Hi, I'm Holly and I'm Hailey. Welcome to Mountain Mysteries Tales from Appalachia. All right, welcome back. Welcome back everybody.
This is week 37 37, week 37, which is crazy. And we have a super special guest with us, Miss Wanda Kidd, who is also Reverend. Reverend Dr. Excuse me.
Reverend Dr. Wanda Kidd. She is a jack-of-all trades, has done so many things, but I want to let her introduce herself a little bit and she still may not be served by my creditors. Give us a little bit of insight.
Well, I'm a native North Berlin. I've always been from North Carolina. There was a brief stay that I had to go to South Carolina, but I got back as quickly as I could 10 to 10 years. Many things, one of my favorite parts, even though I've done youth in campus ministry most of my adult life, I have a home economics degree.
So that colors, literally everything I do. So I love to cook big meals. I don't like to cook for two or three. I like to cook for 50, you know?
Yes. And I like to travel and I love to travel with young people because they are much more adventuresome than people my own age. So we do things like last summer, I went with three young adults to glacier and two campers and saw some really interesting things like a flatbed truck with a dead wild boar on the back of it, racing down the roads because it was out of season. And so they thought we were the police.
But yeah, I was like so many things. So I have two children and they're obviously grown and I have a husband who's a CBA, which is sort of my public accountant. So today would be the worst day because this is the day before taxis and it's over. Right.
And so he's doing he's doing he's texting things. Yes. Very taxing. And I am probably one of them defining things is I was probably close to 50 before I was diagnosed but finally diagnosed with ADHD, which defined so much of my life.
And I always like to say I dated six accountants before I married that one because I didn't know what my diagnosis was but I knew I needed order. So there, there. Oh goodness. So we have asked one here to tell us a story about your old house.
How many houses ago was this? Oh, maybe still on the house. Yes. Okay.
I live there in a while. Well Dan lives there. Dan lives there. Yes.
Because his CPA business is there and he I live here in Marciol and he comes over on the weekends. So yes, we still very much pay the taxes and insurance on this house. So yes, it is for sale. So if the end of this somebody would like to purchase it, it has great history and it would just it needs another family to be ready, be up for the stories to come from it.
So well, and that's what we're doing today. We get to delve into the story of the house and I have it. I'm so excited. Well, when I was a student at Western Carolina University, I moved out of the dorm and moved to a house in Tuckecigee by the river and went by this house every day and it had the sign out front that it said rest a bit large and it just hung up on this cliff and it looked like something out of dark shadows or something.
It was just like it had bushes all around it. I always wanted to go inside and see this house. It just this house called to me from the time I was in my early twenties. And so we moved away and then we moved back and we went to look for a house and they kept showing me just running the mill brick houses in neighborhoods.
And I as a woman in ministry, it was not easy finding jobs in the 80s for women in ministry. And so I was I had this dream of opening a retreat center. So I was kind of looking for something with some character to it. And so about the third day they took me out to see normal houses.
I said, don't you have something like a like a lodge. And they looked at each other very suspiciously. They were too real. They just kind of like looked at each other like, we got something going here.
And they said, as a matter of fact, we have one that came on the market just last week. And so I said, can I see it? And they said, sure. And so they showed it to me.
And I went, it's my house. I've always wanted this house. This house needs me. And so I said to my husband, this is the house that needs me.
Now it was in not great repair when we got there. And he just had a wood stove. And but the worm, the chestnut wood on the inside of the big room with the rock fireplace, it was always there. It's still its shining room.
And as it turns out, it had a lot of purposes, this big room did. So let's see. So we bought the house and then we had all the furniture and their animals. Oh my God.
They left two cats and three dogs at the house and just moved out. So we had to find places for everything. My dog was really not didn't like people and would just run over you. And so that was interesting.
We had to claim this house as our own. And that took a while to reclaim it. And as we were doing that, we began to hear stories about this house. I worked at a church in downtown Silva.
And all the players who had built, lived, knew people, went to that church. They were all in their 80s at this point because the house was built in 1924. And the retired superintendent of schools told me, he said, Wanda, you know, I built those rock walls around that house when I was 17. And I was amazing.
And that was his thing. I didn't make that was not a description. That was the thing. And then this other thing, then we can hear these stories like a German family lived there and they just like disappeared.
And nobody knew what happened to him. And they left all their belongings in this house. And so I was at this church. And I was somebody said, you live in the old rest of it lodge.
And I said, yes. And she said, little Dickie Sellers was in my class. And he was there one day and then he was gone. And I said, really?
That's where it was. That they were German spies. So then the next person I talked to was this McKee. And she moved in when it was still just like two or three rooms and they added on to it through the years.
