Golden Gate Villa: The Gilded Ghosts of Santa Cruz's Haunted Mansion

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Hello and welcome to Citegeist, the paranormal podcast that puts the ah in bibliography. I'm your host, Joshua Spellman. Today, we're looking at a story filled to the brim with scandal, murder, and an unlikely group of historic figures including queen Victoria, Wyatt Earp, and Thomas Edison. And while this story is filled with historic hotshots, they can't hold a candle to the scandal of today's story. So put on your best pair of sunnies and grab a parasol because we're headed to Victorian Santa Cruz, California to learn about the alleged haunted history of Golden Gate Villa.

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Considered one of the most historically significant homes in all of California, Golden Gate Villa is perched atop Santa Cruz's historic Beach Hill neighborhood. Its regal Victorian face is painted a buttery gold with a bright orchid trim like rosy cheeks. But behind this bright and cheerful mask, it hides a dark and twisted past. Major Frank McLaughlin was born sometime around 1840. During his early career, he served in the police force of Newark, New Jersey and developed a lifelong friendship with the esteemed inventor Thomas Edison.

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McLaughlin fought with union forces briefly during the civil war but his stint was short and it's unlikely this is where he earned his military title. Instead, it's believed he earned this title from his later activity with the California state militia though this is unconfirmed. McLaughlin became an engineer on the Pacific Railroad, helping lay tracks across the vast plains and the new frontier. In the Wild West, he earned a reputation for being one of the quickest men on the frontier and was one of only a handful of brave men to ever challenge and survive an encounter with the notorious outlaw Wyatt Earp. By 1877, his work out west concluded and McLaughlin returned to the East Coast.

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Here he began to court a New Jersey widow by the name of Margaret Loomis. And during this period, his good friend Thomas Edison was in the process of developing the incandescent light bulb. But Edison ran into trouble trying to find a dependable source of platinum to use as filaments. Without this precious metal, Edison would not be able to market his world changing invention to the masses. McLaughlin suggested to Edison that he source platinum from the Feather River Valley in California as he heard there was a major source of platinum there.

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And upon this very smart suggestion, Edison commissioned McLaughlin to head out west to prospect for platinum. But before he left, major Frank McLaughlin wed to Margaret Loomis and adopted her three year old daughter Agnes. In California, like most of his endeavors, McLaughlin went all in sparing no expense. It was said in life that he never settled for the petite when the mammoth was available and his exploits in Butte County were no exception. It wasn't long before McLaughlin earned the title King of Feather for his dominion of the River Valley where his sights quickly turned from mining platinum for the good of mankind to gold that he could keep for himself.

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It wasn't long before the major began to make quite a fortune. But he was smart in that he would never invest his own money in his projects. Instead, he would organize companies where he would then pay himself a hefty salary. It was during this time at Feather when Frank McLaughlin commissioned San Francisco architect, Thomas j Welch, to design a home for Margaret and Agnes in Santa Cruz to help them escape the brutal summer heat. McLaughlin instructed Welsh to spare no expense in making Golden Gate Villa the showplace of Santa Cruz.

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And that, he did. The mansion was named after the major's mining organization, the Golden Gate Mining Company, which managed the operations back in Feather and provided all the funding for his lavish home. The McLaughlins moved in in 1892 and brought with them seven boxcars full of furniture of the highest caliber. Rich mahogany and Spanish leather armchairs were among some of the treasures. Many of these furnishings still remain in the house to this very day.

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In addition to all the ornate decoration, naturally, being good friends with Thomas Edison had its perks as the McLaughlin home was outfitted with the newest luxury invention available at the time, electricity. The home itself was magnificent and it was also a staple in the community's social landscape. The McLaughlin's hosted many events at their home including an annual New Year's Eve celebration that the whole city looked forward to. But it didn't stop there. They hosted costume parties, magic shows, musicals, fireworks displays, and the first moving picture ever shown in Santa Cruz.

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By now, the major's stepdaughter, Agnes, was a young woman and she became a figure of note in the community and was pronounced as indescribably pretty, a petite beauty with a rose leaf complexion, and as the ideal American girl by a number of publications. Perhaps because of her beauty, it's no wonder that a focal piece of the Golden Gate Villa is a gigantic stained glass portrait of a young woman reaching to pick an apple blossom branch that was modeled after none other than Agnes herself. It was rumored that Major McLaughlin cut some of Agnes's hair to be mixed in with the color of the glass to imbue it with her stunning otherworldly beauty. But Agnes had a strange duality about her. Despite her vanity and delight of earthly pleasures and extravagance, she attended mass every single morning with her dog who was always doused with the most expensive cologne available.

