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Disclaimer. Some abandoned places may be dangerous or illegal to visit. Please do your research before setting out to any. And, per the legal department, the decision to go lies squarely with you.

Welcome back to Scared All The Time. I'm Chris Cullari.

And I'm Ed Voccola.

And this week, we're going to be talking the empty, the abandoned, the void. We're going to face it together. That's right, this week, we're talking ghost towns. Why do we find these places so frightening? Well, ghost towns are frightening because they are a stark reminder that something bad happened here. That humans are not the masters of our domain that we like to think we are. We are temporary and fleeting and subject to forces beyond our control. Whether a town was ruined by economic forces or a disease or a natural disaster or something even stranger, these places were once home to people just like us. People with hopes and dreams and families. They left behind their homes and businesses, monuments to forgotten lives, reminders that we too will cease to exist someday. I think about it every time I move into a new apartment. So many people have lived within these walls. All the fear and joy and happiness and highs and lows that each person before me must have experienced. And in the years before social media, there was no record of that. Those people came and went and time took them away. And ghost towns are almost Lovecraftian in that sense. Not in the way of madness and tentacles, but in the sense of touching the void. When you visit a ghost town, you're witnessing the aftermath of something unspeakable. I want to introduce an idea from a writer named Mark Fisher that I think will return to a lot, both in this episode and I think throughout the rest of this show. Mark wrote a book I highly recommend if you're into esoteric thought. It's called The Weird and the Eerie. And it's exactly what it sounds like. A series of essays on the difference between the weird and the eerie. And what Mark's argument boils down to is that something weird is the presence of something inexplicable. And the eerie is the absence of the familiar. And I think that makes Ghost Towns almost the textbook definition of eerie. In this episode, we're gonna talk about how some of the eeriest abandoned towns formed, what happened to them, and how likely you are to die should you choose to visit them. So pack your bags and buy a ticket to the unknown with us. First stop, theme song.

What are we scared?

When are we? Now it is time for Time Farts. Scared All The Time. Ed, when I say ghost town, what comes to mind?

I don't know, California on the west coast, at least, I guess I think of like prospector towns where the mine went dry and everybody packed up and left.

Right. Do you find those places scary?

I personally don't go to them. Like, I keep driving if I'm going to like Route 66 type shit. Not because of ghosts or anything. At this point, I guess it would probably be because of like meth heads and creeps that are living in this area and taking advantage of the fact that it's like empty. I don't love empty spaces to begin with. Like, I've had friends who has places in Joshua Tree and different desert communities, and I don't love being alone out there.

Yeah.

I guess the idea of a ghost town, if I'm in my own head about it, I don't like putting myself in a position where it's like, what if I was the last one here?

Right. And I think that's what scares a lot of people about the ideas of ghost towns. They're desolate. They are abandoned. They are home to who knows what in all the shadows and cobwebs and corners of all that rotting old wood. But I think when people hear the term ghost town, most people think about those dusty old abandoned mining towns. But that would be a boring episode. This episode is going to go a lot deeper than that because it turns out towns get abandoned for all kinds of reasons, some explicable, some not and all scary in their own ways. But first, a little housekeeping. Thank you so much to our Facebook community. You're all the best. As of today's recording, we're at 196 people in the Facebook group and on track to cross 200 members probably before this episode even drops. Can we get to 300 by the end of the year? There's only one way for that to happen. If you're listening to this and you haven't already, fire up Zuckerberg's Nightmare Machine and go search Scared All The Time on Facebook to keep in touch with us. We're also having a great time over on Instagram, so follow us there as well. And we're trying on X slash Twitter, but Ed and I are not on there as much. So if that's your main social network, we apologize. We'll try to pay a little more attention to you over there.

Yeah, maybe we'll turn on notifications.

Heads up, we joined Astonishing Legends for their annual Christmas party. So if you want to hear us hang with the gang, don't miss that episode when it drops. We also got a chance to talk UFO legislation with Micah Hanks of The Debrief, which was a big treat for me on that episode. And I'm not sure we ever actually announced this, so I think it's probably worth mentioning. The first season of Scared All The Time, that's right, we're doing seasons, is coming to a close at the end of the year. This is gonna be our eighth episode. Our ninth will drop just before Christmas, and our 10th and final episode of the season will drop the Thursday after Christmas, which I believe is the 28th.

And if you're listening to this in the year 2029, then this is irrelevant, but thanks for finding us.

Yeah, if you're following day to day and wondering, are Chris and Ed really gonna do an episode every week for all eternity? No.

Yeah, we'll finish up around the beginning of the new year, and then we're gonna take a short break, but I think we're working on some stuff that will keep you entertained while we're not dropping episodes.

Yeah, we're gonna take the time to bank episodes, probably create some special content, maybe launch a Patreon, and be back with season two before you know it. But before we take that break, we wanna capture as many ears as we possibly can with season one. So all we want for Christmas from you, dear listeners, is rate, review, and spread the word. All signs point to the fact that we're creating a really special community here, and you can be sure to tell people that we welcome noobs with open arms. So tell your family about us, tell your friends, kidnap a clown and force them to listen to last week's episode. Whatever you wanna do, let's just keep the scared ball rolling.

I don't think they should kidnap a clown and make them listen to...

Well, it's better than kidnapping a clown and doing something terrible to them.

Yeah, don't kidnap anyone. Maybe just nudge people via social media.

I don't know. Good point, Ed. Don't kidnap anybody. So you know what doesn't need housekeeping? An abandoned home.

Probably why they have so many cobwebs.

Yes, sir.

And I will say I live in a house and what are these spiders up to? I feel like I clean this house and then a week later, shit is popping off again.

Well, this year has been really bad for spiders.

Yeah, they are. Well, I guess good for spiders.

Well, it's because mosquitoes were crazy this year. But spiders and mosquitoes would be the least of your concerns if you were actually trapped in an abandoned town. You'd probably be thinking about how to leave a note or how to communicate with someone who might come looking for you. That's what the lost souls of the infamous Roanoke Island did. And I'm just gonna go ahead and say it right now, as far as ghost towns go, I think Roanoke kind of sucks.

It's the original garbage island.

It is. It's a garbage island for garbage people who disappeared and left a mystery that's not really much of a mystery.

Unless one of your relatives or descendants is a fan of the show, in which case you were not garbage people, you're fucking heroes in our eyes and we hope to hear from you again soon.

Around here, at this show, we don't forget about our heroes.

Yeah, exactly. So we don't know where you are. We wish you well.

We also don't know about the descendants of anyone from Roanoke because we don't know where anyone from Roanoke went. So I'm not super worried about this. But Roanoke, you've probably heard of. It was a colony founded in 1585 on Roanoke Island off the coast of what is now North Carolina. The guy who founded it, Ralph Lane, bounced back to England for a few years for supplies and whatever else he needed and left the colonists behind on Roanoke. When a ship came back to check on the place a few years later, the hundred or so settlers who had been left behind were gone. And this is where it feels like it's about to get spooky, right? You leave, you come back, the island's abandoned, and all that remained was this mysterious word carved into a tree, Croatoan. And if the story just stopped there, it would be super creepy, because Croatoan sounds like a magic word or an ancient spell or some old god. But what always disappoints me about this story is that Croatoan isn't a bizarre mystery word. It's the name of the island next door to Roanoke, which gives a very definitive suggestion of where the missing colonists went.

