Pod Insights So Supernatural HAUNTED: Cranmer Family Demon with Two Girls One Ghost About this episode In 1988, Bob Cranmer moved his family into the home of his dreams on Brownsville Road, outside of Pittsburgh, PA. But as they settled in, it became clear they weren’t alone. As furniture moved, and blood oozed from the walls, the Cranmers and their four kids juggled a very public facing life because of Bob’s career… and a very secret life of being tortured by demons.
Transcript 11,869 words · 6 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Speaker 00 One thing I've learned from my years of working in true crime is to always check a source. Where does the information come from? What does this person stand to gain from offering up their version of events? Can they be trusted? But this might be even more applicable when it comes to what we're doing here on So Supernatural. Because there are a lot of wild stories out there. And while you know I love to believe in stuff, there's always a part of me asking or wondering, could this be made up for attention? How might someone benefit from sharing their ghost stories, their alien encounters, their run-ins with a cryptid? Or more importantly, when it comes to the stigma surrounding the supernatural, the
0:45 Speaker 00 question becomes, what do they stand to lose? In some cases, the answer is literally everything. That's what's so interesting about today's story. In 1988, Bob Cranmer and his wife Lisa bought their dream house in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. But it wasn't long until that dream turned into a nightmare. Bob and his family experienced so much paranormal activity in that house that it turned their lives upside down. But the wildest thing about it is Bob wasn't someone who was out for money, or even his 15 minutes of fame. Quite the opposite, actually.
1:27 Speaker 00 His job would have had him dodging the controversy like the plague. Because Bob was a former army officer turned politician, and his haunted house was such a big scandal, it could have cost him his career. Yet he shared his story anyway. And today, Rasha and Yvette are going to share it with you with a twist. I'm Ashley Flowers. Welcome back to So Supernatural.
2:24 Yvette Gentile? Hi, y'all. I'm Yvette Gentile.
2:27 Speaker 02 And I'm Rasha Picarero. And we are beyond excited for today's topic because we aren't alone.
2:35 Yvette Gentile? No, and we're not just referring to ghosts and spirits that we're gonna meet in this episode. We have two of our friends join us to share this story. The host of Two Girls, One Ghost. We had to do that.
2:53 Speaker 02 We couldn't resist. That was so good and so unexpected.
2:57 Yvette Gentile? We have Sabrina, Deanna Roga, and Corinne Vian in the house. Ladies, welcome to So Supernatural.
3:05 Speaker 03 Hello. Thank you. Thank you for having us.
3:09 Yvette Gentile? We're so honored.
3:10 Speaker 02 We're so excited.
3:11 Speaker 03 We might have a ghost with us. That's why, you know, when we say two girls, one ghost, there is a ghost or many ghosts that do haunt our show. And so we always caution people who listen to our podcast that we might haunt you. And we're sorry, or you're welcome, depending on what you want.
3:30 Yvette Gentile? You're sorry, or you're welcome.
3:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, and for the team at So Supernatural, maybe we're sorry because oftentimes it does interfere with the technology. So let us pray that nothing happens when recording today.
3:42 Speaker 03 Knock on wood.
3:43 Yvette Gentile? Knock on wood, all the prayers. We're gonna be fine. We are divinely blessed. We're gonna be just fine. Okay.
3:51 Speaker 03 Good intention setting.
3:52 Speaker 02 Manifest.
3:52 Yvette Gentile? Amen to that. Amen. Okay, so I think we have the perfect topic because from what I understand, this particular topic we're gonna be talking about, you guys have not covered on your show.
4:03 Speaker 03 We have not.
4:05 Yvette Gentile? Well, today, we're exploring the terrifying case of the Cranmer family demon. And I know you just said you haven't covered this story before, but had you even heard about it?
4:16 Speaker 03 You know what's so interesting is on my bookshelf, there is a book, the book, The Brownsville Demon. Book that a listener had given to us a couple of years ago. And it's just been sitting on my bookshelf, so I've never read it. And then in preparation, obviously, for this episode, I did like a little Google search, but not too much because I wanted to be surprised. And I found out that there is a very similar by name case that happened in Cranford, New Jersey, which is like very close to where I grew up in New Jersey.
4:47 Speaker 02 Oh, wow.
4:48 Speaker 03 But the family name is Cramner. So the M and N are switched.
4:53 Speaker 02 Oh, that's so confusing.
4:55 Rasha Pecoraro? That's wild.
4:55 Speaker 03 But it's a different demon case. I know.
4:58 Speaker 02 But is the demon the same? Did the demon get confused trying to hunt down the family, find them again?
5:04 Speaker 03 I don't think so. Maybe.
5:06 Speaker 02 Right?
5:07 Speaker 03 A demon with dyslexia.
5:09 Rasha Pecoraro? All right, but any potential dyslexic demons aside?
5:13 Speaker 03 Otherwise, no, we are, we're coming in blind and we're excited.
5:17 Rasha Pecoraro? We are so excited too. So let's dive right into it. It's the 1970s and Bob Cranmer is a teenager living in a Pittsburgh suburb called Brentwood, Pennsylvania. And for the most part, Bob's your average kid. He loves to be out riding bikes with his friends, pushing the boundaries of his curfew, you know, that sort of thing. Though Bob has one weird fascination that other kids might not, one that started back when he was in the second grade. Bob's obsessed with riding his bike past this particular house at 3406 Brownsville Road. The house was completed around 1910. So yeah, it looks a little bit older, but to him, it feels like something out of a
6:02 Rasha Pecoraro? fairy tale.
6:03 Speaker 03 This sounds like the beginning of a Stephen King novel.
6:05 Rasha Pecoraro? Doesn't it? It totally does. The house is red with white trim and it's covered in windows and ivy. It's three stories tall with a big front porch and a balcony on the second floor. You can't tell from the outside, but it has 14 rooms in total. It also has, I think they call it a foyer or a den, a dedicated music room and three working fireplaces. So it's really, really majestic. There's also this beautiful grand staircase. All to say, this home is incredibly striking. It's the sort of place that catches your attention, even if you've only ever seen the outside.
6:44 Speaker 03 It sounds beautiful.
6:46 Rasha Pecoraro? It does.
6:47 Speaker 03 I'm like, I want to see this Zillow listing.
6:50 Speaker 02 I know, it's one of those things where you're like, is this going to be like 2.4 million? Or is this going to be 200,000? I don't know anything about this area.
6:58 Rasha Pecoraro? Right. Mm-hmm.
6:59 Speaker 02 I don't either.
7:00 Rasha Pecoraro? Yeah. Well, each time he passes it, Bob can't help but just stop and stare. He kind of feels like something is drawing him towards the house, almost as if it's pulling him in. In fact, he's so drawn to it that his biggest dream in life is to own the house himself one day.
7:20 Speaker 02 There's a creepiness to that because it's like, well, is the house calling him? Like, is this something that came from within him himself?
7:27 Speaker 03 Right, yeah.
7:29 Speaker 02 Or was this implanted?
7:31 Speaker 03 Yeah, given the fact that this is so supernatural, and we already know demon is a part of this story title, I'm apprehensive about this lure from the house.
7:41 Speaker 02 Agreed.
7:42 Rasha Pecoraro? Well, even though it's Bob's biggest dream to own this house, it's a long road for him to get there. And he has a tough time in high school. He falls in with a bad crowd. He begins drinking a lot. And he gets into trouble for a bunch of petty crimes.
7:58 Yvette Gentile? His parents are devout Catholics, so they're a little concerned about their son. And they finally tell him that they want him to find Jesus, like, he actually needs Jesus to save him. But the thing is, Bob doesn't believe in God. Eventually, Bob's bad behavior catches up to him, though. And this is in May of 1975, when he's about 18 or 19 years old. He and his friends get drunk one night, and they go for a little joyride. Thankfully, you know, nobody gets hurt. But they do end up getting a flat tire in front of this furniture store. Then one of Bob's brilliant friends makes this decision to impulsively smash the window of this particular store.
