A basement fire, a desperate escape, and a suitcase full of contradictions turned the Hotel Congress into one of the Southwest’s most enduring ghost stories. We head to downtown Tucson to unravel how a 1918 rail-side hotel became ground zero for Dillinger’s capture and a century of spectral lore, then walk room by room through the encounters that keep investigators coming back.

We start with the history: Congress Street’s expansion, the Southern Pacific station, and the 1934 blaze that raced upward to the gang’s hideout. From there, we sift through the strangest details in the recovered luggage—Tommy guns, body armor, cash, gold coins, and whispers of a glass eyeball and a skeletal hand—and how those artifacts shaped decades of first-hand claims from staff and guests. The building’s restoration, landmark status, and still-working switchboard frame a space where time hasn’t fully moved on.

Then we dig into the hauntings with care. Room 242 carries the weight of a life cut short, with reports of a woman in white who sits at the bed or curls close in quiet grief. Room 220 is lighter, marked by a World War II veteran’s routine and the playful reappearance of butter knives left in impossible places. Room 214 hosts a dapper figure in seersucker and hat, often seen at the window of an unrented room, while 212 delivers pure anxiety: locks clicking, doors opening, and a ghostly “apprentice” practicing the craft of intrusion. Under the sidewalks, sealed tunnels with old glass lenses echo a harsher past—Chinese labor routes, smugglers, and disappearances—that anchor the hotel’s stories in Tucson’s wider underground.

If you love haunted hotels, true crime legends, and the way residual energy loops through old routines, this tour of the Hotel Congress is your next deep dive. We share what to watch for, how to plan a multi-room investigation, and where to extend your trip—Tombstone, Bisbee, and beyond—for a full Southern Arizona paranormal circuit. Subscribe, share with a fellow ghost nerd, and leave a review telling us which room you’d dare to spend the night in.

We apologize for the echo and technical difficulties.

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The quiet streets of Baraboo hide a thundering past. We head straight into Circus City’s living history—where the Ringling Brothers built their empire—and follow a single case that starts with an old house, a fallen barn, and a family desperate for sleep, then spirals into one of the strangest hauntings we’ve explored. When sledgehammer blows rattle the walls, a window bursts without warning, and a goldfish bowl hits the floor with no water and no fish, a no-nonsense police chief and three deputies step in. What they witness—clean snow, no footprints, and a Buick sedan dragged uphill with its wheels locked—turns a simple vandalism call into a mystery of weight, force, and a presence that refuses to be seen.

We connect the dots the way a good investigator would: biography, materials, and place. Rose Holliday’s late husband trained elephants for the circus. The house on 8th Street? Built from reclaimed lumber taken from a Ringling elephant-training barn that once held 24 giants. Suddenly the reports make a different kind of sense. The “dog-shaped” shadow children feared, the barn collapse, the house-quaking booms—these aren’t parlor tricks. They feel like boundaries enforced by something that knows its size and space. Whether you land on intelligent haunting, place memory, or an extraordinary string of coincidences, the story forces a new respect for how history embeds in wood, earth, and routine.

Along the way, we revisit how the Ringling Brothers rose from a one-ring show to a national force, how circus territory agreements shaped entertainment, and why Baraboo’s winter quarters mattered. We consider the ethics of spectacle, the emotional residue of training, and what happens when you build a home from timbers that learned the rhythms of command, fear, and applause. The result is part ghost story, part cultural archaeology, and entirely unforgettable.

If this kind of deep-dive haunt keeps you curious, tap follow, share the episode with a friend who loves strange history, and leave a review with your best theory—intelligent haunting, residual echo, or something wilder?

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Thank you for listening to the Paranormal Peeps Podcast. Check us out on Facebook Paranormal Peeps Podcast or Coldspot Paranormal Research and on Instagram coldspot_paranormal_research

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A modest council house on Green Street shouldn’t turn into a stage for flying toys, hot marbles, and a chair that slides on command—but that’s where our night begins. We pull apart the Enfield Haunting with a clear lens: not just what was claimed, but who saw what, when, and how the story held together across months of pressure, fatigue, and scrutiny. From neighbors who fled next door, to a police constable who watched a chair move, to a photographer who took a Lego to the eyebrow, the details pile up—and so do the questions.

We walk through the turning points: the Society for Psychical Research arriving with Maurice Grosse and later Guy Playfair; strange interference that kills video yet allows photos; knocks that track movement; marbles that land hot and refuse to bounce; a child at the center of the storm. Then the voice arrives—deep, gravelly, and eerily specific—identifying itself as “Bill,” later matching a former occupant’s death. Doctors argue false vocal folds; tests with taped lips and water complicate the easy answers. Some moments can be staged; the girls admit the pressure to perform. But other moments—curtains twisting like hands, stones manifesting in the garden, the medium’s cleanse coinciding with a slow fade—refuse to be filed away as tricks.

Rather than force a verdict, we explore three frames: a human spirit with unusual ability, a layered haunting where something non-human rides the chaos, and a psychosocial amplifier centered around a bright, stressed child on the edge of puberty. The label “poltergeist” starts to feel less like a species and more like a weather pattern: conditions where a house becomes conductive, technology misbehaves, and people of all stripes witness things they can’t quickly explain.

If you enjoy careful, grounded storytelling about the paranormal—sourced, skeptical, and still open to wonder—this one’s for you. Hit follow, share with a friend, and tell us: which single detail would make you a believer?

Thank you for listening to the Paranormal Peeps Podcast. Check us out on Facebook Paranormal Peeps Podcast or Coldspot Paranormal Research and on Instagram coldspot_paranormal_research

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