Behind the Scenes Minis: Ghosts and Their Towns

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Behind the Scenes Minis: Ghosts and Their Towns"
Stuff You Missed in History Class (iHeartPodcasts) – October 24, 2025
Hosts: Holly Frey and Tracy V. Wilson

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Episode Overview

In this behind-the-scenes "minis" episode, Holly and Tracy reflect on two thematically eerie main episodes: one on the ghosts of Drury Lane, a famously haunted London theater, and another on various American ghost towns. Interwoven are personal stories about spooky experiences, ruminations on theatrical superstitions, listener suggestions, and musings on why people remain in places that become abandoned or unsafe. The tone is lighthearted, candid, and laced with humor and self-deprecation, matching the playful skepticism both hosts bring to the topic of ghosts and the supernatural.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Ghosts of Drury Lane & Theater Superstitions

(2:35–6:56)

• Drury Lane Ghosts:
  Tracy expresses her affection for the Drury Lane ghost stories, particularly appreciating the quote about theaters lending themselves to ghost sightings due to their nature. An actor once described how the spooky “old foundation” areas of the theater create a naturally eerie vibe, explaining why haunted tales persist.

  • "Theater is kind of inherently given to ghost sighting because of its nature." – Tracy [02:43]

• The Man in Gray Incident:
  Tracy recounts a 1939 story where an entire cast reportedly saw the “man in gray” ghost, but she notes this was likely a publicity stunt by the theater manager. Holly and Tracy talk about the lack of direct cast testimony supporting this.

• Patrick Stewart's Ghost Stories:
  Tracy humorously notes finding “article after article of Patrick Stewart talking about the many ghosts he has seen in his life” when researching stories.

• Superstition About "The Scottish Play":
  The hosts discuss the famous theater superstition of never uttering the name of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” outside of a performance.

  • "We don't ever. No, thank you. It's very silly. I know that's silly. And yet there's a part of my brain that just refuses." – Tracy [05:19]
  • "I had always understood it as a superstition about things that should not be said in a theater. And it had never occurred to me that it could be extended beyond to the theater of life." – Holly [06:01]

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2. Personal Ghost Encounters

(6:56–18:20)

• Tracy's Haunted Cabin Experience:
  Tracy shares her creepiest unexplained experience from massage school, when a family lent her a mountain cabin. The old part felt “malevolent,” prompting her to avoid it after dark.

  • "Immediately was like, something malevolent is in this place. And I left and shut the door behind me and never went back into there after dark ever again." – Tracy [07:38]

• Spooky Theaters:
  Tracy notes most theaters she’s performed in always felt creepy due to their design—big, empty, cavernous, shadow-filled spaces.

• Grove Park Inn Ghosts & The Flying Spoon:
  Tracy describes a moment at her old job when a spoon inexplicably launched itself off a counter, startling the staff but not scaring her as much as the old cabin.

  • "No one was near it. No one was nearby. Like, it wasn't like, it was precariously on the edge of the counter. I don't know what caused that." – Tracy [09:38]

• Ghost Cat Episode:
  Holly tells of feeling a phantom cat leap onto her bed before she owned pets in the house, and Tracy shares seeing a ghost cat in an old apartment—later coinciding with mysteriously adopting real stray cats.

• Holly’s College Library and Haunted Hotel Anecdotes:
  Holly mentions the unnerving atmosphere of an old college library late at night, and a hotel encounter in San Francisco where she distinctly felt phantom fingers scratch her back:

  • "I felt clear as any actual physical thing I have ever felt. The feeling of, like, fingers scratching lightly on my back. And I just said, no, thank you. And that was the end of it." – Holly [17:13]
  • Both hosts acknowledge being “women of science at heart,” but admit some experiences simply defy tidy explanation.

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3. Reflections on Ghost Towns & Listener Suggestions

(23:21–30:29)

• Six Ghost Towns Mini-Episode:
  Tracy compiled the ghost town episode from 100% listener suggestions, appreciating the diversity in the reasons these towns became abandoned—each with their own unique tale.

