Sheena: Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of So Random and We're. And we are glad you're here. So we've got me, Sheena, who is hosting this time. Sarah: My name's Sarah. Sheena: And we're here to give you yet another sputacular episode. Sarah: spectacular. Mm-hmm. I love it. Sheena: Yeah. Yeah. So are things getting super Halloween y for you in your area? Sarah: Yeah, I'm trying to get my stuff out and done. I just I feel like we wanted to Arya and I wanted to decorate at the end of September. But we were having the house appraised and so we had to kinda like hold off on decorating and then they had to we had to fix some things and then they had to come back and so decorating got pushed back for us, which now I feel like It's just I'm like, I wanted it out sooner and I'm depressed and disappointed that I couldn't get it out sooner. I'm still getting my stuff out. It's I mean it's definitely Yeah, people are are are kind of decorating. My street's not that decorated though this year. And I'm like a little perturbed by that. I don't know what's going on. I don't know if people are gonna wait till closer to the time or but it's like, what's going on? Like my street's like a party pooper street. But I can't wait. I'm gonna I'm I mean, we usually have a lot of like trick or treat like a lot of lights on dur for trick-or-treating. Sheena: Mm-hmm. Sarah: on Halloween on my street. But we usually have people who decorate. Maybe it just, you know, maybe they're holding off until later. But we do have a lot of like a lot of good places that we go to. and I can't wait. So there's one house we call it the Michael Myers House. And they have every year like three or four people like walk just kind of like walk their lawn. And it's Michael Myers, Jason, and Freddie Kruger. Sheena: Mm. Sarah: And then there's usually a there's usually a girl who's dressed up in some kind of like costume thing. and every year we go, 'cause Arya just loves seeing these guys. And I remember she was like three and I had like it was me and it was my son and my daughter, and then my son's best friend. And they were like four or five, you know, my daughter's three. And she sees Michael Myers, like we saw these guys for the first time. And I was like, my god, that's so cool and and the boys were like afraid. Like they did not want to get close. But Arya went right up to the guy who was Michael Myers and like just hugging him. He kinda like Sheena: Ha ha ha. Sarah: looked at me and I'm like I shrugged and I'm like, Sure, sure. That's my daughter. Yep. Sheena: Wild. Sarah: My Halloween girl. I mean nothing nothing frightens her. She, We we she loves animatronics. And so we have several animatronics. Our house is so noisy. It's I I apologize to the people every year. I apologize to the people next door. I apologize to the people across the street from us. Because with all the animatronics on, it's it gets loud. They get loud. Like, you know, I have like these these twins that talk, you know, and like say creepy sayings and like a mirror that lights up, you know, that of course it'll it's all motion sensored. I have a bat that swings and makes noise at the top of my porch steps. It's just, you know, it's yeah. A zombie, Sheena: Mm-hmm. Sarah: a a cr it it gets very noisy. But it's cool. We love it. We love I I'd still would love to get LED lights, indoor outdoor LED lights. put up around my porch so that during Halloween I can have colors, during Christmas I can I don't have to worry about doing it every single year. And then even like in other holidays, I can like, you know, make it festive, make it, you know. But it's just me that does that does these things. I don't have help. So it gets a little frustrating, you know. Sheena: Yeah. Sarah: Not being able to do everything I want to do. So how about you? Sheena: Yeah, I still I can't find my lights and there's a couple of people who I've seen, so maybe they're waiting as well until it's closer. Who knows? I know at work they're they're like you if you want to, you know, decorate your cube and the thing is is like we're kind of back behind some stuff, so like nobody really sees us. Nobody really comes in to look for us. So we're Sarah: Yeah, yeah. Sheena: just like I'm like Sarah: Yeah, well I mean you could for yourself. I mean you could do it for yourself if you wanted to. I mean if you want. I mean Yeah. Sheena: Yeah, I wanted to, but I'm not dragging stuff in to drag it back out. So we'll just see how it goes. And they're like, and then we've got the the costume contest and I'm like, Really? I'm not and I'm like, I'm not Sarah: Yeah. My work's doing that too. Mm-hmm. Sheena: interested in dressing up for work. I'm interested in just making it through the day. Sarah: Yeah, my work does that too. They're like, We're having a costume and I'm like, We work from home. Like, Sheena: Yeah. Sarah: I don't I dr I don't I don't dr I I work from home so I don't have to dress up, you know. I work from home so I don't have to like you know, participate and shit, you know. I mean, I'm not a party pooper. I love I'm actually dressing up this year and I think I said that before, but I'm I'm so excited for it. but I'm like Hmm, you know. I may have like a potluck or something that, you know, you can come in to work for and and I'm like, Yeah. Yeah. I I Sheena: Yeah. Sarah: and and then that they have like candy that you they bring in candy and you can go like trick or treating at people's cubicles and stuff, you know, and I'm sure it's a great time for people who who have to be in the office and who work from the office and but I'm like, I'm not driving in to the office to do this. Sheena: Very Sarah: Meh. Yeah. No. Sorry. I mean, I you know, I I love you know, trick or treating and I love Halloween and I love I just when it comes to like mixing that with work, like if I worked in the office I would. Not because Sheena: Yeah. Sarah: I have to win anyway, but And I there w the one year I I was there, I I kind of decorated a little bit. Nothing major. Like people have gone all out. And Sheena: Mm-hmm. Sarah: I'm like, who has who who does this? Like who has time for this? Like No, I barely, you know, get my decorations out in time some years and like this year I feel like I'm like I said, so far behind. But yeah. No. Sheena: I get it. I totally get it. And so well, I decided that this time I am going to do something that I really enjoyed watching and am really upset that it was cancelled. And that is I'm doing an episode of the Hol Zoom Holzer Files. And it is episode thirteen of season two. So it's basically the last episode of the series before Travel stopped pretty much all of their ghost shows, which really pisses me off. Sarah: why do they do that? Sheena: people have theories and it has to do with a certain person on ghost adventures. Sarah: Hmm. Is that why Sheena: Yeah. Sarah: okay. You commented. Ghost