American Paladin: A Tribute to Jerry Paulley

0:00 Speaker 1: Warning. Kind of Murdery contains adult themes, explicit language, and descriptions of violence. It is not suitable for anyone, and we recommend you stop listening now.

0:11 Speaker 2: I heard true crime with a dash of the paranormal, the garish, the strange in the darkly comic, A podcast that's about more than just murder. It's my very own pocket Dimension, home to a curated collection of bizarre and compelling stories, the unsolved, the unsettling, and the unbelievable. I cover it all just so long as it's kind of murdery. Hey, everybody welcome. I am Zevanoldberg and this is kind of murdery. As I mentioned in yesterday's quick update, it's been a bit of a tough stretch. Now.

0:49 Speaker 2: On the list of people that it's been a difficult time for, my name is actually way down the list, and yet I am still feeling it. On November twenty eighth of this year, Thanksgiving dan O, my dear friend and podcasting mentor Jerry Polly, host of Hillbilly Horror Stories, passed away. I hardly think it would be possible to be less thankful for anything on Thanksgiving Day than Jerry's passing. And yet it would be equally impossible to be more thankful for any one than I am for Jerry and his wife Tracy and the influence they've had on my life on my podcast.

1:25 Speaker 2: But really, I said life before podcasts, because life is the truth of it. I met Jerry and Tracy back in June of two thousand and one when Kind of Murdery was a brand spankin new show, and I reached out to them to have them do a promo for me. I bought some ad time and with a show of their stature and because I felt like there was some similarities between our shows, it seemed like a good place to go. And I didn't expect anything more than the promo that I had paid for. But I got a lot more than a promo.

1:55 Speaker 2: I got a true, true friend. Sure, Jerry promoed my show, but he also agreed to come on and be a guest. He agreed to have me on as a guest. He had me on more than once. He asked me to participate in all of his yearly Halloween specials, which I did just recently. And even more importantly, both he and his wife Tracy were people who when I was struggling or feeling down, or having a hard time with podcasting or just life. I could just reach out to with no excuses, no reasons, and they were always there for me, both of them, like living breathing guardian angels, wanting nothing back but friendship, always giving love and authenticity.

2:32 Speaker 2: I mean, I really don't know what to say. There's not much I could say that would do a man like Jerry justice. Maybe that old cliche only the good die young is true here, because Jerry Paully was truly truly a good man. I know I haven't talked about it much, but I know that mental health advocacy was important to Jerry, and so I'll mention here the free Crisis Online ninety eight that you can call if you're going through a tough time. That's nine eight eight. But I know that Jerry Paully, for me and so many people, was a living, breathing crisis hotline who was so much more than a crisis hotline because he was a true, true friend and he will be missed so so dearly.

3:12 Speaker 2: There's that famous line from Blanche Dubois in a street car named Desire, where she says, I always have relied upon the kindness of strangers. Jerry Paully was a man who did not hesitate to offer true, deep, authentic kindness to strangers, to let those strangers become real friends, to introduce them to other people he liked, so that even more people who had been strangers to each other, and sometimes people that wouldn't think they had much in common, suddenly found themselves good friends, all because of Jerry and his beautiful wife Tracy.

3:47 Speaker 2: And I don't know, I'm really broken up. Like I said, nobody has ever done more for me with less reason to do so. Nobody has ever been there for me as unselfishly as Jerry was. Nobody has ever been willing to share the platform with a newcomer with nothing but fledgling hopes and dreams than Jerry and Tracy were at art. Tracy survives Jerry, and my heart and love and prayers go out to her and all of Jerry's friends and loved ones. I wish I could manage to be more eloquent, but I feel like to some extent, words fail me, except to say that the worlds are pretty fucked up place these days, and sometimes it feels like the people that this world needs the most tragically for us, but maybe not for them.

4:29 Speaker 2: Are the people who leave it as much as he'll be missed, as much as he was needed here. If anyone ever deserved to be in a better place, it's Jerry Polly, although I'm sure he would rather be here with us helping us if he had that choice. There's a go fundme for Jerry that's been set up by Tim Mullens from Triple H Media to help cover Jerry's medical and funeral expenses. I'll post a link to that go fundme in the show notes, and if you're able, and if you feel moved to do so, please donate. There's hardly ever been a more worthy cause.

5:03 Speaker 2: As for me, I'll be donating all the ad revenue from Kind of Murdery starting in the month of October through the end of the year to Jerry's GoFundMe. Now, this is really more of a symbolic gesture than anything, because my show doesn't make much money at all. But considering how instrumental Jerry was and is and his inspiration will always be to whatever success I have in podcasting, and frankly all throughout my life, but certainly certainly podcasting, it seems like a symbolic gesture that's appropriate to make.

5:36 Speaker 2: I'm not sure what else to say except that Jerry, you will be so deeply missed. And now, in honor of Jerry, I'm going to share with you a couple of his wonderful appearances here on kind of Murdery. So if you're ready, kind of Murdery's a tribute to Jerry Paully starts now. Hey, everybody, and welcome to Kind of Murdery Season one, ghost Towns of the Mojave Desert. I'm your host, Zevin Odelberg. Thanks for deciding to be here. We're here today with Jerry Polly. I wanted to ask you what was the inspiration for Hillbilly horror story?

6:20 Speaker 2: So did something particular happen in your life that made you decide that this was the show that you wanted to do.

6:27 Speaker 3: When I was twelve thirteen years old, right, you know, we moved into a house and after being there for about a year, it turns out we started having some paranormal activity. Now, looking back, I tend to think a lot of this stemmed from my mother. If you know much about paranormal activity, a lot of times it's calls from a young teen going through pubescence time of their life. There's a lot of angst and emotions and hormones and everything going on, and this energy can sometimes create the things that happen around you.

7:01 Speaker 3: Most of the time that's young women, but for whatever reason, sometimes it can be somebody older if they've got a traumatic experience that's going on in their life. And my mom did at the time, and all this tied in to the time where she started having these experiences, which is why I think that you know, she was involved in a lot of this stuff happening. But we had about five years of paranormal experiences and priests coming in and blessing the house.

7:27 Speaker 2: And oh my goodness, psychics coming.

7:29 Speaker 3: In, and it was kind of kind of crazy. But that five years is what really peaked my interest in the paranormal.

7:35 Speaker 4: I see why your favorite movie is The Exorcist now.

7:38 Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, that was actually my favorite before that.

7:43 Speaker 2: So, so, was your mother alive at this time or are you or were these paranormal experiences? Did were your mother's ghost?

7:51 Speaker 3: No, what happened? She was alive at the time. My mother was raised. She had a very I'm not going to say abusive, because that's really technically wouldn't be the same. But she had a very rough childhood growing up. Her mother was not around. She was kind of an alcoholic and gone a lot. Her father had left at an early age, so she was a single mom. And you know, for the time she was twelve, thirteen, fourteen years old, she was pretty much raising her brothers and sisters because her mom would go off for two, three, four days at a time and nobody knew where she.

8:18 Speaker 2: Was and so on a vendor or something else.

8:20 Speaker 3: Yeah, so she was pushed into the into adulthood very early. They didn't have much money, and she eventually ended up turning to her grandmother and grandfather on the maternal side and they raised her. So that was in all essence, her mother and father. And when her grandfather passed away, which was right at about a year after moving in that house, it was very traumatic for it was something that she really couldn't get over. And then her grandmother passed away four months later.

8:47 Speaker 2: Oh no, that's awful.

8:49 Speaker 3: Yeah, those two things combined it put her in a situation. And I'll tell you about the very first thing that happened, so you could see how it ties in. We were sitting in the living room and we were watching the seven hundred Club and they had a call in number. She was on the phone talking to someone and far away from us, all the way across the other side of the room. We had a big console television and it had a little pin cushion on there that was like, basically it looked like a recliner, like a chair, but it was just designed to put your pins and your thread and stuff in.

9:22 Speaker 3: We had a bunch of stuff sitting on that I think of Elmber's glue. We had some house numbers where we had just been painting the house, sitting there and as she's on this prayer line, this thing pops up in the air about two feet and it just lands in the floor, scatters everywhere.

9:37 Speaker 2: Whoa.

9:38 Speaker 3: And that was the very first instance, and then it took off from there. So that's what leads me to believe. Like I said, I didn't know this back then, but years later looking back, this is why I think this. I don't necessarily know if it was a demon or a ghost or what it was, or if it was something she was manifestating just because of her anguish at the time.

10:00 Speaker 2: Goodness and so I guess that is that why Poultergeist is not your favorite movie.

10:07 Speaker 3: The remake was horrible, but the good the first one was good.

10:10 Speaker 2: Yeah, awesome. And also besides, you know your show is about horror stories about the supernatural, but it's specifically hillbilly horror stories. So can you talk a little bit about that and why you feel like do you would you say you identify as a hillbilly? And if so why?

10:29 Speaker 3: Originally the thought was it was going to be nothing but Southern ghost stories, and so when coming up with a name Southern, and I was trying to think, okay, do we use ghost stories, We're gonna use horror stories, scary stories, and I landed on horror first, and I thought, okay, well, well can be put in front of it that Southern and hillbilly just came up. It was kind of an alliteration, but it was no real reason other than the fact I thought it was catchy and it fit only because we were doing Southern stories, which six months later, we're doing stories from all over the globes.