And she said, oh, yeah, when I got there, everything was just in place like they had just left it. So that was, I've always heard that up in the end. But it turns out that that really happened. Oh, gosh.
Then part of the story was that when it was a, there was a big lumber business in, it's in East Lefort, which is between Colowy and Glendall. And, and so the word gives that all these people stay there, like Al Capone supposedly stayed there one night. And, and so, but this other part, we didn't have supposedly there was a, an Indian chief that haunted, lived in a cave up on the hill who haunted the, on the bull moon. Well, then, some of the people in the case.
Yeah. So, but when we went, started to buy it, we put in our application for a loan at Cloud Savings and Loan. And I would take all this stuff over to purchase it and, and they would take it and then they would call me and say, this isn't there. And so, like four trips from Colowy to Claw, just to take stuff back that they said they didn't have it.
I knew I had given them. And finally, when my husband went with me one day and the secretary said to Dan, he said, okay, what? She said, they're not. And he said, why?
She said, one of the board members knows that it's haunted and thinks it's a bad investment, but he won't let the people loan you the money. Oh my gosh. So, one week before closing, I had to go talk to somebody that I had dated in college who was the president of a savings loan. And he gave me the loan.
I mean, he went through all the processes and he got the letter, but he said, I wondered when you were going to call me. I heard through the grapevine that they were not going to loan you the money. So, that was, we bought this house unknowing that it had a history, except that I wanted it. So, if they told you, oh, that haunted house, you know, they said that because they, oh, it's haunted.
Did that not turn you off at all? Were you intrigued by that? Like, oh, those, Dan likes to say it's enchanted. He likes to say that it's not haunted.
But if there were, and I will say that the other members of my family have had more close up and personal experiences than I have had. So, it came with a piano that was a church piano and it had the mirror across the top where the choir director could play the piano and direct the choir at the same time. And it had music in the piano stool and Dan was working. It was in the dining room and he was working there.
Somebody was living with us because there were always students living with us. And when he came in, all his files had been sitting on the bench and they were then on the dining room table and the music was spread out on the piano. And he said to the girl, you know, I don't mind your playing the piano, but I wish you would put my files back when you were through. And she said, I've never been in the dining room.
So, that was his first, huh, that's weird. So, my son swears that he, this is always a female that supposedly upstairs and she cries a lot. And he claims that he has seen her in the mirror when he was looking. She was behind him.
And he's a pretty not, not an excitable kind of guy. But anyway, but I've never seen these are just reports. What did he say she looked like? He didn't.
He was ghostly, I guess. He just saw a creature in the, but she cries in the back bedroom, the far back bedroom. And my daughter's bedroom was right underneath it. It sounds like she's crying in that bedroom, but you don't hear it except in the bedroom over top of it.
And so, people repeatedly would rush down to Bethany's bedroom to find out if she was crying. No, I'm fine. It's the person who cries upstairs. So, but I've never felt that.
No, I did tell my children I was going to talk about this. And she said, well, do mention that nobody would ever spend the money. And we had a job party people would leave in the middle of the night. So, my kids, they just grew up with it.
But we couldn't get, we couldn't get people to work on a house because it was, the reputation was that it was the haunted house. And I didn't really know that until we were in the process. But my story, I have, I told Haley was that we had gone through like four different plumbers and nobody would come. And this one local man, Mr.
Watson, he came and he was not a talker. I just came in, did the work, went down to the, there's a guest house on the property, which my husband uses his CPA office. And he went down to get paid and he just stood there and he handed him the bill and then read the check out and he said, I just really want to thank you. We were really in need of a plumber and we couldn't get a plumber and we just didn't know what we were going to do.
And the guy just looked at him and said, I'm scared of no ghost. And just took her out of slops out. Dan had not mentioned the ghost. It was, it was just common knowledge.
The person who cleaned my house, said she didn't sleep at all the first night before she came to my house because she was, I'd heard her whole life that it was a haunted house. But Dan's favorite story is that he was a deacon at the Baptist Church on campus. And he was his first meeting. He went in and the, he was sitting beside two older men both were hard of hearing.
And one of them said, who are you? And he said, I'm a wand assassin. And he said that because I was the youth minister at college here. More people knew me.
And he said, who are you? And he said, I'm a wand assassin. He said, where do you live? Dan said, in the old rest of the lodge.
And the other man said, what'd he say? He said, he lives in the old whorehouse. And Dan said, that's the first time I've heard of that. So then we began to ask around.
You wanted to ask a question? Yeah. Old whorehouse? Yeah, you would do tell.