Literally, it's the earliest leaving a note on the fridge.

Yeah, it would be like if you woke up and you were like, my wife's gone. She left this note that says Starbucks, there's a mermaid on it. Where could she have gone? Although I guess if she never came back, that would still be a mystery. In any case, Croatoan being the name of the small island next door to Roanoke does very definitively suggest where these missing colonists probably went. And in fact, it's likely that the only reason the settlers were never seen again is because no one ever made it over to Croatoan to check on them. There was an attempt made, but rough seas and a bad anchor forced the expedition back to England before they could make landfall.

Wait, so the expedition was from England to Croatoa?

I don't know if it was going from England to Roanoke and then from Roanoke to Croatoa or if they-

So not just, we're on Roanoke, we're gonna go check Croatoa. Pretty rough out here. Let's just go back to England, fuck it.

That's what it sounds like happened. It sounds like they made an attempt. Now, I don't know how, maybe you can throw a rock from one of these islands to the other and they were just like, they made up a story when they got back about why they couldn't find anyone.

Or if it's, yeah, it's so close that the person's like, Croatoa? And then he just looks to Croatoa and he's like, I don't see anybody in Croatoa.

There's four trees and I don't see anyone over there.

This became a mystery quickly.

Yeah, so, and for a long time, people like, this story kinda got forgotten about because it really wasn't that big of a deal. And then at some point in the modern era, I didn't shot it down here, but there was some book or something that like brought the story back up as a mystery. And like, it is a mystery in the sense that archeologists have never been able to say really with certainty what happened to this lost colony, but it's pretty likely they assimilated into local Native American tribes.

Am I crazy that Roanoke has an alien component to it now?

Does it?

If it doesn't, it's a good way to get a little fucking traction because it does seem like anything that's weird or mysterious, people these days do just throw like, and aliens.

Oh, I'm sure somebody has suggested that they were abducted by aliens. I can guarantee that that theory is out there, but-

If any of our listeners abducted anyone from Roanoke, let us know. Let the world know.

Let the world know. This is like suddenly turning into Catch a Predator.

We promise we won't turn you in.

Yeah, just send us a jokey email saying if you did it, where they might be.

An OJ. Simpson book.

An OJ. Yeah, so archaeologists have never been able to say with certainty what happened to the so-called lost colony, but it's pretty likely they assimilated in some of the local Native American populations. And honestly, I'm not too worried about it. There's a whole world of much stranger ghost towns out there with stranger, scarier mythologies, like the mysteries and mythologies of Portlock, Alaska. Now, Ed, you've been to Alaska, have you not?

I sure have.

Tell us a little bit about how remote Alaska is.

It's super remote. Like I took a train from Anchorage to Fairbanks, which was hours and hours and hours. And out of both sides of the train was stunning landscape, but fucking nothing there. And also the level of remoteness is, I think it was like 20,000 or more people live off the grid in Alaska. So when you're on the train, you would see these flags. And the flags are to let the conductor know, hey, there's someone at the next mile mark or whatever needing a ride to the next major city, and they would stop and grab them. So if you're one of these people who live off the grid or what have you, one of your rights, I guess, potentially in Alaska is you can get rides for free.

On the train.

On the train, but essentially what the intention is, from what I understand, is you would then go to the city, get the next supplies you need for a couple months, and then get taken back to your snowmobile, which they call snow machines up there.

I can't imagine living that way. I mean, I like my solitude, but living off the grid between the only two cities in Alaska and only being able to get supplies by leaping upon a moving train.

No, no, it's not moving. It comes either to a stop or it slows down. And they're not the only two cities, but yeah, they're the two major well-known cities. But yes, the point of this story is, it is incredibly, incredibly remote. So I've also taken a small plane to Coldfoot, Alaska, which is essentially, I believe, in the Arctic Circle. Like there's 12 people who live there. It's a very beautiful, very remote place.

Yeah, and Portlock was definitely remote. It still is. We'll get to that in a little bit, but this area has been populated for centuries. The earliest records are of the Alouette people who lived on this land that became Portlock, Alaska. On the tip of the Kanai Peninsula in Alaska, they lived there for centuries. And according to one source I found, there was a native settlement there at one point, but wouldn't you know it, it mysteriously disappeared. Always a great sign. European settlers came into the area around 1780 and established what would become Portlock, a small cannery town. It was far from a bustling city, but there was eventually a post office and homes and the cannery and the whole deal. But by the 1950s, it was completely abandoned and no one really knows why.

I do like that you can start a town on cannery.

Yeah, well-

It was a better time.

It was. I mean, you could say, look, here's a problem. People can't get salmon in cans. I've solved it. I've opened a cannery in Alaska and people are getting their salmon and they're thrilled.

Well, they're getting their salmon, yeah.

Now you have to invent Facebook.

Now you have to invent Facebook to have any real traction, that's true.

Yeah, back then-

Back then it's like, what do you need canned? Wear your people.

Yeah.

Can we get this shit shipped? Alaska, we get in the flight every six months, but yeah, go ahead.

So there were longstanding rumors that the area of Portlock was haunted or cursed, possibly because of that native settlement that vanished, but it wasn't until 1905.

Yeah, I wonder if it has anything to do with it. Hey, this land is cheap and or free. Who used to live here?

I wonder if it has anything to do with that giant pile of skulls at the center of town that no one lives in anymore.

Yeah, a lot of language on some of those hand-drawn signs back there that said, do not enter in another tongue.

Yeah.

Well, let's knock those down and open a cannery.

There were longstanding rumors that the area was haunted or cursed probably because of that native settlement that vanished, but it wasn't until 1905 that the mystery really kicked into high gear because 1905 was the year something started quote, bothering the camp. How do we know this? Because a woman wrote a letter to the editor in a 1935 issue of Alaska Sportsman Magazine, claiming, now follow me here, the woman who wrote the letter to Sportsman Magazine claimed that she had discovered a letter written by a relative of hers who had been the school teacher at the cannery in Portlock Bay. She says that in that letter that she found, the relative told a story about all of the Alouette workers bailing on the cannery for an entire season because of a frightening quote, quote, hairy man in the woods who was harassing them. The cannery employed security, but it took an entire year for the workers to come back and feel comfortable enough to work there, which suggests that whatever happened was more than a couple of weird footsteps in the dark.

And this is a time when jobs maybe weren't super plentiful?

Probably not on the tip of some bay in Alaska. Every other job was probably more scary and violent. It's like, if you're not working at the salmon cannery, you have to go kill bears with a rifle.

Or you have to just catch salmon.

Or you have to catch salmon, which sounds awful.

