[EPISODE 31] Dollhouse of Horrors: Annabelle Meets the Winchester Mystery House

[00:00:00] Adam Cox:

[00:00:01] Adam Cox: He looks around the room, but everything appears normal, and he goes about trying to get back to sleep when he catches Annabelle at the bottom of his bed. Doing 

[00:00:11] Adam Cox: what? 

[00:00:12] Adam Cox: Well to begin with, she's just looking at him.

[00:00:14] Adam Cox: And he's almost paralyzed with fear though. And then Annabelle starts to climb up the bed. Shit. Onto Lou's chest and then starts to strangle him. What? Is this real? 

[00:00:53] Kyle Risi: Welcome to the Compendium, an assembly of walls that talk and dolls that walk. Prepare for a journey where reality blurs into the mysterious. 

[00:01:03] Adam Cox: Sounds like that could be very fitting for Halloween week. 

[00:01:06] Kyle Risi: What do you mean? Of course that's fitting. I've been working on that all week. 

[00:01:10] Adam Cox: Do you like it? It's good.

[00:01:11] Adam Cox: It's good. It's building a nice, uh, spooky atmosphere. 

[00:01:14] Kyle Risi: Exactly. And that's it. You're completely right. Today is our Halloween episode. Can you believe that we've got to, I think, like 30 

[00:01:22] Adam Cox: episodes? 30 episodes, yeah. We started this, what, in February? March? Something like that. Crazy. 

[00:01:26] Kyle Risi: Time flies, huh? So, for those of you tuning in for the very first time, I am your host, Kyle Risi.

[00:01:31] Kyle Risi: And I'm 

[00:01:32] Adam Cox: your co host, Adam Cox. 

[00:01:33] Kyle Risi: You're listening to The Compendium, an assembly of fascinating and intriguing things. We're a weekly variety podcast where I, Kyle Risi... Tell Adam Cox all about a topic that I think he'll find both fascinating and intriguing from groundbreaking, uh, events to unforgettable people.

[00:01:48] Kyle Risi: We do this all in a one hour ish episode, giving you just enough information to stand your ground at a social 

[00:01:55] Adam Cox: gathering. 

[00:01:56] Adam Cox: So for this week's all the latest things, what have you got for us this week? Anything Halloween related? 

[00:02:02] Kyle Risi: Oh, not quite Halloween related.

[00:02:03] Kyle Risi: Just something that just stopped me in my tracks. Okay. Okay, Where is it? So of course, this is coming from the Sun newspaper, so you know it's going to be pretty 

[00:02:11] Adam Cox: good. And take with a pinch of 

[00:02:12] Kyle Risi: salt. Yeah, it's not true.

[00:02:13] Kyle Risi: It's not a serious story. 

[00:02:15] Kyle Risi: I want you to cast your mind back to when we first started going out. Yeah. Yeah. Some of the insecurities that maybe as a newly kind of couple getting to know each other, some of them may be the anxieties that we might have had.

[00:02:28] Kyle Risi: Okay. So a good example would have been you would come over to my house for the whole weekend. Then you would. Leave and you'll be absolutely busting for a fart because you've been keeping it in because you don't want to really fart in front of your partner, especially a new partner very 

[00:02:44] Adam Cox: early on.

[00:02:44] Adam Cox: Yeah. You want to wait until you, I don't know, you're a few months in for that. 

[00:02:47] Kyle Risi: Do you know what? I just cannot believe the amount of farts that you can keep inside your body when you are motivated by a new love. Okay. Because I can't even keep a fart in for five minutes anymore. It's got to 

[00:02:59] Adam Cox: come out.

[00:03:00] Adam Cox: Okay. Where's this going? Okay. Okay. 

[00:03:02] Kyle Risi: So it's a Sun article. And it focuses on a 30 year old woman called Kaylee, who's got a story, whose story somehow, the Sun found for some weird reason compelling enough to print. So Kaylee tells the story of how, at the beginning of her new relationship with her boyfriend, how she came face to face with an awkward dilemma of needing a poo.

[00:03:22] Kyle Risi: while spending the evening with her partner. So she tells the son about how paper thin the walls are and she was fearful that her boyfriend would hear her using the toilet. So she decides that she would head to a different part of the house and poop in a Tesco's bag for 

[00:03:37] Adam Cox: life. Right, okay.

[00:03:39] Kyle Risi: And she even jokes. Every little helps. I, hang 

[00:03:43] Adam Cox: on. So actually, she's in another part of the house. She's not in a bathroom when she's doing 

[00:03:46] Kyle Risi: this. No, because the bathroom is close to the bedroom where her fellow was sleeping. So she decides, I imagine, to like creep down to the kitchen, grab a Tesco's bag for life bag, have a crap in the bag, in the kitchen, just so her boyfriend wouldn't be able to hear her pooing in the toilet.

[00:04:05] Adam Cox: But then what about like... You know, clean up job. Oh, 

[00:04:08] Kyle Risi: okay. So she used a tea towel. Oh my God. to clean it up. And then she just dumped it all in the bin. But she said it worked because he never knew that she had gone for a poo and to her, that was a win. Right. And yeah, victory. Victory. 

[00:04:23] Adam Cox: Yeah. But now she's in the Sun newspaper.

[00:04:25] Adam Cox: Is she still going out with this 

[00:04:26] Kyle Risi: guy? Yeah, they're still together. And apparently he says that he's not surprised . 

[00:04:29] Adam Cox: Sounds about right, 

[00:04:32] Kyle Risi: oh God. And it made me think God, like some of the things that we would go through when we first got together, we didn't want to like poo in front of each other.

[00:04:41] Kyle Risi: That's the last thing you want to do. I still don't want to do that. 

[00:04:43] Kyle Risi: That's all my latest things for this week. 

[00:04:45] Adam Cox: Interesting. yeah, nice story there. You're welcome. My, so my latest things for this week, it's not really a latest thing. It's more, of some fun facts about Halloween. Because I thought... Oh, okay. I thought it'd be, yeah, good to reel off some stuff about Halloween.

[00:05:03] Adam Cox: Ooh, did 

[00:05:03] Kyle Risi: you know? Go, let's do this. 

[00:05:05] Adam Cox: number one, did you know that Halloween's origin started around 2000 years ago? 

[00:05:11] Kyle Risi: Probably, because it's like a pagan thing, isn't it? 

[00:05:14] Adam Cox: Yeah, so it had I think it could be traced back to some ancient Celts. So these were people that lived in Ireland, the United Kingdom. Northern France, and they celebrated a festival called So Him, something like that.

[00:05:29] Adam Cox: So Him. So Him, something like that. It's spelt Sam Hane, but I think it's pronounced So Him. Okay. Anyway, so that 

[00:05:35] Kyle Risi: My god, Halloween, that's So Him. 

[00:05:37] Adam Cox: So they, they would celebrate it on October the 31st. And it was a day before Aztec, Toltec and Mayan cultures were celebrating de los 

[00:05:48] Kyle Risi: Muertos?

[00:05:48] Kyle Risi: Hang on, am I correct in thinking that the Mayans and the, who else? The Aztecs? Yep. They're on the other 

[00:05:52] Adam Cox: side of the world, right? Yeah, and, you, you might know that day as Day of the Dead? So, um, yeah, that's when the Celts would, do it a day before them essentially. And it basically marked the day before the new year, the start of winter at a time when the dead were believed to return to the earth.

[00:06:07] Adam Cox: Ooh, 

[00:06:07] Kyle Risi: really? Isn't that just incredible? Like they are essentially. So it's like thousands of miles apart, yet human beings, especially like during the Bronze Ages and the Iron Ages and things like that, were so connected to the land. Because of course, all these celebrations, Halloween, and things that I can't think of any others, but Halloween is so connected to the harvest and the seasons and the sun that they develop these different festivals and rituals associated with these different seasons. Isn't it crazy? It is. And I think, 

[00:06:39] Adam Cox: I guess you can kind of understand it if you're seeing like all these plants die and everything that came to life in the summer is now dying.

[00:06:46] Adam Cox: It's getting colder. The nights are darker and everything like that. I guess it must be like a common thing ingrained in the human body to Celebrate death? 

[00:06:53] Kyle Risi: Yeah, I guess so. And like, thanking the gods for everything that they've given them during the fruitful summer and spring months, and then in the hope that they will return the favor again the next year when 

[00:07:05] Adam Cox: so I've got another fact. the next one is about trick or treating. So this apparently came from a tradition . called souling.

[00:07:12] Adam Cox: it was during the Celtic festival, that poor children would go door to door begging for food and money. And then in exchange, for their generosity, children would pray for the souls of recently lost loved ones. Okay. And so that's why it was called souling. And so that's where trickle treating originally came from.

[00:07:30] Adam Cox: So where does the candy come into this? the candy, I think it's, that's a thing that came from like the 80s, that's when it really started to get popular I think, or Mid, 20th century, but before then people would hand out like apples and other kind of fruits, nuts, things like that before they became chocolate bars.

[00:07:46] Adam Cox: I see. 

[00:07:46] Adam Cox: So my next fact is about, how Halloween got to America. Um, so whilst there were people in America that were kind of aware of the traditions, it wasn't until, a lot of the Irish and other European immigrants arrived , . I think it was because of like the potato famine, that happened.

