Haunted Michigan, Episode 6: Steve Shippy Talks "Michigan Hell House"
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00Haunted Michigan Terrifying Tales.
00:05In this installment of Haunted Michigan, we head up to Mid-Michigan, to Dice Road.
00:10That's where Michigan's Hell House is located.
00:13If you haven't heard about this thing yet, wait until you hear about it from Steve Shippey.
00:17Travel Channel is going to show a two-hour special on Michigan's Hell House.
00:21It's coming Sunday night at 9 o'clock.
00:23But enough of me talking about it.
00:25Here's Steve Shippey to tell you all about it on this episode of Haunted Michigan.
00:30Steve, thanks so much for joining me. How are you, man?
00:32Good. How are you doing?
00:33I'm doing well. The guys from Twisted say hello.
00:36Oh, yeah. Yeah, man. I love those guys.
00:39Yeah. So before we get into Hell House, you did some touring with those guys?
00:43Oh, yeah. Many, many times I've toured with those guys on and off for about 10, 15 years, I would say.
00:50Yeah. Where does your music career stand right now?
00:54Kind of right now it's on hold. You know, I'm kind of putting my focus on to doing this a little bit more so.
01:01I mean, you know, for the longest time I was doing both and then sometimes one would kind of take precedence over the other and then it kind of recycles.
01:08Definitely not done with it. You know, never say never. I definitely have to continue forward with that at some point.
01:15Now, how long have you been doing the paranormal thing?
01:18Well, as far as filming it, you know, professionally in that sense for about 17 years, but prior to that for about 25.
01:28OK, now I've I've watched I haven't seen the show that's going to air this coming this coming weekend on Travel Channel, but I have seen other episodes that you've done on this particular house.
01:38And even the guys from Detroit Paranormal Expeditions told me this house is like really out there, isn't it?
01:44It really is. This whole case is unlike any other case I've ever heard of.
01:49I mean, it's it's it's amazing to me that it just happens to be in my backyard.
01:53But I often refer to this case as the greatest paranormal story in history that you've never heard of.
02:00It's the most prolific haunting I've ever come across in any of the research I've done.
02:04And, you know, that's a bold statement to make. So I don't say that lightly, but there are several factors, I guess, that we could kind of go into on why that is.
02:12Yeah, I was going to ask you, where does this rank as far as your paranormal investigations?
02:16But you're saying it's right there at the top, huh? Definitely.
02:19Hands down. Yeah.
02:20I've watched some of the other shows that you that you've done.
02:23I watched them over the weekend and it's the footage that you guys get is unbelievable.
02:30Well, you know, I think one of the main things that attribute to that is, you know, we spend, you know, weeks, sometimes even months investigating a place, you know, so it's compiling all of that information and all of that footage, you know, for several months, fine tune into a 70 or 80 minute presentation.
02:49Yeah. Now, what makes this house right up there for somebody that's never watched anything about the hell house? First of all, tell us exactly where it is.
02:57Sure. It's in the small town villages as it's referred to of Merrill, Michigan, which is kind of right in the center of the state.
03:05Yeah. Is it in the thumb or it's in the center?
03:08It's in the center. It's only it's about 15 or maybe 20 miles from Saginaw. So I'll do the classic Michigan thing here and say it's right about there.
03:16Okay. All right. So is it by Midland?
03:18Oh, yes, it is.
03:19Okay. All right. So what tell for people that haven't watched any of what you would what this hell house is all about?
03:26What makes this house so unique and so energized?
03:30Well, what makes it unique is, I mean, first of all, there's so many bizarre facets to it. You know, when this case first began, it was in 1974.
03:39The family had built the house in 1951, lived there all that time. Nothing ever happened. No incidents, nothing tragic ever took place in the home. Nothing at all.
03:50Very peaceful farming community and farmers that live there.
03:54This all ends abruptly one night when the family had just kind of gotten to sleep and they hear the smashing sound of glass.
04:01They get up and see that their front picture window in the home was smashed out.
04:06Right away, they kind of thought, okay, it's got to be some vandals, maybe some teenagers are looking for a rock or something of that nature.
04:12They call the police, the police come, they take a report, seeming to be the end of the story.
04:16However, the next day, they start experiencing hounding on the side of their house, all around the house.
04:22And at some point it sounded like multiple people doing it in tandem.
04:25And the police come out again, they investigate, they look around the property, they don't find any footprints, anything of that nature, but they can see indentation on the aluminum siding.
04:35So they make a report. Every single day for a year, the police are called to that home, sometimes as many times as 15 times per night for things that were taking place.
04:46And, you know, a broken window and pounding and knocking is mild in comparison to how this escalated.
04:53What is, I mean, tell us some of the stuff that you yourself have experienced while you've been there.
04:59Well, while I've been in the home, we've experienced cold spots, so we've seen shadowy figures, we've seen objects move on their own, we hear a lot of disembodied voices.
05:10Sometimes it almost feels like the house kind of, I don't know, for lack of a better word, kind of vibrates, you know, you feel reverberation in the entire home, in the floor, you get a very dreadful sensation when you're there.
