Haunted Hikes & Terrifying Taverns with Joe Gelinas! Ep.72

[00:00:09] Right then guys, welcome back to The Spooky Shed Podcast. Liam here as always and you'll never guess what, Billy isn't here because as we all know, Billy is a twat. That tends to get that reaction from all our guests now. So as you can hear there, I do have a guest with us tonight. So tonight I've got Joe from Tales, Trails and Taverns. So Joe, welcome to the podcast and welcome to The Shed. We are finally in The Shed. Thanks for having me man. I'm glad we're in The Shed, I like it.

[00:00:38] Yeah, no problem, no problem. A lot of our guests now when Billy isn't here tend to give him some sort of abuse. So if you just want to say Billy you're a dick or something then... Alright, Billy you're a cunt. Even better, even better. I call him that on a daily basis. I bet you do. Right then Joe, so we start off these guest episodes now by asking our guests to leave something in The Shed. It's almost like our little hall of fame.

[00:01:06] So it can be anything. It can be a place, a feeling, a thing, anything. So what would you like to leave in The Shed with us? Something to leave in The Shed. I don't have much. I got a piece of coal from Centralia, Pennsylvania. I guess you could leave that in The Shed. A little bit of a smoky memorabilia there. Yeah, that's cool. That's cool. Already we've had some random things like we've got someone's resident ghost in here now with us.

[00:01:35] Oh yeah? Yeah. Right, perfect. Right, let's just jump into it then Joe. So Tales Trails and Taverns, tell us about your podcast. So Tales Trails and Taverns is a podcast about going out, exploring haunted, spooky, creepy and abandoned places, places with dark histories.

[00:01:55] And we try to make it different by every place that we have a podcast about, every place we have an episode about is someplace that either me or my co-host Rob has actually been to. We try to give a first-hand experience of what it's like to be there, what it feels like to be there, how you can get there if it's a place that's not a no trespassing place. Because there's a few of those that Rob likes to do urban exploration. So he goes to places that you can certainly get kicked out for.

[00:02:23] But so yeah, it's all about, it's all about going places, haunted places, woods, especially taverns, places that are haunted, places that have a creepy past and, and getting there ourselves and walking around and feeling it out. Hmm.

[00:02:40] Now it's nice. I like it. I mean, I've, I've listened to a lot of your episodes now and like, I really like it. So, and if it's fingers, the fact that like you say, you, you go, you actually go to these places, you don't just talk about them like we do. You actually go to these places. Yeah, it's been a, um, it's been probably like 10 years, more than 10 years now that I've, I've wanted to go to hiking. I've wanted to go hiking in creepy places. And I made, I just made it a point to do it all the time.

[00:03:05] And then when Rob came on, um, one of the things is that he lives near the Bridgewater triangle. He lives near the Freetown State Forest, which is one of the most haunted forests in the world. And, uh, he spent, he spent a lot of time going out there and checking those places out. And, um, so it just, it was just a natural evolution of, uh, of getting out there and hiking and enjoying the outdoors and then bringing that whole creepy experience and all the ghosts and the legends and all the stories out to people and just sharing it with everybody.

[00:03:36] Yeah. It's like, well, it's the perfect way to merge two like hobbies together, isn't it? So. Right. Going hiking, going drinking, telling ghost stories. That's, that's what we like to do. Can't get much better than that, really. Not, not much, no. Yeah. So where did your interest in like, you know, the haunted stuff, the paranormal stuff, all the weird things in life, where, where, where does that start for you?

[00:03:59] It probably started as a kid. I mean, I grew up in a house that was supposedly haunted. It was like, um, we had an old house on the Cape and unlike most other old houses and haunted houses where, you know, usually the story starts with, we moved into a place. Then we learned about the dark history. That's not the case with us. This, this house goes back six generations in my family. It was actually built by my grandfather's grandfather.

[00:04:25] And so it's been in the family for that long. It's still in the family. We still, they still own it. And so the resident ghost was actually a relative that it was her house built for her. And she was always the one who was scaring people out. So that's probably where it started. And then, um, after I got out of the military, I moved down to North Carolina and I did a lot of hiking. I spent a lot of time in the woods and I met this woman who worked at one of the state parks.

[00:04:53] And she started telling me about how one of the trails was haunted there, about how there were, there was an old cemetery on the trail and there were ghosts and how, you know, people had reported hearing disembodied voices in the woods and all kinds of creepy stuff like that. So that just, that just moved it along. It moved it to the next, the next step, so to speak.

[00:05:12] Hmm. I mean, that, that, that's interesting straight away. Like you say, the fact that that house has been in your family then for so long, but then the fact that it's like, it's literally your family that haunted, but they're still scaring people away. Yeah. Yeah. It was always, uh, it was always told that it was Nellie Baker's house and she was the one who, um, uh, what was his name?

[00:05:36] Um, uh, Osiah Baker built the house for her. And so, you know, she stayed in the house and she, she, apparently she was unhappy with the house, how it was built for her. And she, but it was her house. So she didn't like, she didn't, the story was always that the women, any women who came into the house, she wanted to get rid of them. So she would torment women in the house and she would leave the men alone. Any of her boys, it was fine. But if a woman came into the house, they were, it was torture.

[00:06:06] My stepmother apparently had a lot of stuff happen to her over the years. Yeah. That's interesting. That's interesting. So is there, have you got any experiences that happened in that house to stand out for you then? Yeah, I've got, I've got a couple. Um, one of them, I remember a few times being actually like woken up earlier in the morning with like a really hard tap on the shoulder.

[00:06:30] Um, that always did a couple of times that happened that freaked me out. But the one time that really stuck out is I was, I want to say I was probably like 16 years old and I got up super early in the morning. And I don't know why on this particular morning, it was before, before sun came up and, uh, I just felt like I need to get up and get ready for school. I was going to take a shower and, and I was going to be super morning person that day for some reason. And so I went to go in the bathroom, I was getting ready to go take a shower.

