What The Ale?
47, Bobby Mackey's Music Word
ghosts, cryptids, murder, conspiracies, beer, what, the ale. Hello friends, hello hello, welcome back to What the Ale, I'm Elana Ray and I'm a J. And I just wanted to see, do you have any Lippie el moments to search Elma? Well, my Lippie el moment right now is that my beautiful puppy, Koko, had to get the big snip today and so he is out on the couch with the cone of shame and is like not happy with me but so very cute and he is coming down from the anesthesia and does not know what to do with himself but I feel very bad because he looks at me and like what did you do to me? Or baby, he will but it's very sad and of course the kids like when I walked in carrying him the kids were both like very sad and I'm like he's fine, this was normal but like yeah, he's just a big furry ball of like does not know what's going on, he doesn't know what to make of it all poor baby, he'll be okay, yeah, what about you anyone deal? Yeah, I think a good one for me is one of my best friends is visiting me and that's wonderful but we somehow picked a week where because of the hurricane it is raining like every day, oh no, we have some plans that we can still keep up and it won't be a thing and then we have other plans where it's like oof, like it's gonna rain the whole week, yeah, oh no. So you guys can get lots of cuddling, you know, chattering time lots of wine, oh yeah, we've been watching the Olympics non-stop so it's been good so I wonder, are you drinking anything special today? Yeah, I got a beer called the hund but I think it's like hound but with no o. So hound and it's from Ghosttown Brewing in Oakland West Oakland. So cool, nice, oh yeah, what about you? I am having a 617 from Hobo which is very common here in Boston but it is yummy, so yeah. Hey, very nice, well cheers, well I guess we can get into my story if you are all set. Well friends, I have been wanting to cover this one since the beginning and I kind of forgot about it and then remembered about it and now we're here and I'm going to do it. I wanted to cover the world's most haunted nightclub in America. Do you happen to know what it is? It's a haunted nightclub, is it that one in LA, I can't think what it's called, oh okay, and then I don't know. Bobby Mackie's music world, oh yes, of course, okay that makes sense, yeah, I was totally thinking, I don't even remember what the one in LA is called but yeah, Bobby Mackie makes sense. The one in LA is the Winter River Phoenix side, right, like that's like a broad galaxy or whatever it is, yeah, and then like Johnny Death ended for a bit and there was like a mom killing. That one's interesting, we should totally cover that play sometimes. Yeah, yeah, but yeah, Bobby Mackie definitely makes sense. So alright, well it has quite the history, so I'm going to cover a lot of the history and get into some of the ghosts. So the site was originally a slaughterhouse and then it closed down and was vacant for a while and what do you think lots of people do in vacant buildings? That happens in a vacant building. Well it depends what year it was, but like definitely speak easy vibe or yeah, making it like an underground kind of club scene. I mean that would be cool, but no, what they did in the abandoned slaughterhouse was a group of Satanic worshipers occupied the building and would talk to us animals there. That also makes sense. Yeah, and when it was still a slaughterhouse, there was like a well in the basement area where animal crockers would be dumped and so people kind of, you know, outside of that being part of the slaughterhouse, people leave like there was ritual sacrifices in that basement as well that were being conducted. Why couldn't they just do an underground club? That would be much more fun, you're not hurting anyone, like my idea is better. I agree, but unfortunately, we are not people who live in Kentucky, Ken, there we go. But so ever since that part of the building has been called the portal to hell, the blood was also used to drain the blood of virtue to animals toward the river. And so there is that, but there is actually a much darker history that has to go along with the well. So the slaughterhouse owner's daughter Pearl fell in love with a man named Scott Jackson, who was a dental student. She ended up getting pregnant, but since they weren't married, this was a huge problem, especially back in like the 50s. And so they decided the best thing for them to do was to have an abortion. And supposedly Scott was a part of the Satanic group. So the story goes that either on one hand, like the abortion was supposed to happen and something wrong. Or on the other hand, he was planning to use her as a ritual sacrifice. But whichever way it goes, they had initially tried to kill the fetus with cocaine, but then decided to use the dump tool equipment to carry out the abortion. Something went wrong. Well, I would say so, like untrained people using dental equipment in cocaine, that seems like a bad mix. You would think. Yeah. Yeah. But something went wrong. And Pearl ended up being decapitated. How do we go from abortion to she gets decapitated? That doesn't seem like something that accidentally happens. Well, so some people believe she died during the procedure and they did that to cover it up. And some people believe that they did this as part of like a ritual sacrifice. I guess we're not sure. Yeah. But she ended up being decapitated, some, I guess, based on