EP. 21 IOWA - Gitchie Manitou: The Most Haunted Crime Scene In America
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He's the most terrifying serial killer you've never heard of. Haddon Clark has confessed to several murders, but investigators say he could have over 100 victims. At the center of the mayhem, a cellmate of Haddon's that was able to get key evidence into Haddon's murder spree across America,

because hadn't thought he was Jesus Christ. Born Evil, the Serial Killer and the Savior, an ID true crime event. Premieres Monday, September 2nd at 9. Watch on ID or stream on Max. Set your DVR. Warning, the following podcast is not suitable for all audiences. We go into great detail with every case that we cover and do our best to bring viewers even deeper into the stories by utilizing disturbing audio and sound effects. Trigger warnings from the stories we cover may include violence, rape,

murder, and offenses against children. This podcast is not for everyone. You have been warned. Have you ever gone camping? The kind of camping where you're deep in the woods on a cold fall night. You and your favorite people are bundled in blankets, gathered around a campfire. Someone's playing the guitar, you're singing old folk songs, and maybe you're having a few drinks.

In the pitch black of night, all you can see are the people in front of you and what the campfire's light can reach. Beyond that is the darkness of the forest that surrounds you. We all take a risk when camping, knowing that there's darkness beyond what our eyes can see. But the chances of that darkness entering the light of your campfire is usually pretty low. So we take that risk. We continue to camp, to laugh, to sing our songs, and enjoy our night.

But occasionally, that darkness does enter the campsite. And in our case, it's holding a loaded shotgun. This murder story is brutal. It has no explanation. And these murders left a permanent mark. This is the story of the Gitche Manitou murders. And you're listening to Murder in America. ♪♪

Our story starts in Lyon County, Iowa, in the very northwestern corner of the state. The location is actually just a 15-minute drive from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where I grew up.

Everyone involved in this case, both the victims and the perpetrators, were also from Sioux Falls. I grew up hearing this story and visiting this location, so this case means a lot to me, and it really impacted my hometown. Sioux Falls isn't a very big city, and there are still less than 200,000 people that live there, and less than a million in the entire state of South Dakota. If you drive east out of Sioux Falls for about 10 minutes, you'll soon cross the Iowa border. And before you know it, you're surrounded by green fields for as far as the eye can see.

And as you drive through the fields on the tiny small town roads, you'll come across an unassuming gravel parking lot to your right. The entrance to the Gitche Manitou State Preserve. Back in the early 70s, the Gitche Manitou State Preserve was a great place to go hang out with your friends. It was secluded. It had plenty of woods to go wandering through, a huge river running through it for swimming and a lot of places to set up a campsite. It even has an old abandoned post office deep on the property.

An eerie building where you could go for some sort of thrill. The preserve nowadays seems fun and harmless, but its history is a lot darker than one would imagine. The land itself is actually an ancient indigenous burial ground, and the name Gitche Manitou translates to "great spirit," originating from the Anishinaabe tribe. The preserve has a dark history.

No one knows how many indigenous people are buried on its 91 acres, but what we do know is that these lands were sacred to the people that once gathered there in the thousands and lived in the area. Tales of indigenous spirits haunting the preserve make for spooky campfire stories. Stories that I often heard growing up. Stories that many people in the area heard while they were growing up, which made Gitche Manitou the perfect place for a night of camping back in the 1970s.

However, the five teenagers that went out camping at Gitche Manitou on that fateful night in 1973 had no idea that they themselves were doomed to become the Preserve's next gruesome ghost story.

On November 18th, 1973, a couple decided to take a drive through the preserve. It was a Sunday, just before the holidays, and the drive through Gitche Manitou was beautiful, perfect for a nice Sunday afternoon. And as the two are slowly driving, enjoying their time together, one of them sees something lying in the grass up ahead. They drive up a little further, put the car in park, and

and the two step out so they could get a better look at what's up ahead. As they step closer, they notice three men lying in the tall grass, covered in blood and clearly dead.

The police arrive on scene and quickly determine that the victims are all teenage boys. They also observe large gunshot wounds in some of their backs, head, chest, and hands. Judging by how big the wounds were, officers could tell that the victims had been shot with a shotgun at close range. As they're processing the crime scene, investigators find a campfire, one that the group had been using right before their deaths. And just beyond the campfire, investigators find a fourth body.

This male victim, too, had been shot with a shotgun at close range. They take the bodies to the medical examiner and are later able to identify the victims as Mike Hadrath, a 15-year-old boy, Roger Essam, who was 17, and two brothers, Stuart Beatty, who was 17, and Dana Beatty, who was 14. All four of the boys were residents of Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

and they had all been found murdered in the Gitche Manitou State Preserve. Their families were quickly notified about their deaths, and they were absolutely devastated. Mike Hadrath's brother later said this. They were all just teenagers, just out to, you know, spend an evening together, playing music, and, you know, what a way to, you know, unexpected. It was a tragedy.

for all families that were involved. And it just didn't make sense to anyone. They were all young, good kids who never got into any trouble.