Which is like, man, I ain't standing upstream. I want to stand on the conveyor belt just packing the salmon in. It's a lot easier. Oh no, a grizzly fucking unknown beast. I'm outta here. Which makes me believe that that kind of gives credence to it in a sense that we need this money, we need these jobs, but something that's keeping you from taking a job where there aren't any.

They got scared enough that they left for an entire year.

We're talking 365, a calendar. Well, could be a leap year, but minimum 365.

Yeah, there's not too much else to do up there. So they were scared. If you listen to our Hat Man episode, you know I'm a sucker for cultural context for this stuff. So I do think it's interesting that both the original letter that this woman found, assuming that that letter actually exists, and the letter that she wrote to the editor of Alaska Sportsman in 1935, both predate the 60s and 70s Bigfoot craze in America. And obviously stories of wild men and ape-like creatures in the woods existed way, way, way before that modern craze. But if anything, I think that just gives credence to the idea that there is a North American ape that is yet to be identified that is still roaming around out there.

And if you ever don't get canned goods on time, just know that it was likely him.

Bigfoot?

I'm just some North American unnamed ape is, once I hate to say it, but we're talking about supply chains once again. And in this case, it is an unnamed North American ape who's messing. It's like why you're not getting your salmon on time.

The flavor of Bigfoot in this part of Alaska is known as the non-Tinook. And descriptions seem to fall somewhere between a supernatural shapeshifter and a more traditional wild man type ape like figure. And boy, did this figure make the 1920s and 30s wild in Portlock, Alaska.

It started doing the Charleston?

The non-Tinook brought jazz to Portlock, Alaska and no one knew what to make of it. No, he made it wild in a bad way. The first thing that happened was a guy named Albert Petka encountered some sort of a hairy figure and managed to scare it off with the help of his dogs. But we unfortunately only know this about Albert Petka because he staggered back into town and told locals what happened and then immediately succumbed to his wounds, which were a fatal blow to his chest. His creature struck. So Albert came back out of the woods, bleeding from his chest, told somebody he'd encountered this hairy man, fought him off and then died from this giant wound in his chest. Oh. Then in 1931, a resident named Andrew Kamluck was found dead after suffering a heavy blow to the head. The blow was thought to have killed him instantly and was carried out by something much larger and stronger than a human. Because when Kamluck's body was found, it was found 10 feet away from the logging equipment that he was operating. And there was blood all over the logging equipment. There didn't really seem to be any way that this could have happened from Kamluck slipping and falling or simply hitting his head unintentionally somehow on the equipment.

So people are showing up to these locations being like, somebody just punched these guys to death. We've observed the place of death. We've observed the injuries. And the only conclusion we can make is someone tried to punch through these people.

Petka got punched to death. Kamluck got his head smashed in on logging equipment. Then a few years later, a couple cannery workers, these brave salmon cannery workers went for a walk in the woods near Portlock. Guess what? They never returned. And when they were found, at least one of the bodies, some of the reports vary, but one or more of the bodies was found horribly mutilated. And not in the way that bears mutilate people, in the way that they weren't torn apart and eaten. They were just torn apart.

We've got a problem on our hands in Portlock, Alaska.

We've got a problem in Portlock. Hunters tracked a large moose and came across what they claimed were 18-inch long human-like footprints, leading to flattened brush that looked like a moose had been killed and dragged off.

So moose aren't safe either here.

No, and moose are big. Did you see a moose in Alaska?

I did.

They're huge.

I can tell you right now, I punch a moose, it's just gonna be upset.

Yeah.

This thing punches meese.

This thing punches meese, breaks its neck and drags it away.

Oh my God. We've got a hairy puncher on our hands.

And then, fisherman Tom Larson, a few years later.

This has gone aquatic?

No, no, no, he wasn't on a boat. Oh. He was fishing from shore and he said, he saw a huge, hairy creature on one of the beaches near town. He ran home to get his rifle. And when he came back, the creature looked at him and Larson was so scared that he didn't shoot and the creature walked away.

I mean, I don't know. Are you really a fisherman at that point, if you're not at sea?

No.

You're just like, you're a hobbyist at best.

Yeah, you're a woodsman who ran out of food and has decided fish are the only option.

Well, you gotta get them before the canneries do. You gotta get the salmon before the salmon's packed away.

So Petka punched, Camluck caved in, cannery workers carved, hunters horrified, and fisherman Tom Larson scared, maybe hypnotized by the creature that looked at him. And now Ed, as if this wasn't enough, we've agreed, we have a hairy man problem in Portlock, Alaska.

It's one of the bigger problems they've had.

Truly. On top of all that, people started reported seeing the ghost of a woman dressed in all black. She would emerge from the nearby cliff, dragging her long black dress along the ground behind her and wailing like a banshee.

Does anyone know if she was punched to death?

She might have been the ghost of someone that Nantinuk killed. Maybe she was the widow of one of his victims.

Or the widow of Nantinuk.

Or the widow of Nantinuk. Maybe she was punched to death. We have no idea really, but lots of spooky legends surrounding Portlock, Alaska. Which...

What happened to the cannery?

Well, by 1949, people were fleeing and...

1949?

This was over the course of a bunch of years.

So 1949?

Yes.

The war is over, but not the war of Nantinuk?

Yeah, so in 1905, people leave the cannery for a season because of a hairy man bothering them. It takes until 1949 for people to flee. And by 1949, the postmaster was the only person left in Portlock. I can only assume in case somebody was writing letters to the Nantinuk he needed to.

You think he had a PO box?

Maybe, I don't know who else is getting mail at that point. But after that, he left and the town has slowly been reclaimed by the woods. So Ed, what do you think is your favorite theory of what's going on here?

I have two theories forming in my little pee brain, and that is one, we're dealing with a dual ghost ghost slash ape man issue, which is you walk out of your cannery and take a left, you're gonna get punched to death. You walk out of the cannery and take a right, you're gonna meet a woman that's very hard to understand in a long black dress. So just leave town. That's theory number one.

That's what everyone did. So theory number one leads to the correct conclusion.

Theory number two, I'm Jim Cannery. I own the cannery. It's not doing great. Turns out when you can salmon, it becomes inedible. I don't know. I don't know the laws of cannery, but it's not doing great. I need to write a letter to my dad, Mr. Cannery, and say, this was a bad investment from you. I should never have gotten into cannery. This isn't great. Can I still come home? Nobody wants to write that letter. Instead, write a letter to everyone you know, saying there's a woman in the long black dress and a hairy man punching men to the moon. And then say, I would have loved to make this cannery thing work. But the reality situation was, I had ghouls and super punchers, and it's just not gonna happen in the property that we bought.

So you think Jim Cannery was sort of a fail son who needed a way out of this?

I think one version is Jim Cannery couldn't hack it in the cannery business. And he was, rather than admit to that, said that we're dealing with very strong ape men and very confusing women in black dresses. And we just simply, I hate to say it, but we got to close the doors to Jim Cannery and son's cannery.