evidence once they found her body, it was found that her head had been removed while she was still alive. So not great. Wow. But... Cornish was going there, you know, trusting that they were going to do an actual procedure that they agreed to and was necessary, you know, given the time or whatever, you know, and then to have them decapitate her, I mean, she went there trusting them. Yeah. No, totally. It's a little... It's a little marley. But so, like I said, her body had been found, but her head has never been found. And the way they identified her was based on the shoe she was wearing. So the men were convicted and found guilty and they were sentenced to death. So they're gone. And like I said, her head has never been found and a lot of people believe it was thrown down the well. So already just very dark history back in that case. So then in the 1920s, there was also a cafe built on the spot where the slaughterhouse was. There was like a legal gambling and bootlegging. There were several murders on the site. People are not sure what the true number is because bodies were believed to be moved somewhere else. And then in 1933, the cafe or kind of club situation was bought by EA Brady who turned it into a casino. So the mafia realized how successful the casino would be and they wanted to get involved, but Brady was like, "I don't want to sell you." And so the mafia were vandalizing the casino patrons were being beaten in the parking lot and knew that this would continue on if he didn't sell. So supposedly he sold the casino and then he took his own life in 1965. But you would think like patrons that were mistreated by the mob when he owned it wouldn't want to go back and support them once they did buy it. But I would be like, "I'm not supporting you after doing this that way." Yeah, that's how I would feel and react, but yeah, it's definitely crazy. But so the mob, like I said, bought the casino from him and they renamed it the Latin Quarter. The police kept a close watch on it and raided the place often, and the final raid ended with gambling tables and slot machines being removed. So it was no longer a gambling hall. So then a new owner came in and he had a daughter named Joanna and Joanna fell out of the performer named Robert Randall who was a performer in the club. And so she got pregnant, her father was not happy and her father's contacts ran Robert out of town and Joanna took poison and took her own life when she was five months pregnant. As a result, after this in the 70s, it was a hard-rock cafe due for a little bit, but it closed due to a fatal shooting in front of the bar. So then we get to the current owner, which was in 1978 when Bobby Mackie and his wife Janet bought the place. So that is the history to know, or, you know, to the current owner. But some of the common hauntings and things people know of are Carl Lawson, who was the bar's first employee. He was also the handyman and he lived in a small apartment above the club. And he experienced some weird stuff. He said that the jukebox would start playing when it was not plugged in and he claimed to see him a level and spirit behind the bar, not sure if it was like a creepy face or like something was throwing things he didn't really specify. He claimed that he had had a conversation with Joanna and that she often left the sense of roses behind. But a lot of people thought he was like crazy, like people were like this guy's making shit up and Bobby was like not thrilled with him telling those stories all the time. Like he was like, I don't want this happening in my business. But then Janet, so Bobby's wife, started having experiences. And people started to believe that maybe there was something going on. So one story goes that she was in the basement and she was grabbed around her waist by an unseen force. Some sources said that she had been lifted and thrown back and that she had been pushed in the direction of the stairs and then she heard a female voice screaming, "Get out." And the very direct, like we don't want you here, get out of here, we're going to push you around. Like it's very direct that they do not want her there. Totally. And something that I think is really poignant is like I said, so she heard a female voice and she was also pregnant at the time, like Pearl and Joanna were both pregnant at the time. She was like, she was hearing a female voice where they're trying to protect her from being hurt. But yeah, so nevertheless, she experienced that and people started to believe that maybe, you know, Carl wasn't too crazy. Another bartender named Roger Heath saw two handprints on Carl's back, almost like he was being embraced by a woman. Other employees often will see the headless woman or Pearl and people have a lot of strange experiences by the well. So Carl often would sprinkle holy water in it from time to time, which I don't know how you have to holy water, but I think that's funny that like you're freaked out enough that like you're going to sprinkle holy water. You know, I am not Catholic, but you know, if I thought there was some bad juju, I would probably do whatever I could, you know, I would, you know, sage and smudge it and all the things, but yeah, I can see grabbing some holy water at the local church. