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00:00Allegedly, the most haunted place in Detroit is the two-way in, over on East Side,
00:05which, by the way, is just an absolutely great bar in general.
00:08Super cool.
00:09I think it has the best claim to being the oldest bar in Detroit.
00:12I think that place has a legitimate claim to having some stuff going on over there.
00:17Haunted Michigan, Terrifying Tales.
00:21Hey, Jeff, good to see you, man.
00:22How's things with you?
00:24Good, man, good.
00:24How are you doing?
00:25I'm doing well.
00:26Thanks for stopping by, and welcome to Haunted Michigan, where we talk about all things haunted as far as Michigan
00:32is concerned.
00:33Today we're going to talk about Detroit.
00:35Now, Jade, who I work with, actually pointed me in your direction.
00:39She saw you guys.
00:40There was a story online about one of your haunted walks, shadows at the station.
00:47Is that a walk, or is that just like the train station?
00:51So it's the train station and the immediate area around it, right?
00:54So it includes a little bit of Roosevelt Park.
00:56You go outside, you go back in, and it's some of the more, a couple of the more well-known
01:02stories are outside,
01:03and then we have the sort of inside scoop, as it were, on the inside.
01:07Okay.
01:08Now, they just recently redid that, right?
01:10Yeah, yeah.
01:11I mean, the Ford Motor Company put in almost a billion dollars into it, and it's an incredible venue.
01:18We've had the privilege of being a part of the station since 2023, since before it opened to the public,
01:26and we've been working in there ever since, and it's one of the coolest things that I've ever had the
01:30opportunity to do.
01:30So it's been awesome.
01:31All right.
01:32Now, before we get back into that, tell us a little bit about your background and a little bit more
01:35about what you guys do.
01:36And what is this called?
01:38This is the Detroit?
01:39Detroit History Tours, right?
01:41Detroit History Tours.
01:41I don't want to screw it up, I'm sure.
01:42No, it's okay, man.
01:43Don't worry about it.
01:45But so we're a small company, and we were started by the owner of the company.
01:49Her name is Bailey Sisoy Moore.
01:50She's currently the executive director over at the Michigan Maritime Museum in South Haven.
01:55But until not this past June, but the June before, she also had my job.
02:00So she ran the company and also owned the company.
02:02And she started it out of her house when she was a clay modeler at GM.
02:07She wanted to do a career shift.
02:09She started this company, and it's been around for about 12 years.
02:14For me, I met Bailey when I was working over at the Paquette Avenue plant, which is where the Model
02:20T was invented.
02:21I was the events manager there.
02:22Prior to that, I had been up in the thumb at a museum.
02:26I'd been down in Monroe when I was in graduate school at the University of Toledo.
02:31I was working for the Monroe County Historical Society a little bit.
02:34And I met Bailey when I was at Paquette.
02:37She's like, hey, do you want to stop doing weddings and come do history stuff?
02:39And I'm like, absolutely, I do.
02:42Not that weddings weren't great, but it was right after COVID, and I was super burned out with that sort
02:47of emotional experience of people having to reschedule their weddings over and over and over again.
02:51And so I've been a part of the team for about five years.
02:55I've run the joint for Bailey for about a year and a half now.
02:59And it is something I never thought I'd get to do because you get to go out and give people
03:05tours of what I think is the coolest city in the world, focus on all different kinds of topics, do
03:12all different kinds of subject matter, because Detroit has a really dynamic history.
03:17And it's incredible to go out and do it.
03:19Now, by the way, weddings aren't great, just so you know.
03:22But so, yeah, you guys are doing tours throughout the entire year.
03:26And then at this time of the year, you kind of incorporate some of the more haunted stuff.
03:31Now, do you have any you have you have a paranormal background or is this something that you just kind
03:35of learned about?
03:36No. So I've always I do not have a paranormal background at all.
03:40I would classify myself as a skeptic who is is receptive, meaning that I approach it like I would approach
03:48any historical sort of factoid or story.
03:53I approach it with some skepticism right now.
03:56That's not to say I don't believe any ghost stories.
03:59That's not to say I've never experienced things that I don't consider are extremely weird and possibly paranormal.
04:04Absolutely.
