Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and is intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised. A medieval fort built seemingly in the middle of nowhere, protecting seemingly nothing and apparently built to impress and or intimidate absolutely no one. So why was Houska Castle built? Could the legend be true that its purpose is to guard a gateway to hell? I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Welcome, Weirdos. This is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained. Coming up in this episode... In the 1980s, Teresa Noor brutally murdered her two daughters with the help of her sons. Due to the fact that they are homes for children who are unwanted, abandoned or orphaned, orphanages are naturally sad places even when shown in the light of day. But in the dark, the sadness can turn to terror as a whole different crowd of children make themselves known, the ghosts of those who died there. Hannah Up was a teacher who developed a severe and rare form of amnesia. She disappeared twice but was located each time. But then she disappeared again in 2017 and is still missing today. What happened to Hannah? But first, constructed near Prague in the 13th century, Kauska Castle has housed mad scientists, Nazis and perhaps even demons. We begin there. If you're new here, welcome to the show. While you're listening, be sure to check out WeirdDarkness.com for merchandise, to visit sponsors you hear about during the show, sign up for my newsletter and or contests. Connect with me on social media. Plus, you can visit the Hope in the Darkness page if you're struggling with depression or dark thoughts. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com.  Hidden by the thick forestry, Kauska Castle in Czechia is shrouded in nightmare myth and occultist legend. It was built atop a cliff in Prague's countryside, mysteriously isolated from all trade routes. It had no source of water or fortification. Some say it wasn't built to keep evil from entering but to prevent it from spilling out. According to the castle's official website, it was built in the 13th century as an administrative hub for the king. But Czech folklore maintains that the true purpose of its construction was to seal a gaping crack in the limestone. Locals believed this was a gateway to hell from which demonic beings emerged to feed on villagers and drag them back into the abyss, never to be seen again. Legend has it that prisoners who were facing the gallows were offered full pardons, but only if they agreed to be lowered into the bottomless hole and report on what they saw. The first man to do so was young and healthy, and he happily accepted. Within seconds, however, he cried to be raised up. When he was pulled up from the chasm, his hair had turned white. The castle's eerie history doesn't stop there, though. Nazi experiments took place within its walls during World War II. Some say the Wehrmacht occupied this castle precisely to investigate whether the gateway to hell was real, as feverish occultism had consumed its higher ranks. Today, Hauska Castle remains one of the most haunted places on earth. While Hauska Castle now welcomes countless tourists from around the world, the limestone cliff on which it sits has drawn people in since antiquity. Archaeological evidence shows Celtic tribes inhabited the land far before the Middle Ages, and Slavic tribes migrated to the region in the 6th century. As Bohemian chronicler Voklev Hažek detailed in his Czech Chronicle in 1541, the first known structure at the site was a small wooden fort in the 9th century. Hažek also recounted local folklore that described the emergence of a crack in the cliff.  Locals were terrified of the half-human hybrids that began to crawl out of the hole at night and tear livestock apart. Fearful of turning into these demonic entities themselves, villagers avoided the Iraqi entrance. They tried to block it with stones, but the abyss allegedly gobbled up anything they dropped into it, refusing to be filled. King Otaker II of Bohemia had the Gothic structure built sometime between 1253 and 1278. Oddly, the original construction omitted stairs from the courtyard to the upper floors, and most of the structure's defenses were built facing inwards. It was as if the purpose of the castle wasn't to keep invaders out, but rather to keep something trapped within. Perhaps most notable of all, the king had the gateway to hell sealed with stone plates and had a chapel built above it. The chapel was dedicated to the archangel Michael who led God's armies against Lucifer's fallen angels, leading some to believe the gateway truly existed, or still does. By 1639, the castle was occupied by a Swedish mercenary named Oronto. The black magic practitioner allegedly toiled nightly in his laboratory in an effort to create an elixir for eternal life. This instilled villagers with so much mortal fear that two local hunters assassinated him. Despite Oronto's death, locals continued to avoid the area. Scholars have since discovered cracks in Hajek's histories and any evidence of Oronto's existence is rather dubious. Houska Castle did trade hands between various nobles and aristocrats in later centuries, however. It was renovated in the 1580s, fell into disrepair by the 1700s, and was fully restored in 1823. A century later, Josef Simonek, president of Skoda Auto, purchased the castle for himself.  According to the website Castles Today, some believe they needed to secure the 13,000 manuscript library of SS leader Heinrich Himmler, who was obsessed with the occult and believed that its power would help the Nazis rule the world. Himmler allegedly feared his trove of blasphemous materials would be destroyed in the war, but was something even more sinister afoot? Locals at the time reported strange lights and horrifying sounds coming from the castle. Some say that many top Nazi officials, including Himmler, attended dark ceremonies at Houska Castle in which they attempted to harness the power of hell. After the war, the Simonek family regained ownership of Houska Castle, and they still own it to this day. The castle has been open to the public since 1999. The Prague Daily Monitor reports that many visitors are baffled by its counterintuitive architecture and unnerved by the fresco paintings in the chapel. The strangest of these paintings depicts a creature with the upper body of a human woman and the lower body of a horse. While he was unheard of at the time to include depictions of pagan mythology in a church, even more staggering is the fact that the centaur is using its left hand to shoot an arrow. As left-handedness was associated with service to Satan during the Middle Ages, historians believe the painting is a hint to the creatures that lurk beneath the church. Indeed, to this day, visitors claim to hear screams and scratching noises from beneath the chapel floor. When Weird Darkness returns, in the 1980s, Teresa Noor brutally murdered her two daughters with the help of her sons, even going so far as to burn one of her daughters alive. That story is up next. Nothing goes better with chocolate than vanilla, and nothing goes better with the darkness than vampires. So we've combined all of them into a new blend of weird dark roast coffee called Very Vampilla.  So good, you'll want to sink your fangs into the fresh roasted bag itself. Weird Dark Roast Very Vampilla, the only thing at stake, sorry, not sorry, bad pun, is your dissatisfaction with your old coffee. Sip it while the sun is down if you're one of the undead, or when the sun is up if you just feel dead and need a bit of a boost. Get your Weird Dark Roast Very Vampilla at WeirdDarkness.com slash coffee. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash coffee. Ads hurt before, during, or after the podcast are not endorsed by WeirdDarkness or myself unless voiced by me personally. All other ads are pre-recorded and inserted by third-party agencies not me and are not under my control. When you think of a mother, you imagine someone who loves you unconditionally, a person to whom you give your absolute trust. But what happens when that trust is violated in the most heinous of ways? What if the woman who tucks you in at night is a mother, a murderer, and a monster?  Seasoned True Crime author Dennis McDougal examines the chilling case of Teresa Noor, her six children, and the horrific abuse they suffered at the hands of their mother in the book Mother's Day. Teresa Noor was born on March 14, 1946, to Jim and Swannie Gay Cross in Sacramento, California. Teresa was the youngest of two daughters born to the couple. Swannie also had a son and daughter from a previous marriage. The Crosses lived a relatively happy life in the early 1950s. Jim was an assistant cheese maker at Sacramento's Golden State Dairy while Swannie worked at the Essex Lumber Company, running a machine that made pencils. With money saved, the Cross family purchased a bigger home in nearby Rialinda. But by the end of the 1950s, their budding domestic bliss came to a tragic end. Jim was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, and following an unsuccessful brain surgery was forced into unemployment. Swannie did her best to support the family until she suffered a fatal heart attack on March 2, 1961. Teresa, days away from her 15th birthday, was with her mother on the day Swannie's heart gave out. She held her mother in her arms as she died. The year after her mother's death, at age 15, Teresa dropped out of high school and married her first husband, Clifford Clyde Sanders. The following summer, she gave birth to her first child, Howard Sanders. By all accounts, Teresa's marriage to Clifford was a tumultuous one. The couple frequently clashed, and Teresa claimed that her husband was abusive and an alcoholic. On one memorable occasion, Teresa filed charges against her husband after being punched in the face, but the charges were later dropped. At the peak of their brawling, and less than a month later, on July 6, 1964, during a heated argument, Teresa shot Sanders with a rifle. Teresa was charged with murdering Clifford Sanders. She pleaded not guilty, claiming self-defense. At the trial, Clifford's relatives testified that Teresa was capable of killing her husband. I believe with all my heart that Teresa Sanders planned to kill my brother, stated Clifford's sister, Lydia. On September 22, 1964, Teresa was found not guilty in the murder of Clifford Clyde Sanders. The following spring, she gave birth to her second child, Sheila Gay. On July 9, 1966, Teresa married U.S. Marine Bob Noor. The couple had four children together, Susan in 1966, William in 1967, Robert in 1968, and Teresa Terry Marie in 1970. As with her first marriage, Teresa's relationship with Bob was fraught with alcohol-fueled arguments and accusations of infidelity. The couple soon called it quits. Teresa Noor married two more times after her divorce from Bob Noor, first to Ron Plyum and then to Chet Harris. Her fourth and final marriage lasted only a little over two months in 1976, and it was upon the disillusion of this marriage that Teresa Noor went over the edge.  Envious of her two older daughters, Teresa directed the brunt of her abuse at Sheila and Susan.  