[00:08:04] Adam Cox: so when they went over it in the second half of the 19th century, it's them that kind of really spread the news of Halloween and that then basically went across all of America, As 

[00:08:13] Kyle Risi: a result of the 

[00:08:13] Adam Cox: potato famine. Something to do with that. That's how they, that's when they went over to the Americans when they were like 

[00:08:19] Kyle Risi: suddenly leaving.

[00:08:20] Kyle Risi: Yes. Okay. Okay. I 

[00:08:22] Adam Cox: don't know enough about the potato famine. No, I don't know much about it either. I don't know if that's a podcast episode in itself. No, it sounds boring. Yeah, it does, doesn't it? 

[00:08:29] Adam Cox: So next up is about the jack o lantern. So this comes from Irish folktales about Stingy Jack, who was internally doomed to roam the earth at night after making a deal with the devil. And so to guide his way, he lit a coal in a carved out turnip. And that inspired Irish and Scottish people to do the same.

[00:08:50] Adam Cox: With turnips, that's fascinating. Yeah, but the only reason it went to pumpkins was when the immigrants moved to America. they realized that actually pumpkins were better to, carve than turnips. And 

[00:09:02] Kyle Risi: also probably because they didn't have any turnips. Possibly. They're like, we've got no turnips, what are we going to do?

[00:09:06] Kyle Risi: Ah, we'll use this big orange thing. 

[00:09:08] Adam Cox: Pumpkin. Turnips feel very much like an English British thing. Oh yeah. And 

[00:09:12] Kyle Risi: they stink as well. They're not the nicest foods. No, they're so plain and boring. 

[00:09:17] Adam Cox: No wonder why we have some of the worst cuisine in the world. Or known to have. 

[00:09:21] Kyle Risi: Yeah, I guess so, because we eat too many damn turnips and blood sausage.

[00:09:25] Kyle Risi: Bleh, bleh. 

[00:09:26] Adam Cox: next fun fact is about how Halloween, believe it or not, was a more of a romantic kind of holiday than it was a scary holiday at one point. What the hell do you mean? So what would happen at Halloween in the early 20th century... was women would play these kind of games and it was to see who your future love might be and stuff like that.

[00:09:47] Adam Cox: Go on. 

[00:09:48] Adam Cox: So one of the things they would do, is peel an apple and they'd have to peel the apple skin in a way that they don't... They do it all in one go, if that makes sense. They don't break it. 

[00:09:59] Kyle Risi: One skin, right? Yeah. Yeah. So it's a 

[00:10:01] Adam Cox: challenge. Yeah. And so they can't do that. They can't break the skin. And then once they've peeled the apple skin, they then throw it over their shoulder.

[00:10:09] Adam Cox: And then, 

[00:10:10] Kyle Risi: The first man it lands on, that's the man you marry. 

[00:10:13] Adam Cox: Even more stupid than that. Oh god. whatever, , initial it spelled out, is the name of, or the first character of the name of the person you're going to marry. Oh, I 

[00:10:21] Kyle Risi: see. So it's a bit like reading your tea leaves, but no, read your apple skin.

[00:10:25] Adam Cox: Read your apple skins. Um, so we don't do that anymore, we do apple bobbing. Yeah, that's a lost art. or another one they would do is the cabbage test. Okay. for those, , who were interested in finding out their future partner's wealth, what they needed is a good old cabbage patch. Okay. Who's the partner?

[00:10:41] Adam Cox: Yeah, the person. So if you're looking for your future husband or wife. You would need a good cabbage patch that on the 31st of October, what you do is you put on a blindfold, you run into a field of growing cabbages. Yeah. And you search around the ground for a nice big head of cabbage. And then you'd yank it out of the ground, roots and everything.

[00:11:00] Adam Cox: And then now you'd uncover your eyes and you'd check out those cabbage roots. And then if your roots were intact and there was a good amount of earth still attached, then your beloved one will have oodles of money. If it doesn't have any roots and there isn't much mud, then yeah, you're going to have a poor 

[00:11:15] Kyle Risi: partner.

[00:11:16] Kyle Risi: It even goes to show like, even back then, women's. Like expectations. He's got to have a good salary. How are we going to know? Check his cabbage roots.

[00:11:25] Kyle Risi: If there's a bunch of them, he's going to be rich. Yeah. Oh, but mum, he's five foot two. Doesn't matter. He's rich. He's 

[00:11:32] Adam Cox: rich. He's got good roots. Um, so yeah, these things, why have they died to death? I feel like we should still be 

[00:11:37] Kyle Risi: doing them. Do you know what? I think we have , other crazy. like modern day rituals that we do nowadays anyway.

[00:11:44] Kyle Risi: Yeah, that's true. So it's just, yeah, product of its time, I guess. 

[00:11:48] Adam Cox: And then my last one is about the Halloween movie. So, um, you know, Michael Myers, uh, plays the main bad guy in Halloween. Yeah, yeah. Did you know where his mask came from? 

[00:12:00] Kyle Risi: Oh, I want to say I do. Is it based on a real life person's face?

[00:12:05] Kyle Risi: Yeah, it is. Oh god, is it a turned inside out mask of 

[00:12:10] Adam Cox: someone? Uh, it's not a turned inside out mask, it's an actual mask of someone. Who is it? it's William Shatner from Star Trek. 

[00:12:16] Kyle Risi: God, what? 

[00:12:18] Adam Cox: So the guy, I think one of the designer, production designer, he found a mask of William Shatner as Captain Kirk in Star Trek and he used that, he basically just made the eyes a bit bigger, got rid of some sideburns and made the eyebrows.

[00:12:31] Adam Cox: Painted it white, gave it black hair, and that is how the mask came to be. Wow, William Shatner. William Shatner.

[00:12:36] Kyle Risi: Okay, right, so a Halloween special. Yes. But, with a twist, this week normally, I tell you a story that I think that you'll find fascinating and intriguing.

[00:12:46] Kyle Risi: But this week... We both have a story for each other. We do. Yeah. A mini Halloween story. 

[00:12:51] Adam Cox: Yeah. So, um, both kind of creepy or spooky themed. So if you're listening to this at Halloween, it's perfectly timed. If you're listening to this in May on a beach, then it's just treat 

[00:13:01] Kyle Risi: it as a spooky story. But the thing that I have to stress is that when we were planning on this episode, I didn't want us to tell a story that was really.

[00:13:11] Kyle Risi: rooted in fiction. I wanted it to be something that is very close to reality. So both stories , involve very real people, real entities and real events. And I mean, those events could be called into question, but we're going to suspend our disbelief today and we're going to really lean in to the mystery.

[00:13:32] Kyle Risi: of these two stories. Yeah. So we flipped a coin. 

[00:13:36] Adam Cox: We flipped a coin and it's my turn to go first. My story is all about a doll, the infamous and creepy Annabelle doll. most people are familiar with the doll because of the film and the Conjuring film franchise. but what not a lot of people know is that the film is actually based on a real doll called Annabelle.

[00:13:56] Adam Cox: So more importantly, the origins of the doll is what inspired the events that happened in the movie. And this doll is said to be possessed in real life, being able to move when no one is around, leave mysterious notes, and cause people some serious harm. 

[00:14:14] Adam Cox: So the concerns about this doll's paranormal behavior caused the owners of the doll to bring in real life demonologists to help them understand what was going on which led these experts to taking the doll away and putting it behind a glass cabinet for safekeeping. And then on this glass cabinet would be a message that reads positively do not open.

[00:14:37] Adam Cox: Why positively I do not know. But do not open. 

[00:14:40] Kyle Risi: sorry, the word positively do not open 

[00:14:43] Adam Cox: on the front of the glass. It'd be 

[00:14:44] Kyle Risi: like negatively 

[00:14:45] Adam Cox: do not open. yeah, so that's, it doesn't make sense to me. Why positively anyway. but this warning is there. It sounds very 

[00:14:53] Kyle Risi: Disney though. I'm positively really excited.

[00:14:56] Kyle Risi: That kind of thing. Do you know? Like I imagine sound of music and they're like, Oh, I positively couldn't do that. I couldn't eat a whole another slice of pie. it's very like 1940s, 50s, even before then, 30s 

[00:15:10] Adam Cox: language. I guess so. I don't know what the point of it was. but this warning is there to basically warn off others from ever opening that cabinet again. So let's find out how this all came about. First things first, the original Annabelle doll is not like the porcelain doll that you see in the movies.

[00:15:27] Adam Cox: In fact, the original doll looks pretty harmless. It's a 1970s Raggedy Ann doll. don't know if you know what that Raggedy Ann doll. So it's soft it's got button eyes, floppy bright woolen red hair, and then a stitched on smile. So it doesn't have these creepy dark eyes or a sinister stare

[00:15:46] Adam Cox: it doesn't 

[00:15:46] Kyle Risi: have those mechanical eyes, you know that when the creepily one of them opens and the other one doesn't, and like when you lean them backwards, and like sometimes One opens, one shuts. They're on like a hinge. 

[00:15:55] Adam Cox: It's not like that. No, it hasn't got like a lazy doll eye. 

[00:15:58] Kyle Risi: Oh damn. Do you know, when you told me about this episode coming up, I've completely then gotten the artwork wrong for this episode because that's exactly how I pictured her.

