised by Mel Gibson, apparently. So um let's jump right on into it. Tell us tell us some some cool stuff.

SPEAKER_00 12:24

Well, there uh is certainly more to Wisconsin than just cows, cheese, beer, and the packers. So there were actually uh a quite a few ghost towns in the state of Wisconsin, a lot more than I'm currently aware that there's a lot more than I was aware of. A lot of them date back to like the 1800s to early 1900s. Generally, these were towns that were built to house workers who were involved in the lumbering or mining industry because yeah, lead mining actually used to be a really big part of Wisconsin's industry. I don't think we do as much as we um anymore, but it was huge in the 1800s, and that's actually how we got the nickname the Badger State, because a lot of the miners who came to uh work in the mines there were not natives to Wisconsin, they came from other states, and instead of building houses, they would just dig holes into the side of the hill or whatever, and they would live there for the few months that they were working. So people are like, hey, they live like badgers, and that's how we got the nickname the badger state.

SPEAKER_02 13:37

Okay, that makes sense. That's also a dangerous way to live, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:44

And I I suppose that you know, except if you're only going to be in there for uh someplace for a few months, you probably don't really want to invest a lot in a house. I used to work at a geology museum and we had an entire exhibit where we talked about Wisconsin's mining heritage. And uh, whenever we gave tours for the school groups, we'd always like to talk about okay, you know, back uh then when you were, I think it was like eight or ten years old, you didn't have to go to school anymore. If you wanted to, you could go work in the mines. So we'd ask the kids, how many of you would like to go work in the mines? And then we'd explain, you know, what it was like. And usually as we started talking about the conditions back then, more and more uh kids would put their hands down, like, I think I'll stay in school.

SPEAKER_02 14:33

I bet, I bet.

SPEAKER_00 14:36

Yeah, so the uh one ghost town uh was the town of Pendarvis, which is now part of the town of Mineral Point. That was one of the major mining areas back in the day, and the the town currently is or what's left of it rather is part of the historical center, and you'll find that with some of the ghost towns in Wisconsin where there might be a few buildings left, but they were just incorporated into the local historical center for uh educational purposes. Now I have heard that there is legends of a vampire in mineral point. I haven't really yeah, I haven't really researched it very much, so who knows? That might be a another future episode for my podcast. Um so that's one of our cryptids uh here. Another ghost town, and this is one like I said, I just found out when I was preparing for the the episode, and that was that is the town of Vori, or as it was known as the uh strangeites settlement. So this town was formed by a man named Jane James Strang, hence the name Strangites. Uh, he was a Mormon, and after the murder of uh John Smith, there was a bit of an you know disagreements about who would be the successor, and he felt that you know he could be the successor to the uh to the church, but unfortunately, he was still a recent convert, so he didn't have the name recognition, and more people chose to follow Brigham Young. Well, uh he actually led his followers from Illinois up to uh southeastern Wisconsin, where they formed this uh settlement, and the uh name uh Vori uh supposedly means something like Garden of Peace or uh something to that effect. And what's interesting is that he claimed to have found several plates that are known as the Vori plates, so these uh plates supposedly contain the record of Raja Mancho of Vorito, not sure if I'm pronouncing that correctly, but uh this was supposedly an ancient uh uh leader in North America. So unlike the golden plates that are known from Mormonism, there are people outside of the religion that did verify they existed, however, their current unfortunately their current whereabouts are unknown. But um eventually the like I said, the settlement uh did die down a little bit. They did try to start a quarry, but uh unfortunately the because of financial reasons, the you know they never finished some of their buildings, but there is still a town in uh Wisconsin called Vori, and that's where the again the settlement was uh was formed.

SPEAKER_04 17:51

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 17:53

Now another another interesting ghost town. Um the I've heard it called two things uh old Newport and the other, some people call it the Mo settlement. This is it's interesting because it has uh its history tied in with this the famous city of Wisconsin Dells in the south-central part of the state. Now the tourism department likes to call it the water park capital of the world, but my dad always liked to call it the tourist trap capital of the world. Um, so the uh back when the lumbering industry was starting to uh pick up down there, there were people that moved down there, formed the most settlement and or old Newport, whichever you prefer to call it. But unfortunately, the plans for the railroad changed. And this is something you find with other ghost towns in Wisconsin, especially some of the ones in the northern part of the state where lumber industry was really uh really prevalent in a very important part of the economy. Um, the like the the path a railroad was supposed to take would change, so that meant there'd be less um commerce and less travel to the town, so the people packed up and and started to leave. Well, that's what happened with the case of uh old Newport is the railroad company decided that they would build the uh the railroad a little bit north along the Wisconsin River to go through a city called Clareborne City, and because of that, the population started to move to Clareborne, which eventually became the town of Wisconsin Dells. So Wisconsin Dells is an interesting city. I especially if you do like water parks, but they also have other uh tourist attractions there. Um, there is a mystery spot there, or rather, there used to be. So I'm not sure if you're familiar with those or if you've ever been to one.

SPEAKER_02 20:01

Um, I have not. Me neither.

SPEAKER_00 20:05

So these are tourist attractions where uh things are not quite right. Like one of the famous demonstrations they give is they pour water and it appears to move uphill.

SPEAKER_02 20:18

Or okay, I know what you're talking about then. I have a bunch of those on my bucket list for sure. Like there's some place somewhere where, like, if you stand within a certain circle, you can't hear anyone outside of that circle, supposedly. Oh wow, yeah. I don't know, I haven't been able to find if it's a real place or not.

SPEAKER_00 20:36

Yeah, my wife and I went there in 2004, but unfortunately it closed in uh 2006. So a lot of it relies on these optical illusions. There's generally going to be a fenced in area, they're built on usually about a 20-degree slope. And uh because your perception of where the horizon is gets messed up, that's what causes a lot of these strange things to appear to occur. And that's actually the reason why the water can appear to flow uphill, it is actually going downhill, it's just because of how they build everything and all these weird angles to your eye. It looks like it's going uphill, but it's not.

SPEAKER_01 21:20

Okay, so I think the closest thing that I've seen to it is like when at the Ripley's Museum. Oh, the box. Oh, they have a spout that comes out, and it looks like it's uh the water is going up the spout instead of coming down.