They didn't have enemies, so who would have murdered them? The families told investigators that the boys took Stewart's blue van out to get you manna to that day. But the van wasn't in the parking lot when investigators arrived on scene. So they put an all points bulletin out, hoping that if they were able to find the van, they would be able to find their perpetrators. And I say perpetrators plural, because as the medical examiner looked at the victim's bodies,

They noticed that the boys had been shot with different gauge shotguns. On the bodies, there was a 12 gauge shotgun wound,

a 16-gauge wound, and a 20-gauge wound, which led investigators to believe that there was most likely three people involved in this horrendous crime. But this information wasn't much help to investigators at the time. The families had no clue as to who would have done this, and there wasn't much evidence at the scene that pointed towards anyone in particular, and authorities were starting to get frustrated. Four dead teenagers and no leads in the investigation

That was until law enforcement received a call from the Sioux Falls Police Department.

And what they tell them blows the case wide open. The officer at the Sioux Falls Police Department tells investigators about what had just happened. A young girl had just walked through the front doors of their police station. She nervously walked up to the counter and identified herself as 13-year-old Sandra Chesky. She goes on to tell the officer that she had been at Gitche Manitou on Saturday night with her friends.

But while they were all hanging out, three men came out of nowhere, identified themselves as police officers, and separated her from her friends. Sandra had no idea that her friends had been murdered. She assumed that they had been arrested by the so-called police officers that night. The next morning when she tried to call Roger, one of the murder victims, he didn't answer.

And that's why she decided to go into the police station, to try and locate her friends. Investigators knew that Sandra would be the one to help them solve their case. But first, they had to tell her the terrible news.

Her friends were dead. Sandra was absolutely devastated after learning about the murder of her friends, especially because one of the victims, Roger Essam, was Sandra's boyfriend at the time. About a month before the murders, Sandra and Roger had met at the Starlight Drive-In, a local staple, and the two had instantly fallen in love. And now she was finding out that her first love had been murdered.

Investigators ask Sandra to walk them through exactly what happened that night. And she goes on to say this: It was Saturday, November 17th, 1973, and Sandra gets a call from her boyfriend, Roger. He tells her that he, Mike, Stuart, and Dana really wanted to head out to Gitche Manitou that night to camp, and he wants to know if Sandra can come with them. She agrees, and later that night at around 10:30 p.m., they all arrive at the preserve in Stuart's van.

They brought with them a guitar, their camping gear, and a little bit of weed. The group was in good spirits and they were ready to have a fun night. Sandra said that they had started the campfire. They were singing songs, passing the joint around, and that she and Roger were cozied up next to each other by the fire. All was well in the world. The group had only been there about 30 minutes at this point, but they planned to stay up well into the night. That was until...

They started to hear noises emanating from the dark forest that surrounded them. The sound of the guitar was interrupted by something creeping towards them. They all paused, listened closely, and what they heard shook them to their core. It was the sound of twigs snapping beneath someone's feet.

inching closer and closer to their campsite. And whoever was out there could see them, but all that the group could see was the darkness of the forest. - Roger yells out, "Hello? Who's there? Is there anyone out there?" But he's met with deafening silence. He then looks at Sandra, gives her a kiss, and says, "I'll be right back." Roger starts to walk towards the woods when all of a sudden, a loud shotgun blast rings through the forest.

I'm shot!

The next thing she knows, three men appear from out of the forest. There was a heavyset man, a shorter man, and a tall and slender man, and all three are holding shotguns. The tall, skinny man, who the two other men referred to as the boss, yelled out to the teenagers, Put your hands up! You're being busted! The men told the teens that they were narcotics officers and that they had seen them smoking a joint and were there to bust them.

The teens were confused. The men had no uniforms, no badges, and they had just shot two of their friends. Is this what narcotics officers do when they see teens smoking weed? Regardless of their confusion, Sandra was young and truly believed that these men were police officers. Mike, on the other hand, wasn't as easily convinced.

He stood up and asked the men, "What the hell do you think you're doing?" One of the men then points his gun right at Mike. Mike extends his arm out in front of his face trying to protect himself against the shotgun blast. Mike looks down at his mangled hand that the men had just shot a hole through.

and he screams out in pain. The men then instructed the teens to start walking up the trail. Roger and Stuart were still on the ground after being shot, so they stayed by the campfire while Mike, Dana, and Sandra started walking away with the so-called officers. The six of them walk all the way back to the parking lot, and next to Stuart's blue van is an old pickup truck. The man who's considered the boss turns to Sandra and orders her to get inside the truck. Once she's inside, he gets into the driver's seat, and the two of them drive away.

The two of them drive around for what felt like an eternity. Meanwhile, thousands of thoughts are running through Sandra's head. And the boss was quite talkative on this car ride. He was telling her that her friends were going to be okay and that the guns that they had used to shoot them were just tranquilizers. Sandra was relieved, thinking that her boyfriend Roger was just asleep back at the campsite.

