Transcript of The Eddy Brothers and the High Life Ski Club

Hey, weirdos. I'm Ash.

And I'm Alayna.

And this is Morbid in October.

It's October!

Happy motherfucking October, bitches.

We made it, y'all.

Oh, we're here.

September flew by.

September literally— excuse me, Proctober wasn't a month.

No, it didn't even feel like Proctober because it was so fast.

I know.

What's happening to time lately?

It's like bent or something.

Did somebody break that too? Like, what's going on?

Actually, yeah. Oh, I forget what it's—

I—

shit, this isn't going to like sound good because there's a thing I was telling you about it recently. I can't remember what it's— it's Stern or Kern. Fuck. I fell into— people are like, like probably yelling it from the rooftops, but I fell into this whole TikTok hole about this like machine that like bends time timelines. And it's like where Mandela effects come from.

Okay.

And it is making time either go by faster or slower.

They're gonna need to, to hit the pause button on that one.

So I think that's the problem. I think when they—

we hit October, so pause.

I think when they unplug it, it like fucks with the space-time continuum. And obviously this is like theory and like I'm not crazy, but do a little power cycle, plug it back in. October needs to go slow. I think when it's plugged in, it's like fucked up too. I think whoever made it is—

Put batteries in it. I don't know. Make it battery powered.

What's it called? I can't think of what it's called.

It's called the thing that's making things go by too fast and I don't like it.

Yeah.

Period. That's it.

Yeah. Yeah.

That's the name of it.

I should— I wish that I had fallen into that hole more recently and that I remembered. My brain is also just like a fried egg right now.

Yeah. It's been a year. You know, it's been a year. It's been a year. I thought you were gonna say it's been a day. It's been a day. It's been a year. It's been a day. Um, I've recently fallen back into— this is how I know it's October.

Talk to me.

I've fallen straight back into my Salem Witch Trials hyperfixation.

I saw that you were watching something.

Yeah, I'm living for it. And much to my family's chagrin, because I'm just explaining horrible atrocities to John all the time.

That's kind of how this podcast started.

Yeah.

Are you going to do something?

It made me want to, because we covered the Salem Witch Trials so long ago.

Yeah.

And I feel like I could do it better. Okay. Or— And I was sitting there thinking, we have bonus episodes.

We do.

So every once in a while, maybe we could do one.

There's another witch trial that we haven't covered that I want to cover that is like, it starts with a T.

Yeah. I want to cover— I know exactly which ones you're talking about.

Yeah.

I think we could also dive into those a little further. All right.

Go ahead, girl. Go ahead, get down.

I have all the transcripts and stuff.

I feel like I could really do Jack the Ripper style kind of deep dive. The look on Big Red's face right now. I'm kind of ready.

The look on Big Red's face right now. It's helping. I'm also doing research for a book.

Oh.

So that's helped a lot.

And you can't really say much more than that.

No, but, but that kind of tells you something.

When do you get to— you can cut this out if you need to, but do you have any idea when you need to—

Shit if I know.

Okay.

I just, I just, you know, suffer away for a few months.

Yeah.

And then they tell me when I can say it. Should we leave that in or cut it out?

Because that's funny. That is pretty funny.

I think you can leave it in.

I think that's the life of an author.

It literally is. Like, you just are like, okay, now tell me when I can tell everyone about this.

I'm excited for you to announce this one.

I'm very excited about this. I've been excited about every book, but this one's different. It's outside of the series.

No, that's fun.

So it's fun. And I can tell you it's really horror. It's true horror.

Yeah, it's not like a thriller.

And I'm really excited about it.

I'm super, super excited about it and I can't wait to read it, but I want to read it when it's done. I know, because every now and then I'll be like, oh my God, I have this really good chapter. And you're like, I don't want to hear it. I really want the experience of reading a full book of yours just for the first time when I sit down to read the book.

See, now I have to fully rely on John as my—

I'll do it. You know I will.

First reader.

Someday I'd like that option. Someday. Can I have that?

John's my tabby.

Your tabby.

I mean— My Tabitha King.

Yeah.

I love it. So he's really got to step into that role more now.

He does.

He kind of has been.

I'm just your right-hand bitch.

It's true.

I just fell out of a reading slump and I have to thank Richard Chizmar for that. Yes.

I knew you would love that.

I read Becoming the Boogeyman or—

Chasing the Boogeyman. Chasing the Boogeyman.

And I'm obsessed. That is a really good series. I read it in one day.

Oh, it's such an easy one to just eat up because you just—

the way he writes it, you're just like, all right, I got to know what happens next.

Like, you can't stop.

I gobbled it up.

Chasing the— Becoming the Boogeyman is also awesome. And his Killing the Boogeyman that's coming out is amazing.

Yeah, I have Killing and then I preordered Becoming.

I'm finishing up Ninth House.

Oh, you've been talking about that. And I actually have that.

Love it.

I haven't read it, but I have it.

I am loving it.

That's like a dark academy.

Dark academy?

No, like there's— it's like a weird, like, academy, right?

It's like Yale.

Oh.

And it's so— so yeah.

So yeah.

And it's like dark academia, like, fantasy.