8:43 Yvette Gentile? Of course, the alarm sets off and Bob's afraid that the police are gonna be like right there lickety split. So he ditches his friends, he runs from the scene of the crime and he just hitchhikes home. But he ends up getting a ride from two men, like two strangers that he doesn't know, he hasn't met before, they're not from the neighborhood. And they don't have time to bring him all the way back to his house. So they offer to drop him off nearby in Brentwood. And guess where they drop him off, y'all?
9:16 Speaker 03 No, no.
9:17 Yvette Gentile? I'm telling you, they drop him off right in front of 3406 Brownsville Road. I mean, what?
9:24 Speaker 03 Oh, my gosh.
9:25 Speaker 02 My gosh.
9:26 Speaker 03 Of all places.
9:27 Speaker 02 It's like you couldn't have written this more perfectly if this was a movie, right? Like, of course, he's delivered right back to the house that's called him since he was young.
9:36 Yvette Gentile? Yeah, exactly. The same house that he has been obsessing over since he was a kid. But to Bob, he doesn't feel like this is a coincidence. He actually feels like it's fate.
9:48 Speaker 02 Yeah, well, fate is such a positive word, right? It makes it feel like, oh, it's destiny. But like, I don't know, I don't know if this is, well, I'm gonna say, I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but based on the subject of this episode, I feel like this is a very bad thing.
10:05 Speaker 03 Yeah, we've actually read stories from listeners on our podcast before where for years, they've had dreams of the same house over and over and over. And then there are good versions where like one person, when they were, you know, in their 30s with their family, found the house that they had been dreaming about for so long and bought it and moved in with their family, like, you know, happily ever after. But then there's other iterations where it's nightmarish, repeating of the house over and over. And then someone saw it in real life and it was like, I need to stay away from here.
10:38 Speaker 02 Wow. It also makes me think, and this is, I mean, again, I don't know what's gonna happen here, but it does make me think a lot about past lives and it makes me curious about. If this connection to the house that Bob felt at such a young age, because this is a bizarre thing to experience. Like, second grade and he's feeling connected to this house?
10:58 Rasha Pecoraro? Yeah.
10:59 Speaker 02 Like, that's a strange behavior for a second grader. It makes me curious if the connection goes much further than his present life.
11:06 Rasha Pecoraro? Yeah, I definitely think that it does. And something about this interaction convinces Bob to get his life in order. Bob finally listens to his family's advice and becomes a devout Christian, specifically a Baptist. He even considers becoming a minister, though ultimately he decides not to pursue that dream. Instead, he goes to college, then joins the army in the late 1970s when he's in his early 20s. In 1979, while he's enlisted, his friends set him up on a blind date with a woman named Lisa. So they end up hitting it off, they get married, and eventually have four children together. Lisa and the kids live with Bob in Virginia
11:49 Rasha Pecoraro? as he works in Washington DC doing military intelligence. But eventually, Bob feels it's time for a new chapter. So in October of 1988, the family decides to move back to Bob's hometown of Brentwood while he looks for new work.
12:05 Yvette Gentile? And they're looking for a house to live in. And wouldn't you know it? The Brownsville Street Mansion is up for sale.
12:12 Speaker 02 I'm just shaking my head so much.
12:16 Speaker 02 But it almost feels like, have you guys heard of the invisible string theory?
12:20 Yvette Gentile? No, what's that?
12:21 Speaker 02 It's basically like this theory that it kind of goes back to like fate and destiny, where something is always meant to be, and like, whatever's meant to be will be, sort of thing. But like, that your fate is predetermined and that you have these moments where you kind of pass by someone or something that's meant to be in your life so many times before it actually solidifies. So for someone who might find a romantic partner, or perhaps they're looking back at childhood photos and they see a photo of themselves standing together on like, the deck of a cruise ship that both of their families went on vacation at the same time. You know, something like that. Where it's like, was this always meant to be? And he just was always finding himself around this house for this exact moment?
13:02 Yvette Gentile? Yeah.
13:03 Rasha Pecoraro? I love the idea of the invisible string theory. Because it's almost like we're all in alignment that leads us to the right place at the right time, no matter what.
13:12 Speaker 02 Right, like, what are the chances that his family is looking for a house when this house is up for sale and that they're specifically looking in this area? Like, it has to perfectly align. Yeah, agreed, agreed.
13:23 Rasha Pecoraro? Totally. Again, just like the invisible string theory. So get this. The owners say they have to sell because they need a place closer to where they work. But frankly, they seem a little too eager to get rid of the house. Bob figures he won't be able to afford a home this big, this old, and this beautiful. Remember, he's been romanticizing this place for years. But he figures it's worth an offer. And when he tells the owners what he's willing to pay, they accept his offer literally on the spot.
13:56 Speaker 02 No.
13:57 Rasha Pecoraro? Yes, yes.
13:58 Speaker 02 That's the biggest sign!
13:59 Rasha Pecoraro? Even though it's way less than the house should be worth. So obviously, Bob is totally ecstatic.
14:07 Speaker 02 My mind goes to, damn, he should have gone lower.
14:10 Rasha Pecoraro? Right?
14:10 Speaker 02 Oh, my god, and this is like a mansion!
14:13 Rasha Pecoraro? Yeah, 14 rooms.
14:14 Speaker 02 You would think people would be lined up to own this home. Wow.
14:18 Rasha Pecoraro? You'd totally think so. But when the family goes to do a walk-through with the sellers, things get a little weird.
14:26 Yvette Gentile? The whole time, the former owners are acting extremely anxious and nervous, like they're obviously keeping something from the Cranmers. Then at one point, Bob notices that one of his kids is missing.
14:41 Speaker 02 Excuse me?
14:42 Yvette Gentile? Well, everyone's been touring the home. His two-year-old son, Bobby Jr., has somehow just wandered off, nobody noticing where he's gone.
14:51 Speaker 02 Why do I feel like he's gonna be in, like, a dumb waiter?
14:55 Speaker 03 Down to the basement.
14:57 Yvette Gentile? I'm sure there's a dumb waiter in that house.
14:59 Speaker 03 Right.
14:59 Yvette Gentile? I'm sure, right? Oh, my goodness. But Bob, you know, he's not too concerned. But the former owners are freaking panicked. So they start searching the house and they eventually find Bobby Jr. standing on the first landing of the grand staircase. But he's not just standing there, y'all. He's screaming and crying because he is absolutely terrified of something. I don't know what. And when the adults actually ask him what happened, he won't say.
15:29 Speaker 03 Oh, no.
15:30 Yvette Gentile? So not only won't Bobby Jr. say what happened to scare him, apparently the owners don't explain why they were so worried either. But for some reason, this doesn't deter Bob and his wife from signing this paperwork. Let me just put you two into the situation. If that was to happen to you, would you still want to sign those papers?
15:51 Speaker 03 Actually, this reminds me so much of Corinne is having an experience right now in her house with her 10-month-old son. So.
15:58 Yvette Gentile? What?
15:59 Speaker 02 Yeah. I think if you'd asked me this a year ago, I'd be like, absolutely not. I'm not buying this house. But now, given what's happening here in the house that I do own, I'm like, oh, I think I might be able to handle it. I could have a mansion for a few pennies, sure.
16:14 Yvette Gentile? OK, but wait, wait. We totally need to hear about this.