He then told Sandra that if she listened to him, he would let her go home and she wouldn't get in any trouble for smoking the weed. Sandra remained calm, listening to the officer while they drove around for another hour. Eventually, he pulled the truck onto a property.

And up ahead was a farmhouse with an old white paint job and broken windows. And in front of the farmhouse is Stuart's blue van. For a split second, Sandra is relieved, thinking that her friends are on the property. But that relief soon fades when all she can see are the other two police officers. The boss gets out of the truck and tells Sandra to stay put. Sandra sits there, nervously watching the three officers talk to one another.

As they're talking, they keep glancing over at Sandra. An uneasiness starts to overtake her and her intuition tells her that something is wrong.

The next thing she knows, the heavyset officer starts walking towards the truck. He opens up the door, grabs Sandra, and begins to sexually assault her. After the horrific rape that Sandra experiences, the boss gets back into the truck and asks for directions to Sandra's home. Sandra tells him where she lives, and surprisingly enough, he drops her off at her house at around 4 a.m. Before she can get out of the car, he looks at her, and he says...

Luckily, Sandra doesn't stay quiet about what happened that night, which brings us to the Sioux Falls police station, where now she is telling investigators exactly what happened. Unfortunately, she learns that her boyfriend and her friends were not shot with tranquilizers, and that they're all dead.

It turns out that Sandra had been the only survivor of that fateful night. Investigators then placed a protective order on Sandra, given that one of the men drove her home and knew exactly where she lived.

Sandra did her very best giving descriptions of the three men to a sketch artist, but they never mentioned any names or any other identifying information, so it was still unclear who the suspects were. Investigators were also able to tell, based on Sandra's account, that the truck the men drove was a Chevy pickup from the early 70s, but that's about all the information they could go on.

By Monday afternoon, there had been a break in the case. Stewart's blue van had been located in Sioux Falls in the parking lot of a truck stop.

Crime scene investigators swept the van, desperate to find anything that could lead them to a suspect. But unfortunately, they came up with nothing. No fingerprints, no blood, nothing.

So investigators go back to the drawing board, and they think that maybe, if they locate the farmhouse that Sandra had been assaulted at, they could possibly get closer to finding their killers. So they bring Sandra in, and they make a grid of the area surrounding Gitche. Based on the amount of time that she was in the car, they estimate that the farmhouse had to be within 50 miles of Sioux Falls. So they assign officers to different parts of the grid, tell them to drive around, and ask them to be on the lookout for that eerie white farmhouse.

Thanksgiving was approaching and investigators were doing everything in their power to find the perpetrators before the holidays. The public pressure was on and no one around town felt safe. They had officers looking for the pickup truck, the farmhouse, and for anyone and everyone that matched the sketches. They were even driving Sandra around almost every day to see if she could locate the farmhouse where she was taken, but their efforts were coming up empty.

Sandra spent that Thanksgiving without any answers, without her best friends and boyfriend.

And with cops watching over her house, with loaded guns, to make sure the perpetrators didn't come back to finish the job. And on November 29th, 1973, Sandra went with investigators yet again to search for the farmhouse. I'm sure that after weeks of doing this, Sandra felt a little hopeless. Like this day would be just like every other, another day without any real answers.

But as they're driving and Sandra's looking out the window, she notices a white house with broken windows. And she immediately recognizes the property. There in front of her is the old white abandoned farmhouse with broken windows. She calls out to investigators, "That's it! That's the farmhouse!"

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The investigators then pull up to the residence and get out of the car. It's exactly like Sandra had described it.

And as they're all standing there in front of the house, they hear Sandra scream. Suddenly, she jumps into the arms of one of the officers. Her eyes are wide and she's pointing at a Chevy pickup driving down the road, screaming, "That's him! That's him! That's the boss!" The other officer runs to the patrol car and immediately pulls over the Chevy pickup.

As he approaches the driver's side window, he asks the man to identify himself. Defeated, he replies that his name is Alan Fryer. He was the boss in this horrific story.

The officers ask him to step out of his vehicle and they immediately take him into custody. And what are the odds that after almost two weeks of officers driving around looking for suspects, that Sandra would be the one to ultimately catch them at the very moment that they drove by? I'm sure that that was a beautiful feeling for her. When investigators take Alan into the interrogation room and start questioning him about the murders,

He adamantly denies ever being at Gitche that Saturday. He tells officers that he could never commit the crime that he's being accused of and that they have the wrong guy. He continued to claim this innocence for hours, but at some point, investigators were starting to break him down. Allen eventually admits that he and his brothers, David and James, were out at Gitche that night, but that he had absolutely no part in the shootings.

He tells investigators that his brothers were the ones that shot the teenagers. When investigators ask why they shot them, Alan replies that the teenagers had started shooting at them first and they had just returned fire to defend themselves. But it was clear to everyone that Alan's story wasn't true. The truth was that Alan and his brothers were evil.

with a desire to kill. Alan, David, and James Fryer: The Monsters of Gitche Manitou Now that investigators knew their names, it was time to find out who they were. Their parents were Lyle and Mildred Fryer, local farmers in Sioux Falls who had a huge family. Alan, David, and James were just three of the family's seven sons. And in the family, there were also six daughters.

