Outdoor Cats Podcast

We catch up on some news before getting into the main event: the 2007 Wings Over Worcester commercial that proves we used to be a god damn proper city, man.

St. V already looking for a new new CEO again.

Ray Mariano’s dumb school safety column

Dianna Biancheria’s “vision for the future”

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, Cliff vs. the Manson clan

“Train Dreams” trailer

WINGS OVER WORCESTER Commercial

Does someone have the Frankenstein’s commercial recorded? Also this is why we need an ephemera archive.

Thanks for supporting us! We’re thankful for everyone who listens. Those who listen and have a paid sub—double thankful!

Subscription page — Tip Jar — Merch Store (there’s a new shirt on there!)

Also: join us at the punk rock flea market this weekend! We’ll be there the whole time Sunday, part of the time Saturday.

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∿Outro: “Black Ice/Sky High”

∿Intro by Bill Shaner 12.8.25

A weird and decidedly non-newsy one this week, recorded in the throes of post-Thanksgiving fogginess on Friday night. Using a piece by Karl Ove Knausgård in Harpers on technology and the suffocating and/or liberating effects of such, we talk about local journalism and The Platforms mostly.

“The Reenchanted World”

Here’s that synth I built. The one I was talking about. Also featured in the outro! It’s the lead tone.

Thanks for supporting us! We’re thankful for everyone who listens. Those who listen and have a paid sub—double thankful!

Subscription page — Tip Jar — Merch Store

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∿Intro & outro music by Bill Shaner original composition 11.30.25

Hey! Chris here with my own solo episode. Look, we’ve all been through a lot in the past few weeks, and this podcast has been accordingly a bit intense. Not today! This one is about beans.I sat down with my old friend Jen Burt, who some of you may know as the person behind the Worcester Mammoth Horticultural Bean Fair. The Worcester Mammoth is a bean that was sold and grown widely throughout the area from roughly the late 1890s until the 1950s, when it largely seems to have disappeared. Fast-forward to COVID times, when Jen rediscovered the bean in an old seed catalog and decided to hunt it down and bring it back.

We talk about that process, the cultural importance of local heirloom foods and the cultural responsibility of reviving them appropriately, being “pro or anti-GMO” as a sort of reductive concept, other favorite beans, agricultural fairs and how cool they are, and a few other things, but really…it’s just about beans at the end of the day. Don’t overthink it. We didn’t.

THE BEAN HAS AN EMAIL: If you would like to get the bean and/or to know more about the bean, hit up [email protected]

Quick pause from the money man to ask you humbly that you help this little outlet grow into a mammoth outlet! Paid subscriptions are best, but dropping a few bucks in the tip jar or ordering something from the merch store is also great. Thank you! —Bill

We also talked about some historical events that happened at the Worcester Agricultural Fairgrounds, but we didn’t talk about the time Worcester people chased a massive Klan rally out of the city by…uh…any means necessary? No idea why things like this are kicking around in my head. Roll that beautiful bean coverage!

Some relevant links: Seed Savers ExchangeHappiness Pony

Jacob’s Cattle BeanThe Worcester Agricultural Fairground

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∿Outro music: “Celebrate” by Anderson .Paak

∿Intro music by Bill Shaner

After a surprise loss in the District 5 race, Etel Haxhiaj and I sat down for a candid chat. It was late in the afternoon Friday. Both of us were exhausted and the conversation is a winding one. But we hit on several of the nastier elements of local politics in this city—the nativism, the sexism, the routine harassment… not to mention the stranglehold of the police unions and chamber of commerce on the supposedly democratic processes of city government. We discuss “civility” and the other buzzwords used as a cudgel against the progressive movement.

We do some light analysis of the results, thinking about where Rivera’s 900 new votes came from. But more so, the interview was a public airing of observations about the sort of pervasive cultural problems that, over the past several years, Etel and I would often talk about privately. Ahead of recording, Etel told me she felt strongly that there wasn’t any use in keeping a lid on the stuff any longer. People should know what it’s like. Early in the conversation she said:

One of the hopes that I have for this conversation is to shed some light on how I’m experiencing it. And maybe that gives some language to, and some perspective to people who, you know, have been reaching out and saying, ‘we don’t understand what happened on Tuesday.’ And again, not just looking at me as a person, but mostly sort of the, what does this mean for Worcester and where do we go from here?