10:59 Speaker 3: It really doesn't even fit well either way.

11:02 Speaker 2: It's a great name, it certainly is. And you are you from Kentucky or do you just live in Kentucky now?

11:08 Speaker 3: Now we're born, born, and raised in Kentucky.

11:12 Speaker 2: So, Jerry, do you have a kind of murdery story you want to tell us?

11:15 Speaker 3: I probably have something that fits a little more on topic than what you would probably think I would do. So we're going to go back about eight years ago, possibly nine. At the time, I was doing stand up comedy full time, and I was also doing I was appointed process server in the Louisville, Kentucky area, so I handled not only Jefferson County when it comes to summons AND's or subpoenas, but also for the US district courts, so I could go anywhere in the country and serve subpoenas if need be. Wow, well, I had one.

11:54 Speaker 3: I had to cross the bridge and go over to southern Indiana. It was about an hour and a half away from from Louisville, where I lived at time, and I decided to take my wife over there. These things pretty much I didn't really for the most part, dealing with anything dangerous. Most of these summons is that I would deliver would be credit card bills or hospital bills where they had filed lawsuit and they would try to Garnish. She the person involved, and I just had to serve them the paperwork. But we would get subpoenas that sometimes would be a little more, but it was never anything like the cops should be handling.

12:27 Speaker 3: It was nothing like that. This particular day, it was a subpoena delivered in that involved a lawsuit from an automobile accident that it happened I think like three years earlier, and it was in another state. I think it came from Texas, if I remember correctly.

12:44 Speaker 2: So I get the.

12:45 Speaker 3: Subpoena and I drive out to the house. There's nobody home, so I leave a card and my business card actually has you know, it had all the acronyms andccolades everything on there, so you know, it had my title process Server US District Courts, so it's obvious what it is. And I rode on the back, Hey, give me a call. So they give me a call and set up a time for me to come out. I think it was like six pm that evening, and this was probably one o'clock. So I asked my wife. I'm like, hey, I'm just gonna run out there, and I'd already talked to them.

13:20 Speaker 3: They were completely cool with it, tell me to come out, which is usually the case when I left a card, people would call me and tell me to come out, and it was no big deal. So I tell my wife, Okay, they want me to come out at six o'clock, come on and go with me, because you know, it's an hour and a half drive and it was already six o'clock since I had to come out there, so we went ahead and went together. So I get to the house. The gentleman's outside on a lawnmower, one of the riding lawnmowers, and gets off, shakes my hand, and he says, just go ahead and pull all the way up, if you would.

13:52 Speaker 3: And the way this driveway was set up, it was kind of out and not really in the woods, but it was a little more rural fact that the houses weren't right on top of each other. And at the end of his driveway there was some stacked up wood, there was, you know, just some other stuff. So when you got up there, there was no going forward. You stopped at the end of it and that was it. You had to back.

14:14 Speaker 2: Out, so you were boxed in basically.

14:17 Speaker 3: Well that's what ended up happening because he then nonchalantly backs the after we get out of the car. He not he was cleaning his lawnmower. He gets off now and he's cleaning it off. He's wiping it well. Then he gets up and he just nonchalantly parks it behind our car.

14:32 Speaker 2: Boy.

14:32 Speaker 3: Then his wife comes out of the house with a video camera and they start giving us this lecture about we're not going anywhere. We've got no business being on their property. And you know, of course I'm going through the I've talked to you guys earlier today. You told me to come back. You know what the situation is. Well, you're gonna stay here until my friend from the Sheriff's department gets here. And I'm like, good, call the sheriff's department because I've got every right to be here. I'm serving a federal subpoena.

15:08 Speaker 3: And so this went on, and his wife filming us, and they're telling us they're just going on like these big conspiracy theorists or something, and it's almost like something that you would see, you know, in some of these documentaries out in the woods with these people that have their little cults or whatever going on, and you know, they're telling us, we're the enemies. We've got no business being there. They can't believe that we're there. And I'm like, I'm starting to lose my temper. And you know, I eventually told these these people, I'm like, you know what, you're going to let us out or I'm going to call the police myself, which I'd already started to do.

15:46 Speaker 3: And I said, but I didn't have any phone service. Go go figure, And I was. I was so pissed off about this that I ended up calling Sprint because I was constantly having problems with Sprint at the time, and I ended up calling them saying, dude, your phone serve of a crappy fold service is one thing, but now I was in a dangerous situation and I couldn't call the police.

16:05 Speaker 2: You know. But anyway, long story short, Oh my god.

16:08 Speaker 3: So this guy keeps going. I tell him, I said, look, you know I'm gonna go. This is this is you know, you're holding this hostage. You're holding us against the law. You know, I guesst our will, this is against the law. You can't do this. Nope, nope, I'm not holding you against your will. You're just gonna stay here till the sheriff gets here and then we're gonna talk about it. And so he couldn't get a hold of the sheriff. He kept trying, he kept trying, and he'd left messages for him. Well, eventually, after about thirty minutes, he went ahead and said, you can go ahead and go.

16:39 Speaker 3: I can't go to hoold of the sheriff's department. Once I get a hold of the Sheriff's department and they tell me this is okay, then you can come back. So he moves the lawnmower. We back out of the driveway, we start going down this this little country road, and not even five minutes up the road, here comes a sheriff's car passing. So we stopped and flagged the guy down, and then we're tell him what's happening, and he's like, you got to be kidding me, he said, he said, whoever the guy was, he knew who he was.

17:10 Speaker 3: It wouldn't the guy he was trying to get, but I guess they sent somebody. And he's like, let's go up there together. We're gonna get it straightened down. And then we drove up there with him. He basically lectured the guy about what you can and can't do. And the guy signed a paperwork and we left. But I mean, something that should have been so much keen that turned into kind of a kind of a murdery.

17:31 Speaker 4: Story that is very still gosh, Yes, that's another situation I would want to be in, not at all.

17:38 Speaker 2: Did you know what they were being served for.

17:41 Speaker 3: Yeah, it was somebody was suing him over a car accident from like three years earlier.

17:46 Speaker 2: Oh right, car accident. But it had become a federal case at this point. Wow.

17:51 Speaker 3: Well, it's only a federal case because they lived in a different city, So it really wouldn't as much a federal case as it was that they had to have somebody u When anytime you cross state lines with a subpoena, it has to be listed as a federal document, so it woun't. It wouldn't that it was like something the FBI was interested in. It was only because they were in a different state and they needed me to be able to serve it.

18:12 Speaker 2: Yeah. That's definitely scary though, to be to be essentially trapped there. And thank goodness, thank goodness, the wife didn't walk out of the house with a shotgun. Thank goodness, she was only shooting you with a video camera right.

18:25 Speaker 3: Right, And they weren't extremely threatening, but they were loud and belligerent. I never really felt like that my life was in danger, and I would have handled it a whole lot different if my wife hadn't been there. But that's what made it a little more concerned that we just both happened to be there. But the film in it and everything just I don't know what they were expecting or what they thought they were gonna catch on film, but they literally seemed like these anti government conspirats that would be living up in the hills or the mountains or something.

18:57 Speaker 2: Oh wow, I would be afraid that one state have told you you were trespassing, that they would try to goad you into doing something that would give you and give them an excuse to shoot you or something. You know that That's what's really kind of scary about that story to me.

19:12 Speaker 5: Yeah, I served for over seven years and I had probably served thousands of papers and subpoenas, and I say, only time I really had a situation where I had any kind of fear that something might go wrong.

19:30 Speaker 4: Wow, Well that's a pretty good track, Recorde.

19:32 Speaker 2: Then you got a splendid record, Yes, exactly.

19:35 Speaker 5: Well.

19:35 Speaker 3: I mean I had some people that were ticked off, that were not happy that I was there, and I've had them grab the paperwork from me and try to tear it up and stuff like that, But I never felt threatened.

19:47 Speaker 2: Right well, and it seems like you said these were tinfoil hat people and probably not terribly bright. I mean, I'm going to trap the subpoena server with my tractor until a law enforcement officer shows up, is not That's not a logical equation that I would put together, you know.

20:09 Speaker 3: I guess I think being out in the kind of in the country like that where they know the people, they just kind of figured that and in in the end that's really kind of what happened anyway. I mean they just basically you can't, you know, you can't do that, and you know, so, I mean in the end, I would have had to press charges or something for a night it happened, so right.

20:28 Speaker 2: Right, Wow, wow, man, you're you're a brave man. Though I definitely would have I definitely would have felt myself pucker a little bit in that situation. Yeah. Well, you know, speaking of speaking of people that make plans that are maybe not the brightest. I think that leads us right into our third story. That would be the story of Kasmer and Ferguson.

20:59 Speaker 4: That's hare it.

21:05 Speaker 2: It's early February nineteen thirty two, and twenty eight year old Lebick, short order cook is manning the griddle at a restaurant in town when he suddenly leaves his job in the middle of the shift to go for a walk in the nearby mountains. Could it have been because Sheriff RL Hill and Deputies Bud Sherman and al Renfro we're looking for him. Let's find out as we trek into the tragic comedy of Kasmer and Ferguson. Why did he suddenly leave his job in the middle of a shift and take off into the mountains?

