We'd love to hear from you!

Spring has a way of making people bold, and in Watseka it also makes the haunting louder. We pick back up with the Watseka Wonder story at the moment it turns deeply personal: a March 20th, 1878 letter from “Mary” to Dr. E. W. Stevens. It reads like ordinary life, prayer by candlelight, family updates, flowers and buds in the woods, then slips into something chillingly confident about “news from the other side” and a warning that trouble is brewing.

From there, the calm breaks. Reverend Baker and Lavinia Durst arrive at the Roff home and push for a confrontation with Lurancy Venom, demanding proof, throwing around sin, and threatening Springfield. The scene becomes a pressure test for every theme that makes this paranormal history so compelling: faith versus control, spiritualism versus respectability, and what happens when a town decides it can police the unknown. Ann Roff refuses to let self-appointed “concerned citizens” run her home, and the encounter spirals into chaos that forces Asa to send an urgent telegram to Dr. Stevens.

Then we shift into Porchlight Whispers with a real modern 911 call from Pender County, North Carolina near Moores Creek National Battlefield and the Black River. A driver reports something beating and scratching on the roof of his truck before it vanishes into the woods, the kind of account that instantly calls up cryptid lore for anyone who’s ever wondered about Mothman and other unexplained encounters.

If you love true history, folklore, possession and exorcism stories, and firsthand paranormal experiences, hit follow, share the show with a friend, and leave a rating and review so more listeners can find us.

Support the show

If this show resonates with you, please hit follow, share it with a friend who loves true history and the paranormal, and leave a rating and review. It really helps us get discovered, and it helps boost my morale! 

If you’ve enjoyed listening and you would like to support the show, please consider donating through the following, which are also listed at the end of the episode:

Venmo- Bethany-Borden-1

Paypal- BethanyBorden865

Buzzsprout website

CashApp- $SmallTownWhispers

Please share your stories with us at [email protected] 

or send us a message on the Small Town Whispers Facebook page! 

You'll also want to head to our Patreon page for exclusive footage of the Roff house, bonus listener stories, and more! 

Did you know we’re on YouTube?! I dare you to put it on at bedtime. https://www.youtube.com/@SmallTownWhispersPodcast

Don't forget to tell a friend or family member about the show. 

Thank you!

We'd love to hear from you!

A girl runs barefoot into the March snow because she doesn’t recognize the people calling her “family,” and the whole town decides that panic is proof. We’re back in Watseka, Illinois for a pivotal chapter of the Lurancy Vennum possession story, where spiritualism, small-town politics, and fear of the “abnormal” collide inside the walls of the Roff Home.

Then the pressure campaign ramps up: Lavinia Durst and Reverend Baker push to have Lurancy locked away again, only to hit an unexpected wall when Mayor Peters refuses to sacrifice a vulnerable child to public outrage. It’s a rare moment of moral clarity in a story packed with rumors, labels, and power plays.

If you want to step beyond the page, you can. The Roff Home is available as an Airbnb, and "Watseka: Beyond the Veil" invites you to spend time at the Old Courthouse Museum or join a limited overnight investigation inside the Roff Home. We also welcome back Neal Gibbons of Graveside Paranormal (Chicago) for Porchlight Whispers, where he shares updates on his seance work and dives into the legends of Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery, including the caretaker tale, blue orb sightings, and a photograph that captured a spirit.

Subscribe for more true history and paranormal storytelling, share this with a friend who loves haunted locations, and leave a rating and review so more listeners can find us.

Watseka: Beyond the Veil tickets are available Saturday April 11th @ NOON CST! 

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/watseka-beyond-the-veil-tickets-1985645973559

Find out more about Graveside Paranormal at:

https://gravesideparanormal.com/

https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=graveside%20paranormal

Support the show

If this show resonates with you, please hit follow, share it with a friend who loves true history and the paranormal, and leave a rating and review. It really helps us get discovered, and it helps boost my morale! 

