Living St. Louis | October 30, 2023 | Season 2023 | Episode 26

(light music) - [Presenter] Alton, Illinois is a great place to live, and apparently also a great place to stick around after you're dead.

- This is the creepiest, grooviest town on the planet.

- Had a lot of work done.

- We check in to see how things are going at the historic Eugene Field House after extensive water damage last Christmas.

It's coming along but there have been some bumps in the road.

- [Stephanie] Yes, it was definitely not expected but we did get it under control.

- [Presenter] And a look at a local program that trains people in more than a dozen building and construction trades, raising a workforce and lowering barriers - They really set you up for success.

- [Presenter] It's all next on "Living St.

Louis."

(lively music) (music fades) - I am Ruth Ezell and we're starting with a story about things that can neither be confirmed nor denied.

But what better time for ghost stories than Halloween week?

And what better place to go than Alton, Illinois?

That's what Veronica Mohesky did.

(intriguing music) (creepy music) - [Veronica] Whether you believe in ghosts or not, the town of Alton, Illinois is undeniably creepy.

From the McPike Mansion and the Mineral Springs Hotel to the first Unitarian Church, the town boasts of many haunted locations to visit.

- This is the creepiest, grooviest town on the planet.

- [Veronica] The town is so creepy, in fact, that many claim it is the most haunted small town in America.

David Nunnally, a historian and paranormal investigator at the Mineral Springs Hotel explains why he thinks the town is so haunted.

- This town has seen some really hard times and I think that has led to some really highly-charged emotions for the people that live here or have come here.

And as a result of that, we have these hauntings.

You don't have a place as historic as Alton that you don't have these experiences.

The Alton Telegraph's been documenting hauntings in this town for 200 years.

- [Veronica] In a presentation before leading a ghost tour, Nunnally explained that tragic events have plagued the town since the early 19th century.

Here are just some of the places and events that are believed to contribute to the hauntings in Alton.

Abolitionist, Elijah Lovejoy was murdered in the town in 1837 by a pro-slavery mob.

Confederate soldiers were held at the Alton Prison in crowded, dirty conditions.

Nearly 1,400 died in the smallpox epidemic.

The prison was torn down sometime after the Civil War.

Both the Mineral Springs Hotel and the First Unitarian Church experienced deaths or suicides within their walls.

The McPike Mansion is said to be home to many spirits who like to try to communicate with the living.

- So we do ask the spirits to join us in sight or sound or touch or smell as long as it is not harmful to anyone.

Whatever spirit is here, would you once again show us what a yes is?

So if the rods cross, it's yes.

- Sharon Luedke is the owner of the McPike Mansion.

Since purchasing the home in the 1990s, Luedke says she's had many experiences with spirits.

- Okay, so this is the...

The basement actually goes under all of the house.

And then these are the big metal doors here, like this.

And we do close them when we do our tours.

- [Veronica] Today, Luedke says she's come to understand that all the spirits in the mansion have good intentions.

And visitors to Alton are welcome to come into the McPike Mansion wine cellar to meet the ghosts.

Another paranormal hotspot for Alton tourists is the Mineral Springs Hotel.

Built in 1913, it was originally a hotel and health spa, but over time, it saw many tragic events.

- And then there've been a lot of high crimes and misdemeanors over the years in this hotel.

Two known suicides in the hotel, another drowning death in the hotel and it was abandoned for over 10 years.

And during that time, who knows?

Make it red now.

Turn it red.

Use your energy and turn these on.

You can do it.

I don't think you can then.

You're not as strong as I- (tourist yelps) - [Veronica] On his tours, David Nunnally takes visitors to all of the known haunted spots in the hotel including the abandoned pools.

Using paranormal technology, guests can try to communicate with the spirits, and though the only spirits they may have are the alcoholic kind, many restaurants and breweries help spread the spookiness too.

- October does tend to be our busiest month of the year.

I'm sure that the colors and the Halloween tourism have something to do with that.

- [Veronica] Lauren Patton is the co-founder of the Old Bakery Beer Company.

