Episode 331 - Axe Hollow Murders & Hauntings | Appalachian Lore

This week, we explore the legend of Axe Murder Hollow — the chilling tale of a jealousy crazed, axe-wielding farmer that has passed down through generations in Erie Pennsylvania, and spread through northern Appalachia. What began as a ghost story passed between teens in the 1940s has since become one of the state’s most infamous tales — blending true crime, folklore, hauntings, and ghostly revenge. We’ll get into the rumors and theories that sprung up about what haunts Axe Murder Hollow. From the tale of Billy the Butcher to a 1963 double homicide that might have cemented the Hollow’s deadly reputation. Plus: High school newspaper gossip columns (1940s Gossip Girl vibes) turned paranormal record-keepers, vanishing spirits, phantom footsteps, and a spectral man in white with a headlamp and a gun. It’s part haunted history, part local lore, and all chills. 🪓👻 Watch the video version here. Have ghost stories of your own? E-mail them to us at [email protected] New Episodes are released every Sunday at 12am PST/3am EST (the witching hour, of course). Corinne and Sabrina hand select a couple of paranormal encounters from our inbox to read in each episode, from demons, to cryptids, to aliens, to creepy kids... the list goes on and on. If you have a story of your own that you'd like us to share on an upcoming episode, we invite you to email them to us! If you enjoy our show, please consider joining our Patreon, rating and reviewing on iTunes & Spotify and following us on social media! Youtube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Discord. Edited and produced by Jaimi Ryan, original music by Arms Akimbo! Disclaimer: the use of white sage and smudging is a closed practice. If you’re looking to cleanse your space, here are some great alternatives! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I'm so excited. I'm getting my whole body MRI scan from Prenuvo in a couple of weeks.

• 0:05Corinne Vien?

  It's honestly so important. It's like one of those things where getting older and aging has provided me so many anxieties about like what's going on.

• 0:12Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I recently had some medical issues in my family and everyone in my family is like, let's just do everything we can to get ahead and take our own health into our own hands. Prenuvo's whole body scan is a radiation-free MRI designed to help provide a detailed, non-invasive look at your body in under an hour, and it helps evaluate across major organs and systems, including the brain, spine, abdomen, pelvis, and more. Prenuvo's whole body scan can help detect many cancers, aneurysms, and hundreds of other conditions. And they have memberships that bundle MRI scans, blood panels, and a personalized results review to track your health year after year.

• 0:47Corinne Vien?

  To learn more about Prenuvo and get $300 off your whole body MRI, go to prenuvo.com/tgog and use code TGOG. That's P-R-E-N-U-V-O.com/tgog. Terms and conditions apply.

• 1:01Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Receive $300 off Prenuvo whole body scans and executive and comprehensive memberships through January 31st. For full details, visit Prenuvo's website to read their terms and conditions and privacy notice. Prenuvo gifted me a whole body scan. A Prenuvo scan is a screening service, not diagnostic. Diagnosis and treatment are determined by your healthcare provider. Two girls, one ghost. Two Girls, One Ghost is the most haunted podcast in America.

• 1:23Corinne Vien?

  Where each week we dive into all things strange, spooky, and supernatural, and share stories of paranormal encounters from our community of listeners.

• 1:31Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Satisfy that spooky itch and entertain your inner witch with Two Girls, One Ghost.

• 1:36Corinne Vien?

  Listen now wherever you get your podcasts and check us out on YouTube at Two Girls, One Ghost.

• 1:40Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But be warned, side effects might include a haunting or two. Listen at your own risk.

• 2:07Corinne Vien?

  Sorry, because I'm trying not to move to where, whoa, try not move to where you told me not to move to.

• 2:13Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Where'd you come from?

• 2:17Corinne Vien?

  You said the focus is good here, so I'm not, I'm like frozen here.

• 2:19Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Where'd you come from? Where'd you go?

• 2:23Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Huh, oh, okay. Hi, hello everyone. Hi, this is Two Girls One Ghost. Two Girls One Ghost. And we are your ghostesses. That is Corinne. Hello. I'm so sorry.

• 2:36Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I am Sabrina.

• 2:42Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Welcome to another episode of Two Girls One Ghost where we are diving into some Appalachian lore.

• 2:51Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Before I get into my story, I feel like you, every time you go home, you get ghost stories to come back with.

• 2:59Corinne Vien?

  Oh, I do have one.

• 3:00Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  See, I knew.

• 3:01Corinne Vien?

  I would have forgotten to even tell you.

• 3:03Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay, please tell me.

• 3:04Corinne Vien?

  My mom is convinced that it's my Grammy, but I'm convinced that Noah's telepathic. So this is a love, this is our like thing. Like, it's not a huge ghost story. It's basically just the night before. My parents were like, we, we really want to get up when Noah gets up. And I was like, good luck. He's been getting up so early recently. And at 4:45 a.m., Noah gets up. I pluck him from the bed and as I'm about to like open the door, my parents' television turns on in their room to the news and they have never, ever had that happen before. So like, that's not a normal paranormal thing for them. Or just like electrical thing.

• 3:45Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Noah is Noah Matilda?

• 3:47Corinne Vien?

  That is exactly, I kept calling him Matilda. I was like, Noah is Matilda. Cause my mom was like, oh, I think it's, I think it's Grammy. Like she knew that like, cause my dad had to leave for a day when we were visiting to go tend to some things. And my mom was like, no, Grammy knew that dad wanted to spend time with Noah and he was like getting us up. I was like, I don't know. I think Noah wanted to spend time with you. And it's like, turn on the TV, wake you up. I'm up.

• 4:09Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I believe it. Noah's a spooky kid.

• 4:11Corinne Vien?

  I think so. I don't know. That's our ghost story from

• 4:14Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  That's a good one.

• 4:15Corinne Vien?

  the weekend. Yeah.

• 4:16Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I, okay, so I actually weirdly watched Matilda two nights ago.

• 4:20Corinne Vien?

  Did you?

• 4:21Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And I've realized that we are all, I feel like our community, I can speak for y'all. I feel like we, we cater to a specific type of person because we are these types of people. I think we've all become Miss Honey.

• 4:34Corinne Vien?

  I was gonna say your outfits kind of Miss Honey vibes.

• 4:37Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I think you know.

• 4:38Corinne Vien?

  Like if you had like a white turtleneck on, under it or something, like I feel like it would be so Miss Honey.

• 4:43Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Well.

• 4:44Corinne Vien?

  Cause very like nineties.

• 4:45Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Thank you. Um, I, in my depression this past couple of weeks, spent a lot of money on new clothes that I have nowhere to wear, except for our podcast recording. So I'm gonna be dressing up for you.

• 4:58Corinne Vien?

  Okay, great. I will probably still arrive in sweats, but we'll see what happens.

• 5:02Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Anyway, I was thinking, cause so in Matilda, Miss Honey basically gets kicked out of the, her father's beautiful mansion. And she buy, she like rents a little cottage and plants a bunch of wildflowers and lives in this cottage. And I was like, that's all of us. That's all we want.

• 5:20Corinne Vien?