The family was known for farming and harvesting crops from different properties around Sioux Falls. They were also known as people that loved the outdoors, as they spent a lot of their time outside going hunting and engaging in other activities in the wilderness. The father, Lyle, was very strict. Like a lot of farmers, he made his kids work long hours on their property, even referring to them as his "chore boys." And when they wouldn't listen to his every rule, they got into a lot of trouble.

Many kids in the neighborhood saw the way Lyle Fryer would talk to his wife and kids and they knew not to mess with him. He was scary and intimidating, but that didn't stop his kids from getting into trouble. The Fryer sisters had a decent reputation around town. They were good and kept to themselves. But the Fryer brothers were known as troublemakers. Alan had always been the leader of the brothers.

He liked to talk, be around people, and he was always known for his white lies. Many people claimed that Alan would constantly tell these stories that just weren't true. I feel like we all know someone like that. And Alan, amongst his brothers, kind of ran the show.

David was the second oldest of the three, and since his older brother had such an alpha personality, he was the more quiet and submissive type. He never really talked much, and he kind of stayed in the shadows. The youngest, James, was a handful to say the least. He was a very violent individual, and outspoken for most of his life. James' crime started when he was just nine years old.

All three of the brothers fed off of each other when they were together, and they were extremely close. They, in effect, were the perfect storm.

Allen, the boss of the group, would often suggest that they commit crimes around town, and David and James would be right there by his side ready to partake in the illegal activities. In 1967, when David Fryer was just 16 years old, he was arrested for driving around town shooting at people with his .22 caliber rifle. The news of David Fryer trying to shoot people didn't come as a surprise to many. The brothers absolutely loved guns. People would often see the boys walking around proudly with their weapons, constantly polishing them and talking about them.

And the two main things that the Fryer brothers had become somewhat notorious for was their affinity for stealing and poaching. They were constantly taking anything that they could get their hands on. And when they weren't stealing, they were in the woods with their shotguns, illegally shooting deer. It was said that when the boys did get in trouble for their crimes, they didn't seem to have any remorse, which led people to believe that they would have a long criminal rap sheet in their future.

And boy, did they. Just six years after David's shooting incident, the Fryer brothers murdered the four teenagers at Gitche Manitou. After Allen's confession to police, it was now time to bring the other brothers into custody. They were able to quickly apprehend David, who was hiding in his home in Sioux Falls. When authorities went to find James, however, he was already in jail for robbery.

Interestingly enough, he was supposed to be in jail on the night of the murders. But the jail officials had let him out on that very day, on a work release. Not even a single day out of jail and he was already murdering people. And it's sad to think that if they would have kept this man in custody, that this story may have ended a lot differently. After bringing the men into custody, investigators put them in a lineup.

Sandra Chesky walks into the room and takes a look at each and every face. When she gets to David, she identifies him as one of the men that killed her friends.

She continues down the line and stops at James. She then tells investigators that that was the man who had raped her. During the brothers' interrogation, they too, like Alan, denied that they were at fault, claiming that the teens started shooting at them first. And I guess the Fryer brothers' blood isn't that thick, because they all started to point the finger at one another, turning on each other.

and trying to take the blame off of themselves. After breaking down their stories, the investigators were slowly starting to piece together what actually happened that night.

And this is what they found out. With James fresh out of jail for the day, on November 18th, 1973, the brothers set out to do what they do best: poach deer. So they headed out to Gitche Manitou with their 12-gauge, 16-gauge, and 20-gauge shotguns. And as they're walking through the dark forests of Gitche Manitou looking for deer, they see the light of a campfire in the distance. Not only do they see teenagers sitting around the fire, but they also smell weed.

Alan, the oldest of the brothers, suggests that they go to their campsite and steal their marijuana. The brothers make their way towards the teenagers, and as soon as Roger stands up from the fire to confront them, Alan fires his shotgun, killing him instantly. James then points his shotgun at Stuart and pulls the trigger, severely injuring him. Next, the brothers introduce themselves as narcotic officers.

Well, according to the brothers, Stuart, who had been badly injured near the campfire, had mustered up enough strength to stand up and walk in their direction. Once he reached the area where his friends were, James took the keys to Stuart's van and turned it on.

The three remaining victims stand there, unsure of what will happen next, when all of a sudden, James and David appear from out of the van, brandishing their weapons. And they shoot them, one by one. Finally, after weeks of the Fryer brothers being on the loose, they had all been apprehended and would soon face a trial for murder. But Sandra Chesky was not getting the closure that she had hoped for.

She wanted law enforcement to include rape on James Fryer's charges, but they weren't interested in doing so, saying that first-degree murder was a good enough charge. And although she was disappointed, she was also relieved. The Fryer brothers would be in prison forever, and she would never have to worry about them again.

Or so she thought. David Fryer pleads guilty to the charges against him, wanting to avoid a trial. And with that, he is sentenced to life in prison. Alan and James, however, decide to plead not guilty.

