Melissa Gilbert, Haunted Georgetown, Washington DC

In this episode, Anne Marie talks to DC By Foot tour guide Melissa Gilbert. Melissa specializes in the Ghosts of Georgetown and shares some of the DC neighborhood's scary tales with us today.

Originally from Bullhead City, Arizona, the unceded lands of the Pipa Aha Macav, Melissa Leigh Gilbert has spent her career working in Theater Arts and Education but a lifetime of pursuing the arts as they relate to the human experience. Her work as designer, artisan, and educator has spanned numerous genres, disciplines, and locations. 

With Theatre as her primary medium, Costume Design had been the dominant focus of her career. The arc of her work and her design philosophies reflect her Liberal Arts education at Randolph-Macon Woman's College where she received her BFA. While completing her MFA at the University of Iowa she was able to expand her repertoire to include Scenic Art and Design. Both institutions allowed her the opportunity to work abroad in England. In undergrad Melissa studied at the University of Reading as part of the 'World in Britain' program. While in graduate school she returned for a research project which included a tailoring course at the Arts University Bournemouth and worked with Mahogany on costumes for Notting Hill Carnival. 

With a personal and pedagogical emphasis on process and analysis Melissa casts a wide net in regards to her research and influences but relishes the opportunity to edit with collaborators. Melissa maintains a firm belief that one's first idea is never one's best and can always be improved through collaboration, critique, and experimentation. As an educator she encourages experiential learning and is an avid proponent of the Liz Lerman Critical Response Technique, not only in her curriculum but throughout her own creative process. 

Melissa is currently the Wardrobe Supervisor and Costume Associate at the Olney Theatre Center, on the unceded lands of the Piscataway Conoy. She is the Co-Chair of the Social Committee.

 She enjoys baking bread, making pickles, hiking, water aerobics, and spending time with her Cat, Blake The Shake-Gilbert. Melissa also moonlights as a DC Tour Guide. She specializes in Ghosts, Murder, and the historically underrepresented.

Resources
Tour Guide Website: freetoursbyfoot.com/washington-dc-ghost-tours/
Instagram: @melissa.on.foot
Website: https://melissaleighgilbert.com
Cat: @blaketheshake
E.D.E.N. Southworth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._D._E._N._Southworth
River Front Times article, by Chad Garrison, The True Story of the Exorcist House: https://www.riverfrontti

Transcript

Anne Marie Cannon: 0:00

Hello, my name is Anne Marie cannon and I'm the host of armchair historians. What's your favorite history? Each episode begins with this one question. Our guests come from all walks of life. YouTube celebrities, comedians, historians, even neighbors from the small mountain community that I live in. There are people who love history and get really excited about a particular time, place, or person from our distant or not so distant past. The jumping off point is the place where they became curious, then entered the rabbit hole into discovery, fueled by an unrelenting need to know more, we look at history through the filter of other people's eyes. I'm Chair historians is a Belgian rabid production. Stay up to date with us through Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Wherever you listen to your podcast that is where you'll find us. I'm Chair historians as an independent, commercial free podcast. If you'd like to support the show and keep it ad free, you can buy us a cup of coffee through coffee, or you can become a patron through Patreon links to both in the Episode Notes. Hello fellow armchair historians. Welcome to the last episode of our 2021 Halloween series. Today I get to talk to dc by foot tour guide. Melissa Gilbert Melissa specializes in the ghosts of Georgetown. Today she shares with us some of the DC neighborhoods spooky tales. Originally from Bullhead City, Arizona, Melissa Lee Gilbert has spent her career working in theater, arts and education, but a lifetime of pursuing the arts as they relate to the human experience. Her work as designer, artisan, and educator has spanned numerous genres, disciplines and locations. Melissa Gilbert, welcome and thank you for being here today. Oh,

Melissa Gilbert: 1:58

I'm so excited to be here. And so is my cat cuz he literally just jumped up on my lap.