If you’ve enjoyed listening and you would like to support the show, please consider donating through the following, which are also listed at the end of the episode:

Venmo- Bethany-Borden-1

Paypal- BethanyBorden865

Buzzsprout website

CashApp- $SmallTownWhispers

Please share your stories with us at [email protected] 

or send us a message on the Small Town Whispers Facebook page! 

You'll also want to head to our Patreon page for exclusive footage of the Roff house, bonus listener stories, and more! 

Did you know we’re on YouTube?! I dare you to put it on at bedtime. https://www.youtube.com/@SmallTownWhispersPodcast

Don't forget to tell a friend or family member about the show. 

Thank you!

We'd love to hear from you!

A single bark hidden in an audio edit shouldn’t rattle anyone, but it did. While revisiting our interview with paranormal investigator and podcaster Tom Stewart, we hear what sounds like a dog barking right in the middle of a word. Tom hears it too and tells us he has a “ghost dog” that hangs around the basement where he records. It’s a small moment that hits hard, because it echoes the same question that drives this series: how often does the unexplained brush right past us while we’re busy living?

Then we step back into Watseka, Illinois and the notorious Watseka possession case. Mary Roff is “back” inside Lurancy Vennum’s body, and for a brief stretch it almost feels normal to the Roff household. But when the Vennum family visits, the fragile peace snaps. Tom Vennum demands a reason, a why he can hold in his hands, and the scene spirals from disbelief to insults to violence. The episode lays bare the raw nerve beneath paranormal history: what happens when fear replaces compassion, and when a family decides a haunting is something to punish instead of something to understand?

As more townspeople come calling, curiosity turns into a kind of test. “Mary” recalls names, faces, and long-forgotten details with unnerving clarity, including a retired doctor’s leech treatments and memories that cut straight to the bone. Whether you hear possession, trauma, or something stranger, the story forces a real conversation about identity, memory, and what counts as evidence in small town folklore and paranormal storytelling.

Listen now, then subscribe, share with a friend who loves true history and the paranormal, and leave a rating and review. What do you think the bark was and what do you think is really happening in Watseeka?

Support the show

If this show resonates with you, please hit follow, share it with a friend who loves true history and the paranormal, and leave a rating and review. It really helps us get discovered, and it helps boost my morale! 

If you’ve enjoyed listening and you would like to support the show, please consider donating through the following, which are also listed at the end of the episode:

Venmo- Bethany-Borden-1

Paypal- BethanyBorden865

Buzzsprout website

CashApp- $SmallTownWhispers

Please share your stories with us at [email protected] 

or send us a message on the Small Town Whispers Facebook page! 

You'll also want to head to our Patreon page for exclusive footage of the Roff house, bonus listener stories, and more! 

Did you know we’re on YouTube?! I dare you to put it on at bedtime. https://www.youtube.com/@SmallTownWhispersPodcast

Don't forget to tell a friend or family member about the show. 

Thank you!

We'd love to hear from you!

A girl walks out of her house in 1878 and into someone else’s life, and a grieving family chooses to believe their daughter just came home. We pick up the Watseka Wonder at the moment it turns from rumor to reunion: Lurancy Vennum arrives at the Roff home, and “Mary Roff” starts talking like she never died, recognizing objects, remembering childhood moments, and crashing into the brutal truth that time kept moving without her.

From there we sit with the questions that make this case so haunting: what does “proof” look like in a possession story, why do tiny remembered details hit harder than big claims, and what happens to a family when hope and fear share the same room. Mary’s comments about the afterlife push the conversation into spiritualism territory, touching on change, grief, and the unsettling idea of a plan we don’t fully control. I also share what it felt like to visit the Roff home in modern-day Watseka, Illinois, including why I want to go back with better equipment and a clearer plan for collecting evidence.

