[00:00:00] Speaker A: SA if you dig the twisted, admire the outlandish, and are enamored by the unusual, you're in the right place.
True crime, the supernatural, the unexplained. Now you're speaking our language. If you agree, join us as we dive into the darker side. You know, because it's more fun over here.
Welcome to Total Conundrum.
[00:00:58] Speaker B: Warning.
[00:00:59] Speaker A: Some listeners may find the following content disturbing. Listener discretion is advised.
[00:01:10] Speaker B: Welcome back, Conundrum crew. Today we're taking you deep into the heart of the American Midwest. To a place that should have been the stuff of country dreams. Horses grazing in fields, peaceful woods, and a gorgeous mansion tucked away from the world.
[00:01:28] Speaker A: A Hallmark movie waiting to happen.
[00:01:30] Speaker B: Except this one was written by Stephen King. On a bad day, we're talking about Fox Hollow Farm, a place where appearances were everything.
But behind the white fences and the manicured lawns lurked a horror so deep it still stains the ground. Today.
[00:01:49] Speaker A: Serial murders, secrets. A whole lot of mannequins. Because what's scarier than mannequins?
[00:01:55] Speaker B: Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
[00:01:58] Speaker A: Except maybe the real ghosts, people say still wander the property.
[00:02:03] Speaker B: Today, we'll walk you through the life of the man who turned a dream home into a nightmare playground. The victims who tragically crossed his path, the bone chilling hauntings that followed. And because it's us, we'll have a few fun pit stops along the way.
[00:02:19] Speaker A: Because we all know sometimes you need a break from murder with a little bit of haunted real estate humor.
[00:02:26] Speaker B: Exactly. So grab your sage, your EMF meters, and maybe a life preserver for the pool. Trust me, you're gonna want to float, not sink.
[00:02:37] Speaker A: And something solid to hold on to. Because where we're headed, the mannequins aren't the only ones watching. But hey, before we dive into the steamy murder spas and the ghostly grabby hands, make sure to follow, like and subscribe. Wherever you're tuning in, drop us a review on Apple or Spotify. It helps more Conundrum crew members find us. And if you're catching us on YouTube, smash that notification bell so you don't miss a single tale of terror. You got a creepy story or a place you think we should cover?
Hit us up
[email protected] or come hang out with us on Instagram, Facebook, or X. We love hearing your stories, but please, seriously, no haunted mannequins in the mail. We have enough troubles keeping the ones in our nightmares under control.
[00:03:24] Speaker B: Ha. Unless you're sending a mannequin armed with sage bundles and an eviction notice for Any lingering ghosts, then we'll allow it. We could use it in our Halloween display and stick around until the end because we've got trailers from two of our favorite podcast pals, the Suspended Sentence and Zach Solved mysteries. If you love strange mysteries, haunted places, and the kind of legends that make you leave the lights on, you're definitely going to want to check them out.
[00:03:53] Speaker A: All right, let's crack open the gates of Fox Hollow Farm. Where the fences keep the horses in, but couldn't keep the nightmares out.
[00:04:00] Speaker B: This is the true horror of Fox Hollow Farm. Welcome to Carmel, Indiana. Picture it. The early 1990s. A town known for its charm, its wealth, and its never ending supply of roundabouts. It was the kind of place where neighbors waved, lawns were perfectly mowed, and a missing person's flyer was as rare as a haunted doll at a garage sale.
[00:04:25] Speaker A: Safe, cozy, boring. You know, until it wasn't.
[00:04:30] Speaker B: Until a 6,000 square foot Tudor style mansion just outside of the city limits, nestled behind a curtain of woods, became a house of unimaginable horrors. Fox Hollow Farm. Home to Herb Baumeister, husband, father, successful businessmen, and behind closed doors, one of Indiana's most prolific and horrifying serial killers.
[00:04:54] Speaker A: From welcome to the neighborhood to two, you're never leaving alive. Real quick.
[00:04:59] Speaker B: Yeah, you don't exactly find that listed under the Zillow description. Before we crack open the case, let's set the scene. We're in Carmel, Indiana, a picture perfect suburb just north of Indianapolis. The kind of place with sprawling neighborhoods, country clubs, and enough live Laugh love signs to build a small fort.
[00:05:22] Speaker A: Come for the low crime rate, stay for the synchronized lawn watering.
[00:05:26] Speaker B: In the late 80s and early 90s, Carmel wasn't just growing, it was booming.