[00:16:09] Kyle Risi: Like one of those mechanical weird, like a female jigsaw doll. Yeah, that's how I imagined her and that's what the artwork is for this episode. 

[00:16:18] Adam Cox: I don't know. It's just a doll. People get it. People know Annabelle from the film franchise and they do probably the real 

[00:16:22] Kyle Risi: life doll. And they probably had to change that though because I don't see a Raggedy Ann doll with a stitched on mouth as a creepy looking doll.

[00:16:33] Kyle Risi: Well, 

[00:16:33] Adam Cox: at look at the doll here. There we go. There's a comparison. Doesn't look like a scary 

[00:16:37] Kyle Risi: doll, does it? Absolutely not. I would drop kick that bitch right into the stratosphere if it passed me a note. that's not scary at all, but the one on the left, that's pretty horrific. 

[00:16:48] Adam Cox: Yeah, so I think the film franchise obviously had seen the real doll and went like, We can't make a scary movie about this thing .

[00:16:54] Adam Cox: And so they took some creative license and obviously changing how the doll appeared. But it's still in a dress . It's still got rosy cheeks and a weird smile. So yeah, that bit's 

[00:17:03] Kyle Risi: true. Okay. So I'm intrigued to find out like how this became a bit. Creepy and 

[00:17:07] Adam Cox: haunted. Sure. Well, it all started in the 1970s where two nurse friends, Donna and Angie, were sharing an apartment together.

[00:17:16] Adam Cox: Lesbians? Um, no, I think they're just friends. Okay. Donna receives a Raggedy Ann doll as a gift from her mother. Now, you might wonder why a mother would give a 28 year old daughter a children's 

[00:17:27] Kyle Risi: doll. Because she's in a lesbian relationship and she wants to give her daughter and her partner a baby to take care of.

[00:17:34] Adam Cox: I don't know. I can't verify that. but, , I would have thought, like, money, maybe some new clothes, or maybe a house gift, not a kid's doll. Where did she get it from? I think she bought it from, a... I 

[00:17:46] Kyle Risi: can't that apothecary? not an apothecary, an emporium, a flea market. Something 

[00:17:50] Adam Cox: that's a bit like that.

[00:17:51] Adam Cox: I can't remember the exact phrase, but I think it's like a market, a secondhand doll, essentially. Sure. Okay. so Donna gets the doll and she's grateful, I guess. Um, I mean, I mean, I'm not sure I would be, but she is. And she keeps the doll within her bedroom. Nothing really peculiar happens at first, but within a couple of days of receiving the doll.

[00:18:11] Adam Cox: Donna notices that when she comes and goes by the apartment, the doll has moved at first. It's kind of like a small thing. So it might be like facing perhaps a different direction or she's found with her arms crossed. so when Donna starts to notice this, the doll also starts to move places as well.

[00:18:30] Adam Cox: So even when she consciously leaves the door closed thinking, okay, maybe I'm just a bit tired, I'm not thinking straight. Yeah. She goes and opens the door and finds the doll has moved. So a bit like Toy Story, if you imagine it like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So she questions her roommate, Angie, and she's like, well, why would I be touching your toy?

[00:18:49] Adam Cox: You're 28. Goddammit. and so when both leave for work and they come home and they find that the doll has moved, they have no explanation for it. And so I think they realized, okay , it's not each other playing a trick on each other or anything. They even start to make notes of how they leave the doll before they go to work to make sure that they're not just forgetting and just being idiots.

[00:19:08] Adam Cox: Um, but the doll still moves. and then one day they discover notes around the apartment. Now these weren't ordinary notes. They were tiny bits of parchment with the words, help me help us. 

[00:19:20] Kyle Risi: Shit. Help us. Yeah Oh my god a split personality Annabelle 

[00:19:24] Adam Cox: doll And so they were adamant It's not them because apparently they didn't own any parchment paper in their house.

[00:19:30] Adam Cox: Just regular old, printer paper 

[00:19:32] Adam Cox: so obviously they're really confused. They don't really quite sure what to make of this. and so they thought, perhaps it's one of their friends playing a prank, but then no one else has been in the apartment. they've got no idea and the messages keep appearing. And so, like rational people, they don't think that the doll is haunted to begin with. Their first thoughts is that perhaps someone is breaking in and maybe it's a neighbor that's playing pranks. 

[00:19:54] Kyle Risi: Or it's one of the girls, the 

[00:19:56] Adam Cox: lesbians. no, because I think they both realize it's not each other at this point.

[00:19:59] Adam Cox: But I reckon it is. they're not lesbians. That's not confirmed. I reckon it's the 

[00:20:04] Kyle Risi: lesbians. 

[00:20:05] Adam Cox: Anyway, so if there's 

[00:20:06] Kyle Risi: any foul running about, if there's anything going afoul, it's always the lesbians because they live in the shadows. Um, I'm not sure they do. They do. They do. It's true. 

[00:20:16] Adam Cox: Okay. Well, um, so what was I saying? Yeah, they think it could have been a break in like a neighbor. So they look for signs of a break in and there's nothing. So one night they come back from work and they find that the doll is back on Donna's bed, where it belongs.

[00:20:29] Adam Cox: But on closer inspection, when they check on the doll, they find red markings on it. Now it's never confirmed exactly what those markings are, but it's believed to be blood. Whose blood? Don't know. What's Annabelle been up to? Where was the blood? I think it's just like all either across her face or on her dress.

[00:20:46] Adam Cox: So this is enough for them to think, okay, something is up with this freaky doll.

[00:20:50] Adam Cox: And so they call in a medium. The medium comes into the building, sits down, and tells the girls that the name of the spirit that is communicating through the doll is Annabelle Higgins. She was a young girl whose body was found in the field where the apartment now stands. Shit. Now the medium 

[00:21:08] Kyle Risi: says Hang on, so that's suggesting that when her mother gave her the doll, the doll wasn't haunted.

[00:21:14] Kyle Risi: Wasn't haunted, no. But then, because she had died on that spot, she needed some way of channeling into the atmosphere and she found this doll she wasn't given a haunted doll she became haunted 

[00:21:26] Adam Cox: yep so that's the thing that's there's something around the place obviously where they live where this spirit came to be and came into Donna's life and so the medium says Annabelle is still there in spirit form and she's chosen the girls because they seem like nice human beings they're really empathetic is that the right word?

[00:21:44] Adam Cox: Empathetic? 

[00:21:45] Kyle Risi: Empathy? Well, I mean, , possibly they're nice, but it sounds like she's awful then, if she's passing them weird notes and 

[00:21:51] Adam Cox: shit, and... that bit doesn't make sense, but what the medium's saying is that the doll, , is... Found them empathetic. Yeah, and chosen to be with them because they're nice people, they're nurses.

[00:21:59] Adam Cox: I see. Everything like that, so happy to be around them. And so Donna feels compassion for the spirit and gives her permission to stay with them. essentially they've got like a new roommate called Annabelle, the doll. 

[00:22:11] Kyle Risi: And what they're just happy to live with her .

[00:22:12] Kyle Risi: They're not afraid 

[00:22:13] Adam Cox: or anything. At this stage, they're not afraid because there's not been any real trouble. Hang on, you said at this 

[00:22:18] Kyle Risi: stage. Shit's about to get real, right? 

[00:22:21] Adam Cox: Let's start to get a little bit more creepy now, you know, apart from all the weird notes and the potential blood one night whilst the girls were on a night shift Donna's friend, Lou, stays over, as he sometimes would. Now, Lou wasn't particularly fond of the doll, and the doll quickly returns that sentiment. He's in bed, asleep, but he suddenly wakes up and feels like something is instantly wrong.

[00:22:42] Adam Cox: He looks around the room, but everything appears normal, and he goes about trying to get back to sleep when he catches Annabelle at the bottom of his bed. Doing 

[00:22:53] Adam Cox: what? 

[00:22:54] Adam Cox: Well to begin with, she's just looking at him.

[00:22:56] Adam Cox: Fucking hell. And so he doesn't break eye contact initially. And he's almost paralyzed with fear though. And then Annabelle starts to climb up the bed. Shit. Onto Lou's chest and then starts to strangle him. What? He tries to fight the 

[00:23:13] Kyle Risi: doll off. Is this real? Is this a count from 

[00:23:17] Adam Cox: him? 

[00:23:17] This is what he apparently said that happened to him 

[00:23:20] Adam Cox: so Annabelle tries to strangle him. Tries to strangle him and he can't break her off and he blacks out. 

[00:23:25] Kyle Risi: She is a raggedy 

[00:23:26] Adam Cox: doll by the way. But with this spirit of Annabelle, this little girl in the doll, strong enough to strangle a grown man. , so he comes to the next morning and he notices claw marks on his chest and he's freaked out and so when the girls Donna and Angie learn of this they're all scared and You know up until this point it hasn't been an issue But now things have gone dark pretty quick.

[00:23:48] Adam Cox: The girls call in a priest called Father Lawrence and they tell them Everything that has happened. Father 

[00:23:55] Kyle Risi: Lawrence Llewellyn 

[00:23:56] Adam Cox: Bowen? I don't think so. I don't think he's there to do any decorating. Why not? Well, he 

[00:24:00] Kyle Risi: absolutely should be. Maybe. Give Annabelle a makeover. That's why she looks a bit more, Ugh!