04:05Absolutely. But if somebody tells me a ghost story about a place, I'm like, OK, that's cool.
04:11But when I hear the same story four or five times, that's when we can start putting that on a
04:15tour.
04:15Right. That's when we can say, all right, this is the story.
04:19For example, like this is the story of a guy whose cigar factory is gone and he shows up now
04:26asking where his factory is and wanting it back.
04:28And we've got so many sort of versions of that tale, people telling us basically the same story that we
04:35throw that on a tour.
04:36That's part of our tour. And we give them the history of what it could be.
04:39And the important thing that you have to tell people is like, I can't prove to you.
04:43Right. That this is this guy unless the guy says he's that guy.
04:47Right. Or I can't prove to you that this is what happened and this is what's causing this haunting.
04:51But this is the history that we think aligns with the stories that we've heard.
04:55And maybe it's subconscious. Maybe people have heard this history before and they're sort of projecting it.
04:59Or maybe there is something going on. And that's kind of the balance we try and strike as a company
05:03is like we want to give you a ghost story.
05:05That's cool and cool history at the same time and mesh them together.
05:09It's a it's a it's a a backdoor way of being able to teach people crazy different pieces of history.
05:15It's super fun.
05:15Yeah. I'm a lot like you. I'm very skeptical and I am not about clickbait and I am not about
05:23blowing stories up.
05:24That might be nice. I want to hear the real stories and I want to hear what people have experienced.
05:29I want to share that with other people. I'm not here to like, you know, make up stories in air,
05:35you know, but but you just you just kind of hit on it.
05:38So how many how many stories would you think revolve around, you know, the the tour that you're giving out
05:44right now with the with the the dark side of the history bus tour, the walking tours, all of those
05:49tours.
05:49So there's there for those. So for for Dastardly, which is that walking downtown tour, that's a combination of ghost
05:57stories.
05:58One is my own from the Guardian building and the other.
06:02Well, hang on. You got to got to tell us now you brought.
06:04I'm not going to spoil the tour, man. So I'll give I'll give you the nickel version of it. Right.
06:09OK, so I used to we as a company, we used to do tours at the Guardian building.
06:13There's another company in there currently doing tours.
06:17And but it was right when I started is when we were doing this a few years ago.
06:20And I was the second guide. And which means that I'm sort of like at the back, making sure people
06:25don't steal anything or get lost.
06:26Right. Or have a panic attack when we go upstairs.
06:28And I saw something up upstairs that I haven't been able to fully explain yet.
06:33And so that's on the tour. So that's one of our ghost stories.
06:38But on that same tour, though, we talk about a Prohibition era ghost on the Detroit River.
06:43We talk about Nan Rouge or Nain Rouge, depending on how you want to be, because we go to Fort
06:50and Shelby.
06:51Just so everyone knows, there's there's been three forts in Detroit's history.
06:56One of them, which had the name Fort Shelby at one point, was at Fort and Shelby Street because history
07:01is not always hard.
07:02Anyway, then we go up into Capitol Park. We talk about Harry Houdini in Detroit.
07:06We talk about Stephen St. Mason, the first governor of Detroit.
07:11Then we go over to Washington Boulevard. We talk about smallpox and cholera and Abe Bernstein, the head of the
07:16Purple Gang and the book Cadillac Hotel.
07:19Ah, the Purple Gang, yeah.
07:20Yeah, a lot of it's not just ghost stories. There's a lot of like macabre in that one.
07:25The Michigan Central tour we're rolling out, that one has four ghost stories from inside, some of which are sort
07:33of within local legend.
07:35Others are ones that we heard about because we were there on opening night and we had enough people come
07:41up to us
07:42and explain the same thing that was happening to us on July 6th, 2024, that we were like, ah, this
07:48seems like we could have some traction here.
07:51So we did some investigation with that, put that on the tour, sort of gave people potential history behind that.
07:57Then the bus tour this year, every every bus tour that we do is different.
08:00So we've been doing it for, I believe it's 12 years now. This will be our 12th year.
08:05And every single year it's different. Every single year we pick different topics and different ways of looking at things.
08:10This year we're looking at sort of a transportation-centric thing.