21:43 Speaker 2: Well, when he comes down out of the mountains, Sheriff's waiting there for him, and they ask Kasmer that exact question. They say, so, Bud, you know you're a cook here at the restaurant in town. What's with just running out, running out on your job to go for a walk. And Kasmer's reply is, well, you know, I I often have these spells come over me where I just need to get a bit of exercise. And when I do, I you know, I got I got bees in my bonnet, I got ants in my pants, and it's it's really quite common for me to just just leave work and go for a hike in the mountains around Lewick, where you guys, you've probably all been more or less to the Grapevine at some point on a road trip, approaching Los Angeles or leaving it, and you know that these are those are not exactly mountains where you think to yourself, oh boy, the nature is just so beautiful and hospitable.

22:42 Speaker 2: What I really need to do in the middle of the afternoon is go for a hike through these desert mountains full of rattlesnakes, grizzly bears and just you know, hot or extremely cold weather. And so they go, oh, yeah, okay, so you just needed some exercise, They said, well, we you know, we wanted to tell you that the Bank of America in Tipton, which was a town about an hour away from Lewock, it was robbed yesterday afternoon of about eleven hundred dollars in silver money. Because again this was a this was nineteen thirty two, so you know, silver money was much more common currency than maybe today and they and he goes, oh, really the bank was robbed and they said they said, yeah, yeah it was, but great news we found over half the money, to which okay, you know, and you have to add.

23:40 Speaker 4: And he's thinking, whoops, well what he was.

23:44 Speaker 2: Yeah, because two men robbed the bank, right, they told me found over half the buddy and his reply is, well, gosh, I'm sure happy to hear that. No, you know, he's maybe he's so clever he's playing dumb, or maybe he doesn't it doesn't occur to him that maybe the half the money they found was his.

24:06 Speaker 4: Right, He's like, oh, wow, sucks for my unnamed partner who we haven't yet mentioned.

24:12 Speaker 2: Right, right exactly, Here's what happens. The day of the robbery. Kasmer goes to visit a friend of his in Bakersfield and he says, hey, man, can I borrow your car? You know? And the guy says sure. He says, because he said, can I borrow your car for ten minutes? And the guy says, oh sure, you know. Of course, this was nineteen eighty thirty two, but so there was no uber. But I'm pretty sure that the friend wishes he could have told Kasmir, Hey just take an uber because that ten minutes turns into eight hours later that the car gets returned.

24:47 Speaker 2: Can either of you guess exactly which car Kasmer was borrowing from the friend in Bakersfield? No clue? It was the getaway car for the bank robbery. Yes, so wow, he borrows a car from his friend that he says he's gonna return in ten minutes that he then goes and uses for a bank robbery. So he's got a pissed off friend whose car has disappeared for eight hours, who knows exactly who he is. So these guys go in and they rob this bank, but they tie you got you know that twine twine that's like thin sort of old sailor rope, the kind that you might have in your muckroom, but that like unravels as soon as you want to use it.

25:39 Speaker 2: That that kind of almost like garden twine, right right, So they they tie everybody in the bank up with this garden twine, this this like skinny unraveling rope, and then they managed to steal their eleven hundred dollars worth of silver coins and sort of get away in the getaway car. But their tie up job and the twine itself, as you know, you can kind of rip that stuff apart. Everybody basically escapes from there from their tied up situation immediately and calls the cops more or less right away.

26:16 Speaker 2: Meanwhile, Kasmer, eight hours later, returns the car to his friend, who's pissed off. You're like, what the fuck you said? Ten minutes it's eight hours later, and not only does he return the getaway car to his now angry friend. Inside that getaway car, he leaves a pair of his own overalls with the rest of the twine that was not used in tying up bank employees in the front pocket of the ash of the grown man's oshkosh but gosh wow. And one of the easily traceable silver coins from the bank robbery in between the seats that like fell out of his pocket in between the seats is also in the car.

27:03 Speaker 4: Genius yeah so, and the bank employees at the trial testify that they also recognized the two guys and knew who they were.

27:13 Speaker 2: But even if they, yeah, it's not clear that it's not clear that they even wore masks. I mean, maybe they just tied some twine around their eyes, like some kind of nineteen thirty two, Jeordi LaForge. I don't know, but so you know, the police traced the getaway car to the pissed off friend's house and they say, you know, this was the car used in a bank robbery. And he goes, what the fuck? My buddy told me he was going to take the car for ten minutes. And he comes back eight hours later and the police say, what's with these overalls and twine in your car?

27:50 Speaker 2: And the guy's like, wait what and he's like, oh, those must be my friends. And they say, well, who's your friend and the guy says, well, it's it's Kasmer, right. So the police go to Kasmar's house, they get award, they search the house, they find half the money, and that is why they they're coming to look for Kasmar. He must have gotten some kind of a heads up and that's why he ditches the restaurant.

28:18 Speaker 4: Genius. Absolutely geniuses, both of them.

28:22 Speaker 2: I really did feel like it was Lloyd and Harry from Dumb and Dumber, but just not as lucky.

28:29 Speaker 4: Yeah, pretty much. Wow.

28:31 Speaker 2: So they go to trial. They're going to trial. Kasmer cops a deal with the DA to plead guilty and to testify against Ferguson in exchange for a lighter sentence. Again, yes, but not that smart of a guy, because he's not getting no sentence at all, and however long his sentence is, both he and Ferguson are going to be going to San Quentin, except that he will have just squealed on the stand. He's like, just so I can get shanked with a toothbrush in prison, you know. And so the day comes for him to testify against Ferguson and he gets up on the stand and the DA questions him, and he refuses to say a word.

29:25 Speaker 2: He suddenly got smart. He refuses to say a word. He won't say anything at all. They ask him all these questions. He clams up, and you know, the DA says, well, isn't it true that the reason you're refusing to testify right now is that your life was threatened in jail last night? And again Kasmer won't say anything. So finally the DA's frustrated and he's like, well, you know you all right, you know you're going to jail anyway, he says, but let me ask you this. Will you answer this question? And he shows Kasmer the gun that Kasmer used to hold up the bank.

29:59 Speaker 2: And Kasmer says, and he says, is this is this the gun you used to hold up the bank? And Kasmer takes a look at it and he says, oh, yeah, yeah, I guess that's it. He goes it looked bigger the first time I saw it. But that's the one. I was like, if that's not a setup for a that's what she said, Joe, I've never heard one. Wow. Oh man, uh some of us, I know. I almost wish the prosecutor had said, yeah, for the record, you're on her. That's what she said. So, uh, now we're gonna move on to a quick little segment we like to call five star review of the Week, where we basically pick a review and read it just to sort of say thank you to our are our wonderful listeners who take the time to write the reviews.

31:04 Speaker 2: And this year's review is from this year's Yeah, yeah, we've only gotten one. We've only gotten yeah, we've only gotten one review this year. So I was going to say thank you, mister Ditkovich, but I should say thank you very very much mister Ditkovich for being our one review this year. So five star review, and it says, I like this show. What can I say? It's it's a good podcast. What more do you want? Thank you?

31:39 Speaker 3: That didn't sound like gun hilt his head as he wanted at all.

31:44 Speaker 2: Well, if he did, it would be right on brand. Oh my gosh. No, you know what I kind of liked about that. You know, as a for a writer, I think sometimes earnest heavywey is the gold standard of being able to communicate the most with the greatest economy of words. And I think that mister did Kovich did that for us. He said, what can I say? It's a good podcast. What do you want from me? Oh? Boy? So Jerry, I wanted to say, you know, as I mentioned, it was so fun being on your show, and I'm so excited because I believe the episode I'm on came out this Sunday right correct awesome.

32:23 Speaker 2: So everybody go listen to Hillbilly Horror Stories. It's an awesome show without me. By the way, you don't need me to make this an awesome show. Hopefully I didn't detract from anything. But make sure you go find Hillbilly Horror Stories available anywhere you get your podcasts. It's a phenomenal show. And then you guys are I imagine all over social media? Jerry too. Where can people find you? On Twitter and Instagram? Facebook?

32:48 Speaker 3: Would just say the easiest way is just go to our website, Hillbilly Horror Stories dot Com. It's got access to all of our social media on air. Just click it and you go straight to it. Google you can find us. We're all over Google, so if you just do a search, you'll find us. But on our website, we've also got all of our live events that we're doing. We've got my book that's for sale, Hillbilie Horror Stories From Hell to High Water. I want to touch on that real quick, please please. The book is on It is written in three parts.

33:19 Speaker 3: The very first part it's almost like three many books into one. Wow. The very first part is my paranormal experience is growing up. The second part is about my divorce and attempted suicide and dealing with depression.

33:33 Speaker 4: Wow.

33:33 Speaker 3: And then the third part is how we tie the first two parts into Hillbily Horror Stories. And we include about twenty or twenty five messages at the end that people have sented to us telling us how it made a difference in their life, whether they decided not to commit suicide because of the show or something they heard, or whether they sought out some kind of medical help for the depression. But that's on there. And then we have a cruise that we're doing next September twenty twenty two. We've already had two hundred people.

34:04 Speaker 2: Sign up for it totally from.

34:06 Speaker 3: Miami to the Bahamas for four days, and we're going to be doing a live show one there with some of our podcast friends.