And it's like a secret society?

There's secret societies involved.

Okay, that's fun.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think Aidan recommended— you recommended that. And then there's a sequel.

There's 2 books, 2 more books. So it's a trilogy.

Also this.

I have all 3 of them because as soon as I got A quarter of the way through Ninth House, I was like, give me the other 2.

I'm ready.

Leigh Bardugo is the author, and holy shit.

Really good.

Can they write. Holy shit.

Holy shit. I don't even know my own kid.

It's so good. And it's got magic in it, but the magic is like—

Dark.

Yeah. And it just feels so, so real. And there's a lot of the supernatural. It's very, very, very good. And the secret society stuff is delicious in it.

Really?

Yeah.

This time of year, I'm very into a spooky read that like scares me. Yeah, like, uh, fucking, uh, which— I mix up all the verbs. Uh, all the verbs of the boogeyman. What is it?

Chasing.

Chasing the boogeyman.

Thank you.

Scared the shit out of me. Like, I couldn't sleep.

I love that.

Yeah, and I love that feeling. Yeah, which is probably self-sabotage, but—

Nah, we all love that. I love it.

Um, so this time of year I'm, I'm looking for all those kinds of recommendations for books like that.

Hell yeah, and there's so many.

I also just had a bookshelf built in my house and I need to like fill it with more books, so There you go. I really thought that I had a lot of books and then the bookshelf was complete and I was like, am I illiterate?

I have the opposite.

It's the problem where I have too many books and I need more bookshelves.

I have them stacked. I look like one of those crazy tropes of an author where I just have stacks of books all around our house. I love that. And John's like, can we get a vessel for these?

You're also somebody that has multiple copies of the same book.

That's true.

You have a lot of duplicates.

I'm weird.

The only book duplicates I really have are yours.

I love that.

I have at least 6 versions of each book.

Yeah. Yeah. All right.

Well, that's books.

That's books with us.

That's literacy with us. And let's talk about, I mean, it's October 1st, so you know we're about to get spooky this month.

That's right.

So I have a spooky story about some mediums. Ooh.

How about that? Let's go.

So we're going to be talking about the Eddy Brothers today. And this is like not true crime, not anything like that. It's just like a spooky haunted story.

I love that.

And it's up to you to decide if they were real or not. I kind of think they might've been the real deal.

Really?

Maybe. So William and Horatio Eddy were born and raised in Chittenden, Vermont, which was a small village in Rutland County. When they were born, it was between the 1830s and '40s. And at that time there was only about 600 residents in their village, which is gnarly to think about. According to legend, they both actually— this is so weird that you were just talking about this— they both descended from a long line of psychics going back to Mary Bradbury. And she was a distant relative who was convicted of witchcraft in Salem.

Oh.

In 1692. I don't know if you've studied her yet. Look at that. But she managed to escape execution by fleeing Massachusetts.

Damn.

Isn't that so fun? I can't believe she fled. She fled.

She was a witch.

Or maybe she wasn't. So according to those same legends, the boy's mother, Julia, had also gained a reputation around their village for, quote, frightening her neighbors with predictions and visions.

Good for her.

Which, like, I'd like to be that neighbor.

Yeah, good for her.

There's not enough neighbors frightening the village anymore. Yeah, you gotta bring it back.

We all have to take it upon ourselves to be that neighbor.

Yeah, we do.

Okay.

Unfortunately for her though, her husband, Zephaniah, I believe is how you say his name, He shut down his wife's supposed gifts and he declared that her powers were the work of the devil. And so he forbade her from not only using them, but even speaking of them.

That's not your pal.

Buzzkill.

That's not your pal.

Asshole.

Yeah.

The worst.

I don't like that at all. I don't like him.

Now, according to famed occultist and journalist Henry Olcott, Zephaniah Eddy was little more than a, quote, uneducated farmer who was, quote— Whoa.

Yeah.

He read him to pills.

He just said, whoa.

And he said he was, quote, narrow-minded and strong in his prejudices.

Sounds it.

So he instinctively feared his wife's gift of clairvoyance, and that's why he made her hide it.

Yeah.

Now, unfortunately for brothers Horatio and William, they didn't get the not-so-subtle message of their father's discontent with the supernatural. One afternoon when they were still, like, pretty young boys, their father spotted the sons in one of the nearby fields surrounded by dozens of other children. But the closest children in the area lived many, many miles away. So he became terrified by what he saw and he called the boys back to the farm where he, quote, and this is awful, beat them mercilessly for creating an ungodly vision. So you hallucinated.

Maybe. Perhaps.

Or maybe they just made playmates because they have powers.

That's their problem. Yeah.

It's the work of the devil, Alayna.

You have to beat the devil out of it. Yeah, you gotta.

It's your only option.

Yeah, that's what the good Lord says.

That's all you do is just beat your kids about it.

That's good.

Yeah, for sure. Now, this was not the first time that he had caught his sons playing with supernatural apparitions. It was said that he often saw beings, quote, playing with the boys or helping them with chores, but the figures would disappear whenever he would approach.

Sounds awesome.

If that was happening, I'd be like, cool, more hands on deck.

Yeah, I'd be like, awesome.