16:17 Speaker 02 So the house that we moved into, my husband and I, a few years ago, we know the whole history of like the land, the people who've lived here before. So there's by no accounts like any murders or anything that has happened before in this house that would indicate it being haunted. But since my child was born, he's been interacting with people that I can't see. And specific to his room, it's always been just in his room and he's having a good time. Like, he's laughing, he's really enjoying whoever's entertaining him. And I struggled a lot with postpartum, well, I guess still struggling with postpartum depression. And multiple times through my like journey in the night of feeding him multiple times,
16:59 Speaker 02 the lights would turn on in his room or I would hear someone walking and stop like right at the door of his bedroom. I'd see feet going back and forth, like the musical aquarium, toy aquarium would go on to like play a little jingle. And all of those experiences felt generally positive. But there's one space in my house, which is where Sabrina and I record Two Girls One Goes.
17:21 Speaker 03 Where you're sitting right now.
17:23 Speaker 02 Where I'm sitting right at this present moment. And this is where the vibes don't feel so great. And we've had a lot of weird things happen in here. Like weird noises coming from the bookshelf that we can't figure out exactly what's happening or why. I had dirt materialize and fall on me from the ceiling.
17:42 Yvette Gentile? No.
17:43 Speaker 02 Yeah.
17:44 Speaker 03 What? But it's never been scary. Like, it's just been like little odd things and then until recently, something happened.
17:50 Speaker 02 So Noah, my child, he comes in here because he loves being in here and he loves playing with a skeleton that we call Sven.
17:57 Speaker 03 My daughter loves her big skeleton, too. She's 13, though.
18:01 Speaker 02 Right?
18:01 Speaker 03 Yeah.
18:03 Speaker 02 We love a creepy kid. We love an appreciation for the spooky. But he's in here and he's having a good time and he's seen everything, right? He's seen Raggedy and Andy and the skeleton. Nothing is surprising. He's playing and he looks up directly in this spot on our bookshelf where we keep hearing these phantom noises that we cannot figure out what's causing it. And he starts shrieking like a bloody murder, so scared. I've never, ever seen him this scared in his life. He could not calm down. My mom was here visiting. She rushes in, she's like, what scared him? And then she's looking and she's like, something right there, something right there. Because he was staring and he was so, so scared. And neither of us could see anything. And my mom and I both are pretty in tune and often can like see and hear spirits. But we couldn't see anything. So we get him, we rush him out.
18:47 Speaker 02 Takes him a while to calm down. He avoids the room for some time. But I left it at kind of like a light threat. So this is why I say, if I were in Bob's position, I might end up taking this house. Because I came back into the office, I stood at the threshold and I said, whoever is in here, if you scare the baby again, you're on borrowed time. And then, nothing has happened since.
19:12 Yvette Gentile? Really?
19:14 Speaker 02 Yeah.
19:15 Yvette Gentile? Mama, don't play.
19:17 Speaker 02 And I was like, you better behave or you're getting kicked out, my friend.
19:23 Speaker 03 But then it is, it is one of those things where you already live there. You're already in the house. Right. But if something happened right before you were about to sign papers, maybe you would have had a different perspective. And my family actually had, this is when I was in eighth grade, and my family was moving to Princeton, New Jersey. And there was one house that we looked at that it was like among two or three that we were like, these are the top contenders. Brand new build and the weirdest stuff happened there. Like my dad had nightmares about it. When we would go to see it, my mom had a BlackBerry at the time, and it was mostly when BlackBerrys were used just for emails. So it was not set up to receive or have any phone calls.
20:05 Speaker 03 But she kept getting phone calls on her BlackBerry when we were in that house. How weird. And it was almost like a warning of like, get out. We did not buy that house. And I think like someone moved in, sold it immediately. So there was something weird about that house. Yeah, sometimes there are signs like, get out.
20:23 Yvette Gentile? Yeah. I mean, I think for us, like growing up, our mom was all about signs and symbols. So for me, like if it was for me looking at a house and something like that happened, that would be a, oh, hell no. That would be a major sign and symbol, you know?
20:39 Speaker 03 He's like blinded by his obsession with it.
20:42 Yvette Gentile? Yeah, exactly, exactly. For them, they're all in, you know? He's been fantasizing about this house again since forever. So on December 12th, 1988, a moving truck pulls into the driveway to start unloading all of their things. The house is officially theirs, but that doesn't mean it's unoccupied.
21:11 Rasha Pecoraro? Bob Cranmer is talking to a friend one day when he shares his new address. And the friend says something like, so you bought the haunted house, did you? Bob's first thought is that his buddy must be confused. But that's when the guy is like, Bob, hello? Are you living under a rock? Everyone knows that house is haunted. He says there have been weird rumors about it going all the way back to the 1930s at least. Now, Bob doesn't take his coworker that seriously. I mean, this is his dream house after all. But little by little, Bob starts to wonder if maybe there's some truth to it. It starts when he's home alone. He can't shake the feeling that he's being watched.
21:55 Rasha Pecoraro? His wife Lisa even admits she kind of gets that same feeling too. And on top of that, his son Bobby Jr. flat out refuses to sleep in his own bedroom.
22:05 Speaker 02 Is this the same kid who is terrified?
22:08 Rasha Pecoraro? Uh huh. And it's not just him. The other kids are pretty uneasy too. Every single night, at least one of them gets scared and crawls into bed with Bob and Lisa. Something they weren't doing in their old houses, from what I can tell. And poor little Bobby prefers to fall asleep hiding in his closet, which I think is just so sad.
22:29 Speaker 02 Oh, poor baby.
22:31 Rasha Pecoraro? I know. But it's so much more than that. Sometimes Bob wakes up in the morning to find that all of the downstairs lights are on, even though he distinctly remembers turning them off the night before. And at one point, he also notices the furniture is getting rearranged overnight. Like, what? So Bob decides maybe it's time to appeal to a higher power. And that is when he invites a priest to come bless his home. So my question for the two of you, I know this area is literally your specialty. Do you think this works? Like bringing in like a shaman or a priest or someone to bless the home? Do you think it has any merit to it?
23:14 Speaker 02 We have heard that you should do whatever you feel most connected with. So if you do not go to church, if you were not a devout Christian, or whatever your religion or beliefs to be, if that doesn't resonate with you, calling in a priest might not actually do anything. That makes sense. So you have to figure out like what speaks to you, what feels like it will do something. And I don't know why that works. If it's just because like your sheer belief in it working is what contributes to something being like banished from the house.
23:47 Speaker 03 We've also heard, though, so many different stories, you know, especially the more notable cases, like the Smurl possession and different Poltergeist cases, where even when they bring in a priest, it doesn't do anything and sometimes it happens to make it worse. One of the houses I grew up in, so when I was like from four to 13, I lived in this house. There was some weird, dark things that happened in that house that led my dad to calling a priest to bless the house. Like truly, my sister was like basically possessed. And my dad called a priest. And after that, whatever darkness, like it kind of got sent down to our basement, where my brother would have nightmares, reoccurring nightmares of the one closet in our basement.
24:31 Rasha Pecoraro? Oh, your poor brother.
24:32 Speaker 03 It does seem like the priest coming and blessing it, at least pushed it downstairs.
24:39 Speaker 02 So maybe this is just one of the things that you have to check off your list when you have a severely haunted home, where it's worth a shot. Will it work? Unknown, but maybe worth a try.
24:50 Speaker 03 Yeah.
24:50 Rasha Pecoraro? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, like I'm not religious at all. I'm very spiritual and I would have like a Hawaiian Kahuna or some, someone come in and bless the home for sure.
25:01 Speaker 03 I asked Corinne to come bless my house. Like Corinne is my guru.
25:07 Speaker 02 I grew up in a very haunted house. So yeah, my, my house and the things that my mom and I owned and would regularly use to try to get rid of some of the activity when things were getting bad, we were like basically our own little metaphysical shop, so.
25:21 Rasha Pecoraro? Wow. So that's where it all began for you?
25:25 Speaker 02 I guess so.
25:25 Rasha Pecoraro? Obviously, it was with your mom, right?
25:27 Speaker 03 Yeah.