Families flocked there for the promise of peace and prosperity. It was consistently ranked as one of the safest towns in America. Where your biggest worry was a rogue soccer ball, not a serial killer lurking behind the hedges.
[00:05:46] Speaker A: Yeah, murder capital of the Midwest wasn't exactly on the town brochures.
[00:05:51] Speaker B: Fun fact. Carmel has over 140 roundabouts, more than any other city in the United States.
[00:05:59] Speaker A: So they like to go in circles.
[00:06:01] Speaker B: Roundabouts are disgusting.
[00:06:05] Speaker A: Nothing says safe suburb like getting lost in a traffic circle. Until a ghost shows up to direct you.
[00:06:11] Speaker B: Excuse me, sir, this is your fourth lap. Please follow the light to the exit.
[00:06:17] Speaker A: And then take the second right.
[00:06:21] Speaker B: But underneath all that Midwestern perfection, there were secrets brewing. Dark secrets. And at the center of it all, standing behind that picturesque white fence at the end of the private drive, was Fox Hollow Farm.
[00:06:35] Speaker A: A house built for the American dream and repurposed for an American nightmare.
[00:06:41] Speaker B: Let's rewind the clock a bit. Before the hauntings, before the police tape, there was just a kid named Herb.
[00:06:48] Speaker A: Which sounds like the name of a guy who'd fix your lawnmower. Not this.
[00:06:53] Speaker B: Herbert Richard Baumeister was born in 1947 in Indianapolis, Indiana. By all appearances, he had a normal middle class upbringing. But you know how it goes. Appearances can be deceiving.
[00:07:07] Speaker A: Like that guy who seems chill at the barbecue until you find out he's buried several grill masters in the backyard.
[00:07:14] Speaker B: Even as a child, Herb showed some seriously alarming behavior. He was isolated, awkward, obsessed with death. There were whispers about cruelty towards animals. And there was even a pretty unsettling story involving a urine fixation. He used to ponder what it would be like to taste human urine. He also enjoyed urinating on teachers desks.
[00:07:38] Speaker A: We're just gonna say it wasn't a phase he grew out of and leave it at that.
[00:07:43] Speaker B: Psychologist eventually diagnosed Herb with paranoid schizophrenia and antisocial personality disorder when he was still young. But in true brush it under the rug fashion of the 60s, he never received any real treatment.
[00:07:58] Speaker A: Because why treat a serious mental illness when you can just tell a kid to walk it off?
[00:08:04] Speaker B: Exactly. Herb learned pretty quickly how to fake normal. He threw himself into chasing the suburban American dream. The career, the family, the white picket fence.
[00:08:15] Speaker A: Welcome to the 1950s America. Bury your trauma and smile for the neighbors.
[00:08:21] Speaker B: As an adult, Herb drifted through a series of jobs. But eventually carved out success for himself. He opened a chain of save a lot thrift stores. Turning secondhand treasures into first class fortune.
[00:08:34] Speaker A: And I can only assume somewhere in the miscellaneous bin there was a mannequin arm. Just saying.
[00:08:40] Speaker B: Possibly.
From the outside, it looked like Herb had it all. He married Julie Baumeister, a high school journalism student he met in college. They built a life together. Three kids, a gorgeous sprawling estate. The now infamous Fox Hollow Farm.
[00:08:57] Speaker A: But behind closed doors, things weren't exactly the picture perfect romance.
[00:09:03] Speaker B: Julie later revealed that in over 25 years of marriage, she and Herb had only been sexually intimate six times.
[00:09:13] Speaker A: And she said she had never once seen him fully nude. Not even accidentally.
[00:09:18] Speaker B: Six months after they got married, Herb's father actually committed him to a psychiatric hospital. Where he stayed for nearly two months.
[00:09:26] Speaker A: Julie would later say Herb was hurting and needing help.
But even she couldn't have guessed how deep those wounds or that darkness really ran.
[00:09:36] Speaker B: From the outside, Fox Hollow Farm looked like a dream. An 18 acre horse farm. A gorgeous Tudor style Mansion, private woods, a long, winding driveway that screamed luxury and exclusivity.
[00:09:51] Speaker A: You know exactly the kind of place you buy when you want privacy. To steam up your pool with mannequins.
[00:09:58] Speaker B: And not in a cool 80s montage kind of way, either. The centerpiece of Fox Hollow Farm was the indoor swimming pool. A massive echoing room that should have been the heart of family fun.
[00:10:11] Speaker A: Indoor pool. Perfect for parties, swim lessons, and ritualistic creepiness.