[00:07:00] And as I walked out of the bathroom to get ready, I looked up the stairs and right at the top of the stairs, I could see this white mist in the shape of a person. I knew it was her. I knew it was Nellie, just perfect person shape right there. I saw it and just walked across the living room, turned the light on, sat down on the couch so I could watch the bottom of the stairs. And I was like, either she's going to come down the stairs or she's not.

[00:07:25] And I sat there on the couch and I kid you not, I probably sat there for a good 30, 40 minutes and waited while the sun came up. And then once the sun was up, I went back to doing what I never got around taking a shower that morning before school. I just, I wasn't going to cross that threshold again. She was standing there. Yep. Yeah. That's a funny one.

[00:07:47] Cause I'm just thinking to myself there, like you said, at that age, like 16, that's like, it's kind of the age when you start want to be like, you know, a man and you don't want to be scared of anything. But I think, I think if I'd saw that one, even when I was 16, I'd have been like, nope, I'm out. And I'd have been straight out the window. Like, nah, I'm done. I'll, I'll, I'll wait for her to leave and then go back about, go back about my business, you know? Yeah. So you said, you said that was like a clear shape. So could you say like features or was it just sort of like an outline? It was like an outline.

[00:08:16] It was like a shape, like a white mist shape at the top of the stairs. Yeah. Yeah. I could not see her features. My aunt has said she's seen her in full feature outside, outside of the house too, you know? But, um, I don't know. I know my father has talked about her, my uncles and stuff, but my, my aunt is the one who had the most impressing, um, sighting of her. Yeah.

[00:08:41] And then she always talks about how cold and how, uh, uninviting the spirit seems to be to her. Hmm. Well, like you said, she's a woman. So I mean, that's it. Man, she didn't like, she didn't like women in her house. She didn't mind her boys, but she doesn't like women in her house. I know. I know if you're a woman like that. Yeah. It's funny.

[00:09:03] I always find it fascinating with people who, cause I mean, I'll be honest, I've, I've never seen like any sort of full blown like apparitions or anything. Yeah. I always find it really interesting because people always seem to have like a different experience with it. You don't, you know, you never get many that are exactly the same, even if it's like you said, the same spirit, like you said in there, obviously you've seen it one way. Yeah. Someone else has seen it another way. Yeah. I just, that, that's, that's something that really interests me.

[00:09:30] I just, I mean, I don't know. The question is why really? Is it, do you know what I mean? Why different experiences? Yeah. Yeah. It is interesting. People have, have different levels of, uh, I don't know, insight into, into being able to see beyond the veil or whatever it is, however they see spirits, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a very good point. Actually. Maybe, maybe it is that maybe it's more, it's how open you are to it. Yeah. That's true.

[00:09:59] The more you are to it, the more it looks like it's just someone sat there. Right. Yeah. I mean, I couldn't imagine like seeing somebody and then realizing like, oh, they're not really there. I don't, I don't know how I'd react to that. Just seeing another person just like. Yeah. You know? I mean, I've known people who said they could see spirits and they're like, oh, there's somebody sitting there like, I don't know, man. Like, okay. That's weird. I'm not sure if I'd be okay with just seeing somebody sitting there who's not really there, you know? Exactly.

[00:10:28] Especially, especially if it's so clear to them that, you know, it looks like just a real person and then all of a sudden they'll just disappear. I'm like, I wouldn't know who's who. I wouldn't want to talk to anybody. Right. I wouldn't know if they were very long. Right. Yeah. My co-host, his daughter can, she apparently has quite a bit of that. She's pretty open to those. And she said that she sees, she's seen things at some of the places they go to. And it kind of, she's freaking people out.

[00:10:56] Apparently she, they went to, where the hell did they go? It was an abandoned asylum somewhere. And she said something about, they went with a couple other people. And she was like, oh, he noticed that, you know, you keep a rosary in your pocket or something to somebody, one of the other guys that was there. And he's like, how the hell do you know that? She's like, oh, the spirit told, you know, this guy over here told me. Like, man, you can mess with people's head doing that. Yeah. It's crazy. Some of the, like, abilities that people have.

[00:11:26] Because, I mean, anyone who's listened to us knows I started off very, very skeptical of a lot of things. Yeah. And the more we do this, the more I start to believe in stuff. And we had a guest on previously. And she could literally, she would, like, go to places. Well, no, sorry. Like, before she went to places, she would literally sit there and be, like, almost like that. Where people just write stuff down. And then, obviously, a message comes through.

[00:11:53] She would literally draw the places of where she was going to before she'd even been there. Oh, wow. Yeah. Crazy. Crazy. And she even showed me some of them as well. I mean, they weren't, like, works of art. They were literally, like, stick figures and stuff. Right, right. It's still crazy, like, how accurate she is. Because, like, she showed me one of the drawings that she'd done. And then a picture of where they went. And it's just mind-blowing. That's awesome. That's amazing that those gifts are amazing.

[00:12:22] That people can do that. Yeah. I'd love to just be able to do one thing now. Just anything. Even if it was just to hear voices or something. But, well, I mean, apart from the ones that I have in my head anyway. Right. Right. So with the podcast then, so is there any places where you've been where something's happened that's really stood out and you've been, like, freaked out?

[00:12:47] Yeah, so we did a tour at this place called S.K. Pierce's Haunted Victorian Mansion. It's a mansion in Gardner, Mass., right? And it's a place that it took, I want to say it took 100 men three years to build this place. And S.K. Pierce was a furniture magnate in the area. Yeah. And so he built this place for his wife. And it was 6,667 square feet of this mansion, this four-story mansion.

[00:13:18] And after the three years that the guys built it, his wife lived for two years or two weeks in the house before she passed away. And then, so the house went through a series of, you know, went from him to the kids and then it became a boarding house at one point. And in 1963, a guy, shit, I'm going to draw a blank on his name, but there was a guy who spontaneously combusted to death in one of the rooms. Jesus.