25:28 Rasha Pecoraro? I love that. Okay, so his friend said that everyone knew this house was haunted. Do you think Bob knew and just blocked all of it out of his mind?
25:38 Speaker 03 That's so tricky. Maybe it's partially Bob just not wanting to believe it. But I do have a hard time believing that if he grew up in this neighborhood, he never heard about it.
25:49 Rasha Pecoraro? Right.
25:50 Speaker 02 And what, what motives does a second grader have to not believe in the haunted house, right?
25:56 Rasha Pecoraro? Totally. But whether or not Bob always knew the house was haunted, it's pretty clear that by now, he definitely thinks it is. And Bob's hope is that maybe God, or at the very least, the ritual, will drive out whatever evil spirit might be in the home. And so the priest walks from one room to the next.
26:16 Yvette Gentile? In each one, he stops and he says a little prayer. Overall, it's pretty uneventful. That is, until they get to the now three-year-old Bobby Junior's room. When the priest approaches, Bobby Junior stands in the doorway, flat-out refusing to let the priest come inside his room.
26:35 Speaker 02 No.
26:36 Yvette Gentile? Yeah.
26:36 Speaker 02 That's the one room that needs it.
26:37 Yvette Gentile? I know. There's little things that happen in the house, like the lights are flickering on and off, a chair or two is out of place, and sometimes the kids still don't really like sleeping in their own beds. But they just laugh it off, you know, with things like, oh, that's just Castor the friendly ghost.
26:54 Speaker 02 I will say, ignoring the activity is actually one of the recommended things to do when you have a poltergeist or some dark demonic presence, because they thrive off of the fear, they thrive off of the recognition. So by ignoring it, yeah, you might ruffle some feathers and might get pissed off and try to do a little bit more to get your attention. But if you're consistent with it, you give it a lot less energy to feed on, and perhaps it might actually eventually give up and slink away.
27:22 Yvette Gentile? Yeah, so basically, it seems like that's the plan. They're hoping that if they just ignore the weirdness, it'll strip the demon of its power. Which is helpful, because Bob's very focused right now on his new career. Ever since he moved back to his hometown, Bob wanted to get into local politics. So after settling in, he ran for an elected position, and he actually won a spot on the Brentwood Town Council in 1991. From there, he became the chairman of the County Republican Committee. Even people who don't agree with his party or his agenda seem to really respect him a lot. And he has a great reputation, and I guess he's under a lot of pressure to maintain it. And that means he's like always going to community events,
28:05 Yvette Gentile? and he's generally coming across as this very upstanding, reasonable guy, even though in 1995, things at home are anything but reasonable.
28:18 Rasha Pecoraro? While Bob's living his politician life, his wife Lisa is handling the bulk of the housework and childcare. And of course, it's taking a toll on her. Not just because four kids is a lot to deal with, but also because her partner is always out working or at charity events, dinners, you name it. And on top of that, the house itself seems to be influencing her somehow. It's in 1995 when Bob senses something isn't right with his wife. She's constantly tired and also very forgetful all of a sudden. The house is getting neglected. And even worse, she hasn't been handling a lot of the bills like she usually does. It gets so bad that they fall really behind on their mortgage,
29:02 Rasha Pecoraro? to the point where they're actually in danger of losing the house. Once Bob realizes this, he's able to help her sort everything out. But what's really concerning Bob is how out of character Lisa's been acting. Lisa claims she's just feeling overwhelmed and stressed, though she isn't 100% clear with Bob on what all of that means. Either way, the two of them agree she should go to a mental health facility for two weeks. So what do we think? Is Lisa a mom experiencing normal burnout? Or do you think this is the effects of living in a haunted house?
29:37 Speaker 03 It's so hard because, and I think this is a result of, you know, Bob Cranmer is the one who has written a lot about this story and his experience that we're not really getting Lisa's perspective. But yes, I mean, the life that she's living, I can absolutely understand how that could lead to normal burnout. But it's also very common for a dark entity to single someone out.
30:03 Rasha Pecoraro? Oh, is it?
30:04 Speaker 03 To take away their energy so they can become stronger.
30:08 Rasha Pecoraro? Oh, wow.
30:08 Yvette Gentile? And someone who is already feeling overwhelmed and tired, right? Is vulnerable.
30:14 Speaker 02 Yeah. And oftentimes, it does end up being one of the children, which it does sound like perhaps their youngest was the target. But honestly, this demon, if this is kind of the moves that it's making, that's a very strategic move to take down the mom, who's also responsible for caring probably the majority of the time for all of the children, because then it makes the children more susceptible to also being fed on by the demon. But I will say, and you guys could speak to it too, motherhood is very tough. I can't imagine having four kids.
30:45 Rasha Pecoraro? I can't imagine. I know you and I only have one.
30:49 Yvette Gentile? I don't have any. I have a chihuahua and that's already, that's hard enough.
30:53 Speaker 02 I have a cat.
30:54 Yvette Gentile? So, no.
30:54 Rasha Pecoraro? You have a cat? That's your child.
30:56 Speaker 02 Right, right. Yeah. I'm here in two weeks in a mental health facility and I'm like, man, maybe that would fix me. Like, maybe I need that. That does sound like a nice vacation.
31:09 Rasha Pecoraro? Well, after Lisa comes home from those two weeks, I don't know if it was a vacation for her. We don't really know Lisa's side as much as Bob's. Something extremely weird happens in the house. While they're there, the kids tell Bob they saw a stranger in the bathroom. Someone dark and shadowy, who they say looks like, and get this, the Grim Reaper. Great. Right. That's when Bob starts realizing, okay, maybe it's not just Casper the friendly ghost. Maybe something is starting to really come alive in the house. I mean, Lisa, his wife, seems unsettled and distracted.
31:51 Rasha Pecoraro? Both his kids and his kids' friends are seeing strange figures in this home. And now they can't sleep throughout the night again. But at the same time, Bob has a political career to maintain. He's up for the County Board of Commissioners in 1995. And he ends up getting the seat and begins service at the beginning of 1996. So, like any good politician, Bob keeps any and all drama in the Cranmer house from getting out to the press. But come 2003, something happens that he just can't keep under wraps.
32:34 Yvette Gentile? In 2003, the Cranmer family has spent over a decade in this house. Bobby Jr., their second oldest, is now 16 and in high school. And like his father, he's also going through a rebellious phase. He's skipping class, he's disappearing for days at a time. And he regularly takes his parents' car without asking, even though he doesn't even have a license. On September 14th, 2003, Bob tries to get through to his son by planning a fun day out. So they go to a baseball game and then they just drive around town, just talking and bonding. And things seem to be going really well. But when they get home, something shifts in Bobby Jr.
33:18 Yvette Gentile? He gets into an argument with his dad over something so small, and Bobby Jr. just flies into this massive rage. He starts cursing at his father, and then he actually begins beating him.
33:31 Speaker 03 What?
33:31 Yvette Gentile? And according to Bob, he has no choice but to defend himself from his son. It's so bad that their other son, Charlie, joins in attacking his father, and then he feels like he's got to call 911. The police actually arrive, and since Bob is the adult, Bobby Jr. is the minor. Bob is arrested for assaulting his son. And this is seriously upsetting, but it makes a light bulb go off in Bob's head because he thinks Bobby Jr. is not inherently violent, and neither is he. Bob decides something is going on in his house that he can simply no longer ignore.
34:15 Yvette Gentile? Maybe his family is being influenced by something sinister. Perhaps something that's just been reawakened.
34:24 Speaker 03 Well, especially because it happened the moment they pulled back into the driveway. It's like everything was fine, a great day. The second they're in the influence of this house, something changed.