[00:24:05] Kyle Risi: Now, because, he was like, sweetheart, this is not 

[00:24:07] Adam Cox: gonna work. He does like flowery curtains, which I think she's wearing. Kind of flowery dress. 

[00:24:12] Adam Cox: And so Father Lawrence, uh, refers the girls to a couple. Named Ed and Lorraine Warren. Now if those names sound familiar, They do. That's because they star in the Conjuring films. Yeah, they do. Yeah, so they're based on real people. And, Ed and Lorraine, uh, had adventures in real life tackling demons and ghosts.

[00:24:32] Adam Cox: Oh really? 

[00:24:33] Adam Cox: Eddard Warren was a self proclaimed demonologist, which I'm not sure how real that is, or if you can get a doctorate from that, because I 

[00:24:41] Kyle Risi: Well no, because he's self proclaimed. 

[00:24:43] Adam Cox: Well, yeah, this is what I mean, like, how do you be, how do you know that, okay, I'm a demonologist?

[00:24:48] Adam Cox: When do you recognize yourself as one of those? When 

[00:24:50] Kyle Risi: you're doing it. Fine. When you've created a niche for yourself. But then what's And then 

[00:24:55] Adam Cox: you're just doing it. But then, I don't know, what's he studying, or how did he go, oh, that's a demon. because he's 

[00:24:59] Kyle Risi: going out in the field and he's like chilling out in haunted houses like getting an order taken from them I'll have an Aperol spritz, please.

[00:25:07] Kyle Risi: Mr. Ghost. And yeah, he's just hanging out with ghosts. 

[00:25:10] Adam Cox: Well, yeah Anyway, I find a bit weird. But anyway, Lorraine His wife was a trance medium which is the art of allowing a spirit to take control of the body mind and energy and basically in order to communicate or to speak to the other world through written or verbal communication.

[00:25:26] Adam Cox: Now, they both individually had a draw to the paranormal world from a young age. Lorraine said that she could see auras around people from the age of eight, and Ed grew up in a haunted house. So they shared this common interest, which is one of the reasons they were drawn to each other. they were, I guess you could say, the real world.

[00:25:44] Adam Cox: Ghostbusters. 

[00:25:45] Kyle Risi: Yeah, they sound pretty qualified to me. Yeah. If that's their background. 

[00:25:49] Adam Cox: They said that they've worked on over 10, 000 cases over 50 years. Oh, it's 

[00:25:53] Kyle Risi: hard work, but it's 

[00:25:54] Adam Cox: honest work. 10, 000 cases. That's a lot. That's a lot, isn't it? and I think they wouldn't get paid. I think they've just asked for like their travel to be reimbursed and hotel stay and stuff like that.

[00:26:04] Adam Cox: Sure. They wouldn't actually get paid any money. So what else they're 

[00:26:07] Kyle Risi: doing other than this? So they're not really getting paid. They're breaking even every month. 

[00:26:10] Adam Cox: they also have a museum and they do a lot of kind of like talks and things like this, these events. And so I think they get their money that way.

[00:26:19] Adam Cox: So all these, artifacts that they collect and stuff like that. Haunted items and stuff from haunted houses. They were put in their museum. Wow. And this museum 

[00:26:26] Kyle Risi: exists? This 

[00:26:27] Adam Cox: museum exists. 

[00:26:27] Adam Cox: So Ed and Lorraine, , they were essentially the go to people for religious authorities to call in when things got unworldly. After hearing Donna and Angie and Lou's story, the Warrens determined that Annabelle's main goal was to take possession of Donna's soul. So Annabelle was a demon.

[00:26:45] Adam Cox: , maybe not this young girl that got found, she was actually a demon. And so she , somehow attached herself to the doll. And the Warrens said that demons don't normally possess items or things, instead they possess people. And therefore, perhaps this demon wanted to transfer her consciousness to Donna, essentially she needed to get to Donna.

[00:27:04] Adam Cox: And so Ed and Lorraine, bring in a priest, that exercises the apartment. they then decide , they can't keep Annabelle with Donna anymore, she can't be trusted. And so they take the doll away, in order for Donna to survive. And whilst driving the doll back to Ed and Lorraine's place... Ed claims the doll somehow took possession of the car or wheeled the brakes to stop working.

[00:27:26] Adam Cox: Really? And so to try I wanna go back to Donna! To go back to Donna. And so to try and get Annabelle to stop, he threw holy water on the back seat of the car, , to try and prevent an accident. Did she scissor? She's like, GAH! Pfft! My phone! I guess it worked. 

[00:27:41] Adam Cox: Annabelle is actually exercised several times, because it's believed that this dark energy remains within her. Mm hmm. Um, so, Annabelle is now stored in the Occult Museum in Connecticut. 

[00:27:53] Kyle Risi: The Occult? Do you mean the Occult Museum?

[00:27:58] Kyle Risi: How would you spell that? A C C. U l t, 

[00:28:03] Adam Cox: uh, it starts with an O. Occult. That's 

[00:28:06] Kyle Risi: what I said. Occult. Oh, I've You said a, oh, sorry. Occult. Yeah. Did I say a? Yeah. I'm so stupid. I'm a stupid bitch. Occult. Yeah, but you said occult. It's not a 

[00:28:17] Adam Cox: Yakult. No, I said OC Occult. The Occult Museum in Connecticut. The Occult Museum.

[00:28:20] Adam Cox: Yeah. Why are you saying it weird? Occult. 

[00:28:23] Kyle Risi: Okay, the Occult Museum in Connecticut. And if you had asked me to guess which state this is in, I probably would have said like Maine or, Like up there, Connecticut or Rhode Island. 

[00:28:36] Adam Cox: I was going to say, if you said Maine, then you'd been wrong. No, I would have 

[00:28:38] Kyle Risi: been wrong, 

[00:28:38] Adam Cox: but I would have been close.

[00:28:39] Adam Cox: Yeah. Okay. so it's a museum that actually, um, well, it did exist. It's actually closed down now, but it existed for quite some time. So where's Animal? Animal's still at the museum. Let me get to it. 

[00:28:51] Kyle Risi: Okay. I thought you said it's closed down. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Say it again. Say it again. So the Occult Museum.

[00:28:56] Adam Cox: So Annabelle has been stored in the occult museum, however you say it, in Connecticut. And Ed and Lorraine founded this museum in the basement of their research center. And so, as I said, yeah, with Annabelle, there's all these artifacts that Ed and Lorraine have brought to the museum from their investigations over the years.

[00:29:14] Adam Cox: A priest from Hertford once visited the Warrens home before the doll was put in a glass cabinet. And he didn't take the story seriously and he threw the doll across the room, proclaiming that God was more powerful than the devil. And on his way back to the rectory, he got into a serious accident with a tractor trailer.

[00:29:31] Adam Cox: And did he die? We don't know what actually happened, I think he survived, but he wasn't in a good way. . And , it's events like this, which has made the Warrens put Annabelle in her glass cabinet, which she's believed to still be in, warning people not to open.

[00:29:45] Adam Cox: Positively don't open. Positively don't open. A priest would come in regularly to bless the museum, including Annabelle, which helped to contain the evil within her. Lorraine generally seemed to think that the doll was pure evil and would urge people to treat the doll with respect to avoid bad luck happening to them.

[00:30:02] Adam Cox: She would avoid staring at the doll herself, , but that didn't stop the museum putting on tours. , during one particular tour, however, a man found the story of Annabelle amusing.

[00:30:11] Adam Cox: He proceeded to bang on the glass case and say something to the effect of like. , if you're real, put a scratch on me, or, you can't hurt me, that kind of thing. It's a weird thing to 

[00:30:21] Kyle Risi: say, specifically, put a 

[00:30:22] Adam Cox: scratch on me. Yeah, I mean, I'm quoting that, but it's a very, it's a Very specific.

[00:30:26] Adam Cox: Very specific. 

[00:30:26] Kyle Risi: Did he end up with a scratch 

[00:30:28] Adam Cox: on him? Well, Lou ended up with scratches on his chest when he was being strangled. Right. So maybe it's in reference to that. Oh, I see. Oh, okay, of course. but he ignored all the warnings from like the staff and he banged on the dolls boxed and Whilst traveling home him and his girlfriend were laughing about the doll when suddenly they crashed He was killed instantly whilst his girlfriend did survive, but She was hospitalized for over a year.

[00:30:54] Adam Cox: Over a year? Over a year. With what? I think she was in a coma to begin with and then rehabilitation. Shocking. Yeah, it's pretty horrendous. You don't want to cross this doll. No, 

[00:31:05] Adam Cox: Whilst the museum was still open, you could book a dinner date with Annabelle.

[00:31:10] Adam Cox: You could have dinner in the museum right next to Annabelle in her glass cabinet, and it cost 170 at the time. But guests had to sign a waiver form that said you absolved the host, Lorraine Warren, from any liability or traumatic influence associated with the items or being in the presence of Annabelle.