Adventures. Okay. Okay. So Sheena: Yeah. Mm-hmm. So Sarah: that so you're not a fan of ghost adventures because of the pot the possibility of them ruining everything. Sheena: Well it's is like watching a bunch of of him bros, gym bros, you know just reacting to every little thing, dude or come at me Sarah: That's that's that's kinda comical. That's that's a little over dramatic. That's a little that's that's yeah, that's y you kind of when I see things like that, I kinda am like, hmm, this seems really staged, really corny. Sheena: Yeah. Sarah: and it doesn't make me believe it. Like, I believe in ghosts. I believe there is something out there, I believe there is residual Whatever. But I also believe that people get into this business to make a buck. They get into this to make a name for themselves, fame, notoriety, whatever. and I believe that people have no problem staging things to Sheena: Mm-hmm. Sarah: make their show big, you know, a big hit and stuff. Sheena: Mm-hmm. Sarah: I don't want that. Like You know, are you going to see things every time you go to a site? No, you're not. And that may be boring. That may not sell, but it's reality. You know? So I mean, these people are like, my god, look at that. you know. Like for every little single thing? No. I I'm not buying it. I'm not buying it. Sheena: Yeah. Or every time they're like, we saw something, then I'm like, I don't see anything moving. Even after the Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. We're like Sheena: replay with like the little circle, I'm like Sarah: Exactly, exactly. You're like, wait a minute. You saw this? Really? 'Cause I can barely see it. I can barely see it. Sheena: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Sarah: Yeah. No. I there there're something there's some shows I've I've watched that I'm just like gag. This is not real. Gag. Sheena: Yeah. Yep. All right. So It's nineteen sixty four, the year my mother was born, and somewhere on the rocky coast of Massachusetts, a museum curator is standing at the top of a staircase in a building that is older than the United States. And the curator is not alone. I want you to hold on to that image because this is going to be a story about a haunting that, according to the people who worked in that building, did not stop when it was told to stop. It got worse. It got worse for 18 years until the curator packed up, left town, and as far as the people who made this episode of television tell it never came back. And the man who was called in to deal with it, he did a pr preliminary look. Talked to witnesses, politely asked about the ghosts to move along, and went home. Which is a bold strategy. We've all told a problem to go away. How'd that work out for you? So here it is where we are. We're either doing an episode about true crime, the paranormal, weird history, or general oddities in of the universe. And we all share one very crowded couch. And so for this week, if you're stuck with my tangents and I have nobody to blame them on. Sarah: Mm-hmm. Sheena: So today we are going to go deep on the season two finale of the Travel Channel's The Holzel Files. This episode is called Devil in the Rock. It follows a ghost hunter's very short visit in nineteen sixty four to a very old ship supply store in Cohasset, Massachusetts. so we are gonna go over this and we'll start with a little bit about Hans Holzer. So in Vienna nineteen twenty, Hans Holzer was born on january twenty sixth in Vienna, Austria. His father Leo was a businessman, his mother was named Martha, and according to the biographical accounts I have found the things that lit the match for him was a family member, his uncle Henry. Who told him stories about the supernatural when he was a kid. So picture little Vietnam boys in the early 1920s listening to the stories his uncle would tell. And that's the origin of the man who would eventually write more than a hundred books about the afterlife. Every kid with a spooky relative understands this. Every one of us that had that uncle or grandma or auntie or weird cousin with the VHS tapes. unsolved mysteries. Listening to Robert Stack's voice raised an entire generation of Xenils to be mildly paranoid about everything. Sarah: my god, you know, I I unsolved mysteries, I still have visions from certain episodes. To Sheena: Mm-hmm. Sarah: this day, I am forty plus years old Sheena: Okay. Sarah: and I still have visions of like certain ep from certain episodes. So I it terrified me. Terrified Sheena: Mm-hmm. Sarah: me. Sheena: Yep. So Holzer Holzer got Uncle Henry, we got Robert Stack and a trench coat. So Hans went on to study archaeology and ancient history at the University of Vienna Vienna. So keep that in mind as well. He was deeply interested in the past, digging things up and asking what happened here, and that instinct is all over how he approached the hauntings. He didn't just want to know that a house was haunted. He wanted to know who, when, and why, and he wanted to check it against the historical record. Now the family was Jewish and in nineteen thirty eight, the year Austria was taken over by the Nazis, they decided it was not safe to stay. The Holzers left Austria and came to New York City. Now I want to put a pause on that because it's easy to treat a ghost hunter's biography as a quirky little footnote, but think about what that is. He's about eighteen years old, his entire world is dismantled. He lands in a new country, he is a refugee, and the man who spends the rest of his life obsessed with the idea that people really don't disappear, that something remains after the worst has happened. Started his American life like that. Now I'm not gonna tell you that one caused the other, but I I don't know that, and he never, as far as I've seen, said it that way. But as a storyteller, I'd be lying if I say I didn't notice it. So in New York, he went to Columbia University, where in a very holzer twist, he studied Japanese. Of all things, a man who would be America's best known ghost hunter has a Columbia language background. Never let anyone tell you your degree has to match your destiny. Huh word. Sarah: Yeah, yeah. No, I'm I'm right there with you with my degree. Not matching anything that I've done. Except for fun. Sheena: So yeah. Yeah, exactly. So then he moved to a comparative religion and parapsychology. And here comes the first asterisk, and I'd rather give it to you straight than pretend it isn't there. Holzer claimed a PhD from a school called the London College of Applied Science. According to the sources I read, that degree has never been validated, so when the show and the books call him doctor Holzer. That's the title he used, and that but that's a title that skeptics have pushed back on for decades. He also taught parent psychology at the New York Institute of Technology. So he wasn't just a guy writing paperbacks. He had a foot in the academic world and at