34:12 Speaker 2: And wow, yeah, that's on the website. Very nice. So in case you don't want to take my word for it, because I'm a source often of misinformation with an authoritative voice. In case you're wondering just how good Hillbilly Horror Stories is, they are selling out a Carnival cruise ship so just so that people can come hear them do their podcast live. And he's a hell of my gosh, this is a hell of a show. Their show, Please please go listen to it. I am honored and thrilled to be on it this week. And you know, Jerry, I'm honored and thrilled that you agreed to join us.

34:50 Speaker 2: Thank you so much for being here. It's been a thank you, It was an honor. I'm eager to share with you the cursed history of Henry NEF. Anderson, Senior and the ghost town of Andersonia that still bears his name. But before I do, I need to introduce you to my guests today. It is my honor and my privilege to inform you that sharing the microphone with me today are none other than Kentucky Bluegrass blue Bloods of Horror and Haunting, the Duchess and Duke of Spirits and Spooks, the King and Queen of all creepy Things, the President and First Lady of the United Paranormal States of America.

35:41 Speaker 2: It's Jerry and Tracy Pauley from Hillbilly Horror Stories. Hey, how are you two doing?

35:46 Speaker 6: Go ahead, babe, you could have just I'm sorry what we're doing right, I'm sorry in the same room together.

35:54 Speaker 2: I fol for doing that to you, sir.

35:56 Speaker 6: Now that's okay, Honney, thank you for having us. We were just an honor to be on your show.

36:01 Speaker 2: Well, it's absolutely an honor to have you.

36:03 Speaker 3: And that's got to be one of the most advanced introductions.

36:09 Speaker 2: Thank you. Gosh. If you hear a little frog in my throat at any point during the show, I apologize I am recovering from a cold. Luckily not COVID as far as I know, I tested negative. But it's been a little bit of a journey. Of course. You guys are the hosts of the wildly popular Hillbilly Horror Stories. Can you tell us a little bit about Hillbilly Horror Stories? What type of stories you tell, what you're up to, How the show got started, basically, anything you want to tell us.

36:37 Speaker 3: Well, the show has evolved a lot. We're getting ready to celebrate our six year anniversary in August. And the show initially started out with me and a friend of mine, gentleman by name of Ricky, and it was about twenty minute episodes on. It was supposed to just be Southern ghost stories, thus the term Hillbilly Horror Stories, and it was a little more adult, should say. I had Diane from History Goes Bump. She kind of coined it as it sounded like two guys in a bar talking about ghost and that was pretty accurate, I'd say, wouldn't real child friendly, we'll say, And eventually, after eight or ten episodes, we decided that that really wasn't working as much as we wanted, and Tracy became the co host.

37:22 Speaker 3: We became a little more friendly for families and for work, and that's kind of how it started. And we eventually started covering stories from all over the world, so it's not just Southern stories anymore. No need to change the name, so we kept it. People liked it, and I'd say today it's really evolved because we went from doing one story a week on Sundays to interviewing some of the hottest names in the paranormal field, to doing basically six episodes a week. Now. We do our classic show on Sunday, but then we do a couple of other more scripted shows.

37:58 Speaker 3: Because our show is conversational, Tracy never knows the story, so when we do the story, she's hearing things for the first time and she has a natural reaction like a lot of our listeners would have. She asks a lot of the questions that they would ask. And that's kind of been our success to the to the show, I think is the fact of our chemistry together. Being married obviously helps. And I tried to get Ricky to marry me. He didn't want to, so his loss, and I think that's that's when the show went to the crapper.

38:28 Speaker 3: But no I think that's the key, but I know people like other things. So, like you said, we do six episodes a week. We do one that's basically listeners stories. We call it Eerie Encounters and I just read it with a little bit of music behind it. We have one called macab Misfortunes that we do on Saturday, which is just a shorter version of what we do on Sunday Show. So it's almost if you like Sunday Show of the format, it's the same thing, except it's usually a story that's got some tragedy involved with it, and it's not always paranormal.

38:58 Speaker 3: We've done a plane crash where the plane was missing for fifty years and turned up and things like that, so it gives us a little more flexibility on that one. But yeah, if you get something for everybody, if you tune in Tuesday through Sunday.

39:11 Speaker 2: That's all fantastic stuff. And let me just say that, thank goodness Tracy came on board, because I'm a big fan of the show obviously, and I can't imagine the show without you. Tracy. You so often just sort of have the perfect aside or insight. Nah, shall we jump into today's story?

39:36 Speaker 3: Say sure?

39:38 Speaker 2: All right. As I mentioned at the top, this is the story of the haunted and cursed history of the lumber ghost town Andersonia. Now. Andersonia is located just off the one on one North, about five miles from Percy, California, near the south fork of the Eel River. In order to tell you the whole story of Andersonia, I have to begin with the story of the man it's named after, the founder of Andersonia, Henry NEF. Anderson Senior, which brings me to the classic inquiry for all tales of woe, the need to understand the victim.

40:16 Speaker 2: And so I ask who was Henry NEF. Anderson Senior. Henry Anderson, known affectionately as Pap Anderson, was born in eighteen thirty nine. He was a Ford thinking fellow with an eye for opportunity, and by eighteen seventy eight he was a Timberman in the great State of Michigan, home to last week's guest, Nick View from the Traditional Outdoors Podcast. And I know many other fine Michiganders. You know, guys, I'm always looking for an excuse to say the word Michigander because I enjoy it so much, you know, And I have to ask you to.

40:54 Speaker 2: I take it that someone from Kentucky is obviously called a Kentuckian. But are there any other names maybe that Kentuckians use amongst themselves that not everybody would know about. Got any other nicknames for each other depending on where you're from, or any behind the curtain Kentucky monikers.

41:12 Speaker 3: No, but there's there's some where if you were, like in the Louisville area and you're close to there are southern Indiana's right across the bridge there, so people go back and forth. That's kind of considered Kentucky Anian. Okay, there you go, so you know that, But that's that's not used very often, to be honest with you.

41:30 Speaker 2: Is there other than that? Much like with Wisconsin and Illinois? Is there no love lost between Kentucky and Indiana or Indiana? Or do you guys get along pretty well?

41:39 Speaker 3: I don't think we get along with anybody. Kentucky and Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia. Yeah, we have a little. We have the inner city rivals, like the fact that Kentucky, you got Louisville and Lexington that just can't stand each other, just mainly for sports. Reasons, but it bleeds.

41:56 Speaker 2: Over it area. Yeah. I imagine that's because the Wildcats out of Lexington and the Cardinals out of Louisville are such good basketball teams, right.

42:04 Speaker 3: Usually, but it carries over into lacrosse anything. I guess you could you could foot factory in.

42:09 Speaker 2: Boy, you guys must have loved all the Rick Patino stuff then I imagine that was super entertaining. My goodness.

42:15 Speaker 6: Yeah. Never never a dull moment, that's for sure.

42:18 Speaker 2: Wow, what I never knew that that's what an Italian restaurant was for my goodness.

42:25 Speaker 3: Well, that's it, you know, that's a That's the difference between Rick Bottino and John Calipari is John Caliperi is really good with public relations and Rick Patino is really good with relationships.

42:37 Speaker 2: That's good. That's good. Yeah, man, I thought it was scandalous when Michael shot the police commissioner in the in the Italian restaurant in The Godfather, But right, Rick Patino took it to a whole other level.

42:51 Speaker 6: Oh yeah, he's a lover there you go.

42:54 Speaker 2: Yeah. So I Well, on that note, let's let's jump back into the tale of Pape Anderson here. So, uh, as the Michigan timber industry grew, Pap moved to the town of Greenville, Michigan, and there he spent twenty years. Now, as I mentioned, he was a forward thinking man with an eye for opportunity, and around the turn of the twentieth century, there was no greater lumber el Dorado than the great Pacific Northwest, home to the Emerald Triangle and the stories you hear on this season of kind of Murdery.

43:27 Speaker 2: Well, if someone like me can see opportunity in the great, looming, dark forests of the Pacific Northwest, you can bet that sharp eyed businessman and burgeoning lagger baron Pap Anderson wasn't about to miss out. PAP's carp a DM moment, his opportunity to venture into the shadows of the ancients and seize upon the shady green gold awaiting him in the untouched old growth redwood forests of the Pacific Northwest. His door to destiny was unlocked by tragic misfortune. Not mind you, PAP's misfortune, but rather that of another Timberman named JM.

44:07 Speaker 2: Weatherwax Side note great name weatherwax Uh. I wouldn't mind borrowing that surname for a day or two. All right, if Pap had seen foreshadowing rather than opportunity, perhaps he would never have ventured west of the Michigan Woods. But he made his fortune by recognizing rich business opportunities, not by scrying grim omens. And so when JM. Weatherwax, pioneer of Gray's Harbor and sawmill operator, died in eighteen ninety eight, Pap Anderson bought his mill in Aberdeen, Washington, where he founded Anderson and Middleton Lumber alongside his three sons, Sam hal and Ed and his son in law Bert Middleton.