  • "I liked that these were six towns that were all, with the exception of Jerome, abandoned. But it wasn't the same story all six times." – Tracy [23:35]

• Centralia & the Challenge of Leaving Home:
  Holly revises her initial skepticism over residents staying in the dangerous, smoldering town of Centralia, empathizing with attachment to home and economic limitations.

  • "How much do you love your house and how unwilling would you be to leave it? And the answer is quite a lot, actually." – Holly [24:46]
  • Tracy echoes this with the perennial question: “Why don’t people just move?” noting that most can’t afford it or have deep personal ties.

• Eerie Cemetery Remains & the Allure of Jerome:
  Discussion about how the remaining ruins, empty cemeteries, and deserted main streets create their own unique eeriness.

  • Jerome, Arizona is highlighted as a thriving, artist-filled tourist town despite its “ghost town” label. Tracy shares her love for art-o-mats (art vending machines), referencing her history with one at a beloved coffee shop.

• Personal Quirks & Lightheartedness:
  The episode closes with playful banter about spookiness levels (“I feel like this year I haven't been as spooky ooky ooky as I usually am.” – Holly [30:42]) and well-wishes for listeners to experience surprise and delight, whether in art or everyday life.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Theater Spookiness:
  "There was one article I read by an actor... he was like, I see where this could be spooky and make people think they saw things. Cause it's just an inherently, you know, scary, dark place where there's lots of... everything's blacked out." – Tracy [02:55]

• On Unexplained Feelings:
  "All the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I would say all of the theaters that I was in… they were all creepy." – Tracy [08:44]

• On Being Practical but Open-Minded:
  "Listen, we are both women of science in our hearts, but sometimes weird stuff happens." – Holly [17:17]

• On Ghost Town Variety:
  "I thought they were fun together as a whole collection of ghost towns. Something I cannot take any kind of credit for, but that I really liked because this was 100% listener suggestions." – Tracy [23:29]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Theater ghost stories and superstitions: 02:35–06:56
• Personal ghost experiences (cabins, cat, spoon): 06:56–15:04
• College library and hotel ghost tales: 15:04–18:20
• Ghost towns, listener suggestions, and automats: 23:21–30:29

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Overall Tone & Takeaways

Playful, honest, and gently skeptical, Holly and Tracy strike a balance between sharing playful ghost stories and analyzing the psychological and societal roots of hauntings and abandonment. Their warmth and willingness to laugh at themselves—even while acknowledging genuine moments of unease—makes this episode a relatable, comforting listen for anyone drawn to the overlap of history, mystery, and human behavior.

Transcript

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[A]

And I'm Tracy V. Wilson and we.

[D]

Talked about Ghosts of Drury Lane, which I love very much because they're just super fun. I really, really liked the quote that we included at the end about how theater is kind of inherently given to ghost sighting because of its nature. There was one article I read by an actor, it was from some time back, who was in the middle of a play run there, and he took the ghost tour on one of his days off, and he was talking about how, you know, he had never seen a ghost, and some of the stories are very like, meh, whatever. And he was like, uh. But then when I got down lower, where apparently some of the old foundation can be seen of the third theater or second theater, one of the two, he was like, I see where this could be spooky and make people think they saw things. Cause it's just an inherently, you know, scary, dark place where there's lots of. Everything's blacked out. Because most theaters are painted black in the back end.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

You could see some of the old beams from previous versions of the theater. There was apparently, I wanna say it was in 1939, and I did not include it because of this. A story that an entire cast saw the man in Gray at the same time.

[A]

Wow.

