SPIRIT TALES AND MAGIC
Our host; Dr.G had his first paranormal experience at only eight years old. With over five decades of storytelling, magic and paranormal story collection he is an award winning story teller on a mission to revive firelight and the telling of stories!
SPIRIT TALES AND MAGIC
Desert Roads and Whispering Ghosts
Journey with us as we, Dr. G and Cassandra, traverse the mystical high desert of Arizona, where the open road holds secrets and stories untold. Imagine waking up in the middle of the road after a blissful sleep, with no cars in sight, and the vast landscape stretching out endlessly around you. From the quaint allure of Winslow to the bizarre charm of a little alien diner along Route 66, our travels are filled with unexpected encounters and peculiar stops, like a rock shop that's easy to miss if you blink. Along this journey, we cross paths with an enigmatic motorcyclist who shares the captivating tale of Violin Annie, sparking our curiosity for the unseen world where the past often whispers its tales.
Accompanying us in this episode is our special guest, Steve, who invites us into the timeless world of Central Illinois, as he recounts his eerie experience at the historic Elmwood Cemetery. Steve's visit to the grave of Violin Annie unfolds like a step back in time, with a town frozen in the echoes of the 1970s and an atmosphere heavy with history. Join us as we explore the uncanny and the unseen, blurring the lines between reality and folklore. Through tales of motels with their vintage signs and towns nearly forgotten by time, this episode invites you to catch a rare glimpse into the mysteries that quietly surround us all.
Good afternoon. It's Dr G Spirit, tales and Magic where we always say there is indeed a world unseen, a world that exists all around us all the time, and every now and then, for whatever the reason, we catch a glimpse of it and the dead get in. We catch a glimpse of it and the dead get in. As you know, cassandra and I are out on the roads gathering stories, and we have some destinations that we'll be headed for that you will know about soon. Right now we are in the what they would call the high desert of Arizona. I guess we're out in the middle of nowhere. We will end up standing on a corner in Winslow, arizona, but the road that gets us from where we were to there.
Speaker 1:We slept for an hour in the car in the traffic lane last night and that's because there's nobody coming. Nobody's here. It's interesting because occasionally you'll see a car and you'll remark about it. Hey, look, there's a car. It's flat and just goes on for I don't know 100 miles or so Somewhere out here. The last time we were here we passed it. There's a little sign that somebody put and they cleared off a little spot along the right side of the road. It says parking space along the right side of the road and it says parking space. We laughed about that. I'm sure that's why they did it. We we're back in a rock shop. Forgive me, I can't remember the name of the town, but if you blink you way past it, there's a rock shop and a tiny restaurant and then you take the road we're on now and you end up on route 66 and you'll cross that and anyway. So last time we were on this road we were in a little alien diner on Route 66. If you haven't had a chance to travel 66, do it. There's some cool things.
Speaker 1:Winslow was actually not on our schedule this trip, but we're going to stop there anyway. It's a little place there called the Flatbed Ford. It's owned by a fellow police officer and no, I'm not a police officer right now, but once a police officer, always a police officer right. But the food is amazing. It's the kind of food that I would cook if I were cooking it. It's very good.
Speaker 1:He doesn't pay for that. Nobody gets to pay for mentions on this show. Sometimes I mention things, sometimes I don't. Exchanged information with a man who was in the restaurant with us. That same man was back in the rock shop on this trip. He said, hey, I have a story for you. I'd like to hand it to you and have you do it. I said, well, that's fine. He said this is about Violin Annie. I said, well, that one has escaped me, the. So I took his story. He's going to meet up with us in Winslow. He and his significant other are on a fairly cool motorcycle that you know we should be on. Anyway, we ever just hit the lottery out there. Buy Griffin and Cassandra a motorcycle and ship it over here. Would you Something nice like a I don't know a road king? But then again I digress. So this is Steve.
Speaker 1:This past weekend, while on my way to visit some old factories of St Louis, missouri, I stopped in a small town of Central Illinois. I wanted to visit the Elmwood Cemetery. Now you might want to ask yourself why would I want to go to a small place like that, to the Elmwood Cemetery? Well, I wanted to stop by so I could visit and photograph the grave of Violin Annie. The cemetery is extremely old and I believe it used to be called the Centrilla Cemetery, but somewhere in the 20s they changed it to Elmwood. I've heard some stories of this cemetery for a few years and found out that it dates way back into the 1860s and perhaps even longer back.
Speaker 1:On my way and driving through the town, I felt like I was heading back in time. The town's small, it looks like, maybe it hasn't had any updates since the early 70s and it literally takes three minutes to drive through. The town looked empty, but maybe that's just because it was a Sunday. As I drove I saw an old motel sign which was almost like a welcome sign upon entering the town. It showed me a pretty nice image of what appeared to be a great place to stay. Just six blocks ahead, as I drove past the sign, something told me that the billboard was probably there since about the 60s or 70s. Then, six blocks down, I pulled into a motel parking lot to check it out, though it was not the one advertised on the billboard. This motel had certainly seen its better days. It appeared that it had been closed down for quite some time. But I was not in this town to see an old motel.
Speaker 1:I was here to see the grave of Violet Anning. I was here to see the grave of Violet Annie. The cemetery has approximately 1,700 graves and I was looking for just one. As I drove in, I immediately spotted the tall monument with the little girl, harriet Annie, standing on top with her violin. He goes on to take a picture of that. She died at the age of 11 of diphtheria, and legend has it that if you enter the cemetery at night you can hear the sounds of Annie playing her violin ever so softly. They say in life she loved her violin. She played it for family and friends on a daily basis. She was so attached to that violin that after her death her family had this massive monument erected for her.