Allen's trial came first, but with Sandra's damning testimony against him, he never stood a chance. The jury found him guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced him to life in prison and his trial on June 20th, 1974. After his trial on June 20th, 1974, Allen sits in the Lyon County Jail, waiting to be transported to the Fort Madison Maximum Security Prison. Allen and James are both in this jail and they create a plan.

Late at night when they were supposed to be sleeping, Alan takes apart his prison bed and retrieves a piece of wire from it. He then uses that wire to unscrew the bolts in his cell and somehow manages to free himself. Acting quickly, Alan sees a pair of prison keys close by. He grabs them and walks over to his brother's cell. After many attempts, he's able to unlock it.

And before they knew it, the two had escaped and walked right out of the prison doors. It wasn't until 8:00 a.m. the next morning when an officer noticed that their cells were empty. The news of the Fryer brothers' escape made national headlines, and there was a huge manhunt set up to find them. Everyone knew what they were capable of, and people were worried that they would be next. Sandra Chesky was especially worried after hearing about their escape.

Officers sat outside of Sandra's house that night with loaded shotguns, ready to open fire at anyone that came to hurt Sandra. It wasn't until the next morning that word spread that Alan and James had been found 500 miles away in Gillette, Wyoming.

officers had once again apprehended the brothers and brought them back to jail. James' trial came shortly afterwards, in December of 1974. The jury, of course, found him guilty of first-degree murder, life without the possibility of parole. And with that, all three Fryer brothers would go to prison, never to experience freedom again.

And that's where they all three still sit to this day. Sandra Chesky stayed quiet for many years after the murders. She was ashamed of what happened that night. There were terrible rumors going around town that she was involved or that she was responsible for the murders. The weight of those rumors are heavy on a 13-year-old girl. She was a victim that night.

raped by men that thought that they could take control over her life. And the healing was difficult.

After decades of staying quiet and pushing the memories of that night down, Sandra decided to use her story for good and helped write a book called Gitche Girl, telling her story of what happened that night. She is now an inspiration to many victims of rape and violence, and she uses her voice to help others that have been in her situation. In an interview, Sandra says this. These boys were the nicest people.

most respectable kids and we would have never done anything to bring this on. I walked with my head down for 40 years and I blacked everything out. I started doing some events and the outpouring from the public was amazing. Every librarian, every library, every event, the sheriff's family took me in as one of their own. I had so many girls come up to me

during these events and hug me and whisper in my ear, "I was raped and you're my hero. You have to talk about it. Don't hold it in." I felt like I was not good enough. I started healing because I started talking and people were embracing me.

So, as you know, in our show we cover the paranormal aspects of these crimes when it's applicable. And let me tell you, in my opinion, the Gitche Manitou State Preserve is one of the most haunted places in America. There is something dark there, something almost evil.

And I very rarely claim to feel that sort of energy when I investigate for paranormal activity. But Gitche Manitou is one of those places where this darkness seems to live. And I, in fact, think that it was there even before the four murders that happened at the preserve in 1973.

That negativity stemming from the murders may have darkened the property, but I feel like they happened there at Gitche Manitou because the place is almost a beacon for negativity, drawing in dark energies like a moth to a flame. So, I've been going out to Gitche Manitou to investigate for over a decade now. The preserve was only a 20 minute drive from my house where I grew up in Sioux Falls, so it was pretty easy to get to. But I will say, for a place that is located in such close proximity to a fairly large city, Gitche Manitou is very isolated.

It's a huge property, and at night, it's pitch black. To give you an idea of what it's like out there, you exit Sioux Falls, take some county back roads for a while, and eventually you arrive at that gravel parking lot. From there, you park your car and have to walk down a gravel path for about 20 minutes until you reach the very edge of the woods. And right there, at the edge of the forest, is the old post office. This is a very, very creepy building. It's only ruins now, just a shell of what it used to be.

But the ruins of this old post office are located extremely close to where the group was having their bonfire on the night of the murders, and where the first murder happened. I'm very good friends with an 80-something-year-old psychic medium in Sioux Falls named Donna O'Day. She's a sweet woman and has lived quite the crazy life. Her family disowned her when she was younger because she told them that she couldn't stop herself from seeing these spirits around her, and over the years she has assisted many families with troubling hauntings and done private readings for individuals from her home.

She isn't the glitzy psychic medium type that you see on TV. She does these readings and connects to these energies because according to her, she can't stop herself from it. I love Donna. She's been a great friend of mine for years and a person that has helped my family through a lot, even assisting us in the cleansing of our home when, at one point, it was violently haunted.

But what's always intrigued me about Donna is the fact that she claims that there are only two places in Sioux Falls that she will never step foot into again, based on the fact that whatever energy she connected with at these places was overwhelmingly negative and harmful. The first location is the basement of the Orpheum Theater, a famous haunted theater in Sioux Falls. I investigated there a few years ago, and I will agree with her, the basement did seem to have some sort of swirling darkness within it. But the other place that she won't visit? Gitche Manitou.