- We partner with one tour in particular from Alton Odyssey Tours to do a craft beer haunted tour.

And so you get to try a beer sample at each haunted location.

- [Veronica] Patton says the brewery also has seasonal craft beer flavors and a beer-and-Halloween-candy flight pairing.

David Nunnally says the paranormal tourism is a boost for the whole town's economy and not just during the fall.

It's a year-round industry.

- Everyone here knows each other and we're all in it together.

And the city's behind it too.

Every paranormal tourist that comes to Alton spends about 400, $450 in our economy.

That's big money and it's really important.

- [Veronica] And more importantly, Nunnally says that all of the businesses that embrace Alton's haunted past bring the town together.

- When folks come to town for a paranormal investigation here, they end up going to the McPike Mansion, the Enos Sanitarium, the Cracker Factory the Unitarian Church, all these other locations.

And it's a big mutual...

It's just a wonderful experience because we all work together and and you don't find that in most cities, particularly in the paranormal community.

- [Veronica] Sharon Luedke says it's a privilege to be a part of the most haunted small town in America.

- It is exciting and adventurous and you get to meet people from all over the world and the United States.

And so, you know, I'll say the nicest thing about pwning McPike Mansion is meeting all the nice people.

You know, I think that's really, like I said, an honor.

(upbeat music fades) - Our next story is also about an old house.

This one in St. Louis.

It's not filled with ghosts, as far as we know, but lately it's been filled with people trying to bring it back to life.

Jim Kirchherr checked in to see how things are coming along at the historic Eugene Field House.

(intriguing music) - [Jim] It was last Christmas Eve when the 1845 House on Broadway suffered extensive damage.

A sprinkler pipe in the attic broke and water poured down through the walls and the ceilings of the house all the way to the basement.

- Is it up there?

- No!

It's not in its glory right now.

- [Jim] When we visited a few months later museum director Stephanie Bliss took us through.

The period furniture, the carpets, the exhibit pieces were gone.

A few were gone for good because of damage but much of it was salvageable.

The structure, it was in good shape, but there was so much work to be done to restore the walls and the ceilings, the woodwork, the wallpaper.

Still, she was hoping that it would be close to done by now.

- Christmas is our favorite time.

Ideally we would be open, the historic house again, by the next holidays.

(soft music fades) - [Jim] When we came back in mid-October, it was clear there would be no Field House Christmas Not this year.

- We had high ambitions.

We really did.

- It's not gonna happen.

No, we had a setback.

We unfortunately had an airborne mold issue.

- Anybody who does home renovations, repairs knows they're gonna run into something they didn't expect.

- Yes, it was definitely not expected, but we did get it under control.

So it looks here like there's been some replastering or something done.

- Yeah, especially with our ceiling.

We had a lot of work done.

It came down through the ceiling on the first floor and really made a mess of things down there.

So we're happy to have that fixed up.

- [Jim] They will bring all of this back to a mid-19th-century home with the furniture they have and carpets that survived after special cleaning.

But getting the wallpaper right, that's a problem.

The restoration work did uncover remnants of some wallpaper but they don't know from what era.

And they've got a wallpaper historian working on all of this.

- [Stephanie] He came to St. Louis for us.

He researched the Field family, their income level and then the style of St. Louis in the 1850s when the Field family lived here.

(light music) - [Jim] The house was originally part of an upscale development called Walsh's Row.

Roswell Field was a prominent attorney.

He played a key role as part of Dred Scott's legal team.

His son Eugene became famous as the children's poet.

And in the 1930s when Walsh's Row was an overcrowded tenement slated for demolition, the single row house was saved as the Eugene Field House and Toy Museum.

But in 2007, Roswell Field's role in the Dred Scott Case earned the house its national historic landmark status.

And that helped bring about the building of the exhibit space next door in 2017.

Well, fortunately you've got the museum space now.

- Yeah.

- And how's that been going?

You getting visitors or are they saying, "Nah, we'll wait till the house is ready?"

- We've had both.