Speaker 1:Now, in truth, this is my second visit to the cemetery to see the gravesite, and this time I was all alone. I snapped some pictures, I swapped out some lenses and I sat near the grave for a while. I never did hear the strings, but I did feel at peace. It was quiet and oddly, it felt like some sort of warmth had come over me, which to me was a shocker given where I was. So I ended up with some images of the grave Just sat there, feeling unusually comfortable.
Speaker 1:Now there are many legends about Annie. Some even say that her father actually beat her to death with her violin. But I think that's pure storytelling meant to spook teens who would enter the cemetery at night. One group of ghost hunters who visited the site meant to spook teens who would enter the cemetery at night. One group of ghost hunters who visited the site claimed to have seen the statue glow, while others have claimed to see green tears flowing from the eyes of Annie. Upon very close inspection, I could see some green moss or mold on her face and under her eyes. Now, I have always been into ghost hunting in the paranormal, mainly because of an otherworldly experience that my family had the night of my father's death. It was very intense, it was very real. Death, it was very intense, it was very real, and ever since then I've had a curiosity about spirits, ghosts and the afterlife. I find old cemeteries like this to be fascinating. I love to photograph unique graves like the one of Viollini. I also like the adventure of finding these small towns where most of the cemeteries are found.
Speaker 1:The story of Violin Annie can actually be found in a few books about haunted locations, but I feel it was a story made up long ago by kids who probably dared each other to go inside the spooky cemetery at night. It does make a nice slum-like story though, doesn't it? Thank you, mr Steve. It'd be a great story to tell around the campfire, and you know what we're going to say about that. Find yourself some friends and a fire. Tell some stories. It's a lost art and you can help revive it. So tell me, do you have a cemetery story? Got a snail mail from what I'm taking to be a young lady? Just the way the writing looks and the way that the letter is formatted, although it is not signed. Just about any time you start out with a letter saying something like doc, I bet you won't mention this pretty much a guarantee I'm going to mention it, unless you're being a total dick. So it seems like you always have your own story to go with some of the stories that people send you. What up? Yeah well, surely wouldn't want to disappoint you.
Speaker 1:Back where I grew up, there's a little town called Martin's Ferry, and in that town there is a gravestone that looks like a chair, and if you sit in the chair you die. Not right then, but within so many years you die, and, forgive me, I can't remember what the amount of years are that you went before you die. And it's just one of those places we'll digress for just a minute. Kids back then, when we were young, the risque things we did was hop trains and get in empty train cars that were not going anywhere and sit and tell stories or go into graveyards at night. We were not into damaging people's property and breaking into things and that sort of thing. And I don't want to sound outdated property and breaking into things and that sort of thing, and I don't want to sound outdated, but it was just kind of like some good old, clean fun, right. So we find ourselves.
Speaker 1:I'm at the time, I believe, 17 years old and I had this white and red AMC Pacer X. One of my friends said it looked like a pregnant roller skate but it had two seats in the front and if you skimmed it up you could put three people in the back and then it had a way back that one or two people could get in, but it wouldn't be comfortable. So it wouldn't be odd to find 10 people crammed into the pacer, which overloaded it. So we ended up in Ferry, at the cemetery, and it's girls and guys, everybody's coupled off and we're walking around. We had someone that liked to do etchings of gravestones so they would put a piece of paper on the stone, a soft pencil and rub it and you'd get an etching of the stone and then they would send that to a relative of theirs in Pittsburgh, pennsylvania, who would sell them in an art gallery and they'd split it 50-50. It's a good racket for a kid.
Speaker 1:So we're in there and everybody's talking about the chair and nobody will go near the thing. So I have to go sit in it. I mean, I have to. So I went and sat in the chair, so they don't feel anything. And before I sat in the chair I said I'm going to sit in the chair. Thank you for allowing me to do that. I'm doing it to prove that you're not some kind of monster living under the chair waiting to cast this curse upon anybody who touches it. Plop, I'm in the chair. Nobody else will go in the chair. People are leaving. They're going back to the car, which is not a real significant hike, but it's, you know, it's a walk. So they're going clear down into the cemetery, they're going to circle around and go back to the car. So my girlfriend decides we're going to do a lot more than sit in the chair and we'll spare you the details. But things kids do right.
Speaker 1:So now we're both in the chair, thought nothing of it for years and I'll not say her name over the air because I can't get her permission to do so, because she died. She was an assistant for the magic show when I was young and we were friends long after we had been a couple. It was first love, teenage years but long after that we remained friends and she moved away and she died. I heard it was in an auto accident, but I'm not sure. But that supports the legend of the chair, and somebody of course brought that up. You guys were in the chair and she died. I said okay, each and every one of us will eventually die. Then, two years after I made that statement, I died, walked into a restaurant on November the 1st You've heard it before Dropped over dead. So they brought me back to life Last year. It's been two years since that event. Last year. A friend of mine and I are talking on the phone and he says do you think it was the chair? It is amazing to me how long an urban legend like that can stay in your file cabinet. Do you have an urban legend like that that we'd like to hear, because I would love to have you send it to me.
Speaker 1:Got some more episodes coming up as October rolls along. We are way out of the office. For about the next week we're going to be going to some locations that you will find out about later. Got about, as of today, 2,200 miles to cover-ish, which does not include the trip back home. So most of that is flying, some of it isn't. Send me your stories and thank you in advance for doing so. Thank you for listening, sharing, downloading, pass it along and help us spread the word. And hey, find yourself a group of friends or acquaintances, sit around and tell a ghost story. It's good for you. Yeah, good afternoon from the high desert.