[00:13:48] He caught fire in his bed, burnt up and died. Right. Um, and so we were in that room and there's, there's a, um, there's a glass case, like a shadow box on the wall. And it's a piece of the wall. It's a piece of the old wall that was burnt. So it's still got like, it's singed and it's got a little fire damage on it. And so they tell us all the story. They go room, room by room for an hour. And then afterwards you got 30 minutes to walk around and just check up the place by yourself.

[00:14:18] Um, so me and Rob were walking around and we walk in. Oh, it was Eno Sori, right? That's the guy's name. Eno Sori died in 1963 in that room. So we go back in there and we're in that room and it's dark and Rob's in there taking pictures in a mirror and he's taunting the spirit. He's like, come on, show yourself. You know, and I'm like, I don't know if that's such a good idea, man. So I, but I kept, I was taking pictures anyways.

[00:14:44] And, uh, later on that night, later on the night I got home and I'm looking through the pictures and I find one in that room and in the reflection of the shadow box, there's a face and there looks like a flicker of flame reflected in the picture, but not in the rest of the room. Like, like I took it from across the room too. Like you had to zoom in to see it, to see a reflection in this, in the shadow box. And, um, I thought that was weird as hell.

[00:15:11] And then I talked to Rob the next day, we went hiking the next day and he goes, man, I don't know what happened. He's like, I couldn't sleep all night. He goes, I kept feeling like there was somebody standing at the end of my bed watching me. Like I told you not to taunt spirits in the mirror, man. Like I told you not to talk to them. I don't know. I don't know what to say, but so that experience was really weird having that one. And, um, that house, that house was strange. There was a lot of, it was a neat house because it was really detailed in the Victorian architecture,

[00:15:41] but it just had a weird feeling. There was one room where the story was that there was a 16 year old, um, nanny who lived in the room. And then one day she just disappeared and there's no trace of whatever happened to her. And they swear they didn't do anything. It was, I think it was like the son of, of, um, S K Pierce. Um, and then later on, one of the owners, when, when they were having trouble with the ghosts and they were, they were being haunted and the woman went and dug in the furnace downstairs

[00:16:10] went and there was like an old fireplace or something. She dug through there and they found bones and apparently they got it. They took it to an investigator or something. And they said it was a teenage girl's bones. So they think that the girl was murdered or whatever in that house. And when I walked in that room, man, I had a weird feeling in that room. Like I didn't want to be in there. I walked in there and I was like, I don't want to be in this room, this room, there's something wrong with this.

[00:16:36] Even before they told us what room it was, I just had this feeling like, I don't want to be in here. This is not a good feeling. So even though I don't feel like I'm sensitive to spirits and stuff like that, there's some rooms that are just, there's some places, some feelings, there's some energy that's just so overpowering that you're going to feel it no matter what, you know what I mean? So that's probably the best one we've been to. That was worth the, uh, what, like $60 for the ticket for the hour and a half. Definitely worth it to go.

[00:17:03] So yeah, that is really interesting. I mean, have you, have you still got that photo? Oh yeah. Yeah. You, you're going to have to show me that sometime. It's wild, man. I'll send it, I'll send it straight to you later. Yeah. Cool. Cool. Um, it's funny you say there about, about the feeling that you got in, obviously in, obviously in, in the rooms. Cause it's, uh, again, annoyingly with these guest episodes, I just think that there's a certain time where I'm just like, Billy, you twat, why are you not here?

[00:17:33] Yeah. Because there's just not always some of where me, cause me and him have a big argument all the time about energy and how you feel in certain places, like residual energy and stuff. Yeah. Because Billy's a massive believer in it. And part of me is a little bit skeptical of it because it's big, but I think it's big again, because Billy always uses a terrible example of if you're in a graveyard or you go to a hospital, you're going to feel funny. And I'm like, yes, that's because if one of you are surrounded by dead bodies or you're in a hospital where loads of people have died. So you're going to feel like that.

[00:18:02] But then he also says that, oh, well, if you go to work like a serial killer's house and I'm like, well, yeah, you're going to feel funny because you know that to me, to me, the only way I could test it is if someone took me somewhere and I didn't have a clue what had happened there. And if I felt something then, then I'd believe it. Yeah. Yup. Yeah. Just because, I mean, we've not done many things, we've not been to many places yet, but... You're starting to though, right? You guys are starting to do investigations?

[00:18:31] Yeah. And like I said, annoyingly, like I said, I mean, the time we did that, I felt horrendous the whole time we did that. So maybe there is something in it, but I don't know. I don't know. I think it needs to happen another couple of times before I'm a full blown believer in that. Yeah. I'm one of those people. I like to go to these places. I like to feel freaked out. I like to feel scared. But I don't really feel like I'm a paranormal investigator. I don't have all the tools.

[00:19:00] I don't really go there thinking like, I'm going to get a, I'm going to get an EVP or whatever else. The spirit, I don't have any of that stuff. I try not to do that. I just want to go there. I just want to go there and see it. Like, I want to know that the place is haunted. I want to go there and see myself, maybe have an experience, maybe catch something on my, on my iPhone, on my camera, but you know. Oh, so when we went to the, we went to the conjuring house, I felt more like I was just there to have a good time and hang out at the conjuring house.

[00:19:30] Ah, yes. I forgot. I forgot a couple of yous went there, didn't you? Yeah. We'll have to talk about that at some point. Yeah. But yeah, no, I know what you mean. Like, so basically you're happy just to go there. If something happens and you experience it, you're happy enough. You don't feel like you need to get proof for other people. Right. No, I mean, I'm going there. I'm going places that have deep, you know, dark histories too. So I like, I like to know the type of, you know, the stuff that happened there and see what's left and see what it's like to be there.

