In the late 1980s, a family in Wisconsin brought home a simple set of bunk beds for their children. Nothing about them seemed unusual. There was no known history tied to them, no warning signs, and no reason to think they would change anything at all.

But soon after the beds were assembled, the house began to feel different.

Footsteps were heard moving through empty rooms. Objects shifted on their own. The children reported seeing a figure standing in their bedroom. A babysitter experienced something so unsettling that she refused to return. And eventually, the father came face-to-face with something in the hallway that convinced the family to leave their home in the middle of the night and never come back.

In this episode, Robert Barber tells the story of the Tallman Bunk Beds, a case later featured on Unsolved Mysteries, exactly as it has been passed down over the years. Once the story is complete, the episode steps back to examine what can be verified, what remains unconfirmed, and why this case continues to resist a single explanation.

Was this a genuine haunting, a buildup of fear, or something in between?

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State of the Unknown is a documentary-style podcast tracing the haunted highways, forgotten folklore, and unexplained phenomena across America’s 50 states.

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Some stories don’t stay buried.
We go looking anyway.