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
Roots of Retribution: The Twisted Legacy of Louisville's Witch Tree
Step into the haunted heart of Old Louisville as we unravel the mysterious tale of the Witch Tree—a gnarled, twisted Osage orange standing at the corner of 6th Street and Park Avenue. This isn't just any tree; it's a living monument to supernatural vengeance, adorned with beaded necklaces, trinkets, and offerings from those who dare not anger the spirits that claim it.
The story takes us back to the 1800s when the original maple tree served as a sacred gathering place for local witches, traveling gypsies, and even a voodoo priest named Doc Beauregard. When city officials ignored their pleas and cut down the tree for a Maypole celebration, the witches left with a chilling warning: "Beware the 11th month." Precisely eleven months later, a devastating tornado ripped through Louisville, killing about 100 people. During the storm, lightning struck the very stump where the sacred tree once stood, and from its charred remains grew the current twisted tree—a physical manifestation of the witches' curse.
Today, visitors hang offerings on the Witch Tree, believing that the higher you place your tribute, the more luck you'll receive. But locals caution: remove anything from the tree or the ground around it, and you'll suffer a lifetime curse. This tale exemplifies why Old Louisville, with its 1,200 acres of Victorian homes built on limestone bedrock, has earned its reputation as America's most haunted neighborhood. Whether you're a skeptic or believer, the Witch Tree stands as a reminder that some boundaries between worlds should not be crossed without proper respect. Have your own paranormal story? We'd love to hear it—perhaps your tale will become our next featured episode.
Good Sunday everybody. 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. It's 108 degrees in Phoenix today, with 68 days until Halloween, which makes it only about 38 days until Doctober. And we get asked about Doctober all the time. What are you going to do this year? We don't know yet if the Doctober format is going to remain the same as it was last season or if we'll change it up a bit. We would also like to remind you if you have a paranormal story or a ghost story or even a good historical story, we'd love to hear it. You could end up here on the podcast. You can email it to us. You can either remain anonymous, you can dedicate it to someone else, or even to an event, or even to an event. I do want to make a note that some of the markers on the podcast site are not exactly correct. The Unseen World on August 7th truly is Season 4, Episode 6. October of 2025 and 38 days will mark the official closing of season 4. And on October, the 31st, it will be season 5. So we wanted to clear that up.
Speaker 1:There was some confusion among some of the listeners, a lot of questions about our trip to Kentucky and what did we see? Of course, you know we're always looking at statistics and you know who gets what kind of tourism and things like that. There was an area that we go to all the time. It gets about a million tourists in a year, which I think is pretty good. You know on the potential that we may retire there one day. So I'm running the stats on Louisville Nine million tourists a year. There's a lot of very rich history down there and we won't let the cat out of the bag very far. There's a lot of episodes coming up about those visits. I will say that as of today, when I checked approximately 30 minutes prior to this, we are now in 25 countries and 180 cities and I've got to thank you all and let you know every single one of you. We appreciate you. Thanks to everybody who helps us along the way and so far the number one episode remains the man, the girl and the tiger, and I must admit it is one of my personal favorites as well.
Speaker 1:But today's tale, my friends finds us in Old Louisville. Excuse me, I have COVID and I'm in the studio by myself, so if I sound a little off or cough or snort or whatever it is that I'm going to do, that's the reason for it. But, as I said, today's tale is going to find us in old Louisville, kentucky, and while Louisville may only rank 87th in the list of places for witches to live, it does boast one of the, in my opinion, best witchy stories, with America's most haunted neighborhood tours. If you get down there and you get a chance to take one of America's most haunted neighborhood tours, you should do that. You should take it.
Speaker 1:It's about the old witch tree of Louisville. The story reeks of tales of witches and gypsies, pagans scorned and ignored, who retaliated with a deadly and highly destructive curse it's got all the good stuff. It's the ground blazers, excuse me. So, south of downtown, louisville was once a very bustling enclave of millionaires and business people in the late 19th and 20th centuries. In fact, louisville boasts the highest number of Victorian houses in America. It's got about 1,200 acres give or take and about 48 square blocks. These homes alone, with all of their history and all the complications and stories that each and every single one of them have, plus the fact that it's Louisville, they're all built on limestone. That in itself is a potential goldmine of ghost stories. So I know a lot of you guys down there are listening, so send your ghost stories in.
Speaker 1:But for now we're going to speak about the Witch Tree, and that, I believe, is at 6th and Park. So if you've ever been walking past the corner of 6th Street and Park Avenue in Louisville, you most likely noticed what some of the locals are now describing as a well, a natural monstrosity. The tree is so knotted and tortured-looking and misshapen it could very easily serve as a portal to the underworld in the next greatest horror film. But even if the tree didn't resemble something from a nightmare landscape, all of the beaded necklaces, trinkets and baubles hanging from and around the tree kind of make it a little bit impossible to miss Somewhere in the 1800s the locals say the tree was a gathering place honored by a Louisville coven of witches.