[D]

And that, like, clearly this was evidence that he was real. But that's been chalked up by a lot of people to a publicity stunt on the part of the theater manager to kind of, you know, bolster ticket sales. And that really, there aren't a lot of actual accounts from that cast saying, yes, we all saw the same thing. The other thing that I loved that I kept turning up, no matter what I was looking for, even if I was trying to look at very old things, was article after article of Patrick Stewart talking about the many ghosts he has seen in his life. Yeah. And I just loved it. He was doing, you know, famously a while back, he and Ian McKellen did Waiting for Godot together at Theater Royal Haymarket. But, like, one of the big stories that came out during that was that he kept saying that he was seeing a ghost in the theater, and I just sort of loved it. There were also many discussions of articles that I would not include because they mentioned the play whose name I am still too superstitious to say aloud. Yeah, the Scottish.

[A]

I wrote it into a podcast one time, not knowing that your superstition about it extended beyond the walls of a theater. Oh, yeah.

[D]

No, we don't ever.

[A]

Mm.

[D]

Mm.

[A]

No, thank you. It's very silly.

[D]

I know that's silly. And yet there's a part of my brain that just refuses it will shut down unless you are in situ in the middle of that play having to say the name. You don't say that name.

[A]

Can you say the name historically about people with a name?

[D]

I guess, but it would be. I wouldn't. I wouldn't look for that.

[A]

Okay.

[D]

I'll tell you that. Like, if it were on my list of topics to cover, I would scratch it out and move on. Yeah, yeah. Which I know. Again, I know this is silly. No one needs to tell me.

[A]

Right.

[D]

You're being a ding dong. That is not having a rational reaction.

[A]

Yeah, I know.

[D]

It's one of my things I'm superstitious about.

[A]

I had always understood it as a superstition about things that should not be said in a theater. And it had never occurred to me that it could be extended beyond to the theater of life.

[D]

I don't know. Maybe it's one of those things.

[A]

Right.

[D]

Like my degree is in theater and film study.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

And so I feel like maybe it's just so ingrained. I will never ever say it anywhere, ever.

[A]

In case you don't know, maybe where.

[D]

You'Re standing used to be a theater at one time. We don't know all the stuff that's been there. You got to be safe. The theater of life says no.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

I've had many friends who just to taunt me, would just like, say it over and over and I'd be like, get out. Get out of my house. Get out of my party. Whatever you do. We're not not having it. Nope. Not for me. I will say also, I wanna do an episode, and there probably will be one in the not too distant future on Dan Leno because I loved reading about his life.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

Particularly, I mean, as tragic as it becomes in the end just how much work he did to take care of other people with his fame. Like, he's one of those people who found himself with an extraordinary amount of privilege financially and a platform that he could use to help other people. And he did it. And I want to talk about those kind of people all day, every day, especially lately. This seems like a good time to ask you. I know we've done this at live shows before. Have you ever seen a ghost?

[A]

So I've had a couple of unexplained experiences. The creepiest one, when I was in massage school, some family friends generously allowed me to rent a small cabin that had been passed down in their family that was up in the mountains. And the first night that I was there, I went into it, had an old Part that was well over, like, over a century old, like, made of logs, no original plumbing or electricity. That had all been added much later. And then it had this, like, mother in law addition that had been built out of a kit. And I was staying in the kit part. And I walked into the old part after dark the first night that I was there, and immediately was like, something malevolent is in this place. And I left and shut the door behind me and never went back into there after dark ever again. And I also, like, I didn't want to look at it after dark because I was afraid something was gonna look back at me out the window. And then what would I do? Like, I was in the woods with no one around to help.

[D]

I would not be in this position to begin with.

[A]

Yeah. So one night I heard something very strange outside that frightened me. And I couldn't figure out what it was. And I realized the next day it was apples falling out of the tree. And I was like, okay, well, that explains that one part. But not how when I walked in there, all the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I would say all of the theaters that I was in as, like, a participant in the play or the musical, they were all creepy. Like, all of them. I mean, they're big, open, cavernous spaces that, until you actually do the performance, is empty, aside from the people participating in the play and the crew and the director and all of that. Like, right. You're just in this big, echoey, dark space with a lot of shadows and a lot of corners, and they were all creepy. When I was a massage therapist at the Grove Park Inn, there are lots of stories about the ghosts at the Grove Park Inn. And the most direct experience I ever had there was. We were in the spa, and I was talking to a couple of the staff that, like, arranged appointments and stuff. And a spoon from the counter where we made drinks for people just launched itself onto the ground, and we were all like, what did that qua. No one was near, but no one was near it. No one was nearby. Like, it wasn't like, it was precariously on the edge of the counter. I don't know what caused that. It did not scare me nearly as much as the old cabin that I stayed in in massage school.