[00:19:59] But, you know, I'm not going there to catch a spirit on a, you know, catch a picture. If I catch a picture, that's cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, I like that, to be honest. I like that. It's a bit more chilled out and you're not going to, I don't think you won't get disappointed.

[00:20:28] I feel like if you go there, like me and Billy, like say when we went, Billy has, oh, he's got every type of equipment you can think of. Yeah. And like when any investigations we do, if nothing happens, then it's just like, well, what was the point of that? Right. Yeah. I think me and Rob were talking about that at one point and he's saying, oh, maybe we should do something like this. Like, do you have any idea how long it takes sometimes for those guys to get one single EVP? Like they're, they could be sitting around there.

[00:20:57] Like you watch it on, on YouTube or something. You're watching an investigation. You're, you know, you're watching 15 minutes and a bunch of stuff happens. That probably took hours, hours and hours to record that and get that evidence. You know? Yeah. It does. Like you say, I can speak from personal experience. Now it does. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, good on you. And I do like watching those cut up versions of people who do paranormal investigations, but I don't know that I want to do that.

[00:21:24] I think I just want to check the place out, hang out, crack a beer, have a good time. Yeah. No, like I'm, I'm somewhere in the middle because like, so yeah, I like the idea of just going there, like say, saying everything, saying, saying what happens. But then I, like I said, I'm also on the right. I want something to happen. I feel like I've wasted my time. They'd be like, what's that sound we got on the EVP? Like, oh, Joe brought a six pack and he was cracking an open one.

[00:21:54] Like, is anybody here? Sorry. That was. Yeah. That's exactly what you need. So how many episodes have you done in the spooky shed so far since you switched over? Um, well, as the spooky shed, I think this is like the fifth or the sixth one. Well, actually in the shed, this is the first. In the shed is the first. That's awesome. So these, these places you go to, like, do you, do you, how much, how much traveling do you do?

[00:22:24] Because obviously you're in the U S and obviously it's a lot bigger than the UK. So like, do you, do you travel far? Do you do like, you know, long distances? Do you stay over at places? There's been, I think the longest we've traveled to a particular place since we started the podcast was, um, it was, we did Pennhurst Asylum last year and the Pennhurst Paracon in May. Yeah. And we're doing that again this year. We're going again.

[00:22:52] And so I think that's the farthest we've traveled since we started. And we stopped at, um, we stopped at Centralia, Pennsylvania, the famous ghost town on the way there, which is not really on the way there. It was a couple hours out of the way, but that was a good one. And then in May, cause we're going back to Pennhurst in May, we're going to do, uh, we're going to go to Gettysburg. So nice, you know, as far as we've traveled so far, it's been probably up to six, seven hours that we've gone in one direction.

[00:23:23] Um, but I did spend, I spent 10 years living in North Carolina and checking out places down there. I used to, before I did, before I did the podcast, before I did any of the tales, trails and taverns, I, uh, probably 15 years ago, I was doing a blog out in North Carolina about hiking, but I did spend a lot of time going out to creepy places, you know, places that unexpectedly had something, had history. So I do, I do dive back into that stuff.

[00:23:51] And then Rob is, you know, we've done, well, me and Rob both served in Iraq. So we did a couple, we did an episode about Iraq. We did one, um, about some of the different military bases that we've served at. We did an episode where, uh, a place that he hiked out in San Diego, California, which was not something that he was planning to go do. So it wasn't traveling for the podcast, but so we've had, we've got a pretty, uh, pretty

[00:24:18] wide berth, you know, as far as where we've gone or what we've done episodes on. Yeah. You might, you might, you might, you might notice that I don't know if the microphone picked it up that sort of chuckled and smiled a bit when he said like seven hours. Yeah. I'm just thinking to myself, like I can literally drive to the other end of the country and back in seven hours. Yeah. Right. Yeah. You can do that and not even leave the state. Oh, I know. And, um, you know, I'm in, I'm in Rhode Island now, which is the smallest state in the union.

[00:24:47] So we've, you know, I could drive, well, honestly, I live less than a mile from the state line, but you know, in three hours I can cross two or three state lines where when I lived in North Carolina, it would take, it would take up to three, I could drive three hours in one direction before I hit, hit the state line, you know? So, so there are definitely, there are states that are much, much bigger than other ones here. And then, you know, like Texas, how long does it take to drive across Texas? Fucking 15 hours, something like that. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:25:17] Something like that. Yeah. I think there's like, I think there's five or six states that are actually bigger than the UK. Oh, I believe it. Yeah. Just mental. Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned military bases there. So have you had any experiences on the military bases where you were? Not, not really myself. No. I mean, some of the places we've been to, they were, I don't know, the places I, the places that I served at, they weren't so old that I think there was, there was some

[00:25:43] stuff like, you know, um, Paris Island has a lot of creepy history. You know, a lot of shit happened there. I don't remember seeing anything. This is also, you know, 20 years ago. I got, I've been out of the military almost 15 years too. So, but, and we also have a lot of abandoned forts and military places around here in New England that we've gone out and checked out. But I haven't seen much.

[00:26:11] Like I said, I don't, I don't really think I'm that sensitive to this stuff. So as much as I like it and as much as I try to see stuff, I'm not seeing, I'm not seeing much. I have to, uh, it's, it's, it's some of the interests me that because I sort of like, like, I mean, I mean, I, I mean, I can't speak on behalf of anyone who served in the military, but like, I don't mind, it's sort of something that you're, how can I put this? Like, yeah, sort of like almost born to do it. If that is, would you, would you agree with that?