Yeah, well, I got to tell you, that theory is much closer to what may have actually happened here.

Oh, really?

It's hard to determine how true a lot of these stories are. The Skeptoid podcast, shout out Skeptoid, did a great episode on Portlock that involved way more research than we did and came to the conclusion that most of the tales coming out of Portlock were exaggerated or made up completely. The Camluck case where the guy hit his head on the logging equipment and was found 10 feet away. It was reported on at the time and it did indeed happen, but it could just likely have been a strange workplace accident. It was odd that he was found so far away and that there was so much blood on the equipment. But also, I mean, I'm sure a cannery town on the tip of a peninsula in the middle of nowhere, Alaska probably attracted some rough people. And it could just as easily have been Cam Luck ran out of luck with some guy who he owed money to or something and got his head smashed in. I don't think it needed to be necessarily an ape man that did it.

That's true. I will say when I was in Alaska, I was surprised to learn how many, and this is Native American tribes and reservations, but I'll just use it as an example, how many of them were drug and alcohol free. And it had something to do with the history, but more importantly to do with the fact that you are places where it is 24 hours of sunlight, sometimes in the summer, multiple days of full night in the winter, and there's nothing to do but fucking drink and fucking potentially cause trouble. And it's just better to say, hey, you know what, in this area, you can't add a boost to that equation.

Yeah, no help. No help is coming.

Yeah, so let's not get fucking drunk. Let's not fight with each other. Let's not accidentally fall on your equipment, bust your head.

I can guarantee you those laws did not exist at this point in time.

Okay, yeah, but I didn't say these are laws. These are like, you know, like...

Traditions.

Reservations. Well, no, no, it's literally like you can't in these reservations. You literally can't. But it is a thing where, hey, you know what, doesn't help these already rough environments, get in fucking saws.

Right.

So it could very well be that, like you said, pre these types of ideas, people getting hammered and falling into fucking saws. And now it's like, oh, Dave fell into a saw again, turns out you can always say again, so many times when falling into saws, let's drag his body 10 feet and say that fucking Galook-a-goo did it or whatever the hell you said his name was.

Non-Tanuk.

Okay, sure.

This also all does remind me of a really great Hulu documentary called Sasquatch.

That was not called Galook-a-goo on Hulu.

No, it's not called Non-Tanuk, it's called Sasquatch. And is a true crime show that investigates the rumors of Bigfoot's involvement in the murder of three weed farmers up near Mendocino County.

Did it have any clips of him in like an interrogation room where he's like, I didn't fucking do it. I was somewhere else.

They pulled him off the Jack Links commercial set and brought him into an interrogation room. No, but it's a really interesting documentary because spoiler alert, Bigfoot didn't do it.

Or show up for the documentary.

Or show up for the documentary, but it is, I forget if they have someone in the documentary who admits to it or if it's just sort of what they theorize that essentially these people were murdered and sort of to cover it up, rumors were purposely spread of the fact that there was this Bigfoot out there in the woods, fucking people up, stay away from this area. And because there was such a local tradition of this lore and Bigfoot legend already, people started to take it really seriously because these guys were butchered and everyone was frightened and it helped keep people in line. And I wonder your cannery theory, even though we were goofing on it, I do wonder to some extent if some of this could have been maybe not an attempt to close the cannery, but there was somebody using these local legends that stretch back as far as forever to cover up other crimes or to just keep people kind of in line or where they were supposed to be, when they were supposed to be there.

I will say in terms of Northern California, Southern Oregon, in my experience, kind of get your hotel or motel not in either of those places. Those are still kind of parts of this country where they don't take kindly to headlights they're not anticipating. And it is a lot of shit going on in the fucking woods there that have nothing to do with cryptids, but I'm sure they would love to use cryptids as a smoke screen. And I imagine Alaska's 10 times higher that level of like I anticipated being alone for whatever weird crimes.

Yeah, I grew up in Central Pennsylvania and the town where I'm from, Hershey was a very quaint town, but there were lots of dense woods and areas around Hershey where I've been more scared than I've ever been other places in the country because you get a sense of when you're on someone's land or where you are pulling up somewhere that you're not supposed to be. And it gets scary real quick out there.

This is embarrassing to say, I was rollerblading. I was rollerblading.

Ladies and gentlemen, one more time, Ed was rollerblading.

I was in middle school, but I was rollerblading through my town. And I'm also from a small, weird, woodsy town. And I remember being like, I rollerbladed too far away. And I got nervous that the night had descended upon me. And I was like, what do I do? But I felt very cognizant of like, do I knock on someone's door at night in this farm community? Because I personally, one of my great fears is someone knocking at my door. Like, period. Los Angeles, New York City. I don't care where the fuck you are. Someone knocking on your door that you're not expecting is weird. And now I'm in like farm country. I gotta take my rollerblades off, swing them over my shoulder to like walk through a dairy farm to knock on a farmer's door to be like, hey, can I use your phone to call my mom? Because I've rollerbladed too far from home, and now I'm scared. It was a brutal situation.

It sounds like the opening to a season of True Detective or something.

Yeah, no, yeah. I'm the one that goes missing in that opening, yeah. But there's something about isolation and a new thing arriving that's really scary. And whether that thing is a tinuck.

Non-tinuck.

Non-tinuck, yes-tinuck.

So the last thing I wanna say about Port Lack, Alaska is that the story of Port Lack was immortalized in a 2021 Discovery Plus show called Alaskan Killer Bigfoot.

Oh my God.

Ed and I have not watched this show yet.

Why are we doing this podcast?

But if any of you are interested, maybe we'll host a watch along or something with everybody.

Oh, hell yeah, that's a great idea.

I would love to watch Alaskan Killer Bigfoot. It sounds amazing. Big blow for subtlety, I'll say. The title doesn't leave a lot to the imagination, but.

I also don't know what possible footage they have other than a person being like, honestly, I thought it was gonna punch me to the moon.

Yeah, that punch landed, and I thought, my God, my soul has left my body.

Or more realistically, the punch barely missed, and now I'm able to sit down with you, because if it had hit me, I'd be in the core of the earth right now.

Yeah, so to ask the question that we will ask of all of the locations that we're gonna talk about today, will you die if you visit? And the answer I think here is a solid maybe. Maybe because outside of the Nantanuk, getting punched all over the planet, the remains of Portlock are so hard to access that very few people have ever even been back there to explore. The bay where it exists is only accessible by boat or seaplane. So even getting there is a giant pain in the ass and genuinely treacherous. But that also might be part of the real reason that people abandoned the town, because Alaska Route 1 was completed in the 40s and that connected a number of small towns to Anchorage. So suddenly living in a part of Alaska only accessible by boat, even if you're making a killing at your cannery, living there made even less sense than usual. So that might be part of why the place was eventually abandoned. And if you survive the trip to Portlock, you're gonna be facing a dense, dangerous wilderness that isn't very forgiving to people who aren't prepared for it. There are bears and moose, frigid waters and possibly a Bigfoot. So, good luck. The next town we're gonna explore from the safety of Los Angeles.