Well, it turns out that this gentleman was, had a business where women were entertaining other people. Very nice way to pair people. And there, you can go online and look at this house. It's for sale.
And because you will look at it and it's on Zillow and Kully. And there's this huge rock fireplace in the middle is this shining round rock. And I was on jury duty one day. This woman said to me, you want to kiss?
I said, yes. You still live in that warehouse? Yes. I do.
She said, is that kissing stone still there? I said, I don't know what you're talking about. She said, there's a round shiny rock in the middle. I said, yes.
She said, it was known as the kissing stone, because the man had to kiss it before they could go upstairs so that they would not tell it was where they took their oath. But this was a private thing. I said, well, that's very interesting. And she said, how exactly do you know that?
She said, my mob told me. Oh, my gosh. She said it was rated one time in their pictures of it in the newspaper. But I haven't checked that out.
They're pictures of it where men put their pants over their heads and came out so nobody would recognize them. So my lawyer friends said, well, that's true. I defended the owner in court because he took his girls on a vacation. He took his girls on a vacation to Ohio to ride the rollercoaster.
And when he came back to North Carolina, they arrested him for the Man Act for taking people across the border for illegal purposes. And he said, so I defended him in court. And he said, my first time going out there was that place was covered with chickens. And he said, where all these chickens go from?
He said, a lot of people pay in chickens. So we had the, we had our own little chicken ranch. So there you go. So he got him off and I won't tell you how he got him off it.
He did. So that was dinner conversation when everybody has a story about the house. So it's been fun for 30 years to be collecting those stories. So who do you think the woman is who's crying?
Do you think she was one of the women who worked in the Bravo? I, you know, I have pondered that song. I don't know because not just those people live there. I mean, that was just one, one scene of the cell because it had been a boarding house for people who worked at the, at the wood plant, yes, at the lumber yard.
So it had been a place where people just checked in and stayed. So I don't know if that, I mean, there are lots of different people who could have had a really unhappy experience in that room. So, but it's an interesting house because the Tuxley River flooded in 1941 and it took out all of Blackwood lumber. And there used to be a train that came out there.
There was buildings and everything and it took it out and never rebuilt. But the house set up on the, on the ledge above the river and another woman that went to the Methodist church was 14 and lived in the house when that happened and was standing out on the, on the, there used to have a balcony and she said, I was standing on the balcony and watched the whole river basin go in front of me. So it has, it's seen some amazing things. It sounds like it has.
So your son has seen a ghost aberration. You were saying your kids saw a little bit more, heard a little bit more than you did. What kind of things did they see? What kind of things did you hear and see?
Well, the crime, the thing that my daughter was most experienced because everybody thought it was thorough and it was, there were things like there were the car, we would get in the car and somebody would have put the seat all the way down, you know, in the driver's side. You think, we did that. It comes up to somebody's end. And consequently, we have never had one trick or treat her ever.
So my children, when they grew up and moved down down down their own houses, they would write, they would call and say, I had trick or treat her. They weren't the Adam's family living. You're lucky. Your house was an egg or something.
You would think, but no, I think between me, being terrifying to people and the house, being terrible to people, I think it was just 35 years. It's been there. I figured it has enough uninvited. Yes.
They're just there. They're not very welcoming. So I just, that's your own security. Yes.
And it does just, it just kind of hangs up on the side of this hill and it's a little, you know, the second this podcast said I'm gonna, I'm gonna look it up. Obviously it would be fun for Haley and I to venture there and record from there. One of those goes to meters with you. If you feel any spiritual.
I'm down for that. Haley. Yeah, that's on our list. Also, we've added it.
So people were scared of the house. They were scared of you. I've left that house and people are still afraid of me. It's fine.
That's fine. Oh my gosh. Well, those are, those are the big stories. I'm sure that there are other stories that I don't know about, but it was very intriguing to learn first-hand from the actual people because they were in their 80s and I didn't even know they still were around.
But when I worked at this one church for four years, they would, they would be like, oh, you live in that house? Let me tell you how I, how I'm related to that house. So that was, that was fun. It was just the house.
It was the haunted house. Yes. They said that whoever disappeared and left in a model A car in those small garage under the house and it stayed empty long enough that a tree grew up that had to be cut down for somebody to get the model A floor down. And the people in front of the lived ahead of us had heard about the alcopone thing and they looked for the money.
I didn't, I didn't assume that he'd left money. So, but he just left a little chapter to the story. He didn't have to leave any money. He also ended up with syphilis and it affected his brain.
So who knows? That's right. I'm really hoping he did not get it there. He made that.