  That totally is. Oh my gosh, I'm obsessed. Wait, and that reminds me that this morning Noah and I were outside walking around and I'm holding him and a hummingbird came up to us and was like a foot away. And I was like, oh my God. I was like literally saying, oh my God, oh my God, are you okay? What's wrong? Is this a miracle? Are we blessed? Like, I was like flustered and talking out loud because when does a hummingbird ever come and stop and flutter in front of you for multiple seconds?

• 5:43Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So Noah's Cinderella too?

• 5:45Corinne Vien?

  I guess. I don't know. He, he was like la la la la. And I was freaking out and we saved a ton of animals and

• 5:51Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  This is magic.

• 5:52Corinne Vien?

  You know what? Maybe Noah does have something weird going on because we were saving frogs left and right. Because they kept like migrating to where we were. In my parents backyard, there's like a water retention pond that's just like become a pond with all this wildlife and never have we seen deer back there. But when my dad walked Noah out on our last morning, there was a deer like beautifully just resting right at the edge of the pond. Just sitting there staring at them watching.

• 6:18Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So Noah is a Disney princess.

• 6:20Corinne Vien?

  I guess he is.

• 6:21Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  He's beautiful.

• 6:22Corinne Vien?

  He is beautiful.

• 6:23Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  He is beautiful. You know what else is beautiful?

• 6:26Corinne Vien?

  Scary. Spooky scary.

• 6:29Corinne Vien?

  Spooky scary.

• 6:31Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Is the Appalachian area.

• 6:33Corinne Vien?

  Mm hmm.

• 6:33Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Appalachian Mountains, Appalachian Trail, the horrors, the creatures, the ghosts that haunted.

• 6:39Corinne Vien?

  And we're basically turning into an Appalachian podcast at this point because we're obsessed.

• 6:42Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  We are, but this one has a twist.

• 6:45Corinne Vien?

  Oh, okay.

• 6:46Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay. Let me hair flip to get ready. As the story goes, there was once a small farm off of the woods. This farmer lived there and he was a very sad man who found it very difficult to find joy and pleasure in life. The world calloused him, shrouding him in a darkness where laughter and joy ceased to exist. His eor demeanor drew clouds over top everyone around him. His wife became a shadow of herself. She spent her days trying to keep her husband from becoming angry. This toxic environment spread over to their children, too. They went to school, they came home and worked. There was never time for play.

• 7:29Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  One summer, the farmer decided to hire a man to help on the farm because it was just too much to do by himself. Apparently, he hired a drifter. And I would like to say he probably didn't do an interview process because if he had, he probably wouldn't have hired this man because this man was the complete opposite of him. Where he found no joy, this hired hand loved to smile, loved to sing, was just a happy, pleasant man, which obviously annoyed the shit out of the farmer.

• 7:57Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, right. Cranky.

• 7:59Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But the hired hand.

• 8:00Corinne Vien?

  Sometimes you need a little joy.

• 8:01Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I think it was too far gone for this man. But this hired hand continued his work with a smile on his face, which became contagious. It spread across the farm to the wife, to the children. He would craft gifts for the children. He would create toys for them. He would give them flowers.

• 8:18Corinne Vien?

  This is the movie Klaus.

• 8:21Corinne Vien?

  I'm telling you.

• 8:22Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  With a really horrific ending.

• 8:24Corinne Vien?

  Wait.

• 8:25Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Little by little, this farmer grew to resent the hired hand. And then he began to suspect that this man was having an affair with his wife. Enraged, he fired the man, driving him off of his land.

• 8:37Corinne Vien?

  Oh, my, my brain filled in like driving him off of, I thought you were going to say a cliff.

• 8:42Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh, I think he wanted to.

• 8:43Corinne Vien?

  Instant death, like Game of Thrones. How many people are dying in the first two seconds of the story?

• 8:47Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  A lot.

• 8:50Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Content warning here, there is a lot of death. He then confronted his wife and in a blind rage, he picked up an axe and he brutally murdered his wife and then his children.

• 9:03Corinne Vien?

  During the confrontation, like, did she admit to it? Or was he just like?

• 9:06Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I think he was just.

• 9:06Corinne Vien?

  I think you cheated on me and I'm gonna ax my whole family to death?

• 9:10Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yep.

• 9:10Corinne Vien?

  Holy crap.

• 9:11Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  He then went in search of a man he had driven off his land and he was later found by townspeople wandering the woods, still carrying the bloody axe, muttering to himself. Ever since then, people have claimed that the spirits of the entire family haunt the land and that this man is still haunting the land, carrying a bloody axe, looking for the man.

• 9:33Corinne Vien?

  Jeez.

• 9:34Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Ever since then, this has become local legend, local lore, that people have dared one another to go spend time in the Axe Murder Hollow. But there are no records of this murder happening and we're gonna dive into what is called the Axe Hollow Murders, or sometimes called the Axe Hollow Murder. And we're going to discover that despite this being legend in Appalachia, in various regions, the real legend comes from a place technically not in Appalachia.

• 10:07Corinne Vien?

  Oh, interesting.

• 10:08Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And I was very confused because I found it in this book, which I used for the research of when we did our three parter. Appalachia Folklore Unveiled.

• 10:17Corinne Vien?

  Can I look at it? Just gently peruse as you.

• 10:20Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Please. And that's how I picked this topic. I picked it for later because I was like, oh, I definitely wanted to research this. But when I began my Google search, this legend takes place in Erie, Pennsylvania.

• 10:30Corinne Vien?

  Ah, shit.

• 10:32Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  What?

• 10:33Corinne Vien?

  I think, I think the listener's story I picked out is from Erie.

• 10:36Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Really?

• 10:37Corinne Vien?

  And I actually had no idea.

• 10:39Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Don't quote me on this.

• 10:40Corinne Vien?

  Quote me on this, but I'm like fairly certain it is.

• 10:43Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  That would be spooky. Okay.

• 10:45Corinne Vien?

  I think it is.

• 10:46Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So it's interesting because then I was looking on Reddit and I went on a deep dive and people were asking, what's your local Appalachian legend? And multiple people from the Lake Erie area were like, oh, the legend of Axe Hollow murders. But it's technically thirty miles north of the Appalachian region. So it's not technically.

• 11:08Corinne Vien?

  Through the woods, I bet he.

• 11:10Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 11:10Corinne Vien?

  Like a classic wander onto the trail.

• 11:13Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So it's not part of the technical Appalachian region. This takes place in Erie, Pennsylvania, and I think its legend has become so prominent that it has spread through multiple regions in Appalachia. And also, unfortunately, there have been a lot of, what are you saving for later?

• 11:33Corinne Vien?

  There's a Bigfoot-like creature in Appalachia called the Wood Booger. They'll learn about it at a later date.

• 11:40Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  You can keep the book if you would like.

• 11:42Corinne Vien?

  Okay, I will.

• 11:42Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay. So, yes, this legend has become so prominent, and unfortunately, there are a lot of Axe-involved murders and attacks that have taken place throughout this whole region. And keep in mind, this region is what? It traverses like thirteen states and multiple countries. So it's massive. It's been around, it predates us humans, it is ancient. There have been a lot of deaths and a lot of murders.

• 12:05Corinne Vien?

  But I wanted people hiding out on the trail for nefarious activities. I hate those stories. They're so scary.