[D]

Yeah. I wouldn't have been in an old cabin in the woods to begin with. No, no.

[A]

There was also the very first day that Patrick and I spent in this house. We did not have any cats at this time, but we had had the, you know, the long grueling day of moving our stuff from the one place to and we had put sheets on the bed and we got into bed and I think Patrick was like in the bathroom. Patrick hadn't come to bed yet and I had the distinct sensation of a cat jumping onto the bed and we had no cats at that time and I was not frightened by this. I was just like there's a ghost cat in the house and the ghost cat has not made any other visit.

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[D]

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[D]

We had a ghost cat. Yeah, I know I've told this one during a live show, but I don't remember if I've ever said it on the recorded podcast before. There was time. We were in our old apartment where I had been seeing out of the corner of my eye, a cat that wasn't there. And then I discovered, when I finally mentioned it one day that Brian had also been seeing a cat out of the corner of his eye that was not there. And we had cats at the time, but it was not one of our cats. Like, we would think, oh, that's Gigi. Or whatever. And we'd look over and there was no cat there.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

And then there was a night where we were sitting in the living room of our dinky little apartment watching tv, and we both, clear as a bell, heard my dead mother's voice.

[A]

Oh, wow.

[D]

And it was weird. I don't know if there was just someone in an adjacent apartment that sounded just like her and the sound traveled exactly right? But we like looked at each other. Like, did you just hear that? It was weird. And then the next day, the cat was real, but he had a brother and we kept them both.

[A]

Aw.

[D]

So I've always joked. Cause my relationship with my mom was not amazing, right? But she is exactly the kind of person that would dump a stray cat on me, I'm sure. And she was like, that was probably her way to try to reach out if in fact there was a ghost involved. She was like, you like kitties. Here's kitties. I'll bring you great kitties that you wanted. And we had those cats for 20 years.

[A]

We loved them.

[D]

I used to work in a college library that was very old and castle like. And for a while, Brian was working for a Dutch weather company. So he worked Dutch hours and they let me work the same hours as him. So our lives matched up. Cause I was down in acquisitions. I was not like working the desk and stuff. And so I would get there sometimes that, like, I would be there in the middle of the night or get. Start my shift at 4 in the morning. Like it shifted. But I would be there alone in the dark. And similar to how you described that cabin, there were just parts of that building that felt weird.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

And I was like, not interested in going in them. So there was like, if I had to go to the bathroom, I had to walk through part of it. And it always scared the heck out of me, but I did it. And then the one real what just happened to me Moment that I have ever had was in San Francisco at a hotel that is reportedly haunted. And we had been joking, like, hey, I wonder if we'll hear ghosts. And at first we heard this weird ringing noise. And we finally realized that there was like, inside the wall, a loose ish plumbing washer that was jingling. And we were like, oh, fully explained. And then later in that same trip, Brian was taking a shower. And I was like, I'm gonna just lie down on the bed for a minute, take a nap. And I felt clear as any actual physical thing I have ever felt. The feeling of, like, fingers scratching lightly on my back. And I just said, no, thank you. And that was the end of it. I mean, I don't know, I may have just been having some weird. Listen, we are both women of science in our hearts, but sometimes weird stuff happens. I don't know what it was.