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's not a cleanse however you can totally and people actually think the holy water would anger the spirits. They said things would fly off shelves in the cloud lights would turn on and off. And there were a lot of employees who were physically attacked. And then one of the employees of Bobby Mackey's in 1994 supposedly became possessed. And so they performed an exorcism in the kitchen of the bar. And ever since then, obviously there's been bad energy and not great things, but they also think like that's linked to like the portal to hell situation and the Satan worship and all of that. Was it like an actual exorcism like with the Catholic church and all of that or did they just do their own ritual? I think it was like an unofficial or exorcism like I don't know if they got permission from the Vatican and all that, but I think they had like attempted to do something and maybe it didn't work. And people were saying that they would see or after this customers would be pushed and employees were being scratched until they bled. So not just like the normal like three welts, but like scratches, which is no fun. I would not enjoy that very much. No, but honestly ever since then, like there hasn't been a ton of hauntings that have been reported that are like really different or scary. People often report being caressed by unseen hands or that they get poked in the side. They did say that they think that the ghosts have very particular music taste, which I think is fun. Okay. So if a band well, they didn't say what type they like, but they said that if a band that they don't like performs, they will start throwing items again to scare them from the stage, which I think is funny. Can you imagine doing all this work to get to perform at this bar and then you like some fucking ghost just like throws a bottle of beer that you get the gig and you're worried about the patrons and will the patrons like you or will the bar owner like you and want to invite you back? You don't usually have to think about will the ghost want you back? Yeah. Yeah. So that's definitely strange. And to this day, they actually do embrace like the haunted history of the bar. There's a sign that is over the bar that says something to the effect of, you know, this establishment is haunted, like enter at your own risk, like that, which to me, I'm like that's not places haunted, but they have to have a sign to warn you. Yeah. One, I mean, because there were multiple deaths, it makes sense there would be energy there. Totally. And so I will say this place has been investigated by many, many people, including Zafigans and the ghost of ventures crew. He actually, it was the first episode of Ghost Adventures, I believe, is when they investigated it the first time. So like, this was back when they still got scared of everything. I don't know. And that's like kind of unnatural. See them get scared. Yeah. So I recommend watching that. And then the best feeling of all the guys also did investigate there and Shane was being an absolute loon and like, you know, trying to get the demon to possess him and all the things because he's a lunatic, but, you know, it was definitely fun to watch. So if you all want to like see kind of what they experienced, they didn't get anything too crazy, but they did have some like gearbox sessions and things. So, yeah, but outside of that, the bar actually is unfortunately, unfortunately, movie and being completely renovated. And so it sounds like they're rebuilding the whole thing. Really? So what are they going to do with the well? So apparently they're leaving the well. So they're leaving the basement intact and then the upper part is going to be rebuilt. So I don't know if that will change the energy. If we'll see more hunting, you know, any of that, but they might need to search that well and see if home girls heads down there, like, I know, I would be so sad. Yeah, I think we would do that right now, but we have done that, but yeah, but that'll be interesting once it's already done to see if it's a different energy or not. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, this is Kentucky and Kentucky. Yeah, it's like right near like the Kentucky, Ohio border, like pretty, pretty close to there. Yeah. But yeah, so if y'all ever want to check them out, they're supposed to, they're, they have like a temporary location that's still Bobby Mackeys, but it's like at a different bar and they're apparently going to go back to the original site in the next few months. Yeah, that is my little dive in the Bobby Mackeys. Very cool. Yeah. I totally would want to go there, but I'm just thinking, when will I ever be in Kentucky? I don't know when I don't have any plans to go to Kentucky. I don't know when I'd ever be there, but it does sound like the whole spot. I know. I feel like I have to like do it intentionally. Like I have to be like, I'm going to know Ohio for something or I'm going to whatever. Yeah. Well, maybe next time we go to Ohio, I'm going to see your point. We'll do that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love the Cedar Point Day sundown, but yeah, anyway, that's Bobby Mackeys. All right. Well, friends, thanks for listening. We hope you are all having a good week. If you want to follow us on Instagram, you can do that at @theopod. You can send us an email with story ideas at www.theopod@gmail.com. We have a Patreon you can follow that has bonus episodes. So if you go to Patreon and search what the old podcast, we will pop up and outside of that. I just want to say I appreciate you, Mama. I appreciate you. And we appreciate you, friends. Bye. Bye. [BLANK_AUDIO]