least in in a teaching capacity. So as I mentioned, he wrote books and boy did he write more than a hundred and twenty books. Let that number sit for a second. One hundred and twenty books. I still have a note in my phone titled Podcast Ideas that has about forty one entries and I haven't touched one since August. So he goes on and he wrote about ghosts, obviously, but also about reincarnation, ESP, astrology, witchcraft, UFOs, psychic healing, dreams, prophecy, even a book on the psychic life of plants, which that's terrifying. Maybe that's why we get indig indigestion sometimes. We're experiencing we're experiencing the Sarah: I agree. Sheena: life of the plant. Sarah: Rance. I mean, I my I do get an upset stomach after eating salad. Like I I have no idea. I mean like I would get like you know like heavy sauces, like Alfredo sauce. Love Alfredo sauce, like olive gardens, you know. I understand why my stomach gets upset after that. But I also get upset like I had a salad for lunch and afterward I just felt like maybe that's why. Maybe they're like, you know, you ate me, you ate me, you ate me. Sheena: You pulled me out of the earth. You pulled me out of the earth and chopped me up. Sarah: Feel bad, feel bad. Exactly, you chopped me up you put me with with shrimp, with cooked shrimp and avocado. I'm just you know. Sheena: How dare you? So he wrote novels, he wrote plays and musicals, he made films and documentaries, he hosted a TV series called Ghost Hunter. Not to be confused with the later show with the Plumbers, which is Ghost Hunters with an S. His first book on the paranormal, published in 1963, was titled Ghost Hunter. He's sometimes credited with coining the phrase ghost hunter. Though to be fair, a British researcher named Harry Price published a book called The Confessions of a Ghost Hunter back in nineteen thirty six. So Holzer popularized it, Price got there first. That's the paranormal of equipment of I said it first, you just said it louder. And then the hits keep coming Ghosts I've Met in nineteen sixty five, Yankee Ghosts in nineteen sixty six, The Lively Ghosts of Ireland, Ghosts of the Golden West, Gothic Ghosts, The Ghosts That Walk in Washington, Haunted Hollywood, White House Ghosts, later in nineteen eighty nine, ghosts of New England, and that matters for us because this week's case is a New England case from the mid sixties. So he wrote a book on witchcraft in nineteen sixty nine, The Truth About Ro Witchcraft. He wrote one on Wicca, he wrote about modern pagans, and he was notably one of the few mainstream paranormal authors of his era who treated witchcraft as a subject worth taking seriously rather than a punchline or a cause. Which, of course, you're listening to this podcast, so you probably have opinions about that, which is about the same. So here's the part that I find genuinely interesting because Holser had a system. He didn't use one blanket word for everything that goes bump in the night. He separated it into categories. Ghosts in his thinking were basically imprints, impressions left in the environment, like a recording that we've talked about before in the stone tape theory, that sensitive people can pick up. They don't know you're there. They don't interact, they're just a loop. Spirits were intelligent beings who can interact with the living. And then there were what he called the stay-behinds. These were the people who died, but for whatever reason didn't move on. They were stuck, earthbound, often confused, often not even aware that they were dead. And Holzer's whole approach to a haunting was built around that idea. The ghost isn't a monster, the ghost is a person who is lost, and the job of the investigator is to help them realize it and cross them over. You know, because th this is the key to the nineteen sixty four Cahasset visit. When Holzer told the spirit in that building to move on, that wasn't a throwaway line. That was his method. In his word worldview, you talk to a stay behind, you gently tell them the truth, you encourage them to leave. And that's the treatment. He also believed in reincarnation and in what he called levels of consciousness. He was a believer, he did not pretend to be neutral. And he used mediums as well. And they they weren't just mediums, they were usually trans mediums. He almost never went into a house alone. Stop being so cute. My cat is just sitting over here showing me her belly being super cute. Giving me I know she's giving Sarah: she went in on the fun. Sheena: me the eyes, you know, the this is a trap. Sarah: Yeah, mine mine's asleep. He's out. Well, one of them is he's just he's out. The other one, I don't know. He's not here either. So he used to come up a lot more often. Hmm. Sheena: Hm so where was I? yes. Holzel almost never went into a house alone. He brought a medium, and he'd compare what the medium said against what the residents experienced and against historical record. He worked with several includ including Ethel Johnson Myers, Sibyl Leek, and Marissa or Marisa Anderson. Sibyl Leek, by the way, was an English born woman who was famous for being openly a witch and a medium, which in the 1960s was a pretty remarkable thing to be on the book jackets. The method was that mediums would walk the house, say what she senses, and then afterwards Holzer or his team goes to the library, historical society, the deed records, all of that research, and checks whether the names and dates the medium gave match anything real. That's the part he considered his evidence. If a medium who has never been in the town names a person who really lived there, died the way she said, that's a hit. Okay, because that's another thing that too, because of the TV show he inspired, copies this structure almost exactly. Cindy Casa, who I adore, walks the building, researchers dig into the history, and then the two get compared. It's Holzer's method with better lighting. Now you can't talk about Hans Holzer without talking about Amityville. In January 1977, Holzer and the medium Ethel Myers went into 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, New York, in the house that would become the center of Amityville horror. The house where in nineteen seventy four Ronald DeFeo junior murdered his family. Myers claimed the house had been built over a Native American burial ground and the angry spirit of a Shinnecock chief she called rolling thunder had possessed De Feo and had driven him to the killings. And that claim was disputed. Local historian historical societies denied it. Other writers pointed out that the original people of the area were Monotocket, not the Shinnika. So the specifics of the Amityville explanation didn't hold up to the records, which is exactly the kind of cross-check Holzer's own method was supposed to rely on. He kept writing about the Amityville, anyways. Well, actually he wrote about it a lot. The murder in Amityville in 1979. The