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Despite how beautiful and popular she was, Agnes never married. Though she almost did, once. She was engaged to a man by the name of Sam Rucker. And while invitations to the ceremony were sent, nothing ever came of it. And apparently, they remained engaged in secret for years.

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While the McLaughlin women lived in luxury in Santa Cruz, the major was busy with various endeavors. From olive orchards to orange groves to a nine mile tunnel at Big Bend, a 30 mile flume for the hydraulic mine and funding other development in the area, McLaughlin was amassing quite a fortune. However, his biggest endeavor was to divert the water of the Feather River so that gold could be mined from the riverbed. Armed with letters of recommendation from Thomas Edison, the governor, and two California state senators, McLaughlin traveled to London, England to try and secure investors. The major was incredibly charming on his visit to Britain that the local newspapers in London declared that no American since Benjamin Franklin had left such an impression on English society.

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McLaughlin seemed to have luck in all his projects and this trip was no different. Due to a misunderstanding, McLaughlin came home with $12,000,000 in funding. A great deal more than he ever imagined to get. But sadly, the project itself would not benefit from this same luck. The Feather River project took over four years to complete, but in the end it resulted in a 7,000 foot long canal and a retaining wall 12 feet wide and 20 feet high.

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It was heralded as one of the greatest mining feats of the era and much credit had to be given to his good old chum, Thomas Edison, who provided the first electric lights ever to be used at a construction site as it allowed the workers to labor night and day. After its completion, when the water was successfully diverted and the riverbed was dry, McLaughlin was the first to plunge a shovel into the dirt. And while McLaughlin struck gold in London wooing investors, much like the river, this project was all dried up. While the major was sure that he would make a $100,000,000 return on the initial 12,000,000 invested, instead of hitting gold, he hit bankruptcy. All they managed to find in the river were a couple of small gold nuggets, old rusty picks, and broken buckets.

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You see, it turns out that McLaughlin was fifty years too late. Half a century earlier, 40 niners diverted the same river with a simple cheap wooden flume and they exhausted all the gold in the area walking away with their own fortune and leaving nothing behind for the major. Now the locals in the area were well aware of this and they knew that the major's project was doomed from the start. But they decided to keep their mouth shut and watch the outsider go down in flames. But the joke was on them.

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McLaughlin was smart and he had always declined to invest any of his own money. So McLaughlin didn't lose a single cent and all the while he was paying himself a generous salary. But upon learning this, the English investors were furious. Queen Victoria herself launched an investigation into the matter and sent Scotland Yard to California. However, when the agent arrived, he was scared off by McLaughlin who wasn't afraid to wave his pistol and make a fuss.

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The major survived an encounter with Wyatt Earp and a timid Englishman was no match for his American machismo. After this failure at Feather, McLaughlin got into politics. The major was well known and well liked and he had earned a reputation as a frontiersman and a staunch capitalist. And despite pleas from the public that he should run for governor, McLaughlin never held public office himself. However, he did become chair of California's republican state central committee during McKinley's eighteen ninety six presidential campaign.

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In fact, he was so influential that the major was credited with carrying the entire state of California for McKinley and he was offered a seat in McKinley's presidential cabinet for his contributions. The major, however, declined feeling as though accepting it was like picking up table scraps. Despite things getting better for the major after his embarrassment at Feather, all good things eventually do come to an end. The major's wife Margaret died on November sixteenth nineteen o five turning Frank McLaughlin into a widower and leaving her daughter Agnes without a mother. The death took a toll on the major and his stepdaughter.

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Frank seemed to withdraw from society and he appointed Agnes as the head of the house in his wife's absence. Agnes, in many ways, put her life on hold canceling the wedding to her lover Sam Rucker as we had mentioned earlier. On the two year anniversary of Margaret's death, on November sixteenth nineteen o seven, Agnes attended an early morning mass in memory of her mother. Upon returning home to Golden Gate Villa, Agnes retired to her bedroom in the tower to take a small midday nap. However, while she slept, someone entered the room unseen and pressed a 44 caliber pistol to her temple and fired.