[00:26:41] Like what if somebody's born to serve in the military or sort of, or like, you know, it's like you, you, you know, you're really passionate about, it's not just something you do. It's not just something you, it's not just like a day job is it. It's not just something you do. So it kind of depends on what branch you join because you can do, there are some jobs in the military that are just day jobs. Absolutely. But I mean, you gotta want to, you gotta want to be a part of that. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I mean. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:27:09] That's, that's what I'm trying to say very badly. But yeah. So I often think like maybe because it's supposed to be like, if someone is that passionate about it and then say, I don't know, like something happens to them, like maybe they'd want to, they'd want their spirit to stay in a place like that. Maybe. I don't know. Right. Yeah. There is, um, there's a place not too far away from here. It's the, uh, the Pachog State Forest. And one of the, one of the, um, one of the ghost stories there is that there's a colonial

[00:27:39] era guard that walks up and down Breakneck Hill Road. And so it's one of those ones where there's a dirt, it's a dirt road and it's in the middle of nowhere. And apparently there's some, some author that wrote about it in his book. He wrote all about the hauntings of Pachog and he swears that he saw, he was driving down the road and saw the guard walking down and he almost hit, he hit him. But it was one of those things where he slammed on his brakes and the guy disappeared right in front of him. And, uh, that's one that I've tried.

[00:28:06] I've driven down that road a few times with the camera roll and see if I could catch him, but not yet. I haven't seen him yet. And I've checked the tape pretty vigorously after I get done, you know, go back. What, what was that shadow? What was it? But, uh, yes, I mean, there are a lot of stuff like that and especially in new England, especially with the colonists and the native Americans and the wars that happened here, the amount of bloodshed that happened in this place over, you know, a couple hundred years ago. Yeah.

[00:28:38] I'm sure you know all about that in England. I'm sure there's a ton of that. But believe it or not, no. Yeah. Yeah. Like, weirdly, no, I don't, I don't know whether, I don't mean, I don't know why, but like, I mean, my knowledge of like American history is less than basic. Oh no, I was talking about like in England, there's gotta be, there's gotta be a ton of history in England. Cause as old as America is, we, you know, we go back three, 400 years, you know, in recorded

[00:29:08] history, but you guys, I mean thousands. It's mind blowing how old, how old England in the UK is, you know? Yeah. So that, that, that, that, that's something that I find that I do find bizarre though. Like say again, just, just purely on a size aspect, like the size of England compared to the US. Yeah. Yeah. Our history goes back that far. Get nobody. Right. But go to America where there's just this absolute massive land. Yeah.

[00:29:35] I think, um, here in Rhode Island, we've got, we've got the oldest tavern in the country and it's only what, it might be 300 years old. I know you guys have taverns that are thousand years old, 900 years old or something like that. That's crazy. That's something I'd love to check out. Oh yeah. Like I say for, for drinking places, pubs and stuff over here, you'd be in your element. Yeah. Yes. Especially if you go to, uh, I'm going there next month.

[00:30:04] We, we've, we've, we've spoken about it on a quite a few episodes of city called York. It's I think, I think once over, it was apparently the most haunted city in the country. Yeah. And it, it, it, I think if, I think it's official, it has the most haunted pubs in the country. Oh, that's awesome. It's been a long time. I'm going there next month. So I'm going to, I'm going to go to a few of them. That's awesome. Yeah. You mentioned books there, Joe.

[00:30:32] So you've wrote, you have written two books yourself, haven't you? So do you want to tell us about it? I've got a, I've got a fiction novella that's, um, but it's a sci-fi horror. And then we've got the Tales, Trails and Taverns Haunted New England book. It just came out in December. Yeah. So yeah. Science fiction horror. Yeah. Without, without obviously any spoilers, can you give us a bit about that? Okay. So that one's called the Terror of New Dawn.

[00:30:59] And it's, the setting is that humanity kind of burnt its bridge when it came to earth. So they left on arc ships, generational ships, found a new place to live and then decided to try to go back to earth. So they sent the ship back to earth and that ship, that's where the story takes place. That ship gets back to earth and finds how much has changed in the last few thousand years since humanity left. Interesting. Interesting.

[00:31:31] Where, where, where, where did like the idea or the inspiration for that come from then? I think the very first inspiration was that I wanted to write a book where the main character ended up in a position worse than how he started. So then from there, I just kind of developed the story. And it took a long time, man. I had this, I developed this story. It was kind of in my head and I wrote it down a few different times. It probably took over 10 years for me to, to put this whole thing together.

[00:31:58] And then finally, um, had a little spark of inspiration, decided to just start writing like crazy. So I wrote it all down. I got it out. It originally came out in an ebook. And, um, I didn't do enough research with the name. So I ended up naming it the same name as some other really famous book. I don't realize how much of a mistake I made.

[00:32:20] So I went back and I, I edited it and I wrote a pre, uh, prologue and a, an epilogue and then changed a little bit about it and then put it out in a, you know, um, yeah, put it on a paperback a couple of years ago. And I just, I decided to update some of the stuff cause there was a mistake in the book where I brought a character back from the dead. Apparently at the last chapter, I forgot, I kind of made that mistake there. And then I updated the, uh, the artwork on the cover and stuff and put it back out again.

[00:32:49] Not too long ago. So nice, nice. Um, it's a very short read. It's not, it's not very long. I see. I like that though. I like that. I hate books where like the, the look like they're like fucking bricks. And I'm just like, Oh, I can't be, I can't be bothered reading and all that. I don't have the attention span for that. Right. Tiny little words. Exactly.

[00:33:13] It's cause it's always something that I've kind of wanted to do myself to be honest, because I mean, obviously, well, it's sort of on a back burner at the minute, but obviously me and Billy have our little terrifying tale series that we do on here. Yeah. We've come up with our own little stories and obviously being biased. I think some of them are quite good. So, I mean, I mean, I don't know whether that, I don't know whether that could be somewhat where I could do, I could maybe write a couple of little short stories and put that out as a book maybe one day. Yeah.