For what it’s worth there hasn’t been nor will there likely be another interview with Haxhiaj of this length and depth on the results of this election. One of many reasons I think it’s worth it to keep this little outfit in business. Subscribe here or drop a few bucks in the tip jar or even visit the merch store!

Did this one solo (Chris had work) but if all goes according to plan Chris will be coming in with his own solo episode for the next one!

Help us spread the word!

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∿Outro music: “Backlash Blues,” Nina Simone, live version 1970

∿Intro music by me

Continuing on the ‘welp’ theme we get through the election results as quickly as we can, here’s a quick summary if you haven’t caught up on Tuesday’s results yet, then we discuss at length what the story of Heather Prunier exposes about the political culture and attendant media of this city. Taking a breather, Chris lets on the depths of his sandwich-based worldview. Then, finally, the story behind the gong sound in the last episode. Speaking of, we highly suggest you listen to that one before this one: Episode 43: That Is My File (ft. Heather Prunier, Tom Marino)

Thank you for all of the support the past week. Subscriptions are up (subscribe here just $5! One Dunkies), people are making great use of the tip jar, the Instagram is going freakin loco (shouts out Kelly Cashman, IG Editor extraordinaire).

As we talk about in the episode, we believe in what we’re doing here and we believe in the impact it’s already making but more than that we believe in its ability to grow into a real institution. That takes time and time is mostly a slog but if you’re with us, we’re in it for the long haul.

One last thing: I (Bill) will be at the Sinclair from 4-6 p.m. on Saturday, reading some of my work, sharing a stage with some of the most talented writers I know. It’s the book launch party for Luke O’Neil’s new one, “We Had It Coming,” a book that is devastatingly good for anyone but especially for someone who grew up in Massachusetts amid the townies and the decay and the ‘do your job’ fascism.

I have never done a reading such as this before and I’m not entirely sure what I’ll be reading. If there is a piece of mine or a passage or even a riff from this podcast you think would make for a good live reading, chuck it in the chat please!

Or the comments or billshaner [at] substack.com

∿This podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Overcast, Pocket Casts others via this RSS link.

∿Intro by me (Bill Shaner), written and recorded special for the episode. “Make It Look So Nice In Here,” 11.5.25.

∿Outro: “We Have Survived” by No Fixed Address

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Hey all, really special episode here. The other day, I had Heather Prunier, Tom Marino and Lynn Kee over my apartment for a catch-up conversation on a major breakthrough in Heather’s fight for accountability. She finally received some of the records in the investigatory file.

Yesterday, over on This Week In Worcester, Tom Marino published a substantive, detailed report on the contents of this cache of never-before-seen records. Would highly suggest reading that before listening, as we spend most of the time discussing the 23-page packet—what’s in it and perhaps more importantly, what isn’t.

We talk about Heather’s fight for these records, what’s at stake, what gets to be “political” and what doesn’t. (Unfortunately Chris had work, but next episode will surely be almost entirely he and I reacting to this one).

Please share this episode far and wide and consider a paid subscription, it’s our only source of revenue here at Worcester Sucks and for a number of reasons, our subscribers are the only reason we can take on stories like this: Subscribe / Tip Jar.

A few weeks ago, Heather posted a video reminding people that the political class of this city continues to protect John Monfredo, the politically-connected school administrator who serially raped her when she was a child. Monfredo engaged in an escalating pattern of grooming and abuse over a three-year period. It started in 1991, when Heather was just nine years old, an elementary school student. In 2023, Heather and I collaborated to publish a full, detailed account of her experience with Monfredo, her unsuccessful attempts to appeal to authorities and the long campaign of character assassination carried out by the local power elite: “John Monfredo’s “teen-age accuser” takes her power back.”

After Heather released the video, Tom Marino at This Week In Worcester released an article that provides several of the most key advances in the story since Heather and I first released it back in 2023: “Worcester Woman to Voters: Reject Candidates that Protected Alleged Child Rapist”

Among several interesting threads is the establishment of a direct social relationship between Monfredo, then-Mayor Ray Mariano and then-District Attorney John Conte. Marino writes:

Conte, Mariano, and Monfredo not only share the same faith, but were also all active within the local Catholic community in Worcester. The three also shared long-time friendships.