• 12:11Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It's very sad.

• 12:12Corinne Vien?

  It's a love hate. Love to be scared, hate that it's real.

• 12:15Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah. Hate to be scared by real humans.

• 12:18Corinne Vien?

  Right.

• 12:19Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Because ghosts are just doing their ghoul shit, you know? They can't help it. But I wanted to dive deep into this story because we love a hometown legend, a like story that you grow up with that haunts you. And that all the kids spread and that people talk about in school, the doorbell that they dare you to go ring late at night.

• 12:41Corinne Vien?

  Spooky house at the end of the street. Mine was Emily's Bridge, which we covered in an early episode. We'd drive out to Emily's Bridge, like, dare you to go across the bridge.

• 12:48Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Mine was my next door neighbor.

• 12:52Corinne Vien?

  Yours is real close to home.

• 12:53Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  We called him Mr. Milk. I think his name was Milton. I don't know. He was, he was a very old man. And I, looking back, I feel really sad because he was clearly a sad, lonely old man. But he gave pennies on Halloween and his backyard was a frickin jungle. Like, when I think about it, from my childhood perspective, I think of the movie Disturbia. Like, that's what his, like, vibe was to us as children. And we would dare each other to, like, ring the doorbell or to jump over the fence and, like, run through his backyard.

• 13:29Corinne Vien?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 13:29Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I know, I feel really bad for him.

• 13:31Corinne Vien?

  Maybe he was just ahead of his time and it was actually a pollinator habitat. He was keeping for the birds and the bees.

• 13:37Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  He just liked nature.

• 13:38Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 13:39Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah. Anyway, I feel like we all grew up with that, so I wanted to do a story similar to that, but also dive deep into where the legend came from. So this is part true crime, part ghost story, and full Chili Willies.

• 13:52Corinne Vien?

  Chili Willies.

• 13:53Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  This is the story of Axe Hollow Murders, also called the Axe Murder Hollow. Before we dive into the supposed murders and the undeniable hauntings, let's set the scene. It's the fall of 1945 in Mill Creek, which is in Erie, Pennsylvania. Erie, Pennsylvania sits along the southern shore of Lake Erie, which is known for its beauty, its beaches, the wintry snow dunes. We have some pictures in the YouTube video if you would like to look at them. But just beyond the shoreline, a short drive to Mill Creek, the landscape shifts. And so too does the energy. These woods feel older, like they're carrying something heavy, historic. It's because they are.

• 14:36Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And while not exactly in Appalachia, this land does share many similarities to Appalachia. There's deep history with indigenous people who have lived upon this land and creating a deep harmony and understanding with Mother Nature. And it is also rich with oral tradition, ghost stories, and warnings whispered between neighbors. The Pennsylvania region is known for stories of ghostly soldiers, killers in the woods, ghost brides, strange lights in the trees. And Mill Creek itself has always been a quieter town, with evidence of indigenous tribes habitating all the way back to 3,700 B.C.

• 15:12Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It was a community shaped by hard labor. Picture lots of farmland, two-lane roads, a close-knit community, and a path of woods that everyone knows to stay away from. So now that we have the scene, we're in Mill Creek. You heard the legend in the very beginning of this story, the farmer. But where did it come from? I took to the local archives.

• 15:35Corinne Vien?

  Ooh.

• 15:36Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And I was searching newspaper articles for hours. But I found some. I found lots.

• 15:44Corinne Vien?

  Dang.

• 15:45Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And there's some discrepancy here because there was one article that I found, not newspaper article, but one like article about this topic that said that the very first mention of the Axe Hollow murders was in 1945, like the fall of 1945. And I'll tell you the story, but I couldn't find that specific newspaper article. And I think someone else deserves credit, and I'll get there in a second. So according to this one article, the very first mention of Axe murder hollow, being called that, was in 1945, Erie, Pennsylvania. The Harbor Creek High School's football season was in full swing. Pep rallies, bonfires, teenage bonding, all in an effort to root the Huskies to victory, a championship.

• 16:29Corinne Vien?

  Woof, woof, woof, woof. Huskies. Oh, woo. This feels like a TV show to me or like a movie because we didn't, I didn't grow up with like football being.

• 16:39Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  No, my high school had had football for one year and then got, we were like, we suck. So they canceled.

• 16:47Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, it wasn't the spectator sport of Vermont, for sure.

• 16:50Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But in all reality, these kids were just looking for some fun. And that is why, on one chilly fall night, the entire football team loaded into cars and drove out to Thomas Road and stepped into the Erie Woods, wordplay there is intended. Call it a dare, hazing, some kind of teenage ritual. But there they stood, a gaggle of teenage boys who thought themselves men invincible. Nothing could scare them. They'd heard the rumors of the horrific Axe murders that took place in these woods. They'd heard of the hauntings left behind. And they thought that they could go into these woods unscathed. As you do when you're a teen. But as they approached the remnants of the stone fireplace,

• 17:35Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  the wind whipped through the trees, icing their veins. And they became aware of another presence, if that's what you can even call it. It felt like eyes on them, the way that their parents watched them hawk eyed as they brought girls over to study, study. It felt like they had interrupted a gathering, but they were in the middle of the woods with no one else around. That feeling turned into horror when all of a sudden it was accompanied by a laugh.

• 18:04Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Ew! High pitched, short, then fading away. That is not what I was expecting you to do. Then crescendoing into a maniacal, maddening cackle that would not cease.

• 18:20Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Don't look at me, I'm scared.

• 18:26Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I knew I'd get you.

• 18:29Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  The entire team high tailed out of the woods faster than they'd ever run sprints in practice, but not fast enough for them to miss the flashes of light and the appearance of a silhouette standing in the woods watching them go. A ghost. Horrified but grateful to escape with their lives, the football team quickly grew infamous not for their fall record, but for their encounter with the ghost of Axe Murder Hollow. And that is a dramatized version of what I imagine happened to them in those woods. But that, so basically when tracing back the legend, a lot of people are like, this is the first time it was written in newspapers and given the term Axe Murder Hollow. I'm so excited. I'm getting my whole body MRI scan from Prenewvo in a couple of weeks. It's honestly so important.

• 19:14Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It's like one of those things where getting older and aging has provided me so many anxieties about like what's going on. I recently had some medical issues in my family and everyone in my family is like, let's just do everything we can to get ahead and take our own health into our own hands. Prenewvo's whole body scan is a radiation free MRI designed to help provide a detailed, non-invasive look at your body in under an hour, and it helps evaluate across major organs. And systems, including the brain, spine, abdomen, pelvis, and more. Prenewvo's whole body scan can help detect many cancers, aneurysms, and hundreds of other conditions. And they have memberships that bundle MRI scans, blood panels, and a personalized results review to track your health year after year.

• 19:55Corinne Vien?

  To learn more about Prenewvo and get $300 off your whole body MRI, go to prenewvo.com/tgog and use code TGOG. That's P R E N U V O dot com slash T G O G. Terms and conditions apply.