[00:10:16] Speaker B: Herb didn't use the pool like a normal person. He had a very specific routine. He would crank up the heat to hot tub levels way beyond what was comfortable. Then he'd throw open the patio doors, letting the cool outside air rush in, and the entire room would fill with a thick, heavy fog.
[00:10:35] Speaker A: Welcome to Herb's Murder Spa. Come for the humidity. Stay for eternity.
[00:10:40] Speaker B: But it gets worse. Around the edge of the pool, he placed mannequins, lifelike, perfectly posed, as if frozen. Mid laughter, mid conversation. A fake party that never ended.
[00:10:54] Speaker A: I don't even like mannequins at Target. Imagine having them stare you down in your own house through the mist. Just. No. No.
[00:11:02] Speaker B: To Herb, it wasn't just decoration. It was atmosphere. An illusion that the pool was buzzing with life. When in reality, it was a private, silent stage for much darker acts. When Herb brought the men home from Indianapolis bars, there were no big, lively parties waiting for them. It was just Herb, the mannequins, and a heavy, suffocating steam.
[00:11:27] Speaker A: That's straight up horror movie material.
[00:11:30] Speaker B: And for many of those men, that pool was the last thing they ever saw. Herb Baumeister wasn't prowling the dark streets of his own suburban paradise for victims. No, he. He traveled about 20 minutes south into Indianapolis.
[00:11:45] Speaker A: Specifically into the nightlife scene. The bars, the clubs. Places where young gay men gathered, looking for friends, fun, connection.
[00:11:55] Speaker B: And he knew exactly what to say. He would come off charming, casual, harmless. He'd offer them drinks, a party, a place to hang out after last call.
[00:12:06] Speaker A: And what could be safer than a wealthy suburban guy with a big, fancy house?
[00:12:11] Speaker B: But once he got them back to Fox Hollow Farm, things turned deadly. Herb's preferred method was strangulation, often during sexual encounters, blurring the lines between danger and trust until it was far, far too late.
[00:12:27] Speaker A: He didn't just murder. He betrayed every ounce of safety he pretended to offer.
[00:12:32] Speaker B: Several young men lost their lives in that house. And in many cases, their family never even got the chance to bury them properly.
[00:12:41] Speaker A: The victims we know by name deserve to be remembered.
[00:12:45] Speaker B: Roger Allen Goodlet was one of them. 33 years old beloved son. He had a bright smile and a big heart. His mother never stopped searching for him after he vanished.
[00:12:57] Speaker A: Alan Brossard, 28 years old. He was described as lively and warm, someone who could walk into a room and instantly make friends.
[00:13:07] Speaker B: And Jeffrey Jones, just 31 years old. He worked hard. He loved his family. And he deserved a hell of a lot more life than he was given.
Unfortunately, because of the way the remains were discovered. Scattered, fragmented, mixed and burned.
Sadly, many victims remain unidentified, even today.
[00:13:30] Speaker A: Which means there are families out there that still don't know, still wondering, still.
[00:13:35] Speaker B: Waiting for closure that might never come. We will touch on more of the identified victims coming up.
[00:13:42] Speaker A: We're telling this story today not just because of the horrors of what happened, but because their lives mattered, their dreams mattered.
[00:13:51] Speaker B: And we'll keep their memories alive. Because the darkness that took them shouldn't ever be stronger than the light they left behind.
As investigators dug deeper into Herb Baumeister's crimes, they started asking a chilling question. Was Fox Hollow Farm just the final chapter?
[00:14:09] Speaker A: Because if you thought it ended there, think again.
[00:14:12] Speaker B: Between 1980 and 1991, years before Herb ever bought Fox Hollow, young men and boys started disappearing across Indiana and Ohio.
[00:14:24] Speaker A: Each victim had chilling similarities.
Targeted from downtown Indianapolis. Gay bars found along Interstate 70. Dumped like trash in rivers, streams and ditches. Strangled to death.
[00:14:37] Speaker B: There was Michael Sean Petrie, just 15 years old. Found naked in rural Hamilton county in 1980. A young boy trying to survive who trusted the wrong stranger.
[00:14:50] Speaker A: Maurice Allen Taylor, 22, his body discovered in Weasel Creek in 1982. She suspected strangulation.
[00:14:58] Speaker B: Deloitte Lee Baker, just 14, seen getting into a blue van before his life was stolen.
[00:15:05] Speaker A: Michael Andrew Mc Riley, 22, vanished after leaving the Vogue Theater in Indianapolis. Found strangled and dumped near Greenfield.