In the summer of 1984, Teresa burned 17-year-old Susan alive with the help of her sons, Robert and William. Several savage assaults on Susan preceded the incident, a shot in the back, a stabbing and a crude operation with an exacto knife. Teresa's motivation? She believed Susan had used magic to make her gain weight. The following summer, Teresa killed her 20-year-old daughter, Sheila, by beating and then locking her in a closet without food or water for three days. Again, Teresa made wild claims to justify her actions. And again, Robert and William served as her brainwashed accomplices. In 1993, Terry, the youngest of the Noor children, courageously stepped forward with an account of her mother's crimes. It was not, in fact, the first time she had reached out for help. Previous attempts were dismissed. This time, however, the monstrous truth was believed. An investigation led to the arrest and conviction of Teresa Noor, who received two consecutive life sentences. At last, Teresa Noor was brought to justice. But the scars she left would never fade. Dennis McDougal examines Noor's depths of depravity and the case that made headlines across the nation in his book Mother's Day, which I'll link to in the episode notes. The excerpt I'm about to share begins in the aftermath of Noor's divorce from Chet Harris, when the mother's capacity for violence took on a terrible new dimension. Back at the house, on Bellingham Way, Teresa grew more reclusive, more unpredictable, and more violent. But nobody outside of her immediate family knew anything about it. Though she had always been hard on her children, it was her last husband who had finally turned her into a monster. She really went over the edge with Chet Harris, said Terry. After Harris, she dated for a little while, but then she got to the point where she wouldn't date or remarry or nothing. Terry's older brothers, William and Robert, agreed, recalling that their mother's gradual transformation from angry disciplinarian to raging eccentric took place in the late 1970s. Sometime around when I turned 10 or 11 or so, she started becoming abusive, real short-tempered, William recalled. She stopped going out, seeing friends at all on any level. She got rid of the telephone because she didn't want any people calling. We weren't allowed to have anybody inside the house. When I was growing up, I hated the Brady Bunch because I knew that nobody lived like that, said Robert. I knew that because I knew what my family life was like, nothing could be more different from the truth than that expletive TV show. I grew up in an insane asylum, basically. But what's worse is we didn't know it was an insane asylum, he continued. I never really admitted or even knew that I was being abused or that my family was being abused because I thought it was normal. And yet, as far as the neighbors knew, the Nor family was no different from any other. Not that I want to say that they were private but they stayed to themselves, said Janet Garrett, who lived next door. It was difficult to strike up a conversation with the mother. She just didn't want to, it seemed like.  Teresa's changing behavior even went undetected by the neighborhood kids who generally had a closer view of their friends' private lives than their parents. Not having a father figure around, that was the only thing about their family that seemed different, said Janet's son, Chris Garrett. He was the same age as Terry Nor and went to her house to play from time to time. Once he went to her birthday party, a party at which he noticed that he was the only non-family member. Terry's mom wasn't the silent type, he recalled. In fact, she was real talkative, kept to herself but talkative when you talked to her. Even so, I don't remember her ever saying anything that you could call off the wall. But Terry's mom was definitely different from the other moms in the neighborhood. I will say this about her, Garrett added. Terry's mom definitely had control of the kids. I didn't see a lot of back talk or argument coming out of any of them. If they were told to be in by a certain time, they were in. If they were told to do something, they did it. They never asked questions. They never made a point to second-guess authority. Teresa's children may have accepted this dictatorial isolation, but they didn't understand it. They complained about not being able to have friends over, but if they whined too much about it, they were slapped into silence. They did not see the gradual evaporation of their contact with the outside world as the logical result of shutting themselves inside the house. Instead, Teresa's children saw the neighbors distancing from their mother and themselves as indifference and an unwillingness to get involved. Our neighbors backed off, said Terry. They knew better than to mess with our family. Everyone shuts their eyes. Nobody wants to get involved. The Nord children's blind obedience to their mother stemmed from a constant state of terror that remained invisible to the Garrets and everyone else who lived along Bellingham Way. Even in the early stages, the terror was so bizarre and their mother so skilled at keeping it in the family, it would have taken more than a simple curiosity on the part of the neighbors to uncover what was going on. Had the Garrets or any of the other neighbors known about it, Terry wonders even today if they would have done anything. When my mother got drunk, she used to lick the ends of steak knives, Terry recalled, serrated-edged knives as she threw them at us to see if her aim was good. Knives weren't Teresa's only deadly playthings when she'd had a little too much to drink. Terry still blanches, remembering the chill in her mother's voice one evening when she went in to say goodnight. Eyes half closed, her mother sat in a deep chair in the living room and motioned for Terry to approach. In her drunken stupor, Teresa howled at her shivering but stoic young daughter, boasting of that defining moment nearly 15 years earlier when she pointed a gun at Clifford Sanders and pulled the trigger. She owned two guns, a derringer and a revolver, Terry recalled. At one point she took out the bone-handled old cowboy gun. It looked like a toy, but it was a real six-shooter, a .22 pistol. Aiming the pistol at her daughter, Teresa told Terry, I shot once and I can do it again. Terry froze, standing terrified before her. And she told me to come to her and I did, Terry said with a shudder, remembering. As she put the gun to my head so hard that the next morning I woke up, I still had a knot from where the barrel had sunk into my temple. On the evenings that followed, sobered and sentimental, Teresa would try to make amends by taking everyone out for a family ride as if nothing had happened. She'd load them into the car and drive up Highway 50 past Placerville into the high Sierras. It was one of those see how nice I can be type things, Bill recalled. There was no point to it other than to commune with nature. They never went to play in the snow or hike in the forest. It was just a tour through the mountains. Unlike six-lane interstate 80 which cut through the relatively barren Donner Pass, the Placerville Highway had more vistas, more wildlife and more trees, which appealed to Teresa's aesthetic sense. But the family drives did little to make up for the savagery that went on back home. It was beat us, lock us in our room for days, and then she'd be all lovey-dovey, said Terry. My mom was so blatantly contradictory, she played the part of a mother but she also played the part of a very torturous, sadistic human being. Oh yeah, she was schizo. But the older her children got, the more difficult they were to control. They wanted to visit friends, not stay at home for readings from IT or Ecclesiastes. Williams was among the first to begin plotting his escape. When we got to a certain age, we were no longer permitted to go outside, Bill recalled. We were always grounded. Friends that came over were told by my mom that we were grounded or asleep or not there. We had everything taken away from us. Teresa timed her children's visits to school, to the grocery store, to church, and administered the third degree if they were a few minutes late getting home.  It was if you did something wrong or that she saw wrong, like coming back late from the store, that was a beating right there. If I came home late from school, she knew I was out talking to somebody so I was getting a beating. But while William dreamed of his eventual getaway, his older sisters were made to understand that they were different. They were girls. For girls, there was no escape. When the family was out together, Teresa went so far as to make all of her daughters go to the bathroom with her so that she could keep an eye on them. When she warned them not to talk to strangers, there was a cold steel edge to her voice that made each of the girls understand that she meant don't talk to anyone. She was still bigger than most of her children, but wielding the Board of Education, a board about an inch thick and four feet long with a grip at one end that Teresa used for punishment, was no longer as effective as it had been when they were small. Howard became her new tool of discipline. During her fits of terror, Teresa solicited help from her oldest son. Howard was the first one that was made to help hold us down, said William. Coming up, due to the fact that they are homes for children who are unwanted, abandoned, or orphaned, orphanages are naturally sad places, even when shown in the light of day. But in the dark, the sadness can turn to terror as a whole different crowd of children make themselves known, the ghosts of those who died there, ghost stories from orphanages when weird darkness returns. Urban legends are thought by most to be tall tales passed down through the ages. Some of the stories are obviously make-believe, while others, as strange as they may seem, have their origins in actual events. Do alligators roam the dark tunnels deep beneath New York City? Do boogeymen who terrorize those afraid of the night really exist? Are killer clowns a myth born from our fear of the unknown, or could such evil truly walk among us? These are just a few of the urban legends that are explored in this book. After hearing some of the history for yourself, maybe you will be able to answer the age-old question, could it be true? Could it be true? Volume 1, Urban Legends by Cindy Parmitter, narrated by Weird Darkness host Darren Marlar. Here a free sample on the audiobooks page at WeirdDarkness.com. There is something inherently chilling about old orphanages. Maybe it is the fact that scary orphanage stories abound. After all, the buildings are associated with heartbroken and lonely children. And not all of these tales concern the living. Plenty of real-life ghost stories feature orphanages filled with restless and vengeful spirits. These scary orphanage ghost stories all take place at actual haunted orphanages or abandoned orphanage sites around the world. These creepy stories aren't just campfire fodder, but are based off of real-life tragedies that actually occurred at these places. You can even visit these locations