Hashtag Scared: A Look Back at Eloise
After months of failed recordings, we released the first episode of our podcast, Hashtag Scared, in the middle of August. Although we were thrilled to finally have content out, we had pretty low expectations regarding what types of opportunities our podcast would bring to us early on. Fast forward one month, and we saw all over social media and local news that Eloise was going to be open to the public for tours.
Being local to the area, we were so excited to have the chance to walk through this historical building that was so widely known for having the reputation of being haunted. Of course, with all of the excitement, as most of you know, everything sold out within minutes. Dying to get a chance to go inside this incredible building, even for just a second, we reached out to Todd to ask if there would be any additional tour dates added in the future. To our surprise, Todd asked us if we would like to volunteer to help during the tours! In our podcast, Hashtag Scared, we primarily discuss different aspects of the paranormal with a little bit of true crime mixed in. How could we possibly say no to this amazing opportunity? Excited, we immediately agreed to help. Little did we know, agreeing to help run a few of the tours would lead to so much more than just walking down the halls of a dark abandoned building.
To our surprise, every single time we entered Eloise we began to experience strange paranormal activity. What started out fairly mild quickly escalated as the weeks went on. During our first visit to Eloise, we both experienced things such as the sound of shuffling right near us as we were walking the halls. Now, since we were new to this paranormal thing, we thought maybe in our excitement, we were just imagining things. However, after a few more visits, we knew what we were experiencing was not something we created in our minds.
A few highlights from the tours include hearing voices on abandoned floors that sounded as though they were standing right next to us, an eerie whistling coming from down the hall, and hearing unexplained footsteps. Although these were all super strange, one of the most memorable and still incredibly terrifying moments that Jessica experienced was getting tapped on the shoulder while walking down one of the hallways on the patient floors. At first it seemed like this could’ve been a figment of the imagination as well, being in a dark, old, abandoned building with quite the reputation will probably do this to you. But the next day, as we were going through the tours again, she was not just tapped on the shoulder, but grabbed and pulled as she was walking past a staircase on the fourth floor. This feeling could best be described as someone trying to get her attention or getting her to move towards a certain area. Not only could we not explain this incident, we definitely could not explain the fact that the exact spot where she was grabbed still hurt days later. It is one thing to hear noises, but to be physically touched to the point that you could still feel it days later was definitely scary. We never in a million years thought going into this that we would be able to experience so much paranormal activity in such a short amount of time.
Our time at Eloise will be an experience that we will never forget. It has solidified our beliefs in the paranormal and has moved from being an even contender in our podcast where we talk about all things strange, to our main focus. We cannot thank DPX enough for giving us this amazing experience and taking us in as one of their own. We have built so many friendships in such a short period of time that we will forever cherish.