Anne Marie Cannon: 2:04

Oh, buddy, I used to have a cat similar in coloring. So this is gonna be one of our Halloween episodes for the season. And I had originally talked to Camden about doing this. And then she referred me to you. And so I'm just going to ask the question, What is your favorite history that we're going to be talking about today?

Melissa Gilbert: 2:29

Yes, we're going to be talking about all the things I don't have time to talk for on tours. I love getting to do all of that research. But because it's a time limit. There's so many things that I don't usually get to deep dive in. And that's what I think is the most exciting in whatever it is I'm talking about.

Anne Marie Cannon: 2:53

Okay, and we'll talk more later about your tours. But I will tell you that. I don't know if you know this. I also do tours. I do those tours in Georgetown, but it's the other Georgetown, Georgetown, Colorado. So I totally can relate to what you're talking about. And I look forward to hearing the history.

Melissa Gilbert: 3:16

Yes, so this one in particular I on the tour. It's only a couple of lines, but it has such an interesting backstory. And even getting to the story is secondary to one of our main stops which is the exorcist house. And this is the story of the house and the woman who lived there before Mrs. Eden Southworth. So she is she's born in 1819. She's like the ultimate Washingtonian. Born in some house that George Washington developed. Her father dies when she's young, and then he has a priest reChristen her, because elimite Originally, her name is just Emma, and has her rechristened Emma, Dorothy, Eliza Nevitt. So it spells out Eden, which is just delightful and mysterious. And a lot of the things that people write about her say it's kind of a look into her future, or what she ends up doing so her father dies when she is five. As a child, she's running around and describes herself as a dark wild eyed elf, even though she thinks she's shy and unattractive. Her father remarries, and her stepfather and she do not quite get along. He's very strict with her so she as soon as she can, becomes a teacher at 16 and then she marries at 21 to this inventor from New York, and they moved to Wisconsin to like the frontier in a log cabin, and it is not her jam at all. But she does have to Elgin while she's there, her son, and then she's pregnant with her second child, Charlotte, in 1844, when she like, returns to Washington, DC, without her husband, she comes back and she is teaching for the public schools and she starts writing, and she's going to become one of the most prolific novelists of her time. Like she ends up on par with Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mark Twain, but she's not often remembered nowadays. Even though at the time she was like one of the highest paid authors of her day, she starts doing all this writing while she's living in DC. Her first novel is a serial published in 1949. And then in 1956, she signs a deal with the New York ledger. And this is when she's making like $10,000 a year, which is so much money in 1856. Sure, her first huge novel gets published in 1859, and called the hidden hand. And it's kind of it's a really strong example of the overall themes of her work. It's a young girl named Capitola, Black, who is abandoned and a bit tomboyish. And a lot of her work talks about feminist issues of the day like the idea of the perfect Victorian woman, all of that domesticity and all of those things. And she continues writing. She does like over 60 novels, most of them are serials. They're published in newspapers and magazines. I was looking through some of her lesser, not lesser Well, I mean, they're all lesser known. But the less noted in the articles and in 1860, she writes one called the haunted homestead. And there's a part of it called the Gilbert's, which is now completely next time I think, is to read as soon as my new glasses arrive in the mail, but I want to soak it all in. But she's doing all of this writing, while she is living in DC and still kind of teaching and raising her kids alone as a single woman. And she ends up moving into prospect cottage and prospect cottage sits at 36 and prospect currently, where the exorcist house and stairs are. So this is the whole haunted history. Even before we get to the