Amity Vir Amityville Curse in nineteen eighty one, the secret of Amityville in nineteen eighty five. It's the case he's most associated with. For a lot of people, it's also the case that most damaged his credibility. And when speaking of credibility, let's be fair, because this is a podcast where we tell the truth even about people we find charming or tend to agree with. The Society for Psychical Research published an article in its journal that, per the summaries I read, cast considerable doubt on the objectivity and reliability of his work as a whole. The skeptical investigator Joe Nickel wrote that Holster didn't always provide verification for his claims, that he accepted spirit photographs and anecdotes too readily, and that the mediums he relied on gave information that could be found through research. or fished out of the people in the room through cold reading, which is that technique where you throw out vague statements and watch people's faces for the ones that land. And his interest in psychic archaeology, using psychics to locate or interpret archaeological sites, has been widely criticized as pseudoscience, which is a spicy detail that he started out studying real archaeology in Vienna. So you've got a man who respected historical records enough to cross check them, and also built much of his case on testimony that critics say couldn't be independently verified. Both of those are true, and I'll let you hold both. So some human details because I like him better when he's a person. one thing is he was a vegetarian and a teetotaler, and he wrote a book called The Vegetarian Way of Life in nineteen seventy three. which if I could, if I wasn't anemic, and every time that I didn't eat meat, my anemia would go haywire, I would be a vegetarian. So Sarah: Mm, yeah. Sheena: So I mean that's just me personally, you know, I always have a problem with the idea that my food has face. But Sarah: Well, I mean, I like I d I could not eat certain things. I mean, cows and chickens can chickens can get nasty. I don't mind chickens. cows I mean, they're they're good. I mean, they're good for so many things like milk and cheese and me and they're kinda you know, there's a lot of cows. I I don't feel so badly, but I mean I could not eat I couldn't eat dog. I couldn't eat dog. cat of course. Ooh. Bunny rabbits. I couldn't eat bunny rabbits. Baby animals like you know, I can you know I can eat you know, anything like baby. Hmm. Sheena: Yeah. Yeah. So Hans described himself as a lacto vegetarian, meaning dairy, yes, eggs, no. So the world's most famous ghost hunter did not eat meat and did not drink. That is not the energy I expected from a man who spent his nights in old taverns. He married Countess Catherine Buxhoven, who was described as a descendant of Catherine the Great's line. They had two daughters and the marriage eventually ended. One of those daughters is Alexandra Holzer. She wrote a memoir in in 2008 calling Growing Up Haunted about what it was like to be the kid of a man whose idea of a family road trip was a haunted house. And she's the person at the center of this T V series. She opens her father's files, which we'll talk about in a few moments. So, he passed away in two thousand nine on April twenty sixth in Manhattan at the age of eighty nine. And this is the line the Travel Channel loves to repeat, so I will now too. Holzer is credited as the inspiration for Ghostbusterbusters. The network said Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis were inspired by him. Ackroyd in particular has talked for years about growing up in a family interested in Sarah: Yeah. Sheena: spiritualism. Sarah: Yes. His family was very into like the occult and things like that. I I did hear about that. And I was like, it makes so much sense. Makes so much sense. Sheena: Yeah. Yeah. So the guy who started out in Vienna listening to his uncle's ghost stories ended up indirectly being the one reason a generation of kids ran around in the nineties with cardboard proton packs go singing the song Ghostbusters Dee Dee Dee Dee Dee Dee Dee Dee Dee Dee Dee Dee. Sarah: Love it. Sheena: I mean how it there we have so many sounds from our childhood that would immediately Sarah: What do you mean? Sheena: trigger us. I mean, we could be sleeper agents with how many sounds could just trigger us. Sarah: Exactly. I mean commercials like you know the Saturday morning cartoons, like you know, those those those ads and info I mean just seriously, like you hear it and you're like, Ooh, I know or or the jingles, the jingles. We had great jingles. Sheena: Start singing it immediately, yeah. Sarah: Yeah. Double your pleasure, double your fun. Yeah, just I mean seriously, just so many Sheena: Yes. Sarah: I think we're like literally like I feel like chicken and that like chicken. Like I we Sheena: Well Sarah: were the last generation I think that really had that really had those jingles, you know? I mean they don't have jingles like that nowadays. Sheena: Well yeah, 'cause like there's always that yeah for like the caramello. Like every time I see a caramello candy bar, that's all or give me a break. Give me a break. Sarah: Yeah. Caramello. Yep. I mean Give me a break. Break me off a beast that get bar. I mean, seriously, we had like the most amazing jingles that, you know, like the big red, I remember the big red commercials. But they don't have that nowadays. I mean, like now, I mean that would be considered so cheesy. And I guess it was cheesy back then, but you know. Sheena: Well, now they're just reusing our music, you know. Because like I Sarah: God, yes. Pathetic. Sheena: remember there was a pain something and they're like, My neck, my back and I'm like, do not finish that sentence on T V And then they were like Sarah: Exactly. Exactly. I'm like Sheena: they're saying something and then I'm like and then in Sarah: I might Sheena: my head I'm just screaming, My pussy and my crack Sarah: I'm like, do not be using our music to to play. No, no. No. We're not old. I'm sorry. I Sheena: Yeah. Sarah: refuse. Despite what my son calls me. He says I'm apparently Sheena: Yeah. Sarah: older than my parents, which I'm like, Tyrion, how is that even feasible? That's No. No. Sheena: Yeah. Sarah: Apparently I'm a hundred and two. Go ahead. Sorry. Sheena: I feel it sometimes. Sarah: yeah, no, I feel it. I mean like today I was like, you know, trying to put out my my summer decorations and I was just like, I'm like stretching my back out and I'm like, what is this? Sheena: Mm-hmm. So for better or worse, our modern ghost hunting scene, the shows, the gadgets, the whole genre of we investigated a haunted place and here's the EVP has Holzer's fingerprints on it. And that's why a TV network dedicated or excuse me, why a TV network decided he was worth a series. So let's talk about how the Holzer Files works. It premiered on the Travel Channel on October 3rd, 2019. Season