Then we step under the Porchlight with Tom Stewart of My Paranormal Story for firsthand paranormal encounters in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Tom takes us through Swan Point Cemetery, occult rumors around a pentagram-like tomb space, a gate that vanished overnight, and a terrifying Cemetery Street haunting that includes moving objects, a mirror tilting on its own, and an old man in a black hat seen by multiple witnesses. If you’re into paranormal podcasts, true haunting stories, ghost hunting tools, EVPs, and American supernatural history, this one hits both the legend and the lived experience.

Visit myparanormalpodcast.com for more of Tom's stories. You can also listen to his podcast on Youtube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. 

If you need a fundraiser, check out his company https://www.funny4funds.com/

Subscribe, share this with a friend who loves history and the paranormal, and leave a rating and review so more listeners can find us.

Support the show

If this show resonates with you, please hit follow, share it with a friend who loves true history and the paranormal, and leave a rating and review. It really helps us get discovered, and it helps boost my morale! 

If you’ve enjoyed listening and you would like to support the show, please consider donating through the following, which are also listed at the end of the episode:

Venmo- Bethany-Borden-1

Paypal- BethanyBorden865

Buzzsprout website

CashApp- $SmallTownWhispers

Please share your stories with us at [email protected] 

or send us a message on the Small Town Whispers Facebook page! 

You'll also want to head to our Patreon page for exclusive footage of the Roff house, bonus listener stories, and more! 

Did you know we’re on YouTube?! I dare you to put it on at bedtime. https://www.youtube.com/@SmallTownWhispersPodcast

Don't forget to tell a friend or family member about the show. 

Thank you!

We'd love to hear from you!

A girl insists she isn’t who her parents think she is and the room spirals from arguments into terror. We start with a chilling stretch of the Watseka possession narrative, where Lurancy Vennum’s family, Ann Roff, and Dr Stevens clash over belief, control, and consequences. The questions are painfully human even when the claims are supernatural: what counts as truth when a voice, a memory, and a body no longer match? And what happens when fear of “the loony bin” hangs over every decision like a verdict? 

Then we step out from the pages and onto the porch. Porch Light Whispers brings you raw, firsthand eyewitness interviews about the Brown Mountain Lights of Western North Carolina, one of the most enduring American ghost light mysteries. You’ll hear clear descriptions of lights rising above the tree line, hovering, drifting, and disappearing in seconds, plus specific viewing spots like Wiseman’s View and the Brown Mountain Overlook on Highway 181. We also talk about how easy it is to confuse distant town lights with the real phenomenon, and why credibility hits differently when the witness is someone with nothing to gain. 

Folklore trails behind the lights with stories of a slave searching, a hunter lost, and a lover who never came home, and even a snippet of the classic Brown Mountain Lights song that helped carry the legend across generations. If you’re into paranormal podcasts, historical hauntings, possession stories, or North Carolina ghost lights, this one is built for you. Subscribe, share with a friend who loves a good mystery, and leave a review with your take: what do you think the Brown Mountain Lights really are?

See the full video from Patreon here:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/brown-mountain-145115177?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

Support the show

If this show resonates with you, please hit follow, share it with a friend who loves true history and the paranormal, and leave a rating and review. It really helps us get discovered, and it helps boost my morale! 

If you’ve enjoyed listening and you would like to support the show, please consider donating through the following, which are also listed at the end of the episode:

Venmo- Bethany-Borden-1

Paypal- BethanyBorden865

Buzzsprout website

CashApp- $SmallTownWhispers

Please share your stories with us at [email protected] 

or send us a message on the Small Town Whispers Facebook page! 

You'll also want to head to our Patreon page for exclusive footage of the Roff house, bonus listener stories, and more! 

Did you know we’re on YouTube?! I dare you to put it on at bedtime. https://www.youtube.com/@SmallTownWhispersPodcast

Don't forget to tell a friend or family member about the show. 

Thank you!

We'd love to hear from you!