When Mariano won election as mayor for the first time in 1993, Monfredo actively supported the campaign.

In January 1997, the Worcester Public Schools placed Monfredo on leave pending the criminal investigation and the school district’s own investigation in response to Prunier’s claims of abuse. Soon after the investigation began, the Telegram and Gazette reported on Monfredo’s suspension.

With the investigation ongoing, then-Mayor Ray Mariano provided comments to the Telegram supportive of Monfredo, including expressing a high level of trust in him, including with his own daughter.

The same article quotes Monfredo saying he was never alone with the girl who filed the complaint. He maintains the same position today, which Maureen Binienda has repeated many times to several people.

During Mariano’s tenure as mayor, his two-person support staff consisted of Rob Pezzella, a current candidate for city council, and Diana Biancheria, a current school committee member aligned with Binienda on most issues.

Then, on Oct. 24, the police department finally released a cache of investigatory records from Heather’s file. The release includes 10 investigative reports from 1996-1998, all summary documents of interviews WPD detectives conducted with Heather, her parents, multiple administrators, and a janitor at the Belmont Street School.

It took 18 months and the help of lawyers from the Harvard Cyber Law Clinic for Heather to receive these documents—to which she’s legally entitled. But the release is still partial. The extent of the records missing from the initial release remains unknown, but Heather said she’s committed to getting the rest. She says in our interview (about 46 minutes in):

... the fact that I have to do this is traumatizing. But also, they are my records. And I am entitled to them. And I get to have them. So don’t tell me I don’t. And what about the decades and decades of survivors who have been just dismissed? It is unacceptable that our public officials are not being held to task. These are our records.

We spend significant time going over the ins and outs of what continues to be a frustrating bureaucratic quagmire.

Though incomplete, the content of the documents provided offer an interesting glimpse into the time between Heather first coming forward to authorities, detectives mounting a case ,and then, the case against Monfredo somehow disappearing as the superintendent allowed him back at work, which in turn allowed Monfredo to claim exoneration despite never having been legally exonerated.

Of note: at least one investigative report in this cache was filed after his return. A document from 1998 is included. Monfredo returned to work in April of 1997. This means police were still investigating Monfredo after the superintendent allowed him to return to work.

One of the records provided seems to imply the WPD were preparing to press charges. An incident report from January 29, 1997 lists Monfredo as the suspect and includes formal language around a charge listed as “Ind A+B > 14.” The report reads that it was both “reported as” indecent assault and battery and, next to it, “found as..”

The “found as,” according to multiple people with knowledge of the lexicon of these reports, indicates detectives believed they had evidence enough to build a case. The process from there would have been to submit the findings to the DA’s office, who make the final say on whether to charge or not charge. It’s a new development, this “found as” language: detectives were preparing a case, got far enough that they interviewed at least half a dozen people, then something happened and the case went away.

The same document recounts, in detail, a conversation with the lead janitor at the Belmont Street school where Monfredo raped Heather several times. In the interview, the janitor confirms key details from earlier testimony provided by Heather and her parents. And the janitor explicitly says that Monfredo was known to be there “at any time,” had keys to the entire gym area, and that there were days when the school was completely empty save for Monfredo and his softball team. All of it, down to small details such as the rain buckets from a leaking roof, confirms the account Heather shared with me over a series of interviews in the lead up to the publication of the 2023 story.

There are a few lines about Monfredo having keys that are worth including here in full.

Mr. Caffone said he usually saw ten to fifteen girls and a couple of parents in the gym. Mr. Caffone said that the girls used the bathroom facilities on the same floor as the gym. There were lavatories in the locker area and also just outside the gym area. All bathrooms and rooms in the school were locked and Mr. Monfredo had the keys. These rooms were locked up when Mr. Caffone returned for check on Sundays.

At the time, the janitor’s testimony—which, remember, has never before been made public—was a key component in Monfredo’s public exoneration, used as the basis for his claim that he was never alone with Heather.

About 29 minutes into the interview, Heather says...

I was told at the time that the custodian, when they interviewed him, contradicted what I said. And that that there was no opportunity for him to be alone with me, is what I was told.

