Jarrett Lies: 00:00

Welcome to Real Creepy Estate, where we delve into the unexplained, the mysterious, and the downright eerie. I'm your host, Jarrett Lies, a real estate agent who's been inside thousands of houses over the years. In my time on the job, I've encountered more than just impressive layouts and stylish decor. I've had my fair share of strange experiences and have listened to countless stories from homeowners about their own. I was once a bit skeptical myself, but after hearing so many accounts from the most uns uspecting sources, I couldn't deny it any longer.

Jarrett Lies: 00:32

There's something more to this world than meets the eye. Join me as we explore the paranormal one house at a time. Hey, everyone. Welcome to Real Creepy Estate, my brand new podcast that I just launched this week. So fall is in full swing here in Kansas.

Jarrett Lies: 00:56

The weather is perfect. The air is crisp. The leaves are just starting to turn, and I could not be more excited. This time of the year is my all time favorite. Fall is my favorite season.

Jarrett Lies: 01:08

October is my favorite month. Although I know we're still in September, but still close enough. And I just can't help but to think, what a better time to launch a spooky season podcast than right now. So that's what I've decided to do. I did a thing that I don't think you're supposed to do, which is launch this podcast with one single episode.

Jarrett Lies: 01:32

So I am now trying to frantically record and edit two more so that I can get them out into the world and give people something to listen to. So hopefully, it doesn't totally tank this podcast before it even gets going. But, oh, well, this is just for fun anyway. So I don't think it really matters. And I'm just excited to be here and be talking about something that is kind of fun.

Jarrett Lies: 01:54

Although I will say it is 10:44 as I'm recording this podcast, and I'm getting really tired. And the more I think and talk about ghosts, the harder I know it will be for me to fall asleep. And I'm worried that I might be up all night tonight just because I'm scared, even though this episode is a story that I've heard about a million times. It's a story that if you live in Lawrence, if you're from Kansas, if you went to KU, which is the University of Kansas, then you probably know that the fraternity house, Sigma Nu, is supposedly haunted. And today, we're gonna talk about the history of the fraternity house and who the ghost is, who lingers there still.

Jarrett Lies: 02:35

Okay. So let's talk about the ghost of Sigma Nu. Today, you might know it as Sigma Nu Fraternity House at the University of Kansas. But in the past, the mansion was the home of the eighteenth governor of Kansas, Walter Roscoe Stubbs. According to the legend, the house is haunted by a former maid named Virginia who died in 1911 under suspicious circumstances.

Jarrett Lies: 03:00

On April 22 of that year, Stubbs reportedly returned home from Topeka. He went upstairs to the ballroom, and there, in a coat closet, he discovered Virginia's body hanging from the rafters. But was it really suicide? Some versions of the story claim it was murder. They say that Stubbs' wife suspected he was having an affair with Virginia.

Jarrett Lies: 03:21

In a jealous rage, she killed the young woman and staged it to look like a suicide. When Stubbs went looking for his wife after discovering Virginia, he found her rocking back and forth, traumatized by what she had witnessed. Some accounts say she was later committed to an asylum. The story doesn't end there. Stubbs is said to have cremated Virginia and sealed her ashes behind the massive stone fireplace in the home.

Jarrett Lies: 03:44

If you visit the home today, there's reportedly a plaque on that fireplace that reads, the world of strife shut out. The world of love shut in. Since then, fraternity brothers have reported all sorts of strange activity. The sudden smell of lavender perfume drifting through the halls, which was said to have been Virginia's favorite scent, lights flickering and doors slamming shut, footsteps when no one else is around, and even the apparition of a young woman in white staring out the window in the middle of the night. One student even lived in the very room where Virginia's body was supposedly found.

Jarrett Lies: 04:21

He described uneasy dreams, alarms that wouldn't go off, and a heavy, restless feeling that stayed with him all semester. Here's where things get tricky. No one has ever found a death certificate for a Virginia connected to the Stubbs household. Part of the reason could be that she died in April 1911, and Kansas didn't require death certificates to be recorded until July that year. So was Virginia real?

