Highway to Hell

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The Spiritualist movement swept America, enticing people to entertain the question, "can we truly talk to the dead?". The Fox Sisters in 1848 entranced interest with their rapping phenomena in Hydesville, NY. Beleivers in contact were already using talking boards, alphabet cards, taple tipping and planchette writing by putting a heart shape platform on casters that held a pencil and wrote form the spirit guides. The Civil Wars mass casualties increased the demand for any way for people to talk to their lost loved ones. "Can they hear me?". Soon the planchette would be combined with an alphabet board to make translating the writing more efficient and meet the increased demand.
In 1890, a group of Baltimore investors: businessman Elijah Bond, attorney Charles Kennard, and others, with employee William Fuld would soon file a patent for a "talking board." Legend holds the Patent Office demanded a demonstration, and the board correctly spelled out the skeptical examiner's name; the patent was granted in February 1891. The name's origin is disputed. The company claimed it was Egyptian for "good luck"; the likelier story is that Bond's sister-in-law Helen Peters, a medium, asked the board what it wished to be called, and it answered "Ouija." A name similar to the author's name and likeness she wore in a locket.
Fuld would eventually take control of production, and through aggressive manufacturing and litigation against rivals became synonymous with the board. He died in 1927 after falling from the roof of his Baltimore factory — a building he said the board had told him to construct. His family ran the business until selling to Parker Brothers in 1966; Hasbro acquired it in 1991.
For decades the board was harmless parlor entertainment, spiking in popularity during wartime and the 1960s occult revival. In 1973, The Exorcist recast it as a portal for demonic possession, and evangelical anxiety hardened that reputation permanently.
Science attributes its operation to the ideomotor effect, described by physiologist William Carpenter in 1852: unconscious micro-movements by participants who genuinely believe they aren't pushing. Blindfold experiments reliably reduce the board to gibberish.
But then there are stories of unexplainable things, terrifying things, things the board shouldnt... couldnt know. Is it real?
Sources: Condensed for Character space
Deep history & belief — E.B. Tylor, Primitive Culture (1871, animism); archaeology of Sungir, Paviland, Göbekli Tepe; the Epic of Gilgamesh; Egyptian Book of the Dead & "Letters to the Dead"; 1 Samuel 28 & Deuteronomy 18; Homer's Odyssey Bk. 11. The bridge & Spiritualism — Swedenborg's Heaven and Hell (1758); Mesmer; Andrew Jackson Davis; the Fox sisters & Maggie's 1888 confession; Blavatsky & Theosophy; Conan Doyle vs. Houdini; Society for Psychical Research. Tarot — Court de Gébelin's Le Monde primitif (1781); Etteilla; Éliphas Lévi; the Golden Dawn; the 1909 Rider-Waite-Smith deck & Pamela Colman Smith. Ouija — Smithsonian Magazine (Linda Rodriguez McRobbie) · historian Robert Murch · The Strong National Museum of Play · Baltimore Magazine · Time · The Conversation · Atlas Obscura (Pearl Curran) · UBC ideomotor study (Rensink, Gauchou & Fels, 2012) · The Lineup & True Ghost Tales (Zozo) · Wikipedia & Skeptical Inquirer (Roland Doe / Ronald Hunkeler). Dates and figures are drawn from secondary sources — double-check anything you quote on air.

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Robert Hansen was born in Estherville Iowa to Danish immigrant parents. His father, was a baker and very domineering. Hansen had a pronounced stutter, acne scars and experiences social rejection and humiliation. As retaliation for this humiliation, and for the rejection of young women who would bully him, in 1960 he burned down a school district bus garage in Pope County. He was arrested but only served 20 months during which is first wife left him. Good call. Ladies if he's burning buildings down, you can't save him. Once released, he would be responsible for a string of petty thefts.
He would relocate to Anchorage Alaska in 1967 with his second wife and two children and opened a downtown bakery. It was a new place and new start. He was able to build a public identity as a respectable career man, family man, and most impressively in Alaska- a trophy bowhunter. Even with assault convictions in 1971 and 1972 didn't ruin his livelihood or reputation. Because how dare men be held accountable and ostracized from society for sex crimes????
Then between 1971 and 1983, Hansen would abduct, rape and kill women, mostly dancers and sex workers, knowing full well that the transient nature of Anchorage would protect him and provide alibis and lack of suspicion. He method was horrific. As a pilot, he would fly his victims to the Knik River valley and other bush country, release them... and hunt them.
On June 13, 1983, 17-year-old Cindy Paulson escaped in handcuffs at Merrill Field as Hansen loaded her onto his plane. She ran to police and reported it- they didn't believe her. WHY DON'T WOMEN REPORT??? Bodies had been surfacing since 1980 including: unidentified "Eklutna Annie", Joanna Messina, Sherry Morrow, and Paula Goudling. An FBI behavioral profile FINALLY persuaded a judge to issue a warrant. The October 1983 search recovered victims' jewelry hidden in the attic, firearms concealed behind his headboard, and an aviation chart marked with roughly twenty small Xs, a map of his own graves. Ballistics matched shell casings from two scenes.
In February 1984 Robert would plead guilty to four murders and was sentenced to 461 years plus life without parole. He confessed to 17 killings and more than 30 rapes, guiding investigators to burial sites. He died in custody on August 21, 2014.