• 20:09Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Receive $300 off Prenewvo whole body scans and executive and comprehensive memberships through January 31st. For full details, visit Prenewvo's website to read their terms and conditions and privacy notice. Prenewvo gifted me a whole body scan. A Prenewvo scan is a screening service, not diagnostic. Diagnosis and treatment are determined by your healthcare provider. Two girls, one ghost. Two Girls, One Ghost is the most haunted podcast in America.

• 20:32Corinne Vien?

  Where each week we dive into all things strange, spooky, and supernatural, and share stories of paranormal encounters from our community of listeners.

• 20:39Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Satisfy that spooky itch and entertain your inner witch with Two Girls, One Ghost.

• 20:44Corinne Vien?

  Listen now wherever you get your podcasts and check us out on YouTube at Two Girls, One Ghost.

• 20:49Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But be warned, side effects might include a haunting or two. Listen at your own risk.

• 20:55Corinne Vien?

  Wait, so it was written in, you said 1945?

• 20:57Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Five.

• 20:58Corinne Vien?

  Five? And then when, when did it say the murders happened?

• 21:01Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So that's what we're trying to figure out. So there's no mention in the like legend, what, when it happened?

• 21:08Corinne Vien?

  Okay, so we don't know if it was like fresh, or if this was, you know, 1901 farmer slaughter.

• 21:13Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I definitely think it was like past, like not fresh.

• 21:17Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 21:17Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Cause then you would be able to know.

• 21:19Corinne Vien?

  To actually go into the archives a bit, yeah.

• 21:21Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But so then I was like looking for that newspaper article about the football team going to Ax Halla murder, and I couldn't find it. But I could find something that was indeed from Harbor Creek High School. But I think we need to give credit to our queen of the tea, Sue Richardson. Because each week Sue and this other woman Suzanne, Suzanne Blackwood, would write for this column called Student Social Scribblings. And they would spill the gossip from all around school.

• 21:55Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And this was in the local paper.

• 21:57Corinne Vien?

  Oh, my God.

• 21:58Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah, I'll read like just a little blurb of

• 22:01Corinne Vien?

  I love it and I hate it.

• 22:03Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  This is like some other things that are in.

• 22:05Corinne Vien?

  Like, how salacious was the gossip? Was this like, it didn't hurt anyone?

• 22:09Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  No, no, no. Like, OK, I'll just give you an example. "The halls of the academy certainly smelled like a flower shop on Monday. So many of the girls were wearing their corsages from the try-hi dance. Get Well wishes go to Beverly Bonin, the cute band twirler who is in Lakeview Hospital." Like, it's all of these little tidbits of things that are happening around the school. "A little more news about the try-hoo, who was the meanie who started that engagement rumor. It was most embarrassing for all concerned." Drama. Yeah.

• 22:40Corinne Vien?

  Oh, my gosh, so this is a little bit Gossip Girl.

• 22:43Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah, but there's no like hidden identity behind it. It's Sue and Suzanne. So, the article I could find, this is the very first record of what I could find in the archives of it being called Axe Murder Hollow, is from October 27, 1945. Student social scribblings posted the following. And I think it's Suzanne who wrote this because she says, "Sue Richardson, who writes Academy News for us, came into the office the other day and asked, 'Do you remember the Axe murders, which caused so much talk around 34 or 35?'" Of course, Sue thinks that's way back in the Dark Ages. Well, Sue went on to tell me that they're the main topic of conversation of the young set these days. "It seems quite the fad to go out to the Axe Murders Hollow around midnight.

• 23:28Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  There's supposed to be a man dressed in white, wearing a miner's hat with a flashlight on top, who carries a gun and chases all comers. This dismal place, says Sue, is out by West Library and after a rainstorm is just like a mud puddle. 'I was out there Friday night after a dance,' said Sue, 'but the ghost didn't show up. There was almost a full moon and everyone said he only comes out when it's pitch dark. Maybe he didn't come out because of the crowd. I counted 10 cars and at least 50 boys and girls.'" Whether this is true or not, it certainly is causing a lot of excitement.

• 23:59Corinne Vien?

  I'm just now realizing Sue is also a teenager. I thought these were adult women writing about kids in a newspaper and that's why I was like, this is so bizarre.

• 24:08Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  No, no, Sue is in high school. That's how she knows all the tea.

• 24:13Corinne Vien?

  OK, this makes a lot more sense.

• 24:15Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 24:17Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  All it took was me reading her.

• 24:18Corinne Vien?

  Yes.

• 24:20Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  You're like, oh, I get it. Maybe Suzanne is an adult because Suzanne wrote, so if your children come home awfully late some night and tell you that they've been out to the hollow, just chalk it up as an evening spent waiting for a ghost which has been seen by only a few. And then Sue said, I'm going out there again for one more try on a night where there is no moon.

• 24:40Corinne Vien?

  Oh, my God, so daring. Of course she's daring. She's gossiping openly about people.

• 24:45Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah, this is like the spot where also lovers go and make out and there's like rumors that if you stop there, you'll be attacked by the axe murderer.

• 24:55Corinne Vien?

  Why is that? Why do you choose a make out spot that?

• 24:59Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Well, I think that's like the legend, the lover's lane legend.

• 25:02Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 25:02Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  There's so many iterations of that.

• 25:04Corinne Vien?

  The heightened emotion of like, will we die tonight? Do you want to make out with me?

• 25:08Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah, or like getting scared together.

• 25:10Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 25:10Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It's probably like the guy who doesn't believe in ghosts and he's like, let's go to the axe hollow murder spot. And then the girl's like, oh, I'm scared. And he's like, come here, baby.

• 25:19Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, uh, gross.

• 25:21Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I'd be such a good dude.

• 25:25Corinne Vien?

  As I'm saying gross in response to it.

• 25:28Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Well, because I wouldn't do that icky stuff.

• 25:33Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So Sue and the local teens continue to visit the hollow. But clearly from this article, it's stated that this has been happening. This is the hotspot. A lot of kids are going. This is not the first time people are hearing about it. It's a popular thing for people to do.

• 25:46Corinne Vien?

  Yes.

• 25:47Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  The football team goes one night. They encounter some astral form, ghostly sounds. At some point it goes in the paper. I don't know when because I couldn't find that article. But then on November 23rd of 1945, so like a month after that first article I read, there's another mention of the hollows in the student's social scribbling. And this time it sounds like a lot had been stirred up over the last month because this one stated, also I love the way that this is written because it goes, it's like a bunch of thoughts. So it goes, Urbis really proud of the way the football team showed up so well in the all county lineup. Period. Next paragraph. The spooks involved in this axe murder hollow affair has caused some real excitement around school. The kids seem to be turning one and all into determined but shaking spook chasers.

• 26:31Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Hatchets, knives, guns, and what have you accompanied by students are making nightly trips out to Grub Road. Ed Hanson is making his life's work to solve the mystery. Like who's Ed Hanson? A student? Wait, Ed Han- no, I'm thinking about the Hanson Brothers, the band.