We've had people who have really been supporting us because of the exhibits that we've had on display.

- [Jim] During baseball season, there was an exhibit on the history of the St. Louis Browns, and now Eugene Field, the children's poet, once again takes center stage at his boyhood home.

- We've pulled items from our collection, we've pulled items from the Eugene Field Library as well out on display here.

- But if it weren't for Eugene, we probably wouldn't have saved this house.

- Oh, no, If it weren't for Eugene, this house would've been torn down and we would never have been a national historic landmark.

- [Jim] And Mark Twain stood outside.

- Yes.

- Yeah.

- [Stephanie] And dedicated the house as his birthplace.

- [Jim] Even though, might not be his birthplace?

- According to some, from the research we found, it is, but his brother was adamant it was not.

- Doesn't really matter.

- (laughing) It doesn't, because as Twain said, forever, from this day on, this place will be known as Eugene Field's birthplace.

- [Jim] The exhibits continue, so does the paint staking work restoring a 178-year-old, three-story home.

But if all goes as planned, the Field House will be back with old stuff and new stories sometime next year.

(light music fades) - It wasn't that long ago that this time of year we'd be talking about flu-shot season.

Well, and we still do, but now it's also COVID booster season.

And this year there seems to be a lot of questions around who needs them and when?

Are they still effective?

So joining us now to talk about the current state of viruses and vaccines is Dr. Sarah George, professor of Infectious Diseases at SLU School of Medicine and a researcher in SLU's Vaccine Center.

Thanks for joining us, Dr. George.

- Thank you.

- So let's talk about, there's flu, there's COVID, there's RSV.

What virus is causing the most concern right now?

- Well, they're all causing concern.

Fortunately, right now, flu activity is fairly low in Missouri, but it is expected to pick up as it usually does once it gets colder.

COVID activity, again, in Missouri, reasonably low in most counties.

There are some counties that have moderate COVID activity.

And RSV, unfortunately, is starting to pick up in children right now.

- So COVID is still a concern.

And one of those...

It's not the leading topic of conversation anymore.

It doesn't seem.

Well, maybe in your field but not necessarily in ours.

But you know, one of those terms that we heard a lot in years past was herd immunity.

Is that something we've reached?

- I wish we had.

The problem is that COVID virus keeps evolving.

Every time it infects a new person, it has another chance to evolve.

So right now, we've got two new strains that are circulating as well as the XBB strain.

Those are all descendants of the omicron, it gets confusing, family of COVID.

So yes, it's still a concern.

And the COVID booster is still recommended for everybody six months of age and older.

- It's still recommended, but you know, just like the flu, the flu shot changes every year depending on the type of strand.

The COVID booster... That's not in the same?

It hasn't been redeveloped?

- Well this is actually a new booster that was designed against the XBB strain that we had so many cases of last spring and summer and we're still seeing cases of, and it gives you protection against the two newer strains we're seeing right now.

So it is definitely recommended.

- And you know, at this point hundreds of millions of people have had COVID, you know, some more, multiple times.

And there's ongoing research about the long-term effects of COVID.

What do we know now about long COVID?

- Well, unfortunately people are still getting it.

And that's another reason to get vaccinated.

You can't get long COVID if you don't get COVID.

It seems to be a very complicated syndrome with a lot of different symptoms in different people.

Usually gets better slowly over time but it can be very hard on people for months, sometimes many months.

- And as a professor teaching about this with other students or working with students, have you noticed an increase of interest in covering viruses and vaccines?

- You know, people are interested in a lot of things.

They're definitely interested in viruses.

They're definitely scared of them, appropriately enough, or concerned about them at least.

And yes, there's a lot more interest in vaccines and developing new vaccines like the mRNA vaccines that we developed for COVID.

- So can you, can you tell us about some of those new developments that you're working on or researching right now?

- Well, we've been working on an mRNA vaccine for flu.

mRNA vaccines have the advantage that they are a lot faster to make.

The current flu vaccine takes about six months to make start to finish and that's a problem if we have a new flu strain or a new flu pandemic.

