Haunt Weekly - Episode 410 - Raven's Grin Inn ReRedux

[0:23] Greetings everyone, Jonathan here. We warned you last week we were doing a Redux episode, this week that was the plan. There were three reasons for that. One is, we talked about this previously, Crystal started a brand new job Monday of last week. She had her first full week at the new job. Things seem to be going well, but that's a lot. Second is, we've been sick.
I came down with it first, whatever it is, it doesn't appear to be COVID, but it was a nasty cold, leveled me for a few days, and then leveled Crystal, so we're not feeling well.
And the third and probably most important reason, I'm sure everyone can relate to, is that we are behind on haunt work and working our asses off when we feel like we are able to to get caught back up.
It's been frustrating, we have not been able to put in the time and the hours that we want.
The temperatures have finally come down, but we have been really struggling against this illness to try and just get work done.

[1:27] Things are progressing. I don't think we're in a desperate situation per se, but I'm also not happy with where the progress is and I know Crystal isn't fully happy either.
But anyways, it will be done. We're going to be ready to open. I'm sure everything will be fine.
It's just a matter of what optional projects do and do not make the cut this year.
But then comes the question why this episode? Because we've already done this as a Redux episode way back in 309. This was originally aired in episode 87, so that's going way way back.
There's several reasons for that. The first reason is, honestly, this is probably my favorite episode of Haunt Me If You'll Be Done. It is certainly the one I have the fondest memories of and the one that, I just, I'm really, really proud of. I love putting this one out there and talking about this episode.
And the second reason is that as we discussed not that long ago.

[2:30] Jim Warfield, the owner, operator of Ravenscrinan, got some unpleasant health news.
Won't go into details about it, but yeah, he got some unpleasant health news, and he's asking everyone to please come and support The Haunt and focus on the good times, no serious talk, just have fun, getting scared, and going through what can only be described as probably the most unusual haunted attraction I can think of.

Special event for Ravensgren hosted by Haunted House Chicago

[2:59] Also worth noting that Haunted House Chicago is hosting a special event for Ravensgren and Jim Warfield. Right now, the only information we have is the Save the Date stuff. That is December 6th, December 2nd, sorry, December 2nd. It will be in the Chicagoland area. We don't know any more details, but yeah, Haunted House Chicago, Lost Souls with Japes, they're all putting this on, so definitely stay tuned for that. I'll drop a link to the Save the Date announcement in the show notes of this. Please do support Jim Warfield. Please do support RavensgrenN, And until we speak again, here is episode 87, our interview with Jim Warfield from Ravensgren Inn.
Hope you enjoy it.
Welcome to Hot Weekly!

[3:50] Music.

Introduction to Haunted Weekly podcast with special guest Jim Warfield

[4:07] Hello everyone, I'm Jonathan, I'm Crystal, and this is Haunted Weekly, a weekly podcast with Haunted Attraction, Haunted Entertainment Industry.

[4:14] Whether you're an actor, owner, or just plain aficionado, we aim to be a podcast for you and this week episode, this week, listen, this week episode, yes, I'm speaking to my own episode, this is getting made up, yes, this week, dear listener, we have a very special treat for you.
A legend in the industry, or at least in his own mind, I'm not sure which, but yes, we We have Mr. Jim Warfield of Raven's Grin and one of the most iconic and well-known haunted attractions in the country.
That's year-round. That's year-round, yes. And we are so excited to have you.
Jim, how are you doing? And thank you for seeing us on your day off.
Day off, air quotes. Well, I've got a lot to do off here all the time.
I always work on something, whether it's just sawing off a tree or sweeping the sidewalk or building a new creature or something.
Yeah, and that is one thing that you do see. We took the tour last night, and I gotta say, words fail is all I'm gonna say about it.
I can't even begin to spoil it or describe it, but it was a very unique experience.
But every turn, every corner showed how much love and dedication and work you've put into this place. And I guess we're threading the line between insanity and obsession.
There's a line there.
There's a line he crossed a long time ago, huh? That's a line you crossed a long time ago, huh?
He's looking at it in the rear view mirror. But so yeah, I guess the first question is how did you get started all those almost 30 years ago now? 30 years ago, isn't it? Oh yeah, I've had the house 30 years.

[5:40] Well, as a little kid, I was born in 1949, World War II was just over, but technology was going crazy and a couple years later we had nuclear submarine going into the water forever and jet planes and rocket planes flying higher and faster and television screens getting better and bigger and just everything going boom crazy and with all that, they, Hollywood re-reacted the old universal spooky movies and science fiction movies came out at the same time and as a little kid, it was just all, wow, what's gonna be next, wow, look and just more bigger, faster, further, you know, and just the world was incredible, you know, in the 1950s when I was a kid.
And all of the kids seemed to think so too. And, you know, we collected comic books and my older cousin had a big collection of the banned comic books.

[6:26] The government said were too evil to sell anymore.
And they used to scare the hell out of me at my grandmother's house.
Got to walk down the steps into the basement and pick a comic or two out of the old turkey box, right next to a big hole in the floor where they would drop things down and keep them cool.
And I know something's in that hole waiting for me. Guess someday when I came back, it's gonna grab me and that was it, you know?
But anyway, yeah. That sounds like inspiration for part of the cellar.
Well, then I had an older neighbor kid, Mickey Hartman, who he was tall enough, he could drop the lid on my parents' concrete coal bin. It was no longer in use for coal, right next to their house, sort of half from the ground.
He'd tell my friend Mike and I scary stories. They're all the same story.
Usually he'd be down in the park, he'd fall down a big hole in the ground and the devil was gonna grab him And when he said, the devil grabbed me, he grabbed me in the ribs and tickled me.
And then he grabbed my friend, Mike, in the ribs and tickled him.
So one day I said to Mike, Mike, as soon as Mickey drops out, let me get started.
Let's do it. And I go to the empty corner of the room. And then they go, what?
And then we start laughing, of course, where we're all in one corner laughing, you know.
Mickey was sort of my idol as a kid because he was a smart kid and all this stuff.
I asked my mother recently, I said to her, so what do you think of Mickey Armitage as an adult?
Well, we kind of thought he was like Eddie Haskell. So that's sort of where I got some of my inspiration along with the old monster comics and monster magazines and all the comic books and going to the movies.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

[7:53] So was the house the first thing that you started with the haunt industry or did you have some more?
Oh no, no. Well I had my own haunted house in the basement like Timothy McVeigh did.
And uh... Yeah, by the way, thank you for showing us that. Making me feel even creepier and more weird than I already did.
And my haunted house was run a piece of thread over a water pipe and hang a piece of Kleenex, to it looked like a ghost and say look at that and I make the ghost go up and down.
But the thing concerning my mother and the neighbor lady was I had a bunch of kids down there and I had a candle burning and I think I almost had Pat Bausman hypnotized.
I had a book on hypnotism and uh yeah so I told this story to to Pat and some men standing there I said in this day Pat's wife doesn't understand where that check for a buck goes every week. Goes to me.
That's a really effective hypnotist. That's a really effective hypnotist, it's lasted years.
I might need, can I borrow that book? That actually sounds really good.
So how old were you when you were doing that?