A mother opens her front door and watches a “stranger” sprint through the snow with her arms wide, calling someone else “Ma” and “Nervie” like it’s the most natural thing in the world. That’s where we pick up the Watseka Wonder, the infamous Watseka, Illinois possession case that still messes with our sense of identity, grief, and what we think is possible.

We walk back into the Vennum home as Mary Roff’s voice seems to speak through Lurancy Vennum, and the reunion with the Roff women turns tender, awkward, and heartbreaking all at once. The details are too personal to shrug off, but the body is wrong, the timeline is impossible, and every loving gesture lands on a family already stretched thin. 

We also zoom out to talk about Dr. Stevens, spiritualism, and what it looks like to stay curious without turning the unknown into a cheap spectacle. Along the way, we connect this real American paranormal history to the research that helped shape The Exorcist, proving small towns can leave a mark on the biggest horror stories we tell.

Then we flip the porchlight on and switch gears to Porchlight Whispers. We sit down reunion-style and trade real unexplained experiences: Lanterns Lane ghost lights that pulse, vanish, and reappear behind you, a chilling “woman in white” sighting, and poltergeist-like activity that includes a TV turning on by itself, strange camera-flash sounds, and toys triggering for no clear reason. We end by asking what our role is in keeping stories like the Watseka Wonder alive, and why paying attention matters more than pretending we have all the answers.

If you love paranormal podcasts, small town folklore, and true haunting stories with history you can trace, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a rating and review. What’s your theory about what’s really happening here?

Support the show

If this show resonates with you, please hit follow, share it with a friend who loves true history and the paranormal, and leave a rating and review. It really helps us get discovered, and it helps boost my morale! 

If you’ve enjoyed listening and you would like to support the show, please consider donating through the following, which are also listed at the end of the episode:

Venmo- Bethany-Borden-1

Paypal- BethanyBorden865

Buzzsprout website

CashApp- $SmallTownWhispers

Please share your stories with us at [email protected] 

or send us a message on the Small Town Whispers Facebook page! 

You'll also want to head to our Patreon page for exclusive footage of the Roff house, bonus listener stories, and more! 

Did you know we’re on YouTube?! I dare you to put it on at bedtime. https://www.youtube.com/@SmallTownWhispersPodcast

Don't forget to tell a friend or family member about the show. 

Thank you!

We'd love to hear from you!

A father hears his daughter’s voice twelve years after her death. A basement lamp clicks itself on. We open the door to Watseka’s haunted past and present, weaving the famed Mary Roff and Lurancy Vennum possession with fresh, first-hand accounts from Watseka native Matt Lillig. The result is part living-room confessional, part town archive, and part field guide to the strange, where belief is costly and curiosity keeps the porchlight burning.

We start with the oil-lamp glow of the 1870s, tracing how spiritualism promised answers to grieving families while inviting scorn from neighbors and churches. Asa and Ann Roff pay for their convictions with lost standing and shuttered friendships, yet hold to a love that refuses silence. From there, we jump to modern Watseka, where Matt’s basement apartment turns into a quiet theater of the uncanny: ceiling tiles shift, objects migrate, and a stubborn lamp insists on being heard. After a devastating 2008 flood, the next tenant reports nothing at all—leaving us to ask whether hauntings bind to people, places, or moments in time.

Matt’s family stories widen the circle. 

What ties it all together is the “Hail Mary” idea: when reason runs out, we sometimes throw a long pass into the unknown. Maybe that’s Mary stepping into Lurancy to heal her mind, body, and soul. Maybe it’s a family recognizing a warning in the crash of oak on kitchen floorboards. Either way, the stories endure because they help people make meaning, protect each other, and navigate grief without pretending the world is simple.

Support the show

If this show resonates with you, please hit follow, share it with a friend who loves true history and the paranormal, and leave a rating and review. It really helps us get discovered, and it helps boost my morale! 