one ran ten episodes, season two came back with thirteen, kicking off with a Halloween week premiere on october twenty ninth, twenty twenty. The premise Holzer's daughter Alexandra gave the production access to thousands of her father's documents, letters, photographs, and audio and visual visual recordings, some dating back to the nineteen fifties. A team goes through the files, picks a case, and returns to the location to see what's happening now. Now the team is made up of three people, or well, more people than that, but we have Dave Schrader, who is the paranormal investigator and radio host. The network ho network says he's one of the last people to interview Kolzer before he died, which gives him a kind of passing the torch roll on this. We have Cindy Keza or Casa, the psychic medium. We have Shane Pittman, who is the equipment specialist and always seems to be the one that gets sent into the basement first. there is Gabe Roth, a researcher, and of course Alexandra Holzer, bringing her father's family files and family perspective. The structure goes like this: Holzer investigates often decades ago. The team reads his notes, they ask, what did he find? What did he miss? What did he leave unfinished? And then they go see if the place is still active. And that last part is the hook for this finale. The official description says that in nineteen sixty four, Holzer did a prelim preliminary investigation of the bait ship Chanderley. Let's let's try that again. Bates ship chandler I don't know how to say it. Chandler in cohassent. Sarah: It's all good. Sheena: so they interviewed witnesses, told the spirit to move on, and decided a follow up with a psychic wasn't needed. And the show's whole angle is that was a mistake. One quick housekeeping note, if you go looking for this episode, the numbering is a little messy depending on where you look. Some list l some listings call it season two, episode thirteen, which is the finale. Other listings, especially older press materials, gave it a December 2020 premiere day and some streaming and listing sites showing it aired in the spring of 2021. Streaming services have also reshuffled episode order. So if your app says something different, You're not losing your mind. It's the season two finale, however you slice it, and the one with Cohasset and the description. So before we do the show, I want to zoom out on the season two because once you line up the episode description, a theme jumps out. A lot of these cases are about things Holzer left undone. The season opener goes back to 1963 when a Cleveland family called Holzer after seeing a phantom hand pry up nails. and open a trapdoor. Another file episode follows his repeated investigations of Franklin Castle in Cleveland between 1960 and nineteen seventy five, and the description says that strangely he refused to publish his findings. The team tries to figure out why he buried the case. Then there's the Surat Tavern in Clinton, Maryland, the first stop of John Milk's booth after he assassinated Abraham Lincoln in eighteen sixty five. There's Howard Lodge, also in Maryland, where Holzer in nineteen sixty nine investigation was cut short by the homeowner. There's a farmhouse in Waterford, Maine, where in nineteen sixty eight Holzer reportedly fled out of fear of possession by a powerful entity. There's a case from Rockland County, New York, the site of his very first one that he was obsessed with for life. There's Staten Island conference house, where A last minute peace meeting in seventeen seventy six failed to stop the American Revolution. And there's also the Queen Mary, which is a ship which is haunted a haunted ship. that's now a hotel, which is the most American sentence I can ever say. So you've got care cases he buried, cases he was thrown out of, and cases that he ran ran from and cases he never got back to. Then the finale is the one where he showed up, said, move along and left, which fits it is the exact shape of the season's argument. Holzer was brilliant, prolific, charismatic, and also one man with a thousand cases. Things slipped. The show is positioned as the cleanup crew. Whether that's a fair portrait of him is a separate question, and I'll come back to that at the end. but when you watch Devil and the Rock, it's worth remembering that this is not a standalone, it's the closing argument of a season. So let's get to the coast. And then forgotten by time. Stone walls, white clapboard, a harbor, a coastline that is gorgeous and absolutely historically lethal. The National Park Service describes Cohasset's story simply. Through the 18th and 19th centuries, it grew into a seafaring village, living off shipbuilding, trading, and fishing. And right in the middle of the village at 4 Elm Street sits our building. Now, of course, here we go with the word chanterly. Quick vocab lesson because I Sarah: You'll you'll you'll get it one of these times. Sheena: Yeah, one of these times. I'll I'll I'll get Sarah: There are some weird names. Like I that that's the that's the one thing that gets me sometimes like having to like like in foreign languages or whatever. I'm just like I'm gonna mutilate this. Gonna mutilate this. Sheena: Yeah. Well, sometimes it's really hard to wrap your mouth around words. So a ship chandler chandlery is a ship supply store. The word comes from chandler, which is al already originally meant a candle maker, and over time it became to mean the ship the shop that sold everything a vessel needed rope, lamps, candles, tools, dry goods, the kind of place where captains stocked a boat before it left on a sailor's fam and a sailor's family bought groceries while he was gone. Or, if you're a xenil like me, one of the friends on the show friends. Chandler Bing. So now about the Bates ship Chanderley. It was built in the mid seventeen hundreds. The Cohasset Historical Society dates it to around 1754. It was built by Samuel Bates, described as a prominent sea captain and businessman to outfit his own fleet of schooners and other local vessels to supply suppli supply sailors families. It is a two story wood frame building with with a hip roof and clapboard siding, and the National Register of Historic Places lists it as the best preserved remnant of Cohasset's early maritime history. And here's a detail I love. The building did not always stand where it stands today. It was originally on the waterfront across from the Bates Wharf, but in 1957 it was moved to its current spot on Elm Street next to the Captain John Wilson House. And now it's part of the property owned by the Cohasset Historical Society. The Society says Samuel Bates' granddaughter, Jessie Bancroft Cox, gave the building to them. Behind the lot there is an exposed ledge, bare rock rising up behind the buildings. So when we get to a title with the word rock in it, I want you to picture a building literally backed up against a ledge. So today it