Sources:
• Walter Gilmour & Leland E. Hale, Butcher, Baker: The True Account of an Alaskan Serial Killer (1991; reissued Open Road Media, 2016). Gilmour was an Alaska State Trooper involved in the case
• Leland E. Hale, "Butcher Baker" case blog, lelandhale.com/butcherbaker (co-author's ongoing primary-source chronology, including confession-transcript excerpts, the Cindy Paulson statement, the alibi collapse, and the grave-site map). 
• UPI Archives, Feb. 28, 1984 — sentencing wire reports ("Sentenced to life plus 461 years"). 
• Anchorage Daily News — contemporaneous reporting and Aug. 21–22, 2014 obituaries/coverage. 
• Alaska Department of Public Safety / Alaska State Troopers — press releases, incl. the 44
Oct. 22, 2021 identification of "Horseshoe Harriet" as Robin Pelkey (genetic genealogy, Alaska Bureau of Investigation Cold Case Unit with Parabon NanoLabs). 
• FBI Behavioral Science Unit profile (John E. Douglas, with James Horn), October 1983. 
• Wikipedia, "Robert Hansen" and "Murder of Eklutna Annie" (used to locate primary citations); Charley Project / Doe Network (Emerick, Thill); Find A Grave (Futrell). 
• The Frozen Ground (2013, dir. Scott Walker) is a dramatization, not a source of fact — named/altered characters. Used for cultural context only.

Herbert Baumeister was born in Indiana in 1947 and grew up in a middle-class family near Indianapolis. Even as a young man he showed troubling signs, and he spent time in a mental institution as an adult. Still, he built what looked like an ordinary life. He married Julie Saiter in 1971, raised three children, and ran a chain of successful thrift stores called Sav-A-Lot. To neighbors and customers, he seemed like a respectable businessman and family man.
Behind that image was a double life. In the early 1990s, Baumeister began visiting gay bars in Indianapolis under the name "Brian Smart." He lured men back to Fox Hollow Farm, his large estate in Westfield, Indiana, while his wife and children were away. There he strangled them, and he buried and scattered their remains across his wooded property.
The first hint of trouble came in 1994, when one of his sons found a human bone in the yard. Baumeister brushed it off as a medical skeleton. The truth surfaced through a survivor. A man who had escaped went to police and helped them connect the disappearances to "Brian Smart," who was eventually identified as Baumeister. In 1996, while he was away, his wife allowed investigators to search the farm. They uncovered thousands of charred bone fragments, the remains of at least eleven men.
Baumeister did not stay to face the case. He fled to Canada and, on July 3, 1996, shot himself at a provincial park in Ontario. He left a suicide note that mentioned his failing marriage and business but never confessed to the killings.
Investigators later suspected he may also have been responsible for a series of unsolved murders in which bodies were dumped along highways in Indiana and Ohio. Because he died before any trial, much about his crimes remains uncertain. Efforts to identify his victims from the recovered remains have continued for decades, giving names back to some of the men lost at Fox Hollow Farm.
Sources Full list on patreon
Jenny Labalme, "Suicide note mentions marriage, business but not bones," The Indianapolis Star, July 6, 1996 (pp. 1–2). — The three-page suicide note's contents. (Anchor contemporary source for the death.)
The New York Times, July 1996 — Quoting Hamilton County Sheriff's Sgt. Kenneth C. Whisman that the note "did not mention the deaths or remains." (Exact headline/date/URL not independently verified — fetch blocked; attribution confirmed second-hand.)
Associated Press wire, early July 1996 — Breaking discovery / body-count coverage ("bodies found on Westfield estate").
People, "While Julie Was Away," Dec. 23, 1996 (Richard Jerome & Fannie Weinstein)
Indianapolis Monthly, Dec. 1996 — Julie Baumeister's own first-person essay.
Reuters / Indianapolis Star-News wire (c. 1996–1999) — Dr. Stephen Nawrocki, "Our minimum number at the site is 11. There could be more."; Det. Bill Clifford on the DNA signatures.
Detective Mary Wilson's 12-page handwritten memo, dated June 27, 1996 — Obtained via public records and published by WRTV (Vic Ryckaert), "Forgotten at Fox Hollow," 2023.
WRTV / WCPO, "Forgotten at Fox Hollow" (Vic Ryckaert), 2023 — the memo and case documents from the Hamilton County Sheriff
Fannie Weinstein & Melinda Wilson, Where the Bodies Are Buried (St. Martin's, 1998) 
Rob Graves & Richard Estep, The Horrors of Fox Hollow Farm (2019) 
Stephen Nawrocki et al., "A Taphonomic Analysis of Human Cremains from the Fox Hollow Farm Serial Homicide Site" 
University of Indianapolis Human Identification Center (Dr. Krista Latham) — remains curation/analysis; Latham's "marginalized in life… in death" quotes.
Encyclopedia of Indianapolis, "Herbert R. Baumeister" (indyencyclopedia.org) — timeline, the Sept. 12, 1996 first-four IDs, "concluded he was responsible."
Indianapolis Monthly, "Unburying the Truth," Eve Batey (Dec. 2024; updated Nov. 4, 2025) — Jellison's "eight gay men from Indianapolis, what do we care?" and "blonde-haired, blue-eyed girls from Carmel or Fishers" quotes; the Livingston landline detail.