if you are in the mood for a first-hand ghostly encounter. Just be warned, you never know what might come home with you. A privately owned orphanage, known as the Fairmount Children's Home, opened in Alliance, Ohio in the 1870s. Unfortunately, the headmaster of the orphanage was said to be a cruel man who tortured and even slayed the children who lived there. That is, until one night in 1944. According to legend, the children rose up against the headmaster and hanged him from a pipe in the basement. The headmaster supposedly began to haunt the orphanage, looming over children's beds and appearing as a shadowy figure in the back of class photos. The orphanage eventually shut down and was abandoned in the 1990s before it mysteriously burned down. Raleigh's Crybaby Lane was once the spot of a Roman Catholic orphanage. When a fire broke out in the dormitory in 1958, it gutted the building and slayed many of the orphans. All that remains is a patch of grass and the cornerstone of the original building. Months after the fire, neighbors continued to complain to the city about the strong smell of smoke. People walking through the field felt as though they were being suffocated and, creepiest of all, they heard the cries and screams of the orphan children. Because of this, the surrounding houses have now been abandoned. Opened by Sisters of Mercy and the Catholic Church in 1905, St. John's Orphanage in Goulburn, Australia housed 200 boys at its peak. By many accounts, the boys were treated as slaves and cruelly punished. They were given one set of clothing upon arrival and they were beaten and caned regularly. Neglect was common and most of the orphans were not educated beyond fifth grade. As it wasn't the happiest of places, it's no surprise that it's now known as one of the most haunted locations in Australia. Disturbing messages are written on the walls, seemingly by someone who once lived there and the spirits of little boys supposedly still roam the premises. The Montana Children's Center, also known as the Twin Bridges Orphanage, was established by the state in the 1890s as the mining boom of the area declined. While some of the children there were orphans, many were simply abandoned by parents who couldn't afford to care for them. Tales of abuse at the orphanages were numerous, children were whipped for wetting the bed or hung on coat hooks and locked in dark rooms as punishment. Many children also perished on the property from disease. One former employee said there were 30 headstones in the yard for children but they've since disappeared. The orphanage closed in 1976 and the current owner claims to hear children singing when alone on the property. It was investigated by the TV show Ghost Adventures who communicated with the spirit of an orphan girl and found flashing lights dancing from room to room. According to Ohio legend, Gore Orphanage and Vermillion burned down in the 1800s. Rumor has it that the fire was started by a disgruntled employee or by the owner himself to collect insurance money. None of the children survived the fire. The site has since been raised and abandoned, but visitors to the area claim that you can see ghosts of the orphaned children frolicking about the woods.  The Holy Family Orphanage in Marquette, Michigan opened in 1915. While it was initially meant to be a whites-only orphanage, the first occupants were 60 Native American children.  Rumors of abuse were common. One story says that a young girl who would disobeyed orders and stayed out in the cold, perished of pneumonia. Her body was put on display as a warning to the other children that they had better behaved. The Holy Family Orphanage closed in 1965 and visitors report hearing moaning children and sighting ghosts on the property. During the Civil War, orphans of Union soldiers were often taken to the National Soldier's Orphan's Homestead in Gettysburg. The orphanage ran without problems for years until Rosa Carmichael was depointed the orphanage's matron. Said to be an abusive disciplinarian, Carmichael reportedly tortured children in the cellar of the orphanage. Eventually, a runaway outed her abuse as she was fined for her transgressions. Apparently, the spirits of the children she tormented don't believe justice was served. The building is now a tourist attraction and said to be highly haunted. Some visitors claimed to have sighted Rosa Carmichael herself, trapped and angry in the cellar. An abandoned Victorian building that was first an orphanage, then a mental institution, is just asking to be haunted. Originally, the Liverpool Siemens Orphan Institution operated as a medical hospital and a mental asylum before it was closed down by the City Council in 1997. It once housed 400 orphans who risked being locked in unlit, naughty cupboards in an attic corridor if they misbehaved. There have been many ghost sightings at the location on the building roof and in Ward G. Visitors have also reported hearing dragging noises in the dining room and have feelings of uneasiness in the basement. One popular photo supposedly shows a small ghost girl crying in the window. The Guthrie's boys' home in Oklahoma opened its doors sometime in the early 1920s. According to legend, one employee of the orphanage took his own life in the Bell Tower. Another employee, a nurse maid, abused many of the boys and slayed several. The building was closed in 1978 with the emergence of the foster care system. Today, visitors to the Guthrie boys' home claim to hear footsteps in the Bell Tower, bells ringing and even gasping. The ghosts of the boys can be heard screaming late at night and the spirit of the nurse maid supposedly lurks in the main entryway. St. Mary's Orphanage housed children in Galveston Island, Texas. That is until a hurricane wiped out nearly all of the orphans. In 1900, the Great Storm descended upon the island. As the orphanage began to flood, the sisters working there tied the children to them with rope and they sought higher and higher ground. Eventually, the roof collapsed, trapping them inside and slaying 90 orphans and 10 sisters. Their bodies were discovered still tied together by the rope. Today, the site is home to a Walmart. Employees report toys going missing and hearing kids phantom laughter. One employee was certain they heard a child calling for her mother, but upon a store-wide search, no one was found. The Odd Fellow's home was constructed in 1900 in Liberty, Missouri as a place for unfortunate souls. It included a hospital, a home for the elderly, and an orphanage. It was run by the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, or IOOF, a fraternal order meant to help others. But the order may have had a more sinister purpose. Many residents at the Odd Fellow's home passed. 600 bodies are buried in the cemetery there. That is a lot of spirits. There is also suspicion that the IOOF had some creepy secret practices, which included using human remains of their residents in their societal rituals. This supposedly upset the spirits. You are said to haunt the location, now a winery, to this day. An old orphanage in Savannah, Georgia was built in 1810. The Stone Mansion was once an all girls orphanage, until a fire trapped and slayed 11 of the 17 girls who resided there. Today, the owners claim to hear young girls singing and playing, and say they often move items around the rooms. There is little factual evidence to be found on the Good Serpent, later known as Good Serpent orphanage in Vallejo, California. There was an orphanage built in rural Vallejo in the 1800s that closed amid investigations of child abuse and passings.  Whatever the real story, the orphanage was eventually destroyed. A golf course was built in its place and later a housing development. Many residents of the housing development claim their houses, despite being new, are haunted. They hear footsteps and moaning and see the ghosts of children. The Elizabeth Orphan Asylum opened as an orphanage for girls in Elizabeth, New Jersey in 1858. It closed in 1962 and was eventually demolished in 1996, but during its years of abandonment it was the site of a lot of creepy folklore. The basement was rumored to be used for satanic rituals. The house became considered a sort of magnet for evil as it was hit by a small airplane in the 1970s and partially burned a few years later. People often claimed to see demons or satanic nuns in the area. Visitors also reported noticing glowing green orbs almost like eyes in various sections of the house. There are many haunted buildings in New Orleans and St. Vincent's Guest House is no exception. It was originally built as an orphanage in the 1860s, a time when many children would have died from yellow fever. Today the orphanage has been turned into a hotel. Guests constantly report hauntings, specifically that children laugh inside the walls. The apparition of a nun stalks the top floor and spirits move their possessions and wake them up at night. And the Wise County Orphanage in Wise, Virginia, it was abandoned in the 1920s. Not much is known about the orphanage itself, but those daring enough to venture into the area have reported hearing bouncing balls and laughing children and seeing orbs of lights. When Weird Darkness returns, Hannah Up was a teacher who developed a severe and rare form of amnesia. She disappeared twice, but was located each time. But then she disappeared again in 2017 and is still missing today. What happened to Hannah? Do you keep a journal or diary? If not, maybe you should consider it. It has been shown that journaling can help you reduce stress, help relieve depression, build self-confidence, it boosts your emotional intelligence, helps with achieving goals, inspires creativity and more.  