SPEAKER_02 21:33

Okay, yeah, which is done by lights, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:38

Yeah, I know we used to have a Ripley's Believe It or Not museum down in uh down in Wisconsin Dells. I'm not sure if it's still there though, because I it's been a few years since I've been there and I don't know everything changes every few years in that town.

SPEAKER_01 21:54

Oh yeah, no, same thing like San Antonio, I think they're getting rid of it so that we already stand the historical.

SPEAKER_02 22:00

Yeah, they already they got rid of that. And we had two um two different Ripley's. One was just like the general Ripley's, and then one was the Wax Museum, and then one was a scary, like the horror house. Yeah, it was that was kind of cool, the scary, the haunted house. Um, and then they also had like a Guinness World Records thing there too. I think that's where they took all four of them out. And yeah, they don't, yep, no more, unfortunately. They said too tacky for the Allen City.

SPEAKER_00 22:32

Yeah, I know they've uh they've got several uh ha they've had several haunted houses on Main Street there. And now this is actually something that happened to a friend of mine. Um, I've never been to any of the the haunted houses in the Dells, but a friend of mine who was an amateur paranormal investigator for a while uh told me a story about you know, him and his wife were on a car trip, and uh one of the things they do is they would take turns reading uh while the other one drove. And they were reading a book about I think it was about like murders and ghost stories in Wisconsin, something like that. And and they had previously they'd went to when they were in Wisconsin Dells, they went to one of these haunted houses, and my friend um he got into the haunted house, he like rounded a corner, and then he just felt something like it was felt like it was someone breathing down the back of his neck. And you know, he's just like, Okay, I'm done. I'm you know, told his wife, we're leaving. Me too. Um, so they left, and then like Lys said, a few years, a couple years later, uh, they're driving, and you know, one of them is reading this book, and they were reading about how the haunted house that they went to, it used to be like an old garage, and there was a murder that took place there. So supposedly, um, there's other people who've had this experience where uh they're in this haunted house and they feel like you know they're being watched, or they feel someone uh you know, rub their hand or something against the back of their neck, or they feel breathing down their neck. So, I mean, he just read that and he just froze up because it's like, wait a second, we've been there.

SPEAKER_02 24:28

He experienced that, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:30

Oh, so yeah, he um so I thought that was an interesting story, and but definitely recommend visiting uh Wisconsin Dells uh during the late spring through uh early fall, you know, especially if you do like the water parks, it is a fun town. Um, I was actually surprised when I found out people actually live there, and it wasn't just uh this was when I was a kid, of course, that people actually live there, it wasn't just a tourist place, yeah. It just wasn't a tourist trap building your area.

SPEAKER_02 25:03

That's like I was surprised when I went to Disney World and found out that people live in Disney World. Oh, yeah, they have like their little they have college uh college dorms there for college students that are there on um on like abroad trips.

SPEAKER_00 25:20

Yeah, I think the town is named Celebration. Oh, or that might be yes.

SPEAKER_02 25:28

Do you know why you have that? I I'm sure that I've heard stories from um the And That's Why We Drink podcast about stuff that's happened there before. But yes, I've heard of that.

SPEAKER_00 25:39

Yeah, and the but to get back to the Dells, uh the I first heard about Old Newport back in the 90s when we went uh my family went on one of the boat trips along the Wisconsin River, and the uh the guide was telling us that story about how originally they built a town there, but then the railroad decided to go through Kilborne City instead, and that's why everyone ended up picking up and moving. And the at least back in the 90s, the only thing that remained was just like the foundation for the tavern. Oh, what whether it's still there or whether they ended up tearing it up or not, that I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 26:20

Okay, wow. So that must have been so disappointing for them, too, because like a railroad really brings a lot of economy, well, brings brought brought a lot of economy to small towns along the way, you know. That was literally what helped them thrive.

SPEAKER_00 26:39

Yeah, and especially I could see how it was important for the mining and uh the mining and lumbering towns because, well, obviously, large uh you know, trees that you cut down and the amount of you know rock or minerals are pulling from the earth is heavy. So a train is gonna make it a lot easier to you know get that stuff out of town and get it to you know wherever it needs to go.

SPEAKER_02 27:03

Right. You're not gonna put it put it on a trailer behind a horse or your Model T.

SPEAKER_00 27:08

Yeah. Yeah, it's true. Cause as I've seen before, a lot of these places were from the like late 1800s, where I I don't remember when the Model T's and the first mass-produced cars were starting to uh I'm gonna look it up real quick.

SPEAKER_02 27:28

It won't take but a second. 1908 to 1927 is when the Model T was in um in production.

SPEAKER_00 27:36

Okay, so yeah, I assume so probably a most transportation was horse and carriage or trains, so because only rich people had cars for the first couple decades of that person. So um there, excuse me, so the uh so those are some of the actual verified ghost towns that we know about in Wisconsin, but uh one of the towns I always like talking about is Doveland. So I was introduced to the this topic a few years ago. My wife had uh joined a Facebook group where they are just talking about weird things, and I think it's called Strange Wisconsin, so it of course just focuses on Wisconsin, but uh she sent me a link to an article about Doveland, so I started to do a little bit of reading into it, and I thought it was uh interesting because well, first no one really knows where Dovlin was supposed to be, and supposedly the only evidence using that term loosely, of course, that Dovlin existed is there's a picture of a man and two women sitting at a table in what looks like a restaurant of some kind. And also, if you do a search on the internet, you can find Doveland merchandise. So the story goes that Doveland used to be a site of a military town, and somehow it disappeared in either the late 80s or the early 90s, you know, which is interesting because usually when we hear about ghost towns and you know towns disappearing, we tend to think of like the you know the 1800s or early 1900s. So one of the theories is that the uh Dublin was built to house soldiers that were working on something called Project Sanguine, and the purpose of Project Sanguine was they wanted to put a series of cables underneath the bedrock of Wisconsin, and this would allow them to communicate with subs that were uh too deep in the ocean to be communicated with through normal means. So the so the uh the project was conceived during the cold war, you know. So, of course, there was a lot of weird stuff that was going on back then, yeah, lots of experimental things, yeah. And I mean, I know the government was even uh supposedly uh experimenting with psychics and people doing remote viewing, and you know, so yeah, there was a lot of weird stuff going on back then. So this would have uh this series of underground cables would have covered about 40 percent of the state and been powered by underground bunkers. So in theory, it could survive a nuclear attack. Okay, however, the cost in 1960s dollars would have been in the billions, so adjusted for inflation. I have no idea how much that would be today. Um, and of course, there is also or there was also a lot of concern about any potential damage this project might do to the environment, right? So eventually Project Sanguine was downsized and became Project ELF, uh ELF standing for uh extremely low frequency, a type of radio waves. Okay, so the Navy did actually build several of these bases in northern Wisconsin and the upper peninsula of Michigan, and they were in operation from 1989 to 2004, which you know puts us in the appropriate time frame for Dovlin's disappearance. So, what exactly happened to Dovlin? There's a lot of stories which range from you know rather boring to stuff that you might tell around a campfire to stuff you would probably find in a science fiction movie. Okay, so probably the most prosaic theory is that Project Elf was shut down, and the soldiers who were working there just moved elsewhere, and then you know the town was uh torn down. So unfortunately, that's not a very interesting story when you're talking about paranormal things. So the other one of the other theories is that there the military did begin some underground construction, but due to a mistake, the town was destroyed and the evidence of it was covered up.