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Knowing that his stepdaughter was sleeping upstairs, Major Frank McLaughlin sent their maid out on an errand before going upstairs and murdering his beloved stepdaughter. Shortly after the deed was done, McLaughlin called his banker and close friend William Jeter and urged him to come to the villa immediately. At the time, Jeter was preoccupied and declined to come. But McLaughlin insisted shouting into the phone, you must come at once. I have just killed my Bob and I'm going to kill myself.

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And he did. The major ingested a fatal dose of potassium cyanide, dying just as his friend arrived. To everyone's shock, Agnes survived at least for a time. While she survived the initial assault at the hands of the major, she succumbed to her injuries at 06:30 that evening. Newspapers published salacious headlines for weeks that ran alongside an obituary that McLaughlin had penned himself.

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Naturally being full of scandal and intrigue as it was, the tragedy was a hit with the media. McLaughlin for the most part was an incredibly popular and well liked man and the thought of this crime was nearly inconceivable. Why? How on earth could he do such a thing? But you see, this was not a random act of violence or a crime of passion.

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It wasn't executed on a whim. No. The major had been meticulously planning the deed for months which he outlined in plans he left for Jeter including several sealed farewell letters to all of his friends and family and instructions for his estate as well as an explanation for his crime. It turns out that McLaughlin was beginning to suffer financially though he kept that hidden from everyone. The Major feared falling into poverty and being unable to provide for his stepdaughter, Agnes, that he loved so dearly.

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He wrote in his letter, to leave my darling child helpless and penniless would be unnatural and so I take her with me to our loved one. She is the very last who could face this world alone. However, at the inquest, it was revealed that Frank could have liquidated his estate and had a large surplus to spare, hardly leaving him or Agnes impoverished. In fact, he likely would not even have to have done that. As one friend mentioned, that people would have willingly given him money to pay off his debts.

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Some supposed he was simply embarrassed by his failure at Feather River with his reputation being absolutely shattered by the incident. However, no rationalization could explain why he did what he did. Well, not until the whispered rumors swirling around Santa Cruz gave wind to a new theory. Many thought it strange that after missus McLaughlin's death that Agnes continued to live with the major since she was not his blood relative. The fact that she had remained unmarried well into her thirties also didn't quite sit well with the local community.

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In fact, they all could recall that many years prior, announcements of Agnes's marriage to Sam Rucker were sent out but the wedding was cancelled at the very last minute. Presumably because the major couldn't bear to see her married to another man and he forbade the union. But in truth, it turns out that over the years Agnes and Sam remained involved but Agnes couldn't bear to marry so soon after her mother's death and she felt that she needed to take care of her father. This continued engagement cast doubt on the motives of Major McLaughlin seeing as his daughter would be taken care of by her fiance, the ex mayor of San Jose. As the tabloids scrambled for information to keep the headlines rolling, a man by the name of Christian r Walters, a prosperous merchant, stepped forward claiming that he was secretly engaged to Agnes at the time of her murder.

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This made it even harder to believe that major Frank McLaughlin couldn't stand to see his stepdaughter fall into poverty when she would be well provided for by her wealthy would be husband or husbands if the second mysterious fiance was to be believed. Regardless of his motivations, whether the major was truly in love with his stepdaughter or whether he could just not stand the idea of aging alone in the villa without a family, in a letter to the family doctor f e Morgan, McLaughlin wrote, please see that we are not cut up, at least that my pure sweet child is not. And on the outside of the envelope, he had written, dear doc, please do me one last favor and chloroform our old cat. So it does seem that he wanted to take his entire family with him beyond the veil to join his late wife on the anniversary of her death. However, the mystery remains.

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Inside the confines of the shining Golden Gate Villa, the spirits of the McLaughlin's silently linger, unwilling or unable to divulge their secrets to the living. I don't know about you, but I love that story. It has everything. An awful yet mysterious tragedy, a gorgeous home, Queen Victoria, Wyatt Earp, and Thomas Edison. What more could you ask for?

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In researching it, it was also very interesting because I have a connection to two of McLaughlin's famous friends and house guests. The first is McKinley who McLaughlin helped get elected in his presidential campaign. As many of you know, I'm from Buffalo, New York where McKinley was assassinated. But the connection goes a little bit deeper and intersects with my family history in another way. The other connection is Teddy Roosevelt who stayed at the villa on more than one occasion and one of the bedrooms is now named after him.