In fact, she has numerous styles of journals to choose from. Along with the Weird Darkness journal, there is one for dealing with grief, for teachers' notes, for medical residencies, keeping track of your meds or health routine and several others. Journals make a great gift for others, but it is also a great gift for yourself and your own mental health. No matter what you might want a journal for, my friend Anne has it and you can see all of her journals, including the one for Weird Darkness, on the sponsors and friends page at WeirdDarkness.com. Hannah Up was a young woman with a positive attitude and a zest for life. Despite having divorced parents and struggling with her personal understanding of religion, she was a seemingly happy, successful woman, aspiring to become a Montessori teacher in order to affect positive change in the world. Unfortunately, she also suffered from a rare disorder best known for afflicting Jason Bourne, the fictional protagonist from The Bourne Identity and its sequels. Because of this condition, she went missing twice and was later found with no recollection of what had happened. In 2017, Up went missing for a third time and has never been found. On the first day of the school year in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, students waited at their desks without a teacher. Hannah Up was nowhere to be found. Her roommate managed to find her wallet and cell phone in her bedroom, but there was no sign of her whereabouts. Up was in her early 20s and by all accounts, she was a loving individual who radiated positive energy. One of her friends even joked, she lives in this separate place where there are butterflies and birds and they follow her around. Everything is good and everyone is happy and there is no conflict ever. Those close to her maintained she wasn't the type of person to blow off work or take an extended trip without notice. Up's loved ones organized a large search party that scoured the city for any sign of her. Hannah Wood, one of Up's closest friends, even started a Facebook page dedicated to finding her that acquired over 1200 members. Meanwhile, the United Federation of Teachers offered a $10,000 reward for any information leading to Up's discovery. The investigation into Up's disappearance took a strange yet hopeful turn as security cameras revealed multiple sightings of the young woman wandering through various city locales. A detective asked Hannah's mother, Barbara Bellis, to come to the 30th precinct in Harlem to identify whether the woman on camera was her daughter or not. Surveillance footage from an Apple store showed a young woman wearing a sports bra and running shorts ascending the store's staircase. A man stopped to ask if she was the missing woman he had seen on posters around the city, but she quickly dismissed him with what her mother called a characteristic gesture. She was also spotted in a Starbucks in Soho and she had even logged on to a public computer to check her email. She was wandering around New York City as if nothing was wrong, but none of her friends or family had heard from her in weeks. On September 16, 2008, 20 days after Hannah Up vanished, a Staten Island fairy captain saw a female body bobbing in the water near Robin's Reef light station, a lighthouse on a rocky reef just southwest of the Statue of Liberty. Two men steered a small boat toward the body, assuming they were retrieving a corpse. One of the men said, I honestly thought she was dead. As they grabbed her ankles and shoulders, Up gasped for air and began to cry. Half her body was severely sunburned and she looked as if she had been in the water for a long time. She was taken to the hospital and received treatment for dehydration and hypothermia. Even after looking at the security footage in which she appeared, Up had no recollection of what she had done during her disappearance. In fact, she mentioned needing to set up her classroom as if only a few hours had passed, completely unaware that nearly three weeks had gone by. One night she jolted awake and mentioned being at a lighthouse, but when her mother inquired about this the next morning, she couldn't remember anything about it. However, she did remember everything that happened before the incident. Some people accused her of faking the whole ordeal, but her friends and family were supportive and happy to have her back. Even so, they agreed there had to be an explanation. Up was diagnosed with a rare disorder called dissociative fugue, the same disorder that afflicted the fictional Jason Bourne in the Bourne novels and films. Someone experiencing a dissociative fugue episode forgets their identity and recent movements and it's not rare for them to take long journeys across cities, countries or even continents over periods of time ranging from hours to years. According to Dr. David Spiegel of Stanford University, humans have two types of memories, episodic and procedural. Episodic memories allow us to recall what we did, who we did it with and where we were. In short, this is our autobiographical memory. Procedural memory allows us to take care of functions like checking our emails, using an ATM or ordering a coffee. Both types of memories are stored in different parts of the brain, so it's possible someone with dissociative fugue has access to their procedural memory, but not to their episodic memory. Though rare, dissociative fugue has been documented several times throughout modern history. One Minnesota reverend traveled across the country and enlisted in the Navy without realizing it. Another professor was missing for years and began working as a dishwasher in an entirely different location. The most famous American fugue patient was preacher Ansel Bourne, who traveled 200 miles away from home and opened a stationery and candy shop. A couple of months passed before he experienced a return to reality and asked his landlord where he was. Psychologists believe that dissociative fugue usually occurs after serious trauma, such as physical abuse, sexual abuse or combat experience that prevents the mind from developing as a unified whole. Investigators hypnotized up in hopes of accessing her lost memories, but she couldn't recall any traumatic event that might have triggered about a fugue. Her work might have brought on her lapse in memory, as the beginning of the school year was always a stressful time for up and the other teachers.  Up had previously been in a relationship with another woman, but even so she respected her father and traveled with him almost every year. While the world speculated about what caused up's fugue, she wanted to move on. Her friend Ramirez pointed out that even while she was in the psychiatric ward, she was back to her normal upbeat self. Up cycled through possibilities. Was she drugged? Was she the victim of a hit-and-run? Was she mugged? Despite not having an answer, she was ready to return to her normal life. She wanted to get back to her classroom, spend time with her friends and move past the incident. After teaching in New York City, Up was hired as a teaching assistant at a Maryland Montessori School. Unfortunately, on the first day of her new job, deja vu struck bellis as police notified her that her daughter hadn't shown up to work that day. Up's wallet and cell phone were discovered on a trail in Kensington. One of Up's co-workers claimed they saw her driving in the wrong direction that morning. Investigators also discovered that Up hadn't slept at her apartment the night before. Two days after Up's second disappearance, bellis received a call at 10.30 p.m. from an unknown number. The woman on the other line only said, Mom? Up had awoken in a creek in Wheaton, Maryland. For the second time, Up felt as though only 10 minutes had passed. She'd gone for a run, and the next thing she knew, she was in an ambulance missing a significant chunk of time. Police proposed she keep track of her movements, using an ankle bracelet, typically for people under house arrest, but Up declined, saying she wanted to live freely and not feel imprisoned by her condition. Up had become infatuated with the Montessori method of education and believed it had the potential to change the world. After becoming fully certified to be a Montessori teacher, she got a new position on St. Thomas, an island in the Caribbean. She enjoyed life in the tropics and went for long swims almost daily, often at her favorite spot, Sapphire Beach. In 2017, Hurricane Irma devastated the island, and Hurricane Maria was set to strike just a few days later. While many people evacuated, Up decided to stay on the island. She spent her time trying to clean her flooded apartment and preparing for the school year. Just a couple of days before Hurricane Maria struck, Up disappeared once again. She didn't arrive at school as planned, and she missed a faculty meeting. Workers discovered her car in a parking lot near Sapphire Beach and her belongings on a stool at a burger stand. People combed the island, and the Coast Guard sent out three helicopters to search for her, but the search had to be called off due to the impending hurricane. Up has not been found since. Up's friends and family still don't know what happened to her. Some worry she might have gone for a swim at Sapphire Beach and drowned. Others speculate she was the victim of a crime, or that she had another bout to fugue and wandered off. She was a strong swimmer and spoke fluent Spanish, so it's possible she swam to another island and lived on with a new identity. Her family and friends hope she's dealing with another bout of fugue. If that's the case, she could still be alive and may eventually remember who she is. Up experienced two potentially three bouts of dissociative fugue. Each case was different, but some links can be drawn between them. For example, each of them occurred at the onset of autumn when the school year was set to begin. Up reportedly said that fall was a particularly difficult time for her. In her first two bouts of fugue, water seemed to rekindle her memory. She woke up near a reef the first time she went missing and in a creek the second time. Their friends assumed she would be found near the water the third time, and searchers did locate her belongings at Sapphire Beach. Up is still missing to this day. She may still be alive, so if you think you've seen her, contacting the authorities is paramount. As of now, it's best to contact the Virgin Islands Police Department at<PHONE_NUMBER>. I'll leave that number in the episode description. You can also contact a local police authority if you've seen her elsewhere. Thanks for listening and be sure to stick around for the bloopers at the end. If you'd like to show, please share it with someone you know who loves the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters or unsolved mysteries like you do. You can email me anytime with your questions or comments at darren at weirddarkness.com. Darren is D-A-R-R-E-N. Weirddarkness.com is also where you can find information on any of the sponsors you heard about during the show. Find all my social media. Listen to audiobooks I've narrated. Sign up for the email newsletter. Find other podcasts that I host, including Church of the Undead. Visit the store for Weird Darkness merchandise and more. Weird Darkness is also where you can find the Hope in the Darkness page if you or someone you know is struggling with depression or dark thoughts. Also on the website, if you have a true paranormal or creepy tale to tell, you can click on Tell Your Story. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com. All stories on Weird Darkness are purported to be true unless stated otherwise, and you can find links to the stories or the authors in the show notes. Houska Castle and its Gateway to Hell is by Marko Margaritov for all that's interesting. The Murder of the Noordotters was posted at the lineup. Ghost Stories from Orphanages is by Ella Tharp for Graveyard Shift. And The Teacher with Amnesia Who Disappeared Forever was written by Stephen Moran for Unspeakable Crimes. Weird Darkness is a registered trademark. Copyright, Weird Darkness. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. Deuteronomy 3, verse 16. God the Lord said to Joshua, So be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid and do not panic before them, for the Lord your God will personally go ahead of you. He will neither fail you nor abandon you. And a final thought. If we knew what another person is going through, we'd be quicker to show grace. Chuck's Wind Alt. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. Hidden by thick forestry. Houska Castle in Czechia. In Czechia. Czechia? Let's say Czechnia, but there's no N in there. Czechia? Czechia, Czechia, Czechia, Czechia, Pet. At one point, she took out the bone handled... At one point, she took out the bone handled old cow... At one point, she took out the bone handled old cow... At one point, she took out the bone handled old cowboy gun. There was no point to it other than to commute with nature. Commute with... Commute with nature. My co-pilot is mother nature. Now it's commune with nature. Surveillance footage. Surveillance footage from an Apple store. Showed a young woman... Woman woman. Surveillance footage from an Apple store. Showed a young woman wearing a sports bra and running... Surveillance footage from an Apple store. A man stopped to ask if she was the missing woman she had seen. A man asked if she... No, let me try that again. She was also spotted in a Star Books in Soho. And Star Books? Star Books. Yes, it's a coffee shop slash library. Hey Weirdos, be sure to click the like button and subscribe to this channel, and click the notification bell so you don't miss future videos. I post videos seven days a week, and while you're at it, spread the darkness by sharing this video with someone you know who loves all things strange and macabre. If you want to listen to the podcast, you can find it at WeirdDarkness.com slash listen.