Childhood inspiration and early experiences in the haunted industry

[9:02] Oh, I was just about 10, 11 years old. Of course, when I had my first haunted house, I had some helper kids come down, we were playing with the other little John Aarons, he told his mother, he says, I'm going down Jim Moorfield's whorehouse today.
No, you mean horror.
There's a difference, it's light. It's light.
It ended up in a house that was pre-Elysian whorehouse right here, so there you go.
At least that's what they tell me, so, you know. Well, they tell you a lot of things about this house over the years, don't they?
Yeah. So, yeah. When you bought this house, I was reading on the side notes, you saved it from demolition basically, supposedly, they were going to tear it down.
You bought it, you saved it, and you've added electricity to it, and plumbing, and 80 million other things. in the one room we're sitting in.

[9:50] Tell me about the process of building out this house and... Well, the house had sat empty for two years and before that it had a series of landlords that didn't put any money back into the house and they really couldn't afford to because nobody's renting the apartments and then the one guy that did put money into it made five apartments out of three and the two apartments he made were dinky little apartments and the one was like living in the attic and you know but they looked nice and so then nobody did anything for years in this place and when I bought the house, it had holes in the roof as big as a softball, right through.
Some beams in the basement were rotted off and sagging and bagging, and electrical was total junk, as was the plumbing was total junk.
When I say junk, I mean, the sewer pipe went out the north side of the house half an inch under the ground.

[10:37] North side of the house, nor can you see the sun. And that went west, and by the time we got to the parking lot, it was 95 feet away, and it only had a very slight drop to it.
So sometimes the plumbing would just freeze up for a couple of days and yeah.
And the water pipe itself was all crap and just everything was junk.
And the wiring in the house actually got condemned and had to move out.
And some of the worst wiring in the house was actually some of the newest wiring that some guy had done. They wired up 220 baseboard heaters with 50 amp breakers, which means the breaker would never kick until the house was ashes.
Did your dad, perchance, work on this? Just out of curiosity, judging from the wiring in the garage.
Your garage, I don't have a garage.
Yeah, I'm in my garage, yeah, my garage, and the wiring, just curious.
Not that I know of, I don't think he's ever been here. Okay, worth asking.
That sounds like something he might have done at one point.

[11:35] But yeah. Well, then I was in the Mount Carol Jaycees, and we did the Jaycee Harn House, and that was a learning experience, learn to work around other people with their own ideas after they tear my ideas apart.
And, you know. Well, that's not fun. That's not fun. But I always got to be the cleanup guy.
I always had to chuck away everything when it was all done. That was fun.
Yeah, and so it goes, you know.
Well, you kept a few things from it. The JC era. Oh yeah, the fact that this was the JC on the house at one time. Yeah.

Saving and renovating the old house for the haunted attraction

[12:03] Just the wine cellar in the basement, that's all. There were people living upstairs at that time.
Yeah. So people living upstairs would see lines for down in the basement. Yeah.
Well, they did scare some people, I think, down there because nobody knew the wine cellar was there.
Yeah.
Yeah, apparently they didn't know it was there for quite some time after you dropped them in there.
Oh, yeah, that's fun.
Yeah.
So yeah, but um, it's I'm even sitting in the room or sitting in the parlor recording this and I'm looking at everything.

[12:35] That's been accumulated and I just keep finding new things It's like watching a movie for the hundredth time and you know, so it's absolutely incredible Even my wife Jessica she's been in 15 years and she'll say oh you did something new. No, I was there 20 years ago, So much stuff. I've made almost all this stuff. Yeah, there's one exception Jeremy Bore, professional mask maker, used to live across the alley from me.
He made most of the masks with me in the house. Well, how did you go about getting the skills to build all these things? Because there's such a wide variety of stuff.
It's everything from mechanical to pneumatic to...
Well, my great-grandfather, Spencer, in Chadwick, Illinois, just seven miles down the road.
He's still selling cars. He's 95 years old. His three boys were his mechanics.
My grandfather was one of those boys.
And then my grandfather, Elian, It came from England, I guess, and that's where everybody's a gunsmith. And the Warfields came from England, and they were always in the tinder business, and a little bit of plumbing, and old furnaces and stuff, you know?
And then my Uncle Gibb, he was a Ford mechanic all his life, and my Uncle Ted, recently deceased, he worked for Bullitt Corporation in the computer graphics part, and they designed all sorts of big machine tools there.
So I guess it's kind of natural in that respect.

[13:48] It's kind of inherited, I don't know. Yeah, because I mean, you've built everything that I've seen, from mechanical monsters to, large complicated props out of a variety of materials to teeny tiny little detail pieces that I don't know how you had the precision to make, or the patience for that matter.
Yeah, I actually stayed behind a little bit and studied how you made the head move forward, down in the basement because people in haunted houses, it's a dog looking thing.

[14:22] They have big machines that have an animal come out towards you and it's all, you know, motors and gears and.
$10,000 and they'll send us one giant prop.
Yeah, exactly.
I used to go to Transworld. Funny thing was, there were people around that were going to Transworld and they never told me there was a Transworld.
Yeah, and then. They didn't want you to get ideas.
Just Clinton, Clinton, Iowa, 25 miles away, the Creeps were cherry all dressed up like monsters.
They'd do things to raise money for people that were down in bad shape, you know.
They were going to Transworld.
And then the guy and his wife, about 35, 40 years ago, moved into Savannah and have a big mansion there and they built costumes forever.
And they knew about Transworld, but nobody told me. And so one March, cold March day, I'm out in my side yard building a coffin and a guy pulls up in an old van with Missouri plates on.
He says, oh, you got a haunted house? And I said, yeah, I have a haunted house too in Missouri.
Well, isn't that something? How did you find it back in LA? Drove away.
And then a third guy pulls up with Michigan plates. Oh, I have a hundred dollars from Michigan. Wait a minute.
And then a third guy pulls up. What's going on here? You know, how are you guys finding me in the middle of no place? And they'll say, you know, well, it's a trans world in Chicago. What's that?

[15:35] I went to trans world 12 or 13 years old. I knew about it in Chicago.
And I only spent maybe 350 or 400 bucks there. Cause I built my own stuff, you know?
And I don't use glow duct, glow duct, glow duct paint or other stuff.
So there you go. So you don't use Klon that are okay. Well, there's a sample on there on the piano behind you. Yeah.

[15:57] Give me that transfer for free a little bottle.