• 26:50Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Never mind. One of the Hanson Brothers, yeah. He's here to solve the murder mystery. Of course. Okay, then a couple of days later, on November 29th, 1945, there is a statement being made, basically being like, hey, the police are now really mad at all of us, like, we need to cut it out. So it said, "By the way, there has been quite a little discussion about Axe Murderers Hollow again. The state police have asked me to tell you not to go out there anymore." So like, the police literally came to Sue and Suzanne and was like, "Hey, can you just let all the students know to not go?" And it said, "There has been too much disruption, and if it doesn't stop immediately, they will see that there is something done about it." Oh, a light threat. But then the story seems to go cold. Hmm. For like 15 years. So after I read these articles, I was like, okay.

• 27:36Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  The first thing I see is there's reference to like 1935, 1934, that there were these Axe murderers that happened in this area. So I tried to look it up. No record. Never happened. So clearly, this has been around for a long time. Maybe in the 1930s, kids were saying, "Oh, it happened back in the 1920s," you know? Right, yeah. But then I kept looking into Axe Murder Hollow, and I found an article from December 18th, 1960. The Eerie Times published an article called Axe Murder Hollow, Does a Ghost Roam Along Thomas Road? Ooh. And this is the first article that kind of dives into where it originated from, because I think there were Times news reporters who actually spent several months trying to get to the origin of this, with not much luck.

• 28:21Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But this article dives into it. It's written by Tom McCormack, and the article begins, "Chill winds, marking the death of autumn, rip through Axe Murder Hollow. Twigs snap, dry leaves rattle, and an unseen dog howls in the distance. The last rays of daylight fade." A final warning that no living thing has a right to remain here. This is the most remote corner of Mill Creek and the most forbidding. For generations, Axe Murder Hollow, also called Little Egypt, has been the setting for countless wide-eyed whispered tales of the Romani, of hermits, ghouls, missing persons, murders, and the revenge of the undead.

• 29:04Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It restates the legend, talking about how this is the least traveled road in Mill Creek that the farmer crazed with jealousy will not rest until he cleaves the lover's skull that got away. And then the reports of strange going-ons have happened and persisted for years. In this article, I found that like drivers would park there and they'd find messages written in like the dust or dew on their car, which I imagine is other like teens pulling pranks, but how creepy. What was found, it might be a potential origin story, is a story told by Harper G. Rester Holtz, who was a retired interior decorator at the time of this article being published in 1960. Him and his family owned a dairy farm not too far

• 29:48Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  from where the farmer and his family were said to live. But he grew up with a different story. Growing up, Harper knew that there was but one permanent resident in the hollow, an old recluse named Billy. Billy was said to be the son of one of the earliest colonizers of the area. But Billy was so disappointed in his love life that he moved into the woods and spent his life in a small hut deep in the woods. Once a month, Billy would venture into the town to get provisions, but he was cruel, unhappy, mighty cross. And Harper stated that we kids were scared to death of him and avoided him all we could. So this talks now about a different legend, where Harper grew up with the legend of Billy the Butcher, this like terrifying man who lived in the woods.

• 30:34Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So you're like, oh, there's just like, you can see how the game of telephone has

• 30:38Corinne Vien?

  Mm hmm.

• 30:38Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  evolved over time. But there's also two hilarious photos in this article that we need to talk about. Because it's 1960, the internet doesn't exist, and ghost photos are not easily accessible to find. But this one, I, the photography team did some creative. I don't know how they did this. And I'm, it's questionable. I'll show it to you in a second. But basically it says, Times new photographer Ken Ziegler hid in the Axe Murder Hollow woods in an attempt to photograph its legendary ghost. When a brief wind rustled the branches near an old dead log, Ziegler saw nothing. Yet he fired his camera in that direction on a hunch. This, he says, is the image that appeared when he developed his super sensitive infrared film.

• 31:19Corinne Vien?

  Super sensitive ghost hunting camera.

• 31:25Corinne Vien?

  That's hilarious.

• 31:26Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Like, come on.

• 31:28Corinne Vien?

  Do people believe it?

• 31:29Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I, I think that they did.

• 31:31Corinne Vien?

  Oh, my God, let me see it again.

• 31:32Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It's so bad. It's also funny because Tom McCormack, who wrote this article, put in parentheses, he says, like, as, he clearly doesn't believe him.

• 31:42Corinne Vien?

  Right. This, like, what's he holding in his other hand?

• 31:45Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I think it's supposed to be like an axe.

• 31:47Corinne Vien?

  Well, he's holding an axe, but what's in these, in his other hand?

• 31:50Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Let me see.

• 31:50Corinne Vien?

  Looks like he's dragging around like a owl or something.

• 31:53Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh, it might be a head.

• 31:55Corinne Vien?

  Oh.

• 31:56Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Because there's one legend that we'll get into that.

• 31:59Corinne Vien?

  Dang.

• 31:59Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Has like a version where there's a bloody head.

• 32:01Corinne Vien?

  But I can't imagine, like, reading the newspaper that morning where you haven't been exposed to anything else, you're like, oh, because you're supposed to take it all as fact, right?

• 32:08Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 32:09Corinne Vien?

  What's reported in the news, you're supposed to believe.

• 32:11Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right. And then there's a map that's included in this article. And it says reproduced above is an old map that reportedly was found clutched in the hand of a skeleton unearthed at Axe Murder Hollow. Look at this map. Because it's hilarious. It has bats and like a woman in, a witch.

• 32:31Corinne Vien?

  It has a witch in a cauldron.

• 32:33Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And it was supposedly found in the clutches of a corpse.

• 32:37Corinne Vien?

  Is this like, is this newspaper, The Onion, like, early days, The Onion?

• 32:42Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 32:43Corinne Vien?

  I think this doesn't feel, this is.

• 32:45Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Well, Tom McCormack.

• 32:46Corinne Vien?

  It's a mockery.

• 32:47Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But Tom McCormack is basically trying to like, expose the whole story and how it doesn't really have a true origin.

• 32:54Corinne Vien?

  Hmm, okay.

• 32:56Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And how it has.

• 32:58Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 33:00Corinne Vien?

  Well, once you make your way around the 12th giant bat.

• 33:03Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Honestly.

• 33:03Corinne Vien?

  Come with a bubbling cauldron and a cackling witch.

• 33:06Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Bury me with a weird fucking map. Photo and map aside, we're still trying to find the origin story. And what we have right now is the name Billy and loose ends with axe murderers that potentially occurred in 1934 or 1935. Again, couldn't find anything about those axe murderers that happened in 1934 or 1935. So we're going to discuss three theories. Number one is Billy the Butcher. Number two is Little Egypt. And number three is the murder of Mary Lynn Crotty. Again, content warning, there is a lot of violence and murder that happens specifically in theories two and three.

• 33:46Corinne Vien?

  Okay.

• 33:47Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But theory one, let's start with Billy the Butcher, who we heard about briefly from Harper in this article. Billy was just a name, just Billy, like beware of Billy, Billy the Butcher. But who is Billy? There is a real Billy that lived in this area. And there is also in the woods, the remnants of a old stone fireplace.

• 34:08Corinne Vien?

  Mm hmm.

• 34:09Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Like the rest of the house has fallen or been burnt down. So that's like another reason that people like, oh, the farmer lived here because look, there's remnants of a home.

• 34:16Corinne Vien?

  Yeah. Which I mean, that exists all over the place.

• 34:19Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 34:19Corinne Vien?

  Like in Vermont, sometimes my dad will, like, I've been with him in the woods looking for like original.