There's an oxymoron.

Is Dogtown, Massachusetts. This place is eerie for a number of reasons. And I think might actually have some of the most bizarre stories and lore associated with it. Even though there isn't much mystery surrounding what actually happened here. Dogtown was founded around 1693 when people started moving inland from Gloucester. The Dogtown was on sort of higher ground. And so these people moved inland to this higher ground to seek refuge from pirates and hostile natives. And the rocky wooded area that became known as Dogtown provided all the protection they needed. The area was originally known by the fairly unimaginative name of Common Settlement. But took, which just seems like, you know.

That's a real TBD. That's a TBD.

Yeah, exactly. It's a TKTK. But it took on the name Dogtown, possibly for a couple of reasons. The first reason is that people think it might have been named that because of all the dogs that women kept when their husbands left to fight in the American Revolution.

Oh, it wasn't the first city to have a dog mayor.

No, that was-

Which you and I have stayed at a town with a dog mayor, remember?

Idlewild, California, Max. Max the Golden Retriever, adorable.

Dog mayor, dude.

Dog mayor.

Well, as you know, I've driven across this country many times and I've seen a lot of towns. Fuck it, there are plenty of cities that aren't as nice as Max's. So maybe we all need a dog mayor.

Well, you know, maybe Max should seek higher office.

He should run. He should run in 2024.

Honestly, a Golden Retriever running in 2024 might not be a bad idea.

I'm trying to think of a good, like, Max for paw resident or something. Because he's got paws, paw resident.

I think what you're describing is an Air Bud spinoff.

Oh my God. You know what? You've won every accolade you can win on the court, which in turn, you've won the hearts of America. Let's try and fucking take this on the road. How do you feel about being the next president?

Yeah, think about it. You've got, and you can do the whole scene where people are like in the original Air Bud, when they're like, there's no rule that says dogs can't play basketball. You can do a whole thing where some senator stands up and is like, this is absurd. And someone else is like, there's no rule that says a dog can't become president.

And then it's just like a stupid, like the Supreme Court just shrugs and they're like, there's nothing in the Constitution.

Yeah, we looked, we double checked, guys. We double checked and there's nothing in here that says he can't.

And the thing is, all we know is they have to be 35 years old. It doesn't say dog years, it just says 35. What is 35 in dog years?

Like two, so a puppy could run for president in dog years. Just an unlearned dog could be president.

I think it's five years is 35 human years. I'm gonna do a nationwide search for five-year-old golden retrievers and one of them is gonna become our next president because all of the polls are saying that we as a country are ready for a younger president. And again, did not specify the fucking species. So I got exactly that. It's a five-year-old golden retriever.

Named Max, who has a first family, who lives in the White House with him, or her first female president too.

Is Max a lady?

It could be.

Maxine Gass, the lady who dated Epstein?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just Lane Maxwell, not Maxine.

Oh shit, well the dog's name is Just Lane Maxwell. Is that gonna be a problem?

President Just Lane Maxwell, the golden retriever.

Yeah, you'd have to put it in parentheses like Taylor's version.

Yeah.

To our fans in 2095, Air Bud was an inexplicable kids movie. Gilly Maxwell was a convicted criminal. Taylor's version is a phrase famously denoted by parentheses. And in case you don't have them anymore, golden retrievers were dogs.

Well, listen, we're gonna find this dog in Dogtown because there were apparently many, many dogs there. And some people think that it came from the fact that as the town emptied out and everybody left or died, that all of the dogs became feral and started living in the woods and howling and stuff. But we'll get to that in a minute.

Yeah, their political careers are over before they even start, tell you that.

Yeah, by the mid 1700s, there were 80 to 90 homes in Dogtown and nearly a hundred families living there. So it was the thriving little community, but the decline came quickly. New roads and ports opened nearby. And then when the War of 1812 happened, many farmers moved away for literal greener pastures and to avoid being bombarded from the coast, which was the thing that I guess was happening during the War of 1812.

Bombarded from the coast, as in like, like cannonballs and stuff, not perfect storm.

Right, not perfect storm. The Dogtown was a great area to avoid pirates, but not so much the British Navy. So as the population crater, that's when Dogtown really became Dogtown. That's when, as people left and died, the dogs became feral. They started wandering around and howling. Or another reason the name Dogtown stuck is because of all the vagabonds or dogs who moved into the empty houses and started squatting on the land.

That's what they were called? They called hobos dogs?

I don't know if they called them dogs to their faces or if it just was sort of like, oh yeah, that dogtown.

Do you think this was the birth of Lady and the Tramp? Because a tramp is another term for like a vagabond.

Right.

And it's a dog.

Well, I don't know how many tramps lived here, but this sounds like a pretty amazing community of outcasts that started hanging out in this abandoned settlement. There were women who dressed like men, men who did housework, which I think is sort of a big wink wink for a bunch of gay guys who were living here with the women who dressed like men, and former slaves who lived-

What year was this?

This would have been in the like early to mid 1800s that the town became abandoned and then all these people moved in and started squatting.

But like, so you're squatting in a town. What's the point of even keeping up appearances anyway, if you want to be whoever you want to be, then just live that life. No one's coming to check. They're not going to pass the perimeter of dogs to make sure that you're keeping up societal norms.

No, that's what's so cool about this place is like, it seems like it kind of became a gathering place for just sort of-

For John Waters characters?

Yeah, basically 1800s John Waters characters all started living here. And then of course, there were the witches. Rumors spread of strange booms, lights and fires coming from the area that was Dogtown. In fact, there was one woman named Thomasine Tammy Younger, who was described as the queen of the witches by Thomas Dresser in his book, Dogtown, A Village Lost in Time. Tammy lived in a little house on Fox Hill near Alewife Brook, which is now Cherry Street. And there she entertained quote, buccaneers and lawless men, made rum and butter, held card games and read fortunes. So in other words, like most quote unquote witches of the time, Tammy was basically just so cool that no one knew what to do with her and she had to go live in the woods.

So you said, which is now Cherry Street. What's the town called now?

The town is now, it's land that I believe is co-owned by Gloucester and whatever the other town next to Gloucester is.

Dog Town is co-owned by Rockport, Massachusetts, and were Rockport shoes in high school. A company founded nowhere near Rockport. Illusions have been shattered.

Now it's just sort of like a park. It's like wooded land. You can still find like cellar holes where basements had been dug.

Those weren't basements. Those were to keep like food fresh.

Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's a big Northeast thing. Like you see those in Connecticut too.

Yeah, there were cellar holes dug. You can see kind of the foundations of homes, but most of the homes were raised by like the mid to late 1800s.

Yeah, you got to get the stink of this non-traveling circus out of here.

Yeah, yeah. So it's just a wooded area that's like co-owned and you can still go visit and you can still get maps that include like the modern streets as well as kind of the remnants of the-

The Dogtown Star Tour.