We're gonna get shit done.

Yeah. The house is gonna be fucking spotless.

Exactly. And we can all bake together and shit.

Yeah, let's go, girls.

Actually, I don't really like baking with other people.

Let's go ghouls. Let's go ghouls. Literally.

So their father's demands and abuse turned out to be kind of of little use in controlling the sons' supernatural abilities.

Yeah.

The boys themselves didn't really have any control over, I guess, like the phenomenon, if you want to call it that. From the moment that each of them was born, the family experienced strange things surrounding both of them, including like from day one, including eerie sounds emanating from the walls, Inexplicable clouds of mist appearing in each of their bedrooms.

Damn.

And their cradles being rocked by disembodied hands that appeared to come out of nowhere.

That's nice!

It's lovely! It's called a spectral nanny.

Yeah!

Okay, look it up. You don't even have to pay that nanny! A spectral night nurse!

Yeah!

Now, as the brothers aged, things only seemed to grow stronger, and a bit more disruptive though, eventually leading them both to be expelled from school.

Uh, that's not good.

Yeah. Unable to control what he believed to be demonic, their father resorted to chaining his sons up for days at a time in the woods.

I don't like him.

I hate him.

I really don't like him.

And he just hoped that would like, rid them of what he thought was a family curse.

Yeah, that— I can see why he thought that.

Why would chaining your kids up in the woods reverse a curse? Because.

What? Don't worry about it. I hate it. It's another one of those things that you say, don't worry about it.

Don't worry about it.

Just because.

Well, here's the thing. It didn't work.

It didn't?

Yeah. So he did—

What?

The unthinkable. He sold his kids at a traveling sideshow. He couldn't get rid of their curse, so he sold them to a traveling sideshow.

I don't know how to respond to that.

That's valid.

Yeah, I literally don't know how to respond to that.

What do you really say?

Yeah.

So yeah, they spent the next 15 years on display from coast to coast, just forced to perform their supernatural abilities under threat of violence from the show's owners. Because back then, carnivals and sideshows and that kind of thing, they were fucked up. Now, With all that being said, there is not a ton of documentation of their early life. So there are a few different legends and tales about their early life. Some legends say that they actually never left Vermont at all. And others say the boys were sold into performative slavery and didn't return to the state until their mother died in 1872. In other versions of the story though, it was actually their father himself who dragged the boys around the country promoting their abilities to make money. Jeez.

Yeah.

And some skeptics actually believe it was him himself, the father himself, who started rumors about his abilities, his son's abilities, so that he could attract more attention and make more money.

He was against it.

Who knows? Whatever the case may have been, by 1870, William and Horatio were back in Vermont, if they had ever left at all. And they opened a small inn in the home that they'd grown up in, which they named the Green Tavern. And it was there that they capitalized on their supernatural abilities and the growing interest in spiritualism, which at that time was at its peak.

Oh, yeah.

So in order to understand the appeal and the allure of William and Horatio Eddy, it's important to understand just, like, a few things about the spiritualist movement. It's kind of difficult to pinpoint exactly where it emerged from, but it's widely acknowledged that Kate and Maggie Fox, 2 sisters from upstate New York, were some of the key players in developing and popularizing spiritualism around, like, the mid-19th century. They claimed, the sisters, that they were able to communicate with the spirits of the dead. At first through a series of knocks communicated through the walls and floor of their apparently already haunted family home. And later through more sophisticated and theatrical means. Now, as they honed their skills, they attracted more and more attention. And eventually they started holding these like really big séances and performing their spirit communication in theaters across the US, which like— Damn.

That must have been a time.

I was literally just going to say, what a time to be alive.

Because just going to see Paranormal Activity live was such a time to me, and it gives me the same vibes.

Oh my God. But it would have been like legit.

Yeah. Like legitimately, like just about like so theatrical.

And also you'd be like so dressed up and everybody else would be dressed up. It would just be like gorgeous.

We used to be a proper country.

Yeah. You know, if you didn't look like too deep into things.

Don't look too deep at anything.

But in this one moment, In this moment when we were at séances with cute outfits, we were a proper country.

We were a proper country.

Now, at the end of the American Civil War—

Don't look too deep into it.

No, don't, don't, don't. At the end of the American Civil War in 1866, spiritualism gained even more popularity, especially with women. A lot of women had lost brothers, husbands, other loved ones in the war, and they clung to the hopes of communicating with their departed family. Even Mary Todd Lincoln, Abe Lincoln's wife, was a devotee. That's how you say that, right?

Yeah.

Devotee of spiritualism. She had lost 3 of her 4 sons under the age of 18.

Whoa.

And then obviously eventually her husband. Now it was devotee.

What? Her husband died. You didn't know? No.

Sorry to be the first to tell you. It's pretty gnarly.

Damn.

There's a whole museum about it.

Oh, no. I've been there. Wow.

I looked at the pillow.

Holy shit.

Crazy. But we'll talk about it later.

Yeah.

Now, it was devotees like Mary Todd Lincoln that the Eddy brothers hoped to attract to their new business venture when they opened the Green Tavern in 1870. And they declared the tavern was a, quote, homestead for travelers interested in the supernatural.