34:35 Speaker 02 I also, I don't know. I'm becoming a little bit suspicious of Bob. The fact that the youngest son joined in to attack his father made me question, is this demonic influence? Or is there something else where Charlie is seeing this? And he presumes that his father did something and immediately joins his brother in the fight, rather than saying, oh, no, there's a quarrel going on. I need to try to stop both parties here. I just find it bizarre that he immediately jumped to also attacking his father.
35:11 Yvette Gentile? And start fighting, yeah.
35:12 Speaker 02 Right.
35:12 Yvette Gentile? Yeah.
35:13 Speaker 02 And defending his brother.
35:14 Speaker 03 Mm-hmm.
35:14 Speaker 02 Phew. Heavy stuff.
35:16 Speaker 03 Yeah.
35:17 Speaker 02 For sure. Well, to find out more, Bob finally reaches out to every spiritual leader in town, ministers, priests, and nuns.
35:27 Rasha Pecoraro? And when he talks to one nun in particular, he learns something new about his home. She says, from everything that she's heard, Bob's house isn't actually haunted. It's possessed by a demon.
35:42 Speaker 03 I'm just also so confused. Like, this nun is like, oh, yeah, your house is possessed by a demon. It's not just any spirit.
35:50 Yvette Gentile? Like, how would she know?
35:51 Speaker 03 If people know this, yeah.
35:53 Yvette Gentile? How did she know that? Yeah.
35:54 Speaker 02 And also, wouldn't the priest have done more?
35:57 Yvette Gentile? If it was a demon?
35:58 Speaker 03 Yeah.
35:58 Speaker 02 If that were common knowledge within, yeah, the church?
36:01 Yvette Gentile? Right.
36:02 Speaker 03 We've also talked a lot about this on our podcast, where I feel like when you give something power, you know, maybe there is a haunting happening. But if you start to say, oh, there's a demon haunting my house, you do give it more power. And can our minds manifest something more sinister than what was actually there to start off?
36:25 Rasha Pecoraro? It's totally possible. But according to the nun, this only happens when serious sins are committed. Things like adultery, suicide, even murder. So it's not like demons can possess just any old house. According to her, there has to be a dark history there. The nun asked Bob if he knows of any serious sins that have happened in his home prior to him owning it. And he can't think of any offhand. But something about her theory resonates with him. After their conversation, he's convinced he has to be dealing with some sort of possession. But it's almost like, once Bob catches on to this, the demon acts up even more.
37:09 Yvette Gentile? And the thing is, he and the family, they can't rest. They're waking up two unexplainable scratches on their arms and their legs.
37:19 Speaker 03 Jeez.
37:19 Yvette Gentile? Yeah, this is some heavy-duty stuff.
37:23 Speaker 02 Which is like, how do you explain that? Like, all of the things that have happened so far, we could attribute to burnout, to developing minds, to old creaky houses, right? Like, there's ways to write them all off.
37:38 Speaker 03 But random scratches that you wake up to. I mean, what's your explanation? That's the question that I have for all the skeptics out there. How do you explain that?
37:46 Yvette Gentile? Right, exactly. And I agree with you 100%. And it's not just the scratches. On some occasions, they're even waking up where the walls are bleeding. This is where I get like really freaked out because this is, you know, people are actually seeing this, right? So he and his wife Lisa, they said that they woke up one morning and they literally found pools of blood on the floor. Now, Bob certainly doesn't know what to do with this. So again, he goes back to the priest for advice and he gets this. The priest says the best response is to pretend not to notice. If the demon realizes the bloody walls are bothering the family, it'll just keep doing it.
38:29 Yvette Gentile? Instead, the priest advises Bob to keep sleeping in the room with the bleeding walls and to continue to have regular sex with his wife, blood or no blood.
38:42 Speaker 03 In that room?
38:42 Yvette Gentile? What?
38:43 Speaker 03 In the world?
38:44 Yvette Gentile? Ew. Is this guy okay?
38:47 Speaker 03 Yeah, the priest, I don't know.
38:49 Yvette Gentile? I mean, have you, I've never heard of this, anything like this in the stories that we've done when we were talking about priests to stay in the room and...
38:56 Speaker 03 And advise to have sex.
38:57 Yvette Gentile? Ugh.
38:58 Speaker 03 No, never. I, okay, so we covered recently the San Pedro poltergeist and they had a similar situation where some weird liquid was oozing out of the wall and they tested it in a lab and it showed up as blood, like belonging to a male human. And now I'm so curious if they tested this blood.
39:19 Yvette Gentile? Not that I know of.
39:21 Speaker 03 Geez.
39:22 Yvette Gentile? Can you imagine? This is not what Bob was imagining, like for the priest to tell him, you know, stay in the room, have sex while the walls are bleeding. So he sort of takes the matters into his own hands. So one night, Bob shuts himself in his closet and he starts to read the Bible out loud. He's hoping that God's word will make the evil spirit go away. Instead, the more Bob reads, the more he gets this horrible feeling of dread, like something even more terrible is coming.
39:54 Yvette Gentile? And night after night, he sits and he reads the Bible for as long as he can stand it. But the demons, they don't go away. They're still there.
40:03 Speaker 02 And what a scary thing, too, for him now as a religious man who looks to God for protection, to do it consistently, to constantly call out, to use all of the tools he has been told to use. And it changed nothing.
40:19 Rasha Pecoraro? Yeah.
40:19 Speaker 03 Seems like it's making it worse, more than anything.
40:22 Rasha Pecoraro? For sure. And whether it's a demon or several demons, they start acting up even more after this point. So for example, at one point, Bob has, do you remember that movie? You too might be a little too young, but The Passion of the Christ?
40:37 Speaker 03 I feel like I probably watched it in like CCD.
40:40 Speaker 02 Yeah, I've seen clips of it, but I've never, I've never watched it.
40:44 Rasha Pecoraro? Yeah, I, I don't know why I watched it, but I remember watching it. But anyway, Bob has The Passion of the Christ playing on loop in the living room. He thinks it might just annoy the demon enough so much that it leaves his home. Instead, the spirit just keeps shutting off the television.
41:06 Speaker 02 Okay, well, let me interject once here and say, I am almost positive that The Passion of the Christ is one of those movie sets that has the reputation of having been horribly haunted.
41:17 Rasha Pecoraro? I think you are correct. So maybe not the best movie for him to pick.
41:22 Speaker 02 So he was just, yeah, making it even worse.
41:26 Speaker 03 I'm just picturing like the same demon was the one who haunted that set. And was like, that wasn't my best work. I need to turn this off.
41:32 Rasha Pecoraro? I know. Bob should have picked something else. But of course, there's other eerie things happening around this time. Bob keeps finding loose change around the house, only it's standing upright on the rim. Bob thinks this is the demon trying to catch his attention. So the family starts hanging crosses and crucifixes all over the house, only to find they never really last. They're always torn off the walls and broken by morning. So the one thing Yvette and I are always screaming at this point of the story is get the F out.
42:10 Speaker 03 When in doubt, move out.
42:12 Rasha Pecoraro? Move out.
42:12 Speaker 02 Yes, when in doubt.
42:13 Rasha Pecoraro? See ya.
42:16 Yvette Gentile? Well, in Bob's case, he can't move out. He ends up listing the home for sale, but no one is even remotely interested, which is actually sort of a relief for Bob at the same time, because he's feeling a little bit of guilt about putting another family through what his family is going through. It seems irresponsible and unfair on his part. Instead, he decides, for better or worse, it's up to him to figure out how to get rid of this spirit or demon. So Bob returns to the private sector in the year of 2000. But one of the perks of being a former government official is that Bob has connections. He knows people. So he reaches out to the mayor of Pittsburgh,
42:58 Yvette Gentile? and the mayor, in turn, is friends with a powerful Catholic bishop. And the bishop agrees to send an official exorcist to the house. So in early January of 2004, Bob has the priest come over, and he hosts a short, private, religious service for Bob and his family. And then he walks around the house, and he prays in every single corner, just like what happened shortly after they moved in. And this time, the priest stops in every room, including Bobby Jr.'s. Now Bob is hopeful that this will solve his demon problem, but it doesn't. And here's how he knows. Bob is a huge art fan. He has a lot of framed pieces all over the house.