[00:33:39] It was definitely, it's definitely one of those bucket list things where like the first one is like, I just want to, I wanted that stamp, you know, I want published author. Even if it was self-published, I still want to be able to say, Hey, I got a book. I wrote a book. Yeah. You know, it's one of them things without taking anything away from anybody. It's like, it's almost easier to do it nowadays as well. It, it certainly is because I didn't have to shop at the publishers. I could just self-publish it and then put it out there. Yeah.

[00:34:08] You know, but, um, I did have a friend who did that many, many years ago, decided to do a book of poetry and she just went ahead and, and self-published it in a way that she actually had to print the whole thing up herself and then put it together and like actually build the books. This was, this was probably 20 years ago now, but, um, it was impressive the amount of work she had to do to self-publish a book where now you could just, well, I just upload it onto Amazon and make sure it looks good and click, click. Here you go.

[00:34:39] No, but I just think it's good that you can do that now because like I say, it gets, it allows people who maybe don't know how to go about doing it. They, I don't know, like you say, through proper publishers and stuff like official publishers and stuff. Yeah. I don't know. Like I say, I mean, yeah, no, like I say, it's something I've definitely thought about and something I might do one day maybe because I have a couple of little ideas. Like I say, my problem is making them long enough for it to be a book.

[00:35:09] So it might just have to be a couple of short stories for me. I was going to say, you could put, you could make a compendium with short stories, you know, several books together. That's, that's always an option. Yeah, exactly. Um, so your second book there, so is that the Haunted New England, did you say it was? Yeah. Haunted New England. And so, I mean, we had a bunch of stories. That's basically, those are, are pretty much podcast episodes that we had already done.

[00:35:37] And it was, um, especially some of the earlier ones I did. I, I write them all out. I like to write, I like to have my entire podcast and my pretty much scripted out. So I've got everything that I want to say all written down. So I went back through, decided which ones I wanted to put in there, uh, formatted for the book, rewrote them, got them set up for that, and then put them all together.

[00:36:01] And, um, I may or may not add chapters to that book as I go, or we've got a couple, we've got a couple other ideas for more books too. I think we're going to do, we're going to try to do asylums in New England. Hmm. And then I also want to do one that sort of lays out, uh, King Philip's war and then all the places that you can find the different battles.

[00:36:25] Cause there's a lot of places you can find in New England where there's like a marker or stone or something that says, you know, this battle happened here. This person who was in the war, you know, fought here, lived here, died here, whatever. And I'll kind of want to put all those together, do like a step-by-step kind of walk you through the war and walk you through where you can find the different aspects of it. So that's, that's one that I, that I want to work on if I can ever find time to, like I got a lot of projects going on right now.

[00:36:55] So yeah, that is, that is always the problem with stuff is finding time to do it. It's all good having all these ideas. Like I've got loads of ideas of things I'd like to do one day, but then I just think, well, I'm never going to get a chance to do it. So I know, right. If I can hire a team, do all this stuff for me, do all the research and put it all together for me. I got tons of ideas. I just don't have the man hours to do it all. Yeah. See, I'd be no good at that. I don't, I don't know about yourself, but I like doing everything. If you know what I mean? Right. I don't know if I could trust anyone else.

[00:37:25] Right. So you mentioned their asylums cause they're, they're places that really, really interest me to be honest. Just, just, just because of the, the stuff that happened there, the things that people suffered from there. Like it makes sense why there'd be so much like say haunted activity, paranormal activity, whatever you want to call it going on there. Yeah.

[00:37:50] So I'm surprising then obviously if you're, if you've got an idea for a book about them, I'm surprising you've been to a fair few of them then. I've been to, yeah, I've been, I've been to a couple. Rob has been to a lot more than I have. And he's had some, he's had some good experiences there. They're, they're all over the place in New England. I don't know what happened if there was just, they just didn't want to take care of people back in the, back in the 1800s or 1700s. But they built a lot of state schools and sanatoriums and asylums.

[00:38:18] Even places for the tuberculosis that was going on back in the early 1800s. So there's, there's these state schools and state hospitals all over New England. And something about, something about probably how much it would cost to tear these places down or that they were done in such a good, such a way that they're, a lot of them are beautiful buildings. Like they, they're really beautiful architecture.

[00:38:43] So you don't want to tear them down because of the history, but then they don't want to let anybody use them because of course they built them all with asbestos and all kinds of other shit. So, you know, but yeah, as we've been going through our episodes and we've been doing each of the different schools. And digging up the history of them, it's, it's crazy how dark and, and some of the bad shit that happened to these people, you know, in these places.

[00:39:05] Some of the, some of the abuse that has happened at the hands of the staff and the doctors and just the, the treatments that they had, you know, electroshock therapy, lobotomies. I mean, all this kind of crazy Italian people to their beds. And, and I mean, it's akin to torture, basically a lot of the stuff that happened to these poor people, you know, a testament to, to all the evil in the world or some of it, you know, you're not all of it.

[00:39:37] Yeah. Yeah. Cause I, I always think, cause I'm pretty sure I've said, I've seen a thing before saying that like most like you, you, like the, you know, the world's best surgeons and stuff that would be classified as psychopaths. And that's why they're so good. And I'm like, well, to me, most doctors must be a bit mental, especially, especially like the earlier one, like from hundreds of years ago. Cause it's like, it was, it was thinking like, Oh, his, his heart doesn't work anymore. How does a dead body there?

[00:40:05] We'll just take the one out of that and put it in that that, you know, what sane brain thinks like that? Right. Yeah. Oh, this guy, you know, this guy doesn't act appropriately in public. Like, well, let's stick a needle in his eye, scramble his brains for a few seconds. Then that'll, that'll fix them. Yeah. Yeah. We went to, um, we went to, uh, uh, Norwich state hospital, which is about 30 minutes from here. It's not very far away at all. There's, there's a bunch of buildings that are still up and Rob took me, took me through it.