Ooh.

So for $10 a week, which today would be about $250 a week, Guests could check into the inn and watch or participate in the nightly séances held by the brothers.

This sounds fucking awesome.

Top notch.

Holy shit.

Now, night after night, William would enter his medium's cabinet, which was a large open-fronted box that was supposedly instrumental in harnessing the medium's gifts.

Of course.

And he would go into a deep trance. When he was in that trance, he was said to be able to communicate with the land of the dead. Reportedly, on a night when his powers were the strongest they'd probably ever been, as many as 500 spirits appeared.

Whoa.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Now, as word of the Eddys' supernatural skills and exciting séances spread around New England, their fame grew and obviously so did the size of their audience. On a warm spring or summer night, they would hold their séances outside on their lawn where the dead relatives of spectators inevitably would make themselves known. And on other occasions, they would hold séances in high-profile locations like Honto's Cave in Chittenden, where a supposed Native American princess never failed to make her presence known by speaking through William.

Wow.

Now, within a year of opening their business, they built a remarkable reputation as 2 of the nation's most talented psychic mediums.

Go them.

I know. When they weren't entertaining crowds of people at the tavern or at one of their séances in Chittenden, They would appear at conferences and conventions like the Vermont State Spiritualist Convention in 1871, where Horatio was among the top-billed attendees.

Whoa!

Now, during one of his séances held that weekend, it was written that, quote, hands large, small, red, white, and black appeared out of thin air, used sign language, and spelled out messages for attendees.

What?

According to one reporter, the manifestations were highly satisfactory to believers and quite confounding to even skeptics. What the fuck? Just a bunch of fucking disembodied hands just rolling up there.

Disembodied hands, yeah.

Now, by 1874, the Green Tavern and really Chittenden itself, like that town in Vermont, had become known as the spiritualist capital of the universe.

Damn.

Humble motherfucking brag. Of the universe.

Damn.

So devotees were traveling from around the world at this point to visit the brothers and to just hope to get a look at one of their séances.

Of course.

By that time, their skills had extended beyond just mediumship and now included several other supernatural abilities. At one séance in the fall of October 1873, the best time of year ever, Horatio appeared to make a collection of instruments, including a guitar, violin, tambourine, and set of bells play without ever coming into contact with them.

Whaaat?

According to Horatio, it was The collective electric force of the 16 individuals seated at the table that produced the sounds. So like, see, the 16 individuals were— nobody else saw them. Like they were spectral, but like they helped play the instruments.

I love that.

Yeah.

He's like, it's just my spectral band.

It's just my homies. Yeah.

It's me and a couple homies.

Don't worry about it. Now, most, if not all, séances at the time involved attendees speaking with spirits of deceased relatives or loved ones, obviously. But the most talented mediums were never limited to just verbal communication. From his cabinet set off to the side of their stage in the parlor, William would reportedly conjure physical manifestations of the spirits that they spoke with.

Ooh.

Just as they were said to have done it when they were younger children.

That's cool.

Visible only under a dim red light, the ectoplasmic embodiments of the spirits would emerge from William's own body.

Oh, we talked about this kind of thing with Sam and Colby.

Yes. Ectoplasm is so yucky.

Expulsion of ectoplasm.

Yeah, it's pretty yuckus.

Yeah.

But they were briefly visible to all in the room before they just disappeared.

Ew.

Now, a few lucky enough to get close to the ectoplasmic manifestations even managed to touch them. And they claimed they produced a cold, clammy reaction.

Oh.

Which is quite like literally exactly what I pictured.

The fact that it's clammy just really got me. Which is wet. Just got me. Ew.

Now, despite their wild popularity and their countless followers, obviously not everybody in and around Chittenden were convinced of the Eddy brothers' supernatural abilities.

Nah, you're just out here having fun. Somebody's got to ruin it.

Oh, people are always going to people.

People are always peopling.

Now, there were some, even in the spiritualist movement, I guess, who were skeptical of the both of them because also competition.

Of course.

In September of 1873, Joseph Hall, a notable spiritualist at the time and also the Secretary of State of Maine, Oh. Uh, wrote a letter to the editor of the Rutland Daily Herald and claimed that he witnessed— what he witnessed at the Eddy's Tavern was little more than showmanship and fraud.

Uh-oh, those are heavy accusations.

They sure are. And I say, look down at your fingers, sir. How many are pointing back at you? Oh, I like it. But he wrote, I went to Chittenden to witness the wonderful materializations of spirit forms of which I had heard and read so much about. Now, according to him, he and several others had waited a very long time for a spirit to appear. And eventually they were joined by what Hall described, this is a quote, as an Indian maiden. They were told this was Honto, the Native American priestess commonly seen at the cave séances.

Hmm.

But Hall wrote, I could see but very— and again, this is a quote. He said, I could see but very slight resemblance to the Indian costume in her dress. And I saw that her legs were strangely white for an Indian.

Oh, no.

I said Mr. Secretary of State.

This is getting wild.

It's getting a little wily. Yeah. Now, later that night, during a second séance, Honto appeared again, this time with Hall noticing something even more alarmingly inconsistent with what he was expecting. He said, or he wrote, I was pained to witness that her arms were clothed with sleeves that bore a striking resemblance to the shirt sleeves of the medium, William Eddy.