[00:31:27] Adam Cox: Do you know what? I 

[00:31:28] Kyle Risi: think that's just theater. That just adds to it, doesn't it? That adds to the, ooh. Scaryness of it and I think that's quite fitting that she's a doll and you can have like dinner with her like a little kid. Tea Party. Yeah, a little tea party. Have some tea. Ah, you can't have any because you're behind a glass wall.

[00:31:44] Kyle Risi: Ha 

[00:31:44] Adam Cox: ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha. And yeah, members of the public could go and visit Annabelle. as recently as a few years ago, but once Ed and Lorraine died, the museum closed. Oh, when did they die? I think like 2010 to 2015, something like that. Yeah, so not that long 

[00:32:02] Kyle Risi: ago.

[00:32:02] Kyle Risi: Did they not have any kids to leave it to? 

[00:32:04] Adam Cox: They did, and I think one of them perhaps still carries on like investigations. Mm hmm. But there was something going on with, I don't really understand it. It's called zoning, where the museum is. 

[00:32:14] Kyle Risi: Sure, like it's a zoning thing in America. It's a political 

[00:32:18] Adam Cox: thing.

[00:32:18] Adam Cox: Yeah, and that's why it closed down. I'm not quite sure what that's about, but zoning. so as far as we know, Annabelle is still sat inside her glass cabinet . . She's just alone. It's getting all dusty. Well, we assume she's still in there.

[00:32:30] Adam Cox: Is she out walking around putting hexes on people? Yeah. Um. Not everyone is convinced, of course, of the Annabelle story. Skeptics argue that perhaps there was perfectly reasonable explanations for all these strange occurrences. Maybe the doll's movements were just coincidences. Uh, perhaps the notes were a prank.

[00:32:49] Adam Cox: But a lot of the story is told by Ed and Lorraine, and they were the ones that profited from the doll. Not Donna and her friends. Sure. So maybe they created or embellished the truth. Yeah, 

[00:33:00] Kyle Risi: yeah, bit of motivation there to make a bit more money.

[00:33:03] Kyle Risi: Because they're not being paid, are they? 

[00:33:04] Adam Cox: No, and so I think they've took inspiration from real life events and then made it more exciting, like you said, and then that kind of helps with when you do want to go have dinner with Annabelle. You signing this waiver form, it's all the drama with it.

[00:33:17] Adam Cox: so in the end, Annabelle remains a bit of a puzzling enigma as it continues to mystify and intrigue. The fact she is a real doll and seems to have caused some unusual and very bad luck for people in real life, let alone the films that were created about her, it kind of blurs this line between fact and fiction, making us question what is true and what is a ghost story?

[00:33:39] Adam Cox: And that's, that's Annabelle. 

[00:33:41] Kyle Risi: That's the story of 

[00:33:42] Adam Cox: Annabelle. 

[00:33:43] Kyle Risi: I had no idea that she wasn't this porcelain kind of mechanical doll. In fact, she was just a Raggedy Ann doll. Just 

[00:33:51] Adam Cox: a Raggedy Ann doll. Yeah. Average Ann doll. 

[00:33:55] Kyle Risi: I love this type of stuff because there's this very clear boundary between reality and mystery.

[00:34:01] Kyle Risi: Like she is real. She exists. She's a 

[00:34:04] Adam Cox: physical thing. She's in a museum. She was owned by Ed and Lorraine. They were demonologists. Yeah. And 

[00:34:09] Kyle Risi: there's like anecdotes and experiences, first hand experiences of people that essentially know people. Like, fair enough, they're dead now. But Donna and her roommate, they're probably still alive out there if they're young enough.

[00:34:23] Kyle Risi: Yeah. So it's rooted in reality and it's current and it's real. And that's just, that's what makes the stories really creepy. 

[00:34:30] Adam Cox: Yeah. I think that's why it's such an interesting story and why these films were created because there's this air of mystery of going, what is real?

[00:34:37] Adam Cox: What is not? Yeah. The one thing I will say is because so much of the story is by Ed and Lorraine. There is a question mark. Does Donna truly exist? Or did Ed and Lorraine create this history? Oh, this backstory, this provenance. For the doll. Yeah. And so they would perhaps get in these priests and stuff to bless the museum and do all that sort of ritual.

[00:35:00] Adam Cox: But was it all for show? We don't know. I mean,, they believed that they were demonologists and that's how they earned their living. 

[00:35:06] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Ooh, creepy. Yeah, so I didn't realize that we don't technically know whether Donna and Angie were even real.

[00:35:14] Kyle Risi: Yeah, that's a bit 

[00:35:15] Adam Cox: disappointing. And then if the deaths of the, the guy in the accident, the road 

[00:35:20] Kyle Risi: accident, cause. Everything's coming from them too, right? 

[00:35:23] Adam Cox: So yeah, interesting. I think when people have really tried to dig into it, they haven't been able to find some of the records. Names don't match up 

[00:35:29] Adam Cox: it's a great story. Yeah. 

[00:35:30] Kyle Risi: Great. Cool. Great. So that brings me into the driving seat. 

[00:35:35] Kyle Risi: So for my story... We're actually going to be exploring the Winchester Mystery House. Okay. Have you 

[00:35:41] Adam Cox: heard of this before? I've never heard 

[00:35:42] Kyle Risi: of it. So for this story, we're actually stepping back into a time in the late 1800s, finding ourselves in New Haven in Connecticut. Ooh, 

[00:35:52] Adam Cox: Connecticut again. Yeah, 

[00:35:53] Kyle Risi: it always happens in Connecticut.

[00:35:55] Kyle Risi: Creepy Connecticut. Where we meet a woman named Sarah Winchester, a figure who was surrounded by an air of tragedy. She'd experienced a cascade of losses. that would break anyone's spirit. Her father in law had passed away, and not long after, her husband William succumbed to tuberculosis, a deadly illness that claimed many lives during that era.

[00:36:17] Kyle Risi: But most heart wrenching of all was the loss of her only child, leaving Sarah utterly alone. Now, you might recognise the name Winchester, because it carried immense weight in the 19th and the 20th century, especially in America. Her husband and her family were the family behind the infamous repeating rifle, which is a rifle with a clever mechanism

[00:36:41] Kyle Risi: which meant that his handler was able to fire up to 14 rounds without needing to reload. And this weapon itself reshaped the American West and had become a household name. Yet despite the fame and fortune attached to the Winchester name, it seemed to offer Sarah no shield. against the relentless blows of fate.

[00:37:03] Kyle Risi: Upon her husband's death, Sarah had inherited half of the Winchester Repeating Rifle Company, which left her with an unimaginable fortune, but also with a heavy heart, because this was a time when the rifle company had a significant impact on American society, resulting in the deaths of countless lives across the American continent from Native Americans to warring American soldiers and their blood , was on the Winchester family name's hands.

[00:37:35] Kyle Risi: Okay. 

[00:37:35] Kyle Risi: So soon after William's death... , overwhelmed by loss and tragedy, Sarah decided to turn to Boston's most famous psychic of the time, and this is a man named Adam Coombs. Now Sarah was seeking a glimpse into the spiritual realm for a reassuring message from her husband, who she felt was very much present around her even after he had died.

[00:37:57] Kyle Risi: okay. But rather than a reassuring message from beyond the grave, Adam Coombs delivered a dark blow to Sarah. He told Sarah that her family had been cursed and they were being tormented by the relentless spirits claimed by the very weapon that her family had 

[00:38:16] Adam Cox: pioneered. So everyone that weapon had ever killed.

[00:38:19] Adam Cox: was taunting Sarah. That is right, 

[00:38:22] Kyle Risi: and this vile curse had also been the very thing that had robbed Sarah of her loved ones, and it would eventually claim her life as well. Ooh. But, through William the psychic offers a glimpse of hope to Sarah. He tells her that she will be able to evade the curse by building a house, a haven, if you will, For her, the spirits of her family, , and all of the restless souls who had fallen by the Winchester rifle.

[00:38:50] Kyle Risi: Okay. 

[00:38:51] Kyle Risi: Crucially though, the psychic told her that the construction of this house was never... To stop for as long as hammers echoed and nails were driven, the ghost would be kept unsettled and also unable to harm Sarah. 

[00:39:07] Adam Cox: So this house can't be 

[00:39:09] Kyle Risi: completed. Work on this house cannot stop because if it does, she will die as a result of the curse.

[00:39:16] Kyle Risi: Oh my God. So Sarah found herself, obviously, in a bizarre situation. She believed that her family was haunted, cursed even. The souls that had met their end through their family's creation were wandering the afterlife aimlessly as they sought refuge. But, what would be a daunting task for most, was actually really easy for Sarah, given her unimaginable wealth.

[00:39:40] Kyle Risi: Now, since she was the major shareholder in the family's company, she held pretty much a 50 percent stake in the company. This meant that she had an income of 1, 000 a day. Now adjusted for inflation, this was the equivalent of 26, 000. every single day. And this was at a time where there was no such thing as income tax.

[00:40:01] Adam Cox: Damn, that's like footballers wages and stuff. Yeah. Isn't 

[00:40:04] Kyle Risi: it? But on top of this, she had also inherited a whopping 20 million dollars in cash back then. Jeez. Which is over half a billion dollars today. And this made Sarah Winchester one of the richest women on earth. So On the advice of the psychic, she decided to move to a remote location in Santa Clara in California and this is where the stage was set.