• 34:26Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Bigfoot?

• 34:27Corinne Vien?

  No, like the, the original, like foundations, like the prints of the, of homes that once existed.

• 34:32Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  The truth is that yes, Billy did live in this land, in the woods, on a farm. He was a farmer. But his name was William Gack, nicknamed Billy. He was born in Germany and moved to Mill Creek as a child with his mother and father. And I think this was like the 18, like late 1800s. Unfortunately, his father died shortly after they immigrated, leaving William and his mother to fend for themselves. William dropped out of school. I think the furthest he went is like third grade. And then he went and found a job to basically provide for him and his mom. He supported his aging mother until she died of psoriasis of the liver. And for a very long time, he was in fact, that guy in the woods.

• 35:15Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  The recluse, the quiet, somewhat scary because he was different man who didn't really talk to people, who wasn't very happy.

• 35:23Corinne Vien?

  It is interesting because we started this episode being like, we all just want to be in a cottage in the woods with wildflowers and peace. And he was getting maybe a sliver of it.

• 35:31Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah, there's, I think, a little bit of a difference of like, a woman living in the woods doing that and like, a scary big man doing that.

• 35:39Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, but he was taking care of his dying mother.

• 35:41Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I understand that, but I'm saying, even like, women in the woods get bad reps too. And then, this man, he stopped being a farmer and became a butcher. Billy the Butcher. Quickly, word spread of Billy the Butcher, don't go near his house, you'll never come back. And then in 1922, two 14-year-old boys decided to sneak into the woods and rob the old man who lived there.

• 36:04Corinne Vien?

  Oh my gosh.

• 36:05Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  They thought that Billy had gone into town and they snuck into the farmhouse, only to be greeted by Billy, large, towering over them. Billy held these two boys in his house for hours until the police could arrive because he lived far from town.

• 36:20Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 36:21Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So imagine the horror as these two 14-year-old boys who, clearly, we can all agree, they were the ones in the wrong.

• 36:27Corinne Vien?

  Right.

• 36:27Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But now here they are with a scary, large, old man.

• 36:32Corinne Vien?

  Well, the rumors are, he kills you.

• 36:33Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 36:34Corinne Vien?

  So they're thinking they're about to be stew.

• 36:35Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right, and they're alone with him in his house and he's angry, rightfully so, and his home is surrounded by butcher items.

• 36:45Corinne Vien?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:45Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Cleavers, axes, knives, blood. They were let go, but...

• 36:51Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, he kept the intruders until they were appropriately apprehended by official law enforcement.

• 36:57Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Totally, we can agree.

• 36:58Corinne Vien?

  Billy did everything right.

• 36:59Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  We can agree that the children...

• 37:01Corinne Vien?

  But Billy's image was scary to children.

• 37:03Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Absolutely.

• 37:03Corinne Vien?

  That situation to anyone would be scary.

• 37:05Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And now imagine these two 14-year-old boys, they survive this, but they go off and tell the horrors of what they face and like, "We barely escaped with our lives, like, he was gonna kill us." This rumor spreads even more. The truth is, Billy lived a long life. He eventually married and had a family, and then died in 1954 of natural causes. So the true pieces here is that Billy did live in the hollow. His home did burn down and all that remains now is the fireplace that still stands in the woods to stay. Which, here's a picture.

• 37:37Corinne Vien?

  Oh, it's pretty.

• 37:39Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So that's where people say like the farmer is looking to murder.

• 37:42Corinne Vien?

  I do understand how creepy it is though, because there are some hiking trails in Vermont that I've been on that have that same sort of thing where it's like, you hike and then you're like almost at the top when you see the, just like the fireplace still just remaining, standing on its own.

• 37:57Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 37:57Corinne Vien?

  And it is a little.

• 37:58Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Eerie.

• 37:59Corinne Vien?

  It's eerie.

• 38:00Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It is eerie. So I feel like I can understand how this Billy the Butcher urban legend could evolve into the Axe Murder Hollow legend. But I feel like it's missing the murder part, right?

• 38:15Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 38:19Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So let's get into theory number two. This story I do hesitate sharing because it's a very clear example of a group of people being demonized and villainized because they are different and not understood by society. And again, there's no record of it actually happening. But back in the early 1900s, this area that is now the Axe Murder Hollow was nicknamed Little Egypt because a lot of Romani people camped out here and would travel town to town. Their lifestyle was considered different and so a lot of people would create unfavorable stories about them to portray that negative narrative.

• 38:55Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 38:55Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  That they were criminals, thieves, etc. There's a story that spread around the area of Erie, Pennsylvania, that one of the Romani men discovered his wife had been cheating on him and in a rage, took an axe, beheaded her and hid her head in the library building. Which is why that image has like, I think, holding ahead. Again, there is no evidence of this actually ever happening and I'm going to go ahead and say this is absolutely a rumor that was used to increase the fear, like fear mongering and negative opinion of these people and to demonize them in society. But I think if that story is created, plus the Billy the Butcher, over time with the game of telephone, it becomes the legend we heard in the very beginning. Theory number three.

• 39:38Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  This is a very true murder that happened and is very devastating and I think if anything, it. Perpetuated the narrative of this legend rather than created it. So in 1963, Mary Lynn Crotty was a sophomore at Edinburgh College. And she went on a blind date with a 21 year old man named Daniel Bybin Cowser, who unbeknownst to Mary was married with a son. But Mary went on this date and apparently it's hard to know actually what happened. But Daniel tried to make a move on her. She said, no, he continued to make advances. And it is believed that when Mary resisted, Daniel bound her, assaulted her, strangled her to death, and then stabbed her 15 times. Oh, my God.

• 40:23Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  He then put Mary's body in his trunk before deciding to dump her body. But Mary was reported missing and everyone knew that she had gone on this date with Daniel. So Daniel was apprehended and arrested. And he confessed to the murder pretty quickly and led the investigators to her body. He had dumped Mary's body in Axe Murder Hollow, in the hopes that when her body had been discovered in the hollow, it would confuse officials and make them think it was connected to the urban legend. Hmm. Okay, so we can agree on this. The legend originates with tragedy. Whether it's a man who was just trying to live his life in the woods, being turned into the monster butcher, a group of people demonized for their ways of life, or an innocent woman violently and unjustly murdered by angry men.

• 41:06Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  This legend comes from darkness, sadness. And we can also agree that regardless of this origin story, these woods are haunted because countless people have heard and seen all kinds of things. The writing in the cars, the sounds of laughing, lights in the woods, apparitions roaming this area. And it is still a place that people go to visit. But over time, this area has rapidly changed. Back in 1960, this road was like the least traveled, the most dense woods area. But now, most of the woods have been cleared for residential developments. It's now surrounded by homes and parks, and the hollow is not as abandoned and as remote as it once was.

• 41:48Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But the legend continues, and it's one of Pennsylvania's most infamous legends and vastly known, so much so that it's spread through the Appalachia region and that its location is now confused. Is it in the Appalachia area or not? It's close to, but it's not. Some locals are OK with the fact that the legend is continuing. But in 1985, I found another news article from a landowner named Lynn Perry Alzdt, who wrote an exasperated plea in the newspaper begging people to stop perpetuating the legend and care about the land if they visit. What happened at Axmurder Hollow? Nothing, exclaimed the exasperated landowner.