The Dogtown Star Tour. Yeah, where you can see Tammy and another woman, another witch supposedly named Peg Wasson, who actually lived in Gloucester, but somehow, and it's unclear exactly how, but she somehow got wrapped up in the Dogtown life, probably because it was so awesome and she was out looking for fun. But according to a New York Times article about Dogtown, it was published in 1921. So about a hundred years after Dogtown kind of took a turn for the worse, the New York Times was writing about it.

Failing New York Times.

And according to the failing New York Times, Peg had once been accused of flying around on a broomstick.

We would hear that again, wouldn't we, in the 1980s.

If you have not listened to Scared All The Times episodes on the Satanic Panic yet, pause the show right now and go do that. Afterward, return to this moment and nod along knowingly at what Ed just said. You'll feel better. They'll feel better. All will be right with the world.

Not only was she flying around on this broomstick in her human form, but one day she did this disguised as a black crow and she flew over a camp of soldiers who shot the crow down with a silver sleeve button fired from a gun because regular bullets failed to bring the crow down.

Wait, so guns, you can just put anything in it at the time? You can just be like, give me a handful of those rocks. I'm gonna shoot them out of this.

If it was a front loading, I mean, it wouldn't have been a musket, I guess. Well, maybe it would have been.

I don't know what it would be, but I mean, you just jam a button from your sleeve, which probably comes out of your pay that month.

Right, but get this, get this. So they shoot this crow down with a button because bullets won't do it. And legend has it that at that very moment, Peg Wasson fell down at home with an injured leg. And when she went to the doctor, wouldn't you know it, he extracted an identical silver button.

Whoa, I have to back this up then, because you said one time she did it disguised as a crow. So then my mind's like, wait, there's a crow on a broomstick, which is suspect. But now it seems to be revealed that she was just doing some Game of Thrones shit where she was like hijacked a crow.

Yeah, well I think-

Oh no, but she technically transformed into it because there's a bullet in her leg.

I think the legend is a little unclear here. I think-

No, this is fact, you're reading fact.

That's true, these are-

So basically they shot this crow with a button and then I guess the crow must have fallen from the sky to a meteor on the other side of the woods, so she was able to limp back to her house.

To me, the way I read it was, well first I read it as yes, a crow on a broom, which I assume is not what the legend writer actually meant.

Well, I would shoot at that, be like, why are you on a broom? Or I guess you would just think a crow is carrying a broom. Because crows can fly.

Yeah, right. But I think it is more of the, she sort of projected herself as a crow. She was in two places at once, and in one of those places she was a crow.

Well, that's the only thing that's suspect about it, is if you're in two places at once, and you shoot your astral projection out of the sky, you're not gonna end up with physical evidence in you.

Well, no, because it's her. It's the same, she's the same entity in two places. Like, I don't think the bird was an astral projection. I think the bird was a literal version of herself.

So she's skin-wockered.

Kind of, but she also stayed at home doing whatever Peg Wasson was doing.

Well, this is the part I'm talking about. Like, you can't have it both ways.

I think you can. I think it's a projection, but you're thinking projection in the, like, technological hologram sense. And I'm saying-

Even if she projected herself as a physical crow, like, the crow would have to, like, it can't be two things. It can't be-

Bro, you don't know what you're talking about because I am also a bald eagle right now. I am a bald eagle.

Do you think bald eagles know what they are to America?

I don't know, but I did see one. I saw a bald eagle actually fairly up close when I was home in the fall. It was circling over the road where there was a dead deer and it swooped down in front of my car.

It's a close shave with patriotism.

All right, well, legend has it that at this very moment, Pegg Watson fell down at home with an injured leg. And when she went to the doctor, wouldn't she know it? He extracted an identical silver button from her leg. Now these women, particularly the aforementioned Tammy, Queen of the Witches, were so intimidating to people passing through Dogtown that they often left the witches' offerings of fish and corn to allow them safe passage through the area, which is a great way to feed your community of weirdos. Just being like, watch this. We'll scare these fuckers so bad that they just pay us and feed us while we live out here in the woods. There's no evidence that any of these women ever did anything to harm anyone. But I do think the idea of these strange booms that people were hearing in the woods is interesting. Because I don't know what you'd be doing in the 1800s or the early 1800s. Like you weren't blowing up your meth lab. You weren't building bombs.

Well, you had dynamite and everything by this point. You can also just be banging on like the side of a kettle. Like you can make loud noises pretty easily.

Sure, that's true. But I don't know, banging on the side of a kettle wouldn't create a boom. It would create a clanking noise.

I don't know.

By 1828, the village is all but deserted. And Thomas Dresser writes, It became an aberration, an embarrassment. The last resident, a freed slave named Cornelius Finson, was found living in a cellar hole with his feet frozen and taken to the poor house in the winter of 1830, where he died soon after. And really, since then, Dogtown has just become reclaimed by the woods. By the late 1800s, they had raised all the homes, demolished everything, and it became kind of, there's some marshland in there, there's some fields, there's forests, and people go kicking around. So the question of will you die if you visit Dogtown? No, it actually seems like a pretty great place to take your family.

Take a tour of famous cellar holes.

Take a tour of famous cellar holes. Yeah, it's a great place to take the family. And there's actually a really interesting series of rocks.

Oh, tell me more about an interesting series of rocks.

As a person who can't get enough of rocks.

Geodes.

No, Roger Babson, who founded Babson College, he during the Great Depression hired some out-of-work stonecutters to go to Dogtown and cut sort of like inspirational phrases into different boulders that were in the area. So there's boulders there that just have phrases like, when work stops, values crumble, and very Puritan kind of stuff, like stay out of debt, one of the rocks says.

Yeah, like idle hands or the devil's playground.

Kind of stuff like that.

I'd rather like to think that it was part of some supernatural thing where it's like, to us, it doesn't seem like anything, but they were like, we need to put these phrases on all these rocks to keep the evil behind some circle of whatever. Like, that's more fun to me than just some lame Puritan being like, fucking, are you working yet? You lazy bums used to live out here with your frozen feet. Like, get back to work in my factory.

Heat those feet up on the fires of the industrial revolution.

Yeah.

Get back to work.

Yeah. So that's less interesting than they were phrases that, if carved in sequence, will keep evil at bay.

True. I mean, yeah, maybe it was to kind of trap the witches, the lazy, libidinous spirits of the witches.

Yeah. All looking for a handout, you know, whatever fish people can provide.

So yeah, go visit Dogtown and take some pictures and find a rock. Tell us about the interesting rocks. We love it.

If you want to do that, we, for legal reasons, can't tell you to do anything. But if you feel so inclined to go to Dogtown and take pictures, touch a rock, see a rock, we think that's great and would love to do it ourselves. But again, the producers of Scared All The Time had requested we don't ask you or tell you to do anything.

Okay. Well, we won't ask you or tell you to go to this next abandoned town either, even though it did actually get covered by our producers at Astonishing Legends back in 2017. So let's see what Mr. Mechanic remembers about it. Ed, do you remember what happened in Perry, Shaney, Michigan?