08:14We're headed down to the Westcott, which is the world's only floating zip code.
08:17They're going to tell us some of their ghost stories.
08:20We're going to be rolling around there.
08:22We're going to tell the most famous ghost story, railroad ghost story in America that has many different versions
08:29in many different cities and many different places and how it got started.
08:32So that's one of them as well.
08:34Okay, I got you.
08:35So you just mentioned, you just mentioned the word investigate.
08:38Have you had paranormal investigators come out with you to some of these places?
08:43Not when I was, not at Detroit History Tours.
08:46I've worked with other paranormal investigators previously when I've been worked in smaller museums, whatever else.
08:53The problem with trying to do an investigation on a bus is that typically you have too many people who
08:59want too many different things.
09:00They can't be quiet.
09:01They can't leave stuff alone, et cetera.
09:03So that's typically we kind of shy away from that.
09:05Now, I will tell you a lot of the places that we've gone to in the past have had those
09:09types of people there.
09:11I mean, allegedly the most haunted place in Detroit is the two-way in.
09:17Over on East Side, which, by the way, is just an absolutely great bar in general.
09:21Super cool.
09:22I think it has the best claim to being the oldest bar in Detroit.
09:25It's one of my favorite places.
09:27They've had investigators out.
09:29I believe another friend of the company, Abex Bar, opposite end of the city, has done the same.
09:37I mean, so we've used them in the past as our bar stop for our tours, right, because there's always
09:41a bar stop on a tour typically.
09:44And they've had people there.
09:46And so what we like to do at those types of places, like at the bar or at the Westcott,
09:51is have people who work there or who are there a lot, whatever it might be, give us the history.
09:57Give us their version of their ghost story.
09:59And we let people figure it out for themselves.
10:01Like, is this real?
10:02Is it not real?
10:03Can you explain it away?
10:04Can you not?
10:04And it adds a really, I think, an important bit of authenticity and also a different voice than just me
10:11talking for three hours on a bus.
10:13Right.
10:13Because God only knows no one wants that.
10:16So this two-way in bar, I was going to ask you, in your opinion, I mean, you know, you
10:23say you're not really, you know, you don't have a paranormal background.
10:26But in your opinion, is that the most haunted place in Detroit or do you have another place?
10:30I, so there's two places that people will tell me are the most haunted in Detroit.
10:35One is Fort Wayne in Southwest.
10:37I was going to ask you about that, yeah.
10:39Yeah, Fort Wayne.
10:39So Fort Wayne, I love Fort Wayne.
10:41They have a great, their staff person over there, Brenna Grace, is an incredible human being, just an absolutely top
10:48-notch human.
10:49I've been there at almost every hour of the day.
10:52And I have felt odd and weird there, but it's, I think it's because you have a lot of temperature
10:59changes as you're getting down towards the river.
11:01If you go inside the wall, the temperature will drop like crazy and just messes with you internally.
11:06Other people claim other things.
11:09I don't necessarily, I mean, I've never, there I've never experienced anything that I couldn't be like, all right, I
11:14can figure this out.
11:15There are a lot of people who say different.
11:17The two-way is the only place in the city, other than the Guardian building, where I've ever had anything,
11:23anything happen to me that I couldn't figure it out.
11:27And the two-way, there's a lot of, there's a lot of legends.
11:30There's a lot of, of history there.
11:31There's a lot of stories there.
11:33But the thing that happened to me has happened to other folks.
11:37And I, I tell people this on tour occasionally.
11:41There's this, I don't remember what the phenomenon is, but it's disembodied voices that sound like people, you know, like
11:47calling you and asking you to do something or calling you in.
11:51And so this was my first year on the job.
11:53And the two-way was our Halloween bar.
11:55And we're in the middle of the tour run.
11:57And that year was pretty long.
11:58It was like 20 tours in a month, which is a lot for a small company like us.
12:03And I, so my boss, Bailey, was leading the tour.
12:07She leaves the bar.
12:08And it's my job to make sure all, all tabs are paid.
12:11If anyone's sticking around because they want to hang out at the bar longer, they're not going to get back
12:14on the bus.
12:14I make sure that if there's no one like that, everyone's back on the bus so we can take off.