Intriguing Encounters with Glowing Headlights

[16:01] Get and see what happened, but you know Yeah, you were talking about the...
Car last night, and I noticed that there were headlights glowing in the dark, so...
Those scared the hell out of a few people.
Yeah, I'm sure they did. I was like...
Now, the glow-in-the-dark statue up there and glow-in-the-dark mask, those are factory-made glow-in-the-dark masks, but... Yeah. Yeah.
...other than that, yeah.

Running a haunt in the middle of nowhere

[16:27] But yeah. So, what's it like running? You said, you know, out in the middle of nowhere, and, after driving here from St. Louis, I'm inclined to agree with the statement. Yeah. Yeah.
What's it like running a haunt out in the middle of nowhere?
Well, believe it or not, this is not really that bad of a location in some respects because if you're in Chicago and you go to the Mississippi River, we're right now in the shortest line.
We're at Route 64 and we're just 10 miles from the Mississippi River.
And the Palisades Park, which is very popular on the river, the big cliffs and everything.
And the widest spot in the entire Mississippi River is just down at Thompson because they build a big dam there.
And it's always been a place where people like to go camping, you know?
And we've got a lot of woods here and that's a very pretty part of the land with all the hills and valleys we have because the glacier missed us millions of years ago and went on passing down the state of Illinois with all that boring flat land.
And there's a lot of caves, there's some caves around here and like I say, rock formations and cliffs and things. And so it's pretty, kind of private with all the little valleys, we would just build a house in the valley and never see them again, you know?
So now I know where to go into hiding. Yes, yes. Right? Yeah.
Screw Key West, I'm coming here to hide out. There's a writer, a retired writer who lives just north of town, a hidden place, you can't really find it.
He came to the town, this is 1964, read X-Gage Jaguar one time a couple of years ago.
I looked at him and said, thank you for making my day by driving that car to town, sir.
You're welcome. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah.

[17:54] So when did you, have you always been year-round or did you make that move always?
Oh yeah, we'd always be year-round. Yeah.
I have to eat year-round. Well, yeah, that's true. Unfortunately, I have to eat year-round, yeah.
Really? I thought Haunters just didn't eat for 10 and a half months out of the year.
I've been doing them. Oh, OK.
Well, running the house in October is totally different than the rest of the year, of course.
And in this first room in October, I'm really fortunate to give them 15 minutes of this room.
The rest of the year, as long as they're enjoying the stories, I can talk in this room for an hour and a half. Which we can personally attest to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
True story, when I go through haunts, I usually set a timer to measure roughly how long it is, just so I can talk about it and think about it in that context.
Yeah, you broke my timer.
My timer didn't go that high. Even in October, it takes an hour and a half.
Yeah. And that's with a dozen helpers in the house, pushing people through the house a little bit, leading them through the house a little bit.
Right. But of course, they don't do all the routines I do, and they don't tell any stories hardly, except they're only in like makeup, and that's the way it's entertaining too.
And I just tell them, just have a fun time and entertain people, be sociable and don't try to terrorize anybody with a little kid or something.
But I also tell people, like most probably, home houses, don't bring a little bitty kid here after 9.30 at night.
Because that's when those people will show up they want a little kid in the room screaming and hollering and you're saying, that's gonna happen.
But I basically just try to treat everybody like a decent human being and hope they treat me the same way.

[19:24] And enjoy what I provide for them. And it seems to work because I do have a lot of fans out there, I discovered.
Years from all over, every place, just nuts.
I mean, that's how we ended up making the decision to make this pilgrimage, as I'm now referring to it.
Yeah. It's because our friend Kyle, who's another Haunter, he did a, he likes, he's a tour guide in New Orleans, and he used to go on a walkabout every summer when the tourist season's dead in the city.
And he toured and came through here, and he went to Ravensbrin.
And when he got back, it was the only thing he would talk about.

[19:58] Without talking about it. And he would talk about it without talking about it.
It was absolutely bananas. You've got to go to Raven's Grin.
Why? I can't say. You've just got to go. Why?
I can't say. And it's like this for like hours, talking to him.
And he went on, and I realized now why.
He couldn't. I'm at a loss trying to describe anything myself.
Early on, before I got financing to get this house, I was desperate to get financing.
I talked to a retiring carpenter who had several adult, almost adult boys, and I'm really glad that partnership didn't happen because these are all my ideas and my sweat and there you go.
And I like it that way. Some people come here to get their ideas.
But you know what, they're going to be using them so far away from here, it doesn't make a difference. And if that's fine, that's fine.

[20:54] So, you know, honestly, I other than that's just it. Everything to me is so unique in this hall, It's hard to take your ideas and apply it elsewhere for me. Well, I know that I know that.

Impressed with Camouflaged Passages in Haunt

[21:09] As someone who is really good at hiding Doorways and things in my haunt i'm really impressed with the way that you camouflage, Yeah passages. Well, it's interesting how real stone looks normal next to real stone It's a real brick next to a real brick, what's normal. Yes, yes it is.
You need some heavy hinges and good bearings though. Yeah, yeah.
I'm thinking that's not just a Home Depot trip. Yeah.
Well I welded up all my hinges and stuff myself and designed them and they're still working so.
So yeah, you are carpenter, welder.
Artist. Artist, CAD.

[21:51] Everything of this haul. You're the mastermind, the evil genius, or just evil, I'm not sure.
My sister's name is Gina, it's close, but you can't use it sometimes. Fair enough.
Yeah, so it's like we were talking about, it's such a diverse set of skills that you have to do.
Most haunters we talk to are like, yes, I'm the carpenter, I frame the haunt, and then someone else comes in and paints it, and someone else comes in and does the scene design of the lighting and all that, and you're just like, yeah, I've got it, I've got it all.
Well, I'm free with my ideas to another honor though, because one time a guy, I was talking about his spot room, you know, the black spots on the wall, the white room, it was just, so they can hide and he'll dress that same way.
And I said, here's my idea for that.
The room is white, black spots. You walk in, okay, where's the guy hiding in this costume that looks like the wall?

[22:43] I guess there's nobody here. I guess he's walking home break or something.
So you go to leave the room and you trip. What's that trip over?
A dead Dalmatian dog. Oh no, the dog's dead! Oh no! Oh, that would be terrifying.
Yeah. But the dead dog says, oh!
You know, whatever.
You know, I see things more in a humorous light than maybe some humor, some horrors do, just because I have to have that to balance out anything that might scare somebody here.
Yeah. The sound of my voice, the look on my face, or whatever, you know.
Yeah, you definitely add in a lot of puns and humor, which I appreciate. Oh yeah.
And I do... Yeah, it's definitely the funniest. I do adult tours.
I do little kid tours.
My wife comes out and brings a kitty cat or the puppy out for the crying kid.
The puppy! Yeah.
It's like Swippin' Switch. I gotta remember that one. We need right now.
I gotta remember that one. That might be the most useful thing we learn at Raymond's Corner.
They have a dog handy. Yeah.
That might be the most applicable thing for us.
Well, I depend on people remembering this place and telling their friends and coming back someday. Yeah.
And just a couple weeks ago, people were all coming here from 20 years ago, bringing their whole families with them.