43:43 Yvette Gentile? And the morning after the exorcism, every single one of them is crooked or even upside down. Like the spirit spent the whole night knocking them around just to show how unbothered it was by this exorcism. So the priest comes back, and they go through the whole thing again. And at this point, Bob has to be thinking... Well, this didn't work the last time. I mean, are we gonna try something new? Is this gonna work, right? But the Holy Man tells him that sometimes you need to perform a whole bunch of exorcisms to get rid of a demon permanently. He says it's like fighting a war, and it's not like it's not over at the first battle.
44:26 Yvette Gentile? So you have to keep fighting, like, again and again and again. Have you guys heard this before? Where people do exorcisms over and over again?
44:35 Speaker 02 Yeah, and I, Sabrina, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it might have been the Smurl family possession case, where they actually had many people from their church come over and had this, like, massive prayer and exorcism on the house. And unfortunately, it did very little for them.
44:54 Speaker 03 Yeah, but I also, and, you know, we've been doing this for seven or eight years now at this point, so we've only scratched the surface, really, in terms of possession and exorcism cases. But like, a lot of them seem to like, have this repetitive cycle of exorcisms performed. And yet, it doesn't really, like, it might put it to bay for a little bit, but it doesn't actually get rid of the possession or the demon. And the demon, the only way it leaves is just like randomly, out of the blue.
45:24 Speaker 02 When it chooses to.
45:25 Yvette Gentile? When it, when it's ready to go.
45:27 Speaker 03 Yeah.
45:27 Yvette Gentile? Well, I mean, Bob seems to buy into this whole exorcisms, you know, is a war, like, the war is on for him. Because he has two more priests come over for an exorcism on a Friday night in February 2004. And then they come back in May, and they do the same thing again. And this goes on and on and on. And Bob does what he can, I mean, between exorcisms, to make his house as unpleasant for these evil demons as possible. He does what we all would do. I mean, I know Rasha and I do this, where you sprinkle salt across your doorway in the home, and that's what Bob does. He, you know, he does the salt, he does the crosses. And if you've ever seen the movie, The Exorcist, you might imagine this is how it all played out, right?
46:11 Yvette Gentile? For weeks, maybe months. But no, you guys, do you know? Know how long this took? Two years.
46:19 Speaker 03 Geez.
46:20 Yvette Gentile? Of doing this regularly. Like, repeated exorcism after exorcism.
46:27 Speaker 03 My god.
46:27 Yvette Gentile? For two years. I mean, is that not dedication? I mean, this man obviously wants to stay in this home. Because how dedicated is he to be going through all of this? For how many years now with his family?
46:40 Speaker 03 Also, what's happening to them within this two years?
46:44 Yvette Gentile? I know.
46:44 Speaker 02 But then, okay, wait, I'm trying to do some math here. Is there only one child left in the house at this point? Because his, his second oldest was 16, and now there's two years of exorcisms happening? Did one child moving out happen at the same time that the exorcism stopped? That's another question I have.
47:02 Yvette Gentile? That's a good question, Corinne. Ooh.
47:05 Speaker 03 We should have Sabrina grab the book on her shelf and find out.
47:10 Speaker 03 Yeah. If I could just touch it, put my hand on the book, and just consume everything it had in there.
47:16 Speaker 02 Quick, Sabrina, read 300 pages and let us know the answers in the book.
47:20 Speaker 03 And let us know. Yeah.
47:25 Yvette Gentile? Okay, so, obviously, it was a long two years. Because even in 2006, the Cranmers are still waking up with bizarre scratches all over their bodies. They're actually still seeing dark figures lurking around the home, and the furniture is still moving.
47:41 Speaker 03 Geez.
47:41 Yvette Gentile? While everyone is still irritable, they're exhausted, they're stressed. I mean, it's like the house has this bad mojo. And it's getting to all of them, which is, obviously, it's totally understandable. But that year, the exorcists do another ritual. And this time, it actually seems to work. Bob is so relieved and impressed by the priest's work that he actually converts back to his childhood faith of Catholicism afterwards. And to this day, he is a devout Catholic. In fact, Bob goes on to write a book about his experience. It's called "The Demon of Brownsville Road."
48:22 Yvette Gentile? And right on the first page in the acknowledgements, he says, and this is a quote, "I owe everything to the Lord Jesus Christ, who died for me on a Roman cross."
48:34 Rasha Pecoraro? And speaking of Bob's book, it generates a lot of controversy. Now, some people love it. Fans of ghost stories devour the spooky narrative. And interestingly enough, devout Christians like how Bob's account highlights how good and powerful God can be. Copies fly off the shelves and lots of bookstores sell out. But then, of course, there are the critics. Lots of people accuse Bob of making the whole story up for attention or money. People end up taking sides. Some Brentwood residents are pro-Bob and others side with the skeptics, assuming he's being dishonest. Either way, his credibility is shot,
49:18 Rasha Pecoraro? as is his political legacy. But as far as Bob's concerned, it was worth the cost. And he's not afraid to tell his truth or to evangelize about his faith. He and his family start getting the peace and quiet they were hoping for. By 2019, his children are all grown up and living lives of their own. Bob doesn't need the whole house to himself anymore. But he still can't bring himself to sell his dream home. So he converts it into a bed and breakfast. Interestingly, he's open with his customers about the house's history. And okay, you might be thinking like, "He must be marketing the B&B as a haunted house, right?" Maybe he had made up the whole story
50:03 Rasha Pecoraro? about the haunting to make money after all. But Bob is very clear with his clients that his home is not haunted, at least not anymore. He doesn't want them to think of it as a spooky destination or that he's trying to profit off the earlier possession. The thing is, Bob seems almost afraid of re-inviting the demon back in. He even goes as far as to ban guests from using Ouija boards. And he outright refuses to book ghost hunting teams. Bob knows that the house has a dark history beyond the one he experienced. Remember back in 2003 when Bob met with that nun?
50:44 Rasha Pecoraro? She told him that demons only haunt places that have serious sins in their histories. And at that time, Bob did look into this. That's when he found out that his house didn't just have one tragedy in its past. Turns out, the land's entire history is soaked in blood.
51:11 Rasha Pecoraro? After Bob Cranmer met with a nun in 2003, he wanted to learn more about the house he was living in. In particular, he wanted to know what kind of evil could have happened on this property to attract such a dark and sinister entity. So, he dove into historical research, and he found records of a massacre that happened all the way back in the year 1792. This is right after the United States was established as a nation. And in Brentwood, Pennsylvania, there was still a lot of unrest between the European settlers and the indigenous people of that time. Sometimes tensions erupted into violence. At some point in early 1792,
51:56 Rasha Pecoraro? a European woman was walking down the street with three of her children. Without warning, a group of indigenous people surrounded the four of them, and in a heated dispute, ended up killing the woman and her children.
52:11 Speaker 03 Oh no.
52:12 Rasha Pecoraro? Yeah. The woman's husband, who was on the other side of town at the time of the attack, ended up planting an oak tree at the site of the murder. It's still standing today, towering in the front yard of one particular house. Bob's house, at least according to him.
52:30 Yvette Gentile? Now, I want to be very clear. The murders have been verified in numerous official records and news articles. But historians say that there is no evidence that the massacre took place on Bob's property. This is all mostly coming from him. And I have to say, we don't really know the truth. I mean, what if the Europeans were provoking the indigenous people? I just have to put that out there. We don't know all the sides to the story.
52:57 Speaker 03 Yeah, saying that there are records and newspaper articles, like, written by who?