On entertainment news now, Sony Music has cancelled the debts of thousands of artists who signed to the record label before the year 2000. It means that many will now earn money when their songs are streamed on services like Spotify and Amazon Music. Sony said it could not name the eligible acts due to confidentiality agreements, but a source said it would include household names. It said some artists do to receive many thousands of dollars per year. Musicians typically take on debt when they first sign to a record label. They're given a lump sum known as an advance to pay for recording studios, video shoots, distribution and other expenses. The money is then paid back when they sell their music.


This is the Monday, February 14th meeting of the Montpelier Planning Commission. First thing we have to do is approve the agenda. So I'm going to remember the planning commission's ready. The motion to approve the agenda. Our cell is in theme for the day. I'll move to approve the agenda. All right. You should have said I would love to. Love to approve the agenda. There you go. We have a second. I'll second. Second for Mario. Those in favor of approving the agenda say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Gender approved. Let's proceed. Next we have comments from the chair. I don't think I have any comments. I mean, my, my thoughts about tonight are. That we need to get through. This memo and we're going to be doing some rebotes on the. On the zoning changes that. That we want to do. I think we're, we're obviously mostly in agreement on everything, but we. Have some amendments and some tinkering that we're doing last minute. And then we'll be handing it off to the city council. The memo is for city council and also for the public's benefit. So this, this memo is, is we plan to distribute. As widely as we can so that people are aware of what's going on. That's the main order of business for tonight. We also have the economic development chapter of the new city plan. Frankly. I'm not sure we'll get to it and. I don't know. I'd be better to put it off to give it. It's given full attention at the proper meeting next time, but we'll see what. What happens. You guys can tell me what you think about how you feel about that. As things unfold here. Does anyone have anything to bring up before we move on. Yeah, I think we're going to move on. I think we're going to move on. These at the last meeting, which I missed some. Amendments came up to which, which items or. It's, it's new things. It's no one's like, we haven't changed course on anything that was decided before or anything. It's, it's just new stuff has come up. Okay. But we're going to learn about during that. Discussion. Yeah. Yeah. The list is kind of laid out in the agenda of what, what are the items for consideration. Okay. So I'm going to move on to general business.  There's a parcel near video or avenue that seemed like it should be moved into a different. Neighborhood. So it was related to what we were looking at before. We didn't end up doing anything about it. Mike suggested that we should. And we were all cool with it at the time. Stuff like that. So. Okay. So with that, I'm going to move on to general business. So we're going to move on to the next item. And then we'll move on to the next item. And we're going to be in the meeting right now. We're not planning commissioners. So. If anyone has anything to bring to our attention or anything they'd like to bring up, that's not on the agenda already. It's not related to zoning changes or economic development chapter of the city plan. Now would be the time. So. Just let us know. So Doug and Alan are here for the riverfront district boundary commission meeting. So Dan hates, I was going to mention this at the, in the comments from the chair or I can mention now for general, but as Dan is the intern that I mentioned at the last meeting, that's going to be working with me over the spring semester. So I invited him to sit in on our planning commission meeting and just kind of see how these things are run and handled and kind of familiarize himself with who we are. That's wonderful, Dan. We're glad to have you here. I'm glad to have your help too. So we appreciate that. Okay. Is there anything else you had Mike before we move on? Sorry, I didn't mean to. Okay. Didn't mean to charge ahead. So it looks like we don't have anything for general business. Looks like no one's in the room with Mike. So let's move on to. Review and. To discuss the zoning amendment memo. The first thing we are planning to do is. To have a motion to reconsider the zoning amendment forwarded to the city council on January 10th. So Mike, you listed those things in order like that because you, you think we should, we should open up. The amendment. We could do them in whatever, we could do them in whatever order, but we, um, we should have a motion to reconsider. Um, again, just so everybody's on board and on the same plane. Okay. Um, any of these times we go through these processes, processes, they become very, um, litigious at times. So even though we have no reason to believe that this is going to be challenged at any point, we do want to make sure that we dot our eyes and cross our T's to make sure that somebody doesn't come back later on. To try to get a procedural violation. So because we already voted to forward the amendment to city council for consideration. Um, we're not going to open it up. They haven't opened anything. So it's appropriate for somebody. And it was unanimous. So it doesn't matter who, um, uh, according to Robert's rules to reconsider something. It has to be somebody who was in the affirmative to reconsider it. And then, um, so. We've just looked for a motion and a second to reconsider the memo. Um, the amendment and then we can reopen the conversation on the various elements. So I think, I think the simplest thing for us. Uh, I think it would go the smoothest if we just walk, if Mike, if you'll walk us through the memo, walk us new, these walk us through these new items. As you're doing that. And then after we have all of the information, we'll just do all of the motions one right after the other. After we've already heard everything. That way we don't jump the gun and, and. Vote on something prematurely. That sounds good to everyone. Okay. So I'm just going to hand it off to you, Mike, um, to give everyone some background, Mike drafted a memo. We discussed it last time. I made some changes to the memo, send it back to Mike. Mike had some things to change. Uh, so he's just going to walk us through the current state of it, which should more or less be the final version. But we'll still have chances now to point out. Um, some of the things that we need to do. Um, underlining and things like that that need to be polished up. Yeah, more than, more than happy to make any more of those, those amendments to this. Um, those we can make afterwards if we have to. To the memo. Um, I think at this point, well, I'll just hand it off to you to, to do a final edits or whatever. Um, Okay, go ahead, Mike. Um, I think when Kirby went through and did a strike out version, I did, uh, you know, accepted all of his changes with a few minor edits. Um, and then went through the, um, the three items that needed to get reconsidered. So the first one to get reconsidered, and we'll get this pretty quick so we can get to Doug and Alan. So we can hear their, um, hear their pitch, but just so we get through these other two really quickly. So the first was to consider adding six with your, uh, with your Ave to, or with your street to the Harrison Ave. Map amendment. So we had talked about maybe what I should have done is open this up. Earlier. Nice request. Sorry. So you guys are able to kind of see this, maybe make it a little bigger for you. Yeah. So if you can see my cursor. What we, uh, so this is what, what I did to the memo is I added in both current and proposed. So what we have is here's Harrison Ave. That is currently in purple. And in the revision, it will be yellow. What we had approved was everything except for this parcel here, which kind of noses in. So I had, we had approved it before with 19. And what we will be doing is adding in number 20. And that's this little parcel here. And the reason for that is, um, the house that this, this sits on is actually sitting about where my cursor is. It's, they have a big parcel and they squeezed their house on the little tiny, um, peninsula that sticks out to Whittier. So it wouldn't make any sense to have somebody on that street be part of, um, be part of the college street neighborhood. And, uh, I think Marcella pointed that out. And at the time we kind of just let it go. But afterwards I kind of thought about it and took a look at things and said, no, we should add number 20 in. So that's my first one. I would want you guys to reconsider is adding that parcel in to, um, what is number one on the, the list. Um, so that was the first change. The second change we'll consider is a clarification to the wetland hearings requirement. Let me roll down to that. And it's, let's just go by it. Hold on. So it's right here. So the clarification on hearing for state wetland permits of specific amendment, this draft would add a few words to note that, uh, to note when a hearing, um, qualifies for an exemption. That when a hearing that when an applicant qualifies for an exemption, that they also do not need a hearing. Um, so the revision and it's a little clearer in the strike out, we'll remove number one from under 3007, uh, six point B and instead insert a new number one under 3006. And I'm going to regret not having grabbed my zoning regulations. So 3006 point B is applicability, which basically says what needs to meet these requirements. And initially, what had been discussed is a little bit in the background. The intent of the section has always been that the city only regulates