Jarrett Lies: 04:47

Was she erased from history, or was the whole thing a story invented and retold by generations of fraternity brothers? Whatever the truth is, the legend, and maybe the spirit, has lingered for over a century inside the Sigma Nu fraternity house. So I have some of my own thoughts about the story and also questions for people. First being, has anyone been inside the Sigma Nu fraternity house? I mean, I know some people have been there because there's boys living in there every single year.

Jarrett Lies: 05:18

But has anyone listening to this podcast actually been in there? Because I would love to know if that plaque on the fireplace is really there. That seems like a great place to start. Like, does that part of the story even exist or not? Can we verify that that is true?

Jarrett Lies: 05:35

I'm curious to know. And for those who have been in the frat house, have you had any experiences there? I went to school at the University of Kansas, and I've never been in. I actually, when I was thinking about it, don't think I have ever met anyone who's even ever been in that fraternity. So I'd be really interested to know what the experience living there was like and if this haunting is even talked about within the fraternity house and among the people who live there.

Jarrett Lies: 05:59

And then my second thought was about the closet in the ballroom. That was a detail to me that at first seemed odd because a ballroom is generally a wide open space. And then I thought back to a very large historical home that I sold in Lawrence that did have a ballroom on the Top Floor, and it did indeed have closets. So I guess that part of the story can check out even though at first thought it seemed weird. Another thought I had was what a bizarre place for missus Stubbs and then for the governor to go look for a body.

Jarrett Lies: 06:34

In a closet, in the ballroom, it just it seems weird to me. And part of the reason that I thought it seemed weird is because the house is a mansion, so it's a huge house. It's hard to hear people from across a big home. But also, those ballrooms and really old houses that are those big, old, expensive historic homes, some of those ballrooms were built with sprung floors, meaning that underneath the wood floor, there's actually a system of joists and little, like, boxes that kind of act as shock absorbers so that when people were dancing up there, they could dance, and the shock was absorbed. Because think about it.

Jarrett Lies: 07:13

If a ballroom is on the Top Floor of a big home, there's people up there constantly pushing down on the floor, and it'd be nice to have some sort of shock absorber. So if people had enough money at the time to build homes that large and have a ballroom in their home, they would sometimes have special flooring like that for dancing. And that got me thinking, did those floors also dampen the noise? So I looked into it a little bit, and it actually said online that they did dampen the noise in some ways, but also made certain sounds more pronounced. So who knows?

Jarrett Lies: 07:41

I mean, that's not really a hugely important part of my analysis. It was just one more thing that got me thinking about how feasible it would actually be for someone to hear someone doing something way across the house, especially if they were in a room that had special flooring and things like that. So maybe Mrs. Stubbs was with Virginia. Maybe she did kill her.

Jarrett Lies: 08:00

Although, I really hate to think that for a couple reasons. One, like, why does she have to kill the mistress? Okay? Why can't she kill her husband? I mean, I was talking about this with my friend earlier.

Jarrett Lies: 08:12

And, yeah, I think it's awful that Virginia was having an affair, if that's the truth. But, like, what about the husband who wronged you? And why does she have to die? And I obviously don't advocate that she killed either party. But it was just curious to me because it seems like if you were gonna kill someone in a jealous fit of rage, it would be because you, like, found them in bed together or something, not just one day while you were home alone with her, unless she just was stewing on the situation and could take it no longer.

Jarrett Lies: 08:42

And then that also got me thinking about the other angle. Like, maybe Virginia, who from all accounts, it seems like was a young girl, although I don't really know her age. Maybe her relationship with the husband was not her decision. So who knows? Maybe she did commit suicide because she was so unhappy, and maybe missus Stubbs found her and was so traumatized because she knew the situation and not because she was in some sort of jealous rage.