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Now my great great grandfather apparently was a member of Pancho Villa's revolutionary forces and allegedly, as my family says, rode against Teddy Roosevelt in Mexico. But they're likely mistaken since while Teddy Roosevelt was a staunch vocal opponent of Pancho Villa, it's likely that they'd never met and they certainly never met on the battlefield. However, Teddy Roosevelt was McKinley's vice president and was one of the very few presidents to ever be inaugurated outside of the capital. And this is a fun fact because my father and my grandfather were upholsterers who specialized in antiquarian techniques and were responsible for restoring and upholstering the furniture in the Teddy Roosevelt inaugural site here in Buffalo. So I guess my dad and my grandfather made up for any ancestral crimes that we may have committed against Teddy Roosevelt.

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But I digress. Enough about me. Let's dig into this story a little bit. This is one of the few cases again where pretty much everything I told you in the story portion was a 100% true. Since this isn't actually a very popular ghost story and I did find it really difficult to wedge the misconceptions that I did find about the ghosts into the story portion convincingly.

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Notably, people think that because the murder victim at the villa was the major's daughter that she was a child. And some websites say that major Frank McLaughlin shot his little daughter and poisoned himself on the second anniversary of his wife's death. The spirit of the little girl has been seen in the drawing room where she died, floating around its gold plated chandelier. And let it be known that Agnes was not a little girl, she was 32. Other stories that I found seem to be a part of local lore since I mainly found them on Facebook comments and Reddit posts from Santa Cruz locals that the house was built on an old Indian burial ground and that's what was responsible for all the misfortune and tragedy at the house.

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Not that it was a direct result of a man's greed, selfishness, and bad decisions like, let's not give yet another man a reason not to take accountability for his own actions. Other than that, I would say the only detail that most people get wrong is thinking that major Frank McLaughlin was a real major or military man, which we know that he wasn't. But it's also not really clear where he got the title from and where he started to use it and how it caught on, but it did. And, of course, the other thing that everyone always states is the rumor that his relationship with his stepdaughter Agnes was inappropriate and that's always stated as an absolute fact of the matter when we know that that's not quite true. For this episode, I got a lot of my information from contemporary newspaper articles since it was such a major story across The United States and perhaps even globally.

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In one of the main newspaper articles that I referenced was the November seventeenth nineteen o seven issue of the San Francisco Daily Call that was titled Frank McLaughlin kills daughter and himself at Santa Cruz which was an incredibly detailed article. But I'm bringing it up now because it had a really interesting juxtaposition. The story right next to it, a tiny little story is called Suicide Ends Happy Love Affair of Girl Takes Poison When Father Refuses to Consent to wedding. Farewell note lost. This story only had a tiny little blurb since the people involved weren't major public figures like the McLaughlin's, but nonetheless, I found it interesting that these two articles were side by side because I couldn't help but think that someone at the paper saw this other story which then inspired them to make up the rumors about the major being in love with his daughter and refusing to let her marry.

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But that's all speculation on my part so do not quote me on that. Aside from newspaper accounts, my next biggest source for this episode was an article written by a lifesaver of a librarian or perhaps a historian from the Santa Cruz Public Library's local history department named Susan Dormanen. So thank you, Susan. And like any great historian, Susan had an endless supply of footnotes for me to follow to expand my own research. So while I have nothing to disprove with this story since most accounts out there are more or less factually sound, I did want to just share some fun newspaper articles about Major McLaughlin's life since it was so full of many colorful and notable characters.

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And it will also help us get a better idea of who the Major was and what his personality was like. Now I was specifically interested in his encounter with Wyatt Earp so I took a good look into that. So here's a story of his encounter with Wyatt Earp though not contemporary to when it happened in a headline titled always a foe of Earp. And now keep in mind it's filled with flourishing prose and alliteration. McLaughlin was unsparing in his denunciations of the rascality of Wyatt Earp And it was vowed up and down Market Street that Earp had vowed to shoot McLaughlin on sight.

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When the two encountered one another at Johnny Farley's Peerless Saloon, Earp and the little major had a staring match for a thrilling instant in which the petulant pop of the pistol was expected by all. But the Arizona gunman saw that he could not intimidate through many a gunplay on the Western frontier And so he said with a tone smacking of something of an apology, I know Major McLaughlin, that you would not have made such remarks unless you believed them to be true, and left the saloon while the man he was supposed to kill on-site took his time over his drink, uttered a few jocular remarks for the benefit of the bystanders, and went his own way with a nerve seemingly not shaken at all. First off, apologies for whatever that accent was but I love this story partially because the fact that it's a little bit anticlimactic and it definitely did not go down in the way a lot of other sources made it sound. Most sources made it sound like he actually had a duel with Wyatt Earp, but they really just had a little staring contest and exchanged a couple of terse words and they were on their way.