If you’ve enjoyed listening and you would like to support the show, please consider donating through the following, which are also listed at the end of the episode:

Venmo- Bethany-Borden-1

Paypal- BethanyBorden865

Buzzsprout website

CashApp- $SmallTownWhispers

Please share your stories with us at [email protected] 

or send us a message on the Small Town Whispers Facebook page! 

You'll also want to head to our Patreon page for exclusive footage of the Roff house, bonus listener stories, and more! 

Did you know we’re on YouTube?! I dare you to put it on at bedtime. https://www.youtube.com/@SmallTownWhispersPodcast

Don't forget to tell a friend or family member about the show. 

Thank you!

We'd love to hear from you!

A number can spook a culture, but it can also signal a doorway. On a Friday the 13th packed with lore and pop nostalgia, we follow a thread that leads to Watseka, Illinois—and a moment that flips possession from horror to human. Bethany walks us back into the parlor where Dr. E. W. Stevens tries to help a fragile teenager, Lurancy Venom, whose body has become an instrument for voices. The room bristles with tension when a voice from the past returns.

We unpack why this scene lingers—how numerology’s take on 13 as transformation suddenly fits, how the “instrument and player” analogy reframes consciousness, and how grief can wear the shape of a miracle. Then the porchlight clicks on and Mandy joins to ground the mystery in lived experience. Growing up kitty-corner from the Roff (Roth?!) home, she remembers hallway shadows, a household that stirred when the Watseka book came out, and the ways playground dares like Bloody Mary thread local names into folklore. Together we talk faith and spirit as companions, not rivals, and the hard-won boundaries that keep curiosity safe. The old wooden Ouija board tempts, but respect, protection, and closure lead the way.

Across stories runs a single current: connection. Friends reunited by a question only a small town could prompt. Listeners invited to add their voices to a chorus that keeps history warm. If you’ve ever wondered whether love can find its way back—or how to explore the unknown without losing your footing—this chapter of the Watseka case will stay with you.

If this resonated, hit follow, share it with a friend who loves true history and the paranormal, and leave a review with your take: invasion, reunion, or something in between? Your stories help guide where we go next.

Support the show

If this show resonates with you, please hit follow, share it with a friend who loves true history and the paranormal, and leave a rating and review. It really helps us get discovered, and it helps boost my morale! 

If you’ve enjoyed listening and you would like to support the show, please consider donating through the following, which are also listed at the end of the episode:

Venmo- Bethany-Borden-1

Paypal- BethanyBorden865

Buzzsprout website

CashApp- $SmallTownWhispers

Please share your stories with us at [email protected] 

or send us a message on the Small Town Whispers Facebook page! 

You'll also want to head to our Patreon page for exclusive footage of the Roff house, bonus listener stories, and more! 

Did you know we’re on YouTube?! I dare you to put it on at bedtime. https://www.youtube.com/@SmallTownWhispersPodcast

Don't forget to tell a friend or family member about the show. 

Thank you!

We'd love to hear from you!

A winter storm closed the world outside, so we opened a door most people keep shut: the Watseka Wonder. Bethany revisits a case tangled with possession, small-town politics, and a healer who worked without touch, guiding us through a sequence that feels equal parts courtroom, confessional, and séance. 

3 men in Watseka take things into their own hands and approach the Vennums about Lurancy. What follows isn’t spectacle—it’s procedure. We walk moment by moment through the questions, the verifiable family lore, and the unsettling pivot when bravado collapses into pain. Stevens’ “magnetic passes” read like an early form of focused ritual or mesmerism, a careful choreography of belief and care rather than force. Whether you see this as dissociation, social scripting, or genuine spirit communication, the ethical stakes stay front and center: how do we treat the suffering when proof is partial and the unknown stares back?