05:23Some people have experienced really loud ringing in their ears, kind of a sense of being watched at all times.
05:31Some people in the crew were actually feeling nauseous at different times throughout the house.
05:36So it kind of really spans a gamut of sensations and visuals.
05:41And is there a family living there now?
05:43There is, yeah.
05:44The family that lives there now actually bought it from the family, the original family, 40-some years ago.
05:50Hmm.
05:51And when you buy it, do you have to disclose that there may be a demon living there?
05:55You know, I hear different, you know, information on that.
05:59Some people say you have to disclose that there's a haunting.
06:01Some people say you don't.
06:02This house has only been on the market one time for a very small amount of time, and this family bought it.
06:08So up until now, there's only been two occupants of this house.
06:11Now, does the family just, I guess, just kind of get used to it?
06:15Well, the family that lives there now, they experience a lot of different things, but they're mild, I guess you could say.
06:22Certainly mild as compared to the previous owners.
06:25You know, it's more like they'll see a shadowy figure.
06:28They'll see an apparition in the window kind of peering in.
06:31They'll see flashes of lights.
06:33The objects will come up missing in the home.
06:35Stuff like that.
06:36It seemed to be that what was happening then that was so destructive and chaotic was more targeting that original family.
06:43And perhaps these are more of the after effects of that haunting, if that makes sense.
06:48Yeah.
06:49Now, the specials I saw you do on this, the ones I watched are from like 2015 or 2016 or something.
06:56How many times have you investigated this house or how many times have you been there?
06:59I don't know for three or four kind of full investigations.
07:04So, I mean, I've been investigating there going on about eight years, which is a lot of time.
07:10Yeah. Now, I saw in the promo for the show, which is, by the way, on Travel Channel this coming Sunday night at 9 p.m.
07:17Two hours, correct?
07:18Yeah, it's a two hour special.
07:20So I saw the promo.
07:21It says it alluded to the fact that some of the town folk or some of the police officers or whatever are talking for the first time.
07:28Is that right? I know that in past episodes I've seen some of the cops come out that are retired and what have you.
07:33Is there people talking for the first time about this house?
07:36Yeah, there are some people that are coming forward that, you know, we've got a chance to talk to for the first time.
07:41And something that's really amazing to me that was kind of the catalyst, I guess, in a sense, well, not the original catalyst to reopen the case,
07:50one of the main impactful things were, you know, the first time I took that deep dive into the case,
07:55we kept hearing from the individuals that came out to study the phenomenon from Duke University that there were recordings, multiple recordings,
08:03you know, of the pounding, audio running when the fires took place, because this team of professors,
08:09they would have audio reel to reel at the time placed throughout the house, always running, capturing anything that may happen.
08:16And interviews with the family members, interviews with the police officers.
08:21And we kept thinking, my God, if we could only track down that audio.
08:26But for years and years, we couldn't find it. It was thought to be lost. We don't know.
08:31Long story short, we located this treasure trove of audio from the 1970s.
08:39And we could actually now listen to everything that was being said, what the family was saying, what the officers were saying, what the neighbors were saying.
08:47We could hear the pounding. We could hear the explosions.
08:50We could even hear the moments that the fires happened in the house.
08:53We could hear the family's reaction upon discovering them, even the police trucks approaching and busting in the house and spraying it down.
09:01Luckily, these recorders weren't damaged. So we can hear all of this and kind of really put together some missing pieces of the I don't want to say too much, but it was a lot of information for us.
09:14Now, I've heard of other houses like this, like, for example, like, you know, obviously Amityville and whatnot, but I like the Sally house and stuff.
09:22Have you been to any of these other places? Yeah, sure have. I've investigated the Sally house.
09:27We featured that on an episode of Haunting in the Heartland, which is a series that I have with the Travel Channel.
09:33You know, it's on Discovery Plus. But yeah, I've been to the Sally house.
09:36You brought up Amityville. It's interesting. One of the professors that came to the Hell House originally in the 70s, he also did some work on the Amityville case as well.
09:47Yeah. I mean, these houses, what do you think attracts, you know, this spirit or this energy to specific places like this? You have any ideas?
09:57Well, you know, I think it all depends on the individual case for the Michigan Hell House specifically.
10:03It's it's kind of split as far as the people that, you know, have been investigating for years.
10:08Law enforcement brought in again, you know, this this team from Duke University.
10:12They deemed it to be a poltergeist. Now, the family that lived in the house and I would say the overwhelming amount of people in the community thought it was the work of dark arts and witchcraft and things of that nature, targeting that family through a grievance of somebody in the area.
10:28Right. There was a neighbor, if I recall, that was a witch. Yes. Back in the day. Right.
10:34Yeah. She referred to herself. She introduced herself as an ordained witch is what she said she was.
10:39And is she still around or what happened to her? You know, I definitely know we're kind of holding back that right now, but more will come.
10:48OK, I got you. So this is this coming Sunday at nine o'clock.
10:53Do do people do do people like, you know, not so much investigators like yourself, but just normal everyday fans of the paranormal.
11:02Do they swing by this house? A lot of people will drive by, you know, the house and kind of snap a picture.