[00:40:29] Kyle Risi: Here in the quiet, she would begin constructing a house like no other this earth had ever seen before. And this is a real house. It actually exists. Exists. It does. Even today. Even today. No way. Sarah had employed 16 shifts of builders and carpenters who she paid three times over the minimum wage in order to guarantee that work would continue 24 hours around the clock, 365 days a year.

[00:40:58] Kyle Risi: Construction was never meant to stop. 

[00:41:02] Adam Cox: That must have been ridiculously expensive. 

[00:41:05] Kyle Risi: It was, but remember she's got 26, 000 per day to pay for this, right? yeah. And she's worth over half a 

[00:41:11] Adam Cox: billion. So can you take a tea break? Or does someone need to be like hammering a nail 

[00:41:16] Kyle Risi: constantly? I mean they have, she has teams of people.

[00:41:18] Kyle Risi: Yeah. So they are, yes they're taking breaks, but there's always someone working. 

[00:41:22] Adam Cox: And how do you get to sleep with all the noise going on? 

[00:41:24] Kyle Risi: Well, this is the thing. She doesn't, right? And I think over the years, she takes solace in having the comfort of knowing that there is movement and activity in the house.

[00:41:33] Kyle Risi: So almost immediately when work began, the first order of business was to build a seance room, but this was no. Ordinary room it had just one entrance and three exits a perplexing design I guess but it was designed to ensure that no one would be able to leave through the same room or the same door that they'd entered into.

[00:41:58] Kyle Risi: I'm trying to 

[00:41:58] Adam Cox: picture 

[00:41:59] Kyle Risi: that. Yeah. So initially when I heard this, I was like, but surely all entrances are exits as well. But I guess if you have only a door handle on one side, right. Okay. Then it means that you can enter through one, but you can't exit through one of those doors. So, yeah. It means that you would never exit through the same door that you entered. I see.

[00:42:17] Kyle Risi: So it was initially believed that the seance room would serve as a place for the grieving Sarah to connect with her husband. Now, spiritualism was kind of on the rise during the late 1800s, so builders didn't find this request strange or unusual. Instead, they pitied her. They had this kind of sense of compassion for Sarah, so they hurried to complete the room so she would be able to make her connection from, beyond.

[00:42:43] Kyle Risi: However, as work continued, confusion set in amongst the builders due to the absence of any kind of architect to guide them. Instead, Sarah Winchester herself would emerge each morning with new building plans, as if they had been conjured. Out of thin air. Right. But unbeknownst to them, these mysterious plans were being communicated to Sarah from the spirit world.

[00:43:06] Adam Cox: Right. It's like, oh, you need a bigger bedroom and an en suite and maybe a turret. 

[00:43:12] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Or, and then they'd build the turret and they'd be like, oh, we don't the turret, demolish it. And they'd have to build somewhere else. And to say that the designs were bizarre. It's 100 percent an understatement.

[00:43:23] Kyle Risi: So rooms would have like windows that looked directly into other rooms. There would be staircases that would lead to like pretty much blank dead ends. there would be stairs that would extend over 50 stairs, but Ultimately only rise just a few feet, so they'd be really tiny stairs and they would meander up in like really small steps.

[00:43:46] Adam Cox: And what, what is the rationale for that? It doesn't sound practical. 

[00:43:49] Kyle Risi: it doesn't. Now, when we look into a little bit deeper, it turns out that in her later years, like she suffered from chronic, chronic. arthritis. Right. So she could only manage small amounts of stairs, right? She couldn't lift like the quarter of a foot that a normal stair is.

[00:44:05] Kyle Risi: Right. So maybe she got these builders to build smaller stairs. 

[00:44:08] Adam Cox: And she's like, Oh, it's the spirits. They want these tiny stairs. 

[00:44:13] Kyle Risi: Yeah. So there'll be doors that would open to reveal nothing but brick walls. There'll be secret passages that would lead to whole sections of the house that would offer access to dozens and dozens of different rooms.

[00:44:27] Kyle Risi: And the foremen couldn't help but think if they kept going at this relentless pace, that the mansion would become this labyrinth of, this weird absurdity. A maze, almost. Exactly. It was as if the house was turning in on itself. That's exactly how they described it.

[00:44:43] Kyle Risi: Becoming this kind of weird, endless puzzle that just grew more and more complex and less sensible with each passing year. And the charm of the original modest eight bedroom farmhouse that they originally had bought to start building on had just completely been lost and absorbed into this monstrosity, essentially.

[00:45:03] Adam Cox: Imagine if you're like a worker working on the house, you want to get the satisfaction in completing the house, right? And then using that to showcase what you have built. Yep. But you couldn't use that for this house. You'd be like, uh, this is a mess.

[00:45:14] Adam Cox: Don't 

[00:45:14] Kyle Risi: get me wrong. The house looks stunning. I'm going to show you pictures of it in a minute. Oh, cool. It's messed up. But at the same time, these builders, you've got to remember they're being paid more than any other construction worker in the city. They've been paid three times the minimum wage, right ?

[00:45:29] Kyle Risi: So they're not just going to, they're not going to question, they're just going to keep on building, keep on hammering, doing their shift. Yeah. 

[00:45:36] Kyle Risi: Even the building material seems to play a weird part in this cryptic story as well, because Sarah's explicit instructions were that the construction could use nothing but redwood, but she hated, hated. Site of Redwood

[00:45:51] Kyle Risi: So she also demanded that every single wooden surface be stained and styled to look nothing like the original material. Oh my God. And by the end workers had used a staggering 78,000 liters of paint just to disguise the paint work. 

[00:46:07] Adam Cox: That is a ridiculous amount. And just that feels like it defeats the purpose almost.

[00:46:12] Adam Cox: It does. 

[00:46:13] Kyle Risi: It almost feels like she's just creating work. Yeah. Yeah. For the sake of the work. So now when it comes to the size of this mansion, it was never really finished, but it did reach seven stories at its highest point. And the estate sprawled over land that could fit more than 160 football fields.

[00:46:32] Kyle Risi: Wow. And was all allocated to be built on. Okay. If she continued to live, she would have continued building. It boasted 161 rooms, 40 bedrooms. Two ballrooms. You'll also find 47 fireplaces that you can gather around, but not all of them had functional chimneys. There were 17 actual chimneys and traces of two more that were never completed, but the others were just fake.

[00:46:58] Kyle Risi: The house also had two basements, which is bizarre. I mean, to me that doesn't make sense. You have one basement. Well, it's under the house, but you have two separate 

[00:47:05] Adam Cox: basements. I don't know that you sometimes go to like a shopping mall now, sometimes like lower ground and lower lower ground. Yeah, 

[00:47:12] Kyle Risi: possibly.

[00:47:12] Kyle Risi: That's my lower, lower ground. it had three elevators and astonishingly, it had 10, 000 individual panes of glass throughout the 

[00:47:23] Adam Cox: Entire house. 

[00:47:23] Kyle Risi: The crown jewel was an organ.

[00:47:26] Kyle Risi: That was perched inside the attic as if ready for anyone to provide a haunting soundtrack to a real life 

[00:47:34] Adam Cox: mystery. Jeez, what houses come with an organ in the attic? 

[00:47:38] Adam Cox: I can't even picture how big this is.

[00:47:40] Kyle Risi: Right so i think now's probably a good time to have a look at some of the photos of the house this is a plan of the house. 

[00:47:49] Adam Cox: . That is unreal. I can't even, that's 

[00:47:53] Kyle Risi: a lot. There's a lot, right? It's massive. Do you want to see an actual picture of it?

[00:47:57] Kyle Risi: Yeah, let's 

[00:47:57] Adam Cox: see the actual picture of the house. That's weird, it looks like a housing estate. 

[00:48:01] Kyle Risi: It does look like a housing estate, doesn't it? It's 

[00:48:03] Adam Cox: beautiful. Yeah, it's it's not obvious that they're all joined up. It's like a bunch of terrace houses and courtyards. And all sorts in one hotel complex.

[00:48:13] Adam Cox: It's really well manicured as well. It is. 

[00:48:14] Adam Cox: So this is a recent photo 

[00:48:16] Kyle Risi: Yeah. I only took this from their website the other day. Okay. there's an image of one of the 

[00:48:20] Adam Cox: ballrooms. That's what the ballroom looks like. Wow. That's nice. 

[00:48:24] Kyle Risi: Weird staircases.

[00:48:26] Adam Cox: It is quite an impressive looking house. The grounds are huge, aren't they? 

[00:48:29] Kyle Risi: It's mental. 

[00:48:30] Adam Cox: Is it a hotel or something? Now? Or do people actually live in it? 

[00:48:34] Kyle Risi: It's the Winchester Mystery House, and you can stay in it if you want to.

[00:48:37] Kyle Risi: You can pay to stay in it, and they do various tours things like that. It's just gorgeous. In my opinion, it's absolutely stunning. 

[00:48:43] Adam Cox: Yeah, I'd be happy to stay there, as long as the ghosts aren't there. I hope they've moved out. 