44:54 Speaker 2: Now, Pap Anderson's opportunity to stake claim to the rich Washington Woods arose out of the death of someone else. But opportunity born from calamity doesn't always appear at another's expense, you know, Jerry Tracy, I've found in my life that sometimes things happen that seem like an absolute disaster when you're in the middle of it, but then later on down the road you realize that wonderful things that have happened wouldn't have been possible without going through that seeming disaster first.

45:26 Speaker 2: I guess that's why there's the saying it's always darkest before the Dawn. But I wanted to ask you, guys, if there are any examples in your own lives of things you did or things that happened to you that felt like an utter catastrophe when they were happening, but that you now can see have led to something overwhelmingly positive.

45:50 Speaker 3: Well, I would obviously say my divorce, my divorce from my first wife, because that definitely seemed like a calamity at the time, and it was the darkest part of my life. And now my life is pretty great, and I have a wonderful wife, and you know, I could never have foreseen my life being where it is now. I'm as happy at that I've ever been in my life, and I couldn't have seen that twenty years ago.

46:19 Speaker 2: And I know you guys do a lot of you do a lot of work around causes for mental health and suicide prevention and also for veterans causes. And do you feel like your desire to be in those outreach and charitable areas was born out of anything that happened to you in your life?

46:40 Speaker 3: Oh, I think, without a doubt. I think I think once you've been to that point, you have a whole different outlook on what It's like, I know, when I was before any of this happened, depression was something I had never dealt with, never understood depression. You know. I was one of those people that would say, mean, if you're press just get up and do something, you know, work it off. You know, it's like getting you know, hit with a baseball. Just walk it off. That's what I felt like, you know, what are you sad about?

47:07 Speaker 3: I mean, you got all these good things in your life, what do you what's there to be sad about? And you don't realize that it's a it's truly a mental condition that you just can't get over that easily. And once I went through it and realized that it didn't matter what happened, you know, I couldn't change that, at least not easily. So yeah, my outlook completely changed on that. And people who would attempt suicide, I was one of those that believed that anybody who did it was completely selfish. Couldn't understand why anybody would even consider it until I got to that point.

47:41 Speaker 3: And then you realize that sometimes you just hurt so bad you wanted to go away at any cost, and you know you're willing to do things because you're not in the right state of mind. And that's the whole thing. Whether it be depression, whether it be suicide attempts, or people who actually complete the job of suicide, it's all about the frame of mind that you're in right there, and you will never understand that until you've been there.

48:06 Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, when you're in that frame of mind, you can sort of intellectually be aware of all the blessings in your life, but you just can't feel it like that. You just can't feel that anything is good or positive, and it's hard to move, it's hard to breathe, it's hard to do anything. So yeah, I think you're exactly right about that, and I think I'm sorry that you went through such a dark time in your life, but I think that it's been a great blessing to the community that you've created through Hillbilly Horror Stories, the larger podcasting community, and for anyone that has the good luck to hear your voice and hear you talk about these things, who've maybe who's maybe been in those dark spaces and themselves.

48:53 Speaker 2: I mean, thank God that you went through what you went through so that you can help the rest of us find a way through it, so that curse was a blessing, not just for yourself but for everybody. I think, And as as we were just talking about this idea that sometimes terrible things happen, but down the road you see that the wonderful things could only have grown out of the soil of these these tragedies or these hard times. And I guess I guess that's why they call it faith, right, because human beings often don't have the perspective or the patients to anticipate the domino effects of events that occur around us.

49:31 Speaker 2: I mean, that's that's the conclusion I've come to.

49:33 Speaker 3: Anyway, Yeah, I agree.

49:35 Speaker 2: And speaking of domino effects, let's get back to Pat Anderson. So he'd put down those firm roots in Aberdeen, Washington, near Gray's Harbor, but then he stumbled upon what he saw as the opportunity of a lifetime. He made a trip to the Redwoods of northern California, where he discovered what he saw as the future of the logging business. There was an abundance of ancient timber that could be purchased at low prices. However, part of the reason for the affordable price point was a significant logistical challenge.

50:09 Speaker 2: Sure, you could buy the trees and at a great price by board foot, but challenges remained. How could you fell them, mill the timber into lumber and then get it through the endless emerald moat of ancient redwood forest. Well Anderson concluded that a mill could be located seventeen miles from the coast, and lumber could be moved by railway to the docks and shift both north and south. He knew he'd have to plan for the daily life of his loggers and mill workers, and so he selected an area where the soil was arable, and he could locate his workmen's homes near the railroad, giving them access to the mill and the company train, as well as the ability to have gardens and orchards.

50:53 Speaker 2: Pap saw his timber utopia what would become the town of Andersonia as buld of an economic opportunity and the social experiment. Of course, these were extremely rose colored glasses through which to view the company towns of the turn of the twentieth century. Emerald Triangle Timber Industry. Now, guys, you're both native Kentuckians or Jerry. I know you are, Tracy. Are you from Kentucky all your life too. Well, there you go. So, Jerry and Tracy, you're both native Kentuckians, so I'm sure you're more than just a little familiar with the notorious company towns of the coal industry, made pop culture famous to a lot of us by the Merle Travis song sixteen Tons, which I used to sing with my dad in the truck on the way to the school bus every morning.

51:44 Speaker 2: It was our morning school commute ritual. And the lumber company towns of the Pacific Northwest at the turn of the twentieth century were what I've gathered and what I've read not too dissimilar. Do you guys have any friends or family who are a workhole and do you know anyone who's experienced what it's like to it to live in a company town?

52:05 Speaker 3: I actually do not.

52:06 Speaker 6: I mean, I'm pretty sure that I had relatives they used to live up in All well. My mom's from Olive Hill, and I recall that she had had spoken about that she had some family set did work in the coal mines, but I don't really remember any specifics about it. But God bless them, they're hard workers. I'll tell you. I just I don't know how they do it like they do it.

52:27 Speaker 3: And fun fun fact, Olive Hill, where her mother lived, is where Tom T. Hall lived at the same.

52:32 Speaker 6: Oh wow, Yeah, they were actually neighbors, like right next door each other. My mom always told me that story, how that they used to maybe sit in each other and stuff like that. So I thought that was pretty cool.

52:43 Speaker 2: So that is yeah, that is I have a story kind of like that. My grandfather was grew up in Stockton, California, which is where John Fogerty from Creeden's Clear Waters from and then when he was in his middle years, my grandfather was a drummer in a Dixieland jazz band and they used to play Dixieland at this one bar in Stockton where John's mother, who was a single woman, would often go to go out. And so my grandfather got to know her because she was a regular at the bar when his band would play. And he says he remembers very clearly a night when she came up to him and said, my son just wrote this new song.

53:30 Speaker 2: I really like it. And he said, oh, yeah, what's it called? And she said, who will Stop the Rain?

53:37 Speaker 1: No Way?

53:39 Speaker 2: Like what a moment it was. In history, like it was the night of the day that John Fogerty back in Mom's garage wrote Who'll Stop the Raid?

53:49 Speaker 6: You know, yeah, that's a great story, great song.

53:53 Speaker 2: Oh man, I love Credence.

53:54 Speaker 6: Oh yeah, we do too.

53:56 Speaker 3: Oh same here. We got to see John last year.

54:00 Speaker 2: Fantastic. He's wonderful.

54:02 Speaker 6: Oh my gosh, she's like, what is in his seventies and you would think he's in his thirties. He lives all over that stage. I mean he was wonderful.

54:11 Speaker 2: Yeah, he looks great, And you're right, he moves like a much younger man. I mean I'm much younger than him. I think he moves better than it moves better not yes, for dang sure. My one other this moment in personalized, This moment in music history happened to me. I think it was probably two thousand and seven New Year's Eve and I went to this little Irish bar in Los Angeles called Molly Malone's to see my friend's bluegrass rock band called The Lincoln Bedroom. Nice and opening for the Lincoln Bedroom was this group that I didn't know anything about, and they were all dressed in matching suits like the Temptations.

54:56 Speaker 2: There were horn players, that everybody danced like Michael Jackson. It was the most mind blowingly awesome show I'd ever seen. And I watched it in probably a seven hundred square foot room about twenty five feet from the stage. And probably two weeks after that, when he all of a sudden became massively famous, I realized that I'd just seen Bruno Mars.

55:23 Speaker 6: Oh oh nice, Oh my gosh, that is so awesome.

55:30 Speaker 2: Completely completely blew my mind. And he was opening for my buddies like folk Rock bed.

55:37 Speaker 6: You know that's awesome.

55:41 Speaker 2: Okay, I digress. Let's get back to Let's get back to pap Anderson. He located the mill, this utopian sawmill dream of his, in an area where Percy Creek empties into the Eel River, about seventeen and a half mile from the coast, and he quickly went to work constructing a dam thirty two feet high and eighty feet across to form a mill pond capable of holding twenty million board feet of logs. I mean, this was not a guy for half measures. If he was going to build a logging town and build a sawmill to cut down these giant trees, he was going to do it all the way.

56:23 Speaker 2: I don't know if you have you guys, ever visited northern California, are you familiar with redwood trees at all? Now?

56:30 Speaker 3: The furthest furthest I think either one of us has been in is Las Vegas.