Don't put me in this position.

I mean, this was 2017. This was long before Ed was on the show as Mr. Mechanic. But I did, in my research for this episode, stumbled across the Astonishing Legends episode. And we won't be covering a lot of what they talk about. Certainly not as much detail. But it is, there's a lot about Perry, Shaney that makes for an interesting abandoned town. So it was settled in the 1870s when a bunch of lumber men or lumberjacks, if you will, who were following the railroads, set up a camp. And the town grew pretty quickly. It established a school, a grocery store, a post office. And it became one of the largest towns in the area at the time. The population spiked up to about 1500 people, which for that part of Michigan in that time was pretty big.

Way more kids than were in my high school.

Yeah. But then in 1893, diphtheria spread to the village and killed pretty much everybody.

That's not one of the worst things that can happen.

It is. But then they bounced back. Only for diphtheria to return in 1897. Parashaney. By 1917, there were only 18 people left in Parashaney, and the entire place ended up getting sold in an auction, which I didn't know you could do. I didn't know you could sell a town in an auction.

I do know that.

Did you sell one or buy one?

I'm obsessed with all sorts of auctions. I'm constantly buying and selling things on eBay, but more importantly, I'm always looking at storage wars style, bid on things, sight unseen. And I did stumble on the fact that you can buy ghost towns in abandoned towns a couple years ago.

Oh, wow. Well, we should buy one with the podcast money.

There's no podcast money, but also, I watched a couple of videos on it. No different than buying a villa in Italy for a dollar. It's really a bad investment.

Yeah, I'm sure. Well, now in Paraceni, all the buildings are gone, and there's just a cemetery that remains about a mile south of where the town once stood. And according to some people who have visited, you can still see imprints in the ground where some of the buildings were, which when I visited an abandoned town, that was one of the eeriest things to me, was seeing, like, literally outlines of life, like where there had been a thriving community, and now you're literally just seeing, like, outlines.

I mean, those are called ruins.

Yeah, but they weren't even, it was the outlines of where houses had stood was almost even more upsetting than crumbling buildings.

Any ruin, that's still a ruin.

It's just nothing. So, the stories surrounding the destruction of Parashaini involve a different supernatural force.

Is it, well, I guess we have to ask the question everyone's thinking. Were these buildings punched off their foundations?

Were there giant holes in the buildings? Were they in orbit when they were discovered?

Because that might be an unnamed ape man.

It was another witch who did this, who some people believe cursed the town to suffer so many rounds of diphtheria. The details are really sketchy, but at least one person who has suggested that this woman who was hung was not even really a witch, just a woman who had a baby out of wedlock, and at the time that was enough to get her the noose in town.

Now you have a villain origin story for the son or child, woman or daughter, I don't know what it is.

Well, in any case, the belief is that the diphtheria was the result of a curse that this woman placed on the town when she died.

Oh, this is pre-diphtheria, pre-first diphtheria?

I believe so, yes.

So this lady was like, if I'm going out, you're getting two rounds of diphtheria.

And if that's true, then God bless her, because she fucking won.

I think the devil blessed her at that point.

Although unclear.

Although God is a piece, like he's done some pretty naughty stuff in the first testament.

Yeah, she won, although I got a hope that maybe the kid of hers survived, because that would be a real shame. If she cursed the town and the kid died from diphtheria.

That's a monkey's paw situation.

That is.

I mean, that's usually how it goes. Do you think a witch gets the last laugh or the last cackle?

Ed, you're a goddamn genius.

I know, the shirts will be printed this week.

According to Wikipedia, Parashaney remains number two on the top 10 witch graves in the Midwest, topped only by Bloody Mary of Indiana, which begs the question, who are the other eight Midwestern witch graves on this list?

Well, I mean, you can't hold a candle to New England witches. This is like the SEC versus the Big 12 or whatever.

These are Midwestern witches. So you're saying that the New England witches would be better.

I think in a bracket scenario, I think like the final four of witches, I don't think the Midwest holds a chance.

But my question is, who are the other eight Midwestern witches in this bracket even?

I think Sally Cauldron is probably in there.

Yeah, Typhoid Betty.

Typhoid Betty, fucking Broomstick Broomhilda.

Pretty good. So if you know who any of the other top 10 witch graves in the Midwest are, let us know. We didn't dig them up, but I'm curious. That brings us to the question of the hour. Will you die if you visit? I'm also going to give this one a hard maybe because I don't know how long diphtheria hangs around.

What's the shelf life of diphtheria?

I don't know if there's a half life on diphtheria. I don't know if that's something that could like come back up out of the ground and like getcha. I don't know anything about diseases, really. Also some kids who visited in 2009 were threatened.

Got diphtheria.

No, they were threatened by a man with a shotgun. So on second thought, you are pretty likely to die if you visit Parashaney.

We don't know. That guy's name could have been Dale the Diphtheria.

Could have been.

And that's, so it's still going strong.

It could have been the child of the original witch.

I think it's just Dale the Diphtheria, known for his love of skull, long cut, winter green dip.

So now I want to move on to a lightning round of abandoned towns. And I want to ask you, Ed, if you can guess why these towns were abandoned. So Whitnoom, Australia. Why was it abandoned?

I had spectral kangaroos.

No, Bluist-Bestos, a very real fear and problem. It was approximately 1,420 kilometers north, northeast of Perth. It was a thriving mining town for Bluist-Bestos. However, the mine was shut down in 1966 due to its unprofitability and growing health concerns from asbestos mining in the area. Will you die if you visit? 100% you will die if you visit Whitnoom, Australia. Regular asbestos is pretty bad for you. I knew that already, but I Googled Bluist-Bestos, and this is like the Walter White, blue meth bad boy asbestos. It is very dangerous. It's actually ranked as the most dangerous mineral in the world.

Is it not just to flames? Like asbestos is like an anti-flame thing, right?

It's dangerous because it's fibrous, so it gets in your lungs.

True.

It's like that, I don't know what the mineral term is.

I mean, it's basically fiberglass you're breathing in, I guess.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's bad for you. Lightning round number two, Ed. Santa Claus, Arizona. Why was Santa Claus, Arizona abandoned?

Ooh, foggy weather and they had no Rudolph?

Good guess, good guess. It was a holiday-themed town established in the late 30s by a real estate agent in the Mojave Desert.

So the war on Christmas is a real thing?

Yeah, and this lady, real estate agent, Nina Talbot, led the charge. She set this place up in the Mojave Desert and it consisted of peppermint striped buildings with green shingles and red trimming. It had a Christmas tree in, a gift shop, a post office where you could send letters. It would be postmarked from Santa Claus. And it flourished as a holiday theme destination, but the excitement kind of waned in the seventies and everything closed down and the last attractions closed in 1995.

Well, nobody wants a letter from Santa Claus. They want their letter read to Santa Claus.

Yeah, that was a big mistake.

Yeah, there's a Bethlehem, Connecticut. There's probably one in Pennsylvania as well. There's a Bethlehem, Connecticut.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

That people drive to every like holiday to mail their Christmas cards from Bethlehem.