12:18Right.
12:20And I'm getting ready to, I sort of gather everybody up, get them outside.
12:24I check with the bartender.
12:25And I'm like, hey, any open tabs?
12:27They're like, no, thanks.
12:28We'll see you next time.
12:29Awesome.
12:29I go outside, just outside the door at the two-way.
12:33And I hear Bailey's voice, which is distinctive.
12:35It's a distinctive voice yelling for me back inside.
12:38Pollock, come back in.
12:39Pollock, come back in.
12:40And I go back in.
12:41And at the two-way, you have to buzz to get in, right?
12:44It's a buzzer bar.
12:45I buzz to get in.
12:46I go in.
12:47And I'm looking around.
12:48I'm looking around.
12:49And the bartender finally asked me, Danielle, she goes, what the hell are you doing?
12:53And I go, I'm looking for Bailey.
12:55She was just, she's like, Bailey hasn't been in here for like 10 minutes.
12:58And I get back on the bus.
13:00And there are a few sins at our company that are bad.
13:04And holding up a bus tour is a pretty bad sin, right?
13:07And she's like, I get back on.
13:09And the owner of Bailey and then our driver, whose name is Wendy, who's the best damn driver
13:13in the business.
13:15They're like, what were you doing?
13:16Like, what are you?
13:17I'm like, Bailey was inside.
13:18She was yelling at me.
13:19Like, I legitimately thought Bailey was messing with me and had gone out the back door of
13:23the two-way, run around the building and come back in.
13:25I'm like, no, she's been on the bus the whole time.
13:27So we get back to our office after the tour.
13:31And I explain what happened.
13:32And apparently, this is just one of the things that we didn't really talk about on the tour
13:36beforehand.
13:37And this happened all the time at the two-way.
13:39And it's not just Bailey's voice.
13:41Some other people have heard their mother calling for them inside the building, et cetera.
13:45That's the most common one.
13:47And Bailey, who is, in fact, I think six months younger than me, was like, if anyone ever thinks
13:53that I'm your mother, you are in deep shit.
13:54So that made it like that.
13:56Well, so that's the only other thing in the city that I've had happen that I'm like, all
14:00right, that's weird.
14:01And then you couple that with all the other stories over at the two-way, I think that place
14:06has a legitimate claim to having some stuff going on over there.
14:09Plus, it's just a historic building.
14:12And it's really cool.
14:13And I encourage anyone to go over there to have a beverage if they wish.
14:18I mean, but we go to other places, too, that have their own fair share of ghost stories.
14:22Some of them are comedic.
14:23Like one year, we had original buddies over Six and Conant on our tour, right?
14:29And they were like, well, we have this one story.
14:30It's not really a ghost story.
14:32We eventually figured out what happened.
14:33I'm like, well, what happened?
14:35So it's the 80s.
14:36This waitress gets yelled at by the manager.
14:38And she starts bawling her eyes out, right?
14:40And the manager, it's like, just go downstairs, take a few minutes, catch up.
14:44Like, you'll be all right.
14:45And they go downstairs and she's gone.
14:47She disappears.
14:48And this is the only way in and out of the basement.
14:50And then, like, so they go on with the night.
14:53Like, that's really weird.
14:54That's kind of freaky.
14:55And then, like, three or four days later, somebody sees this waitress, like, out in
15:01Hamtramck.
15:01Like, she was from Hamtramck.
15:02And they see her there.
15:03And, like, what the hell happened?
15:04How did you get out?
15:05She goes, oh, I climbed up the coal chute.
15:07But there was this big rumor that eventually spawns this ghost story of the disappearing
15:11waitress.
15:11And so those sometimes are just as fun as the actual ghost stories, like how ghost stories
15:17get started.
15:18And it's usually a misconception.
15:20So that's kind of fun for me.
15:23Now, you mentioned Houdini.
15:25So there must be a lot of Houdini stories.
15:28Oh, absolutely.
15:29Houdini.
15:29So Detroit at one time has the world's second largest theater district behind Broadway.
15:34So Houdini came here a lot.
15:36And it's funny.
15:37When you tell people, when you talk to people about Houdini, they're like, hey, oh, he died
15:43when they dropped him off the MacArthur Bridge going on to Belisle, obviously.