[00:15:15] Speaker B: Eric Allen Rotger, 17, disappeared in 1985.
Found near a stream in rural Ohio. Rope burns, a brutal death.
[00:15:27] Speaker A: Michael Allen Glenn, 29, handyman, found in a ditch near Eaton, Ohio. Identified years later by fingerprints.
[00:15:36] Speaker B: James Boyd Robbins Jr. 21, his naked body found two days after he left home in Indianapolis.
[00:15:45] Speaker A: Stephen Lynn Elliott, 26, left his home in the city and ended up strangled near Interstate 70.
[00:15:52] Speaker B: Clay Russell, boatman, 32, a licensed practical nurse. Left for a night out and never came home.
[00:16:01] Speaker A: Thomas Ray Clevenger Jr. Just 18, found near abandoned railroad tracks.
[00:16:07] Speaker B: And Otto Gary Becker, 42, the last known victim linked with the i70 killings. Found dumped on a rural gravel road. Eleven lives, 10 taken far too soon. Most of them young, vulnerable, Unseen by a world too willing to look away.
[00:16:25] Speaker A: And the Killings. They stopped in 1991, the same year.
[00:16:30] Speaker B: Herb Baumeister purchased Fox hollow farm.
[00:16:34] Speaker A: In 1999, after Herb's death, law enforcement officials named him the prime suspect in the i70 stranger case.
[00:16:43] Speaker B: But with Herb gone, the there were no trials, no confessions, no direct closure for the families who had been waiting for answers.
[00:16:51] Speaker A: Only more questions and decades of grief.
[00:16:54] Speaker B: If Herb Baumeister really was the i70 Strangler, Fox Hollow wasn't where his darkness began. It was simply where it found a home. And while dozens fell victim to Herb's predatory games, one man, just one, would live to tell the story.
[00:17:12] Speaker A: The man who trusted his gut and escaped.
[00:17:15] Speaker B: Let's talk about Tony Harris. While dozens of young men tragically lost their lives at Fox Hollow Farm, one man lived to tell the story.
[00:17:25] Speaker A: And in true horror movie fashion, it all started with what should have been just a casual night out.
[00:17:32] Speaker B: In the summer of 1994, a man we know today only by the alias Tony Harris met a stranger at a popular Indianapolis gay bar. The guy introduced himself as Brian Smart.
[00:17:45] Speaker A: Because nothing screams trustworthy like a guy who insists you call him by a totally fake sounding name.
[00:17:52] Speaker B: Seriously, Brian Smart might as well have gone with innocent McNormal. Well, Brian was charming, relaxed. He bought Tony a few drinks, made some easy small talk, and then invited him back to see a friend's estate that he was house sitting.
[00:18:08] Speaker A: Yeah, because hey, you want to come see my mannequins? Is the ultimate pickup line.
[00:18:15] Speaker B: Tony agreed. He got into Brian's car, and soon they were pulling up the long driveway to Fox Hollow Farm. Inside the house, Toni noticed something immediately. The massive indoor pool. The mannequins staged around the poolside, positioned like they were in mid party.
Frozen smiles, plastic stairs, and the thick, steamy fog from the overheated pool clinging to everything.
[00:18:43] Speaker A: If that's not your cue to run, I don't know what is.
[00:18:46] Speaker B: But Tony stayed calm. Brian offered him a drink, and they talked casually. At least at first.
Then Brian made a strange suggestion. He asked Tony if he was into breath play erotic asphyxiation, which is already.
[00:19:03] Speaker A: A pretty big red flag. But then Brian suggests Tony strangle him first. Just for fun.
[00:19:09] Speaker B: Tony played along. He pretended to participate. He pretended to go along with the fantasy. But deep inside, his instincts were screaming.
[00:19:20] Speaker A: Tony had that spidey sense tingling. Best case of noping out I've ever heard.
[00:19:26] Speaker B: And somehow, miraculously, Tony managed to stay cool enough to get out of there alive.
[00:19:31] Speaker A: He.
[00:19:32] Speaker B: He made an excuse and talked his way back to the car and got out. Tony's cool head didn't just save his own life. It would later help break the entire case wide open.
[00:19:43] Speaker A: Moral of the story? Trust your gut. Especially when mannequins are involved.
[00:19:48] Speaker B: And because Tony survived, he became the key witness who finally led investigators to the monster hiding behind Fox Hollow's perfect facade.