We track it back and it was also one to live in. So we're alcopone cousin. We get about it. We got it.
Perfect. And he got caught for it. Was it the guy who got it? Was the IRS that did him in?
Yes. That's how Hoover got him. He got his say got him for tax for all. Tax evasion tax evasion.
And here's the CPA living in the house. So it's a circle. It really is. Well, Capone is one of the, the ghosts that they say he haunts like all these different places.
Like some of the prisons he's been in, different places he's stayed. So he may be haunting that house. Well, he's got a sissy cry. One would hope if it goes for a circle that the people who by decide to rejuvenate it and make a whorehouse again.
Oh, they get that. This time it could be online. I think a haunted bed and breakfast would be excellent. I just think.
I mean, I think there are people who would I mean, you could have the Al Capone room and you could have the Dolly Pardon room. That's a little more housing. Colley and you're just there's so many opportunities that as a VISTA minister, I did not have the opportunity to cash it on. So nobody's stopping you.
Well, not now. Not now. Not now. Oh my goodness.
Well, that's been the haunted warhouse. Yes. Anybody has any questions? Just, you know, we'll give you all our email.
Yeah. As a matter of fact, hey, how do they do that? Yeah. So you can send us an email at mountainmysteries.epilatchin.com or find us on Facebook at mountainmysteriespalesfromepilatchin or our Instagram at mountainmysteries.epilatchin.
So many ways. Well, you know, we're going to give a shout out to Colowee, North Carolina. Yeah, East Leport is really East Leport. Yes.
And Colowee, the home of Western Carolina University and all those students. Big old shout out. And I've seen that a few times. Yeah, we've got some posters out there.
Yeah. So good. We'll find, I mean, look at the house from a distance. Don't go up to it.
Go on the lease, don't text me since I've ever seen it. We'll come out with a whole thing. Yes. And go look at the house and if you're interested, please give me a call.
I'll make an offer. I think it would be if I were younger and not the campus minister at Western Carolina, there are just so many things that hospitality would be a gracious thing. But I just can't think of all the things you could themes. You could have weddings and different Halloween parties and different things.
How many bedrooms are in this house? Well, there are five rooms that could be used as bedrooms. There are three bathrooms, and but it has this huge, the room, the big room, the big room is we call it, is 720 square feet. So and it has that huge fireplace with a kissing stone in the middle.
So I mean, that's where people just drive it up just to see that. Yeah. Yeah. Take a tour.
Find it on Zillow. I feel like they're going to hear this and offer to be made right out of Zillow. Somebody from New York, somebody from not around that would just really not be swept up in the actual culture because there's still this residual thing about the house locally that people, we need an outsider. So L.A.
if you're listening. L.A. New York, Colorado. That's an international listener.
So if you want to come across the pond and check out this. Yes. I mean, if you lived in England, this would be the perfect answer to your haunted castles. Yes.
Because it's, you know, the Scotch Irish settled this whole part of the country and I'm sure you're related to something that went on there. You wouldn't want to have tea, like high tea in a whore house. That's a haunted one of that haunted. Or actually, you could call it a house with you'll review with that sounds a little bit more.
Yeah. So because, you know, those girls want to treat them with respect. We do. Yes.
That is terrible. They were making, making their way. That's right. victims.
Probably have no such workers. To me, I have no ill-will against sex workers or what you do with your life as long as you're doing it willingly and consensually. We'll do whatever you want. So that was, I just wanted to put in a word of respect.
Yes. Absolutely. A word of respect to our ladies of the night. Or the day.
Or the day. Or the day. Or the afternoon. Any times the right time.
Oh my goodness. Well, thank you, Wanda. You're so welcome and I'm so glad I'm part of my life that I can't be fired. And you are our first guest.
Yeah. Really? Yes. You just re-told stories?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah.
We always ask for case suggestions and, you know, we've, we started this to tell stories that nobody else was telling. So stories from this area and, you know, Appalachia such a wild history and just you could go to Jackson County and get some little Canada. There are lots of stories. I like it.
Just put a word out. Shout out to Colleen. Anybody else in Jackson County who has a story that she contacted you because one of my really good friends, father's, was a grandfather, was a sheriff and he was shot for the moonshining person. And that would be a great story.
There's somebody writing some of those stories in Jackson County. So you should be jealous. Well, look them up and see if you can get them on. I can promote their book and give us some good stories.
I don't, Debbie would be, Debbie, I won't say. I can get that information. Great. Perfect.
Okay. Well, thank you guys for listening to another episode and I hope you have a wonderful week. Hey, we will catch you next week, right? See you next week.
All right. Bye. Bye.