Small Town Whispers
Small Town Whispers is a storytelling podcast where history and the paranormal meet under the glow of the porchlight. Season One, Watseka Wonder, explores the chilling 19th-century case of possession and exorcism that haunted my hometown of Watseka, Illinois. I first discovered the story as a twelve-year-old when I read the book Watseka: America's Most Extraordinary Case of Possession and Exorcism by David St. Clair. Now, I return to share those haunting pages alongside small-town legends, ghost stories, and folklore submitted by listeners like you.
Episodes
24 episodes
A Double Warning
A brother shows up at the door with his hat in his hands and a request that sounds simple: “Can Rancy come see Ma?” That one question pulls the Roff household back into the most volatile part of the Watseka-inspired possession story, where ever...
A Letter From Heaven and a Warning
A child’s body goes still. A household runs out of options. Then an ordinary white envelope drifts down from the ceiling with instructions detailed enough to save a life. We’re back in Watseka, Illinois, digging deeper into the infamous Lurancy...
Spring Fever
Spring has a way of making people bold, and in Watseka it also makes the haunting louder. We pick back up with the Watseka Wonder story at the moment it turns deeply personal: a March 20th, 1878 letter from “Mary” to Dr. E. W. Stevens. It reads...
"Two 'Crazies' to Contend With"
A girl runs barefoot into the March snow because she doesn’t recognize the people calling her “family,” and the whole town decides that panic is proof. We’re back in Watseka, Illinois for a pivotal chapter of the Lurancy Vennum possession story...
Total Recall
A single bark hidden in an audio edit shouldn’t rattle anyone, but it did. While revisiting our interview with paranormal investigator and podcaster Tom Stewart, we hear what sounds like a dog barking right in the middle of a word. Tom hears it...
Tea in Heaven
A girl walks out of her house in 1878 and into someone else’s life, and a grieving family chooses to believe their daughter just came home. We pick up the Watseka Wonder at the moment it turns from rumor to reunion: Lurancy Vennum arrives at th...
Unfamiliar Territory
A girl insists she isn’t who her parents think she is and the room spirals from arguments into terror. We start with a chilling stretch of the Watseka possession narrative, where Lurancy Vennum’s family, Ann Roff, and Dr Stevens clash over beli...
An Unconventional Tea Party
A mother opens her front door and watches a “stranger” sprint through the snow with her arms wide, calling someone else “Ma” and “Nervie” like it’s the most natural thing in the world. That’s where we pick up the Watseka Wonder, the infamous Wa...
A Hail Mary Possession
A father hears his daughter’s voice twelve years after her death. A basement lamp clicks itself on. We open the door to Watseka’s haunted past and present, weaving the famed Mary Roff and Lurancy Vennum possession with fresh, first-hand account...
A Voice From the Past
A number can spook a culture, but it can also signal a doorway. On a Friday the 13th packed with lore and pop nostalgia, we follow a thread that leads to Watseka, Illinois—and a moment that flips possession from horror to human. Bethany walks u...
Cigars, Sailors, & a Very Rude Ghost
A winter storm closed the world outside, so we opened a door most people keep shut: the Watseka Wonder. Bethany revisits a case tangled with possession, small-town politics, and a healer who worked without touch, guiding us through a sequence t...
Dr. E. W. Stevens, At Your Service
The room goes quiet when a child is called “possessed,” but the real noise lives in the spaces between fear, faith, and the need to explain what we can’t understand. We open on Watseka’s social stage, where Lavinia Durst’s parlor hums with stat...
September 21, 1877: The Crow
Content Note: This episode includes discussion of suicide and historical mental health struggles. Listener discretion is advised.A seventh grader bends over a blank page and starts to write about a crow. Minutes later, th...
July 4, 1877: It's Happening Again
We revisit Watseka and are introduced to Lurancy Vennum, a frail teen who hears voices and sees the dead during frightening fits. Between a mother’s terror and a town’s rumors, we explore whether grief, illness, or something unseen is calling R...
Permanent Side Effects
A quiet Illinois morning shatters with a single scream, and an old question returns with new force: what do we do with the stories we can’t explain? We follow Mary Roff’s final turn as her father, Asa, rides a desperate circuit between Peoria’s...
A Cup of Tea
The bells of Palm Sunday ring, the town pours into the street, and then the story slips sideways. Watseka, Illinois is celebrating the end of war, but behind the music and speeches, neighbors trade signatures under lamplight, a cruel nickname s...
Dinner & a Séance Part 2
A quiet room, a held breath—and then a voice that isn’t quite Mary’s. What begins as a message for a granddaughter turns into a reckoning about shame, stolen money, and the cost of keeping family history locked away. The word protection lands l...
Dinner & a Séance Part 1
The room goes still, the metronome ticks, and Mary begins a slow descent down an imagined staircase that somehow leads straight into the private histories of everyone at the table. What follows isn’t vagueness or guesswork; it’s a sequence of p...
Ghost Horse
A girl wakes after five silent days with no memory and no weakness. A minister sits in her parlor and suggests a possibility more human than demonic: a spirit not gone far enough. When he conducts an experiment successfully right there in the h...
Bloody Mary
Content Warning:This episode contains descriptions of self-harm, blood, graphic injury, violence, and strong language. Check the Chapters for details.Listener discretion is advised. The porchlight fli...
Possession or Performance?
We trace Mary’s missing days at the Peoria Water Cure and the split between diagnosis and belief, then widen the lens to Wilmington’s haunted landmarks and why certain places feel charged. The thread is care: how families endure the unexplainab...
Mary Mary, Quite Contrary
A teenager restrained in a windowless room, a doctor’s letter that reads like a warning, and a father who refuses to accept “coincidence” as an answer—this chapter of Small Town Whispers moves from the Roff family’s newfound prosperity to the m...
There's Something About Mary
A quiet kitchen, a Sunday supper, and a six-year-old who suddenly sounds sixty-three. That’s where our journey takes a sharp turn, pulling us from small-town routine into a confrontation with the unexplainable. I read a vivid passa...
Watseka: America's Most Extraordinary Case of Possession and Exorcism
Welcome to Small Town Whispers. In Episode 1, you are going to get to know your host a little bit better and understand why she wants to keep the history of Watseka, IL and the story of the Watseka Wonder alive. The Roff family was ...