We'd love to hear from you!

Welcome to Small Town Whispers. In Episode 1, you are going to get to know your host a little bit better and understand why she wants to keep the history of Watseka, IL and the story of the Watseka Wonder alive.

The Roff family was one of the wealthiest in town in the late 1800s. However, money couldn't cure their daughter Mary, who was suffering from fits with strange and sometimes violent side effects. You'll never guess what's going to happen. This isn't your average ghost story. You just need to hear it for yourself. If you love a mystery from history with a paranormal twist, you are in the right place!

In addition to diving into the book and looking at the facts of the time period, we will also explore urban legends and folklore from Iroquois County Illinois and other small towns. If you have a story to share, please email Bethany Borden at bthny80@gmail.com or get in touch with us on our Buzzsprout website, Facebook page, or Instagram page. We look forward to hearing from you.

Please also consider supporting the podcast by liking this episode, subscribing to the podcast, telling a friend about it, or even throwing us a small donation. We are thoroughly enjoying telling this creepy tale.

Support the show

Please share your stories with us at porchlightwhispers@gmail.com or send us a message on the Small Town Whispers Facebook page! You'll also want to head to our Patreon page for exclusive footage of the Roff house, bonus listener stories, and more! Don't forget to tell a friend or family member about the show. Thank you!

We'd love to hear from you!

A quiet kitchen, a Sunday supper, and a six-year-old who suddenly sounds sixty-three. That’s where our journey takes a sharp turn, pulling us from small-town routine into a confrontation with the unexplainable. We trace Mary’s strange history from her astonishing twelve-day unresponsive state as an infant to a chilling scene where she cuts her arm, clutches a knife, and insists her name is Katrina Hogan. Layer by layer, we learn how hardship, faith, and the frontier mindset shaped what people believed.

I read a vivid passage from Watseka, America’s Most Extraordinary Case of Possession and Exorcism that captures the room’s shifting air: Anne’s panic, Nervie’s shock, Asa’s steady command, and Josiah’s calm invocation of Spiritualism. The debate that follows feels modern even now. Was this a spirit, a trauma response, a dissociative state, or the pressure of grief and gossip on a family under strain? The details matter—the mud on boots, pegs on the wall, pigs in the yard—because they prove this wasn’t theater. It was a normal day interrupted by something no one could easily name.

I share why the Watseka Wonder still holds me: I lived in that town, walked those streets, and recently even stayed at the Roff house. We close with Porchlight Whispers, our open line for witnesses and storytellers. If you’ve seen the light at Lantern’s Lane, felt the hair rise at the old mailbox, or carry a legend from your own hometown, step into the circle. Follow Small Town Whispers for new chapters every Friday, share the show with a friend who loves history and hauntings, and leave a quick review to help more listeners find us. What do you think happened in that kitchen—possession or psychology? We’re listening.

Support the show

Please share your stories with us at porchlightwhispers@gmail.com or send us a message on the Small Town Whispers Facebook page! You'll also want to head to our Patreon page for exclusive footage of the Roff house, bonus listener stories, and more! Don't forget to tell a friend or family member about the show. Thank you!

We'd love to hear from you!

A teenager restrained in a windowless room, a doctor’s letter that reads like a warning, and a father who refuses to accept “coincidence” as an answer—this chapter of Small Town Whispers moves from the Roff family’s newfound prosperity to the most unsettling moment in Mary’s treatment at the Peoria Water Cure. We walk through Asa’s confrontation with physicians who mock spirit claims and lean on the Fox sisters as a tidy explanation, while he counters with dates, details, and a demand for proof that feels surprisingly modern. It’s not a ghost hunt; it’s a debate about how we decide what’s real when the facts refuse to fit.

From there, we step beneath the Porch Light and into 1969, where the legend of Lantern Lane carries a different kind of evidence: a steady, approaching light on an empty country road with no cars, no houses, no swamp gas. Becky Mackenzie, a Watseka native and teacher-to-be, recounts her band-night sighting with clarity and restraint. The story endures because it remains stubbornly ordinary and stubbornly unexplained. University researchers reportedly found nothing, and that nothing only makes the light harder to dismiss.

What ties these threads together is the small-town method of knowing: patient observation, passed-down stories, a willingness to hold discomfort without smothering it under easy narratives. We explore the tension between medicine and belief, the practical courage of a parent insisting on evidence, and the way local legends archive anomalies that science hasn’t yet claimed. If you’re drawn to historical mysteries, paranormal folklore, and the messy, human process of making sense of the unknown, you’ll feel right at home on these streets and crossroads. If the story stirred something in you—curiosity, doubt, a memory—tap follow, share it with a friend who loves a good mystery, and leave us a review. And if you’ve got a whisper of your own, send it our way so it can step into the light next Friday.

Support the show

Please share your stories with us at porchlightwhispers@gmail.com or send us a message on the Small Town Whispers Facebook page! You'll also want to head to our Patreon page for exclusive footage of the Roff house, bonus listener stories, and more! Don't forget to tell a friend or family member about the show. Thank you!