Today a little palette cleanser!
After some heavy true crime and hauntings we wanted to do an episode sharing claimed in person paranormal encounters. If you'd like to submit a story- submit to info@montemader.com

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This episode closes the two-part countdown of the most haunted places on earth, covering the top five. We open in Edinburgh, Scotland — a city that sealed off its medieval streets and built a new city on top of them, leaving the original closes and vaults intact beneath the surface. The South Bridge Vaults, rediscovered in 1985, have been the subject of one of the most rigorous paranormal studies ever conducted.
From Scotland we go to Bohemia, Czech Republic, and Houska Castle — a 13th-century structure with no water source, no town to protect, and no trade route to control, built in the middle of dense forest with outer walls that face inward. It was built over a hole in the ground that medieval sources describe as a gateway to the underworld. The chapel sits directly above the sealed pit and contains a fresco of St. Michael painted deliberately left-handed — in medieval Catholic iconography, the hand of the Devil.
In County Offaly, Ireland, Leap Castle earns the third spot. It is the site of a massacre carried out in the castle's own chapel during a feast, and the murder of a Catholic priest at the altar by his own brother during Mass. In 1900, renovation workers discovered a concealed oubliette off the Bloody Chapel — a spiked pit containing the remains of an estimated 150 people. An elemental is also present: a creature the size of a sheep, moving on all fours in a human manner, with a human face, black empty eye sockets, and a smell of sulfur and decay that arrives before it appears and lingers after it's gone.
Number two, Gettysburg Battlefield in Pennsylvania — 51,000 casualties in 72 hours across six square miles of farmland in July 1863. The most paranormally documented site in the United States. At dusk in the Wheatfield, where 6,000 men fell in a single afternoon, figures in period clothing have been reported walking in opposite directions.
We close at number one: Poveglia Island where plague victims were quarantined and burned across three centuries of epidemic — 1348, 1630, and the waves between. The soil is documented at approximately fifty percent human ash and bone fragments. An estimated 160,000 people died there. The bell that was removed from the hospital tower, still rings
SOURCES
Wiseman, Richard. "Hauntings and Psychology." University of Hertfordshire study, Paranormality: Why We See What Isn't There. Macmillan, 2011.
Historic Environment Scotland. Edinburgh Castle site documentation and architectural history. Edinburgh: HES
Burke and Hare: Bailey, Brian. Burke and Hare: The Year of the Ghouls. Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing, 2002.
Ottokar II of Bohemia and Houska Castle construction: Žemlička, Josef. Království v pohybu (The Kingdom in Motion). Prague: NLN, 2014.
SS Ahnenerbe occult research division: Pringle, Heather. The Master Plan: Himmler's Scholars and the Holocaust. New York: Hyperion, 2006.
O'Carroll clan history and Leap Castle: Simms, Katharine. From Kings to Warlords: The Changing Political Structure of Gaelic Ireland in the Later Middle Ages. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1987.
The oubliette at Leap Castle: Ryan, Sean. Personal accounts and estate documentation. See also: Costello, Con. A Most Delightful Station: The British Army on the Curragh of Kildare, Ireland. Collins Press, 1996.
Chamberlain and Little Round Top: Trulock, Alice Rains. In the Hands of Providence: Joshua L. Chamberlain and the American Civil War. University of North Carolina Press, 1992.
Venice plague epidemics and the lazaretto system: Cohn, Samuel K. Cultures of Plague: Medical Thinking at the End of the Renaissance. Oxford University Press, 2010.
Poveglia Island quarantine history: Norwich, John Julius. A History of Venice. New York: Knopf, 1982.
Psychiatric care in early 20th-century Italy: Foot, John. The Man Who Closed the Asylums: Franco Basaglia and the Revolution in Mental Health Care. Verso, 2015.