15:48Like, that's when he died.
15:49He's like, no, he just almost died then.
15:51He died in Detroit because he had gotten punched in the stomach right after a show in
15:58Montreal, basically a series of, a couple guys wanted to see him take a punch from any
16:05man.
16:05He gets punched in the stomach.
16:06He eventually, he falls on the ground.
16:09He goes to Detroit.
16:11And the story goes is that he came to Detroit from Montreal because he's got a two-week
16:15engagement at the Garrick Theater.
16:17The Garrick started its life as the Whitney Opera House, I'm fairly certain.
16:22And he, the train gets delayed on its way into Detroit.
16:26And when he gets here, his stomach's so swollen that they have to use a hair, a hair ribbon
16:33from Bess, his wife, to sort of tie up his pants.
16:35And he goes directly on stage to, at the Garrick Theater to do his act.
16:41He does the first little bit of his act, but he passes out on stage, right?
16:46He passes out on stage.
16:48He's taken from the, the, the theater over to the Statler, which is where he's staying.
16:53The Statler has like an internist filling in for the usual hotel doctor.
16:58He misdiagnoses him.
16:59They eventually take him over to the hospital where they're like, oh, this dude has appendicitis.
17:03And they operate on him.
17:05And then Harry Houdini dies in Detroit on October 31st, Halloween.
17:09Yeah.
17:10Right now put yourself in the shoes of somebody in the audience or somebody from Detroit.
17:14And so Harry Houdini comes to the town and he rushes to stage and then he passes out on stage.
17:20And then he dies on Halloween of all nights.
17:22Is anyone going to believe him?
17:24And a lot of people didn't.
17:27So there's a crowd that gathers at the funeral home, which is still, still standing.
17:31It's over on Cass.
17:32It's the old Hamilton funeral home.
17:34It takes Senator Livernoy to come out and be like, hey, you know, he's dead.
17:40You know, magic has died in the Motor City.
17:42Then Harry Houdini eventually is taken out of Michigan or out of, out of Detroit to be buried in New
17:47York at Michigan Central Station.
17:51So all of these things happen in Detroit.
17:53And there's, there's layers upon layers to that story.
17:56That is the quick and easy version of it.
17:58But it's cool.
17:59I hear tell Detroit Historical Society is putting together an exhibit on Harry Houdini for the 100th anniversary of his
18:05death coming up at the end of the month.
18:08So that'll be, or at the end of October.
18:09So that'll be cool too.
18:10Nice little time.
18:11He died in 18, 1926?
18:13Yeah.
18:14Oh, okay.
18:14I didn't realize.
18:15Yeah.
18:15Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
18:16I should have mentioned that, you know.
18:18No, no, no, no.
18:18It's fine.
18:19I knew it was early 1900s, but you know, I've been on ghost tours.
18:22I was actually in one in a Gettysburg one time.
18:25Yep.
18:25And there was this kid in the middle of the room.
18:28There's about 20 people on this tour.
18:30And at one point we were upstairs in the third floor of a, of a, one of the houses that
18:34was actually there when, when, you know, the civil war was going on.
18:37Yeah.
18:37And he, he stopped a tour to inform the tour guide that somebody had their hands on his shoulders.
18:43And of course there was nobody there.
18:45Right.
18:45So, uh, is, has there been an instance like that in any of the tours you've taken with, uh, with
18:49any of the, uh, people?
18:51Um, as far as with guests?
18:53Yeah.
18:53I've had, so we've had a couple of things like that happen.
18:58Um, the most common thing that happens is people like picking up like orbs or whatever in pictures.
19:03Right.
19:04Um, the funniest thing, the funniest one that happened was we were at Fort Wayne, um, a couple of few
19:10years ago now.
19:12And there's this, when you go into the fort, you go into the wall itself, basically to, to just make
19:17layman's explanation.
19:19And we sort of start our interpretation there.
19:21Like, this is what was going on at this fort at this point in time.
19:25Um, here's the history of the fort.
19:27Here's the history of the walls, which change over time too.
19:29And people always take pictures, you know, we encourage them to do so.
19:32Cause why not?