56:34 Speaker 2: Well, Vegas is fun. Well, I grew up. I grew up amongst the redwoods, and they really are remarkable. They can be the oldest ones can be as much as forty feet in diameter, over three hundred feet tall, and they can be five thousand years old. So if you cut down a redwood tree that old. And you know how trees have of rings right that show how much they've grown in any particular year. They grow a lot more in mild years, less if there's a forest fire or a drought or something. But you can actually mark like the entirety of recorded human history.

57:17 Speaker 6: That's amazing.

57:18 Speaker 2: It really blows my mind. It's like, here's Sophocles, here's the birth of Christ, here's the Crusades, and you can go all the way from the dawn of things to now. Incredible, they're living, living time capsules. So he builds this incredible setup. He laid out railroad connecting the mill to the coastal port at Bear Harbor, and he had his workmen build fourteen massive trestles to span the narrow valleys and gulches along the route from Andersonia to Bear Harbor. Now, railroad activity at Bear Harbor was nothing new, and here again, although he may not have realized it, as before in Gray's Harbor, Washington, pap Anderson benefited from the dominoes that fell as the result of another man's unfortunate demise.

58:10 Speaker 2: In eighteen eighty two, C. C. Milton had begun building wharves at Bear Harbor for the shipping of tan bark and railroad ties, but in eighteen eighty four he unexpectedly drowned at Rockport, California, and construction was halted. I suppose it may have been redundant to say unexpectedly drowned, as though, because no one ever drowned. Yeah, no one expects to drown it, right, I mean, and although no one ever hopes for drownings, if one does occur, you have to hope that it's unexpected, right, because otherwise it's murder.

58:46 Speaker 6: It's correct, or just dumb luck, right right.

58:50 Speaker 2: By July of eighteen eighty five, doctor W. A. McCormick of Mendocino resumes work on the wharves and the timber shoot, and to fast forward a little, in eighteen ninety two, other business interests acquire the wharves and twelve thousand acres of timber and they order their very first steam engine, Engine Number one, from San Francisco, and then a year later over two miles of track was in use, and by eighteen eighty nine they get their second engine, creatively named Engine number two, and a plan was set to run railroad all the way from Bear Harbor to the town of Garberville.

59:24 Speaker 2: Now all of this occurred while Pap was busy lumbering in Michigan and Washington, but it seems clear that the death of C. C. Milton set off a flurry of economic opportunity that would make pap stream of Andersonia possible. In case anyone is keeping track, Pap Anderson's destiny has been defined by two deaths so far. So far, Dun, Dun, Dun. By nineteen oh two, Anderson and Middleton had arrived on the scene in Mendocino County, just south of the Humbled border, and they incorporated the Southern Humble lumber company with capital stock of five hundred thousand dollars.

1:00:09 Speaker 2: By this time, Anderson himself was a millionaire man. How'd you like to have a million dollars in nineteen oh five?

1:00:17 Speaker 6: Got Away, It's hard to believe there would be such a thing in that year.

1:00:22 Speaker 2: I know, I know, I know, you'd be like royalty absolutely. I mean my grandfather, I remember him telling me his first job in Stockton that we were just talking about. He was eighteen, so it would have been nineteen thirty eight, and he would work all day in the blazing height hot sun digging potatoes for fifty cents a day. And that's that's nineteen thirty eight. So that'll give you some idea what a million bucks in nineteen oh five must have been able to get you. So by February of nineteen oh five, the sawmill was built, filled with the appssel cutting edge pun intended of logging machinery, shipped and then transported via mule cart I guess from the East coast by Pap Anderson.

1:01:11 Speaker 2: A great expense and logistical challenge Andersonia his timber utopia had been laid out over forty acres in all seventeen and a half miles by covered wagon road from the town of Garberville because there were no cars yet. It included a general store, a post office, a saloon, a cookhouse of bunkhouse or railway depot, and everything needed for a full grown logging town. As construction was completed, Pap recruited his crew from Grays Harbor and other northern logging companies, even as far away as the home state of his first logging operation, Michigan.

1:01:47 Speaker 2: Michigander, there's my favorite word again. William Lilly made a trip to northern California to become the foreman of Southern Humble Lumber Company and stood in Andersonia Mouth Agape just trying to make sense of the largest trees he had ever seen, truly untouched virgin old growth forests. I've seen some old photos. By the time, there were actual logging trucks, like we're maybe all familiar with, essentially flatbed mac trucks. You could only fit one tree on an entire truck.

1:02:21 Speaker 6: Wow, now, those aren't the trees that you could. They've got them carved out where you can drive a truck through or a car through or something like that.

1:02:30 Speaker 2: That's exactly right. Those to that In fact, that drive through tree, the famous one, is not too far from this town of Andersonia that I'm telling you guys all about. Say, cool, you're you're exactly on point there, Tracy Good.

1:02:42 Speaker 6: It would seemed like it would take forever to you know, get all those trees over there, if they could only do one at a time.

1:02:47 Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I think it did take a long time, but there was so much money in it that, uh, you know, many hands make short work, I guess. And also, as I sort of alluded to when I mentioned that he damned the rear to create a mill pond, very often they would use a lot of water for the transport. You'd essentially dump all the logs into the pond and then run them down the river for as long as you can to get where you're going. Because, yeah, as you said, besides train trees this big, I mean, they were nearly impossible to transport.

1:03:22 Speaker 2: And that was why when he first arrived in the Emerald Triangle you could get a pretty good deal on very valuable timber because everybody was like, well, yeah, it's here, but how the heck am I supposed to get it out of here and sell it? So one day in the fall of nineteen oh five, everything was ready. Pap sons and son in law Bird had arrived, and toward the end of October of that year, Pap announced that the mill and Andersonia would cut its first log. It had been a race against time to make sure everything was ready.

1:03:57 Speaker 2: Much of the scaffolding and staging was still up, but the saws had been lined up, the carriage tested, and the live rolls were working. The live rolls are what they when they cut a big round off the log, it would drop onto essentially like a conveyor belt, sort of like when you're going through security at the airport, and that would roll the log into the mill to be cut by the giant saw blades. So everything was up and running. A huge crowd had gathered when Pap Andersen roared started up and the first redwood log came up, the slips soaking, wet and heavy with perfect wood.

1:04:33 Speaker 2: Andersen took a position behind the saws to watch, his eyes sparkling with anticipation as the first blades bit into that gargantuine tree. Sawdust flew as the steel cut deep, slicing a thick round of wood from the tree. The round fell the off bearer stuck his piccaroon in the round, landed up on the rolls, and the round began to slide smoothly toward the mill for sawing into lumber. Everything was going perfectly. Pap was thrilled to witness the first moments of the birth of his Emerald Triangle logging empire.

1:05:09 Speaker 2: And then, with all the horrible inevitability of a scene from the film series Final Destination, a cable used to demolish the staging from the construction work caught on a brace in the structure of the mill. It tore the brace loose, and that impossibly heavy brace tumbled high overhead like the sword of Damocles, hanging above the skull of visionary Pap Anderson, the very man whose vision and perseverance, whose dreams made reality, had created this exact moment. The brace struck Pap Anderson where he stood.

1:05:47 Speaker 2: He hung on for a hopeless week and died.

1:05:53 Speaker 6: H Yeah, so Pap had a horrible thing happened to him, But look what are you creating right right?

1:06:01 Speaker 3: And if and if it a missed him, it would have been a misspep.

1:06:05 Speaker 2: Oh boy lord, I love.

1:06:07 Speaker 6: It every day seven every day a.

1:06:10 Speaker 2: Master, a master of dad jokes. Yeah, that's last week when I was on with my buddy Nick View, who's from Michigan. I asked him, I said, so, if you're a Michigander, does that mean your wife or any other woman from Michigan. It would be a michig goose.

1:06:29 Speaker 3: That's what I was going to say. Well, you made that comment, I was gonna say, what's good for the Michigan goose. That's good for the Michigan.

1:06:36 Speaker 2: Yeah, it was funny. You didn't have much of a sense of humor about He was like, No, no one's ever said.

1:06:42 Speaker 6: That a lord.

1:06:44 Speaker 2: I mean not really. He was playing with me, but I think, you know it is a People from Michigan like that word even more than I do.

1:06:51 Speaker 3: So I have never even heard of that Michigan you do, Yeah, and they like they like that just as much as throwing up their hand to show you where they live. That'sn't always a given. Where do you live at? Well, if you go, it's like, we don't do that. We don't. Let's try to make the shape of Kentucky.

1:07:10 Speaker 2: That's really yeah, as if like a map of Michigan is just imprinted in everyone else's heads. That's pretty funny. Oh my gosh. So when Pap dies, all the work and his timber utopia of Andersonia ceased, and it remained ceased some thirty one years later, on April eighteenth, Yeah, it stood as a sort of ghostly monument to what could have been for a long time. Thirty one years later, on April eighteenth, nineteen thirty six, in the Mendocino Beacon, a writer named C. A. King recounted a story written by George J. Tuby of The Humble Times, And it was C. A. King's recounting where I first discovered this story of Andersonia.

1:08:02 Speaker 2: The story King tells as a brief overview of the one I've just told you, but with the added perspective of thirty one years gone by. King and Tuby's recounting of the dark fate of Pap Andersen and Andersonia includes new, decidedly creepy and decidedly paranormal details. The first is that the brand new machinery in the Andersonia Mill remained brand new and sparkling thirty one years later, despite the perpetual fog and forest damp when one entered the ghost town of Andersonia in nineteen thirty six.