[A]

I love it. I honestly, I did not like the fact that when I walked into this old cabin that it made me feel like something malevolent was there. Because the people who loaned it to me were so nice. They were great people. It was like cabin that had been handed down through the family. And there was just stuff in it that was so interesting. And a lot of it was really beautiful. And I would have just explored all through it, happy as a clam. But even though it had, like the. The first day that I had gone up there and they had sort of shown me like here's how you have to turn the water off from the outside and like this kind of stuff. I was like, man, this is going to be so great. I'm going to be up here two or three nights a week. This is such a great space. I love it. And then after the first night I was like, no, there's nothing in that house that I need to see and I never need to lie in a hammock on the porch again because what I had been doing when I went in there after dark was to put the hammock away because it was a fabric hammock that they didn't want to be left out because it would get mildew, right? And I was like, well, nope, no more of that for me. Ever. Great.

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[B]

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[D]

Listen to your elders, honey. You might know them from their viral videos. But now the Old Gays pull back the curtain on their brand new podcast Silver Linings with the Old Gays. Brought to you in part partnership with iHeart's Ruby Studio and Veeve Healthcare, with over 300 years of experience between them, hosts Robert, Mick, Bill and Jesse serve four lifetimes of wisdom when it comes to love, sex, community, and whatever else they've got on the gay agenda. Listen in to these fabulous friends swap stories exploring how queer life has evolved over the decades and the silver linings they've collected along the way. Each episode dives into hot topics, from safe sex and online dating to untangling Gen Z lingo, as well as insights on how music, art, and fashion show up in queer culture. So check out Silver Linings, a show about how pride ages like fine wine. Available on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[A]

A new era of power has arrived with the Alienware Area 51 gaming laptops, intentionally engineered to push more power to the CPU and GPU for maximum performance. Combined With Intel Core Ultra 9 processors merging CPU, NPU and integrated GPU into one AI optimized chip, it delivers fast, smart and seamless performance across everything you do. And with the new cryo chamber design, Airflow is focused exactly where it's needed most. Fused with Alienware's enhanced thermal solutions, it creates a higher power output without raising noise levels, allowing you to play with confidence even during the most demanding marathon gaming sessions. So no matter what you're playing, Alienware ensures every game runs precisely as its developers intended. A new era of power is here. All you have to do is take it. Discover Area51 today at www.alienware.com area-51 laptops we talked about ghost towns this week.

[D]

Sure did.

[A]

I didn't put in my normal introduction about six impossible episodes and how it's when I round up six things that are related, usually somehow and for some reason or another can't really be a whole episode. And if we did a full on history of some of these, it would probably be possible to do a whole episode. But I thought they were fun together as a whole collection of ghost towns. Something I cannot take any kind of credit for, but that I really liked because this was 100% listener suggestions. So they were the topics that listeners asked for. I liked that these were six towns that were all, with the exception of Jerome, abandoned. But it wasn't the same story all six times. Yeah, like all of them I felt like had very different nuances and even the ones that were like this was a boom town and then it disappeared. Like those also were not identical in terms of of exactly what happened. Because when I kind of went through and wrote down all the ghost town suggestions, I was like, is this gonna be six of the same story? And it wasn't so thanks everyone who contributed one of these ideas.

[D]

I had a semimental retraction after something I said during recording. Okay. Because when we were talking about Centralia and I was like, this seems surprising to me that people would stay there for a decade while this burned out their town. And then I was like, holly, how much do you love your house and how unwilling would you be to leave it? And the answer is quite a lot, actually. Yeah.

[A]

I think I also framed it as like, people dealing with it for a decade. And it was like, when the fire first started and it was more contained, it wasn't that big of a deal. So this, like, people were just dealing with it for more than a decade. The fire had been burning for more than a decade, but it was like more than a decade of it really affecting life in the town on a day to day level.

[D]

Yeah. It's also like, most people can't just afford to pick up and leave.

[A]

Right.

[D]

And find a new place to live.

[A]

That is a refrain so many times in so many contexts, historically and today. There will be the, well, why don't people just move if it's so bad? And it's like, like a lot of people don't have the money to just move or they have family ties to a place, or like you just said, they love their house and that's their house and it's their home and they don't want to leave their home. I similarly have trouble imagining living in a place where there are toxic gases seeping out of the ground and possibly a sinkhole just opening up in your backyard one day or under your house or whatever. Sinkholes being one of my weird fears. Oh, really? My house? Yeah. I'm just like, what if one day my house suddenly falls into a sinkhole?