Oh, I don't know if anyone did it. Well, I was too far from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. It was like two hours.

I mean, I don't do. I'm born on Christmas Eve. I have no love for that holiday.

Well, you would definitely have no love for Santa Claus, Arizona, because it's a piece of shit town in the middle of nowhere. And now it's literally, there is a note that it is now mostly inhabited by rattlesnakes. So-

Good riddance, you peppermint shaped piece of shit buildings. Enjoy the rattlesnakes.

To me, though, this might be one of the eeriest places on the list because it's an abandoned place designed to bring joy, you know? Like it was supposed to be like a happy, fun place, but it's also super eerie because although I guess by Mark Fisher's definition, this would maybe technically be weird, but it's a Christmas town in the middle of Arizona, which on its own is disgusting to me. Like I really have a problem with, I don't like Christmas in California. I don't like Christmas anywhere sunny. I never want to vacation in Hawaii during Christmas. There should be snow on the ground. There should be Christmas trees. If you're gonna do Christmas, it should be Christmas. So I don't like it when there's people there. I don't like it when it's abandoned, be gone.

So you get pretty strong opinions on Christmas and how it should be celebrated.

Yeah.

I'm the opposite. You know, I'll make Christmas anywhere. I don't need the driven snow.

That's sweet. You're nicer about it than me. So with that, I think it's time to place abandoned towns, ghost towns, whatever you want to call them onto the fear tier.

The fear tier for me is pretty low. It seems like a lot of these places, unless it is still on fire or is irradiated or something, I think places that are abandoned, you probably can go in at your own peril. Although I will say, I do genuinely, I become like a hundred year old man when I watch those YouTubers of like young people who go to like abandoned buildings and abandoned towns and whatever. And they're just like walking on rickety shit. And I'm just like screaming at my computer screen, being like, are you fucking nuts? You're going to you crazy kids are the fuck out of there. So I guess it does elicit a visceral reaction of worry that someone's going to get hurt in an abandoned town because, you know, by virtue of it being abandoned, there's during like disarray, it's all rotted wood and rusty metal. And so I think there's a genuine fear of going to a place and getting injured and being too far away to be helped. But other than that, no, I'm not too worried about it. I'll just keep on driving, just drive on by. And I will say this, there is no shortage of people in Connecticut when I was a kid. There was a closed down mental institution, an asylum called Fairfield Hills, that they actually shot huge portions of the movie Sleepers at post being abandoned, which was a Kevin Bacon vehicle. It's actually really scary.

Yeah.

And there was always like a story that went around that said, oh, you know, there's a bunch of film equipment in there because they got so scared when filming the movie in the asylum, they heard so many crazy things and so many crazy things happened that they actually like left Dolly track and shit and just like ran away. And then I've worked in the industry and I'm like, there's no fucking way that anybody left anything anywhere.

And if they did, the studio sent a PA back and said, go in the abandoned asylum and get that shit and bring it back to California.

Exactly. And if the kids didn't come back, they would just keep sending PA. But it's something that's funny because that rumor permeated to young kids. Like there were children talking about behind the scenes of movies. There are children talking about Dolly Track. It's so weird to me, but everyone knew, like at some point someone would inevitably say, you know, they actually left equipment there. Like they were so scared. But there were many, many, many braver than me, people in my high school and middle school who with older brothers, what have you, and kind of explored Fairfield Hills, like kind of went through the fences or whatever. And went to this abandoned asylum. The reason I bring it up before YouTube, like people have always been going to weird, creepy fucked up places on dares or just through genuine curiosity, but there's just no way to monetize it. So those are just kids that died for no reason.

Wait, wait, what kids?

I never joined along.

Which kids died?

I'm assuming like someone probably fell into a rusty fucking fence post or something and died.

Yeah, as with all local lore, lots of people died and it was covered up. There's, I've got some good ones of those from Hershey, but we'll save those for our upcoming Patreon where we need stories. Okay, for me on the fear tier, honestly, I think I would put it a little bit higher. I'd put abandoned places below physical threats, like the dangers of outer space or even Hat Man. But I think, you know, I have lots of dreams about being in an abandoned place. I have lots of dreams about being the last person alive or walking outside and everyone's gone. And there's something about that eeriness, like that Mark Fisher quote from the beginning of the episode, the eeriness of a place where there's nothing left that really I just find haunting and it gets under my skin. So I would place it somewhere more in the middle of the fear tier for me, but that's why this is a tier. It's personal for everyone.

Well, I think I'm going to bump mine up then because I sort of mentioned it, but I guess the physical aspect to me is real because part of like the abandoned town fear is that if I get injured or I fall on one of these rusty fucking nails, I keep talking about that. It's abandoned, which means there's no highway running by it and shit. So you might end up fucking really in a hot spot. So I'm raising it up for me. I'm raising it up.

Okay. All right. Yeah. I mean, the fear for me is less about the practical being injured and trapped, which is frightening and more just about the vibes, I would say. But eventually we're going to put out an illustrated fear tier for everybody.

Or we're going to be on season 29 being like, guys, it's coming. We got a fear tier coming. I actually, someone unsolicited gave me like a little bit of shit for their fear tier. They texted me that their fear tier is, and this is really interesting to me, spiders for everyday fear, buried alive for unlikely to happen, and then quadriplegic for could happen and scary as fuck. And I find that really interesting that they broke it into those three sections. And I told them, we're going to steal that compartmentalization aspect. And they wrote all yours. And I can screenshot that. So we legally have it now. But I do find that interesting, right? That they decided on their own to break it up that way.

Yeah, no, that's really interesting. I think there's a lot of ways that everybody can split up their own individual fear tier. I don't know if we'll end up splitting a fear tier in three like that. Maybe we will. The fear tier, I would say for us has been a really loose conceptual idea of more than a concrete thing.

So if anything, the fear tier might just be for people listening to just know that we're wrapping up. So if it felt like pulling teeth, just know it's ending soon when you hear the fear tier. Like as soon as they hear fear tier, they just turn it off. They know it's gonna be us being like, we're still working on a graphic. I guess I probably can just avoid the thing.

Well, all right, guys. That's abandoned towns. That's ghost towns. Luckily, you guys have made our lives very full and our Facebook feed and our Apple podcast reviews not a ghost town, and we really appreciate that. We will be back next week with a Christmas episode and the week after that with a year-end wrap-up, and we will see you all then. This has been Scared All The Time. I'm Chris Cullari.

And I'm Ed Voccola.

And we'll see you next week.

Scared All The Time is co-produced and written by Chris Cullari and Ed Voccola.

Edited by Ed Voccola.

Additional support and keeper of sanity Tess Feifel.

Our theme is the track Scared by Perpetual Stew.

And Mr. Disclaimer is ****. No part of this show can be reproduced anywhere without permission.

Copyright Astonishing Legends Productions.

Good night.

We are in this together.

Together. Together.

===TRANSCRIPT END===