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Welcome, Well, well do Barry Truth.
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What's going on? Paratruthers, Welcome to a brand new Paratruth Reborn.
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This is a pre recorded show on one of seven
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point seven FM, New Orleans and United Public Radio Network.
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My name is Justin. Hey, I'm Eric, and tonight we're
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bringing on Richard step to talk about his book The
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Horrors of Fox Hello Farms Farm. Sorry, We've had Richard
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on numerous times with Paratruth Radio and we're happy to
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bring him back. Richard has been a paranormal investigator for
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thirty years and is the author of more than thirty books.
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He is a cast member of the TV shows Haunted Hospitals,
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Paranormal Revenge, and Paranormal Nine to one one. He writes
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a regular column for Haunted Magazine and frequently presents at
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events across the US. And we're gonna bring in Richard desktep. Richard,
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Welcome to Paratruth Reborn.
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How's it going, Hey, gentlemen, it's gooding well? Thanks?
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How about yourselves? Doing good? Doing good? So you've been
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on our show Paratruth Radio at least quite a bit.
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But for our new listeners, tell everybody a little bit
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about how you got into the paranormal field and why
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you wanted to do a book on Fox Hollow Farm.
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Yeah, I mean, I've grew up in a haunted house,
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loved the books of people like Peter Rendlewood, guyline playf
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some of the greats I think in the paranormal field,
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Harry Price, who was a great showman and questioned bull
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virtue but still great popularizer of the field. That gave
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me a love of writing. We all, as writers write
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the books we want to read, and so I ended
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up writing those kind of books and still do.
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Fox Hollow Farm.
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I mean the opportunity to number one who would say
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no to the chance to move in to a residence
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haunted supposedly by the ghost of a serial killer. But
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more importantly, I think it sticks in my crawl, and
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it has until very recently when the Hulu show came out,
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that this case was forgotten, that these gentlemen that bones
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are sitting in evidence boxes on a shelf somewhere with
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no burial, no memorial until very recently, you know, and
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I felt that it was nobody was really making any
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effort to keep the story alive. Being covered on an
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episode of Ghost Adventures. I think there had been a
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documentary movie made about it by a guy called Dan Hall,
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who I think did a good job, but that was
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pretty much it. And I think that this was a
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story that has a lot to say, not just about
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the paranormal, but about the appalling way in which we
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as a society treat some of our marginalized men and women.
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For sure, Now, what do we know for sure about
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Herb and his crimes and what remained speculation still to
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this day.
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Well, if we're going to be technical, the word alleged
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and should be before serial killer whenever we talk about
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her Baummeister. And indeed I saw a newspaper article from
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this week that they were talking about the identification of
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another of his victims through DNA evidence, and it listed
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Badmeister as an alleged serial killer. Because he is, he
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was never charged, let alone convicted. So I think that
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literally everything about this case remained speculation if you get
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down to brass tacks, but there is no other.
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Help.
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Well, let me backtrack on that. There is speculation that
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Herb may have worked in concert with at least one
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other accomplice, potentially more.
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I think that's entirely possible.
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And then you enter the debate of well, who was
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dominant who was not. We do know for sure that
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the remains of multiple men were found on Herb's property,
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that Herb baumeis to match the description of a man
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named Brian Smart who was seen in the nightclubs, the
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gay night clubs of Indianapolis taking home a number of
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the victims. He was the last person that they were
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ever seen alive with, and they turned up dead in
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his backyard. So's he's a very strong candidate to be
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the perpetrator in this case. But you know, again there
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was never a t because Herb Baumeister took his own
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life before he could be put on trial, which again
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is you know, something that an innocent individual probably would
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not have done under these circumstances, right, Okay.
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So it kind of has a Jeffrey Dammer feel to it.
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Now do they know if Herb was gay himself?
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And it's interesting you make that comparison because I think
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it's the TV show makes the statement, this is the
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Damie you've never heard of. And yes, her Van Dabsley.
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Was gay himself. You know, he had a gay lover.
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His mo o was that he would he would go
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to these night clubs when his wife and kids were away,
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usually staying at the lake House in Lake Wawasi. He
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would meet men and say that his name was Brian Smart.
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He adopted this alias, and his story was also We're
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told anyway, that he would approach men that he liked
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the love car preferably ones that were a little down
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on their luck or you know, had been ostracized, maybe carrotsurfing,
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maybe you know, no fixed a bode. But he would
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tell them that he was a contractor working on a
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house with a swimming pool in the basement, that the
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house was empty for the weekend, and that he had
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the some alcohol there, he had some drugs, and that
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they could go back and party in this house with
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a ball. Which sounds like a pretty great way to
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spend your Friday or Saturday night, hilt.
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I mean not to me now, I'm fifty one.
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You know, a great a great way to spend a
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Friday night for me now as a cup of tea
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in a good book. But it was a very attractive
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one for some of these men, and so they accompanied
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him back, and of course he'd set things up before
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he left. Herbs the victim or supposedly the victim that
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got away. Mark Goodyear says that Herb's emo was that
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he would take the swimming pool. He will crank the
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heat all the way up before he left the house.
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Then he would roll the cover over so that I
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always picture this as like a saucepan simmering on the range,
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you know, just kind of getting the heat up there.
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And then when he would bring these men into the pool,
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he would open the three sets of French doors which
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lead out to the back patio. Cold air would come in,
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roll back the pool cover. Cold air meets warm air,
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and what.
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Do you get? Steam?
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And so you've got this steamy, disorienting environment. To make
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things even more surreal, the pool is ringed with mannequins.