Spooky Scary Movie. We're not entirely sure when prospect cottage is built, but it is said to have been occupied by a former French minister. And sources say that Mrs. Southworth is there as late as the 1860s or earlier than like 1853. So we're not entirely sure when she lands there. But what she does, it becomes well known that that is her house. It's carpenter Gothic, which is a very exciting popular pre Civil War style. But nowadays, it looks like a gingerbread house. Because of all of the they call it bargeboard. So it's like little icicles that hang off the house, and it overlooks the Potomac and Virginia and that's where most of her stories are set. And it has this big old river veranda that wraps around the side. And she lives there from we'll say, the early 1850s Up until her death in 1899. And she lives there for the majority of the American Civil War. She is a union supporter. She lives very close to the Confederate border. It's she can see it from her house. Wow. And she has a kind of a front row seat to a lot of these events, including things like Lincoln's second inaugural, which she attends. She volunteers at seminary Hospital, which is another stop on the tour that I talked about. Mrs Southworth on, she lets the hospital use her house for soldiers that still need a place to to convalesce and recover at some point they said she had like 27 Soldiers staying there. And then this is where we get to our first kind of spooky story about the property. Legend says that after the Second Battle of Bull Run, it was a decisive Confederate victory. They beat the Union army which was like twice as large as them. And all of the residents of Georgetown have DC were very concerned that the Confederates were going to come in, they were going to just completely overrun the city. And so she barricades herself in her house because it's one of the first places that they would arrive when they cross like the bridge from Virginia into the district. And so she barricades herself in the door or in the house. And she stands there and she says, there's only three of us here. What are we going to do if the Confederates come? And a voice from the darkness responds, there are four of you here and you'll be fine. And they are? Yes, she lives out. The rest of her life passes away in 1899. And she is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery up the hill where we do not go on the go store, mostly because it's uphill. Okay, so she dies, her son inherits the house, and then he dies. And then her daughter inherits it. But she lives up in New York, she has zero interest in the property. And so it gets sold and bought a few times. At one point, they say that there was this Italian grocer, I think it was who sets his cart up in front of the house. And as he's setting up and getting ready to sell things. Mrs. Southworth comes walking out of the garden to have a chat with him. And because he's a local, he knows that she had passed several years before so he just runs leaving all of his stuff in front of the house. It then becomes some people call it a tourist trap. I like to think it was like a delightful little oddity. So prospect cottage becomes an ice cream parlor. It has an ice cream parlor in the sitting room. The drawing room is a cafe and they sell ice cream and lunches and they have a drink Coca Cola sign and they sell live bait and cigars and tobacco. And it's a really popular spot for people to sit and wait for all of the streetcars that would run through Georgetown back in the day, they'd sit on the veranda, and it was such a popular spot because she was still such a famous novelist. Visitors would rip like giant hunks of wood are splinters out of the house as given years, and they would catch like bugs to take them home and be like this is from Mrs Southworth house. And they also say if that wasn't enough, Mrs. Southworth was still around to have a chat, she would frequently appear inside the house. And passers by said she could often be seen walking the edges of the veranda wringing her hands. And that is the haunted history before. It's even the exorcist house. It gets bought by a woman's Literary Society in the 1920s. It's supposed to turn into a museum, and then it's torn down in the 40s. And the current house is built shortly after, which is incredibly famous.