SPEAKER_02 32:42

That one makes a lot of sense.

SPEAKER_00 32:44

Yep. Um, other stories say that well, it may have just been the result of an unspecified, you know, science experiment gone wrong. Uh, another theory I heard is that the excuse me, uh, another theory I heard is that uh the town was somehow vanished by an evil spirit, though I didn't really find anything else about that, just you know, one of the campfire story type things you hear about. There's another theory that the town is still there, it's just invisible and we can't interact with it, like it's in an alternate dimension of sorts. Oh, I like that theory, which is yeah, it is an interesting theory, but of course, some people say that occasionally on the right at the right times of the year, you can actually encounter Dovlin and you can see it and you can hear uh the people living there.

SPEAKER_02 33:46

Oh, cool, that's a cool concept. I really like that now.

SPEAKER_00 33:51

Um another theory is that it's actually a hyperstition, which it's kind of a weird concept. Um, you find it more in like uh metaphysical and chaos magic circles, where at least what I could gather from it, a hyperstition is some sort of entity that tries to make itself real. So supposedly, if enough people start believing in it, Dolphin might become real someday.

SPEAKER_02 34:22

So there's a movie about this called The Apparition, where guy literally like creates an uh paranormal abomination through basically like enhancing his belief with specific types of like electrical equipment.

SPEAKER_00 34:40

Yeah, and there is a similar concept in Tibetan Buddhism called the Tulpa, which is an entity that you can bring into creation. Um, though I've heard different things, stories about it. It's not something I've done a lot of deep research into, but you know, there was one story I heard where a guy actually uh did create a tulpa and he had to put it down because it became too mischievous.

SPEAKER_04 35:06

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_00 35:08

So um then there's also a couple of boring, you know, boring scientific type theories about what could have happened. Some people thought that maybe the town disappeared because of a sinkhole, and we do have sinkholes in Wisconsin, but because of our the erosion-resistant rock under the soil, usually our sinkholes are shallow and you know not very big. Another theory is that it was destroyed by an earthquake because there are uh fault lines in Wisconsin, but they're so deep underneath the ground that by the time the energy reaches the earth the surface, we barely feel it. Um I mean, occasionally we do hear stories, we do hear news reports about how there was like a very minor earthquake, which meant maybe you saw a picture on the wall shake or something. Uh, but there was actually a fairly uh significant one back in 1947 down in the Milwaukee area. Um the on May 6th, residents reported hearing something that sounded like an explosion. So some buildings suffered minor damage and no injuries were reported, though. So the the earthquake measured a five on the modified Mercali intensity scale, which is a it's a scale that measures the power of an earthquake based on visible effects as opposed to energy released. Um, so it would have been roughly a four to four point nine on the Richter scale.

SPEAKER_02 36:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 36:57

So, like I said, we do get earthquakes, but they're certainly not uh very powerful. So a town being destroyed by an earthquake would be extremely unlikely, right?

SPEAKER_02 37:10

It's no, it's no um San Andreas situation, exactly. Sorry, she had to take a quick call, so but she'll be right back because it's not a big deal. Um, but yeah, I mean that makes sense that you know it wouldn't be the most logical explanation because if it can barely shake a picture on a on a wall, how's it supposed to sink a whole entire town into oblivion?

SPEAKER_00 37:33

That's true, yep. And now you might be asking yourself, how did this story you know start to circulate? Well, the earliest mentions of Doveland date back to sites like 4chan, Reddit, and Tumblr from about 2017 and 2018. Now, one theory I've heard is that uh the creation of Doveland may have been linked to a 2015 article in the Appleton Post Crescent newspaper called More Than 1,000 Wisconsinites Reported as Missing, which if you just read the article, or I'm sorry, if you just read the headline, it makes it sound like you know, there's you know, 1,000 Wisconsinites just disappeared into thin air. But the uh actual article is uh really about uh several people who disappeared between 1992 and 2014. So it's not about people that all disappeared at once, it you know happened over a couple of decades. Um go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 38:49

No, you're good.

SPEAKER_00 38:50

Go ahead. Okay, now another um theory as to how the legend may have started is that in the 1920s, uh there was a small co town called Werner that was intentionally flooded to make way for the construction of a dam. So before they before they did the flooding, of course, the residents were you know they were compensated for the value of their homes, and you know, no one was you know killed in a surprise flood, but there's another town called Delavin. So the theory is that Dovlin is a misspelling of Delavin, and people connected it to the flooding of Werner, um, though kind of an iffy theory because the two locations are about 130 miles apart, so it's not like they're sitting right next to each other, right?

SPEAKER_02 39:44

It's at least a solid two-hour drive from one to the other.