Several of the documents challenge the line from a different angle. Three reports—one from Heather, one from her mother and one from her father—reference several occasions Monfredo drove Heather to her house. Two reports referenced instances in which Monfredo invited Heather to his house to go swimming. These are …

We catch up on various pre-election tomfooleries and talk about likely outcomes next Tuesday. We psycho-analyze the cranks. Then we talk about how the Worcester Common is littered with human remains. Hundreds of skeletons just under the surface. Talk about spooky-wooky.

Anyway… Please vote!! Our election guide went up last night. It starts with the very basics and walks you through it. You don’t need to know anything at all about city hall to follow the guide. It takes five minutes to vote. Low turnout in municipal elections is what keeps us… like this. As the federal government falls apart the city government desperately needs to get its act together. We are all we have, after all. And right now it’s just not good enough. Early voting today, tomorrow and Friday at the library if you can’t make it to the polls Tuesday. Anyway, some links from the episode...

That Joy Williams piece in Harpers on Gene Hackman

Petty’s interview with Manny Jae

Tim Murray resigns from WRRB

“Throughout my time in public-facing roles, the Worcester Regional Research Bureau, under the leadership of Roberta Schaefer, Tim McGourthy, and Paul Matthews, has produced high-quality research and reports that have benefited both the public and policymakers when deliberating important issues. The request by City Manager Batista and the City Council for a report on police oversight protocols, including civilian review boards, is an important public policy matter that merits thoughtful deliberation and debate. To issue a report and recommendation three weeks before a competitive municipal election was, in my judgment, a mistake that does a disservice to the important discussion and debate this issue warrants.

Additionally, the Board of Directors of the Worcester Regional Research Bureau does not receive notice about when reports are being issued, nor are we solicited for input on potential research topics. Accordingly, I have suggested to Worcester Regional Research Bureau Executive Board members, both prior to and after my resignation, that a better description for the Worcester Regional Research Bureau Board of Directors in its current form would be ‘corporators’ or ‘supporters’ of the Research Bureau, as the Executive Board and officers are the primary decision-makers on Research Bureau policy and personnel matters”

The Common is still very much a graveyard

“At one time more than 400 people were buried there prior to 1824. Nearly three decades later, Worcester made the decision to lay the gravestones flat, bury the cemetery in several feet of dirt and ultimately built the ever-expanding railroad over the landIt wasn’t until the 1960s that the old gravestones were rediscovered, when the city attempted to build a reflecting pool. More than 100 graves were revealed and reburied at Hope Cemetery. It is believed another 300 remain untouched, undisturbed and unidentified”

WPL’s Library of ThingsEpitaphs from Worcester Common’s Cemetery

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And help us spread the word! Use this to convince someone in your life to vote.

∿This podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Overcast, Pocket Casts others via this RSS link.

∿Intro music: original composition “????” by Bill Shaner 10.29.25

∿Outro music: “Great Worcester Song Ever” by Guy by The Guy Who Sings Songs About Cities & Towns

In which we go into recording without a plan and come out having woven together the Fresolo vs Pezzella meltdown, the split tax rate fallacy, local journalism’s failings on school issues, the Roosevelt School debacle finally discussed in the context of walkability and sidewalk coverage, Dianna Biancheria’s secret stash of menthols, a pool of untouched CSX money in Candy Mero-Carlson’s district, the rotten no good LVT security trailer, the DOJ report, birding and, lastly, Kneecap. Oh and Task. All in a manner our colleague Pablo Picasso would surely respect.

Quick schedule note: I usually like to have the OG Worcester Sucks weekly text post out before the podcast, but this week it’s just not happening. Expect it tomorrow! This is better Sunday listening and the post I have drafted is better Monday reading. Also make sure you didn’t miss Aislinn’s great School Committee candidate rundown from a few days ago. We discuss it in the episode. It’s really great.

Lots going on as the election nears and we reach that beautiful late October fever pitch. Here’s the clip show of the D3 forum meltdown in full.

More links:

Article about how dogshit the LVT tower was

Worcester Police Chief Paul Saucier said the pilot program for Worcester was not a success.

“For our environment, I would say no,” Saucier said. “I don’t want to throw the company under the bus. But for the things we wanted to use it for, I am not inclined to getting a contract. We’re moving along.”

Although the system had three cameras, it had a problem hooking up with the city’s universal video feed and the quality of the video it recorded was “spotty,” Saucier said.