Tony Harris's narrow escape didn't just save his own life. It cracked open a case that had been brewing quietly just beneath the surface of Carmel's perfect suburban bubble.
[00:20:09] Speaker A: And it turns out Tony wasn't the only one sounding alarm bells.
[00:20:13] Speaker B: Families had been raising concerns for months, even years, about young men vanishing without a trace.
Mothers, fathers, friends.
They filed missing person reports, begged the police to take the disappearances seriously.
[00:20:29] Speaker A: But in typical 90s fashion, because many of the victims were gay men, the cases were often brushed aside, labeled as runaways, lifestylers, you know, total nonsense.
[00:20:41] Speaker B: It's infuriating. If the police had acted faster, maybe fewer lives would have been lost. But while the official response lagged, the one man did listen. Enter private investigator Virgil Vandegrift.
[00:20:56] Speaker A: Best detective name ever, right?
[00:20:59] Speaker B: Virgil wasn't just a P.I. he was a former Maran County Sheriff's deputy who had seen it all. And he believed the families.
[00:21:08] Speaker A: Imagine that, actually believing people when they say their loved ones didn't just disappear to start a new life.
[00:21:15] Speaker B: Virgil connected the dots between the missing persons reports and Tony Harris's chilling story about Brian Smart and the creepy indoor pool scene. Tony even managed to spot Herb, AKA Brian, again later at the bar, confirming his identity. With mounting suspicions, investigators began quietly surveilling Herb Baumeister. But there was a catch. Fox Hollow Farm just wasn't Herb's property. It was marital property. Meaning they couldn't just waltz in and search without permission.
[00:21:48] Speaker A: And somehow, even after all this, the police still couldn't get a search warrant.
[00:21:53] Speaker B: Not without more direct evidence. That's when Julie Baumeister, Herb's wife, stepped in.
[00:21:59] Speaker A: Plot twist. The wife saves the day.
[00:22:01] Speaker B: Julie, who was in the middle of filing for divorce, was beginning to piece things together herself. The strange behavior, the mannequins, the unexplained disappearances, the restricted areas of the property.
[00:22:15] Speaker A: And.
[00:22:15] Speaker B: And here's where things get even more unsettling. Years before the police ever set foot on Fox Hollow Farm, Herb and Julie's teenage son made a gruesome discovery. He stumbled across bones while playing in the woods behind the house.
[00:22:29] Speaker A: He brought them back home to show his mom, Julie. And when she confronted Herb about it, he brushed it off. Told her they were old Medical training, props left over from his dad's medical practice.
[00:22:41] Speaker B: And somehow, in the chaos of raising three kids and running businesses, Julie accepted it. Or maybe she just wanted to. And while the bones she found should have set off alarm bells, life at Fox Hollow Farm carried on.
[00:22:56] Speaker A: Most of the time, Julie and the kids weren't even there.
[00:22:59] Speaker B: They often spent long stretches of time at their family cabin at Lake Wawa Sea, leaving Herb alone at Fox Hollow.
[00:23:07] Speaker A: And that privacy gave him the perfect opportunity to turn their home into his personal hunting ground.
[00:23:14] Speaker B: Because when the person you love tells you it's nothing, sometimes it's easier to believe them than to believe the alternative.
[00:23:22] Speaker A: And sometimes it's easier to believe a lie than to admit the nightmare you're already living in.
[00:23:28] Speaker B: Julie agreed to let investigators onto the property. And what they found was beyond anything they imagined. Fox Hollow Farm was no longer just a mansion. It was a massive open air crime scene.
[00:23:41] Speaker A: And the horror Herb Baumeister had hidden so carefully was finally unleashed into the light.
[00:23:47] Speaker B: On June 24, 1996, investigators made a gruesome discovery at Fox Hollow Farm. Human bone fragments. Thousands of them, buried deep in the wooded areas behind the mansion.
[00:24:01] Speaker A: At least 11 people were believed to have been murdered and hidden there.
[00:24:05] Speaker B: And while initial searches uncovered a horrifying amount, the story didn't end in the 90s.
In December 2022, over 25 years later, a new forensic search was launched at Fox Hollow farm.
[00:24:21] Speaker A: Investigators recovered one new bone fragment and identified 20 additional locations on the property that might still be hiding more remains underground.
[00:24:31] Speaker B: As of January 2024, forensic teams are still hard at work trying to process nearly 10,000 individual bone fragments recovered from the property. Eight of Herb Baumeister's victims have now been officially identified.
[00:24:47] Speaker A: Johnny Lee Bear, 20 years old, missing since 1993.