53:02 Yvette Gentile? Right, exactly.
53:03 Speaker 03 And also, I feel like this is Bob really trying to find a reason. And I totally get that because after going through something like this or enduring hauntings, you want to find a reason. You want to be like, the reason this place is haunted is because XYZ terrible things happened here. But as we've learned through the years of our own personal encounters and through reading other people's and researching them, sometimes there is no reason. And it's kind of like, anywhere in the world can be haunted. Any person can be haunted. Anything can be haunted. But as humans, we want to find rationale in the unknown.
53:41 Yvette Gentile? Right, right. We want the answer. Either way, I mean, Bob believes this tragedy helped attract evil energies to his house. But he doesn't think it's the only factor that led to the possession. Because about 100 years go by after those four deaths that we just talked about. And then, in the early 1900s, a woman named Mrs. Malik and her husband buy the land. She builds a house, namely, the house that Bob lives in now. But she's also married, which is a problem for one of the construction workers building the house because he has a huge crush on her. Every day, Mrs. Malik comes out to the construction site to see how things are going.
54:23 Yvette Gentile? You know, and of course, she's wearing fancy clothes and her hair is done nicely. And this construction worker is just stunned every time he sees her. But Mrs. Malik doesn't give him the time of day. And it's not that she doesn't return his feelings. It's just that she doesn't even realize that he exists. So eventually, the construction worker gets fed up. Or supposedly, this is what they say, he puts a curse on the house.
54:51 Speaker 03 So he was obsessed with her and?
54:54 Yvette Gentile? Right. She didn't pay any attention to him. So he's like, well, I'm gonna get you. I'm gonna curse this house. So supposedly, he puts a curse on one particular plank that is left in the home's basement and stays there until Bob moves in and actually learns about it.
55:13 Speaker 02 I will say one thing. I do think that this man was a little bit clever in cursing just one singular plank of wood, because who could figure that out, right?
55:22 Speaker 03 Right.
55:22 Speaker 02 There was some thought behind this. Have you heard about the egg technique to find out if you've been hexed or if there's a curse on you?
55:29 Yvette Gentile? No. No.
55:31 Speaker 02 OK, so if you crack an egg into a cup of water and you give it like a couple of minutes, you see how the yolk transforms in the water. And based on the pattern, it's almost like tea leaf reading. Based on what happens to the yolk, it means different things. And one of those things could be that there was a hex or bad energy placed on you. And what's also very interesting, I actually did it the other day because I had like a million car accidents and a bunch of stuff happened to me. And hospitalizations all at once. And I was like, what's happening to me? And someone told me about the egg thing. And I did it and it said that there was a curse placed on me.
56:05 Yvette Gentile? How do you get rid of it?
56:06 Speaker 02 That's a great question. I asked everyone in our Two Girls, One Ghost community to just send good vibes to me and it seemed to have done the trick.
56:14 Speaker 03 Hey, good vibes help.
56:15 Speaker 02 Yeah, but one thing I learned from some of the practicing witches in our community is that curses and hexes don't have to be created with intention. So like, someone doesn't have to consciously think, I need to place a curse on this person. It could just be so many negative thoughts and feelings that someone has that's projecting through the space and onto this other person. They don't know that they just cursed you. But it does kind of speak to like the power of our thoughts and our minds and how powerful we can be and just trying to. You know, manifest good and think good, energetic things, and that will all come back to you in the end.
56:56 Speaker 03 I love that.
56:57 Rasha Pecoraro? Yeah, me too. Well, after Bob learned about the cursed wooden plane, he also uncovers reports about a person he calls Dr. M. Bob says that in the 1920s and 30s, this man lived in the Brownsville Street House. He also had a bad reputation and a tendency to drink too much, which is not a good quality for a doctor, especially one who performed illegal abortions out of his own home, which, according to Bob, is exactly what Dr. M. did. The house's back door was impossible to see from the street because of how the doorway and the porch were set up, so women could sneak in and out of the home late at night with little risk of anyone knowing what they were up to.
57:43 Rasha Pecoraro? Unfortunately, the door came to be known as the Door of Sorrows because of the bad treatment many of the clients received during their surgeries. Allegedly, Dr. M. didn't really want to help his patients. He looked down on them and was often rude and dismissive. And he also didn't follow proper medical procedures.
58:04 Speaker 03 My question, though, is, is this a rumor? Or are there documents about this?
58:13 Rasha Pecoraro? The facts. I think it's just according to Bob.
58:16 Speaker 03 Okay.
58:17 Rasha Pecoraro? I think. But again, I haven't read his book, so I don't know 100% for sure. But allegedly, there was a report of at least one of Dr. M.'s patients who died. And to cover up her death, Dr. M. burned her body in the basement furnace. Then he ended up burying the ashes in the backyard of the home. Bob thinks that Dr. M.'s work may also be what attracted evil spirits to his house. The woman's murder, along with her children in 1792, and the curse on Mrs. Malik probably didn't help either. But he believes Dr. M. is the main reason that evil resides there.
59:02 Rasha Pecoraro? Although Bob does say that the woman's ghost is still around, and she's definitely not evil. To this day, people claim to see a woman dressed like an 18th-century Puritan walking the grounds outside of Bob's house.
59:19 Rasha Pecoraro? She doesn't harass anyone or hurt anyone. She's not an angry spirit, apparently. She's just a restless ghost going about her eternal business. Now, here's a question. Do you believe that there are good and evil ghosts? And can they live in the same place?
59:36 Speaker 03 Yeah. Yes. 100%. Yes. Without a doubt. Yeah. Okay, this is a random theory that, because when I was briefly just in preparation for this episode, looking up the case, there was this theory that I ran into that some people speculated that the Cranmer family was targeted because of their bloodline. Oh. And allegedly, one of Bob Cranmer's ancestors was a real historical figure named Thomas Cranmer, who was the first Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury during the English Reformation and worked helping dismantle the Roman Catholic influence with King Henry VIII. Wow.
1:00:16 Speaker 03 And was later executed, burnt alive at the stake for heresy by Queen Mary I, aka Bloody Mary. Stop. What? So, again, allegedly, but when I read that, I was like, okay, this kind of makes sense if Bob now is this devout Catholic and he comes from a family bloodline that dismantled Catholicism. Is there some darkness that his ancestors kind of sent to him? Got to break that generational trauma, baby.
1:00:50 Speaker 02 Yeah. Well, and also with the woman who's wandering the grounds, it's interesting because when you guys were first saying that the family would come downstairs and all the lights would be on, my first thought was someone else is in that house who is afraid, like a spirit is in that house who's afraid of who's upstairs at night or who's in the basement. Like, the first floor is the safe zone. And that was my first thought. So I do wonder if this woman perhaps was the person who was turning on the lights and is kind of around and responsible for maybe some of the lulls in the demonic activity.
1:01:26 Speaker 03 Oh, that's a really interesting thought.
1:01:29 Yvette Gentile? Okay, so let's just summarize everything. So Bob thinks there's a lot of tragedy and heartache in his house's history. Obviously, right? We know, we know a lot of stuff went down on that particular land. Going back to the European family's murder, the curse on Mrs. Malik, and Dr. M's illegal medical practice. Bob also believes there's only one person who was capable of getting rid of the demon, and that was Bob himself. In fact, he believes he was fated to fight this demon since before he was born. At one point in his research, Bob talks to a psychic named Connie, who had helped with his successful exorcism.
1:02:11 Yvette Gentile? And Connie tells Bob that he is a reincarnated soul. She tells him his mother was one of the women who went to Dr. M for an illegal abortion. The procedure killed him and his mother, but instead of moving on to the afterlife, Bob had another shot at existence. He was born as himself, Bob Cranmer, and that's why he's always been drawn to this house as a child. Because he was literally fated to purify it from the evil forces that were possessing it. Drop the mic. Boom!