Anne Marie Cannon: 13:13

So when you say the exorcist house, do you mean from the movie?

Melissa Gilbert: 13:18

Yes, the 1973 film, this is the house that is in Georgetown, it's next to the giant stairs, which used to be 36th Street would just continue down. And now that's one of the I think one of the main reasons people take the tour because they're like, we're gonna go see the exorcist stairs and, and where the movie was and stuff. And it's always great fun, but I like being able to say, oh, no, it doesn't just start there. It starts like 100 years before.

Anne Marie Cannon: 13:51

Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's cool. That is interesting. So do you have more stories?

Melissa Gilbert: 13:59

I've got quite a few. One of my favorite ones is the first story that I get to tell on the tour. And it's about the CNO Canal, which now is like a really nice bougie great place for photos and brunch. But when DC well, when Georgetown was first founded in 1751, it was like an industry town. It was a seaport. There was all sorts of rough and tumble things going on down there. And the route that took the local police patrol, through Georgetown comes to be known as dead man's bt c and o canal gets built was in the 1820s. It's like incredibly busy and popular leading up to the American Civil War. They just renovated it and brought in a barge. It's like an 80 foot barge that they built in the Port of Baltimore that they had to put in the canal in two pieces, and it'll be open for rides I think in the spring, which I'm excited about, because I love boats. But back in the day, there's like all these pubs these like, like houses of ill repute, we shall call them boarding houses, the sailors. So definitely rough and tumble down. And all these rumors start going around about this one route that takes you through Georgetown, by the CNO canal. And bad things keep happening to the police officers that go out on the beat, a lot of them are killed. Some of them just quit and they like won't explain themselves, or they'll just never come back. A lot of them just straight up disappear. And this goes on for years, it gets a bit of a reputation, and some officers don't quite believe it. There's one officer named Frank burrows, who very much didn't believe in any of the superstitious stuff. He figured his biggest issue back out there would be bar fights, or like stabbings or like rabid dogs and giant rats. But he finally gets assigned to Dead Man's beat and he goes out, and he only lasts an hour. He gets as far as 30 seconds and Cherry Hill, which is now M Street. And then he goes running back to the precinct. He bangs on the door to be let in and he threatens to quit he is done. He is never gonna go back out there. And when they asked him like why you didn't believe anything, he is suddenly a believer. He said that that phantom police officer had like chased him down alleyways, it had threatened his life. It had been known to appear with razors, threatening police. And later they could be killed in like a razor bar fight. So now that he's out there, all these stories he completely believes and he runs as soon as he can. They say that his boss really liked him. And so instead of accepting his resignation, he promised him he could go on to desk duty, he would never have to go out onto Dead Man's beat again. And that was the end of that. But a legend says that Frank burrows woke up the next morning and his hair had turned pure white from the shock of what he had seen the evening before. And the officer that took over for him disappears within a week of taking over the dead man's beat. So the story persisted, even after those who didn't believe it thought that they could make it through the night.

Anne Marie Cannon: 17:39

So there was a phantom police officers, how would you said,

Melissa Gilbert: 17:44

yeah, one of their own early 1800s kind of figure with a heavy wool coat and a hat. And that's how they knew that he was a police officer because it was like the uniform coat the uniform hat and he would just appear and all you could see you couldn't even see his face, you could just see red eyes staring out at you.

Anne Marie Cannon: 18:09

So now you do ghost tours. Do you do other kinds of tours as well in Georgetown? DC is at Georgetown, DC.

Melissa Gilbert: 18:19

Yeah, Georgetown in the District of Columbia. I pretty much exclusively do the ghosts of Georgetown tour. And sometimes the wicked Georgetown tour, which is a lot of murders, I have a full time job in the theater. So this is just my fun moonlighting gig that I get to do.

Anne Marie Cannon: 18:39

Do you Do it all year long?

Melissa Gilbert: 18:41

I do. And it's so interesting, because people always expect October to be like it is our busiest month. But in the spring, we have a ton of visitors because that's when the schools come. And the kids of course want to go on the cool ghost tour instead of like the boring building tour. So pre pandemic, especially like how I loved having the kids out to because they asked the best weird questions.

Anne Marie Cannon: 19:09

Yeah, I believe that. Do you want to talk about where we can find you? Yeah, I

Melissa Gilbert: 19:15

mean, those were my two my two kind of main ones I have another I'm going to be a guest on tour guide tell all for one of their Patreon episodes, sharing a completely different story from one of the tours. And that one was started by some of our other guides, I can be found at Melissa Lee gilbert.com. And my Instagram is at Melissa on foot. And that's where all of my tour guide stuff is. My website is actually like mostly as theater artists things but there is also a way to go to my shop and you can buy watercolors, several of which are of Georgetown.

Anne Marie Cannon: 19:57

Oh, okay. Interesting. So what's the name of the podcast? Tour Guide? What?

Melissa Gilbert: 20:03

Tour Guide? Tell all?

Anne Marie Cannon: 20:06

I've never heard of that. I should be listening to that. Oh, yeah,

Melissa Gilbert: 20:10

it's great. I tell my guests that I keep learning things from it. And this is my job.