[24:00] Well, years ago, I know Joe Jensen from Chicago and Leonard Pickle are having this conversation.
Oh, my God, the birth rate's down for all the 12-year-old kids this year.
They're now turning 12 and they're 13. Where are the business going to come from?
Well, if you appeal to, you know, six, eight year olds on up to 38 year olds, you got more business potentially.
Yeah. So, there you go.

Appeal to All Ages for Business Potential

[24:24] Exactly. That's a good point. Why exclude anyone?
But if I have a haunted tent that's got real blood stains on it and hackers and choppers and screaming and hollering, well, a few people might go to that, you know.
Yeah. Maybe not the second time, you know.
And one thing that I really enjoyed was a lot, the scare doesn't come from the gore, as you are saying. It doesn't, in fact, I'm trying to think that there wasn't any at all.
But that's not where it comes from, it's not the point.
Well, you know, for years, the first, I don't know, 10 years I had this house, at the exit when people would be leaving, I'd say to them, what's the neatest, scariest, most impressive thing you ever seen out of a haunted house?
And unfortunately at that time, the answer was a blank look most of the time.

[25:05] You either forgot it, didn't remember it, or something. Yeah.
Oh, that's pretty glum. Yes. Yeah.
Yeah, I heard a few stories that were impressive, you know, yeah, like good How do we get out of this hallway walk through that fire walk through fire? It wasn't real fire. It looks like real fire, Yeah, yeah, or guy says, oh you're actually coming to the break room sit down watch TV. It's a good slasher movie Okay, and all sudden the slasher guy comes out of the screen of the television set and tax the guy said there Yeah, how'd they do this? I don't know Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. That worked. Yeah.
But a doctor, it's funny too, my first best patrons were doctors, nurses, dentists, chiropractors, morticians. Yeah. Yeah.
And they all kind of have that dark sense of humor.
Yeah. Yes. They do. And the one doctor, he was one of my first four or five customers.

[25:58] I got done taking him to my house. I thought, oh my God, it's gonna be a tough way to make a living.
He smiled one time. That was it. And all these people started showing up.
How did you find out about my house? Dr. Vinji. Dr. Vinji. Who's Dr. Vinji?
And the guy shows up driving a sports car with his daughter in the car with him.
You have a big smile on his face. I didn't recognize him. That was Dr. Vinji.
The guy smiled once and went to my house.
But then he told me he went to a haunted house in New Mexico.
One of the first ones, it looked like a big castle, actually, a building.
He had the guy walk around with a parrot with a pump on his back.
And had live animals and snakes and bats and cages. And then they took his little daughter and sat her in an electric chair and said, we're going to electrocute you now.
We're like, oh no. And they flipped the switch and everybody else in the room got a shock, but she didn't.
And that doctor brought and sent and paid for so many people when I first started.
I just happened to run into his wife the other day in Freeport and I said, I just have to tell you, you really helped me get started because if it hadn't been for you, well, but yeah.
But I've had school classes bring the fifth graders here for being good kids.
And I thought, well, it'll only be about two bus loads. No, this was the price.
So they had like six bus loads, one a day for a week.
And some of the same school teachers show up with more than one group and have to figure out how to scare the teacher the next day in front of the kids.

Jim's Unique House with Multiple Opportunities

[27:17] Evil Jim says.
Well, you've definitely got the house to do that. You have multiple opportunities in every corner.
Oh, yeah, yeah, and that's one thing that I think it really is goes no two tours are the same Oh, no, not even remotely. No, well, you know, I interact with the customers the customers say I'm goofy some goofy thing I'll go off on that. Yeah, or they'll remind me of something else. Some other customer did or something and it's all fun You know, yeah, so I said, you know basically like me screaming shit pickle bouncing down.

Haunted House Architect Encounter

[27:48] Well, you know I had the house and didn't know what the hell's going on there I don't know if anybody else even had a haunted house. I knew Disney's had a haunted house, but I didn't think anybody else had them.
And a young farmer north of town, he's sort of a businessman, he has 10,000 acres.
He got this little book in the mail on new businesses.
Here, you want to have this, look at page such and such. I've got it upstairs in the first room you go to.
There's a picture of a guy named Leonard Pickle from Texas, haunted house architect.
So I wrote him a letter and mailed it to him, he never got it.
Not quite the address.
I don't hear it until the other phone rang on Wednesday. Hello, this is Leonard Pickle.
I said, Honest Architects?
Big size, how does this guy know me? Just a fluke. And he says, how do you get to Mount Carol?
Blah, blah, blah. Okay, so I told him.
Then on the phone he says, do you have chainsaws? My wife hates chainsaws.
She went to a house who smells like there's a chainsaw. No chainsaws here. Okay.
So we had to go through the house like this. Just look at this, look at that.
Not really having a fun time, just looking at everything. So we get to my time travel tunnel, which is still there.
We use it for most little kids. A series of grocery store rollers the tallest building.
A medium-sized adult can fit through that, but you get a little cart, and push it by your feet and pull the second one back on the rope.
So Jeannie gets on the cart first, Leonard's down there, and I said to Jeannie, don't worry, just take you past the chainsaw so fast you won't even notice them.
And I pushed her at the top. There's a big smile on Leonard's face.
Oh my God! You know? Well there were no chainsaws, you know, but anyway. Ha ha ha ha ha.

[29:12] Oh, that's beautiful. And then Joe Jens from Chicago Broad Group here one time, and he's the guy that said, You're a performance artist.
A what? I can... Let's see... That fits in. Part of it. It's part of it. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah.
So have you had a chance to go to any other haunted houses? Not really. No?
No. I didn't think so. We'd be here all the time.
Well, my ex-wife, she wanted to take one day a week off, like Monday, so we'd be closed on Monday. We'd come home, there's 20 people standing, where the hell have you been for the last hour and a half?
Okay, we can't take Friday's off. Let's take Wednesday's off.
Come back, brother, how you been, you know what I mean? Four and three, four and three days, you know?
Whereas that's an admission of like two or three bucks to add two.
You know, I'd have the same teenagers come here three times in a month.
And they'd be from Wisconsin and Iowa, you know? Just, yeah.