19:33You never know when you're going to be back at Fort Wayne.
19:35Right.
19:35The next day we get an email from this guest and this is the best photographic story that I have.
19:42And it's a picture and there's no one else in this hallway.
19:45And there's, there's a shadowy figure off to one side, like just in the picture.
19:50And these two, it's this, this older couple.
19:53And the woman called us to basically explain why she emailed this to us.
19:57Cause we replied like, Hey, give us a call and tell us why you emailed us this picture.
20:01And she's on the phone talking to us, but I don't know if you've ever heard this, like
20:04you have an older couple and they're, they're, they've been together so long that they argue
20:09with each other while they're on the phone.
20:11So they're talking and she's explaining what she did with this photo and her husband, you
20:14can hear him.
20:15He doesn't know I'm there and you can hear him in the side.
20:18He's like, that's Jeff.
20:19That's Jeff off to the side.
20:20That's clearly Jeff.
20:21And the woman goes, Oh, hush.
20:22That's not Jeff.
20:23That's way too skinny to be Jeff.
20:25Like, you know, like, and I still find that funny to this day.
20:28So we've had stuff like that.
20:30And then at the two way, we've had some things happen.
20:33Like people can't get into the women's bathroom when there's no one there at ABEX.
20:38We've had people be like, I definitely, somebody definitely like, like kind of put their hand
20:43on the bottom of my back to make me move.
20:45And there's no one there.
20:46Right.
20:47When we were at PLAV post number 10, which is the Polish Legion of American veterans in
20:52Amtramck, we had somebody who basically kept being like, there's somebody following me
20:57upstairs, like in their, in their upstairs room.
21:00Like there's somebody been following me.
21:01There's somebody hanging out with me, that type of thing.
21:03I don't think we've ever had anybody claim that there were hands on their shoulders while
21:07we were talking, but yeah, man.
21:09I mean, it's, things happen and you're like, okay, that's kind of weird.
21:12So yeah, nobody's been scratched or their hairs.
21:14No, no, no, no, no, nothing like that.
21:17Yeah, no, yeah.
21:18Yeah.
21:19Fort Wayne, you know, many people have brought up Fort Wayne, but nobody that I've talked
21:22to has brought up the two way.
21:24People do bring up the Whitney downtown.
21:27Oh, for sure.
21:27Yeah.
21:28Yeah.
21:28The Whitney has a great reputation for that.
21:30Um, I knew one of their managers, an ex, just a great human being, and he had a bunch of
21:36stories as well, like the piano playing at night, um, like without anyone being there
21:41and it's not a player piano, um, people seeing, um, other people who clearly didn't belong
21:47there at, at the building.
21:49So, I mean, just crazy stuff.
21:50Um, yeah, the Whitney also has that, that reputation as well.
21:53Yeah.
21:54They say that, that, uh, that, that ghosts and, and, you know, aberrations and stuff
21:58like that tend to, uh, tend to go to places where there was a lot of trauma and stuff.
22:02You know, Detroit's had its fair share of trauma over the years.
22:05And so, you know, things like that are, are probably not that uncommon.
22:10Yeah.
22:10I mean, and that's one of the theories, right?
22:12It's trauma.
22:13Sometimes it's just strong memories in general, but yeah.
22:16And there's this, it's, it's really cool.
22:18They've done some work.
22:19Um, I'm a, I'm a civil war guy by trade and training.
22:22So when you say Gettysburg, I'm like, I know of what you speak, um, the battlefield
22:25guides, so not the ghost tour guides, but the battlefield guides are like the, the gold
22:29standard of tour guiding world, right?
22:32Like they're amazing.
22:33They know they're encyclopedic and they're, they're great tour guides, but I go to Gettysburg
22:37every year.
22:38And this year when I was at the conference, I picked up a book that, that was just published
22:42by the university of Tennessee press talking about the prevalence of ghost stories with the
22:48civil war.
22:49And that's their, one of their growing theories is that it's the trauma and it's the power
22:53of those memories that makes this all happen.
22:55So absolutely.
22:56Um, that, that, that line of thinking is one that I, that I'll often talk to folks about.