SPEAKER_00 39:48

Yeah. So that's what we know about Doveland. And you know, again, I think it is an interesting story uh because I, you know, just something about stories about towns that disappear. Uh, we know about them in history from like Roanoke, and you know, of course, we know you know, there's the famous legend of Atlantis, and then you know, other historical cities like Pompeii. So I don't know, there's just something fascinating about stories of a city that just vanishes, especially in modern times, because you know, if Dublin did exist, you'd think we would have records of it. You know, we'd be able to trace down, you know, government records and uh bankruptcy records if there were businesses that went out. Um, and of course, there are people who claim that they've passed through there when they were kids. There's people who claim that they have elderly elderly relatives that live there, but that just might be internet trolling.

SPEAKER_02 40:44

That's a good point. That's a good point, but still interesting nonetheless. Um, all I can think about, I'm sorry, I I think I'm a comedian over here, but it's it's reminding me of from the Simpsons movie when they're planning on putting a dome over the city and blowing it up. It's just it it gives me like those creepy vibes of like, was it something, was it something like you said, you know, could have been just a complete misunderstanding or misspelling, or could have been a government cover-up, or could have been, you know, there's so many different options here to choose from. I don't know which one's my favorite.

SPEAKER_00 41:22

Yeah, and you know, occasionally you do hear stories of people who supposedly came from alternate dimensions or alternate uh histories. There is a famous case of one. I I'm I apologize, I can't remember the name right now, but he had an ID for some like country that doesn't exist. I know it begins with a T, um, but I apologize, I can't remember the the name of it right now.

SPEAKER_02 41:49

To look into this, but that is that is right up our alley.

SPEAKER_00 41:54

Yeah, you know, and another thing that's interesting when we talk about the hyperstition uh theory, I was watching some YouTube videos uh when I was trying to you know learn about what it is, and like one example a proponent of the hyperstition theory gave is that you know, long ago in sci-fi, you you know, we'd hear stories of or people would tell stories about surveillance states where you know you could hardly just about everything you do is watched and monitored, and it's like, well, now you know, there's security cameras everywhere, and you know, traffic cameras, and you know, everyone has cameras on their phone, and people have security cameras outside their houses, so it's like it almost makes you think did this idea of a hypermon uh monitored society somehow become reality through our own thoughts and intentions?

SPEAKER_02 42:50

Oh wow, wow, that is I didn't think of it like that.

SPEAKER_00 42:57

Okay, yeah, and when I heard about it too, again, I was like, yeah, I was like, huh, you know, yeah, it kind of kind of makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 43:07

And I mean, like, you know, everyone has a ring on their house now, you know, like the ring doorbell. Yeah, you know, I mean, in fact, one of one of my coworkers was like, guys, look at this video of my ring doorbell. I fell down when I was leaving my house. So, like, it's it's good for not just seeing who's there.

SPEAKER_00 43:26

Yeah, and I do have to admit, I do like the I know AI generated, but there's the ring videos of like porch pirates where someone tries to steal an Amazon box from uh someone's porch and it like blows up with glitter in their face and stuff. So, I mean, I know there is someone that did actually make a glitter bomb box, but I don't know if it's a common thing. Um, yeah, I don't remember the guy's name, but he he got angry because someone stole an Amazon. Box from his his porch and the police couldn't really do anything about it. So what he did is he he he was an engineer, I think, and he actually created a box or this metal frame inside the box that had like an iPhone so he could monitor the uh um you know monitor the thief's reaction. And when they open this got this box, it explodes in glitter, and then after like 30 seconds, it starts releasing this fart smell.

SPEAKER_02 44:29

So no, that's diabolical. You do worse things, honestly.

SPEAKER_00 44:35

But funny, yes, it is diabolical, but it is funny, and it's hopefully those people will never uh steal a box from uh a porch ever again, right?

SPEAKER_02 44:44

They're lucky that they got a hysterical approach instead of you know like a violent one because they they could have definitely gone a very different route than glitter and fart smell.

SPEAKER_00 44:55

That's true, but another uh story I wanted to talk about, and this is one that's local to my area, and that is the uh out of well, the former Outagamy County Mental Hospital. So now unfortunately, it is no longer there. Um, it right now the only things that remain of it are a stone bridge and the cemetery. Okay, but uh this story starts back in uh 18. I just gotta look at my notes here. Sorry. Um okay, 1889. So the county purchased several hundred acres of land in the city of Appleton to build an asylum, and they also had a farm that was included on the property as well, because the intent was that they would use the farm to grow food for the the patients, though, you know, unfortunately, the way society is treated the mentally ill hasn't always been very positive. So back then they always just called them inmates, but you know, the intention was they wanted to grow food for the to feed the inmates, and then any leftovers they would sell to the community.

SPEAKER_02 46:17

Real quick, uh Ali is back. Will you remind her? We'll let her know um what we're what you're covering now. You missed some good stuff. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:28

Okay. Um, so I'm going right now into the uh story of uh an asylum that a mental asylum that used to be in my area.

SPEAKER_01 46:37

Oh, okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 46:40

So, you know, as I said, the uh they built the assignment, the asylum, they had the farm on the property, and unfortunately, so then what happened? Excuse me. Can I start over? I don't know if you edit or not, or yeah, I added everything. So okay. Uh can I just start over from the beginning or so? The next thing I like to talk about is an asylum that used to be in uh my area, and this story starts back in 1889. The city of Appleton built bought several hundred acres of land as well as a farm on which to build this asylum, because the intent was they would have this farm that they could use to grow food for the inmates, and then any leftover would could be sold to the community. So the asylum was originally operated by a man named George Downer, who had a background in agriculture. So we have an asylum that's operated by someone with no experience in medicine or mental health. Um, the purpose is to you know have this farm uh for the inmates to work on or the patients to work on. They there was no regular doctor on grounds, you know, they had traveling doctors I would stop by every few weeks, and it was not only understaffed, but the staff was poorly trained. So, as I'm sure you can guess, this story is gonna have a happy ending, right?

SPEAKER_02 48:24

Yes, yeah, it sounds like we're on a lovely uh class A track right now.