[30:07] It was fun, a lot of fun that way. So, we talked a little bit earlier

Advertising Strategies and Dealing with Visitors

[30:13] about the differences between October and off-season.
We're here in the middle of July, late July.
What are some of the differences we could expect if we came back in October?
Well, in the season, you know, if somebody shows up here with their family, got little kids in it, we try to put them with a group that's gonna be similar to, of course.
If the drunks show up screaming and hollering, no, you can't come in, go away.
And if a bunch of college kids come in, well, we try to give them a little different show, a little more risque, maybe, you know.
And they respond to that well, usually. And, but I'm always trying to feel it out to see who I'm talking to, because you never really know for sure.
And I don't want to offend anybody. I don't want to be that person, you know?
And it's kind of tricky to do that, not offend someone.
Sometimes I have to be more humorous than I think I should be, or more topical, because I used to tell some joke I made up about OJ Simpson when he was in trial, I can't remember what it was now, and yet somebody coming here probably remembers it, but I don't, you know?
My first advertising, I wrote a long poem about the house.
I had it printed out and I'd read it to people in the first room, and I'd tell them what else to do.
And I'd give them a copy of it.
Years later, they told me down at Clinton, I have this one bar, they have pool tables there, and they put it on the wall, and they're playing pool like I'm 25 year old guys.
You remember that poem? Yeah, where we start it from, verbatim, don't read it.
And they have contests to remember my long poem.

[31:36] I mean, that's different advertising, huh? Yeah, it is. It is.
And then we had bumper stickers for a couple years, and they became dorm door stickers.

[31:47] More valuable than a car bumper sticker. Yeah. What's that place? Where is that? Oh, really? Oh, yeah.
But the teenager puts in an old junk car they have back then, Two weeks later, the car's in the junkyard forever, and bumper stickers, no point, you know?
And I gave away little big pens, and I said, Ravens, grin on them, and gave away a thousand pens in one week.
And then they came back and wanted more pens. Well, wait a minute.
So I saved a few back for a special occasion, like a birthday party group comes to the house, and gave little kids pens. And this one kid, thanks for the pen.
He takes it, looks right at me, and bends it back towards me and breaks it in half.
Can I have another one? No, you can't. No. Yeah.
I can just create a face two halves you just created. Ah! One for each nostril.
And a hammer, you know? I mean, I had to learn to be calmer on people, and they totally act like that.
You know, just, especially kids, of course, but.
Yeah, that's a hard, that's a tough task. Yeah, yeah, we've only had problems with kids once trying to intentionally break stuff.
We've been lucky there. Which is, ugh, that's always a nightmare.
Well, the first summer, first fall I was open.
At the end of that fall, I was taking inventory and I had numerous little things that were missing.
Things that I had made, spent two or three hours making and it's missing.
I thought, well, let's put this in perspective.
Jim, have you ever made this much money in one month of your entire life? Hell no.
I guess it's part of doing business.

[33:13] Yeah. Yeah, it's hard to look at it. So people just try to take little souvenirs from the house? Yeah.
Yeah. One time I caught a guy in the bed slide. I looked down and he had these trinkets and I had a stick in one of his two pockets on his chest.
And we were nothing but a damn thief. I reached out and took him out of his pockets.
Tipped him down. I'm done with him. I'm busy, I don't care. My helper comes, my wife's helper comes and says, she says you're gonna sue you because you punched him.
Well, guess what? I had video cameras.

[33:40] Never punched him, never threatened to punch him, never raised my fist like I was gonna punch him. Right.
He's stuck by his story. The cops say, I said, well, here's the videotape.
Officer, take him away. Goodbye. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I don't know about the most extreme. I was ever trying to do things, say I punched them. You know.
Yeah, so have you increased video cameras since that incident?
We're just on the verge of buying new ones, yes. Yeah.
I had a lot of video cameras at one time. And sometimes they didn't help. and sometimes.
I wonder why I had them, because they didn't help, you know, but they're good to have. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. So, you talked a little bit about advertising. What are you doing for advertising now?
What's your big method for promotion? Or is it just people like us sitting and talking about you?

[34:25] I quit advertising years ago. I mean, I gave out free bumper stickers, and then I, oh let's see, way back when that guy, taught me to put an ad on the radio.
I did the voice I provided the screaming woman in the background sound And I wrote the ad yeah, and it won third place in national Congress in state competition for small radio stations Yeah and the guy that talked me into doing it and get Turned the knobs and turn the equipment off and on got in a big fight over who's gonna put that in their resume and one Get him quitting, But I didn't take my younger son with me that he got to see me be a little radio stuff, Oh, and this in the end was so simple. Yeah. Yeah.

Jimmy Warfield: Haunted House Owner and Advertising

[35:06] Hi, I'm Jimmy Warfield, I own my own house, my parents' base, but...
And then I got lazy, I bought a house that's really haunted, Ravens grinning, and sitting there screaming stars in the background.
25 seconds, perfect, that was it.
Cool. That's very nice. And other than that, I put ads in the Rockford paper for about six years and finally quit doing that because I didn't need to do that anymore.
And part of the reason I ask that is we spent most of the morning morning roaming around Mount Carroll.
Basically, I think we saw everything. Yeah. It didn't take very long.
But we did not see, other than the signs, the actual street signs at point, we didn't see anything mentioning. Well, on the highway or two signs.
The car on the highway, the signs, yes. I paid, I don't know, 40 bucks a year for the state of Illinois to leave those up.
They put them up, they make the signs.
If the signs ever get vandalized or stolen, they replace the sign for nothing for me.
I just wish the print was a little bigger Yeah, well yeah, I barely caught it actually walking by.
But yeah, so how is your relationship with the town?

[36:11] Oh, it's very, very good. Cool. Yeah.
I mean, there's a few people that are just jealous because I'm doing what I want to do.
Or they think I'm making millions of dollars here. Ha ha ha.
But other than that, those people don't bother me and I don't bother them and there you go.
Yeah. But I also, I don't have gory displays here and that. I mean, I've got church group come to the house.
Yeah. And I tell the ghost stories and everything. Right. And they don't, that's fine, you know.
But the only church groups that don't come to the house are the local church groups.
Hmm. Which is okay, you know. So the local church groups stay away, but the faraway ones come in.
Yeah. Yeah. The schools that came by, is that the local school?
From 20 miles away. Okay.
Yeah. That's fairly low. Well, the 20-mile-away school had a lot more students, and they're also a little more with, it, I think, you know, as far as what the kids would want to do.
Right.
And that's, I think, how that happened. I'm not 100% on that. Yeah.

[37:12] But it got me when I first started though. Somebody discovered my house, they come to have a great time and then they keep it a secret.
Bring their new boyfriend, new girlfriend here. Well, no, tell everybody.
How am I gonna stay in business if it's a secret, you know? But I did it early on.
This one woman just graduated from college in advertising something field.
And she says, I'll advertise for you.
And she wrote a letter about my house and mailed it to everybody that had a radio station a newspaper, a school newspaper, I got one call from one kid at one school, that was it, and I thought, boy, yeah.

[37:49] No, just impressed me with the house, you know. Obviously, I've never enjoyed using the same haunted house picture, well, you're just using the newspaper.