23:00Like if there are ghosts here, this is why it's probably this trauma or these strong memories
23:05or whatever it might be.
23:06Yeah.
23:06I, I believe, uh, correct me if I'm wrong.
23:08I believe I was in the Hawthorne house.
23:11Does that, is that, um, Oh, for sure.
23:12That's definitely one of them.
23:13Yeah.
23:13Is that what it's called?
23:14Yeah.
23:14So we were on the, we were on the third floor and this is going back like 15 years.
23:18This is before I kind of got into all this stuff.
23:21And my wife bought a ghost tour as I went back to the car to drop something off.
23:24And of course I, I rolled her and I'm like, Oh God, here we go.
23:27And then that happened.
23:29Yeah.
23:30Yeah.
23:30So, I mean, but I mean, I, there are, there's a lot of diverse opinions within the history
23:35world about ghost tours.
23:36I think if they're done correctly without being cheesy and terrible, I think they're
23:41great.
23:42I think it's just, it's another way to teach people history who might not otherwise want
23:46to engage with it.
23:47Um, and you're, you're adding a different lens to it.
23:50And I think I, frankly, I think it's cool.
23:52Like when I was a kid, they had these like, uh, ghosts of English castles type show on like
23:57A&E.
23:58I remember that to this day.
24:00Um, and how, how that got me interested in that type of history.
24:03I was already a giant history nerd, but got me interested in that like genre and sphere
24:08of history of English history.
24:10So it's kind of cool.
24:11Yeah.
24:11And also, um, you know, when I went out on that, uh, on that ghost tour in a Gettysburg,
24:15um, the, the, the, the sun had set by time we got to the, um, by time we got to
24:20the battlefield.
24:21And I will tell you this, um, there was a certain scent in the air, like something was
24:26like, there was a burning type scent, but we couldn't, I've never smelled it before or
24:31after.
24:31Like, I don't know what that was.
24:33And there was nobody around us smoking, but that could be described by a lot of different
24:37things, but I'd never smelled that scent before or, and it's, and it's like, uh, everybody
24:42caught it too.
24:43And it was, and it was, and it kind of, kind of, kind of came and went.
24:46Yeah.
24:47And, um, and then we took a, we took a horse, uh, tour through the battlefield the next day,
24:51which was a pretty cool as well.
24:52That's awesome, man.
24:54No, when we go to Southwest, people pick up our odor too, but usually I can explain that
24:57one away.
24:58Yeah.
24:59That's right.
24:59Yeah.
25:00Yeah.
25:00There you go.
25:01Well, as we, uh, start to wind things down here, where can people like, uh, find you
25:05guys, uh, and, and are, are there still, uh, tours available?
25:09Yeah.
25:09We have some, we have some bus tickets available in particular and dastardly tour tickets.
25:14And that's the walking one.
25:15Yeah.
25:15The walking one.
25:16Yeah.
25:16We have, we have both a few available of both, um, Detroit history tours.com.
25:20Um, we're on, we, we have our socials, of course, Facebook, uh, install that other fun stuff.
25:26You can go through that way as well.
25:27And then, um, we might be releasing more shadows at the station, uh, tickets.
25:32Um, channel seven was kind enough to, to sort of pump that.
25:35And so we sold out in about 45 minutes, three different times.
25:38Um, which was great.
25:39Uh, I am not complaining whatsoever, but those tours will probably be just after Halloween
25:45still within the spooky season, quote unquote, but a little bit after.
25:49So people want to sort of linger with that feeling.
25:51We're going to be able to help them out.
25:52And where you go.
25:54Yeah.
25:54Yeah.
25:54And by the way, when, when this is released, you'll be selling like three more tickets.
25:59Hey, that's great, man.
26:00I love, Hey, listen, every, you know, three more tickets, five, whatever, whatever we got,
26:04man, I'm super excited for it.
26:05You know, it's funny and you can even, you can even pass this story along if you want
26:09to at the, uh, the train station thing.
26:10But I remember interviewing Josh Homme from Queens of the stone age back in 2009.
26:15And I was at the book Cadillac and he was playing with them.
26:17He was playing with them crooked vultures.
26:19And I, one side of me is Josh Homme and Dave Grohl.