Jeffrey Allen Jones, 3, 31, missing in 1993.
Richard Douglas Hamilton, Jr. 20, vanished that same summer.
Alan Lee Livingston, 27, missing in August of 1993. His remains remained unidentified until October of 2023.
[00:25:14] Speaker B: Steven Spurlin Hale, 28, missing in April 1994.
Alan Wayne Bussard, 28, last seen June 1994.
Roger Allen Goodlett, 33, missing just a month later, in July 1994.
Michael Frederick Kieran, 45, last seen March 1995.
[00:25:41] Speaker A: And just last year, in January of 2024, authorities identified the remains of Manuel Resendez, 3, 34, who disappeared after visiting a gay bar in downtown Indianapolis.
[00:25:55] Speaker B: Even more heartbreakingly, authorities have posthumously linked another victim, Jerry Williams Comer, 34, to Baumeister. He disappeared in August 1995, his vehicle was found abandoned at the Castleton Square Mall. But his remains were never recovered. The Hamilton County Coroner's Office continued to appeal for the public's help, urging families who have lost loved ones in the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s to submit DNA samples. There may still be missing sons, brothers and friends waiting to be named. Waiting to come home.
[00:26:35] Speaker A: Even after all these years, Fox Hollow Farms is still giving up its dead.
[00:26:40] Speaker B: With the discovery of thousands of human remains scattered across Fox Hollow Farm, authorities prepared to move in. They were ready to charge Herb Baumeister with multiple counts of murder.
[00:26:52] Speaker A: But there was just one problem.
Herb was already gone.
[00:26:56] Speaker B: Before police could arrest him, Herb fled Indiana. He crossed the border into Ontario, Canada without telling a soul. He wandered through small towns, staying under the radar. He bought camping equipment. And eventually he. He made his way to Pinery Provincial Park, A remote wooded area near Lake Huron.
[00:27:19] Speaker A: Nothing says not guilty like ditching your entire life and running to Canada.
[00:27:24] Speaker B: In July 1996, a hiker at the park found Herb's body. He had died from a self inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
[00:27:33] Speaker A: And just like that, Herb Baumeister took the easy way out.
[00:27:37] Speaker B: He left behind a three page suicide note that. But here's the kicker. The note made no mention of the victims. No apologies, no admissions, nothing.
[00:27:47] Speaker A: He blamed stress, failing business ventures, a collapsing marriage.
[00:27:52] Speaker B: He never acknowledged the countless lives he stole. Never gave the families the closure they deserved.
[00:27:59] Speaker A: He controlled the narrative to the bitter end. Just like he controlled everything and everyone else.
[00:28:06] Speaker B: But while Herb Baumeister's life ended that summer in Canada, the horrors he left behind at Fox Hollow Farm were just getting started.
Let's take a little mental break. Let's do a little haunted house real estate listing.
Looking for your dream home? Tired of cookie cutter houses that don't come with a deep, unsettling past?
[00:28:28] Speaker A: Then come on down to Foxhall Farms where the views are spectacular, the horse trails are endless, and bonus, there's at least one extra guest you didn't invite to the party.
[00:28:40] Speaker B: Features include an Olympic sized indoor pool, complete with mannequins, private woods perfect for ghost sightings, and enough residual trauma to last a lifetime.
[00:28:52] Speaker A: That's right. This 18 acre estate comes with a built in ghost room. No renovations required. Brief, bring your own sage bundle and maybe a priest just in case. Utilities not included, possible cold spots may spike your heating bill.
[00:29:07] Speaker B: Act now and we'll throw in complimentary EVP sessions with your new spirit roommates. All right, Conundrum crew humor. Break over now.
[00:29:16] Speaker A: Let's get back to the ghosts who really never left Fox Hollow Farms.
[00:29:21] Speaker B: After her Baumeister's death and the discovery of the countless remains, Fox Hollow Farm sat in silence for a little while.
[00:29:30] Speaker A: But death doesn't just leave a place like that. Not when the ground itself is soaked in it.
[00:29:36] Speaker B: In the late 1990s, Rob and Vicki Graves bought Fox Hollow Farm. But they couldn't have imagined what awaited them.
[00:29:45] Speaker A: Probably figured, hey, fresh start, big house, great price. The American dream, right?
[00:29:51] Speaker B: Except it wasn't long after they moved in that the nightmares began. Rob started hearing things at first. Whispers. Faint, hard to place. But soon he and Vicki both heard full body voices echoing through the halls. Voices with no visible source.