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And these mannequins all have names and backstories, and they
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are wearing a variety of clothing, some of them belonging
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to former victims in fact, and in the pool they
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would engage in autoerotic asphyxiation. Herb would invite them to
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strangle him while they engaged in you know, sexual conduct,
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and then he would return the favor.
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But he would not stop.
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And that was her Baumeister's MMO for killing his victims.
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Wow. Now regarding the firm itself, like, what kind of
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paranormal activity are we speaking of? Is how active?
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Is it less so today than it was? So the house?
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It's really kind of necessary to talk about the house
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train how the house chased hands. So Herb Baumeister, when
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he heard that the police were looking for him, drove
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to the Canadian border.
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Across the border, found.
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A scenic spot in a national park, ate his favorite food,
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a PB and Jay sandwich, and then shot himself in
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the head. Although there is now so speculation perhaps that
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he was possibly killed by an accomplice, I that is
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debatable either way, we know that he died of a
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single gunshot wound to the head, which the official account
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says was self inflicted. At that point, the police descend
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on Hollow Farm. They discover thousands of bone fragments, ranging
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in size from entire femas to forearms with handcuffs still
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on them, to small chips and fragments. Because the critters,
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the animals that live in that vicinity, have taken these
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remains and they've scattered them far and wide. So Herp's
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wife and kids move out. They go to start a
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new life and who can blame them for that, for
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wanting to be free of that appalling legacy. Fox Hollow
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Farm sat vacant for a few years until it was
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bought by a couple called Rob and Vicki Graves, who
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moved in with their children. And so, Rob, who co
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authored the book with me, is it's fair to say
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an expert on the Baumeister murders. And he has a
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death and of tie with with that location in that
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you know, he bathes in Herb Baumeister's bathtub, he has
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Herb Baumeister's library. You know, he's he's the c to
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an next bot I think we have on Baumeister's life.
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And Rob did not believe in ghosts. His wife Vicky
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was a little less skeptical, but she's so strange. Things
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started happening around the house when they moved in, stuff
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that seemed weird, but you might try and explain away.
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For example, Vicky was vacuuming downstairs and the power cord
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from the vacuum cleaner was pulled out of the wall.
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You know, we've all done it, right, We've been vacuuming,
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We've caught the cable, we pull it out and it
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kind of whiplashes around your legs and that's just us
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being clumsy. Well, Vicky insisted that it was jerked out
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of the wall. Okay, maybe maybe not. What she couldn't deny, though,
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was the day she came home and she saw a
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young man in a red shirt walking through the trees
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to one side of her house, and initially she thought
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it was trespasser, so she was getting ready to fetch
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Rob to go see this guy off. And when she
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paid closer attention got a good look at the man,
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she realized that he had no les. That this was
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essentially an apparition that was legless from the thighs on down.
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That's what finally convinced her, the appearance of this apparition
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that this farm was haunted, this house was haunted.
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Now do the spirits seem to want justice, peace or
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simply to be acknowledged? Did you get a lot of
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experiences there from any of that?
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It's complex, and I'm always very skeptical when it comes
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to assigning identities in cases of paranormal activity. I did
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bring in different mediums who gave me different accounts, different explanations,
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so that was kind of intriguing to me. The thing
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that I feared the most was and of course, you know,
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you follow the trail wherever it leads. But the thing
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I feared the most was the idea that some of
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his victims may still be earth bound, may still be
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trapped there, because as if they had not suffered enough
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at the hands of this.
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Monster in life, you know.
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But there were others that say that they've seen the
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apparition of Herb Baumeister himself looking out of the kitchen window.
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One medium told me entirely, Craig, you know, he told
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me that he was convinced that there was an entity
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in the pool. He called it the frog, and that
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it was a non human entity that had been drawn
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there because of the evil energies that the murders had created,
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you know, like a moth to a flame. So I
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can't speak to the.
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Validity of any of those.
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Those are all kind of subjective, and whenever you work
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with mediums, you run into that issue right run into
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the whole. Like I always think that whether you're dealing
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with a weija board or whether you're dealing with a medium,
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it's kind of like those old Internet chat rooms from
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the nineties. You only have the word of the person that.
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They are where they say erect.
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You know, it's not like they're literally turning up and manifesting.
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So I tried to keep an open mind, and I
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do to this day. So the accurate answer is I
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I'm not sure, but something is active.
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In that house.
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Something that growth while I was swimming in the pool,
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something that whispered the name Laura while I was swimming
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in the pool, or happening to be my wife's name,
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something that stroked my tricep when I was in the
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pump room, something that's said in a very kind of
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wheezy voice. When I was out in the woods at
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the one of the body disposal sites get away from there.
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I do not know.
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Well, I mean, it's wild to just think about not
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just the potential spirits of the deceased themselves, but possibly
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dark entities that are there prowling the grounds as well.
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And you know, we know through a number of different
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investigative circumstances, whenever there is a traumatic experience and these
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darker entities show up, they kind of have a hold
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on the whole ground, almost as if it's imprisoning other
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spirits in many cases, which is always is you know,
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kind of horrifying really, but that was really intriguing. Now
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regarding the pool itself, like do you find or have
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you found that the events, the hauntings that is, really
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seem to reside around the pool specifically, or how does
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the hunting spread out from the home and maybe else
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elsewhere around the yard or the vicinity.
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It's a large estate, so about eighteen acres, although it's
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half that today because they sold off some of the land.
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But I think that ground zero for the haunting was