Jarrett Lies: 09:06

Maybe she felt despair for Virginia. Another interesting thing about the story is that I had always heard that she was found hanging from a chandelier, not from a closet. So that was just an interesting difference in the stories I've been told verbally versus the research I did on my own when creating this podcast. I do wonder why all stories seem to point to Virginia being the person who haunts the Sigma Nu house, when in my opinion, it could just as easily be Mrs. Stubbs, who is the apparition that people are seeing in the home.

Jarrett Lies: 09:36

Because now she's surely deceased. And if you had that much trauma in a home, I don't think that she necessarily had to die in the home to haunt the home. But it also makes sense that Virginia could be the ghost if she was indeed a real person and did indeed die in that home. My overall thought on hauntings, though, is that not all hauntings come from someone dying in a place. I think energy is interesting.

Jarrett Lies: 09:57

I think stuck energy can loom in homes long after people are gone. I think that people can go back and haunt places. I'll talk about some of these things in future podcasts, but I think that it's complex. I don't think that we know these things, and I think it could just as well be missus Stubbs haunting that place instead of Virginia. Or who knows?

Jarrett Lies: 10:15

If death certificates weren't being recorded in Kansas until July 1911, Sigma Nu was built in nineteen o seven, I believe. So there were years before when other people could have lived in that home that we don't know about. And also, people were most likely on that land before the house was ever built. So there's a lot of things to think about when it comes to the spirit and who it is. All I know is that at one time, there were a couple of very sad women in the Sigma Nu fraternity house, seemingly sad because of the man who lived there with them.

Jarrett Lies: 10:45

And since her death, one of them has been stuck in there with hundreds of men. So I hope that one day whoever it is can find peace. And while I absolutely believe in hauntings, I really deep down hope that most ghost stories aren't true. Because as fun as it is to share these stories, when it really comes down to it, when I hear stories that are so tragic, stories like this, all I can hope is that they are not true. So as I mentioned earlier, this podcast is brand new.

Jarrett Lies: 11:13

It's going to be evolving for a little bit while I share different types of stories to see what you all like. But my hope is that you guys will send in some stories that I can share too. I have a lot of my own to start this podcast, but I know that there are a lot of people out there with stories too because I've heard them. And if you're a friend of mine and you're listening to this podcast and we have shared a paranormal experience together, I've probably not asked you if I can share it on this podcast yet, but be warned that the ask is coming. If anyone out there has a story, please email it to me at hello@realcreepyestate.com, and I might just share it in a future episode.

Jarrett Lies: 11:53

Also, be sure to follow me on Instagram at real creepy estate. I don't know what I'm going to be doing over on that account, but my hope is that while I'm gonna be posting about the podcast, obviously, I would love to be able to get enough content that it could also be a place where I could share creepy footage that people send in. Like, for instance, my brother sent me a video the other day that happened at a place where I used to work. One night, the bartender saw that a glass had broken. He was wondering how the glass broke, so he rolled back the camera footage to see what had happened.

Jarrett Lies: 12:21

And, well, I will let you look at that video for yourself on my Instagram to see what you think. I'd love to have little snippets of videos like that. So if you've caught anything on a pet cam, maybe security footage, and you'd be willing to share it with me and let me post about it so that people can see for themselves, I would love that. I know it's out there because I've seen it with my own eyeballs. Some of you have shown me videos like this.

Jarrett Lies: 12:45

And if you'd be willing to share, I think content like that would be really fun to share on Instagram. So send anything you've got. You can DM me on Instagram, or you can email me at hellorealcreepyestate dot com. And also keep in mind that these first couple episodes happen to be about Kansas, but that's only because it's where I currently live. I would take stories and footage from all over the world.

Jarrett Lies: 13:08

I'm just starting local and with my own stories because right now, I'm pretty sure that all of my listeners are just people I know. But I hope now that this podcast is actually launched that that can change and that other people start to hear these stories too. Thanks so much for listening to Real Creepy Estate. Happy spooky season. And remember, every house has a story to tell.

Jarrett Lies: 13:28

That concludes this episode of Real Creepy Estate. Thanks for listening. Talk to you next time.