[00:30:09] Speaker A: Voices that didn't belong to anyone living.
[00:30:13] Speaker B: Then there were wet footprints. Puddles of water appearing out of nowhere, scattered along the tiled floor near the indoor pool.
[00:30:21] Speaker A: Which is fine if you have guests over. Not so fine when the only thing standing by the pool is a mannequin missing a hand.
[00:30:29] Speaker B: The hauntings weren't limited to just sounds or water. Both Robin, Vicki and even visitors reported seeing shadowy figures.
[00:30:37] Speaker A: Not just out of the corner of your eyes, stuff. Full bodied apparitions.
[00:30:42] Speaker B: Figures male. Often darting through the woods or flashing by doorways inside the house. And always, always the feeling of being watched. Doors even slammed violently in empty rooms. Lights would flicker or shut off entirely, even when the wiring was checked and rechecked.
[00:31:02] Speaker A: Well, your wiring looks fine, Mr. Graves. Just maybe it's just the dead or something.
[00:31:10] Speaker B: And then there were the physical attacks. Rob Graves reported being grabbed by unseen hands. Not a bump, not a shove. A full on grip. Hard enough to leave him shaken and bruised.
[00:31:25] Speaker A: That's not just spooky sounds at three in the morning. That's dangerous.
[00:31:30] Speaker B: And no matter how many times they tried to rationalize it, the Graves family knew they weren't alone. And the more investigators came to study Fox Hollow Farm, the more it became clear something still roamed the property.
Something never left.
[00:31:47] Speaker A: After the strange activity at Fox Hollow Farms became public knowledge, it didn't take long for the paranormal world to come knocking. Because if there's anything ghost hunters love more than a haunted mansion, It's a haunted mansion with a murder pool.
[00:32:02] Speaker B: Multiple teams came through, but two of the most famous investigations gave us some of the most chilling evidence.
In 2014, Ghost Adventures filmed an entire episode at Fox Hollow Farm.
[00:32:16] Speaker A: Big shock. They found stuff. Real stuff.
[00:32:19] Speaker B: Yep. First up, EVPs.
Clear recordings of disembodied male voices whispering chilling phrases like Help me and get out.
[00:32:34] Speaker A: If a ghost says get out. I'm pulling up a chair. You started this conversation, buddy. Tell me why I have to leave.
[00:32:42] Speaker B: Well, and it didn't stop there. Static cameras left running near the pool captured unexplained shadow figures moving back and forth even when the room was locked and empty.
[00:32:55] Speaker A: Mannequins weren't moving. But something else definitely was.
[00:32:59] Speaker B: Thermal cameras also picked up severe temperature drops in specific spots around the pool. Sudden drops of 20 degrees or more in isolated areas.
[00:33:09] Speaker A: It's either a portal to the afterlife or Herb left the AC on again.
[00:33:13] Speaker B: And get this. Investigators EMF meters and other electronics were repeatedly drained when placed near the mannequins.
Batteries that had been fully charged just minutes earlier.
Completely dead.
[00:33:28] Speaker A: If the mannequins are draining batteries, great. I'll just switch to the old school film and see what they're hiding.
[00:33:34] Speaker B: Yeah, until they start moving. Then you'll see me setting land speed records and throwing a match behind me as I go.
[00:33:46] Speaker A: Classic Tracy move. If we had a dollar for every haunted place you've threatened to burn down, we could buy our own haunted location by now.
[00:33:56] Speaker B: And then there was Paranormal Witness, Sci Fi Channel's dramatized reenactment show.
[00:34:03] Speaker A: Nothing like a spooky reenactment actor sprinting past a pool to make you question your life choices.
[00:34:09] Speaker B: In that episode, Rob and Vicki Graves, the owners, were interviewed firsthand. They recounted seeing a shadow man by the pool, and they described whispering voices so loud in their bedroom that it woke them up from a dead sleep.
[00:34:24] Speaker A: Leave it to the ghost adventures to find the one pool where you definitely.
[00:34:27] Speaker B: Don'T want to skinny dip come for the spirits. Stay. Because they pushed you in the pool. Well, all jokes aside, there's no question that whatever is lingering at Fox Hollow Farm isn't ready to be forgotten.
[00:34:43] Speaker A: And it's not just trapped memories. It's something intelligent, something angry.
Still looking for the living to notice them.
[00:34:52] Speaker B: Everything we've talked about so far, the murders, the hauntings, the strange phenomena, it all got captured in one chilling book.