wetlands and vernal pools that show in the national resources inventory map. We also exempt any project from needing, um, to meet these rules if they receive a state wetlands permit. Unfortunately, these rules also state all projects needing impact wetlands, uh, that impact wetlands need a hearing. So it was unclear when you get a permit. So that's a little bit of the confusion. The issue, if you were to actually look at the rules in the strike out version is that we started to get so many exemptions that we had, we started to talk about exemptions, but we had exemptions of exemptions and exemptions. So what we did is 3006 B talks about applicability. Who needs to get a permit? So that's just going to be clear. The provisions of this section only applied to lands identified on the wetlands and vernal pool map on the natural resource inventory. At the initial filing of the permit. Period. So there, there it is. That's the only thing that applies to applicability point C is the section that talks about whether or not you need a hearing. So that's why when we go back up here. So we removed all those exemptions. We had initially jammed all those exemptions under the applicability statement, which really kind of. It wasn't very clean and we probably shouldn't have. So what we did was we took it out from under the applicability. We made the applicability nice and clean point C talks about hearings. So that stays the same development subject to this section shall require a hearing, require approval of a waiver under the DRB meeting standards of blah, blah, blah. And what C now would have as an exemption. That says. If you're exempt, I don't know if I've got it specifically written out here. That says development that is required to obtain state wetlands permit shall not be required to hold hearing unless the project impacts a verbal vernal pool. But of course those are vernal pools identified on the natural resources map. And then under D we talk about specific standards. So under here is where we talk about development. That is required to get a state wetlands permit is as assumed to meet these development standards unless the project impacts a vernal pool. And that's just because the vernal pool rules at the state are different than the local. We have stricter vernal pool rules, but they still only apply to vernal pools on that map. So, so that's maybe a lot of stuff I just glazed a few people over with. But really what it was was we had all these exemptions jammed under B and we've broken them out to make it clear by putting one exemption under C and one exemption under D. Nothing has really changed. We haven't changed the rules. We've just changed how we talk about them. So it's clearer in the in the written text. So that's those two. The third and final one I will introduce and then I will, you know, let Doug or Alan comment if they want to. So on the memo I sent you guys on Friday and I think I put a reference in there. There is now a number 11. So we had our one through 10 that we had public hearings on we now have an 11 and 11 is adjustments to the riverfront boundary and savings pasture and the specific amendment is to change the adjusted boundaries. And I can move up here. There is adjustments. So map change to adjust the eastern boundary of riverfront district 40 feet to the west and to bump out a 500 foot section of the riverfront boundary by 90 feet. And there's a image below the background savings pasture is an undeveloped 100 acre parcel near the eastern end of Berry Street. This privately owned parcel has been subject of development proposal in the past and has been debated publicly many times back in 2017. The city council debated how to zone savings pasture and I think we talked about this a little bit before and they eventually decided that the lower pasture closest to Berry Street to be zoned riverfront and the remaining to be zoned rural and a set of lines were roughly sketched out to match that request. So that is the proposal planning commission had sent to city council was to have it read six which would have resulted in about 400 units across savings pasture. City council didn't like that so they they decided to have a high density zone near in riverfront in a lower density up in rural and the calculation when you do the math on that is roughly 400 permits or 400 parts of units. So that was kind of how they came out with that 15 acre number. So recently a development team has started to pull together a proposal to develop the lower pasture and they found three things. Some of the land set aside in riverfront for development is not developable and other land that is developable is in the rural area. And second their parcel boundary on the zoning map was not accurate on the western side. And therefore they did not have full 15 acres. And the actual amount of their land in riverfront turns out to be only 14.1 acres. So their development proposal identifies a good building site on the northern edge of riverfront but the building will cross the line into the rural district thereby prohibiting its development. So they have a set of buildings that they want to build one of which would overlap the rural line. So their proposal is therefore to bring in the eastern line 720 which is 720 feet long by 40 feet. So if you're looking and it's a little gray on a lot of maps and maybe I can make this a little bigger again if it doesn't mess with people too much they want to there's a yellow line that's roughly kind of going along here this is Barry Street down here Caledonia Spirits is across the street if you're trying to get perspective so you'll see the yellow line kind of comes up that's the zoning line currently unfortunately see this gray line I'm not doing a good job following it that's their actual property line so they kind of don't own this piece in the middle that was part of their 15 acres so what they wanted was not to make this any bigger area wise what they just wanted to do was to get the 15 acres that city council had kind of agreed they should have so they want to bring this line in 40 feet bonk and they want to extend this one by 90 feet and this is 500 feet long 500 by 90 and 40 by 720 so that is their request the building site that they had proposed up here that I think roughly would have put a building in this area kind of has the room to get built with a little bit of flexibility so if they have to move the building slightly they don't have to come back with another request they have enough room and that's really the nature of their request so yellow line is current green is proposed the final revised district will be 15 acres or slightly less public comment is none this request was submitted after the close this is the memo to city council so the public did not get an opportunity to comment as a result the planning commission recommends to council do additional outreach regarding this proposal and then I staff is recommending approval of this and I've highlighted you guys if you guys want to approve this then we can make this approval so that's why that is highlighted so I will I don't know if somebody has questions on that or if Doug or Alan wants to correct me on anything I said yeah I was going to ask if Doug or Alan would like to provide any info and then after that the planning commission could ask Mike whatever questions they have be glad to good evening Mike you did a fantastic job of summarizing appreciate it very much for the commission's knowledge the modifications result in a zone district of approximately 14 and a half acres well under the 15 and once again I'm available for any comments or discussion that anyone would like to have thank you okay thanks Doug do any of the planning commissioners have any comments or questions right now you know I just I don't know Mike if you remember but why did the city council make the original decision where they did for that 15 acres so the original the original part that they wanted was to allow the higher density development in the lower pasture and so I roughly tried to lay out the lower pasture on this yellow line I guess I gotta use this mouse or you guys don't see it and kind of put that out as a presentation this was a really fluid time I mean we had lots of proposals lots of people with ideas for in a lot of debate about whether the planning commission's approach was right maybe this all should be in rural maybe there should be a separate Saban's Pasture Zoning District that would have its own rules eventually the planning commission didn't like that approach and eventually staff succeeded in saying that that's really not fair to kind of give them their own unique rules they should be zoned similar to some of their surrounding neighborhoods and so that's what won out so that lower pasture idea was just to have greater density closer to Berry Street where we already have some density that's the bottom yeah I think that sounds about pretty well okay so the actual where the line is by 40 feet or 60 feet was not there's no scientific purpose to it there's no water issues or anything else no there's no issue like that I tried to approximately put that line the yellow line where I thought the edge of the wooded area was I didn't have the benefit of the aerial photo and so Doug having the aerial photo you can see for those of you can kind of see where the gray changes that's where the field changes to the woods the woods is the woods because it's really difficult to develop so you kind of see there's this rough line and that was actually kind of where I was hoping to put the parcel but I put the line much farther into the woods where this is mostly undevelopable pieces of land so my can you can you give us an idea of the so for the upper pasture which is zone rural what percentage of that zone would this new strip make five percent was it five percent cutting into a five percent one percent well fortunately to it's a hundred acre parcel so 85 percent of this parcel is currently zoned rural and 15 percent is currently zoned you know approximate numbers 15 percent is zoned riverfront so this adjustment will actually only make a point four percent difference in that in the actual amount of land because currently it's 14.1 percent riverfront and we're going to make it 14.5 percent riverfront and the city council was trying to have it 15 percent riverfront okay but but sounds like maybe a half a percent of the entire thing is going to be more on the upper parcel than than city council originally planned I wouldn't say they originally had planned on having 15 acres and when I drew the line it roughly had but if you look right you've got this wedge that they don't own and we've sent this in to get this boundary correct so you're getting out another important piece of information which is the sounds like the city council did not have a specific upper boundary in line they just asked you to give them something and this is what you did yeah they asked for for a boundary and I took what was on the tax map which is this yellow line which is wrong this gray line here is the more accurate line and therefore because you know in the rezoning we rezoned that part that ended up not being laying that they owned so that