[D]

I had no idea.

[A]

Wouldn't that be terrible and terrifying?

[D]

It would.

[A]

But like, yeah. If that were actually my house that I had bought and that I had put love and work into and had raised a family in or whatever, like, I might not want to leave it either.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

So, yeah. Yeah. The Centralia story being associated with the Silent Hill franchise, I didn't realize until doing this that that really wasn't about the movie and not the original video game. Because I have not seen the movie or played the video game, but I knew that there was a connection.

[D]

Boy, it's been a million years since I played that video game. I don't think I could conjure many details from it.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. The photos of a lot of these places, regardless of whether they are rumored to have Some kind of ghost story attached. The photos of a lot of these places are really eerie. I mean, because Bodie looks like the. Like the prototypical ghost town that, you know, with buildings, they're kind of falling apart. And the remaining chimneys and smokestacks and old Cahaba that kind of come up out of the ground, out of nowhere, that's its own level of eeriness. Having a place where the one thing remaining is the cemetery, that's not that uncommon. But it's also so remote that it's sort of like here is a cemetery with really nothing around it now.

[D]

Right.

[A]

So, yeah, I feel like all of these are kind of eerie in their own way. And then, of course, Jerome, which is like, from my understanding, at least a cute little town where tourists can go and. And have ghost tours and look at a bunch of art and sound some wine.

[D]

Sounds amazing.

[A]

And I would do that. That would be a great, great little trip, in my opinion.

[D]

It sounds amazing. Although then when we had the statistic in there that like 450 people live there, I was like, no, that is very small. No, that's too many people knowing all my business. I don't. Nope.

[A]

I was scrolling through somebody's blog post of photos from their trip they took to Jerome, and one of the pictures was of an automat. And every time I see an automat, I get excited. And so I don't know if I've told the automat story on the podcast before, but I'm going to now. So, once upon a time, you could buy cigarettes from vending machines in the United States. You know this, of course, Holly, but our. Our younger audience members may not know this, that you could just put money into a vending machine and get a pack of cigarettes. And when those machines eventually were outlawed, a lot of them were still around. And so an artist converted one into an art vending machine with little works of art the size and shape of a pack of cigarettes. And the first one of these machines was at a coffee shop called Penny University, which is in Winston Salem, North Carolina, was one of the coffee shops that I spent some time at when I was freshly out of college. And so now anytime I am anywhere and I see an automat, I buy something out of it. Yeah, I love it. I think it's great. And I feel like there used to be one in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. But I may be misremembering that when I looked at the map of where they are located. Cause there's a big map showing where they are and they're all over the world at this point. There was not one at the mfa.

[D]

It's possible there was one there and it got shipped elsewhere because they do move sometimes.

[A]

Yeah. So yeah, I love the artomat and I love getting a little thing that pops out of it and being surprised by whatever little piece of art I have found.

[D]

It's the best.

[A]

So yeah, I think this was my final October contribution to this year's October episodes and it only kind of skirted the world of the eerie and ghostly, but it was fun.

[D]

I know. I feel like this year I haven't been as spooky ooky ooky as I usually am.

[A]

Sorry. Well, I had a werewolf episode.

[D]

I'm very in Skeptical Village anymore. I'm like, ah, it's not real. I don't know if this is my age speaking or yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

Well, whatever's happening on your weekends, if you want a chance to go out and look at some art, I hope you get to look at some art. If there is an automat and you get a little little cigarette package sized piece of art, I hope it is something that surprises and delights you. Whatever's happening in your world, boy do I hope it is going as smoothly as is absolutely possible. I know there's a lot going on and a lot of it's not going smoothly. So whatever's happening, I hope it is as easy as is possible. We will be back with a Saturday classic tomorrow. We will have something brand new on Monday. Stuff youf Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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[A]

This is an iHeart podcast.