Oh, so that's a little bit worse.

During that same evening, when the female spirit of one of the attendees' dead loved ones appeared in the dim light, he noticed that the ectoplasmic manifestation appeared, in his opinion, much larger than the average woman. And he said she had a bulkier frame, more like that of a man dressed up to appear as though he was a female spirit.

Well, shit.

AKA one of the Eddy brothers.

Well, shit.

Potentially. That's his opinion.

That's his opinion.

You picked up what I laid down.

There it is.

Now, there may not have been many who'd agree at the time, but Joseph Hall wasn't completely alone in his skepticism of the Eddy brothers' claims. A few weeks after his letter was published, another attendee of the séances, Mr. L.A. Bigelow of Boston.

L.A. Bigelow.

Hello, I am L.A. Bigelow. I feel like he's just constantly smoking a cigarette.

That's exactly what I thought.

Yeah, he's like the, um, What's the Looney Tune that's like that big chicken?

That big chicken.

He's always smoking a—

It's that big chicken.

He's the villain in that new ACME movie.

Lost me.

I'm looking at you, Aiden.

You've completely lost me on that.

He's the big chicken or rooster or something.

He's a big rooster.

Drew is so mad at me right now. My guy loves the Looney Tunes.

Foghorn Leghorn.

Foghorn Leghorn. Oh. You know him.

Oh, I didn't think of him.

You're picturing him.

No, I wasn't thinking of him.

Can you picture him now?

Yeah. I know who that is.

That's who I picture Mr. L.A. Bigelow to be. But anyway, he wrote a similar complaint to the Burlington Free Press. Like so many other spiritualists, he had read the reports of the Eddys' supernatural abilities and he himself traveled to Vermont to see the spectacle, only to be quite disappointed by what he found. He said after the lights were dimmed and Horatio's hands were tied, the séance got underway and the instruments on the table started to play on their own. So he was like, okay, shit, maybe Bigelow's for reals here. But at that moment, he lit a match, probably to light his giant cigar.

Yes.

And to his surprise, he said, Mr. Horatio Eddy, the medium, could be distinctly seen in front of the circle, untied, with the guitar in his hand, playing it vigorously.

What?

Like, okay, but why are all the other instruments playing?

Yeah. He still seems spooky to me.

Seems pretty spooky. When confronted with the discovery, Horatio threw the guitar at Bigelow. I just hear like, bow. and stormed out of the room. He just threw an instrument at somebody. He just threw an instrument at an LA and left the séance. Yeah, he said, fuck y'all.

What else do you do in that situation? You got caught, throw a guitar.

He had trouble managing his anger.

That was rock star behavior.

Rock star. Very rock star. Fuck you, I'm a rock star.

Yeah.

The growing criticism was met with vigorous rebuttals, though, from all of the people who really believed in them. all seeking to defend them as not just genuine psychic mediums, but extremely talented ones at that. In an article written for the Rutland Daily Globe, one séance attendee described, among other things, seeing a disembodied hand appear out of thin air and write a message on a sheet of paper lying on the table.

Whoa.

They wrote, another hand, this time plainly that of a lady, came out between myself and Eddie in plain sight. There was no physical arm or body connected with it. The hand took the pencil a few inches nearer to the paper and then wrote an affectionate message signed with my sister's name.

Whoa. I'm like, that's weird.

How do you make that happen?

It's not like they have Google.

No, definitely not.

Yeah.

Now, this was among a ton of other letters and messages sent to the local press, all determined to prove that William and Horatio were not like the other so-called phony mediums of that day. And at that time, a lot of the mediums were being exposed, including the Fox sisters.

Of course.

As frauds.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That still happens. It does. Yeah. Yeah.

The repeated questions about the legitimacy of Eddie— the other— the Eddy brothers' abilities, though, and frequent attempts to debunk their claims reached their peak in 1874 when, according to one writer, the tavern was, quote, infested with supernatural beings of such numbers that had never been reported before or since.

Hell yeah.

Their reputation had achieved such range I'm also just laughing. Hell yeah! Yeah!

That was a great reaction. So many supernatural beings.

But they achieved such range that their séances were starting to attract some of spiritualism's biggest names, including— and I think we might have talked about her with Sam and Colby— um, Helena Blavatsky.

Oh, maybe.

I think we did. She's a Russian occultist, and she actually—

Go Helena!

Helena. She founded the Theosophical Hold on. Theosophical— yeah. I had to think about how to say that.

Theosophical. I know, that one's got weird things in it.

Yeah, she founded the Theosophical Society.

And by weird things, I meant vowels.

I was like, yeah, that's got so many weird things in it. It has a lot of O's, and by a lot, I mean 2.

Shut up, it's hard to say, all right?

It only has like 4 vowels, but still.

Guys, it's hard, all right?

I don't know. But anyways, it wasn't any of those big names in mysticism that ended up rehabbing the Eddy name after the 1873 exposures. Instead, it was a skeptical journalist.

Oh, that would be the best one to do it.