1:02:55 Speaker 03 Right. I mean, if this were a movie, that's a beautiful tie-a-bow-on-it story. But I have just reservations in terms of like, did Connie know all of the information that Bob gave him? And sure, maybe Bob was fated to defeat whatever evil was here, and I love that for him, if that's his narrative. But, I don't know, that feels almost too perfect. Agreed.
1:03:23 Speaker 02 And it does make me think of just some of the reincarnation stories that we have heard. And I feel like there's often, at least the energy or the thoughts about a certain place where the person had previously resided, especially if it was a place where they lost their life. It wasn't rosy rainbows, butterflies, I want to move here, this place is majestic. So I do find it interesting that he was so drawn to it. If his mom lost her life in a really terrible way, if he also lost his life here. And if this was a place where, because one of the questions I had when thinking about this doctor who was performing these illegal abortions and he was, you know, just treating people so poorly. I'm like, why even risk your license? Why operate like that?
1:04:06 Speaker 02 But in the end, it sounds like he was just an evil dude who wanted access to these super vulnerable people. And so, yeah, it just does make me question, I guess, like, well, I guess he's saying to, his purpose was to go back and banish the evil from this house.
1:04:23 Yvette Gentile? Yeah.
1:04:23 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:04:24 Speaker 02 But yeah, no, I'm also left with some questions and reservations. But I also don't want to not believe someone's story.
1:04:30 Yvette Gentile? I know, and this is the thing, you know? I think it's the happy ending we would all want to think because you think about this man who has put his family through so much by staying in this frickin' house for so long and doing these exorcisms for two years.
1:04:44 Speaker 02 But also like at the expense of who or what, right? Like he's doing all of this to fix the past, but like what about his future? What about his kids? How much trauma has he created for them by keeping them in this house and performing exorcisms? Like what do they say about him and their childhood?
1:04:59 Yvette Gentile? That's what I want to know, too.
1:05:00 Speaker 03 That's what I'm left so like in search of is what happened to his children and his wife? Like what are their experiences? And it kind of goes back to what I was saying earlier. This whole story is coming from Bob, which it's his experience. Like, I'm happy to hear it, but there's so many perspectives we're not hearing.
1:05:21 Speaker 02 There's other pieces to the story.
1:05:22 Yvette Gentile? We need to save that for another episode.
1:05:24 Speaker 03 Hmm.
1:05:25 Rasha Pecoraro? But there is something else that we have to talk about. That the demons the Cranmer family were fighting were real, but also metaphorical. It's important not to overlook the mental health conversation here, right? Whether the house was the catalyst or a symptom to that isn't what's important. What is important is that the family was struggling at times. At some point while he lived in the house, Bobby Jr. was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Many medical professionals believe his mood swings and his aggression were symptoms of his mental health condition, not an influence from a dark spirit, much like what happened to Lisa. And sadly, it's very common
1:06:10 Rasha Pecoraro? for people with disorders like schizophrenia to believe that they're being tormented by demons. But more often than not, the best way for them to get help is by talking to a trained mental health professional, not by getting an exorcism. So it's possible that Bob latched onto the idea of this evil spirit or demon to help him make sense of a very difficult situation. If there's one thing we've learned from doing this show, it's that anything is possible. But then again, we may never know the full story of what truly went on inside the Cranmer house. Because remember, it's not just the Cranmers saying this. There were other people that experienced things there
1:06:55 Rasha Pecoraro? that to this day, they cannot explain. You have the kids' friends who say they saw a shadowy figure in the home, priests who came to perform exorcisms multiple times. And then there are some details that Bob definitely didn't imagine, like his walls bleeding so bad that the liquid was puddling on the ground, which Lisa also saw. Apparently, this damaged the paint so bad that they had to put up brand-new wallpaper when he converted his home into a B&B. So yeah, I think it's more likely than not that the Cranmers were dealing with something that they couldn't explain or control. And if you believe the story Bob heard from the psychic, that he was literally reincarnated
1:07:40 Rasha Pecoraro? to deal with the house, well, then, it sounds to me like this tale is about destiny and fate and a reassurance that no matter how dark things get, good will always find a way to overcome evil.
1:07:55 Speaker 03 Well, that's a beautiful sentiment.
1:07:57 Rasha Pecoraro? Right?
1:07:58 Speaker 03 I mean, we have to have hope.
1:07:59 Yvette Gentile? Yeah, yeah.
1:08:00 Speaker 03 Yes.
1:08:00 Yvette Gentile? You have to, especially in telling all of these stories. We always have to look for the light, always.
1:08:07 Speaker 03 Right. I do want to know what happened to the family who lived there and sold the house to Bob. Because we don't have that story either, and they were in such a rush to sell it. They were worried the whole time they were touring the house. They accepted a low offer, so... And people, the rumors of the house being haunted since the 1930s.
1:08:27 Yvette Gentile? Yep.
1:08:27 Speaker 03 There's clearly a lot of stories that went around.
1:08:30 Speaker 02 Well, I know that, I mean, it's kind of a confusing thing, the fact that Bob does not want to discuss the house being haunted today, which I understand because he's not trying to attract the demonic energy back to the place. But I am curious if there are any reviews out there of people who've stayed there and what they may have experienced. Because he can't control the review on the internet, right? He can only control what he says.
1:08:54 Speaker 03 Is it still a bed and breakfast?
1:08:57 Yvette Gentile? It is, yeah. It's still a bed and breakfast, it is.
1:08:59 Speaker 03 Why do I want to go?
1:09:01 Yvette Gentile? Girl's trip? Yeah, no.
1:09:05 Speaker 03 Me by myself.
1:09:08 Speaker 02 I have enough hauntings of my own over here. I don't need to pick them out.
1:09:11 Yvette Gentile? Right, right, right, right. Corinne's like, "I love you, but, uh, no."
1:09:18 Yvette Gentile? Well, you guys, I cannot tell you how much of a joy it has been to have you on our show. Serena, Corinne, like, you guys are truly the experts, you know, of all of this. Rasha and I...
1:09:32 Speaker 03 With an asterisk.
1:09:33 Yvette Gentile? Yeah, but, but truly, like, Rasha and I are just diving into all of these, you know, hauntings and paranormal stories. So to have you two on with us today has been the absolute honor. So thank you so much. Everybody should listen to their podcast. It's called Two Girls, One Ghost.
1:09:56 Speaker 03 Two Girls, One Ghost, if you didn't hear us whisper.
1:09:59 Yvette Gentile? You can find them on YouTube or wherever else you get your podcasts. Mahalo nui loa. Thank you guys so much.
1:10:07 Speaker 03 Thank you so much, and we're so excited. Can't wait to have you on our show to talk more about your paranormal experiences and maybe, I don't know, maybe haunt you a little bit on our show. I love it.
1:10:19 Yvette Gentile? We're ready, we're ready.
1:10:30 Rasha Pecoraro? This is So Supernatural, an AudioChuck original, produced by Crime House. You can connect with us on Instagram at So Supernatural Pod and visit our website at sosupernaturalpodcast.com. Join Yvette and me next Friday for an all-new episode. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?
1:10:54 Speaker 05 I've been having a hard time trying to explain what Midnight Burger is. How about I let them give it a shot?
1:11:00 Yvette Gentile? Your podcast is amazing.
1:11:02 Rasha Pecoraro? It's such an amazing show altogether. You guys have actively ruined all other audio dramas for me.
1:11:07 Speaker 02 You can't get people to understand the humaning that happens in this damn show. Keep doing what you're doing, because it's awesome. You might not think it, but you are far more important than you realize. Thank you.
1:11:17 Speaker 05 At the nexus of all things, there is a diner. Look for Midnight Burger on your favorite podcasting app, or just go to weopenat6.com.
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