26:22And right next to me is John Paul Jones from a band called Led Zeppelin.
26:25I could not get my head around that.
26:26I'm like, this guy was in Led Zeppelin.
26:28Anyhow, as I think it was off, off the interview.
26:32And, uh, Josh Homme said to me, he goes, man, I would love to buy that train
26:35station and keep it just as it is, but make like maybe the upper corner, uh, top
26:39floor into a really cool office for myself.
26:42I never forgot that.
26:43Um, well, I mean, he had his chance, right?
26:46I mean, I mean, I think what the Ford motor company has done in there, as far as
26:51the renovations, which are ongoing is it's crazy.
26:54I mean, it's just the amount of, the amount of like emergency restoration they had to
26:59do after years of neglect to save it, let alone restore it.
27:04It's just amazing.
27:04It's astounding stuff.
27:06Yeah.
27:06This sounds, uh, this might sound a little bit crazy, but I, but sometimes like, uh, for
27:10example, uh, the South line hotel used to have a lot of, uh, activity and then, and it
27:16burned down and they rebuilt it and all the activity is gone.
27:19Like nobody ever says anything about it.
27:20I wonder if, if when they, at the train station is kind of the same way, like I
27:24said, I don't want to sound too crazy, but, um, so they, the, we, we actually, our
27:29stories at the station, let me think about it real quick.
27:33As far as ghost stories go, we have one that is, uh, from basically current.
27:40Um, and we have two, three that are from its heyday and well, no, we have two from
27:46its heyday and one from when it was abandoned.
27:49So we tried to, we tried to gather up all those eras in addition to sort of some of
27:52the, the more, the broader Detroit type, uh, stories that we have in there to sort of
27:58connect the station to the rest of the city.
28:00Yeah.
28:00It's fun.
28:01Yeah.
28:01They say sometimes if you, uh, if you like restore something or you, or there's old
28:06pictures around there, it keeps some of the spirits kind of not at bay, but kind of like
28:11a little bit more relaxed.
28:12Well, we'll see, man.
28:13We got an iPad loaded with images that our guides are going to be carrying, um, for that.
28:17So maybe that'll cause something or won't.
28:19Who knows?
28:20Yeah.
28:21Well, Jeff, thanks so much for the time.
28:23Uh, everybody can check out Detroit history tours.com.
28:25Really cool, man.
28:26I'm going to have to check out one of these tours one time because, uh, I've always thought
28:30about it.
28:30You know, you go to Charleston or Gettysburg, there's always tours, you know, and I always
28:34thought to myself, is there something in Detroit?
28:35But I guess.
28:37I mean, so it's, it's fantastic.
28:39It's, it's one of those things that in Detroit, it's a tough market, right?
28:43It's a really, it's, it's not, it's not as easy as Charleston or New York or Chicago,
28:47but, um, it is, it's, I, I, I think it's incredibly fun.
28:51Um, I'm, I'm incredibly lucky to be able to do what I do.
28:53And, uh, people that come in basically local or you get, you get people from out of town
28:57a little bit of both.
28:58Um, surprising.
28:59I mean, our, our predominant client base, uh, for this year anyway, has been, uh, basically
29:05Southeastern Michigan.
29:06Um, as far as public tours go private tours, we get them from all over the place.
29:11We do get people who will stop into town, especially at Michigan central, but, um, we
29:17not as many Canadians this year for reasons beyond our control.
29:20And we'll, we'd love to see them back, but, um, we absolutely, um, our based, our, our
29:26strongest customer base is Detroit in its suburbs.
29:28Um, so a lot of locals, which is great because on top of giving people history, they might not
29:34know you get to hear their stories as well on almost every tour.
29:38I learned something new and it depends on, um, how good it is, if it's true or not.
29:44So, um, then I get to go research, do more work.
29:46So it's good.
29:47That's cool.
29:47Well, I hope you have a lot more stories to tell this year and, uh, thanks so much for
29:50taking the time and we'll push everybody towards your, uh, website and toward all your
29:54social media and we'll get, get them walking around the streets of Detroit.
29:58Absolutely, man.
29:59Love to see them out.
29:59And thanks a lot, man.
30:00Love being on.
30:04Love being on.