sounds like the final exam in a property law course doing over the tax map yeah so had the tax map been right we always try to tell people out there that's what you pay taxes on in this case the tax map should be corrected and I believe Doug is submitting that to the assessor's office so they could send that because it is surveyed I mean this is the gray line here is the surveyed line so we know this is the correct line okay can I just ask a procedural question so I understand right this is an addition to what we already approved so if we approve this tonight this will just be bundled in with those other packages the other changes we asked for yes so it's there was originally a thought that because they had a little bit missed the window of the first public hearing that we would send this and present this first to city council and what that would mean is city in either case at the planning commission level after the public hearings you are allowed to amend the zoning before submitting it to city council there's no requirement of re-warning new hearings if there's a significant change it goes to city council city council can hold the hearing and they can make whatever amendments they want whether they're in the amendment or not so we were going to add it into that process under state law is if they made a substantial change like voting to make this amendment it would have to come back to you guys you guys would have to have a meeting not a hearing but a meeting to discuss this change before making comments and submitting it back to city council for them to consider it further so because as we're doing it now if we agree on this tonight yeah because we hadn't and we were already going to vote to reconsider it we're kind of like well let's talk about it now then that'll save that loop go back and have it reconsidered we can say alright we're going to look at it we're going to say it's okay with the caveat with the note that the city council should be aware and I will make them very aware of the fact that there was no public hearing on this I will be sending letters to all the abutting property owners prior to the new public hearing at the city council level I will be advising them that there was not a planning commission thing so they should take whatever extra input that they need on this if there's a lot of pushback from neighbors I look at this through my eyes and think it shouldn't be creating that much of an issue but maybe it does create an issue with somebody and they want to have a much bigger hearing process but at least we'll make sure that they're aware of it and they can make their decisions on what additional measures they want to take as they review it but it would at least cut out the fact that it doesn't have to get sent back to you guys okay anyone have anything else about this I mean a lot of our thoughts I could say that I'm I think this is reasonable I think that this is within the spirit you know a correction following the spirit of the city council's intention but with new information I agree Kirby and I think the parcel like the parcel next door has a spunky line through it as well and make it you know match the reality on the ground just seems pretty straightforward to me this is not I can't imagine that this is not we're not close to the edge of the parcel really now just seems reasonable anyone else have any thoughts anyone have any reservations about this now would be a good time to mention those okay well seems like that's easy enough Mike thank you so much for the added details we can go on to the next item I guess again we'll be we'll be I think approving things at the end yeah I just as a letter E consider any other amendments because I you know I personally don't have any other amendments but that would be these were the three that we were going to entertain as I was putting together the agenda as I said I put in any other just in case oh oh you don't have any new things nope these were the three I had to make three amendments okay Whittier Street the wetlands and the riverfront district boundary and then anything else people you know again we revised that we went as we said we had our congregations at the last meeting we made a number of revisions if anybody has gone through or if anyone wants to go through any of those changes I amended those maps as I said instead of just having one map that I don't know if this was any better but I at least went through that this is the current zoning map this would be the proposed boundaries because we do now have a proposed zoning map from CVRPC so I've added in those additional details yeah that's great did anyone have anything to ask about Whittier or or the wetlands changes the wetlands changes seem like there's hardly any there's not really anything substantive there just moving some things around but did anyone have anything on either of those did everyone have a chance to review the memo were there any anything to note for the memo does that mean we're ready for amendments okay well let's take it let's take it down the list then do we have first we need we need a motion to reconsider the zoning amendment that we've already forwarded to the city council anyone inclined to move that we reconsider our suggestions for the city council from January 10th I move that we reconsider our recommendations to the city council okay I second we have a second from we have a motion from Erin a second from Gabe those in favor of reconsidering our recommendations from January 10th say hi hi any opposed okay so we are reconsidering those suggestions we've heard a proposal to change our original recommendation related to 6 Whittier street and Harrison avenue do we have a motion to add 6 Whittier street to that neighborhood and Mike if you have a suggested way of phrasing this let me know no I think that's fine a motion to add 6 Whittier to Harrison av map amendment is fine okay I'll move to add that parcel to Harrison av map okay I'll move to add 6 Whittier street to the Harrison av map wait a second second second from Erin okay any discussion I'm bad about that step those in favor of the amendment say hi hi any opposed okay Gabe was that I said hi I think there was I'm okay okay so you were in favor okay it's good to clarify that okay so that motion passes unanimously 6-0 John Adams isn't here tonight and next motion we would need would be to amend our proposal to the City Council to clarify how wetlands hearings work and when they're required what's that Erin I see I'm looking for I was trying to see where it is in the memo but I see it I'll move the change okay I'll move to approve how how what Mike's proposed to clarify the wetlands hearing requirement second by Erin any discussion those in favor of the motion say hi any opposed motion also unanimous and lastly do we have a motion to amend the riverfront district boundary around savings pasture to adjust it as Mike has laid out I'll move for those adjustments at savings pasture okay second second from Marcella any discussion those in favor of the motion say hi hi any opposed okay another unanimous and I believe that's all the amendments we wanted to make um does anyone have anything else I was curious so when will the City Council have the consideration of this changes so City Council that has mostly been I believe Bill having conversations with the mayor about the timing of the hearing I didn't want to open the hearing so first of all once you open the hearing both sets of regulations go into effect it's a really messed up state law so you don't want to have these open for too long because it starts to mess up people's applications so we'll wait until the last minute to warn the hearings and what they didn't want to have happen or what they didn't know was how long it was going to take to have the hearing the council is pretty busy with the budgets and running for re-elections and either they would have to get through all the hearings and vote to adopt these before town meeting day or they're going to have to wait until after town meeting day to open the hearing and that's what they decided to do because at least one council member is not running for re-election so we didn't want to have some testimony given before and then have people who are new councillors who did not have so they've just been holding it so the first hearing I believe is going to be March 23rd don't hold me to that date it's somewhere in that area there's a council meeting and that's when they'll have their first they usually have a first meeting on it and I will give a presentation with a power point and I'll lay all these things out and then there'll be a second it'll be a warned hearing a meeting to present it to city council and then usually they'll take another meeting to take more testimony and then at that point it really depends on what they hear from the public if they get a lot of input from the public they might warn a third and boy you didn't want to be here in 2017 when that was I had 22 meetings with city council on that zoning amendment well that was a zoning adoption so that was a full revision but that was 22 council meetings they get that through this one I would expect would be two maybe at most three starting on March 23rd I guess the upside is that that provides a lot of opportunity for the public to see the memo to see the changes there's a lot of notice for people big window so that's good at least okay so to wrap this up we need a motion to approve all of the changes all the amendments that we've approved so far and to take those and to resubmit the entire proposal back to the city council so just does or I guess worded differently I move a motion to resubmit the city council as amended would be as amended with these three okay the motion from Gabe do we have a second I'll second second from our own do we have any discussion about this we move on okay those in favor of the motion say aye aye aye any opposed okay another unanimous approval and so there it is we're going to resubmit the city council with those amendments anything else Mike nope that is good for that one thank you thank you for your patience with that and with the memo so if you have any other clerical typo things Kirby on the memo you can just send them to me tomorrow or in the next couple of days I'll get that memo finalized so I can start building I've got to start building the website for the council and I can start getting this pdf and put up there so the public can start viewing it because so far it hasn't been a public document while it's been in draft form I left a note in google maps I think you'll be able to see it just one note let me know if you don't see it but yeah goes for all the planning commission so just let Mike know of any editorial like stylistic type things we're not talking about anything substantive just you know like the thing I marked was just a place that was underlined that it looked like it was a formatting issue that's all okay looks like we're good on that then thanks a lot for coming by and being on call Doug we appreciate that thank you for your consideration okay so the next thing we have is it looks like we do about an hour left to review economic development goals and strategies