1:08:41 Speaker 2: Everything outside was ancient and everything inside sparkling new, as if to underscore the point that the mill never milled so much as a tree from those south fork of the Eel River forests. The second creepy thing is a railroad station standing there with only one hundred feet of track that disappears into a gully. And yet local hunters report finding pieces of railroad rail miles from any civilization, and many miles from Andersonia itself, as though flung impossible distances by a raging Sasquatch or some other Sylvan protector.

1:09:27 Speaker 2: And lastly, ranchers living near Andersonia report that on certain windy nights, the ghost of Pap Anderson comes down from the tall mill stacks. Eternally furious at the frustration of his herculean dream, he haunts Andersonia and spends stormy nights whimpering tear streaked rage into the mill's massive, unused boilers. And Andersonia is not only it may also very well be cursed. Immediately after Anderson's death, his sons in the timber business didn't want to leave Washington to work. Andersonia.

1:10:14 Speaker 2: Then litigation developed among Anderson's young wife and his many heirs. At first, there were many interested buyers, in particular a man named Trumbull, who went to San Francisco in nineteen oh six to finalize the details of his purchase of Andersonia. Well, Trumbull arrived in San Francisco only to live through the nineteen o six earthquake and massive fire, but the experience of his survival was so traumatic he became embittered with California and left forever, never to return. That's one purchase of Andersonia thwarted.

1:10:56 Speaker 2: The next perspective buyer was a man named Hicks, who had trouble securing the funds to buy Andersonia and became so despondent by this failure that he took his own life Hicks Partners. Because Hicks was the lead man on the purchase, declined to buy the mill themselves. Then, by nineteen thirty nine, the timber holdings associated with Andersonia had continued to increase in value, and curse or ghost or no a man named Barnum, a name associated with many a great hoodwinking, resolved to reopen the mill at Andersonia, but a short decade later, work that once again had never really started, was halted as the company was in receivership and facing lawsuits.

1:11:46 Speaker 2: Then, in October fifteenth of nineteen seventy five, almost seventy years to the day since the death of Pap Anderson, a company called Andersonia Forest Products was established in Arcada, California. But a short nine years later, in nineteen eighty four, its license was suspended by the California Secretary of State. And that's the last I know of Andersonia, although I believe its first locomotive, nicknamed Gipsy, has been preserved and can be seen at the Fort Humboldt Logging Museum, and the ruins of Andersonia can still be visited and viewed if you're brave enough.

1:12:26 Speaker 3: Wow, sounds like a fun place.

1:12:28 Speaker 6: Yeah, well, it definitely sounded curse, that's for sure.

1:12:31 Speaker 2: I'll admit I wanted to choose a paranormal story today because you know, you guys are the absolute masters of telling paranormal stories. And I hoped that if I could do an okay job of telling a scary story, that maybe there would be a Hillbilly horror Stories listener tuning into my show that might decide to stick around. So oh, of.

1:12:53 Speaker 6: Course, of course that was really an interesting story too.

1:12:58 Speaker 3: Yeah, I think most of your stories would keep our listeners interested. I know you got quite a few listeners over the last year or so.

1:13:06 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's well, that's very kind of you to say. I very recently have gotten a big increase in listenership. Our mutual friend Darren Marler from Weird Darkness was very kind and in promoing my show on his and I think also that I finally have sort of cracked how my show ought to go. I mean, I'm sure you guys can speak to this, but I've been doing it for just a little bit over a year now, and it feels like there's quite a learning curve. One thinks you can just kind of hop on a mic and do things, but it takes a darn while to learn what you're doing at all.

1:13:42 Speaker 6: Well that's the truth, especially for me, Like I just was kind of hopped in and had no clue how to do anything, and probably still this day. Really don't you know, just kind of listen and put my two cents in. But it's a lot, it's a lot to do, and it's a lot to learn, and we definitely have made our mistakes for sure, and you know you just kind of got to learn from it and move on and you know you'll get there.

1:14:06 Speaker 2: Yeah, it's good advice. I feel like an important thing to remember in this modern world we live in today, where I feel like everyone is conditioned to just kind of succeed right away or think that they should. You know, all the articles are always forty under forty, thirty under thirty. You know, it's never like sixty people who put in a lifetime's worth of hard work and became mega experts and are now really successful. We're we're we're absolutely in love with the idea of sort of hitting the hitting the one armed bandit jackpot immediate success.

1:14:44 Speaker 2: And so with something that takes as much work as podcasting, it can sometimes be hard to remember that you've just you know, you've got to put the time in.

1:14:56 Speaker 3: I think what's important to keep in mind, though, is the reason those forty under forty and thirty under thirty type stories are so big is because that's not the norm. That's what makes them a.

1:15:07 Speaker 2: Story, right. That's a great point. That's a great point. Well, Jerry Tracy, do you guys have a story that maybe you want to share with the listeners here, give him a little break from me.

1:15:21 Speaker 3: We're tired of telling stories. We do that all we thought this was just going to be a break for us. We had to work on our off day. You're I actually have a story. It's in my book, and I've told this story on Jim Harold's show, which is wildly popular, his Campfires show. And he actually said at the time, and he's been doing this for I think thirteen years now, he said at the time that this was his favorite story at that point. Now he's probably had some since then, but I'll start with this story because it's my favorite story to tell, and it's one that changed my life.

1:16:00 Speaker 2: I can't wait.

1:16:03 Speaker 3: Okay, so we're going to go back and a little bit of a backstory. My mother passed away in two thousand and seven, and she was only fifty four years old. It was an unexpected death. She went to the hospital for something that we thought was going to be no big deal, and then she didn't make it past the next day. My mother and I did not have the greatest relationship up to this point. There was a lot of I don't know, it's just we used to be really close when I was younger, and at the time of my teen years, we kind of started getting a little more distant, started having those typical teenage, teenager and parent confrontations, and it just seemed like as I got older and moved out of the house, got married, and had kids, that relationship never really was repaired, and it would be frustrated and somewhat to the point to where I'm ashamed at the way I conducted myself as I was older.

1:17:00 Speaker 3: In the years before she passed away, there were times where I would go over the house and visit my dad. She would be in a back room and I wouldn't even go back there or say hi. She would call and I wouldn't pick up the phone because I saw it was her, or i'd rush her off the phone when I did.

1:17:15 Speaker 2: Talk to her. So I imagine that I made her passing very extra painful for you.

1:17:20 Speaker 3: It did.

1:17:21 Speaker 2: It did.

1:17:21 Speaker 3: There was a lot of guilt, obviously, because I didn't expect her. She didn't have a terminal illness or anything, and I obviously it wasn't expecting her to pass away, but I didn't have that perspective until after the fact. And at this time, I was doing stand up comedy and where about six months passed her death. And I'm at this little hole in the wall bar. I mean, I bet if it was wall to wall with people there probably wouldn't couldn't have been fifty people in the place. It had two rooms. The main room was the bar, and then it had a step down room with seating for about twenty five thirty people that they would do carry over and what have you in there.

1:18:01 Speaker 3: And they allowed us to do a comedy show one night, and it was me and a gentleman named Chuck. So I had nothing else to do that day. I get there a couple hours before the show. I've got my notes on paperwork. I'm just kind of going over my routine. And it's about this time that this quintessential biker and his girlfriend come into the bar. When I say stereotypical, I mean stereotypical. I mean they both had the leather on. He was probably about six one six y two, big, burly beard, burly hair, had the bandanna on and kind of a rough looking guy.

1:18:42 Speaker 3: And she was kind of the same way as far as on the woman's side, minus the beard. She didn't have a beard, but she she was. You know, she had a couple of scars on her face and she was probably late forties. He was probably late forties. But anyway, so they come in, super nice people. We're talking and they find out I'm a comedian. I ask them, you know, hey, you guys staying for the show. Well, they had no idea there's gonna be a comedy show. Which it's not like there was a big billboard outside or anything.

1:19:10 Speaker 3: And you know, they said they might hang around. They were basically stopping here before they went to a couple of other bars, and you know, I sit there and talked to them a little bit, you know, chit chat, small talk, nothing major. They obviously don't know me, I don't know them, and we're probably about an hour from the show. I decide I'm going to go into that little step down room where the show is going to be so I can go over my notes. It'd be a little quieter in there. As I'm sitting in there, they come in and sit down cross the room from me.

1:19:40 Speaker 3: But you know, I see them sitting there and I'm like, I feel bad because they're sitting all by their stuff and I'm in the room. I don't want them to think I'm ignoring them, so I felt obligated to go over there and talk to them, which I really didn't want to do because I really wanted to go over my prep. Yeah right, and so I go over and start talking to them, and literally within a minute minute and a half of us sitting down, the uh the man says, well, your mom just wants you to know that everything will be okay.

1:20:11 Speaker 3: So initially I'm thinking this is some kind of joke that I missed because they were crying. He was telling me jokes in the other room, because anytime somebody finds out you're a comedian, the first thing I want to do is tell you jokes, which is odd, but which is odd because when I find out that people will work at McDonald's, I don't ask them to come in the kitchen and let me start flipping burgerstors. I can see my technique, but people do that different when you're a comedian. So anyways, I'm sitting down and they say, well, your mom just wants you to know that everything's okay.