serves as the Society's maritime museum. It holds artifacts and artwork about Cohasset's maritime history, shipbuilding, fishing, deep sea captains, shipwrecks. The Society says it underwent a major restoration and reopened the summer of twenty twenty one, around the time that this episode was airing, which is a very satisfying coincidence, if we believe in coincidences. So the historical s society lists seasonal hours. So if you wanna go, you should check, check their hours before you drive out there. And so I want to flag a few things that is in my observation and not a claim made in any source. The building was moved in 1957, holzer visited in 1964, so that's seven years. I'm not telling you that moving a building causes a haunting. Please do not email me about that. But if you're thinking about how a place changes, here is a 200-year-old structure hauled away from the waterfront where it spent its whole working life, set down on a new foundation next to a different house, and turned into a museum. And without about a decade, people are reporting footsteps upstairs. A believer may say the building holds something and it came along for the ride. A skeptic might say old wooden but wooden buildings that get moved, restored, and reopened to the public are going to creak, shift, settle, and sound like someone is walking on a second floor. Choose your choose your poison there. Pick your poison because I say that they that they moved along because partially because of the stone tape theory. So Here's what the shown is the show's materials say about the original case. And I'm going to be careful to tell you where this information comes from. It comes from the official description of the episode as presented by the show's team, so treat it as the version that the production tells and not as an independent historical record. So in nineteen sixty four, Hans Holz Holzer traveled to the Bates Shop Bateship Chanderly. Ugh, say that three times fast. You're not gonna make it. Sarah: I'm not even gonna try, friend. I'm not even gonna try. No. Sheena: So he goes for what's described as a preliminary investigation. And the witness accounts, according to the description, are not subtle. Dozens of people reported hearing phantom footsteps walking around the upstairs of the old ship's door, not one nervous volunteer, dozens. The museum's curator, Bob Fraser, reported an event that even more directly experienced blah blah blah. Reportedly had an even more direct experience, a full body apparition at the top of the stairs. So not a cold spot, not shadows, but a full figure standing at the top of the staircase in the building where he worked. So imagine sitting there unlo you know, going through unlocking a museum every morning, turning the lights on, walking past the displays, and knowing that at the top of those stairs, there's usually nothing there. And then that's where a job a job where you either develop a really dry sense of humor or you start talking to the to the you start taking the long way to work. According to the description of the ghost, the witnesses all believed that they were dealing with the ghost of a past owner, a man named John Bates. So yet again, flag on the play. You know, the sources I found credit Samuel Bates with the with building the January and sent the 1700s. The ghost per the show's material is John Bates, described as a past owner. I couldn't find a source that explains exactly how those two men are part of the same family because the bait's name runs through the history of the building and the wharf, but I'm not going to tell you that as a fact. If you're from Cohasset or you've been to the museum, I would generally love to hear what the local story is about that. So Hans Holzer interviewed the witnesses, he implored the spirit to move on, and then he decided a follow-up with a psychic was not needed, and then he left. So surprising, but of course you have somebody who they may not feel that this is up to it because he is experienced. Maybe that was just simple. And then I also told you that mediums were the foundation of Holzer's method. He nearly always brought one. The medium walks the place, speaks. Afterward you check what she said against historical record. That's the evidence. That's the part that in his mind separated his work from the campfire story. But oddly enough, he skipped it this time. So what can we guess from that? One, the haunting looked simple enough to him, named a ghost, a clear identity, reliable witnesses, a historical figure everybody already knew. In Holzer's framework, it a stay behind who knows his own name and has been identified by the community as a low complexity case. So Octoem, ask him to go, done. Two, it was a preliminary visit. and he may have planned to come back and never did. People forget how many cases he had. A hundred plus books means a lot of houses, and no one can ever give a house a second vi no one can give every house a second visit. Three, and this is the skeptic's view. The identification came from the witnesses before any investigators showed up. Everyone already knew it was John Bates and there was a problem for the method Because the whole point of the blind medium is that she gives you names you don't tell her. If the people in the room already decided who the ghost was, the identification isn't independent, it's folklore that got confirmed by the people who made it. So and then comes the part that makes this g a good television episode. The description says the haunting did not stop. In fact, it grew in intensity. It got to the point where in nineteen eighty two the curator was driven out of town and has refused to return ever since. Eighteen years between the investigation and the day the curator left. Think about that timeline. He visited in nineteen sixty four. He says, Move along, mister Bates. And for nearly two decades after that, people working in that building kept experiencing something until it gets bad enough that one of them who's been dealing with this the whole entire time books it. And that's the premise that the show uses. Bolzra's solution didn't work and something else was going on that his quick visit never uncovered. So now with this, there is the local historian named Robert Fraser, who wrote about the town's history in books, essays, including in a 1981 piece on the wreck of the Saint Brig, of the Bra Brig Saint John. which we're going to include in a few moments. The curator in the show's description is Bob Fraser. Bob is a common nickname for Robert. Cohasset is a small town, and the Historical Society is exactly where you expect a local historian to work. It would not shock me if they were the same person, but I haven't confirmed it, so I'm only telling you that there's a thread. If it is the same man, then the person who saw the figure at the top of the stairs may also have been the one the people who wrote down the town's