SPEAKER_00 48:29

Yeah, so the um after the asylum opened, um, the for the first few years things did go pretty well. Um, the as I said, the goal was to make the asylum self-sufficient and it was successful at that. They had the like I said, the patients work on the farm, but unfortunately, things would eventually take uh a bad turn because the management of the asylum was very budget conscious, and one of the reasons that they had such a small staff is because the patients there took care of virtually everything the cooking, the cleaning, working on the farm. And as I said, since they didn't have a full-time doctor or any medical professionals on staff, a patient could go for weeks or even months before they had a chance to actually see a doctor.

SPEAKER_04 49:32

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 49:33

Now we also know that electroshock therapy was one of the treatments that they used, but the staff was not properly trained in the procedure. So if you were deemed physically and mentally fit, you'd spend long hours of the day working on the farm or handling um other tasks, but you know, you'd get your three meal breaks during the day, and occasionally they would bring in like you know, the a local um, you know, band or other uh local entertainers to perform for the the patients.

SPEAKER_04 50:12

Nice.

SPEAKER_00 50:13

If you were not deemed fit to work though, then you spent most of your time either in bed or in a day room with pretty much nothing to do.

SPEAKER_02 50:23

Boring.

SPEAKER_00 50:25

Yeah, so yeah, I guess those are your choices either sit around doing nothing all day or uh you know do all the work that hospitals nowadays would you know hire actual people to do instead of making the patients do it for sure.

SPEAKER_02 50:42

Man, that's rough.

SPEAKER_00 50:44

Yeah, and so the the thing started to go downhill in 1913. We know that the asylum management had forced several of the male patients to go through involuntary castration. Oh god, only one and uh only the one family was known to have uh sued the asylum for this, and that was the uh family of John Rayfeld. He was a father of six, and he was there being treated for alcoholism. Well, he unfortunately never had a chance to get any justice for what happened to him. The surgery was performed by a man named Dr. James uh Canavan, who ended up dying later that year. And George Downer, the man in charge of things, resigned in 1914 and committed suicide in 1915. So he Rayfelt was released and returned to his family, but unfortunately, he wasn't able to put his life back together. His wife filed for divorce, and by 1915 he was back at the asylum and then eventually died in 1931. So Downer's position was filled by a man named Thomas Flanagan and his wife Anna. So, like Downer, they had no experience in the mental health field. So the locals began to call it Flanagan's Funny Farm. So by 1944, uh the asylum went through a state investigation and in vet inspection, and they found out that the facility was severely overcrowded. The asylum had added 100 patients, but didn't add any staff, additional staff to take care of them. Um, each room would house anywhere from 11 to 14 people, and many of the patients were found to be malnourished because management decided that they would withhold food from the inmates to so they'd have more to sell and make more money.

SPEAKER_02 53:10

I take back my diabolical statement from earlier and put it back over here. That is diabolical.

SPEAKER_00 53:17

Yeah, it's I mean, it it is horrifying how people used to treat the the mentally ill. Um, there's a podcast I used to listen to called We're All Mad Here. Unfortunately, uh it's I they stopped the person who uh operated it stopped posting, and I don't think it's available anymore. But the host Rachel talked a lot about uh the history of mental illness and how there were a lot of these asylums back in the day where they treated the patients as little better than animals. Um, and you know, she would also talk about her own personal struggles with mental illness. And I remember she did actually have one episode which was about a mental asylum that didn't suck because they actually tried to think of ways to help these people instead of just locking them in rooms all day. Nice. So, um, like I said, I'm not sure if it's still available on Spotify or anything, but if you can find it, is it is an interesting podcast to listen to.

SPEAKER_02 54:20

Good, good to know. I'll have to put that on the list.

SPEAKER_00 54:23

Yep. The Flanagans did eventually retire, and the asylum management changed hands and was passed on over to the county. So the by 1956, the uh facility was set up to house 150 people, but was housing over 260. So the county invested about $2 million to expand the asylum. Uh, they added more beds and they limited the occupancy of the room to four so they could avoid the overcrowding. Yeah, and eventually they also stopped the practice of making the inmates do all the farming. They kept some gardens just for like the inmates to garden as something to do, but they weren't, you know, they weren't forced to work several hours a day to to grow their food.

SPEAKER_04 55:20

That's fine.

SPEAKER_00 55:21

Yeah. Um, so the uh eventually the name was changed to the Audogamy County Hospital, but they had to change the name because people thought it was a regular hospital. So there were actually stories of people bringing their pregnant wives there and people giving birth on the steps of the hospital because they went to the wrong place.

SPEAKER_04 55:45

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 55:47

So eventually it was changed the name to Autagamy County Health Center, but it closed in 2000 with the opening of a new assisted living center, and the last remaining buildings were demolished by 2021.

unknown 56:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 56:03

So the uh only things left are the stone bridge and that led to the asylum and then the graveyard. Now the the cemetery, uh, there aren't any headstones there anymore. There's just markers showing where the burial rows were. There's also a monument that shows where uh the or has the name of people who are known to have been buried there. Um, because a lot of times when someone died at the asylum, if the family didn't, you know, come by to pick up their body, they were just buried in this field, and again, usually without a headstone. Um, but by the 70s, all of the headstones were gone. Um, the area had been pretty much overgrown and forgotten. And the uh fortunately a disaster was averted because there were plans to build a road through that area, but an out of game county executive, uh, his he was the son of one of the people who worked on the farm there. So he's like, uh, wait a second, there's bodies buried over there. So that's when uh they started to begin the restoration efforts. Uh later they built a path in a pergola, and again, they put up the uh the uh the monument with the names of people who are known to have been buried there. I think the youngest was like they had at least a couple of people who are like 14 or 15. Um, so there was they actually did have some pretty young patients there.

SPEAKER_02 57:41

Yeah, wow, man, Chris, yeah, you're right. Crisis averted. That could have been a really ugly situation that they created if they'd done that.