1:20:38 Speaker 3: So I did like the little fake, awkward laugh, you know, thinking I missed a joke, and the young lady reaches over she puts her hand right on top of my hand and said, no, your mom really wants you to know that everything is okay. And in that moment, I literally broke down. I have a hard time telling this story without breaking down at that same point. A matter of fact, we did a live event in Memphis last year, I think in October, and I literally broke down on stage and had to wait before I could finish.

1:21:09 Speaker 3: Because it's just as many times as I've written this story and told this story, which has been a bunch, it never seemed the emotion never goes away from it. But I lost it to the point to where I knew that she was there. I knew that they were there for a reason that I had no clue about, and I wasn't sure if they had a clue about. And so, you know, we just started talking about it, and I said, you know, we didn't have the best relationship and there was a lot of guilt and you know, and I explained some of the stuff already that I explained to you about, you know, not answering phone calls and all that, and they said, yeah, you know, she knows that, and she just wants you to know that everything's completely fine, that's not something that you need to worry about.

1:21:54 Speaker 3: It's not something that needs to be on your mind. That you know, all is basically forgiven. And I said, yeah, I you know, that's a load off of my shoulders to be able to hear that. And then they just went on to start talking about other stuff like, you know, well, she feels like that you should be doing you know, bigger and better things than you know, like being at this little bar tonight and all this stuff. And my mom saw me perform one time. It was at the Comedy Caravan up in Louisville, which was the biggest night club or the comedy club in that area.

1:22:27 Speaker 3: And matter of fact, Tom Sobel owned that club for the longest time. He started owned it for like thirty years, and he's the gentleman that founded Gallagher and some other big names out there. So that was, you know, his agent and all that. So he was a pretty big name in the comedy business. And you know, so my mom did see me perform once, and you know, my comedy career really was just starting about the time that she saw me. As a matter of fact, I think it was my second performance ever and I was still only like probably less than a year into it, so you know, a lot of girling to still do.

1:22:59 Speaker 3: I really didn't to be anywhere other than a place like I was that night, but you know, and they kept saying some things to me. But to be honest with you, I don't remember much after that moment. I was so overcome with emotion that you know, I don't remember much about that night after that, not the show, not anything. I mean, I've performed and I guess I did okay, But you know, I at that moment just completely changed my life because even though I grew up in a haunted house and I knew in my heart that there were spirits and life went on, this was my proof.

1:23:36 Speaker 3: This was my undoubt undoubtedly proof that there is a life and that my mom was still out there and she was willing to send somebody in there, somehow, some way to give me this message. And they would have had no clue. They would have had no clue. And then right after that they got up and left and I've never seen them since. So, you know, these two bikers ran walk into a bar and start telling me stuff about my mom. And you know, that's a story that you can't write. I mean, how does that happen? I don't know if they were angels or I mean, I don't know if they even knew that, you know, I don't know if they've ever been used like it since then, but they were sent there for a reason.

1:24:19 Speaker 2: Yeah, wow, that's an amazing story. I'm misty eyed myself. I don't know if you can see me sort of biting my lips, but yeah, that wow. So do you think then, do you think that she channeled through them to speak to you and that it's likely that the biker and his girlfriend don't have any memory of it themselves, or do you think that there was something more intentional to it on their side as well, Like maybe this is something they've done for people before because they somehow have that sixth sense or something.

1:24:53 Speaker 3: I have no clue. I have no clue whatsoever. I mean, it could have been a situation where they walked out of that bar and it was like, what the hell just happened? You know, maybe they didn't have a clue, it was just a spur of the moment thing. I have no idea. I did figure out though years later, it never made this connection. The little bar was called Red Eyes and it was a little hole in the wall. I mean literally a hole in the wall had set on a corner of a you know, on these two little quiet roads, so you had to want to get there.

1:25:25 Speaker 3: And I remember my mom, my mom, myself and my dad rarely did anything by ourselves, but a couple of years before she passed away, the last thing that we did all do together was we went to that little bar and shop pool.

1:25:41 Speaker 5: Uh.

1:25:41 Speaker 3: And I didn't remember that until literally, probably maybe three or four years ago. And that just happens to be the place she showed up. And maybe that was a connection that I didn't draw.

1:25:54 Speaker 2: Wow, that's amazing. And is your is your father or still alive or was he still alive at the time?

1:26:00 Speaker 3: Now he is?

1:26:01 Speaker 2: He still laugh Wow? That that's really that's really I've got the goosies, Jerry, that's quite a story.

1:26:09 Speaker 3: Well, I've got the ganders.

1:26:10 Speaker 2: So and we brought it full circle. Yay, Oh my gosh, that is that is I can see why that's Jim Harold's favorite story and now it's one of mine as well. What a remarkable tale. Thank you so much for sharing it with us.

1:26:27 Speaker 3: You're welcome.

1:26:29 Speaker 2: So uh, guys, Hillbilly horror stories. Do you guys have any upcoming events? Don't you have a cruise planned? Could you tell me a little tell my listeners a little bit. Excuse me, tell our listeners a little bit about that. We do.

1:26:43 Speaker 3: We have a extra large row boat, so there's room if anybody wants to get on and be right down the Ohio River. It's now we're actually uh it's it should be fine. It's through Royal Caribbean and it's going to be from Miami to the Bahamas. It's a four day cruise. It takes off September nineteenth and goes to the twenty third, and last I checked, we had over two hundred people already booked to come aboard. So it's gonna be fun. It's gonna be us and three other podcasts that are going to be their mysterious circumstances, the Brohile podcasts and the Shane Waters podcast.

1:27:23 Speaker 3: Threw a blank completely at the thing, but it's gonna be a complete blast. We're gonna do. We're gonna have one day where we're gonna be doing a live show with all four podcasts and uh yeah, the foul Play podcast. Yeah, I just yeah, yeah, and Shane By the way, Shane is big time. I mean big time. This guy. He helped solve some of the redheaded murder cases that was in West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana. But there was there's some cases back in the seventies where they're were a bunch of redheaded women of the night we'll say, ladies of the evening that went missing, and uh, they found their bodies, but they couldn't rectify who they were.

1:28:10 Speaker 3: They never could find the names for these people. And Shane went through and actually helped find the identities of two or three of these young women. Uh here recently so and he's spoken at crime Con. He's closed down crime Con. The Netflix television show The Followers. Uh, he was one of the writers or researchers i should say for that, and uh, they're doing a sequel he's gonna be a part of. Yeah, Shane Shane is big time. He's a thirty year old guy that's about six eight six 'y nine. He is ah and has the heart of a teddy bear.

1:28:44 Speaker 6: Oh my gosh, it is. He's a He's an amazing person, just as nice as he can be. And we're just so proud of him for what he's accomplished.

1:28:52 Speaker 2: It's a lot that's remarkable. That sounds he's amazing.

1:28:57 Speaker 3: Hillbilly Horror stories dot Com. We have a a tab on there this completely dedicated to the cruise. Gets all the information the travel agent to call. It's got all the videos and prices of rooms and everything. But this thing starts. You can get in with two people in an interior room for like nine hundred bucks and that includes all your food and a couple of different stops that we do out there, and then the live show that we do. It's going to be a fun time.

1:29:25 Speaker 2: Gosh, that sounds fantastic. I might have to go book some tickets for myself and my family right now. What a cruise? You should really be super fun? All right, well, hey yeah I should. I've got to run it by the family accountant first. But uh, if she says, okay, maybe we'll see you there, well, Jerry, that great, It's sure would. I would love it so, Jerry Tracy, thank you so much for being here today. It's been an absolute pleasure to share this time with you and share stories. Jerry. I'm honestly still a little bit moved by your story.

1:30:04 Speaker 2: I was thinking all about the Kursten Haunted story that I told, and now I hardly remember it because I'm just thinking about that moment with you and the bikers in the bar and what that must have been like. Man, thank you so much for sharing that. Well. It's Hillbilly Horror Stories Everybody, a fantastic podcast available anywhere you get your pods. You can go to Hillbilly Horror Stories dot com. You can book tickets to the cruise. They've got some fantastic merch there. They've got announcements about upcoming live shows.

1:30:38 Speaker 2: I love the show. I love Jerry and Tracy. They've been amazing friends and mentors to me on my podcast journey. Please engage with them, subscribe to their show. You will be so happy you did. And again, Jerry and Tracy, thank you so much for being here. For Jerry and Tracy PAULI I'm Zeven Odlebird and this has been kind of murdery, and this has been kind of murders tribute to Jerry Polly. Once again, Jerry, I have no words for how deeply I and so many will miss you. Thank you so much for everything you've done for me and again for so many people but since this is my show, thank you so much for everything you've done for me.

1:31:54 Speaker 2: You will live forever in my heart and ah man, this tribute feels so inadequate, but Jerry, I love you and everybody please rejoin me next Thursday for a regularly scheduled kind of Murdery episode. I'm Zevan Odleberg for Jerry and for Tracy Polly. This has been kind of Murdery.

1:32:24 Speaker 1: If you like the show case, subscribe with you and tell your friends. You can find us on social media at kind of Murdery or email at kinda Murdery at gmail dot com