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Now the next story is about his time in politics and is titled No Fear of a Bad Gun. There was never any doubt of his physical courage or willingness to accept a challenge from any bad gunman. When he was managing the campaign of D M Burns for the United States Senate, there were many threats that he would be killed. In one day in the corridor of the Golden Eagle Hotel in Sacramento, he met Major Gaucho of San Diego who was supposed to have a particular grudge against him. Major McLaughlin calmly spat in Major Gaucher's face and pushed him with his left hand.

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Goucher made no effort to resent the insult and afterwards he had said, I was too wise to be taken by that old frontier trick. He spat in my pistol eye and pushed me off with his left hand so that he was free to draw with his right. These articles perfectly illustrate the personality of Major McLaughlin. He was a bit of a tough guy but they also showed that he was resilient and he was smart. The major used his brain.

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He had tricks, not just frontier tricks, but as we know, he also swindled his investors out of their money while paying himself a hefty salary that he couldn't lose. Both of these stories also show his resolve. He was unshakable in the face of danger and he never backed down from a fight even with Wyatt Earp or an agent from Scotland Yard. And this was a through line throughout his life that he was never nervous about an outcome because he always believed with the utmost confidence that he would come out on top. I think it's also really interesting that alongside this unshakable personality, this gruff persona, and this machismo facade.

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But there was also a really soft side specifically for his stepdaughter Agnes. I guess how you view that relationship and those soft feelings that the major had for Agnes is gonna rely greatly on whether or not you believe the tabloid gossip about some kind of incestuous relationship. Many online sources and people in comments have seen that that bit of information was published newspaper and took it as fact. But I'm a lot more skeptical because the papers also said that Agnes had some secret fiance on the East Coast and they cited that fiance and Agnes' own friends as the source for that information. But when Agnes' friends were asked about the secret fiance, they denied that that was a possibility.

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So I don't really give too much credence to this twisted relationship that the Major allegedly had with Agnes. And to me, looking at the Major and Agnes' relationship critically, I think this argument kind of falls apart. Many cite his letter which says, I love her so and so I take her with me. As proof of his twisted disgusting desires. But just stop and think for just one second.

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The Major adopted Agnes when she was three. He was absolutely enamored with her mother, Margaret, and it was clear that he suffered greatly at her mother's loss. He cared for Agnes and was undoubtedly fiercely protective of her, but in the way that an overbearing father loves his family. Let's not forget that he didn't even want his cat to be left alone at the villa. Now I'm not condoning cat murder, but in his mind, he believed that he was doing the best thing for his entire family.

[00:28:49] - [Speaker 0]
Or perhaps he thought too highly of himself and thought that Agnes couldn't possibly survive without him, but I think it's probably more that he was selfish and wanted to make sure that he, Margaret, Agnes, and the cat were all together on the other side. I think in his twisted mind, he really just wanted his family back together again. And despite conflicting stories, Agnes was still very much involved with Sam Rucker who was described as one of the most attentive lovers and that he was patiently waiting for Agnes to marry him but that Agnes felt she was unjustified in leaving her father since the death of her mother. And sadly, instead of having the chance to finally marry her, Sam Rucker instead accompanied Agnes' and the major's bodies to the East Coast where they were buried. And their engagement wasn't a secret, at least not to the major, which makes his decision even more confounding seeing as Rucker was the former mayor of San Jose and a very successful man.

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The major was clearly not in his right mind and I believe that Margaret's death took a greater toll on him newspapers and his friends let on. But the fact that he committed his crime on the anniversary of his wife's passing, I think that really puts the nail in the coffin. Regardless of his motivations, when all is said and done, major Frank McLaughlin murdered his daughter and killed himself in his home. And one might suppose that this would leave a dark psychic stain on the glittering home that is the Golden Gate Villa. And you would be right.

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The home is rumored to be haunted. Patricia Sambook Wilder, a former fashion model turned interior designer, ended up buying and restoring the home which landed the villa on the National Registry of Historic Landmarks in 1975. Despite the fact that Patricia Wilder was born on Halloween, there was never any inkling of a haunting or even a single bad vibe at the villa. In fact, for the first four years that she owned the house, she wasn't even aware of the murder suicide that happened there. And as for the rest of her time there, she still never saw anything saying, I've never seen an apparition.