We also hold the narrative up to the light. Bethany compares David St. Clair’s storytelling with the University of Illinois’ scanned documents, noting which names the archive preserves and which the book amplifies. That contrast invites a broader conversation about evidence, folklore, and how memory edits what communities refuse to forget. The real pull of this story isn’t whether spirits exist; it’s what our responses reveal—about mercy, skepticism, and the dangers of imposing belief. Stay to the end for a candid reflection on living with mystery and an open invitation to share your own experiences. If this made you think, subscribe, share it with a friend, and tell us: where do you draw the line between the seen and the felt?

Support the show

If this show resonates with you, please hit follow, share it with a friend who loves true history and the paranormal, and leave a rating and review. It really helps us get discovered, and it helps boost my morale! 

If you’ve enjoyed listening and you would like to support the show, please consider donating through the following, which are also listed at the end of the episode:

Venmo- Bethany-Borden-1

Paypal- BethanyBorden865

Buzzsprout website

CashApp- $SmallTownWhispers

Please share your stories with us at [email protected] 

or send us a message on the Small Town Whispers Facebook page! 

You'll also want to head to our Patreon page for exclusive footage of the Roff house, bonus listener stories, and more! 

Did you know we’re on YouTube?! I dare you to put it on at bedtime. https://www.youtube.com/@SmallTownWhispersPodcast

Don't forget to tell a friend or family member about the show. 

Thank you!

We'd love to hear from you!

The room goes quiet when a child is called “possessed,” but the real noise lives in the spaces between fear, faith, and the need to explain what we can’t understand. We open on Watseka’s social stage, where Lavinia Durst’s parlor hums with status and suspicion, and a town’s story takes shape through whispers. As tales of a frightened horse, a threatened minister, and a locked bedroom accumulate, a petition begins to circulate—proof that gossip can harden into action before truth gets a hearing.

Enter Dr. E. Winchester Stevens, a towering spiritualist with a voice built for crowded halls and a résumé stitched from lectures, “magnetic passes,” and belief in spirit obsession. Over brandy and cut crystal, he hears about Lurancy Vennum, the boarded windows, and the plans to send her to Springfield. By the time his boots hit Walnut Street, the town’s January thaw reveals a colder kind of frost: the kind that forms when a community decides what is safe to say out loud. His arrival at the Vennum house sparks the episode’s most charged moment—a sharp command, a father’s refusal, and a shotgun promise that draws a hard line between “entities” and medical help.

Then we step under the porch light. Bethany brings the story home with her own memories of Watseka: fishtails on ice, sunlit streets that blind at the worst time, a TV that clicks on to static in an empty room, and a closet door that creeps open toward a child frozen in fear. Sleep paralysis is the likely name; the feeling is still uncanny. That tension—between rational labels and lived experience—threads the entire episode, asking what makes a haunting and what makes a community turn toward or away from compassion.

If folklore, true crime, and the psychology of belief pull you in, this chapter of the Watseka case will stick with you. Hear how social power shapes a narrative, how a healer meets his match at a farmhouse door, and how personal hauntings teach us to listen. Subscribe, share with a friend who loves small-town mysteries, and leave a review to help more curious minds find their way to the porch. Then tell us your story—what memory keeps tapping on your window?

Support the show

If this show resonates with you, please hit follow, share it with a friend who loves true history and the paranormal, and leave a rating and review. It really helps us get discovered, and it helps boost my morale! 

If you’ve enjoyed listening and you would like to support the show, please consider donating through the following, which are also listed at the end of the episode:

Venmo- Bethany-Borden-1

Paypal- BethanyBorden865

Buzzsprout website

CashApp- $SmallTownWhispers

Please share your stories with us at [email protected] 

or send us a message on the Small Town Whispers Facebook page! 

You'll also want to head to our Patreon page for exclusive footage of the Roff house, bonus listener stories, and more! 

Did you know we’re on YouTube?! I dare you to put it on at bedtime. https://www.youtube.com/@SmallTownWhispersPodcast

Don't forget to tell a friend or family member about the show. 

Thank you!