Right? So Henry Olcott had never had any particular interest in spirituality throughout his life. He actually had always been drawn to science and agriculture since he was young.

Good for him.

And he tended to dismiss the paranormal and supernatural as nonsense.

Eh. Don't do that. I know.

But he was, he was very of a different mind.

Yeah, of course. That's all right.

Now, after graduating from college in his early 20s, he took a job as the farm editor for the New York Tribune. When the Civil War broke out in 1860, he quit his position with the paper and he enlisted with the Union Army.

Whoop whoop!

Ultimately rising to the rank of colonel by the time the war was over. During his time in the service, he was appointed as a special agent charged with investigating military fraud.

That sounds fancy. Yeah.

And his investigatory skills later earned him a place on the 3-man panel that investigated— spoiler alert for you, I guess— the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Oh my God. Is that Mary Todd's husband? Yes.

Holy shit.

Former president.

Came full circle.

Honest Abe?

Oh, no. You know? Oh, no. Isn't that crazy, though? That, that, that's weird.

From, like, writing a farm column to being, like, on a 3-man panel investigating an assassination.

Of the president?

Of the straight-up president. That's pretty crazy. Cray cray. Now, he eventually ended up pursuing a law degree, and by his early 50s, he was one of the most respected and most admired attorneys in New York. So it's unclear what prompted him to buy a copy of the spiritualist newspaper Banner of Light in 1874. Especially as a man of science and reason, he really didn't have any interest in the movement. And at that point, he sort of thought very little of those who did.

But you know what? Maybe it sounds like he's a man that's willing to open his mind. So maybe he was like, I don't agree with any of this and I don't believe in any of it, but I'm going to learn about it so I can better have a counterargument. I think that— You should learn about the thing that you don't agree with so that you can counterargument.

I think that you're spot on. I think that's exactly what he did.

Oh, there we go.

It's quite interesting what ends up happening.

Oh.

I kind of foreshadowed it earlier. Now, when he read the detailed accounts of the séances and other supernatural experiences at the Green Tavern in Chittenden, something about the claims interested him so much that he just couldn't get them out of his head.

Yeah.

There was nothing about the claims to that point that he really found that convincing. Later, he wrote, if any part of it was true, it was, quote, the most important fact in modern physical science.

Yeah.

100%.

Yeah. He's like, I don't think this is true, but if it is, we should know about it.

And I think it's kind of cool that he's approaching it from, like, a place of science.

Yeah. Good for him.

So he convinced the editors of the New York Sun to fund an investigation of the Eddy brothers that summer.

Whoa!

And he arrived in Vermont with illustrator Alfred Kaps ready to debunk everything. He went into this being like, I know that this isn't real and I'm gonna figure it out.

I think that's the best way to go into something like this because—

Skeptical.

Yeah.

Yeah. So when they arrived at the farm, they both were surprised and actually somewhat disappointed by what they found there. Rather than meeting what they expected to be 2 sophisticated showmen, Olcott found William and Horatio Eddy to be very gruff and unfriendly farmers. Now, despite their off-putting demeanors and rough appearances, he, Olcott, remained committed to his story and was totally enthralled once the Eddys started telling the story of the family's legacy of supernatural gifts, which we talked about in the beginning. It was actually Olcott who would document and later circulate the brothers' story of their early life on the farm and the abuse and everything that we talked about at the hands of their father.

Yeah.

But of all the stories he found the most fascinating and exciting, It was the claims of the quote unquote visitors who would appear and disappear at various times around the farm.

Me too.

That night, he and Caps there attended their first séance at the tavern. And they sat outside of the mouth of Honto's Cave with about 10 other participants. Before the séance started, Olcott himself went into the cave and thoroughly examined the entire space. It was a pretty small space.

Poor guy.

And he was looking for a second exit or any kind of hiding spot. Something like that that would be able to help in a fraud scheme.

Yeah.

But he didn't find anything.

He said, no faux. No.

He said, no fraud here.

No.

As far as he could tell, there was one way in and one way out, and the cave was completely empty when they got there.

Okay.

Now, once Horatio arrived and was seated in his makeshift cabinet of branches and fabrics and whatnot, the séance began. Almost immediately after he slipped into his trance, One of the attendees gasped and pointed to the top of the cave where they all witnessed the materialization of what appeared to be a large native man looking down at them. Now, moments later, the figure of a native woman appeared beside the first spirit. And that was presumably the princess who frequently appeared during the Yeti séances. Now, at first, Alcott was like, that spirit is absolutely William dressed up. It's got to be.

Yeah.

And people have said that before.

Yeah.

But the more he looked, the less he believed that to be the case. Later he wrote, to William Eddy, she bears not the slightest resemblance. I have seen her about 30 times and have necessarily enjoyed ample opportunities to compare her to William in every particular.

Wow.

So that was the first time he saw her, but then he continued to at all these séances.

That's interesting.

And he couldn't find a similar resemblance at all. So he left the séance that night. convinced of the brothers' legitimacy. Went in completely skeptical and then was like, I don't know.

I think I fucking believe this. I think this might be real.