11:09You know, we always kind of urge people to obviously not trespass or go there. The family's not interested in people investigating or or coming onto their property.
11:18So luckily, the vast majority of people have been pretty respectful.
11:21But, you know, people will certainly drive by and it's right at a four way stop.
11:25So they'll kind of snap some pictures and and kind of freak out.
11:29Sometimes they'll actually see things in the window and send us photos or whatnot. But, yeah.
11:33Yeah, I saw some pretty crazy spirit box interaction with you on the promo.
11:38And one thing that struck me, too, when I was watching the previous shows that you've done before is some of the outside footage was pretty amazing, too.
11:46It is. Yeah. You know, Dice Road is where, you know, the home is located.
11:50Dice Road itself is just a plethora of activity.
11:54I mean, there's so many locations along that Dice Road corridor that people claim to have experiences.
12:00And this goes back 60, 70 years.
12:03You know, I mean, there's people that will contact me that they are in their 50s, some of them in their 60s.
12:09And they talk about experiences that they've had when they were teenagers at multiple different locations.
12:14It's very interesting how much folklore and how many sightings still happened in that whole region.
12:21But none as impactful as this, certainly the Hell House. Yeah.
12:26Yeah. I just mentioned the spirit box. You get some pretty good interaction, don't you?
12:30Yeah, definitely. That device in particular is very much like a spirit box.
12:34It's called the GeoPort. OK.
12:36It was invented by a man named George Brown.
12:38So we we get a lot of great evidence with that with that device.
12:42Yeah. Everyone can see in the promo that you mentioned something about a demon or something.
12:47Yes. Yeah. We were getting a lot of really nasty things coming from that device.
12:52A lot of things we didn't show, but a lot of things referencing that type of energy.
12:58Yeah. Well, it's it's super interesting.
13:01Would you say that in your experiences and your travels that this is like, I don't know, maybe one of the most haunted places in Michigan?
13:08Yeah, I would certainly say that. And it's definitely to me the most prolific case.
13:13I truly believe in paranormal history. You know, I mean, yeah, sure.
13:17There wasn't a brutal murder or murders that took place there.
13:21But when you're talking about a thousand police reports, when you're talking about multiple law enforcement agencies going all the way to the state police and then even high ranking detectives of the state police,
13:32when you're talking about a paranormal case that had stakeouts and polygraphs and, you know, again, it's so much to even say.
13:41But I mean, what kind of case have you ever heard of that would involve something like that or even the FAA coming out, which, you know, you'll have to kind of know the whole story to hear why that is.
13:51The power company, the gas company, lighting companies, seismographs, geologists came out there.
13:58Could there be a natural explanation for these explosions?
14:01I mean, everything that could possibly be explored to explain this was explored.
14:07And in the end, they had to basically in writing, come out and say, we don't know what's happening.
14:13We have no idea what's happening. I remember the one show I was watching on this that that you had before the woman was standing, I believe, in a bathroom and she felt like there was people screaming coming up to the floor.
14:25Yes. You guys you guys were on. There's a crawl space or something right now, ain't there, Michigan?
14:29Yeah, right underneath the house. Yeah. Yeah.
14:31So that was kind of a nut. So.
14:33Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's it's it's almost like the Bermuda Triangle of activity.
14:38I mean, it's it's hard to explain what it's like being there, but it takes a toll on everybody in many different ways.
14:46You know, it's very extreme. Well, thanks for the time Sunday at nine o'clock on the Travel Channel.
14:52What else you got coming up this year? Can you talk about anything else?
14:55Are you going to be at any any conventions, any expos, anything like that?
14:59You know, actually, I don't even really do any of those. I just we do our own events here in Saginaw.
15:03We do a big film premiere at the Temple Theater in Saginaw every year.
15:07And we've been doing that for about 11 years now.
15:10So the next film I'm putting out independently is a haunting on Brockway Street to people have been waiting quite a while for the follow up investigation to that.
15:19So that'll be coming out. And I also have a new project with the network.
15:24I can't really go into that yet. But, you know, certainly when I do, I'd love to come back and and talk with you about all things spooky.
15:31Yeah. Hey, dude, I'm ready, man. I'm ready for it. So, Steve, thanks so much for your time.
15:36Really appreciate it. Can't wait to watch this show Sunday night at nine on the Travel Channel.
15:40And like I said, it was riveting watching the other episodes.
15:44I could hardly wait to see what this one's all about.
15:46Yeah. For anyone that's seen, you know, what's good is that people haven't seen my previous investigation there.
15:52We really go into that as well.
15:54So it's not something that they necessarily have to do, per se.
15:58But it's a really good thing to get the full perspective and then see the continuation and what we've uncovered since then.
16:04You know, I got you. I'm looking forward to seeing it.
16:07So thanks again. Next time we're down in Detroit, I'll look me up.
16:10OK, yeah, absolutely. Thank you.
16:12Once again, a big thank you to Steve Shippey for telling us all about Michigan's Hell House.
16:18I can hardly wait to watch this Sunday night at nine o'clock on Travel Channel.
16:22And a big thank you to you for watching Haunted Michigan.