[37:59] Print the same haunted house three times on one page, and they're all different, and you're waiting, that's stupid. Well, let me tell you how it really got started though.
I had the house three or four years up, I got enough to show the world.
So I wrote a letter to the Chicago Tribune, mailed it to them, got there just in time to make the paper that had all the haunted houses listed in.
Fold out about this big, and each listing was about that tiny.
Except for mine, it was about that big.
And I wrote to them and said, It's an actual haunted house built in 1865.

[38:33] Optional Guaranteed Scare Package, admission, da, da, da, Mount Carroll, Illinois.
And it hit the stands, new stands at about 5.30 in the morning.
I'm sleeping on an Army cot next to the phone just because that was my bed at the time. The phone rings.
Ring, I picked up, said, Raven's going in. It's like a young black man said, holy shit, I hung up the phone.
Well, that's a good start. And then I hung the phone back up and it rang again.
Where's Mount Carroll, blah, blah, okay.
Hung up the phone and it rang again. Well, as the sun started to come up, when I went to hang the foot, I just pushed down the little thing on the reed, and I just cradled it, and it was ringing again, and again, goodbye, ring, hello, ring, goodbye, goodbye.
Dee dee dee dee dee dee.
So, after about a couple hours of that, I turned the answering machine on, walked uptown to the restaurants, the bars, and I walked in, I said, you know, I think a lot of people can come to Mount Carroll this weekend and see my haunted house.
You might want to stay open an hour later, put on an extra waitress to buy an extra 50 pounds of hamburger, and then to a man, And they all went, yeah, right. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Guess what? The whole town is crammed full of cars and people trying to find and get in my house. Wow.
They, at some stop, the sheriff's off, just a block and a half away, and said, where's this Red Green place? And by the way, how much do houses in this town sell for?

[39:47] People bought some houses in this town because I was here. Yeah.
The guy from East Dubuque, he'd been in town once, came and sold my haunted house.
He bought the bowling alley for five years. Wow.
Jim, the realtor, Jim, the tourist guy. I tell everybody who comes to my house about the Palisades State Park and Savannah, the big cliff you can stand and look down across the whole river on, and everybody's impressed by that when you go there.

[40:10] I have a mystery information here, if they wanna know this, I'm gonna let, couple years ago, a couple showed up here, and she says, I just spent the last six years in the South Pacific looking for Amelia Earhart.
Well, the parents of the one taught her how to fly are buried in this graveyard. What?
I found her here in Mount Carol. I found Amelia Hart in Mount Carol.
Yeah, you did. And up at the post office, they got the thing there, the sign that tells you all about that woman and her parents and you know. Yeah.

[40:41] Speaking of the graveyard, you actually do something or work with a tour over there, too?
I wrote the first original script they needed for that.
Okay. I knew more about that little stuff than they did. And this is during October, is it every weekend?
Or is it just? October nights, they call it.
It moves around the month a little bit and sometimes, well sometimes they just don't even do it.
Now the last couple of years they had a daytime walking tour which I had no idea what to talk about. Right.

[41:08] But at night, when they'd have it at night, they'd drive you up there, and I took Jessica up there for the first time a couple years ago.
And when you make the turn around, you look back down this main street of the town, at night, for the moon out, it looks like you're almost in an airplane, like an aerial view, you know, and that's really neat.
Yeah. And then they'd hire some, they'd get some guy to give the, give the talk, and he couldn't pronounce his words well, because he was too much in the sauce. Yeah.
Grrr, anyway. Yeah.
But yeah, it's the historical tour where they have people dressed up like the famous people in the cemetery giving information, pretending to be them.
And that's a very cool way to bring history to, I guess, I was about to say history alive, but that's not really appropriate. Well, there was a woman in town that wrote a paper the first time I did that and she said, I don't think that's proper because, you know, it's a graveyard, it shouldn't be like da da da da da da.
And I thought about it, thought about it, I'm going to go talk to that woman.
I went to talk to her and she said, that's okay, I've already changed my mind.
Yeah. I remember she and her husband were down in New Orleans Cemetery, taking a tour with the tour guide.
He's making jokes about it.
And that's where they buried the mother-in-law with a little blue stone.
So, she can see both sides.
Yeah. I thought she could, but you know.

[42:19] Yeah, you never know. But she's also the woman who, her husband died, her kids all moved away, she had a granddaughter in town. The granddaughter came up and said, happy birthday, grandma. Oh, thanks for coming for my birthday.
Spent a great day today together.
And that night, the granddaughter's leaving the house, she says, well, I'll see you tomorrow, grandma.
She says, no, because I'll be dead tomorrow.
And she was, and it wasn't self-inflicted.

Haunted Happenings in Mount Carroll

[42:42] Hmm. Yeah. This town does seem to have more than it's, I come from New Orleans, towns seem to have more than it's fair share of spookiness.
I'm sitting here wondering when I go back and listen to the audio the recorder is picking up. You should have interviewed me young man, you couldn't hear my voice in your machine.
I was right behind you the whole time. I'm going to take your underwear and snap it for you.
Just joking. the whole time! I'm gonna take your underwear and snap it for you!
Just joking. But yeah, Mount Carroll definitely seems to have more than its share of haunted happenings and things, yeah.
Well, my parents, you know, grew up here and lived all their lives as did their parents as did their parents as did their parents.
Yeah. And, uh, yeah, there's a lot of goofy history or two, funny stuff and goofy stuff people did and said.
And yeah, there's several characters in town that everybody kind of knew how they were, you know?
I'm not saying they're insane, they're just kind of different, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

[43:43] And I don't know, I try to enjoy my life and every day I have because, you know, we don't get many days really, if you're thinking about it in those terms.
And I like to get something done every day and something and say, well, I did yesterday.
Oh, I'm looking around, I see that you got something done every day.
Yeah, I would say so.
Well, I've had some personally odd experiences in my life that I don't talk about entirely ever to anybody because most people just look at you and go, oh, really, no, no, no, no.
I wasn't on drugs, never done drugs, never drank, never smoked.
I have had a dozen concussions in football and diving board, but other than that, you know.
But none from haunting, interesting. No.

[44:25] That's where like 90% of my concussions come from. Oh really?
Falling boards, kids getting scared and running the wrong way.
Oh yeah, I've heard those stories. Yeah, you've been tackled a bit.
Yeah, I've been speared a few times.
Run right through me. Some of those kids are not, I mean, we're talking kids, we're talking like teenagers a lot of these times and some of them are not so little.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, some are pretty damn strong for their size too.
Especially when they're scared. Yeah.

[44:51] Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, I enjoy people's fearful reactions at the same time.
I try to, at the time, kind of try to make light of it so they're not too embarrassed and from their friends never come back again. Yeah.
You know? I told you, many more females have come to this house than males.
Yeah. Because if a boy screams, she's a girl. If a girl screams, she's a girl. You know? Yeah.
You know, there are parts of the tour where there's no clear way out.
I remember like a few rooms and I had absolutely no idea where we were.
Yeah. I was totally lost.