Now, he spent years of his life investigating fraud. He knew a conman when he saw one. And he and cops even searched the cave and the area outside for footprints and evidence that what they had seen had to have been human, not ghost. But there was nothing. Now, in the days that followed, he attended several more séances. All following the usual Eddy format. And they witnessed hands appear out of thin air, again, instruments playing by themselves. They heard disembodied voices delivering messages. And every night, Olcott would go around and investigate the room for any evidence of what he would think was fraud, but didn't find any. He spoke with the brothers at length and with others who attended the séances. And by the time he ended up leaving Vermont, he was a staunch believer in spiritualism.

That's incredible.

Isn't that the best?

That's wild.

He wrote, I see no more reason why we should not be able to trace the phenomenon of spiritualism back to their source than those of heat, light, motion, electricity, or chemical action, if we only use the same patience and resort to like tests.

I love that thought process.

Right? He's like, I think this is just like a science that we don't understand.

Yeah, like a branch of science that we can investigate.

Yeah, a part of the world that we don't get.

Yeah.

Now, in other words, psychic abilities and the phenomenon he witnessed in Chittenden was no different than other natural phenomena found in nature, which were themselves once ascribed supernatural origins. Yeah, that's true. We always think shit's supernatural at first.

Oh yeah.

Now his articles about his time in Chittenden were a huge success and they went on to be republished by several other newspapers around the Northeast. And that only served to grow the Eddy brothers' reputations and supporters. A year later, he collected his writing on the Eddies into a book called People from the Other World. Which I love.

Ooh, I like that.

And that set him on a new path towards spiritual enlightenment.

Wow!

Now through the Eddys, he met Helena Blavatsky and joined the Theosophical Society.

Damn!

And spent the rest of his life pursuing and writing about non-traditional spiritual experiences.

He just took a hard left.

Isn't that the craziest thing?

Yeah, that's crazy.

Now his articles and enthusiasm for the brothers' abilities went a long way toward combating the accusations of fraud that had been leveled against them in the years leading up to the visit. But unfortunately, his enthusiasm for the Eddy brothers' abilities wasn't enough to beat back the changing attitude towards spiritualism in America.

Yeah.

By that time, many, many psychic mediums across the country had been debunked and exposed as frauds. Like we said, even the Fox sisters, who were largely responsible for the movement, they had actually been outed by their own sister.

Oh.

But it is worth noting that she later recanted her confession that they were frauds.

Oh.

So she went back and forth.

Interesting.

So I don't know, maybe there was some sister infighting.

So there's something, yeah.

And she was like, they're frauds.

You never know.

And then she was like, I shouldn't have said that.

Yeah, you never know.

But under the circumstances, it was only a matter of time before the Eddy brothers' critics and skeptics managed to gain a foothold with their arguments and bring the whole thing to an end.

Aw, bummer.

Womp, womp, womp. Now, the first major blow to their credibility came in late March of 1875, In the form of a letter to the editor of the Rutland Daily Globe written by D.P. Westcott, who was a childhood friend of the Eddys.

What?

In his letter, he examined the brothers' séances step by step and pointed out what he claimed were all tricks and illusions that were used to fool attendees. He wrote, they dislike to admit a person whom they think has come for an investigation. They prefer to perform for believers in spiritualism and allow them to inform the public through press.

Ah.

I'm like, I don't really want to perform for a bunch of nonbelievers either. Yeah.

Like, if somebody's there just to yuck your yum, that's kind of shitty. Yeah.

You know what I mean?

I don't blame them.

I was like, maybe you were a dick to them in school because it kind of sounds like you were.

Kind of sounds like you were an asshole.

Yeah, so fuck you. Now, for all the damage done by negative press that they'd been receiving throughout 1875, it was actually their own interpersonal dynamics that ended up being the final nail in the coffin.

Or nor.

This always happens. Despite their success, William and Horatio and their sister Mary had really struggled to get along with each other as adults, and the stresses of running a business and being in the public spotlight didn't help matters. So by the time the negative press and repeated attempts to debunk them were really coming at them on a regular basis, their constant fighting had kind of left them barely even more than business partners and acquaintances.

Oh, wow.

They kind of just hated each other.

And then when, like, all that strain is being put on, if you already have a rickety foundation, eek.

Didn't work for us.

No.

Because we have a strong-ass foundation.

We're gush.

But people have tried. Now, by the next year, they decided to call it quits, unfortunately. Horatio went out on his own and performed magic tricks and séances just solo around Vermont and the nearby areas, and occasionally found himself on the wrong side of the law. It happens. Mary, who had spent much of her life behind the scenes, actually stepped out into the spotlight and became a popular medium for a time.

Oh.

And then it just kind of— people really weren't going to see mediums as much.

Yeah. So it was a little dip.

Yeah. Dip. Exactly.

It was a dip for a moment of people wanting to speak to the dead. Yeah.

We were like, not now.

Yeah.

We had other things going on, I guess. We're back at it though. We're back at it. We're here. I'm trying to speak to the dead.

Honestly, at this point everybody's like, let's talk to the dead.

It's wilder than the living.

Yeah.

Now, William actually left the movement altogether and kind of became like a bitter recluse until he died in 1932. Whoa. Bummer.

Wow.