Anne Marie Cannon: 20:16

I was closed last year, I didn't do any tours. But for me, it's the busy season right now. And how long have you been a tour guide? Oh, gosh,

Melissa Gilbert: 20:29

I moved back to DC in 2018. So, yes, but I've always kind of had that, like tour guide Enos about me. My friends think it's funny because I can draw I drop into like, it's like your customer service voice, your tour voice because I grew up in Arizona, and we have like a little ghost town down the road, where Clark Gable and his, uh, one of his wives Carole Lombard, still haunt. And that was my kind of like, first introduction and telling that story is I think like that, that sleeping tour guide that it's been in me this entire time. And now I get to do it for a living.

Anne Marie Cannon: 21:09

I know, I don't know how I ended up doing ghost tours. But I started the tour business thinking I would just do straight history tours, because I live in a National Historic Landmark District. And somebody told me, Oh, you should do ghost tours. And I had already heard enough stories about Georgetown, and people telling me stories about ghosts and hauntings and stuff like that. And so I started doing them. And they are so much more popular than his regular history tours. In fact, I've been on two documentaries, one is called trails to the unknown. And I'm in episode two of that, and one of the museums here in town. And then the other one is ghosts and ghost towns. And so our town is featured in the last half hour of it. And I guess I become because I live in a town of like, 1000 people. So I've become the resident ghost expert.

Melissa Gilbert: 22:10

Yeah, that is like life goals right there.

Anne Marie Cannon: 22:16

I never even knew that that would happen. Do you believe in ghosts? Oh, absolutely.

Melissa Gilbert: 22:22

I 100% believe I don't think that we see them as often as we think. But I do think there's that many out there. I accidentally took one of the ghosts home from my tour.

Anne Marie Cannon: 22:36

How did that manifest? How did you know? Do you know which ghost it was? Or

Melissa Gilbert: 22:42

I do. It was the nanny. And it was the the streetlights in front of her house. Were going like on and off. And then it didn't happen ever again. And I noticed when I get home, I pull my car in the street light goes off. And then I get out of my car. And it turns on for me to walk in. And it happens no matter what time I get home no matter what day. And if I'm going to like leave, I'll open the door and the light will go off. And she won't turn it back on till I get home.

Anne Marie Cannon: 23:12

So have you always been a believer? So I'm

Melissa Gilbert: 23:15

raised Catholic, which I think some somehow has like some sort of tie into this sense of like, life going on. And yeah, and just something about, like, I think open was my favorite place to visit growing up. That's where the the Clark Gable thing was. And I was like obsessed with him in high school. And then working in theater. There's so many theater ghost stories, like, I know, the human brain can try and like think of ways to explain things. But our brains like we're not that smart.

Anne Marie Cannon: 23:53

I was thinking today because I you know, I do the ghost tours. And I've been really thinking I need to come up with some new material or new way of telling things, find out more information about things. And this is what I believe about myself and probably other people that I think things are happening a lot. But I am so oblivious most of the time that I don't even notice it. Yeah, and there's been there's been a couple things that have happened that I have caught my attention. I've not been a believer, I always tell people that I'm a skeptic when I start my tours. But there have been a couple things since I've been doing the tours that have definitely rooted both my feet in the side of I'm a believer, I know that there's something it's tied into energy. And I don't know if we'll ever really understand it but I had a young girl a couple years ago on a tour her and her mother. She was having a lot of experience. anses with the paranormal, and her mother did not, you know, she wasn't worried about it. Instead, she looked at it as an opportunity to help her teenage daughter to come to terms with it. And one of the things that she told me the daughter, she said, there was some kind of entity in her house, especially in her closet in her bedroom. And it really scared her. And she would, you know, one night, she was just so terrified, but so enraged at the terror, you know, like being afraid all the time. And she said to me, she said, and then I just yelled, what do you want for me? And she said, it stopped after that. And that her takeaway from that? Exactly, that's exactly what her takeaway was from that. So, you know, kudos to her mother for, you know, helping her to come to terms with that six cents, or whatever you want to call it, but I don't know, I just think that, you know, the things that I've experienced, and it's might be the same for you that it is just a matter of acknowledging and, you know, seeing it and acknowledging it, right.