I brought Donna out to get you with me two years ago for an interview and I practically begged her to walk down the trail a little bit with me for our interview, but she refused. She was very serious in telling me that she will not step foot on the property. These are a few clips from that interview that I shot with her that day. I'm going to let her tell you guys about a few of her paranormal experiences from the place herself. My name is Donna O'Day. I'm a psychic medium. I've been working in this field for 30 odd years.

This is a place that I've been to before, Gitche Manitou, and it really is quite haunted. Some are good, some are bad, but for the most part, I will not come out here by myself at all and walk past this barrier.

because I've had some really negative experiences, and unfortunately those experiences have followed me home. Let's just start out with what do you think is here at Gitche Manitou? Oh, there's a variety. There's...

I don't think that you could say that there's one specific type of entity here. As I said before, there's good, there's bad, there's indifferent. It's a hodgepodge. It seems to be a place where, shall we say, old ghosts go. It's kind of like...

Old ghosts meet together just the way human beings do, you know, kind of like it's the favorite bar, the favorite restaurant. They tend to congregate together. And so it's a hodgepodge. Good and bad? Good and bad. So what do you think the good is? Well, the good would be, and I think that we talked about this a little bit, about the white light that I saw in a tree.

that was, it was just a brilliant white light and I was with several people at the time and I pointed it out to them and I said, "Don't you see that?" And they didn't see it. So I actually went and stood under the tree, pointed up into the tree and I said, "There, there it is, still nothing." So my friend who's a professional photographer took a picture and the next day

The pictures that she took several, they were all just white. Nothing. I didn't show just white light in those pictures. And I would say that was a good entity. I was kind of happy that that happened because we traveled further on down the road here. And as we went further,

I was with my granddaughter, adult granddaughter, and we were walking by ourselves and the other three ladies were ahead and we heard this horrible growl coming down from, there's a little creek that runs through here and it seemed to be coming from the creek. And it was horrible, I mean it was like your favorite television devil sound, bad.

And so we just stopped in our tracks and we called to the others who were further down the road and we said, "We're not going any further. Nope." And they tried to convince us that we should stay. Definitely wasn't a friendly growl. And so my granddaughter Renee and I shouted to the people ahead of us and said, "We're not going any further." And they of course didn't

Agree with that, but we said okay suit yourself So we turned around and came back and then when they saw us come back They also came back then we went home and we were riding in a Jeep one of my friends had a Jeep with the top down and so we drove into Sioux Falls we got to the corner of 41st and Louise Avenue and this

beat up old car, looked like it was from the 50s, like an old Chevy, yellow and orange I think it was. And we stopped at the stoplight and one of the guys, he was on the passenger side, he went boom, he hit the side of the car. And so we of course looked and he was unshaven, dark black hair all over the place.

mustache, beard, and he made that same sound. To you guys? To us. It was just horrible. So what do you think that is that could cause that kind of activity around here? Well, the night before, several nights before, in fact, in a row, I had this dream and also in meditation, I saw that very car. I saw it.

And it all came together at the end. It all came together at the end. So you think that's something evil or bad? It wasn't good. It wasn't good at all. It's speculation on my part and there's no way I can prove it, not knowing the people who committed the murders out here. But I think that it may have been something that stemmed from that. It may have been their spirits.

somehow on the loose. And the vehicle that they were driving certainly would be from that time. So some kind of negative entity that... Some sort of negative entity that perhaps escaped the soul or the psyche. That's craziness, but that can happen. And it's locked here, you think?

Or lives here. Lives here. My daughter wanted to come out here after we had the little growl episode with her granddaughter. So we were out here and I wouldn't, at that point, wouldn't go past this juncture. So we were turning around to leave and I saw a man with a little hat on

And I saw him actually inside the door. I saw the door and I saw him waving at us and smiling. And he was saying, "Y'all come back now. It's been real nice to visit with you."

And so I just kind of laughed about that. And I was telling Connie, my daughter, because of course she couldn't see it. And being a nurse at the VA hospital, she said that she had a patient who just died two days before.

And he always did that. He came to the door, he always wore that hat, and he always said that. Wow. And he was just friendly and a sweet, sweet man. And he was here too. So that's what I mean. There's just a conglomerate of people, of energies. But overall, you think that it's more negative than positive because you won't come back. Oh, I won't come back. And why not?

Well, if you touched the stove and burned your hand once, would you do it again? Mm-mm. Well, that's why. And you think that growl and what happened was so powerful that... Was so powerful that there's no way I'm going to put myself through that. Life is too short to fight battles you don't need to fight. Mm-hmm. Do you think it's dangerous to be out here alone? I wouldn't do it. Well, I'm going to do it. I know. So what do you think about that?