SPEAKER_00 57:49

Yeah, and um, now as far as how active the asylum is, or I'm sorry, the the cemetery is, I don't think it's as far as I know, it's not like a hotbed like Bachelor's Grove in Illinois or you know, some of the other more famous cemeteries in the states, but um okay, I have heard people occasionally getting like uh EVPs there or uh occasionally like photographing orbs or you know, mist. But um, I have been out there. I was I did a walkthrough of it for a video for my podcast, and I didn't really have anything too unusual. And though this is probably the closest to a paranormal experience I had um there, I was there recording, you know, it's kind of narrating and looking around with my key, my uh my phone, and I felt this sharp tapping on my shoulder. And you know, I I look over to my on my shoulder and I see a pine cone rolling, um, you know, rolling away from me. And I mean, I was standing under a tree and it was pretty windy that day, so pretty sure it was just the wind that blew it down, but it was a cemetery, so you never know. Never know.

SPEAKER_02 59:04

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 59:06

But yeah, other than that, probably the only real paranormal experience I had was in the or closest thing to one anyway, was the basement of the house that my wife used to live in before we got married. Um, I mean, you it was one of those base, it was an older house. So when you just you go in the basement, it just felt kind of off. And there was one part of the the basement wall that was boarded off, and she never asked the landlord why. I'm assuming there was just some like pipes or something that had to be repaired, so they tore down the wall and um fixed it and then boarded it up, but her dog would refuse to go down there, and then um, you know, and she occasionally had some weird feelings there, but you know, other than general creepiness, I never experienced anything unusual when I was at her house.

SPEAKER_02 59:59

Wow, yeah, basements are creepy to begin with, yeah, yeah, and then especially those like old ones that have the dirt floors. Oh, yeah, those ones really freaked me out.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:10

Yeah, I've never been in one with a dirt floor, but um I have a I used to have a friend who lived uh outside of Amro, which is about 20 miles or so uh west of Oshkosh.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:25

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:25

And he lived in a local landmark called Fox Tower. Um, so as you're heading west, as you're heading west of Amro on Highway 21, there's an old farmhouse that has a seven-story tower attached to it. So whenever anyone asked how to get to his house, he's usually just, yeah, just drive west of Amro and it's the first uh house with the seven-story uh tower attached to it. But um, I mean, I was over at his house several times and I never experienced anything unusual there. But the property used to be, I think it was either a mink farm or a fox farm, um, back in the early 1900s. But the story I heard is that the guy who ran the farm, um, after the Great Depression, you know, the need for uh the the furs he was selling diminished. So uh he went bankrupt. His wife took all his money and left him, and he committed suicide on I think it was the fifth floor of the tower.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:28

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:29

Um, so supposedly the ghost, you know, haunted the tower for a bit, but he said he was able to do something to get rid of it, but I didn't really, you know, ask about it. So, but still again, it is something kind of creepy about those old buildings out in kind of in the middle of nowhere, you know?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:46

Absolutely, for sure. Definitely know that. Um, I'm about to move further out in the middle of nowhere, and my boyfriend constantly tells me about like weird things that have happened in the sky out there, and I'm like, I don't know about this.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:04

I don't know that's the thing too, is like even in Al Paso, it's more toward out the middle of nowhere, and when it was empty, it was like a bunch of like everybody had some kind of experience happening there.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:16

That's close to Marfa too. That's only a few hours out.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:20

Yeah, my my wife and her dad, uh, they had an experience up near Hayward, uh, which is you know, pretty is far north in uh far, far northern Wisconsin. Um, it is about five areas from the Fox Cities where I live. And uh they her parents have a cabin up there, and this was before she met me. Um, but they were you know her they were staying up there, and then there was some like weird light that was coming off of the lake. So my wife and her father were the only ones who noticed it. Um, you know, her brother and mother didn't, so you know they tease them about it, and it's like, but they they swear that it's real, so they they think it was a UFO, but you know, they're not really sure.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:11

I think that's really cool. Matt, you you're like surrounded by so many different types of experiences.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:18

It's a cool place. That means that we need to plan a trip to Wisconsin at some point to explore for sure.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:25

Yeah, yeah, there's um I said I know there's like a lot of topics I'd like to cover. I just haven't had the time to to do it because one of the topics I want to cover is uh there's the the pyramids of rock lake, um, which it's a it's in a town called Lake Mills, and my um great-great aunt used to live on the shores of that lake. And the story was that when settlers first came into the area, um there they saw that there were these stone temples or stone pyramids, and they you know they asked the local natives what they were, and um I think they said something that was built by people who came before them. Uh, I'll have to double check on that legend, but um, the other people think they were just altars that were made for religious reasons, but then of course, you know, people moved into the area, they flooded the valley there, and then the the pyramids were underwater and were pretty much forgotten. But in I think it was the 50s, there was like a there was a drought, and then there were a couple of duck hunters, you know, that were out on the lake, and you know, they were gonna uh move to a different location, and one of them put the ore down and bumped into something, and that's when they you know noticed these stone pyramids under the lake.

unknown 1:04:54

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:55

Um, I know there have been several attempts to find them, but the problem is because of the industrial runoff and you know the algae and stuff in the area, the the water is very um dangerous, yeah. It's very well, not necessarily dangerous. Maybe it's not the industrial runoff, but um the water's very murky, not clear, you can't see through it very well, yeah. And um, so the supposedly there's also a lake monster there, but I never heard about that story. I only heard the story about um about the pyramids, and the theory is that the pyramids actually are connected to another nearby place called Astellon State Park, and Astellon is home to several uh mound pier, you know, mound pyramids. And there uh it's believed that Astellon was actually a settlement of a larger city called Cahokia, down near the uh the Illinois Missouri border. Um we did know that the natives in there did have a trade, did have an extensive trade route that somehow connected to the southeast United States because archaeologists have found shells there from clams and other shellfish that are only found in the Gulf of Mexico. So yeah, somehow they did actually, you know, there was this extensive trade system along uh the Mississippi River. Um, but now whether the pyramids of Rock Lake are connected to that, that I don't know, but I know it's something I want to explore in greater detail on my topic. Or it's a topic I want to discuss in greater detail on my show sometime in the future.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:43

I don't blame you. That sounds like a great topic.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:47

Yeah, and I think there is like one old aerial photo that might show the pyramids. It's an aerial view of the lake that I think was taken either in the late 50s or 60s, and there's part of the lake where you can see um some sort of large shape under the water. But like I said, because of the industry in the area, um the you know, the the water levels of the lake have risen. So, you know, whether anyone will ever find them, you know, that I I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:20