[00:40:34] Cause I, he's been there like two or three times. And, uh, we were going to a place that one of them was called the, uh, the lipid building. And so we come around the corner and we walk into this room and it's, this room has got this, it's still got tile. On the wall. Still got this really nice tile on the wall. It's got windows. It's almost like a half octagon shape when the windows. And he's like, this is the lobotomy room. This is where they scrabble everybody's brains. Like this is where all the lobotomies in Norwich state hospital happened in this room.

[00:41:03] And it's just crazy. It's crazy to think that that, that kind of shit, all that should happen there. Yeah. Funny enough, I was about to say, I was about to say that must be a weird feeling standing in there, but given what I was saying earlier about them feelings. Yeah, exactly. You mentioned there earlier that obviously you visited the conjuring house. Yep. So that was a, uh, that was awesome. So I got the invite from, uh, Scott from beyond the shadows.

[00:41:33] And he said him and Kevin from where the weird ones are, we're going to the conjuring house. They had a date and they asked if me and Rob wanted to want to tag along. And, um, at first it was just me. And then it ended up, they had somebody who fell through. So Rob was able to come to Rob's been wanting to go to the conjuring house for a long time. And that was, uh, the house was awesome. The experience was pretty cool.

[00:41:56] Um, the only problem was that, I don't know if you've seen any of the news lately, there's been some issues with the conjuring house and the, uh, the owner and some former employees. There was this whole thing going on where she was accusing some of the former employees of robbing from her. And that she was, that the spirit had told her that these employees were stealing from her. So she was, she had, she fired everybody. Right. And all this stuff was going on and we had no idea. We were there right in the middle of it.

[00:42:24] And so there was nobody else there except for the owner. And she was being, she was being a creep, man. She was like watching us and, and telling us, you know, told us that we couldn't talk about it without prior consent. That we had to share everything with her before we put it out there and wrote her or did any podcasts about it. And there's, I don't know, cause I don't know if you heard Scott's episode.

[00:42:51] Well, he didn't do an episode on it, but he's talked about it a couple of times. There were cameras all over that place. You felt like you were being watched the whole time you were down there. And, um, so it was kind of a weird of like, yeah, it's a great house. Yeah. It's, it's got a lot of history and obviously the movie franchise makes it, makes it that much bigger. And then the other hand, it was like, you know, the owners being weird and just not being cool, but the place was great.

[00:43:18] I mean, we walked out in the woods at one point and there was a weird feeling in the woods. Again, we walked out there and it was just, it, something about it just didn't, either didn't watch there or it was just kind of freaky, but. It's a shame that really, cause that, that, that, that must have almost ruined the experience really for you. Yeah. I mean, cause it was, and it was, it was in the middle of summer. It was in June and it was one of the hottest days of the year and the air conditioning, there was no air conditioning in the house.

[00:43:47] Like they had window units, but they were all stacked up. Like they hadn't gotten it prepped because apparently, you know, all the help was fired. So they couldn't get it all ready for us or whatever. And then, you know. Yeah. So like I say, it's just a shame, like you say, to feel like you've been followed around by someone and like you say cameras everywhere, watching what you're doing. And that sort of thing. Yeah. It's a, it's a shame, but I mean, I mean, I suppose, cause it almost just ends up being like, you know, at least you can say you've been there.

[00:44:17] Yeah. No. And, and now like, um, they, the town, the town ended up taking their business license away. So they can't even have guests there anymore at this time. Oh shit. So you can't even get in there anymore. And then they got caught trying to operate without a business license. So got even further into the hole. Yeah. Yeah. They tried to tell us that they had this whole thing about what you could and couldn't do while you were there. You know, they were like, you got to run everything by us. We were like, no, we're going live on Instagram.

[00:44:47] And, you know, they told us, oh, there's no alcohol allowed. I was like, all right, well, I'll just keep the cooler in the Jeep then and just go outside. I don't want to get a beer because I'm not going to the Conjuring house and not having a beer or two while I'm there. It's just not happening. You know? Exactly. A bit of Dutch courage. But we were there. We were there almost all night. I mean, we were there till probably three in the morning. I think we all ended up, most of us ended up sleeping for like an hour or so while we were there.

[00:45:14] And then Scott and all them, they all had, God, four or five hour drive back to Maine. However long that was once they were done with that. But I don't know. It was only like an hour from me. Conjuring house isn't that far from me. Fair enough. Yeah. Like I'd like to go to a place like that somewhere where you could stay over. But like, I always say if I went there, I wouldn't go to sleep just because I'd want to stay awake just to see if anything happens. Yeah.

[00:45:41] One of the ones we want to go to is there's the Lizzie Borden house in Fall River. And they have, they're like a bed and breakfast they do overnight. It's not that bad either. It's like, I think it's under $400 for a room for the night. So, I mean, it's not, it's still, it's expensive, but it's not terrible, you know? Yeah. Yeah. You're, you're, you're obviously going to pay a bit more just because of where it is. But like, oh yeah, absolutely. It's not too bad, I suppose. Yeah. I mean, you could take a tour there.

[00:46:10] You could go there, take like a one or two hour tour. They've got a, um, uh, they've got a gift shop, you know? You could buy, buy gifts or whatever. The house next door, which was also owned by one of the Bordens that there's a, uh, it's now Little Lizzie's Coffee Shop. So you can go in there, you can check it out, you can buy a coffee. I stopped there one time on the way to the Cape and got iced coffee. I don't know. I don't know if that name's like a bit inappropriate maybe. I don't know. The what? The what?

[00:46:40] I don't know if the, I don't know if the name of that's funny or what. I don't know. Little Lizzie's Coffee Shop, yeah. Yeah. Something I'd love to do here is like go, is go to a castle. Yeah. Because obviously we've got hundreds of them here. I'd love, I'd love to like do an investigation in a castle and maybe spend the night in a castle. I think that'd be really interesting. You probably got castles like we got, uh, asylums, you know? Yeah. Probably, yeah. Like I said, we have a stupid amount of castles here. That'd be cool.