Well... Not a good idea. You're being strong. Yep. Yeah, let's say. And you have a positive frame of mind. You'll probably be okay. Well, good. Probably. Okay, there is one more story that's really pretty cool. Okay. I was with my friend...

several other women and we happened to go down by down by the creek or river whatever that is down there and I saw a man I don't know that that fedora hat thing seems to be a recurring theme out here I saw I saw him but just his head

sticking up out of the ground. And he was smiling. I mean, it was okay with him. And I told my friend about it. I said, wow, look at that. And she said that her uncle, who, you know, liked to drink quite a lot, and so did his friends, that one day he was buried up to his neck in the dirt. Hmm.

And she has photos of that. Wow. And he has on that hat. And then you confirm that through you seeing it and then the photos existing. That's crazy. But that was here at Gitche once again? That was at Gitche. Do you think this is like kind of a meeting ground where a lot of different entities like to hang out? Well, as I said, you know, it's a place where old ghosts meet, good and bad. I mean, let's say you go in a bar.

Okay, some people are gonna be good in there, some people are gonna be bad. And you kind of have to choose and pick.

what you're gonna do, where you're gonna be. And my experience with that growl was bad enough that I don't need this. - Yeah, you actually won't cross this barrier right here. - No, I'm a scaredy cat. - You just don't wanna mess with whatever's potentially here? - I don't wanna mess with that, no. The good, the bad, you don't have to fix every problem.

And now on to me.

I've had a ton of paranormal experiences at Gitche Manitou and I've managed to capture a number of them on camera. Years ago, my friend Joe and I went out to Gitche early in the day while the sun was still out to explore the ruins and to plan for our investigation. While we were there surveying the post office, we both heard a blood-curdling scream echo out from the dense woods. It sounded like the torture yell of a young girl and she was screaming, "Help!"

Immediately, believing that this scream was from a real person who needed real help, we literally dropped our bags and took off running into the woods to see if we could help this girl. We were yelling out "Hello" and "Do you need help?" the entire time. Hello? Hello? Hello? Do you need help? Hello?

There's literally no way that someone could not have heard that if they were around here. But after searching for about 30 minutes, we couldn't find anybody in the park. There was no young girl. It was completely silent.

And that experience has stuck with me throughout the years. Something seemed to be there with us in the park at that time. Later that night, Joe and I experienced a number of odd things. We recorded spikes in electromagnetic frequency, or EMF, near the abandoned post office, we heard movement in the woods, and at one point Joe's camera completely glitched out and stopped recording.

Here's a recording of what the audio sounded like when his camera glitched. This is the area that Joe and I were in yesterday when we heard the girl screaming for help. Here's where we're going to set up base camp for the night. Got a power generator. The sun is setting right now. We're going to get set up. Just got colder, man. Do you feel that? Mm-hmm. Look it. And here, standing up, you got goosebumps. Can you see the goosebumps? I literally just got so cold.

And I'm not like that cold because I have three layers on. At this point, Joe and I are going to split up. Joe, I'm going to give you this night vision camera. Basically, I want you to go back through the forest. We kind of hit the cabin already, so I want you to walk along those paths. It is 11.33 right now. Set an alarm to head back towards the cabin area at 12.15. Gives us about 45 minutes of alone time. Cool? 12.15. Got my alarm set for 12.15. Okay.

Above all, if something happens, don't run. I'm all alone in the forest, walking back. Maybe dead, silent. Sounds like there was like a barrel being hit or something. I don't know.

I returned the next night with Joe and my other friend Jackson to finish investigating. And as we sat once again in the abandoned post office, we heard something that chilled us to the bone. It was the sound of screaming. But this time, it almost sounded like two young girls screaming. Here's that clip now. This is the real audio from our investigation. That was a f***ing scream. That was a scream. That was a deathly scream.

Was that you? I feel like I'm gonna throw up.

Those screams were obviously frightening to hear, and we were never able to identify where they came from. That same night we heard movement from within the cabin and captured some more strange voices on our audio, but nothing else significant really happened. Fast forward a year to the summer of 2018 when I returned to Gitche Manitou once again. This time though was different.

Remember when Donna was talking about that spirit that lives in the tree near the park's entrance? Well, we arrived at Gitche Manitou that night late in the evening. The sun had already set and it was pitch blackout. And as we walked down that gravel path towards the post office, I noticed something laying beneath that very tree. It was a bloody organ wrapped in white paper tied with a black string. I believe that it was a heart or another organ like that.

I've had people comment on my video on YouTube claiming that hunters will sometimes leave these sorts of things out to draw animals in, but I couldn't find anybody that referenced this practice anywhere online. And it was just really strange to me to find this bloody organ wrapped up in string and paper sitting right below that tree where, a year later, Donna would tell me a dark spirit lives. Was that some sort of a tribute to the energy, to the spirit? I've never been able to give myself a solid answer on that.

While we were there that night in the woods, we heard gunshots echoing, once again, from within the deep woods. I don't know if these were actual gunshots from people hunting, but either way, it was eerie. I couldn't take my mind off the thought that four teenagers were gunned down in this very place almost 50 years ago. And in that moment, in the darkness, I was hearing echoing gunshots from somewhere on the property.