[00:48:47] Kyle Risi: So the pictures reveal what appears to be like this haphazard collection of structures, as if someone had just placed various pieces of different puzzle pieces together, like not even caring whether or not they even fitted together. Together at all it was just like this higgledy piggledy kind of mishmash like the warren from harry potter you know the weasley's house yeah yeah it gives me that vibe even though it doesn't look like that but when people are describing it that's how they describe the interior and the house doesn't have.

[00:49:16] Kyle Risi: Mealy 7 floors it has 7 floors of chaos this kind of architectural labyrinth that's just designed with no. Clear plan in mind whatsoever. 

[00:49:26] Kyle Risi: But it's not just the curious architecture and the unsettling deco that catches your eye. There's also this weird pattern that seems to emerge throughout the entire house and there seems to be this peculiar obsession with the number 13 as well. that Sarah had written into all the different plans. 

[00:49:42] Kyle Risi: One floor boasted 13 bathrooms, each climbing 13 stairs, and within each bathroom you'll find 13 individual window panes within the window as well. And how 

[00:49:53] Adam Cox: did she land on that number, 

[00:49:55] Kyle Risi: do we know? I don't know, it's weird, it's almost like if you are trying to evade spirits. You don't really want to be attracting them with the number 13, right?

[00:50:05] Kyle Risi: That's the last thing 

[00:50:06] Adam Cox: you want to be doing. I was gonna say, like, wasn't number 13 bad luck? 

[00:50:09] Kyle Risi: But at the same time, , the psychic told her that you need to build a house refuge for these spirits. So maybe actually that is like acting like a beacon to these different spirits. okay.

[00:50:20] Kyle Risi: Yeah, that makes sense. But what's bizarre, even though there were 13 bathrooms in this house, only one of them worked. 

[00:50:25] Adam Cox: So they're just for show? 

[00:50:26] Kyle Risi: Essentially, they're just for show. No running water, only one of them had plumbing, and that was the one that she had access to, and that's the only one that she 

[00:50:33] Adam Cox: used.

[00:50:33] Adam Cox: Like, surely you'd have a guest bathroom? I don't know if she's got guests. She never 

[00:50:37] Kyle Risi: really had any guests come over, it was really bizarre. She lived in isolation, essentially.

[00:50:42] Kyle Risi: And so leading up to this bathroom, you pass through a room with 13 wall panels, and that leads you into the carriage area where all the characters live. And essentially here, there are 13 different slots where 13 different characters can be parked. And what's incredible is that this is the first time that the world ever sees this kind of this area where you can kind of park your carriages. Kind of undercover. So essentially. She invents the garish.

[00:51:09] Adam Cox: She invented garages yeah pretty much no need to make this crazy house she invented garages.

[00:51:15] Kyle Risi: So she's quite pioneering woman in the architectural kind of world if you will even though she was receiving all of her plans from the spirit world.

[00:51:22] Adam Cox: Are you saying we have ghosts to thank for guarantees 

[00:51:25] Kyle Risi: the idea of the garage came from the afterworld. Yeah. Like some, I could just imagine some kind of busybody ghost going, do you know what? You guys need to learn what garages are. Yeah. You need them. Here's a gift from the spirit world to the living realm.

[00:51:39] Kyle Risi: You don't leave your carriage 

[00:51:40] Adam Cox: out in the open. Put it away.

[00:51:42] Kyle Risi: So chandelier fixtures that would logically hold 12. Gas bulbs were all modified to accommodate a 13th there were also even 13 holes in the sink drains as well that had been custom made just for this purpose as well.

[00:51:55] Kyle Risi: Very bespoke. 

[00:51:56] Kyle Risi: Some people believe that she was just embracing this kind of, this number to kind of ward off spirits. However, those familiar with the story might suggest that it's, as I said, like a beacon to draw in the spirits affected by the Winchester Rifle kind of company as a safe space for them.

[00:52:12] Kyle Risi: Yeah. So it's smart, I think. Smart, yeah. Sarah was constantly balancing this kind of need to pacify the benevolent spirits while outwitting the malevolent ones.

[00:52:24] Adam Cox: Yes, keeping them happy, keeping them on side, but then obviously deterring and keeping the bad spirits out. 

[00:52:29] Kyle Risi: Exactly. Now, you might think that mirrors are just everyday items, but not in the Winchester house, apparently, because mirrors were forbidden. Out of all 160 rooms across this entire mansion, there were only two small mirrors that were found within the premises.

[00:52:46] Kyle Risi: And why? You might ask, well, they say that spirits find mirrors tormenting as a reminder that they're not alive. Okay, you can imagine like all the staff that lived or worked in the house, like having to live in a world where there just aren't mirrors.

[00:53:03] Kyle Risi: So they would smuggle these little mirrors. Into the house, and they would wear them like these little compact mirrors, which were really expensive back then and made to carry around these little pocket mirrors at all times concealed within their uniform. Just checking on their appearance in a secretive way.

[00:53:16] Kyle Risi: Why would 

[00:53:17] Adam Cox: they need to check on their 

[00:53:18] Kyle Risi: appearance? Because mirrors are banned. why would you not want to see a mirror? you're a female maid, right? You walk around, you want to just check your hair's all smooth and nice. 

[00:53:25] Adam Cox: I was thinking of the builders and stuff like that. .

[00:53:27] Adam Cox: Why do they need the mirror to check on their looks? You know 

[00:53:29] Kyle Risi: why. there's. Bill there is putting up a shelf. I'm going to go, Ooh, drop, drop my feather duster. 

[00:53:37] Adam Cox: Um, that is bizarre. But then I guess, again, the whole mirror thing is to obviously, yeah, attract ghosts or spirits 

[00:53:43] Kyle Risi: yeah. You don't want to upset the bad ones. Right.

[00:53:46] Kyle Risi: Now, it is said that Sarah would host these lavish dinner parties, but not for the living. She would meticulously place out all the different plates and the cutlery sets and all the kind of different things that go along with that for kind of these lavish feasts inviting the spirits that are dwelling within the house.

[00:54:03] Kyle Risi: But when malevolent entities made their presence known, that's when the kind of like the maze like architecture of the house really served its purpose. Because if she sensed that there was an evil spirit tailing her. Sarah would like quickly vanish into a hidden passageway or descend down a staircase leading to nowhere, only then to retrace her steps.

[00:54:25] Kyle Risi: And this kind of bewildering design was purely a defense, like a way to throw off the dark spirits from trailing her. This is why there was also 40 bedrooms because. , she wasn't hosting large gatherings of human guests. She was also ensuring that she could stay one step ahead of the evil spirits that were seeking their revenge by never sleeping in the same bedroom two nights in a row.

[00:54:49] Kyle Risi: Wow. And that's why there were 40 

[00:54:50] Adam Cox: bedrooms. That's a lot of bed sheets. And I mean, is she stripping the bed before she moves on to the next bed or does she have 40 sets? Of 

[00:54:58] Kyle Risi: bedsheets. Who knows? Maybe she's not. Maybe she's only slept in it once, so the maid will just make the bed and that's it. But remember, she's not the one cleaning the bed bedsheets, is she?

[00:55:06] Adam Cox: That's true. She's got all these maid. She is so rich . 

[00:55:08] Kyle Risi: She is a rich mf . So in 1906, the San Francisco earthquake brought a different kind of havoc to the Winchester House. Just like that, snap my fingers, the building lost three of its seven stories overnight, but 

[00:55:23] Kyle Risi: while much of Northern California just completely lay in ruins, crumbled under the force of the earthquake, the mystery house stood relatively unscathed, preserving the spirit sanctuary they shared with Sarah Winchester. 

[00:55:38] Kyle Risi: It was also one of the very first, houses in the world to have, , gas lighting, and also to have. Running hot water as well and electricity so 

[00:55:48] Kyle Risi: she was employing some pioneering innovations in the building world of the time.

[00:55:53] Kyle Risi: So for 36 years construction went around the clock. Workers took turns to make sure that the building never stopped, always hammering, they were always sawing and painting.

[00:56:04] Kyle Risi: But one night in September 1922, after a brief break in the early hours of the morning, Sarah Winchester died. In her sleep at the age of 80 years old. 

[00:56:16] Adam Cox: so someone had paused construction and that's when she died. A moment 

[00:56:20] Kyle Risi: where all work had just stopped. the team that was on the shift, they'd all just taken a short break.

[00:56:26] Kyle Risi: No one was working. And that was the day that she died at the age of 80 years old. Wow. So upon her death. Sarah's fortune and all of her belongings were bequeathed to her niece. Now, she was the only surviving family member. Now, mysteriously, another eerie layer to this mystery was in her will, which contained 13 sections and was signed 13 times.

[00:56:49] Kyle Risi: And it is documented that it took six weeks for removal people shuttling back and forth, to empty. That's how much stuff she had in this house. She was a hoarder. She was a bit of a hoarder, but she also had some really amazing things as well. Now, strangely enough, despite the house being an all consuming project for nearly 40 years, Sarah made no mention of what should be done with the house.

[00:57:14] Kyle Risi: It was as if, like, this towering symbol of her obsession and her fears, like her darkest fears, just simply vanished from her thoughts, as if, like, it never existed. She never mentioned it. 

[00:57:29] Adam Cox: that seems really strange. Why would she not want something to carry on, 

[00:57:33] Kyle Risi: right? exactly. once she died, maybe that was, it served its purpose, it kept her alive.

