EP 12: The Spider House
*SPOILER ALERT: The following article contains spoilers for Episode 1 & 12. Before reading, be sure to listen to Ink, Coffee, & Spirits & The Spider House . Afterward, feel free to check out this "Behind-the-Episode" blog for additional info and photos! And visit our Patreon page for more extras!
Photos for this story provided by Thao Photography
The Spider House Cafe, 2908 Fruth St., Austin, TX
On September 7th, 2017 I decided to invite Sara to the Spider House Cafe for a cup of coffee and to chat about my new podcast in the works. This was a photograph I snapped with my phone that evening when I arrived.
I picked a booth on this main patio - just further back behind where this photo was taken. It was here that the booth at the end of this covered patio faced the stairway that led straight up to the window of Royal Legion Tattoo.
While Sara sat in this booth facing this window, she shared this drawing with me.
At the time, she had only partially drawn the female figure and the male figure with the vest. As the night progressed, so did the drawings, leading to the page you see above. The female spirit, Christine, was tied to the tattoo shop. The male seemed to be tied to the grounds or the Spider House. Note the name she jotted down at the end of this night - Christina. In the records I found for the daughter of the founder of this property who inherited and lived here until just a couple years before passing, her name was listed as both Christine and Christina in various articles I found at the Austin History Center. Upon returning numerous times with Sara, this spirit made it a point to tell Sara she preferred Christine. So that's why we refer to her that way from this point on.
When Sara needed to run to the bathroom during our 1st investigation at the tattoo shop, she pushed her way through this hallway, but before she made it to the back room, the male figure with the vest appeared in this basement doorway. He told Sara his box was down in this basement and that he couldn't get to it. Sara couldn't handle two spirits this first night - remember, this was the first time she'd ever tried doing something like this - so she ignored this man, went to the bathroom, then rejoined us in the back patio to continue communicating with Christine.
On October 9th, 2017 - Sara, Alexis, Franklyn and I returned to access the basement and see if the male spirit with the vest would give us more about this box he was adamant about us finding.
Waiting for Conrad and staff to arrive to let us into the basement of the Spider House, Sara took an opportunity to check in on Christine. We hung out on the upstairs patio at Royal Legion and she got several updates from her. During this check in, the male spirit called to her from the bottom of the stairs. She soon got a letter then a full name for him - Patrick.
Patrick led Sara down these stairs and into the basement of The Spider House.
While in here, Sara was drawn to the far concrete wall you see here - just behind the stacked red chairs.
But Sara felt something was wrong. She kept saying, it's behind this wall. Conrad, the Spider House founder and owner, directed us to this section just above the wall. If you look close, you can see where the concrete ends and a sheet of paneling begins. You can see a small gap between them. Conrad removed this panel and revealed a crawlspace that stretched into darkness under the cafe.
Roy, one of the employees, went around the house and climbed under the house. We could see him through this removed panel in the basement. But it tough to see and communicate with him through this. So, I ultimately had to join Roy under the Spider House.
This is the tiny crawl space door located on the exterior skirt of the house.
This is the area where Hunter used to live and sleep. The rug is folded in half because Roy and I had to dig under it for a while. So this isn't exactly how it looked when we crawled in. It looked much more like a sleeping space. If you look in and to the right, you'll see a concrete foundation pillar. There's another one of these that's slightly further back. This further one is where I was when Sara said Patrick jumped into the crawlspace and got right by me, trying to show me where to look up and find the watch in the cross beams above my head - above the concrete beam.
We weren't able to find a watch or a box. However, wee learned more about a man that used to live in this crawlspace and made some interesting connections. He used to carry around a box. He would collect trinkets and objects. And he slept right where Patrick kept leading us. It led me to theorize that maybe this spirit, Patrick, was showing us who took the watch rather than showing us where it was at the moment. Sara had also mentioned that he kept saying "Stolen". She drew a man, who we now assume was Hunter, laying under the house. She had also written in pencil above this drawing of Hunter, the same word - "Stolen".
After hearing some of the testimony from the past and present staff members, we decided to head back for a quieter investigation to see if Sara would pick up on any other spirits in the Spider House. I had a hunch the boots and footsteps reported in the front end and hallway of the Spider House might have been Patrick, I was curious if Sara would get anything in the back room or women's bathroom, where most of the other experiences