Exploring the House and Yard

[45:22] I know you do hide and seek and we'll talk about that in a minute.
I felt, I couldn't find myself. I don't know how hide and seek would work, is what I'm pointing out at.
Yeah, I have no idea where I was in relation to the outside of the house.
Well, your tour last night was longer than the average tour because you might never be able to come back here again, so you might as well get it now while I'm still alive.
But anyway, but at the same time, I don't do everything for every tour.
Yeah, obviously. And so they come back and I just pick and choose.
I don't know if I've done this before or not, but for them I do it.
And by the reaction, they can tell, oh, I didn't see that before, okay.
I have a thing in the kitchen that I have to do a little tinkering on, not the one I showed you, because that actually works. But it's a little thing I have to do a little tinkering on.
I used to scare the hell out of people. It hasn't worked for probably a year now.
It's just a minor inadjustment, you know, that's all it is. But yeah, and.

[46:16] I like to have options as far as where you go to the house and how it happens.
Yeah. Yeah. And the yard.

[46:26] Yeah. Yeah. And like I said, it's just everything in this house drips of how much work and love you put into it.
Or it's absolutely, like I said, I'm so blown away by your effort and by how much you've done.
And as someone that builds these types of things from time to time I know how much time it must have taken and I am thoroughly blown away.
Well I lose all sense of time doing that.
You said you used to keep track of your time. That's one of the things you said. Yeah.
Well one thing that helped me out the first couple years I had the house they had a Thursday night junk auction in Savannah just 10 miles away.
I'd be down at the pickup truck. I'm only going to spend 15 bucks tonight. I didn't spend 25 and I got that piece of furniture, those pieces of furniture, and antique dealers can't believe it, but they are standing right there, when I bid 250 for something, it should have been 50 or something, you know what I mean? And there you go.

[47:22] Yeah, that would have been great finds. I would have liked those.
Yeah, well the problem is, they used to sit right there.
I'd open the door and a few people would run in, they'd all sit in the same chair at the same time, and crash, it's an older city.
I'd like to have duplicated those in steel.
Yeah. I'll try and break it, you know?
Well, like the piece of steel in the backyard that doesn't want big special effects.
It's a 16 foot long piece of steel. It's only about five inches high, about, let's say, a half inch wide.
It's got holes in it that I didn't put there. I can't drill a hole in that piece of steel.
Because it's the front scrape edge off a bulldozer blade.
Yeah, I was given that. Just given it, here you go, can you use it?
Maybe, you know? Yeah.

[48:06] So it helps to have the reputation of the guy who could do this.
Well, my backyard maids, all those doors, those steel doors, there are two dumpsters in Savannah off the low income housing place.
Yeah. Two dumpsters.
So I rented a big pickup truck and a trailer I brought them right home for nothing. Wow.
I think most families like to have about 47 steel doors, wouldn't they?
Yes, they would. Yes, they would. Yeah, I can attest to that.
Right place at the right time. I don't know what it is, you know?
Of course, when I stopped working for my dad completely and started doing this full-time, I had more opportunities to come that way.
Right. Because I'd be here all the time working. Somebody would walk up, I'd talk to them, promote the place so they'd have something I could use or wanted to give me or, you know what I mean?
But I did have, no offense at the time, just the parking lot, and it went downhill, and there's my yard. I walk out in the morning, here's three old microwaves.
Okay, well, I got little micro switches that I can take, other than that, you know. Yeah. Yeah.
Sometimes you got stuff you didn't want, you know. Yeah. Well, yeah.
Well, one time, some guys had a dental supply place, had a whole warehouse full of old dental chairs.
They gave me one, I think, no, not a dental supply.
And here, you push the button, you can't hear a sound. It raises straight up in the air 18 inches.
Wow. three tons and found out late, it's an open oil reservoir.
There's no lid on the oil thing. You tip it, you got oil over the floor.
What the hell? Where'd that come from? Hmm, not so good.

[49:32] But I always wanted to go straight up in the air without making a sound.
You couldn't hear a thing.

[49:37] Quality of material, yes.

Discovering Dental Lights from a Prison

[49:41] Well, you know, how about dental warehouse? Remember the dental lights we picked up?
Yeah, those were the... The prison dental lights.
Yeah, my dad works at a prison and they were getting rid of some of those.
At least he tells you he works at a prison, never comes home.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
But yeah, he brought us some of the big dental lights. With the big weird hinges.
It like moved like this. Just look at the light, it would scare me.
Yeah, yeah, they're very bright.
The only problem is I think those lights, they don't make the bulbs anymore.
So once those pumps go out, we're screwed. Yeah.
Well, they have a big light for the prisoners, so if the prisoner starts to act up and cheers, take the big light and go, wham! He's out. Exactly. He's out. Pretty much.
Well, that's what they use instead of Novocaine. Okay. Okay.
Okay. Okay. I don't know. It works. Use the Chevy too, okay?
Maybe the Impala-ocaine.
Yeah. Yeah. No more Novocaine. This is the end of the video.
I hope you guys enjoyed it.
If you did, make sure to like, subscribe and leave a comment.
So what are some of your future plans for this place? Try to stay alive.
I will see you guys next time.

[50:46] That's my big future plan. I was in danger of losing that the other day, but now I pulled through so I couldn't swallow and couldn't eat and drink any water well.
It just went away. This seems like a place under constant evolution.
Yeah. Do you want to talk a little bit about the hide-and-seek since we mentioned it earlier?
Okay. When did that get started? How recent was that? And what the heck is it? Yeah.
Well, it is where the customers really want it to be. Sometimes they sit in this room and I tell them, you know, don't go out this door, you'll be in dog poop land.
And don't do this and don't do that. Don't walk in the attic where there's no floor.
And that's where the restroom is. And we just set them free.
If they want to go down the slide, that's fine. We have to operate that one slide of course.
And they actually carry their slide blanks to back up if they go down more than once, which doesn't always happen, but we try.
And the best hiding place in the adult hide-and-go-seek is up in Charlie's Tavern, because they never find you up there. Right next door.
Yeah, plug for Charlie's there. And I think connors like Charlie's Tavern because of all the taxidermy animals they have hanging on the wall. And the three giant bison.
And anyway, so, but you know, the hide-and-seek can be for little kids and a couple of adults, and it can be whatever.
And sometimes we wish we weren't doing that because you get a little rough in the house, you know.
Slimy, bangy, crashy sort of things and stuff.
But mostly it works out okay.

Intense Moments and Best Hiding Places in Hide-and-Seek

[52:13] Sometimes you hold your breath, if some groups come in, if they're gonna play agnostic, the house is violent, you know?
But it works out. The best agnostic was the agnostic we had October 31st at the end of the night for our employees.