worst maritime disaster. And that's a pretty stunning overlap between the man who saw a ghost and the man who documented tragedy. So now with this, can't verify all the specifics. So here's what happens with the team in the episode of Devil in the Rock. The team, Dave Schraeder, Cindy Casa, and Shane Pittman, travel to the Massachusetts coast to follow up on Holzer's investigation. The official synopsis says that they dig into the property's past, they uncover chilling undercurrent of darkness, and that's anchored in the rocky shores. So with this, they have Cosm go in by herself where she goes, reads through, says what she thinks, they go in, they double check the history, and then they go and and then they do a follow-up investigation afterwards where they find some things. You know, Shane Pittman, who is the equipment guy, he gets all of the the stuff. Brain can't think now. he gets all of the the proof on that second. So now I don't want to ruin the reveal for anybody. So I want to do something now that makes the episode richer, whether or not the show makes this exact connection. I'm gonna tell you what's documented about the rocks off of Cohasset. Because I think you agree you'll agree that when a T V T V episode says darkness anchored in the rocky shores, A true story from exact coastline stops feeling like a background. And I need to be very clear about this. I'm not going to say that the episode claims this. I'm saying that this is real local history that this building's own museum collects documents. If you ever looked at the nautical chart of the water outside Cohasset, it looks like someone spilled a bag of gravel into the ocean. Ledges, rocks, shoals, hazards with names. Minot Ledge, Grampus Ledge, also called the Grampuses, a group of low rocks, and one of them s stays submerged even at low tide. The Cohasset Historical Society's own museum notes that the second floor is designed to chronicle the many strip wrecks off the Cohasset Rocks, and the stripbrecks are not a footnote to this town's history. They are a major chapter. So I mentioned the St. John which happened in October eighteen forty nine. The worst of them, as the local historians put it, was the wreck of the the Brig Saint John. And here's the story as best as I can piece it together from the Cohasset records and the histories I've found. The Saint John was a ship carrying Irish immigrants during the Great Famine. It left Galway, Ireland on September seventh, eighteen forty nine, with about a hundred and forty three people aboard under Captain Martin Oliver. Most of the passengers were destitute people from Galway and Clare. One source mentions victims from the towns of Enistemon, Lachinick, and Kelfornor Kelfonora. They were headed for Boston. After about five weeks at sea, the ship approached Mach Massachusetts Bay in the middle of a violent storm. On Sunday, october seventh, eighteen forty nine, while the gale was raging, The visibility terrible, the captain realized he was going to miss the harbor. The ship anchored near Manoa's ledge, trying to ride out the storm. The anchors didn't halt. The ship was driven onto Grampus ledge, hit the rocks, and broke in two. So with that you have Irish who are immigrating. They survived the famine. They survived five weeks on in the hold of a ship. You can see the coast of the country that you've been dreaming about, and then it's rocks. And here's the part that really gets me. The townspeople of Cohasset were on the shore. They could see the ship coming apart. According to one account published by the Boston Irish community, the local boatmen Yankees, who by the account had a little affinity for the Irish. Put the prejudice aside and tried over and over to launch the town's life-saving boats into the surf, but the waves kept throwing them back. One of the rescuers wrote that it took them close to 45 minutes of struggling just to reach the wreck. They were able to save people, but not many. One historian counts nine of the sixteen crew and eleven passengers were saved. So that's about twenty survivors in all. Now the death toll, this is the one of those things where the sources don't agree, and I want to be honest that rather than you know, just pick a number. The memorial marker at Cohesset Cemetery refers to ninety nine who lost their lives. Another source says more than a hundred, and another five another says one hundred and forty five. Part of the confusion is that the passenger records from immigrants' ships in eighteen forty nine were not exactly meticulous and bodies were still washing ashore. For days. So I'll say the way that I think it is, most honest, at least 99, very likely more than 100, many of them were children. And here's a little fascinating thing for the history nerds in the in our audience. Henry David Thoreau read about the wreck in a Boston newspaper and went to see it. He took a train to Cohasset, arriving around October 9th, two days after the wreck. He wrote about what he saw in his book Cape Cod. He found the surf still breaking violently on the rocks. A sailor pointed out the remains of the ship to him. He walked the shore and saw pieces of the vessel and the aftermath. He ended his account with a reflection essentially that these people had come to the New World in the same spirit as Columbus or the pilgrims, that the people who died on those rocks were arrivers, not just victims. Which isn't a nice way to put it. So now most of the victims who came ashore were buried in Cohasset Central Cemetery, which about forty-five of them are in a common grave. In nineteen fourteen, the Ancient Order of Hiberians put up an eighteen foot Celtic cross on the hill to market, and in twenty twenty one a memorial bench was added. Father John Rodden, a priest from Boston, was summoned to Cohasset to help with that, with the burials. And here's also a bitter irony. The iron lighthouse on Mano's ledge was under construction at the time of the wreck. It wasn't yet lit when the St. John anchored there. It was completed in 1850, only a few months later. So the beacon that might have saved them was a few months too late. I believe that it was later destroyed in 1851, which killed the two assistant keepers and Now there is a stone lighthouse that stands there that was lit in 1860. at least that's what I found or I have seen. I had didn't get a chance to verify that. So with all of that, now we have all of that information. We have pieces and inform and and proof of that inside the Maritime Museum. So what could it be? You know, They have the objects there from the Saint John, a trunk, a small writing desk, and a piece of one of the ship's pulleys. Now think about it, bringing in objects from disaster. that could bring in those who were attached to it. So you know, whoever is there could be walking around because they're attached to those items. So Sarah: Yeah. Sheena: What I can tell you is that in a