That was just chilling. It should also be noted that when we arrived at Gitche that night, there were no other cars in the gravel parking lot. We seemed to be the only people in the preserve, which made it all the more eerie. Eventually that night we heard some loud movement from within the woods and we all got uncomfortable and decided to leave.

Remember, that was back in 2018. In 2019, I visited Gitche once again but this time I really wanted to connect with the energy. This was the visit during which I interviewed Donna and that night I headed down that gravel trail all by myself to investigate the ruins and the forest alone. And let me tell you, that was scary. It was almost as if the forest was alive.

While I was in the post office recording, I realized later on that my camera's microphone started to glitch out and created a strange low voice beneath my regular voice. I'm going to play you a clip from that investigation now. Listen to my regular voice on top and that strange phantom low voice that was recorded way below my own. Why are you here? And who are you? Can you give me a knock? Throw something at me if you're here. Are you out here in the woods? Can you make some sort of a noise so I can tell where you are?

Later that night, as I was investigating alone, I captured an eerie voice on my camera's microphone, and it sounded like it was saying, "Need help." Here's that clip. If it's a little girl, do you need help?

You have to understand, I came out of that night with hours of investigation footage, and there wasn't anything like that voice found in any of the other clips. It's very strange. I seem to have connected with this young girl's spirit multiple times while visiting the preserve. But, as I've said many times in the past, I think that if Gitche Manitou is haunted, it's not haunted by the victims of the brutal murders.

They might be out there somewhere, but from what I can tell, there's something much darker out there in those isolated woods. So Colin and I were actually in South Dakota last week, and knowing that we were going to do this episode, we wanted to go visit Gitche. And we specifically wanted to go at night to get a good feel of the place. The teenagers were murdered there at night, so we kind of wanted it to be

similar to what they were experiencing on the night that they were murdered. As soon as you get on the property, it is, it's really hard to describe, but there's just a certain presence there, like you can tell that

really bad things happened on that property. Weird things were happening to us the entire time. Before we even got to the location where the murders happened, we were walking up and the ground is completely flat and randomly out of nowhere, I just roll my ankle and I collapsed to the ground and it was super painful. So that was weird. Then we got to the post office, we set up all the REM pods

And randomly, my phone falls out of my pocket and shatters. Just weird, odd things happening the entire night. The creepiest part for me was...

the crazy activity happening on the REM pods. I've gone on several investigations with Colin and I've never seen a REM pod react the way that it did that night. If you don't know, a REM pod is a device that tells you if a phantom EMF signal has entered the area. A crazy story that happened off camera. We were so annoyed that we didn't get this on camera, but Colin was telling me that

At the entrance of the post office, he always feels a super dark energy coming from the entrance. And right when he's saying that, he's pointing towards it.

And as soon as he finished his sentence, the REM pod starts going insane. It's beeping. The lights are going off. It's beeping like crazy. And it continues to do that for about a minute. And I was so scared. I literally run into Colin's arms. I'm screaming at the top of my lungs. As this is happening, rocks are falling around us.

At one point that night, Courtney told me that she was starting to feel kind of sick. And after about 10 seconds, I randomly gagged and began throwing up.

I've never experienced something this strong before. It scared me. I was sitting at the edge of the post office throwing up for about two minutes, wondering what the hell just happened to me. And things only got worse for us from there. We ended up leaving the property in a hurry that night. If you want to watch the video footage of all this happening, head to the Paranormal Files official channel on YouTube next Wednesday to view our full documentary on Gitche Manitou.

At the end of the day, I, speaking from personal experience, can tell you that the Gitche Manitou State Preserve is indeed haunted in more ways than one. Not only is this property isolated, but it's dark, it's ominous, and when you're out there late at night, it's quiet. If you listen hard enough to the silence, at times you can almost hear the sounds of a guitar echoing from within the woods.

It feels almost alive. It has an energy of its own. And regardless if you believe in the paranormal or not, you can't honestly say that Gitche Manitou isn't haunted by something. It is, after all, haunted by those four gruesome murders that took place there on that very land back in 1973. So if you're ever in Iowa, I implore you, head out to Gitche Manitou. Go at night, after the sun has already set.

Make that long walk down the gravel road and sit alone in the darkness in that old abandoned post office. And maybe, just maybe, you'll find the ghosts that you're looking for.

Hey, everybody. It's Colin here. Thank you again for listening to this episode of Murder in America. Courtney's with her family right now celebrating her birthday. So everybody go wish Courtney a very happy birthday on social media. If you want to follow our podcast, please check us out on Instagram at Murder in America. It's the same on Twitter. And we just launched our YouTube channel. So go check out Murder in America on YouTube. We've already got a video posted there.

But Gitche Manitou obviously is a very special place to me. I kind of cut my teeth in the paranormal at this place. And the story is so intriguing and so tragic. And it's really a timeless story. A spooky campfire tale, if you will. Something that will haunt generations for years to come. And especially with this case. It has me sitting here, finishing this podcast, wondering the same old question. The dead don't talk. Or do they? ♪

See you on the next one, everybody.