[00:35:00] Speaker A: And trust us, this isn't your average things that go bump in the night ghost story.
[00:35:05] Speaker B: In 2016, paranormal investigators and author Richard Esteppel, along with Fox Hollow's then owner, Rob Graves, published a book called the Horrors of Fox Hollow Farm, unraveling the history and hauntings of one of America's scariest locations.
This book isn't just about spooky encounters. It's a deep, painful dive into the psychic wound left on that property.
[00:35:32] Speaker A: Because real horror doesn't just stay in the past. It stains Everything it touches.
[00:35:38] Speaker B: The book includes chilling interviews, Survivors who knew Herb Baumeister, paranormal investigators who captured disturbing EVPs and shadow figure sightings, and skeptical visitors who left convinced.
[00:35:53] Speaker A: And remember Tony Harris, the man who escaped Herb's clutches.
[00:35:58] Speaker B: Tony's story is featured heavily in this book. He talks about his experience surviving Herb's breath play game and. And how even years later, he felt a deep, gnawing connection to the darkness that surrounded that property.
[00:36:12] Speaker A: Because you don't just walk away from something like that without scars.
[00:36:16] Speaker B: One of the most disturbing themes throughout the book isn't just that the spirits of the victims are trapped there, but that the house itself, the land itself, remains poisoned by the violence committed there.
[00:36:31] Speaker A: Residual hauntings, intelligent hauntings, Entities that know you're there and sometimes don't want you to leave.
[00:36:38] Speaker B: Investigators recorded responses to questions captured full on figures darting between rooms. Equipment would fail repeatedly, only to work perfectly once they stepped off the property.
It's not just a haunted house. It's a haunted memory.
[00:36:54] Speaker A: A nightmare that keeps playing itself over and over, long after the dreamer is gone.
[00:37:00] Speaker B: And today, Fox Hollow Farm still stands just outside of Carmel, Indiana. A beautiful estate hiding a darkness that refuses to be forgotten.
[00:37:11] Speaker A: A stunning house surrounded by thick woods and haunted by something much darker than shadows.
[00:37:18] Speaker B: The property is still a private residence, still owned by Rob Graves, who once bravely stepped into that nightmare without knowing what he was buying.
[00:37:27] Speaker A: And to be clear, there was no public tours, no overnight ghost hunts, no Instagram influencer haunted sleepovers happening here.
[00:37:36] Speaker B: Investigations are extremely limited and only by.
[00:37:40] Speaker A: Private request, probably because there's a fine line between ghost hunter and ghost bait.
[00:37:45] Speaker B: But the stories, the spirits, the weight of what happened there, none of that has faded away.
[00:37:51] Speaker A: Fox Hollow Farms remains frozen in time. A living memory of life stolen, secrets buried, and a chilling reminder that evil can wear a smile and mow its lawn every Sunday.
[00:38:04] Speaker B: And sometimes the scariest hauntings aren't the ones you can see. They're the ones that are woven deep into the bones of a place and the hearts it shattered.
[00:38:14] Speaker A: Imagine moving into your dream home. Gorgeous acreage, private pool, perfect place to raise your family. And then finding out your backyard's an unmarked graveyard.
[00:38:24] Speaker B: I mean, herbicides kill weeds, but herb killed people.
Let that one sink in. Well, all joking aside, the real heart of this story isn't about the haunted house. It's about the lives lost, the young men who deserve so much more than the fate that they were dealt.
[00:38:45] Speaker A: The men who have been identified, and the many others whose names we may never know.
[00:38:51] Speaker B: And survivor Tony Harris, the one who trusted his gut, escaped and bravely spoke out, risking everything to help bring the truth to light. If there was one thing we could take away from Fox Hollow Farm, it's that evil doesn't always look like a monster. Sometimes it looks like your neighbor, your co worker, someone blending in with the American dream.
[00:39:14] Speaker A: And sometimes the loudest cries for help aren't screams, they're the silence we ignore.
[00:39:21] Speaker B: Thank you Conundrum Crew for taking this journey with us today. And to the victims and their families. You are not forgotten.
[00:39:29] Speaker A: Next time, we're lightening it up just a bit because after haunted mannequins and murder spas, we could all use a palate cleanser.
[00:39:37] Speaker B: Seriously, next episode, fewer corpses, more chaos. Well, until then, stay curious, stay weird.
[00:39:46] Speaker A: And stay out of the roundabouts and.
[00:39:49] Speaker B: Keep on creeping on. We love you.
[00:39:52] Speaker A: Bye.
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