Speaker 1:Some traveling gypsies and even Doc Beauregard Doc was a voodoo priest spent some time between Kentucky and New Orleans, trucking supplies back and forth. They performed their ceremonies there and generally, according to the townspeople, didn't create much of a nuisance, according to many locals, kind of nice having them around. They were part of the normal operation of the town and never really ruffled anybody's feathers. They were part of the normal operation of the town and never really ruffled anybody's feathers. That is until a city planning committee decided to cut down the tree so that a Maypole could be erected for a May Day celebration. The witches petitioned the committee to please don't cut down their honored meeting tree. But against the wishes the tree was cut down.
Speaker 1:It's rumored that as the witches fled the area they placed a curse on the town. The rumor is that they said Beware the 11th month. And 11 months later, on March, the 27th 1890, a massive tornado. There are stories very much of all of the downtown of Louisville. About 100 people lose their lives. And on that day lightning directly struck the stump where the great old maple tree once stood. Flames erupted and shot high into the air and from the damage a new tree grew. It's an Osage orange tree. And from the damage a new tree grew. It's an Osage orange tree, but as the locals say, it's not pretty, it's twisted and gnarled. The town folks say the witches had summoned some sort of a storm demon and replace their beloved tree with well, not a happy tree, but rather the otherworldly looking thing that still stands to this day.
Speaker 1:The locals hung some trinkets and other things on the tree, hoping to appease the wronged witches tree hoping to appease the wronged witches, some of the locals say the higher on the tree you throw your offering, the more luck you will have. But the locals also caution. Remove anything from the tree or from the ground around it and you will endure a most terrible curse that will follow you all the days of your life. You get a feeling when you stand there and look at that tree, and I'm not going to go into that in this episode, but only because I want you to go there, because I know I have a lot of listeners in that area. So tell me what you feel when you see the tree, because I'm going to lead you. If I tell you, hey, I felt this and that, then you're going to go. Oh, yeah, he's right. No, I want to know what you feel.
Speaker 1:Whether there's any truth to the tale or not, it would appear that the good folks of Louisville have decided to err on the side of caution and leave small tributes and hanging on and around the tree. To keep the witches on their good side. We were there about a week, which was nowhere near enough time to experience even a minuscule mouth of the history in this place. There's the tree, there's hundreds of stories, some haunted distilleries. Uh, I will tell you, this is not really a paranormal thing. I guess it would depend on who you ask, and I think I said this on one of the other podcasts.
Speaker 1:But Cassandra and I my high school friend and his wife were sitting in a restaurant and my friend's wife forgot her reading glasses. So Cassandra was going to let her borrow a pair of hers and a complete stranger from the next table said Do you all forget your reading glasses here? I keep a spare pair right here in my purse just in case someone might need them. That kind of behavior is what we endured the entire week, which is way different. And I'm not going to badmouth, the city I live in, but like any other city, it has its ups and its downs, but it's terribly, horribly hot, and you've heard me say this before. We live smack in the middle of what most people refer to as oh my God, you live there. So the behavior of people that we're around on a daily basis. While you will find some that behave like they know how to behave if that's even a thing the large majority of the people that I deal with out in the public aren't very nice.
Speaker 1:Now, I'm not talking about the bank tellers and people like that that I, you know, associate with. I'm talking about the random strangers that you run into on the street. You have to watch what you're doing, so what? I'm trying to research some extra background on this story. Sandra has COVID, so she's very sick. We're isolated from each other. So I'm in the office, she's in another part of the house and I stopped always knowing this what do you need? I don't need anything. Did you call my name? No, did something? No, but I must have just been thinking about you.
Speaker 1:So I come back and the computer is running. I'm not talking about running in the background, like it always does. It's on record. It's recording me. So I turn it off and I distinctly hear what I think is Cassandra say how's your left eye? So I go back out to where she can see me. I'm like my eye. She's like what's wrong with your eye? Did can see me on my eye. She's like what's wrong with your eye. Did you ask me how my eye was? No, they didn't ask you that.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I'm getting ready to do this recording and we have a new monitor. It's huge, it's scary. My head on this monitor is actually about four times its normal size. It's a curved monitor. It's very nice. Thank you to the equipment wizards for that. But my left eye has a hematoma on it like it's been punched, has not been punched. It has not been punched.
Speaker 1:So I'm watching old episodes of some ghost shows and things like that. We do a lot of research in our downtime and everything that I'm coming to is you know, I've been poked, I've been scratched, I got hit in the eye Three times today I hear I got hit in the eye. It's just interesting. It doesn't have anything to do with Louisville, but you know I would say that's paranormal. This thing is. It looks like I was boxing and I took one in the eye. I assure you I was doing none of those things.
Speaker 1:What is your paranormal story? It's a lot of things coming up in October. Not sure exactly how they're going to present. As I've said before, for the first time in a long time we did not book a show. We're waiting until the last minute. It's an experiment, started out as an experiment. Now it's become an obsession. I'd like to thank Kayla for the man, the girl and the tiger. I'd like to thank Kayla for the man, the girl and the tiger Because, as I said, that is now a worldwide favorite story and I think that's pretty awesome. So, whatever you're doing, be very highly careful this weekend. Labor Day will be upon us soon and it's going to be a very heavy travel time. Cassandra and I are going to stay here, I believe, and research some podcasts, providing that neither one of us is out of commission, and you know we always say, hey, tell a ghost story. It's good for you. Send us your thoughts and have a great and safe night. Good night from phoenix.