• 42:25Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And I'll put a picture of it if you guys want to pause and read it, but I'm not going to read the whole article. But it's very, uh, I understand.

• 42:32Corinne Vien?

  They're probably so sick of people trespassing.

• 42:34Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah, and I think a lot of it is teenagers going probably with alcohol and leaving trash behind. And I think that was the part that pissed people off.

• 42:44Corinne Vien?

  It's just being noisy, too.

• 42:45Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right. It's like, we're all about a local legend. If you respect the land and the people who live here. Like, if you go, you sit there quietly, no one's going to have a problem with it. But if you go and you're drinking a bunch of beers and leaving all your trash behind late at night, waking up the neighbors, yeah, people are going to be pissed off.

• 43:03Corinne Vien?

  And I feel like there's like certain days where even if you are the person that doesn't want this to happen, like you have to understand that sometimes every once in a while, something is. And I feel like a specific day, like Halloween. Like, I would understand if I lived next to a cemetery or something like that, that like, maybe there's going to be noise until 4:00 a.m. And it just is what it is for that one day.

• 43:22Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Totally.

• 43:23Corinne Vien?

  But yeah, for it to be just like a constant cycle and rotation of

• 43:27Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 43:28Corinne Vien?

  shenanigans, hooligan activities.

• 43:30Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Which actually, you talk about a cemetery on Halloween. I've been going to the beach as much as possible, just because it's been so nice and it's the summer. And I just walk over there, and I have the most like... I was just like, I love Marblehead so much. My walk to the beach is less than 10 minutes. I pass tons of homes that are older than our country. I walk through a cemetery and I walk past a pond that is dedicated to a woman who was falsely accused of being a witch in the Salem witch trials. Like, then I walk to a beach.

• 44:01Corinne Vien?

  Yep.

• 44:02Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  That has an island that at low tide you can walk to.

• 44:04Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, and has like a group of people that go do like cold plunges and stuff together.

• 44:10Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah, the Wolf Pack.

• 44:13Corinne Vien?

  It's magical. It is magical.

• 44:16Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But others do want to encourage the legend, wanting to uphold the oral tradition and the local lore that it has created for the town of Erie, Pennsylvania. And to wrap up this story of the Axe Murder Hollow, I'm gonna read the latest rendition of the legend and story that goes around, written by S. E. Sclosser, the author of Spooky Pennsylvania and the author of like all the spooky blank books. We've definitely read their books before.

• 44:41Corinne Vien?

  Oh, yeah.

• 44:42Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Settle in, this is gonna be like a scary story told in the dark.

• 44:45Corinne Vien?

  Ooh.

• 44:46Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Susan and Ned were driving through a wooded, empty section of highway. Lightning flashed, thunder roared, the sky went dark in the torrential downpour. "We'd better stop," said Susan. Ned nodded his head in agreement, stepped on the brake, and suddenly the car started to slide on the slick pavement. They plunged off the road and slid to a halt at the bottom of an incline. Ned quickly turned to check if Susan was all right. When she nodded, Ned relaxed and looked through the rain-soaked windows. "I'm gonna see how bad it is," he told Susan, and went out into the storm. She saw his blurry figure in the headlight walking around the front of the car. A moment later, he jumped in beside her, soaking wet. "The car's not badly damaged, but we're real deep in mud," he said. "I'm going to have to go for help."

• 45:31Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Susan swallowed nervously. There would be no quick rescue here, so he told her to turn off the headlights and lock the doors until he returned. Axe Murder Hollow. Although Ned hadn't said the name aloud, they both knew what he had been thinking when he told her to lock the car. This was a place where a man had once taken an axe, hacked his wife to death, in a jealous rage over an alleged affair. Supposedly, the axe-wielding spirit of the husband continues to haunt the section of the road. Outside the car, Susan heard a shriek. A loud thump and a strange gurgling noise. But she couldn't see anything in the darkness. Frightened, she shrank down in her seat. She sat in silence for a while, and then she noticed another sound. Bump, bump, bump.

• 46:17Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It was a soft sound, like something being blown by the wind. Suddenly, the car was illuminated by a bright light. An official-sounding voice told her to get out of the car. Ned must have found a police officer, right? So Susan unlocked the door and stepped out of the car. As her eyes adjusted to the bright light, she saw it. Hanging by his feet, from the tree next to the car, was the dead body of Ned. His bloody throat had been cut so deeply, he was nearly decapitated. The wind swung his corpse back and forth, so that it thumped against the tree. Bump, bump, bump. Susan screamed and ran toward the voice in the light.

• 46:59Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  As she drew close, she realized that the light was not coming from a flashlight. Standing there was the glowing figure of a man with a smile on his face and a large, solid, definitely real axe in his hands. She backed away from the glowing figure until she bumped into the car. "Playing around when my back was turned," the ghost whispered, stroking the sharp blade of the axe with his fingers. "You have been very naughty." The last thing she saw-

• 47:29Corinne Vien?

  Just a word, it makes me feel like now we're in like a smut, weird, novel situation.

• 47:35Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Naughty, naughty.

• 47:38Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  The last thing she saw was the glint of the axe blade in the eerie, incandescent light. Susan blinked.

• 47:47Corinne Vien?

  Just kidding. Going to the Belinda blinks.

• 47:53Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  If you don't know where that's from, My Dad Wrote a Porno, highly suggest hilarious.

• 47:58Corinne Vien?

  Oh, yeah.

• 47:58Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Podcast.

• 47:59Corinne Vien?

  One of the first podcasts we ever listened to. It was like My Favorite Murder and My Dad Wrote a Porno.

• 48:03Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah. But no, Susan did not blink again.

• 48:05Corinne Vien?

  Dang.

• 48:06Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And that's the legend that goes around town now, and that's the ghost story people tell at campfires.

• 48:12Corinne Vien?

  That is very creepy, and I totally understand why kids would keep it going.

• 48:18Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 48:18Corinne Vien?

  Especially if there's like that much history and like you actually have newspaper clippings of people talking about this. It just perpetuates.

• 48:26Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  For generations.

• 48:27Corinne Vien?

  Right.

• 48:28Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  In different iterations, but over time it's evolving.

• 48:31Corinne Vien?

  Engrained.

• 48:32Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 48:33Corinne Vien?

  Okay, I lied. This is, it's not from Erie, but it is from Pennsylvania.

• 48:38Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Which, in the tracker, I did not mention Pennsylvania, so.

• 48:42Corinne Vien?

  I, yeah, I did not know, and I didn't.

• 48:43Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  That's Erie.

• 48:44Corinne Vien?

  Google. It is Erie. Ooh. Snaps for Sabrina. So already snaps?

• 48:50Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I feel bad. Anyone who's from Erie, how many times have you heard that?

• 48:54Corinne Vien?

  Well, it's fun. Be more fun.

• 48:56Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It's pretty there. It's very pretty there.

• 48:58Corinne Vien?