town where the sea took so many and there's a museum that holds physical remains of the worst of those losses, the idea of a place carrying weight isn't a big leap. Whether you read that as a ghost, as a memory, or as the way human beings feel when they're surrounded by abject objects from a tragedy, it's the same underlying thing. The past doesn't feel finished. And that I think is the real devil in the rock. It isn't a demon. It's that the rocks are still there, the town still remembers, and the bull building is full of reminders. So one last thing, and this is puri co purely coincidental, but I like it. excuse me. Hans Holzer wrote a book in nineteen sixty seven called The Lively Ghosts of Ireland, and the victims of the Saint John were largely from the West of Ireland, from the Galway and Clare. I'm not saying it means anything, I'm saying that if you go looking for patterns in the paranormal, you will find them. And that's both the fun and the danger of the genre. So like I said, I'm not going to to ruin the end of the holzer files for you, but let me leave you with three questions I can't shake. Why did he skip the medium? Second, does an investigation change a haunting? And third and this is the one I think about the most when I watch this because I do re watch these over and over again. is what do we owe the objects of the dead? If that museum is really displaying a trunk and writing desk and other things from the famine ship, then every visitor who walks past them in a small way is a witness. Maybe there's more meaningful things to a building like what that can do. Whether or not anyone is walking upstairs is the point of the place to make sure we don't forget where it came from. So with that, That's the end of the story and I hope you guys watch it. It was a great episode to end on for the series. I wish there was more. I still would like to go and kick some asses of the travel channel because they took away my ghost shows. And they had some really good ghost shows, like the Holster Files. And lights and and lights out. And destination fear. So Really, really upset about it. Sarah: I'm sorry. Sheena: Yeah, me too. Sarah: I don't I don't understand I don't know. I don't understand why. If it's if it's doing so well and and they're a success, like why would you take I don't know, I I don't know the whole history but I just Well, just would drive me crazy. I just like I it's like I love the show Penny Dreadful. And Sheena: Mm-hmm. Sarah: supposedly it was supposed to end after what three seasons I think or something. And it was Sheena: Mm-hmm. Sarah: supposed to end the way it did. But there were so many loose ends. They didn't wrap anything up, hardly anything. So many questions were left unanswered. And it's like Really? I mean, you did so well with telling your story and weaving your story, you know, like these relationships, you know, these webs, you know, and and you're gonna end it like this with no closure, with no I mean, you know, they say one thing but I really I really question like Was it supposed to really end or did something else happen? 'Cause yeah, there's Sheena: Yeah. Sarah: there's stories that that they just wasn't enough like enough in the budget, so they should so Showtime cut it and who knows? Who knows? Sheena: Yeah, so you guys, you know, watch it and let me know what you guys think. we we are getting windy down for Halloween season and thankfully it's getting cooler. I can actually make soup. So might just make myself some soup or might just make myself some chicken parm for dinner. I don't know. Sarah: I'm I'm excited. I'm I'm I have it on my menu to make my cream of carrot soup because I love my cream of carrot soup. So Sheena: Hmm. I can't can't say I have it. And then the weird thing as well is that my next episode that I am doing requires me to spin the wheel. It feels so weird to be doing this again. Sarah: I know that 'cause that means I'll be we'll be out of October. I don't wanna think about that. Sheena: I know. So here I go. I'm spinning the wheel. And Sarah: Dun dun dun dun dun dun dun, sorry. Little drum roll. Sheena: And Yeah. I got history. Sarah: Ooh, history. Awesome. Yay. Sheena: Yay. We love history. So And then we've got you coming up next week. are you going to reveal Sarah: No, cause I'm honestly still kinda deciding what I want to do. still thinking about it because I I obviously want it to be Halloween-y or spooky-ish or I don't know so Yeah, still debating. I feel like there's Sheena: Yeah. Sarah: so much and I feel like there's so much and I wanna do something good and interesting and and so like this the last when I can pick, you know, that's like you know, for a while until I get like paranormal or something or Yeah. So debating, debating. Sheena: Yeah. All right. Well, before we close out, we want to say thank you to all of our listeners. We love and appreciate you and we Sarah: Definitely. Sheena: we want you to interact with us. Let's get us get ourselves our weird and random community going. So we've got a Halloween special coming up for you. But as always, rate and review us. Share us with your friends. Your emanes. Yes, you're anemones. Sarah: Enemies, emones, emone It's all good, it's all good. Sheena: Your your kidneys. share it with the ghost in your house. yeah. So that way we can get more listeners and more ideas and more and also give us critiques. I might cry, but I will take it into consideration. Sarah: Yeah, we wanna know. We wanna know like what we're doing right, what we're doing wrong. You know, let us know what you're interested in. Like if you know, if you want us to if you wanna hear a certain topic, if you wanna hear a certain, you know, let us know. If you wanna, you know, tell us your stories, your friends' stories, your family stories, you know, we'll we'll read you know, we'll we'll share them if you want. you know. Sheena: Yeah, 'cause we want to do we want to do listener stories. And we know everybody who's listening has stories. Especially if this is your kind of thing. especially if it's paranormal, you know, give us true crime, give us, you know, that your great aunt ran away from Ted Bundy. You know, that would be great. Sarah: Weird stories. funky stories. Strange stories. Nothing's too weird. Nothing's too funky. Nothing's too out there. We wanna hear it. We wanna hear it all. So Sheena: Yes. So you can email us at so random and weird pod at gmail. And then we also have Facebook and Instagram. you can listen to us pretty much anywhere where there is where you listen to your podcast. There we go. so with that we want you to stay curious. stay weird and avoid those maritime excuse me, sorry. All of a sudden I have a little visitor. and make sure that when you're at a museum that it go what goes bump in the night isn't just a rat. So with that we love you and we will see you next week. Bye Sarah: Love you guys. Yep. Bye. See ya.