Now, when the Eddy siblings went their separate ways in 1878, the Green Tavern, which they— that was their childhood home, was passed from one private owner to another until the mid-20th century. And then it was finally purchased by, I believe it's Asa and Ellen Gee. Now the Geese thought they were just buying an old Vermont farmhouse, like nothing, nothing, you know, supernatural. But not long after they moved in, an article about the Eddy brothers appeared in a local paper. And so tourists started flocking to Chittenden.

Oh no.

Ellen said, we'd get calls at all times of the day and night. A lot of people wanted to come in just to stand in our living room. It got so bad we had to turn them away. Which honestly, I bet would suck.

I just can't.

Like, don't—

boundaries have never been a thing apparently.

If it's a private residence, you have to respect that.

Yeah, you can't do that.

Now more often than not, they obviously declined to allow strangers into their home, but there were times when somebody would show up and seem so determined or had traveled such a long distance that they were like, okay, like, I guess you can come in and steal them.

That's really nice of them because I'd be like, tell someone who cares. Yeah, that's on you, dog.

Because I don't. Now, on one occasion in the early 1970s, 2 young tourists pulled up in front of the house and they just begged the Gees to allow them inside with a psychic medium that they were with.

No!

And eventually Ellen was like, sure, I guess I'll go fuck myself.

Come on in. Wow.

Now the medium— actually, she was probably much nicer than that. But the medium had barely been in the house for a few moments when a new voice emerged from her throat. Ellen later said she said it was Honto speaking.

Oh.

Then the voice changed to a deep male's voice. It was like a ventriloquist was in the room. She was a very old lady, but she was talking with a man's voice.

I heard it. That's scary.

I'd be like, you need to go because I'm getting scared.

Yeah. I feel like this is why I don't invite strangers into my house.

Yeah. Like I don't experience things that you guys apparently do. No.

What's happening?

Now they never personally experienced anything in the home, the Geese, but there were others who claimed to have had eerie experiences. In the early '70s, not long after the experience with the medium actually, the Gees decided to sell the property to the High Life Ski Club, who renovated—

I love that.

Yeah. High Life Ski Club forever. They renovated and expanded the original building and transformed it into a clubhouse. On the morning, or one morning in 1973, just after the grand opening party of the lodge, a woman named Linda Burns remembered entering into the great room to find that the room had been completely trashed and that the microphone on stage had completely been snapped in half.

Whoa.

She said nobody could have bent those things, much less break them like that. And she also said that her and her friends had held a few sessions with a Ouija board a few nights earlier. And when they asked whether there were ghosts in the house, the planchette went wild across the board.

Oh, damn. Yeah.

Now, if the Eddy brothers and their associated spirits were continuing to reach out after death, it also seems like they weren't content to just confine themselves to the tavern turned ski lodge alone. Around that same time, Stephen Eddy, a great-great-great-grandson of the father's brother—

Whoa.

Moved to Horatio's home just outside of Rutland. He and his wife Nancy said for the first 3 months they lived there, they heard voices and footsteps that they couldn't explain.

That's spooky.

So it's like a haunted family.

I love that.

I love it. Now, today, the Eddys' former tavern remains the Vermont home of the High Life Ski Lodge.

Hell yeah.

Continues to welcome members every year. It looks a lot different than when it was occupied by the Eddies a century ago, obviously, but the brothers and their supernatural activities will always be part of the building and the land. Ooh, I love that. And as for whether or not their psychic abilities were genuine, or whether a part of them remains there today, we may never know for sure, weirdos.

They're still there.

Oh, fuck yeah.

I'm declaring it.

It looks pretty comfy too.

Does it?

Yeah.

Oh, I love that. We got pics. We'll post them. It's the high life.

You know, it's the Vermont skiing high life.

Do it.

So that is the Eddy Brothers and the High Life Ski Club.

I like that.

It was a fun one.

Spiritualism is really interesting. It is. It's so awesome. The fact that it was such a massive movement.

Yeah.

It's really, really interesting.

It is cool.

I like that.

I love it a lot.

I feel bad though. They had like a real shitty go at it.

They had like a good go at it for like a minute.

They had like a go at it, but I mean like growing up.

Growing up and then when they like decided they hated each other. Yeah.

And I don't think they were like, obviously like, Like they went through a whole lot together and you would hope that would kind of like bond them together.

Yeah. But it looked like it divided them a little bit. Kind of tore them apart.

Yeah. Because they weren't really taught to love your family. It doesn't sound like they were taught love.

No, I don't really think they were. Yeah, definitely not.

Yeah.

Also, do you feel like we need a fun fact for cases like this?

I know. I don't know if we need a fun fact.

I think for the month of October we can just kind of like—

Yeah, we'll save those for the— For after October.

Yeah, for like palate cleansers.

Yes. All right.

Perfect.

Because that was just fun.

That was just super fun. That's what I thought.

Yeah.

So with that being said, we hope you keep listening. And we hope you keep it weird. But not so weird that you conjure disembodied hands. Or actually, no, I do want you to keep it that weird.

Yeah. Keep it that weird and don't keep it so weird that you start landscaping in the middle of our recording.

People love to do that. They love to do that.

Bye! Bye!