Melissa Gilbert: 26:23

Yeah. Well, and my, my bet is, I always tell the guests that I'm like, I love having skeptics, because the ghosts know me, like, they have nothing to prove with me. They know, I'm not like I believe so. It's the people that aren't quite bought in, that's who they're trying to reach out to the most on the tours.

Anne Marie Cannon: 26:44

Interesting. So have you had experiences where they've reached out on your tours, like you say,

Melissa Gilbert: 26:51

Yes, I get a lot of like lights and electrical activity, and it will be like in very specific spots. At certain times of year, I've had a lot more since the pandemic has been like winding down and the guests have been returning. So I tell them that the that's the ghost excited to have them back. But the more I do it, the more I just have like, all these little instances, and, and like I will, I will kind of brush it off sometimes. But then the guests will get really excited or they'll notice something or like a light will go on as soon as I say a certain word or get to a certain part in the story. So just having all those moments kind of like reaffirm like, there can't be that many coincidences. Like when I've been doing this for years and years.

Anne Marie Cannon: 27:47

Do you? Does it ever scare you?

Melissa Gilbert: 27:50

I have never been scared in Georgetown. I have. I think I've definitely been in places that I think it's because I'm so familiar with it. That's what it is like if I went somewhere haunted that I didn't know the history. I didn't know the stories I think that would be a lot more scary for me. That makes I just that's a major understanding. That's why I That's why I Wikipedia scary movies. Oh my gosh, I learned something about myself today. Thank you.

Anne Marie Cannon: 28:22

Wikipedia scary movies.

Melissa Gilbert: 28:24

Yeah, I don't watch them. I read about them. I didn't even watch the exorcist until last year, like I'd been giving tours on the house. And I was like, I can't bring myself to watch it. But I was furloughed from my theater job. So I was visiting my mom in Arizona. And she is very Catholic. There were rosaries everywhere and it was like bright sunshine middle of the day and it came on the TV and I thought this is my best shot anywhere else like

Anne Marie Cannon: 28:55

Oh, okay. And how was it for you? Do you go scared watching movies?

Melissa Gilbert: 29:02

Is that what Yes, yes, I do. My brain just keeps going it it holds up like I think some the special effects you can kind of tell that it's a bit dated, but there's some like some of the analog tech that they used in the film like keeps it really spooky and like as I said I was raised Catholic like altar server like Latin our father so I who? I feel like I can't not believe

Anne Marie Cannon: 29:35

Do you think that there's like evil forces out there?

Melissa Gilbert: 29:39

Yes. Oh, absolutely. Thankfully there's not really any terrible ones in Georgetown. And I've I don't think I've come across any but I absolutely believe that it exists out there.

Anne Marie Cannon: 29:55

Yeah, I don't know. I I used to when I was younger, I'd get scared. and I don't get scared anymore. And the things that have happened they don't the thought of them don't scare me. Like, when I was younger things would scare me. But and I don't know what that's about. I don't know if I feel like I'm protected or if they're I don't know if I believe in demons and things like that. I'm not sure about that.

Melissa Gilbert: 30:24

I definitely don't think they're like as common. Like, as the, the movies would have us believe kind of a thing. Like, yeah, like, reflecting humanity. Sort of like I think there's more good in the world than bad. But some of the bad can be really bad.

Anne Marie Cannon: 30:44

Yeah, that's true. I am obsessed with true crime. So

Melissa Gilbert: 30:49

Oh, hello. I don't Hello, girl.

Anne Marie Cannon: 30:54

Oh, my God, I should have done a true crime podcast. But there's so many of them. That I thought I mean, I didn't even think about it, because history is kind of my jam. But I love true crime. I can't get enough of it. What's your favorite True Crime podcast? Oh,

Melissa Gilbert: 31:14

well, I mean, I am. I'm a murderer, you know, from like, way back when? Okay. And I think I think that's the only one I've actually listened to. I watch a lot of documentaries. Like, okay, I'm really bad at having different like, if I watch a whole series, like in one go, so I'm really bad at keeping up with podcasts. I have to start late and then

Anne Marie Cannon: 31:34

okay, well, okay. Yeah. Do you have? Do you have to scout discovery plus?