how are people feeling about that tonight do we have any like strong feelings where people be okay with just waiting and just tackling that the next meeting and making the full meeting about that that's just what I'm feeling but if other people want to proceed tonight and not lose the time then I get it I'm not opposed to waiting I might feel more prepared myself but I can talk tonight too I understand that we wouldn't necessarily want to lose the time is everybody else okay with just putting it off to the next meeting and calling a little early for winter break thumbs up from Ariane let's just do that Erin made a face what was the face better or different I don't know it was a good mafia type face okay let's just do that let's tackle it cleanly next time everyone read up on the goals and strategies is there any work that needs to be done on this mic or are they going to be in pretty good order to vote on yeah can we maybe just like a quick update of where we were and what we want to be prepared for to do next time so we can move it along fast and we were working in the revised template right you were working in the revised template so I think we had pretty much gone through and approved we'd reshuffled a couple of these goals we were all set with the aspirations I think shuffled a couple of goals we were pretty good with it we were starting to go through the strategies and I haven't gone through to delete these I think we decided we were going to get rid of meaningful work I think we had started to talk about potentially maybe getting rid of the livable wage stuff if I remember that conversation but then we kind of kind of got bogged down we hadn't really had much discussion and I think you guys were going to go through and start to review what I had put in here as drafts and started to come up with comments you know there's workforce development these ones that are in I guess called a peach color they were really ones that we and other chapters have talked about they're in the implementation strategy but we really don't leave them in the implementation strategy we talk about them in column it'll say use in chapter not implementation plan so so we had a number of things not all these are good ideas these are just ideas that are in here these little headers kind of tie back to the previous goals so the goals will have a discussion about resilient business environment and these are a couple things that a municipality can do to improve the and make a resilient business environment or at least in my opinion and if people have other ideas you're welcome to and I think I also if you notice in the column N see them on some of my computer here it's got goals these are what the goals are associated with 3, 4, 5 and 6 so that's all it's a bunch of stuff laid out and you guys are going to kind of review it not everything may stay and make some thoughts or comments of what you're thinking you know maybe hotel and parking garage project should stay dead it is dead maybe it should stay that way but this is a little bit of what we're talking about and I guess the last thing before I send you guys off to work on it and really so we're talking about the strategies in the revised template just to start reviewing them one of the big topics actually that's come out of the strategic plan strategic planning at city council is a push to do more economic development so I'm getting ready today I was trying to get the posting out I didn't so our community development specialist is going to be leaving and so we're going to be posting for his position to rehire a new community development specialist and the position title is going to change to economic development specialist so there's a push at city council to get and do more economic development now that MDC is no more so it's going to be kind of a little bit different position than it's currently been we're going to be working to hire somebody new to do that they also want to redo the EDSP so they've got money in the budget to do that economic development strategic plan that we talked about that's a very, it's kind of a fundamental document that most communities will do when you want to do economic development your EDSP and they want to do that they want to get me to have an RFP out maybe in September August time frame so we can get a consultant on board for next winter to start working on revising our 2016 one which had a lot of value and a lot of good ideas it also had you know it was a little bit it didn't have full support of the entire community had a number of pieces in it that people didn't support I thought it was pretty good I thought it's presentation didn't always come across right you know when we talk about trying to be a premium destination it wasn't that we were trying to be elitist and trying to avoid affordability and other folks it was more a reduction of our reality that our downtown is a very expensive place to start a business and therefore we really kind of need to make sure that it's a difficult place for an entrepreneur to just jump in unless you happen to be an experienced entrepreneur you know for example trying to rent space in our downtown to make cost $18, $22 a square foot you can go to Berry City for $5 to $7 a square foot and you know when you calculate those costs on an annual basis you know if you want to start a new business this is an expensive place and that was why that plan was looking at that being a premium destination because you know you need to be a business that's going to be able to generate enough income to be able to support the rents that currently it costs to be in Montpelier so anyways that turns out to be a longer discussion than probably you were looking for but just to give you guys a reference that we're talking about it now and even before our city plan is adopted what we are talking about at the next meeting will probably be you know this chapter may even be brought to city council before the city plan is even moving forward we may you know which we did with the housing plan we pulled the housing plan to city council and said hey this is the housing plan we've got a lot of stuff going on we've got to be moving we can't wait for this to be adopted let's have a conversation and they did I think we might do the same thing here with the economic development we can really talk about things really think about things think about what do we want to have if we were to have a meeting in say May or June with city council about economic development what is it we think is our goal what is our mission and see what they think of what we're thinking you know this one may this one may start becoming reality sooner than we think so when I spoke to Dan Groberg he mentioned us waiting to do this until after the strategic plan and I told him I don't think that timeline is going to add up because we're trying to get this city plan done because that strategic plan is a year a year for out right Mike yeah yeah we would have something in starting in September it probably wouldn't be till the following August so 18 months from now so unfortunately unfortunately there's going to be all this economic development work and consultation done that's going to be after we do this so and that thing's going to get a lot of economic development attention we're supposed to be doing the city plan which was supposed to be a guidance document but yeah so the timing is kind of unfortunate I guess maybe what we put here might influence that strategic plan that's done later but yeah that's something for everyone to be aware of when they review this another thing to keep in mind as you review for next time what I was hearing when we discussed this last was it sounded like there's interest in paring it down and focusing on two or three really key important areas instead of just trying to cover everything a little bit I thought that was a good idea so people want to embrace that more and do some work between now and the next meeting to isolate what those key areas are and come back and talk about that I think that would be that would be really interesting okay does anybody else have any other like global thoughts about economic development before we review it and get back next time okay so we'll see everybody next time on that we have to consider the minutes from January 24th may as well get that knocked out so if people can take a look at that the minutes mentioned a phone call about the Whittier street thing did you have notifying the people at Whittier street about us potentially making that change Mike no we didn't have any direct contact information and so I did get their mailing address and all that information but I didn't get a chance to send it out I have been pretty busy but okay yeah that's understandable I can start to lay it out to them to okay yeah and they'll if for some reason it causes them concern they'll still have time for a city council I guess that's not going to city council super fast right yeah okay March okay do we have a motion to approve minutes quick question do we not make any changes to the solar shading stuff in the end no I did I went back and I I paired that down I think it was like four or five paragraphs I made it like one one and a half paragraphs so if you look at the new version of the memo you'll see the solar shadings different do we need to vote on them no I mean like everyone has the new version of the memo so if you if you have any issues with it let us know it's not I don't think we have to vote out it doesn't rise to the level of an amendment I guess that's what I meant there's the strike out version a lot of people look at the memo and think this is the amendment the actual amendment is the red line version which we don't talk about because the red line doesn't really help people because it's just aligned through density and I think we voted on the memo in the first place but we didn't really have to me because it's just described what we did but yeah people should check out the new version of the memo make sure everything there as far as what I did was I just John thought it was too long so I took it back and I turned it into a sentence basically making the same point just with less description were you okay with that mic by the way I kind of most of them look good I didn't have any issues with the how you had rephrased them like I said most of my small changes were pretty minor edits to what you had put together okay you're really cool about how much we mess with the stuff you write by the way very humble that's it's not my strongest suit so I will just admit that up front feel fine I don't think it's something that you're bad at we just tinker so you don't ever seem to show a lot of you go about it so I think that this speaks a lot about you I think that's a good question for the to approve the minutes so moved by Aaron wait a second second for Marcella those favor of approving the minutes from January 24 say aye aye opposed okay minutes approved one final motion of this meeting with lots of motions and that's to adjourn moved to adjourn I will second okay second for Marcella you guys have a lovely night those in favor of the motion say aye aye we're done good night everyone thank you