Right. It would take some extensive uh dredging as well to get enough of that water out to be able to see if anything's under there.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:27

Yeah, but yeah, I always thought that was an interesting story, and it's one that my you know great-great aunt was used to tell. And I just thought it was fascinating because okay, we've got our own uh Atlantis in Wisconsin, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:07:38

Yeah, absolutely. That is that is really cool. I'm excited because now after this interview, I have a whole bunch of things that I can like look up. Deep dive in.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:46

Yeah, you can you can bring a research topic, right? Um, is there anything else that you haven't had a chance to share yet that you have in your notes or on your list to to touch on?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:59

Well, I could probably go on for uh about other things, but I I did I just pretty much focused on preparing them for um to talk about Dove Land and the uh the asylum there. Now I know that there is supposed to be another lake monster in Devil's Lake, which is a popular state park. And again, I've been there several times, both camping with my family and on Boy Scout trips, and I never heard of any lake monsters that supposedly live there. The worst I've heard about is something called the Devil's Itch. I guess there was like some kind of parasite that uh lived in the lake, and you know it it wasn't harmful or anything, but um you know, if it infected you, it could you know you could develop some rashes and itching. So they always recommend that after swimming in the lake that you you know took a good shower just to make sure.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:54

Um there's also the general what's that? Oh, I think that's just a good practice in general, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:03

And there is also another famous cryptid in Wisconsin, the Beast of Brayer Road, um, which or Bray Road, sorry, Bray Road.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:11

I've heard of this one very loosely though.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:14

Yeah, it's uh it's a werewolf uh type creature, at least that's what I know about it. You know, again, it's not a a subject that I've looked into too deeply, but it's you know, it's one of those um it's one of those legends that just about you know everyone in Wisconsin knows about. And well, actually, if I could finish with uh a story, this is something that it's not an urban legend, it's just a story that I was told on a scouting trip.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:42

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:43

Okay, well, you know, since we were kind of talking about lost towns before, uh many years ago, my uh uh explorer post troop, we were heading to northern Wisconsin for a rafting trip. And our uh scout master who was driving told a story about that this is a friend of a friend type story. So of course, you know, take it with a grain of salt. But uh the story goes that you know he knew someone who was hitchhiking across Wisconsin back in like the 60s or 70s, and he uh you know he couldn't get a ride, so he was you know stuck to walking. And he walked to this small town, and it was unusual because like if someone saw them from their house, they would close their drapes. Oh, and if he tried to approach a store, um they would you know lock the door and switch the sign from open to closed, you know. And if people saw him on the street, they turn and go the other way. So, needless to say, this creeped him out and he got out of that uh that town as fast as he could. When he got to the next town, he asked what happened there. And the story he was told is that a few years before the local Catholic priest started preaching things that were not part of standard church doctrine. Uh, he didn't specify what they were, but um, the a word of the priest's teaching eventually reached the Vatican, and the priest was warned to stop, but he wouldn't. So the the Pope excommunicated the entire town. So now as a result, from you know, up until the current day or whenever this story was told, uh the townsfolk for some reason always avoid contact with outsiders because of this. So, you know, not really, I'd say it was an urban, probably not really an urban legend. Um, probably just an interesting story the he told us to keep us entertained on this long uh car ride.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:46

Very cool, regardless.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:48

I was like, I believe it, I believe that there are towns or like specific oh yeah areas that are like I mean, I've seen hot fuzz.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:58

That is very interesting. Oh my goodness, such great stories that we've heard.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:03

I know.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:04

Thank you so much for like for giving us this on our podcast for doing awesome for doing research so that we didn't have to for an entire episode.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:13

You're welcome. Hey, happy to uh happy to appear on and thanks for having me. I always enjoy talking about you know this kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:21

Yeah, I was like, if we ever get bored, we can always plan another, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:26

Absolutely and trust me, I'm I'm sure I could uh I could probably think of something. I mean, you mentioned liking Dungeons and Dragons earlier, so you know if you ever want to talk about Dungeons and Dragons related topics, I could probably do a very long episode on that.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:44

Yeah, and you know, if there's any kind of col like Ali just said, any collaborative things that you would like from us, you know. I mean, you do did us a huge favor of coming on today, so you know, absolutely the door swings both ways, and you know, we're open to going on yours as well if you if you're like, hey, I need something.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:03

So yeah, I'd love to have you on sometime.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:06

Absolutely. We we definitely both have some spooky experiences. Um, I don't know if Al, I don't think Ali has any any kind of extraterrestrial stories, but not extraterrestrial, most are like she's got a few mimic stories, she's got mimic stories for sure. Um, and I have I have some interesting extraterrestrial stories as well that Ali hasn't heard yet, but um yeah, and lots of paranormal, like I have some really crazy paranormal stories. So if that ever falls into a category that you're on, by all means, and you know, we're also here for any other weird stuff too.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:43

Oh, yeah, um, yeah, the extraterrestrial stories would be interesting because I have seen a couple unusual things in the sky, but I was able to, you know, they were naturally explainable. Um, but you know, when you talk about UFOs, I worked at a Boy Scout camp for eight years and Camp Long Lake on the shores of Long Lake and and Tuttle Lake, and there is a bar down there called Benson's Hideaway, and every summer. Well, I don't know if they're still doing it because unfortunately Bill Benson, the uh you know, the owner of it, had passed away a couple years ago, but they would have this thing called UFO days where and days spelled D-A-Z-E, of course. Yeah, you know, they'd have people come, it was an excuse to get drunk and look for UFOs, but they'd have people come in and give presentations and stuff. And uh Bill, oh, he was such a fun guy. He said that he would always say that he sold tickets for UFO rides. However, if they don't show up, you don't get a refund. And if they do pick you up, they return you back in time before you got on, so you wouldn't remember it. I love that. Yeah, that's another thing about Long Lake. Supposedly, there's a Long Lake monster, but I have a feeling that was just a story that we told the the scouts just to you know scare them or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:09

So I hate that. I get that. My camp had its own interesting story stories for sure that were meant to scare the pants off of us and keep us inside the dorms at night. I think that's what it's really about. So well, Al, thank you so much for your time. Is there anything else that you didn't get a chance to share that you wanted to today?

