Cousin Cecil the Blacksmith, Dr Mudd and the President Lincoln Assassination

Cousin Cappy and the bigfoot sighting

Well, hello, last week one of our cousins stopped by for dinner.  Our cousin Cappy, he’s a good ole boy that is always good for a fun night.  I’ll tell you what, it’s never boring with Cappy around.  Like my grandma used to say He’s more fun than a movie. Cappy started telling this story to me, well, more said he was confessing this story to me.  Because he hasn’t ever told anyone the whole story until now.  He said some things start out in good fun, but turn into a little more than you bargained for. Cousin Cappy owned a nice little landscape company. He was always known as a happy guy, playing pranks on people, always laughing and enjoying a good joke.  His company did pretty well, he liked working hard and being outdoors.  And his customers all enjoyed working with him.  The end of the summer and early fall his business slowed to a crawl.  So, a few years back someone had come up with this Halloween haunted trail idea. It was successful right away and, in the fall every year they made a haunted trail and haunted hayride to make some extra money in the downtime.  Cappy enjoyed planning his haunted trail, coming up with different themes and ideas every year.   Some years it was zombies and some years crazy killer clowns but everyone knew whatever Cappy had planned it would be a fun time. The story starts this one-night Cappy and a few friends stopped in at the local dinner to have a nice dinner.  Everyone was talking about the bigfoot hunting group that was going to film some kind of documentary in the area.  Bigfoot sightings were a common occurrence in the small town, there had been sightings for years and years.  Most people around those parts thought most the sightings were just people's wild imaginations or misidentified animals or even people just plain lying.  This bigfoot hunting group had spread the word they wanted to hear locals eye witness accounts.  For some reason there had been an increase in bigfoot sightings lately.  So, when this bigfoot research groups came to town.  They had a big townhall meeting to document some of the sightings and zero in on which area to do their study. This bigfoot hunting group was a funny bunch of characters, they would run around the woods trying to find any evidence of a bigfoot. But they would find things in the woods and say it was bigfoot when it was just a natural occurrence that any outdoors person would know was just natural. Things like a gouge in a large old tree that was an old lightning strike, the Bigfoot people would say it was bigfoot scratches on a tree. They would record howls and cries in the woods at night and even yell back saying it was bigfoot. But these noises were packs of coyotes or screeching of owls. They had made up all kinds of things like that.

Haunted Lemp Mansion St Louis Missouri

Please note that this episode contains content of death and suicide.  We advise listener discretion. Well Hello, I’ve had so much company lately I should turn this old place into a bed and breakfast and start charging.  My relatives have been stopping by because they heard I'm putting together all these stories.  And they want to make sure I get their stories right. Just a few days ago Burl stopped by, I think he’s a second cousin, but he might be a third cousin.  Someday I’ll get around to writing down my whole family tree so I can keep all the relation straight. Burl was telling me about the time he lived in a haunted house in St Louis, yep, a haunted house.  He went to Missouri for work in the early 60’s.  He moved there first and after a couple weeks sent for his wife and children.  He had twins, 2 daughters. He moved on down first because he didn’t know if he could find a place big enough, and cheap enough for all of them to live.  Burl thought he got lucky when he found a boarding house to stay at.  There was plenty of room for all of them and was well below their budget. They could live there awhile to see if they liked the area enough to know if they wanted to settle down there or not.  This was way before St Louis was the murder capital of the US. This is how Burl told the tale to me.

Alien Abduction of Barney and Betty Hill and our cousin Beverly the busy body

Great Aunt Beverly told me the craziest story, in fact it's so crazy most people who have heard about it still don’t believe it's true.  But since Aunt Beverly heard it first hand, straight from the horse's mouth you might say, I’m leaning toward the believing it side. Beverly worked at the local library, she seemed to know everybody and everything and everything that everybody was doing.  She was part of the reason this small town didn’t really need a newspaper, because they had Beverly and she could spread stories faster than any newspaper. Beverly was close friends with a local resident and avid reader, Mrs. Betty Hill.  Betty and her husband Barney were a well-respected couple in the area.  Betty was a social worker and Barney was a postal worker.  They both were involved with the equal rights movement. Beverly said this is how the UFO experience started. Barney and Betty were coming home from a nice little vacation, a belated honeymoon.  They had spent 3 romantic days in Niagra Falls and stopped in Montreal before heading home. The night was September 19, 1961, the couple had decided instead of staying another night in a hotel they would make the drive home.  Barney estimated they should get home about 3 am.

Bud and Lucy and the Dogman Experience

Have you ever heard of the Dogman, he’s pretty famous, mostly around Michigan.  The sightings of this monster have been told for over a hundred years.  It was legends from the odawa indians about the creature stalking areas around the Manistee River.  Two lumberjacks reported a scary encounter they had with the Dogman in 1887. The way Bud and Lucy told me the story.  They were all out together at the local bar, it might have been the local VFW Hall, but I don’t really remember and it's not all that important anyway.  They were all having some fun, a little bit of drinking, some dancing and playing pool, Ok, there may have been more than a little bit of drinking. This one particular Saturday night everybody at the bar was telling their stories about who they knew who had seen the dogman.

Cousin Cecil the Blacksmith, Dr Mudd and the President Lincoln Assassination

Dr Mudd and his involment with the assassination of President Lincoln.  Dr Mudds time in jail and the Yellow Fever outbreak. The night that changed the life of Dr Mudd and the whole country was April 14, 1865, the night John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Lincoln at the Ford Theater in Washington DC.  Everybody knows about President Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth, but not too many know about Dr. Mudd and his part. It didn’t take long for the authorities to show up at the Dr’s house to investigate. There are a few different descriptions of what was said at the interview. Some said Dr. Mudd cooperated others said he first denied he knew Booth, then he admitted he had been there.  He didn’t offer up very much unless he was directly asked.  During the questioning the Dr’s wife even produced the boot he had cut off Booths leg.  His name was even written on the inside of the boot, no mistaking who that came from.  They arrested Dr Mudd right there believing he was in cahoots with Booth.