[00:57:38] Kyle Risi: Yeah. And I guess there was maybe no one else in the family, but what about her niece? Was she then not succumbed to the curse? I don't know. So for this reason, the house eventually fell into the hands of a local businessman at auction.

[00:57:50] Kyle Risi: And many people thought the house was just practically worthless. It had after all suffered significant damage during the earthquake and was in desperate need of repair. But the sale price for the house equivalent at the time was just 130, 000. 130, 

[00:58:05] Adam Cox: 000 at the time. Today's money. Oh, in today's money? Yeah, so it was like 5, 000 odd dollars.

[00:58:10] Adam Cox: It's 130, 000 and this is four floors? 

[00:58:13] Kyle Risi: Four floors , 161 rooms. That is a steal. It's an absolute steal.

[00:58:19] Kyle Risi: So the businessman probably thought that he was getting a good deal as well, but little did he know is that he just bought a house that was... Essentially cursed that was built for these spirits that were roaming the world 

[00:58:29] Kyle Risi: So the question is, is the Winchester Mystery House really haunted? And that's the burning question. That I now want to delve into real quick, because you see, some say that the maze like mansion was a playground for over a thousand ghosts. With that many around, it stands to reason that at least one would make his presence known, right?

[00:58:51] Kyle Risi: Yeah. So over the years, countless investigators and psychics have braved the night within the walls of the Winchester Mystery House, attempting to find concrete evidence of any supernatural kind of going ons, if you will. But in 19 75, 1 of California's most celebrated psychic investigators, a person called Jeanie Bogan, along with Joy Adams, decided that they were gonna delve into the mystery of the house by conducting a seance at the stroke of midnight. And as they settled into the gloomy seance room of the. which was normally frequented by Sarah Winchester Knightley, something apparently extraordinary happened.

[00:59:28] Kyle Risi: Now, Joy Adams observed that Jeannie appeared to somehow change her appearance. Her face looked like it 40 years in like a mere 5 seconds. And then her hair seemed to turn this really kind of dark shade of grey. And her forehead just developed all these lines and creases in it.

[00:59:49] Kyle Risi: And then suddenly, Jeannie felt this kind of unbearable pain kind of coursing through her body, making it really difficult for her to even stand up, and she felt as though she was experiencing the symptoms of a heart attack. And then she collapses, and then she lets out this mage like scream. And then moments later, she just regains her composure, and breathing just kind of returned back to normal, and then the pain disappears.

[01:00:12] Kyle Risi: And Jeannie kind of explains that she just felt this overwhelming urge of energy just... overtake her body. And it was as if the spirit of Sarah Winchester herself was trying to consume her very being and like, take over her, but she says that she didn't feel any malice whatsoever. In Jeannie's words, she basically encountered a non violent spirit in the form of Sarah Winchester.

[01:00:39] Adam Cox: So is this the only encounter where, I guess a ghost has, taken over someone's body? 

[01:00:44] Kyle Risi: So in regards to Genie and Joy, despite obviously the house's reputation of being filled with all these different ghosts, they say that they only encountered Sarah Winchester herself.

[01:00:53] Kyle Risi: So no other spirits whatsoever. So Sarah Winchester had become this kind of dominant spirit in her own creation. Maybe when she died, maybe she set free all the other ghosts. Who knows? Yeah, 

[01:01:05] Adam Cox: maybe. But yeah, that's weird that she's still creeping around her own place. But then I guess she's put so much effort into it.

[01:01:11] Kyle Risi: But then she clearly wasn't that enamored by it because she didn't mention what should happen to it after she had died, right? If she really cared about it and she wants to stay there because she was so proud of her own creation. Why would she not mention it in her will? Yeah, 

[01:01:25] Kyle Risi: that's, I don't know. That's a, yeah, I'm not 

[01:01:27] Kyle Risi: quite sure.

[01:01:28] Kyle Risi: Yet she's now trapped in her own creation. It's bizarre.

[01:01:31] Kyle Risi: . So in 1981, a team from the Nirvana Foundation said that they had captured, on an old fashioned tape recorder, the resonant, haunting sounds... of the mansion's organ being played from within the attic.

[01:01:45] Kyle Risi: And that was the organ that Sarah Winchester would often play. 

[01:01:49] Adam Cox: So who was playing it? Sarah Winchester. The ghost, Sarah Winchester. 

[01:01:53] Kyle Risi: Yeah, so this Nirvana foundation had captured this music playing on this organ. I wonder if it was teen spirit. 

[01:02:01] Adam Cox: I did say, you said Nirvana, I was like, not the band, right?

[01:02:04] Kyle Risi: Does it say teen spirit? smells like teen spirit. 

[01:02:06] Adam Cox: Yeah. I reckon it sounds good on the organ. Do you reckon? Yeah. 

[01:02:10] Kyle Risi: So today the Winchester Mystery House welcomes the public, inviting those curious to kind of explore this captivating mansion in the heart of Santa Clara Valley. So for a fee, you can tour the house and even have the option to stay overnight if you dare. 

[01:02:25] Kyle Risi: A woman called Andrea Greeton. So she's connected to one of the staff members who work at the Winchester Mystery House, and she shares a chilling tale on a Reddit site. So Andrea mentions how guests would often remark on seeing actors in period attire wandering around the estate.

[01:02:45] Kyle Risi: However, the mansion doesn't employ. Actors at all. Oh, really? Yeah, and the frequent sightings of individuals in period clothing just adds another unsettling layer to this. There's a weird story. 

[01:02:59] Adam Cox: I guess you think it's someone playing a prank, but then I guess if this happened enough and it's just random.

[01:03:04] Adam Cox: Yeah, that's weird. That's very weird. 

[01:03:06] Kyle Risi: So the mansion's legendary status has influenced numerous portrayals of haunted houses in popular culture. So think of Casper the Friendly Ghost.

[01:03:15] Kyle Risi: Think of Luigi's Mansion. Think of Disneyland's Haunted Mansion in Disney World. All of them are inspired by Disney. The Winchester Mystery House. In fact, Walt Disney not wanting a dilapidated eerie house for his park, he Directly got inspiration from the grandeur of the Winchester mystery house itself.

[01:03:36] Kyle Risi: That's what he based his haunted mansion on. Yeah, I can 

[01:03:39] Adam Cox: see definitely the insides. I can see how that's influenced it. That kind of grand sort of, mansion with the turrets, the balconies. 

[01:03:47] Kyle Risi: Crazy. So in homage to the Winchester House, Disneyland advertised its haunted mansion as inhabited by 999 happy ghosts rather than obviously the thousands of one less spirits that is rumored to haunt the Winchester mystery house and every October the Winchester mystery house hosts a series of Halloween events titled unhinged.

[01:04:12] Kyle Risi: And it's basically an immersive experience that's set in 1923 and revolves around this kind of whole narrative around the Hollywood couple throwing a lavish housewarming party. . So the events include like a roaring twenties garden party, mysterious characters, spine chilling surprises.

[01:04:29] Kyle Risi: And if you're eager to explore. Then you can go and visit or you can even go online and you can actually buy a video tour of the house for just five 

[01:04:39] Adam Cox: bucks. Oh, really? That seems quite cheap, but yeah, I'd love to visit. That'd be, maybe that's why I should do 

[01:04:44] Kyle Risi: that. Watch the video. It's incredible. So I'll leave a little link to that in the show notes.

[01:04:49] Kyle Risi: It's five dollars. Pay it. It's 41 minutes. Watch it. You'll get to have a tour around, a lot of the house. I mean, there's 161 rooms, but they'll tell you a lot about the history about what happened and how it all went down. Oh, cool. Yeah, and that is the story of the Winchester Mystery House. 

[01:05:06] Adam Cox: I would love to visit that or have a dinner party or whatever, stay the night.

[01:05:10] Adam Cox: I feel like that's a, it feels like a friendly. Haunted place, 

[01:05:14] Kyle Risi: largely. . Yeah, so that's, that's our Halloween episode, I 

[01:05:17] Adam Cox: guess. Cool, that was good, I enjoyed that. I hope you guys have been entertained and spooked a little. 

[01:05:23] Kyle Risi: Yeah, we'll leave, notes to everything we covered today in the show notes. , so if you want to find out more about anything that we've covered today. All of these things to a degree exist, they're physical things in the real world, they're not made up stories. You can go touch them. You can go touch them. I think. Yeah. 

[01:05:39] Adam Cox: Not Annabelle. Don't touch her, don't get her out of the cabinet, you positively should not open that.

[01:05:44] Kyle Risi: . And so we come to the end of another episode of the compendium and assembly of fascinating and intriguing things. If you found today's episode, both fascinating and intriguing, then remember to subscribe. Please leave us a review and don't just stop there.

[01:05:57] Kyle Risi: Schedule your episodes to download automatically as soon as they become available. Remember we are on Instagram at the compendium podcast. Uh, so stop by and say hi. You can also visit us on our home on the web at thecompendiumpodcast. com. We release every Tuesday. And until then, remember the next time you consider buying an antique doll or exploring an old mansion, you might just be inviting more than you bargained for.

[01:06:22] Kyle Risi: So stay curious and maybe a little bit cautious. See 

[01:06:26] Adam Cox: you next time. See ya.