Rob Bilotta’s editorial on CSX

...according to a recent report from City Manager Eric Batista, the CSX neighborhood improvement funds have sat unused and untouched for the past seven years. The report, requested by City Councilor-at-Large Khrystian King, first appeared on the May 6 City Council agenda. It was then held under privilege by Councilor Mero-Carlson for two weeks in a row. After two weeks of budget hearings, the report was finally discussed at the June 17 City Council meeting, six weeks later

Rare birds, and “Listers”

KNEECAP’s US video showAs always, please consider a paid subscription!

Any support you can give us would be greatly appreciated. We have a tip jar now!

And help us spread the word!

This podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Overcast, Pocket Casts others via this RSS link.

Last week the Ballpark Commission approved a massive active shooter drill to take place in and (maybe?) around Polar Park next June. This counts as a “community day” by the way remember those? The 20 minute meeting and the agenda.

As far as I can tell this has gone unreported, though as we discussed at the top of the episode, officiating my sister’s wedding had me pretty checked out for a few days there. Could have missed it.

One of the commission members, can’t make out who, said:

This will include almost like every first responder in this city and kind of in central Mass because the goal is to give them the training of if something were to happen, how they’re communicating with each other and the response times and kind of what that would look like. And this being a large venue here in the city, they thought that it would be good to host it here, not only to get our staff training, but then to also have those live scenarios of the traffic and at least square and everything else that these first responders happen to go with. So I know, like you said, this is in June, but we’ve been in the planning process with them trying to get a date and work with the city to get this approved and have a pretty large meeting coming up. So they really wanted to see if this would be something that y’all would be interested in allowing here.

No discussion at all, nor even a voice vote—okay then!

Otherwise, we discuss how the LVT security robot aimed at the homeless downtown was supposed to leave on the 10th but is still there, surprise surprise. And a major Moneybags Mitra update.

LVT website, in particular the state and local government subpage, is a revealing browse!

Article on the Worcester Work Farm

“At the Poor Farm, also known as the Worcester Home Farm, life was difficult. Its residents, called “inmates,” were not permitted to be idle; or to talk without permission; nor leave. It was considered shameful to be considered a pauper, and the location of the Poor Farm enabled the city to provide for their needs while ostracizing them from the community”

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Next Election Squad is set for Thursday at Steel and Wire! See you there. Flyer with details here.

∿Intro music: original composition “Bleep Boop V” by Bill Shaner 10.14.25

∿Outro music: MC5 - “The American Ruse”

∿This podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Overcast, Pocket Casts others via this RSS link.

As promised at the end of my last piece, (really encouraging it resonated with a lot of people thank you to everyone who said so) I’m taking the description in a different, extended direction tonight. The passage below was written in a moment of deep frustration, staring at an empty document after a council meeting that was so stupid it was hard to describe. It serves, I think, as a statement of intent. Not just for the current episode, though it works perfect for that too, but as an attempt to lay out a more productive path for our engagement, attention, energy, patience. The productive discourse at the local level does not lie in the realm of argument. It is not a contest of ideas because we’re dealing with an anti-idea opposition. And we cheapen ourselves and our movement by engaging in a good faith contest of ideas, by believing that it’s a democratic institution we’re dealing with that can be shamed into reform. What we really need to do is adopt a framework that starts with the basic fact these people are fools. And openly discuss how we go about circumnavigating them—rendering them, as Chris said in this episode, politically irrelevant. So here it is... after the requisite plugs.

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What can you say about the meeting this week I haven’t already said?

The same dipshits were dipshits. They filled six hours with mean, petty invective. They debased themselves with asinine legal arguments, the thought of explaining any of them is physically painful. A resolution a normal council would have passed in five minutes devolved in the petulant hands of these old guard councilors to a bonfire of vanities.

The people in control of this board are just not serious. They have built a culture that rewards unserious people. Kate Toomey is not the highest vote getter despite her pet-like fealty to the police, reactionary anti-progressive political stances cut from an otherwise incoherent tapestry of dislocated beliefs, her insistence on believing she’s the only one who can Google Articles and so feels the need to read them into the record. (She read the entire FAQ on immigration on the Worcester PD website then looked up from her phone with an expression that said “case closed.” But she made no case at all. The only thing she proved was that she didn’t understand the material. Nevertheless, she maintained a posture of indignance, holding the item then taking it back after slight pressure from an ally. Then voting for it. Embarrassing.) She is the highest vote getter because of those things. She reaps the rewards of a political culture that incentivizes low-rent cronyism. A social circle built around the institution that trims itself like a Bonsai tree around a narrow rhetoric crafted by cynical real estate and police power brokers. She swims effortlessly in the current of that feedback loop.