SPEAKER_00 1:15:32

Uh no, just um I said if you're interested in hearing my podcast, uh poi gamestudio.podbean.com. Uh, like I said, I do podcast near I do narrations of creepy pastas, which are internet horror stories. I also uh I also said I do uh the occasional episode of my strange and interest interesting show, which is you know about folklore and other things I find interesting. Uh occasionally I do stories about DD and gaming related topics. Um, you can find my game products at poigamestudio.com. Um, or if you look up Point of Insanity Game Studio on Facebook, you can also find me there as well.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:14

Awesome, awesome. And if you'll do me a solid and send those links to our Facebook chat and then I can copy and paste them into our show notes that way and you get some exposure as well. Thanks. Thank you so much, Al. Have a lovely evening on Park. You're welcome.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:32

And I said I'll definitely uh get back to you because I would like to have you on my show sometime. That would be fun.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:37

Most definitely awesome, awesome. I look forward to it. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:40

Have a good evening.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:42

You as well. Goodbye. All right, Allie. Before we do a mild chat on that and close out for the day.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:59

Amazing corny joke. We could call this the Whis Cornson?

SPEAKER_01 1:17:06

It's cause is it is it because Al's from Wisconsin? Maybe.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:12

Maybe. Where do cows go for entertainment?

SPEAKER_03 1:17:18

The movies. What a crazy.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:26

What? I actually like that.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:28

It's just crazy because Allie took me to a drive-in yesterday for my first time ever, and it was such a cool experience. It was.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:36

It was a really fun time.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:37

Yeah. Where's no? Thank you. Thank you for the lights, medium lodgings. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. That was such a cool interview. It's just really cool hearing all of the different information. I love a good ghost town.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:06

So the the one thing I get excited about is people who have a lot of like research behind them. And um El had so much. I'm not kidding. I like I want to take a trip out to Wisconsin now just to visit a lot of those places that he was talking about. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:23

Because it just sounds like cool, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:27

Um also like maybe we can sneak on to the out of gamey asylum. Don't listen, coppers. Don't listen coppers.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:41

This is on a private uh what a private network? What network?

SPEAKER_03 1:18:48

The chaos network. Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:54

So I have this for you to read. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:59

It looks like the lost city of Dublin.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:03

You said advances earlier. And then you said it also looks like one of those Halloween lollipops with apple flavoring.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:11

I was gonna say caramel apple candy.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:13

Um I said it has like most Amazonite looks, maybe. I don't know. It's so pretty, it is and so familiar.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:22

Amazonite? Is what you said?

SPEAKER_02 1:19:24

That was one of my guesses.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:27

I've never heard of this.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:30

Chryso praise!

SPEAKER_01 1:19:31

Chrysopraise!

SPEAKER_02 1:19:32

That's one of my favorite stones. That's why it looks so familiar. Yeah, it's a really good thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:37

Okay, so before I read this, what is uh Chrysopraise too?

SPEAKER_02 1:19:40

So what I know that it's good for is like connecting with the spiritual realm.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:45

Mmm.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:47

Yeah. It's also a blue stone, which means that it's uh calming. And since it's like a turquoisey color, uh-huh, it's a bluish-greenish color. And since it's also like got the green to it as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:58

Um just letting you guys know in this picture, it is straight up green.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:02

To me, that looks turquoise or teal. That looks turquoise.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:05

What that's green.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:11

It's just the lighting, I guess. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:14

Even the back of this car is green. Um, so maybe I need to get my eyes turned. Maybe Chrysopraise. What it is. Hypnotic green chrysopraise is a rare stone with a heavy helping of nickel. Hence it's mesmerizing verdant hue. So it is green.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:38

Because verdant means green because of verde.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:41

Verde. Who needs it? Explorer is searching for the fountain of youth. Oh god, I want this. Where to put it? Squeeze Chrysopraise against your heart and tell your inner child how much you love them. Then cry forever. That sounds oh my god.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:11

I was about to say, I was like, this is Saturday night. Well, you know what I'll be doing right over there tonight. Just crying my inner child to sleep.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:27

Let's see. When when should somebody use this? When it's time to forgive that person who hurt you most, your parents, and most of all yourself. This is a deep stone. Jesus Christ. I will never forgive myself. Sorry, Chrysopraise. You are an evolved being. When you feel like giving up on love, Chrysopraise gives you the green light to keep going. Um, this is a very like heavy metaphysical meta.

unknown 1:22:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:04

Yeah, right. It's a very, very pretty stone.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:06

It is. It's one of my favorites. It reminds me of the Gulf of Mexico.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:16

Because of the shade of green. It's not a running endorsement for the Gulf of Mexico.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:24

But for what it's worth, it is Mississippi backwash. So and it's also called the Gulf of America now. So really depends on who you ask, but if you ask Google Maps, it says Gulf of America.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:36

Disappointing. So the um the motto for Chrysopraise, grow from your heart out.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:47

Nice, very nice. Nothing to do with thinning the veil at all. None. Google, you are wrong. Google, you're wrong. Giving me misinformation. I know, right? So um it's been a long episode. Mm-hmm. It's yep. I mean, that was a fun one, a long one. Thank you so much for staying with us until the very end. Hopefully, we get to see Al on the podcast again. Absolutely. He's actually already invited both of us to be on his uh podcast. So look out for his podcast, Point of Insanity. You can find him on POIGamestudio.com, and we might be on there at some point in time. So yeah, that being said, I think we should let them go. We should release, we should release their ears. They've probably driven to and from work three times now. It's the next day. It's three days. We have stopped with them Monday, Tuesday. It is now Wednesday on the way home from work, and they are sick and tired of our fucking voices. I believe that. I believe that part of mine.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:00

Alrighty, guys. So with that being said, thank you for listening to Conjuring Chaos. Make sure to hit that subscribe button and look us up on the social medias. You can find us on Instagram and TikTok as Conjuring Chaos Podcast.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:15

Please email us your stories so we can tell them on the podcast at conjuring chaos podcast at gmail.com. We're two witchy weirdos with microphones. And thank you for conjuring chaos with us.