[52:26] Because gym was it for the zombie tag agnostic.
And so I counted whatever it did and I started wandering around the house and I could hear voices on the side of the wall.
I knew by the time I ran around the wall, it'd be down the other way and they'd get away from me. Yeah.
So I finally ran, I finally thought, I'm just gonna run down this concrete underground tunnel and scream as loud as I can like a total maniac.
You know, flush somebody out. It did. It did. You know, I went out for Jeff all night.
He said to Jessica, I thought Jim was gonna kill us. He just, you know what, he's gonna kill us, it is.
Jeff's a big guy, you know what I mean? And I had the best hiding places because it's my house, obviously.
Yeah, obviously, yeah. Jessica threw out one hiding place.

[53:06] There's a big upside-down plastic tote inside. Yeah, it's been a few years, and I was in the tote.
The tote was about two inches off the ground, and my legs were dying.
I'm here, oh, please find me now. Please find me now. And there was Jessica and another person walking by.
Could he be inside that tote?
No. And I jump at him. And Jessica had a hiding place in the basement that nobody could find her.
And when Jeff would walk by, she'd say nasty things about Jeff.
She can't even find her. Ha ha ha ha!
Ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha! Yeah, that's fun.
Ha ha ha ha! But yeah, that's something you can rent a house for for a night and do that.
It's by the hour, right?
Yeah by the hour. By the hour, sorry. Yeah. Yeah, that sounds like a lot of fun.
And it was something I have not actually seen any other hall do.
No. No, they're big into escape rooms now. I have an inescapable room. Yes.
Yes you do. bars last night. In the hallway, it was lit up, yeah.

[54:04] Yeah, it was. And I actually built a chain and pipe ladder to get down there because this girl that used to work for me, wanted to be down there for October.
I got all built, and she said, I, nah, I changed my mind.
No. No. No. No.
Well. It's sort of like being in a grave, actually a hole in the ground, laying in the coffin for Halloween.
And next year, the JC and the lamp didn't do that. Why didn't they do it?
Got a tag of heaven dirt kicked in his face and people spitting on him.
Okay, I know why. Yeah. Because there's a drawback to anything you want to do it seems like, you know.

Exploring the Local Area and Family Connections

[54:37] Yeah.
Sometimes it's too much of a price to pay unfortunately.
That is very true. Oh yeah, I would tell you, for years I had my cars decorated and I'd drive around in Thank you. Thank you.
And that got a lot of people's attention. Those cars are very attention grabbing.
We took a couple photos of the one.
Especially the square. Yeah, of the square. We'll have to put those in the blog post whenever we post this. Yeah.
Yeah, they're very attentive. Right across the street from the hotel.
Yeah, that we were at. Right next to the sheriff's office too.
Yeah. So whether you go into jail or go into the hotel, you know where Raymond's brain is.
That's one thing, when other hunters talk online about security, I tell them, well, I dial my phone about 20 seconds later, the policeman's right here in the car.
350 feet or so from the policeman's office, you know? And we got the county and the city police here, so yeah.
Yeah, I noticed that on the way in. Yeah, and I do like that everything's within walking distance of you.

[55:33] If you wanted to stay here in town, you know? Yeah, you stay at the Glenview, you eat at Rita's and Charlie's, you drink at Charlie's. Bridgewater. Bridgewater, sorry.
Bridgewater, drink at Charlie's, eat at Rita's, also Charlie's.
There's also the place next door to Charles we haven't been to yet, Sam been open.
Seabirds. Seabirds, yep.
And then come here. It's like you can literally make a day, two days out of it and never get in your car.
When I first opened up, I've known a little while, a rock and roll band from Chicago we spent the night actually.
I was, I had like a haunted bed breakfast and they were sitting in Seabirds and had ordered a second round of drinks and the waitress brought the bill.
And the guy says, quick, quick, another round of drinks before the price goes up.
This must have been a special price.
Special congrats to Chicago, yeah. Yeah, we were happy with the prices.
And Charlie's happy. Yeah. A little too happy, maybe. Well, my great-grandfather, Ely, was a bartender in this house for seven, eight years of life 1880s.
Yeah, I didn't know that until just about six months ago. Yeah.
He had his full-time job. He had two mules, Joe and Jenny, wagging them down the street, hauling them from the railroad, down to town to merchants and that was about it.
But, yeah, so I do have a family connection with the house in that respect.

[56:52] Yeah. And I have people that told me their stories and they used to live in these apartments and, yeah.
Most of those people that tell their stories would not be capable of making up and telling the story either.
Yeah. And some people thought they do, but most people I know, I don't think they're doing that. Yeah.
So would you have any advice for someone who wanted to get something like this?
Not that there's anything like this, right? No, or ever will be again.
Well, you know, you hit the nail on the head and you said about the hours I spent here and the ambition I spent here.
Because the one reason I wanted to buy this house to start with, my one wife, who I have two children with, she didn't make any house payments on our house we used to live in for about eight months and didn't even tell me.
It wasn't her fault, because I was working with my dad full time and he didn't pay very well or very often.
So all of a sudden, we got no place to live. Where are we gonna live?
This house is for sale.
Well, if I can get the money, so I tried for about how many months to get the money.
If I got the money, I went back to our house and I walked in and I said, because she said, yeah, it's a good place to live.
She went to the daycare center and had the house in the basement.
I walked in and I said, I got the house today. And she just frowned and looked away and I thought, what's that mean?
All that meant she wasn't staying with me, she was down the road.

[58:13] But when I came home and her witchy mother was there and her friends all packing stuff on the table, I see the shoebox sitting there and it got my attention. We don't keep shoeboxes. What the hell is that shoebox?
I opened it up and there's a snake skin in the shoebox, a dried snake skin.
I said, Kathy, I found your mother's winter coat.

Family Life and Children

[58:33] And she went, grrr.
I'm gonna steal that one later. So I came down here with no wife and no kids.
Yeah. And I had four kids total.
And some of them, well one just graduated from high school that year and the other was the year behind him and then the two little boys.
Yeah. And that wasn't pleasant. I think that's about all the time we have.
So yeah, this is Ravensgren Inn.
And if you need to look it up, it's ... Okay, what was the website?
Haunted Raven's Grin. Haunted Raven's Grin.
I was going to get it wrong, that's why I turned to you.
And it's 411 North Carroll Street, Mount Carroll, Illinois.
You know what? You got to come at least once. That's what I'm saying.
This should be like a legal requirement in the industry, right?
You're not allowed to work in the haunted attraction industry if you don't come at least once. I mean, a new rule from my book.
Jim, thank you so much for spending the hour with us and regaling us with your stories.
It has been an amazing, amazing time.
Dear listeners, thank you very much for joining us. And next week we're doing the news.
So we will see you guys next time.