You and I do not. Khrystian and Etel do not. We are punished and worn down. The weapon Toomey et al wield best is the one they are the least conscious of: their own unseriousness. The narcissism to get up there every week and genuinely believe that no one sees through your s**t. The sheer force of will it takes to impose a willful misunderstanding as a legitimate argument. It’s not enough to not do your homework. You need to sniff out those who do and punish them for having dared. No no no, they say every week, we don’t do actual thinking here. That’s not the way things are done. Like any good ape they know a club by the weight of it in their hand. You don’t need to know what it’s made of to swing it. And all their handlers expect is that they swing it hard and feel no shame when it makes contact.

Councilor Moe Bergman accused Khrystian King of electioneering with the anti-ICE resolution. On the same agenda, he advocated for buying the police another drone for an expanded drone program. Just cuz! Certainly not because the police unions tend to decide elections in this city.

He voted against King’s resolution saying he won’t vote on “a hypothetical.” He then offered multiple hypothetical situations as justification for another police drone. On this drone proposal, coming a month before the election, apropos nothing, Bergman offered a hypothetical situation...

Can you imagine currently the way it exists now that there’s an emergency somewhere and a police officer has to get in a car at one end of the city and fight traffic all the way to the other end of the city to perhaps stop a child from being kidnapped or or a domestic situation for a woman getting stabbed and now you could have the opportunity to have a drone get right out there and relay information immediately?

You see what I’m getting at... There was a lot of it. What can you say? Hypocrisy is dead and yada yada yada. Tiresome.

Listen. If I haven’t already convinced you these people are fools I don’t think I can. No reason the rest of us should suffer through it.

Donna Colorio at least had the courage to vote against it without giving a reason. Moe Bergman could learn a thing or two. You only made it worse for yourself, bud. Unless what you’re really after is world-building yourself a victimhood narrative. If that’s the case, mission accomplished. Of course that would be a baseless accusation that I, personally, would never make. The accusation being, again, that councilor Moe Bergman uses his time on the council floor to construct a paranoid ongoing fiction in which he is the protagonist and defacto victim. And that in pursuit of a compelling fiction he makes bad faith interpretations and willfully misunderstands the policy proposals of his perceived enemies. To use a lawyerly word that would be causal inference if someone were to accuse Bergman of doing all that. Causal inference is an activity I would never engage in. I would simply never reason inductively after many years of watching the man speak at city council meetings that the first and perhaps sole objective of Bergman’s time in public life categorically must be—because of what that time has yielded, and what it hasn’t, in other words the “Effect”—racking up a list of perceived grievances used for self-victimization purposes.

It’s pathetic is what it is. I’m tired of letting these people embarrass me, embarrass you, embarrass the city. They need to be put in a position to answer these questions plainly: Why do you demand my respect but do nothing to win it? Why do you remain in politics when you do not have a political vision? Why are you so embarrassing? That’s where we need to start. We do not need to suffer these fools with our earnestness. They are not going to return the favor. They cannot be shamed because they lack shame. The only logic they understand is the logic of the cudgel.

So, what is our cudgel? If your answer includes winning any argument on practical merit or morality or justice, start over. You’re at the wrong tree trunk, they’re not up there. If it includes their entitlements or narcissism, now we’re getting warmer. If we can withhold their ability to feel special, they’ll finally come to the bargaining table or, even better, get bored and quit. The police unions, it’s dawning on me now, have known that for a long time. They know how to sniff out a mark, I’ll give them that.

Some links and such from the episode:

Hubie Dubie Picture Show at Hunchback Gallery Oct. 12!

Election Squad Oct. 16!

Toomey proposes drones to respond to 911 calls

Shaking house on Douglas St.

That’s when Randy Chavoor, a retired Worcester Fire Department district chief, shared his own family’s story regarding the rattling. His late grandmother, Victoria Chavoor, owned the home on Douglas Street in 1950. He said a plumber solved the mystery of the shaking years later.

“According to my cousin, someone put a washing-machine motor inside the wall,” Ch…