Melissa Gilbert: 31:41

Oh, no, I do not. But I'll

Anne Marie Cannon: 31:44

tell you what, oh. Oh, yeah. It'll keep you in the true crime. Oh, my God. I ended up signing up. I cancelled Hulu. And I signed up for discovery plus, and I Okay, pretty much every night. That's what I do is I watch True Crime until I'm tired.

Melissa Gilbert: 32:00

It's so soothing to lull you to sleep I put it on when I take now.

Anne Marie Cannon: 32:05

Is that are you know, what is that it's, I I'll step back from myself watching these shows. And think why. Like that is disturbing. To say the least my boyfriend thinks it's disturbing. Oh, yeah.

Melissa Gilbert: 32:19

No, it's ever. Whenever I talk about the other the other tour that I give sometimes I'm like, it's basically my favorite murders in Georgetown. Like, that's all it is. It's all the terrible stuff. But I don't know, maybe it's because then I don't have to think about it happening to me, or like, I don't have to think about the reality of it. Because it's all just something else. I don't know. But yeah, and

Anne Marie Cannon: 32:43

I, I think it's a way it's presented to Mm hmm.

Melissa Gilbert: 32:48

Yeah, it's the narrative and the, at the fact that I think for so many like, there is an end point to it. Like, I'm not coming in in the middle or the beginning. I know, for a certain to a certain standard is concluded,

Anne Marie Cannon: 33:03

we have really gone off the rails. But I don't care because I'm enjoying it. Anyways, true crime. It's my jam, too. So I just don't know what I would if I was going to do a true crime podcast. I don't know what angle I would do. Because there's so many of them.

Melissa Gilbert: 33:18

Yeah, I'm just bad. It continuing on with things I started during the furlough, I started like an eight episode podcast for my theater, to be like, Oh, I'm just going to learn about stuff that has to do with the theater. And then I was just like, I'm bored. I'm done. I was like, and I think about these podcasts that had been on for years and years, and I'm just like, how do you keep going? Oh, my gosh, matters fact.

Anne Marie Cannon: 33:48

Yeah. Oh, my goodness. Well, anything else? Sir? Anything about this history that I didn't ask you that you wanted to share?

Melissa Gilbert: 34:01

Oh, gosh, I think that I My favorite thing about the history and the tours is it is really different standing where it is, instead of reading about it. Like I had never had a great interest in colonial history or Civil War history until I started giving these tours. And now I am genuinely more interested in how everything happened. Because I'm like, Oh, I stand in front of that house all the time. These are the same streets there is something so wonderful about being able to like be in that same human space, as so many. Yes. Yes. So many years before you.

Anne Marie Cannon: 34:42

Yeah. There is something really powerful about the physicality of it. Yeah, I agree. there anything else you want to say about where people can find you and that type of thing?

Melissa Gilbert: 34:54

Oh, yeah. So I give my tours with Free Tours by Foot deep. See by foot as that branch, and we offer ghost tours in cities all around the world. But in DC we have three the White House, ghosts, Capitol Hill ghosts, and Georgetown ghosts. And we talk about all sorts of different haunted history, including my upcoming also guest episode with a different ghost story on tour guide, tell

Anne Marie Cannon: 35:25

people, you're gonna have to go out there and like, listen to all these episodes to get the stories.

Melissa Gilbert: 35:30

Yes. And then I'm gonna have to tell them on that one, that they have to come listen to armchair historians to get these stories.

Anne Marie Cannon: 35:37

Yeah. Well, I really enjoyed talking to you, Melissa, thank you so much for being here today. Oh, thank

Melissa Gilbert: 35:45

you so much for having me. I am honored to be on such a wonderful historical and amazing podcast.

Anne Marie Cannon: 35:54

There you have it. If you fancy a haunted walk in the neighborhood of Georgetown, be sure to look up Melissa. For more information on Melissa including her cat's Instagram page, whose handle is at Blake the shake. Be sure to check out our episode notes. Thanks for joining us, and in light of the fact that Halloween is this Sunday. I hope you have a haunted week.