[00:31:07] - [Speaker 0]
Not that it doesn't exist. I I wouldn't challenge that, But I do believe in energy. But this house has positive vibes, a very good energy. So whatever spiritual force is left for the McLaughlin's is good. Now Wilder isn't a skeptic by any stretch of the imagination.

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While she never saw a ghost in the home, she claims that the otherworldly spirits which reside there helped her to choose the paint colors during the restoration. She has also said that sometimes when I've been cleaning and vacuuming, I've had the feeling that someone is watching me, but nothing frightening. Patricia did recall that one time when she was giving a tour of the house, a man in the group had asked her, have you ever seen a ghost? And of course, she told him that she never did. But another woman in the group scoffed at Wilder and said, they would never show themselves to her.

[00:32:01] - [Speaker 0]
They wouldn't wanna scare her. So maybe the ghosts are caring and they've been sitting quietly by this whole time picking out paint colors for the house and they're just so courteous and polite that they didn't wanna scare Patricia. Who by the way said, I wouldn't be scared. It would almost be an affirmation of the life beyond in which I believe. But not everyone is a believer.

[00:32:22] - [Speaker 0]
Patricia Wilder's granddaughter Chelsea Mosgrove lived in the house her entire life. And she turns her nose up at the notion that the house is haunted saying, I've never seen or felt anything except a lot of love which my grandmother has put into this house. And Chelsea went on to talk about how her grandmother was a fantastic artist who reupholstered all the old furniture, some of which was likely from the McLaughlin's and poured and mixed all the paint herself. However, even if the Major or Agnes don't haunt the house, there may be another ghost there now. Patricia Wilder said herself, there is so much of me in this house.

[00:33:06] - [Speaker 0]
I've owned it longer than anybody else. So I definitely plan to haunt it. Sadly, Patricia passed away in Texas in 2014 at the age of 89. The new owner hasn't said anything of hauntings from Patricia or otherwise. But I was curious if there were any ghostly encounters at Golden Gate Villa so I started looking.

[00:33:30] - [Speaker 0]
Blogs and newspapers say that people have seen a young woman in a lavender dress on the staircase but I wasn't able to find a single firsthand account of that. However, what was promising is that Patricia rented out the upper floors at the villa to renters. And after poking around on social media, I found a couple of comments from people who used to live at the villa or they had friends or family that did. Most of them had vague comments like, there was an energy or it was old and creepy but I never saw anything. But there were no actual experiences until I saw a comment on Reddit.

[00:34:11] - [Speaker 0]
This was the exchange. My friend used to live at Golden Gate Villa. It has an interesting history and in my experience, some intense paranormal activity. Finally, this was the golden ticket. The OP replied saying, oh, what was your experience?

[00:34:31] - [Speaker 0]
And the commenter never answered. That was five years ago. They never made any other posts or comments. So it's a mystery and we may never know the answer. And while we can't solve that mystery or the mystery of the motivations for the major's murder suicide or whether or not there are any ghosts in the manor at all, there is one mystery that we can solve and that's the door to nowhere.

[00:34:59] - [Speaker 0]
In the back of the villa, the rear carriage house faces out towards the street on a cliff. And in the back of this carriage house is a mysterious door. Just a door all by itself perched right out over the cliff. It seems that it's always been a bit of a point of mystery and urban legend and locals have connected many theories and hypotheses towards its purpose. Some fancy it to be like the budget version of the Winchester Mystery House, But no.

[00:35:31] - [Speaker 0]
The door was there so that the stable workers could shovel horse waste out of the back of the carriage house and down towards the bottom of the cliff. Well, not the mystery that I had hoped to solve on this episode. At least it's something. But I wanna know what you think. What were the Major's motivations?

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Was he in love with his stepdaughter? Was he driven to madness at the loss of his wife? At the loss of his fortune and reputation? What do you think? If you're on YouTube, leave a comment down below and let me know.

[00:36:04] - [Speaker 0]
And while you're at it, hit that little thumbs up button and subscribe if you aren't already. And for all those listening with your beautiful ears, if you can leave a review on iTunes, it helps a ton. But more importantly, let your friends know who might be interested in the podcast, and let's try and recruit them into our little club of bibliographers. But until next time, do a little bit of research before draining an entire river for gold. Do not mix your stepdaughter's hair into your stained glass windows, but do pick your next paint color based on the suggestion of your resident ghost.

[00:36:40] - [Speaker 0]
And until next time, I'll see you in the stacks.