[00:47:09] I would love to, I'd love to check out a castle. That'd definitely be something. It is funny. Like when you mentioned about how many asylums there is over there, because I watch a lot of urban explorers on YouTube and it seems like one, the main guy that I watch, it seems like literally at least once a month he's in another asylum. And I'm like, how is there so many? Like why was there so many? It's just crazy. Yeah. And the thing about them is like they were, they were sprawling campuses, most of them.

[00:47:38] So if you find one, you're going to find anywhere from, you know, three or four to 20 buildings to go into. And some of them, you know, some of the buildings are massive. Some were a little and like housing type stuff, but the buildings are just, are just huge. We went to one not too long ago in, um, in Newtown, Connecticut. And the crazy part about it is it's the Fairfield Hills asylum and they actually start using some of the buildings.

[00:48:07] So like some of the buildings have been renovated and there's actually businesses in there. And then some of the buildings are still just abandoned. So like you've got this mix of new builds where they've, there's some that they've torn down and built the new buildings. So you've got new buildings that are being used. You've got old buildings that have been renovated and being used. And then you've got another building that's completely boarded up and completely abandoned, but they still mow around it. They still mow the grass. You can still drive around there. So we get there and there's people everywhere.

[00:48:36] Cause it's like this sprawling campus that's still being used. And it's like, okay, I'm used to, I'm used to asylums just being completely abandoned, like not being able to find them. But this is just wide open. There's people all over the place. There's a playground. Kids are playing. There's an indoor pool. Like it's, it's such a weird, it's such a weird thing. Like it could either be, it can either be completely abandoned or it could be in use.

[00:48:59] And, and you know, there's no, uh, it's not like one size fits all for these places. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. That, that, that, that, that definitely seems strange. Like the fact that like you say, what one part of it's all boarded up and then the other parts, uh, you say being renovated. That's, that seems bizarre. Yeah. There was a, um, one of the buildings was turned into a brewery. So they've got this place called new asylum brewery.

[00:49:25] And then right behind the building, right behind the brewery, there's an open patio. There's like a patio back there, like a covered, covered patio. And then 20 feet past that is another huge, empty abandoned building. And there's just people, they've got a band set up, like up against the abandoned building, just out there playing music and kids running all over the lawn and running around. And we walked around back and we found a hole down in the basement and we actually got into that building.

[00:49:51] So we're walking around inside the abandoned building while all these kids are like out playing in the yard. We're like trying to duck past the windows in the first floor to make sure that we're not seen. It was, it was a nuts experience, you know, it was crazy fun, but yeah, I bet. I, I, I, I'm just thinking now, I wonder if that would maybe like affect any sort of activity that was going on in there. Like the energy and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. The kids running around. Yeah. I mean, maybe.

[00:50:21] Yeah. I mean, in, in my head, for some, for some reason, my brain's telling me that it, that that would like lessen it. If you know what I mean? I mean, it could, you know, there was one of the other buildings we went into, there were people like sitting out and picnicking outside the building on the other side. And we, we walked in, got behind the fence and we're like trying to sneak past the fence and making sure that the people sitting there having a picnic didn't see us while we were sneaking inside or coming out.

[00:50:49] But it's probably such a normal thing for people to go in and out of these buildings at that point when, when there's so many people around that just like, whatever, nobody cares. Yeah. True. But probably almost makes it easier to get into them as well. It, it could. Yeah. Yeah. You know, people run there all the time. So, yeah. Well, Billy's found a place not far from us. It's about, about an hour's drive from us and it's an old, I think it's an old university.

[00:51:20] Yeah. And that, well, it's a really, really old building. Like, I mean, Christ, some of the universities that are over here are, God knows how, like, literally older than the US itself. Anyway, some of the universities we have here. But that, that, that's all abandoned and boarded up. But there is, there is ways of getting in there because people have been in there before. So, I think that's some of this, maybe we're going to try at one point. But it's one of them. I'm, I don't, I don't want to get arrested again.

[00:51:51] I've done that. I've done that life. I don't want to do that anymore. Yeah. I want to, I want to keep away from doing that. Right then, Joe. Well, I've enjoyed, I've enjoyed that. That's been fun. I've enjoyed that. So, um, do you want to let our listeners know where they can find you, find your podcast, find your books? Yeah. So, um, like I said before, it's Tales, Trails and Taverns. We are on Instagram. We're on threads. We're on Facebook. We're on YouTube. Um, you can listen to the podcast on Apple, Spotify, iHeartRadio.

[00:52:20] We're hosted on Spreaker. If you download the Spreaker app, you can listen to it there. We also have a Patreon. If you want ad-free listening and early access, we, record on Wednesdays and drop them on Patreon on Wednesdays. And then the episode comes out every Friday. Um, the books that we talked about, Terror of New Dawn, the fictional novella, and Haunted New England, the History, Legend, and Lords by Tales, Trails, and Taverns are both available on Amazon. You can look those up using the titles.

[00:52:49] And then my name, Joseph Gelinas, it makes it easier to find it. Or if you go on the Instagram page, obviously link and bio, everything is right there and easy to access. So thank you so much for having me on, Liam. It's been a- No problem. No problem. It's been great, man. I know it's been a long time and we've been wanting to, uh, sit down and chat. So I'm definitely happy to, uh, happy to be here, man. Yeah. Cool. Uh, um, I'll, um, I'll put all the links obviously for the podcast, for the Amazon links, for the books and everything in the description for the episode. If people want to go check them out.

[00:53:20] Awesome, man. Cool. Right then guys, we shall leave it there. So we shall speak to you next time and possibly Billy might be back, but who the fuck knows at this point. So, yeah. This podcast is part of Podomity, the UK's podcast comedy network.

[00:53:48] Why not laugh at what else we've got? Visit Podomity.com.