  I've never been. Okay. Hi, Karen and Sabrina. This story is about my father, and he recently shared this story with me after I sent him one of your episodes on an Appalachian ghost story. For context, my dad is a skeptic. He's a biologist and strictly believes in science and will always try to justify the supernatural with scientific evidence.

• 49:17Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay, can I just say, though, like I literally saw a video on TikTok the other day where it's a scientist who talks about how he like studied water and like feeding frequencies and information to water.

• 49:29Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 49:30Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And water retains more information on a full moon, which is why people make moon water.

• 49:37Corinne Vien?

  Whoa.

• 49:37Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Under a full moon.

• 49:38Corinne Vien?

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 49:39Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Isn't that wild?

• 49:40Corinne Vien?

  I just knew like the structure.

• 49:42Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So you can whisper your intentions and like good, positive energy into water before putting it under a full moon and.

• 49:50Corinne Vien?

  Okay.

• 49:52Corinne Vien?

  Do you drink the mood water?

• 49:53Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  You can. You can also use it in like any ritual. You can water your plants with it. You can, yeah. Mine's just sitting on my table and I have not done anything with it yet.

• 50:05Corinne Vien?

  Don't leave it in the jar too long, right?

• 50:08Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Well, it will grow sea monkeys or something. I'll bathe in it.

• 50:11Corinne Vien?

  Oh, wow. But I do love this too, because I feel like this is like a classic where it's always like a skeptic story. But specifically when a dad has their child send it in a story, you know that this is like rocked their world.

• 50:22Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yes.

• 50:23Corinne Vien?

  Okay, he's a biologist. He strictly believes in science and will always try to justify the supernatural with scientific evidence. But when I had asked him if he had any spooky stories from his time growing up in West Virginia and southern central Pennsylvania, he said he had one that he will never forget. He has never shared it before in his life.

• 50:44Corinne Vien?

  A little background to my dad's childhood. He grew up in a very rural part of southern Pennsylvania in a hotel called the Grand View Ship Hotel on Lincoln Highway.

• 50:53Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  That sounds amazing.

• 50:55Corinne Vien?

  The hotel was an actual ship. My grandparents owned it in the seventies and called it Noah's Ark, where they had a zoo and a restaurant as well. And the hotel itself is pretty famous. Many presidents and notable historical figures have stayed there, so it is old as fuck. The hotel is haunted and my dad knew this because he also lived there while his family owned it. This specific part of Pennsylvania is deep in history due to it being relevant during the Revolutionary War, having multiple Native American tribes local to the area, and the Underground Railroad went through this area and my grandparents' house. So lots of ground for folklore to take place. The one night my dad was sitting in his room in the hotel,

• 51:37Corinne Vien?

  I think he said he was seven or eight and he had a window open, but the screen was still there. He described to me what he saw and it was something he'd never seen before in his life. This is a man who literally studies biology, zoology, and entomology for a living. He said what he saw flapping outside his window looked like a Jenny Hanover, which is basically like a dried out stingray skeleton that people used to have in their house as decor in the seventies, like his grandma did, which is why he knew what this was. He said, and they showed a picture because I was like, what the fuck is this? I've never even heard of that. He said this creature flapped in front of the window for five seconds before flying away and then he never saw it again. He told me that even fifty some years later, he has never encountered something that has

• 52:19Corinne Vien?

  looked like that. He has no idea what it could be other than something supernatural. And he's a very reserved and private man. So I knew that this wasn't him just bullshitting me. I'm hoping maybe you could help discover what this creature might be, as I have no idea myself. And I am very into Appalachian folklore. Thank you so much for your time. I hope you enjoy the story. And this is from Ivy.

• 52:40Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Can I see the picture?

• 52:41Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, we've seen this in like different cryptozoology museums. It's a dried out stingray. I feel like they used to call them like mermaids sometimes.

• 52:49Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 52:50Corinne Vien?

  But solving this-

• 52:51Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Do you know stingrays are sharks?

• 52:52Corinne Vien?

  No.

• 52:53Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 52:54Corinne Vien?

  What?

• 52:54Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I'm watching all the sharks on Netflix. I don't know why, because I love sharks and Shark Week is my vibe. But yeah, stingrays are flat sharks.

• 53:02Corinne Vien?

  So I swam with sharks in the Cayman Islands?

• 53:05Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Basically.

• 53:05Corinne Vien?

  I hugged and kissed and touched a shark?

• 53:07Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Mm hmm.

• 53:08Corinne Vien?

  Can't say every species I'll do that to.

• 53:11Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  That's crazy. Isn't that wild? I was, I had no idea. But there's a woman on the show who is like a expert in stingrays and she is, she keeps saying, "Flat sharks are sharks too."

• 53:23Corinne Vien?

  That's so funny. Okay, and here's a postcard of the hotel. That is a ship, but it's also a hotel.

• 53:30Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  That would be so cool to grow up on that.

• 53:32Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 53:33Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I have no idea what the heck he saw.

• 53:35Corinne Vien?

  I don't know either.

• 53:36Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Well, part of me is like, did the ghost of the corpse that his grandmother had appear?

• 53:44Corinne Vien?

  Like flying and flapping through the sky?

• 53:46Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I don't know if I'm a ghost of a, a, a water species. I'd be like, hey, I'm not restricted to the water now.

• 53:53Corinne Vien?

  But in a shriveled form, I feel like if it were spectral, it would be like it's full stingray body.

• 53:58Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I thought it was.

• 54:00Corinne Vien?

  No, it was like the shriveled, dried up, mummified version of the stingray, flapping through the sky.

• 54:05Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Maybe it was a fairy.

• 54:06Corinne Vien?

  Can owls lose all of their feathers? But then how do they fly? Never mind. I'm trying to think of what this could be.

• 54:12Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  They can lose their feathers, right?

• 54:13Corinne Vien?

  Oh, yeah, but- But then how do they fly without their feathers?

• 54:17Corinne Vien?

  I don't know.

• 54:18Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  We have no answers?

• 54:19Corinne Vien?

  Sorry, we have zero answers.

• 54:20Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But your dad should not be skeptic is basically all we have to say.

• 54:23Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, he can't figure it out. Guess what? Neither can we.

• 54:26Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And we are professionals.

• 54:28Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, so tell your dad, and that's really saying that this is this is authentic paranormal experience.

• 54:35Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Damn. Okay.

• 54:36Corinne Vien?

  Wow.

• 54:37Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Well, tell us your local urban legend. Tell us all the weird things that you've seen out your window. Tell us your parents' stories, even if they say they're skeptic. We know the truth.

• 54:48Corinne Vien?

  We know the truth.

• 54:50Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And yeah, just keep coming back. If you want episodes one week early and ad free, you can join us on Patreon, where we have plenty of other bonuses, like bonus episodes, book club, I almost said book story, but campfire stories.

• 55:03Corinne Vien?

  And stories about paranormal.

• 55:05Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yes.

• 55:05Corinne Vien?

  There's things.

• 55:06Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  There's things. And write and review us, follow us on social media, tell all of your friends about us. And yeah, that's it.

• 55:13Corinne Vien?

  And shout out to Jamie Ryan, who edits and produces our podcast. Thank you, Jamie.

• 55:17Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  We love you all.

• 55:18Corinne Vien?

  Thank you to all of you.

• 55:19Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  We will see you on the other side.