Last flu pandemic was in 2009.

We could get another one, unfortunately, any time now.

So we need to make vaccines faster and quicker and mRNA and other technologies are ways to do that.

- You know, it seems in 2021 when I was looking to get my COVID vaccine, the first one, I had to travel with a colleague to Hannibal, Missouri.

That was the closest place I could find a vaccine.

That doesn't seem to be the case anymore.

There's, you know, wide availability.

But for example, my daughter's pediatrician office does not offer the COVID vaccine for children.

Is there an issue with accessibility?

- There was early on, back in September when the new vaccine was just coming out, but it's pretty widely available right now.

You can sign up for it at CVS or Walgreens.

Your doctor's clinic probably has it.

Many other pharmacies do.

It is covered by Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance.

- So the big takeaway is get vaccinated, get boosted, stay healthy.

Masks?

Are those effective anymore?

- Well, they're certainly still effective.

People are kind of tired of them, understandably, but if you choose to wear one, feel free to do so.

Again, right now we're not seeing a whole lot of flu or COVID activity, but that's expected to go up as the weather gets colder.

It usually does.

- Dr. Sarah George, thank you so much for joining us.

- Thank you.

- Next, October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, an often challenging and sensitive topic.

One organization's efforts to de-stigmatize this important issue was to announce an extension of their safe haven to the beloved, but often not considered, members of the family.

(intriguing music) The Women's Safe House in St. Louis provides a full range of services to survivors of domestic violence and now they'll be extending refuge to the four-legged members of the family.

- Well it is an important aspect because if the women and children are being abused, their their pets probably are too.

And when women call and they wanna come with their children and they ask if they could bring their animals, we've said no.

And that really started weighing on my heart because I wouldn't go off and leave my 85-pound doodle at home, and knowing that it might not survive or that I needed it for my emotional support.

So after a while, we decided we need to do something about that situation and that's why we're here today, because we will be building a kennel.

- [Brooke] A groundbreaking ceremony was held earlier in October which is domestic violence awareness month raising understanding, and uniting survivors of an issue that affects one in three women.

The kennel is being constructed with support from various organizations such as the City of St. Louis and Nestle Purina.

Several representatives attended the groundbreaking including Sarah Newton, who's already a frequent visitor of the shelter with her duo support dog, Nishka.

- So when I was five years old, I first saw my mother with a black eye.

When I was seven years old, my father punched his fist through a window of a car, pulled me out and dragged me down the sidewalk on my bare knees.

The fact that 10 million children a year witness domestic violence like myself in my childhood is alarming.

And I think it is a taboo topic.

There's a stigma around it and people are not comfortable talking about it.

So it's very important to me to advocate for survivors and let the St. Louis community at large know that this is still an issue and an epidemic that we're dealing with in our community.

(intriguing music) - [Brooke] According to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, it takes survivors an average of seven attempts at leaving an abusive relationship before getting out for good.

And as pets are often used as collateral in the cycle of violence, studies show that not being able to take their pets to shelters is the reason roughly half of domestic violence survivors don't leave immediately.

As this is a growing awareness, only 17% of shelters across the country allow pets.

The Women's Safe House will be the first shelter in the greater St. Louis area to welcome cats, dogs, lizards, birds, any type of companion that women and children can keep safe while they rebuild their lives.

(intriguing music fades) - Finally, a story about a program that is teaching skills to people who are needed to fill openings in the construction industry.

But as Anne Marie Berger shows us, it also, in a symbolic way, is building bridges and opening doors.

(light music) - [Anne Marie] We've been reporting for a few years now that older workers in the skilled trades are retiring and not enough young people are training up to take their jobs.

(light music) This widening gap between supply and demand of workers in construction, plumbing, electrical, tile setting and other trades is a concern.

But fortunately, there are organizations in St. Louis working not only to recruit a workforce, but are creating pathways for people who are often overlooked.

- That includes a combination of helping address some of those barriers, teaching students the basics of the construction industry.

- [Anne Marie] Megan Price is the executive director of the Missouri Works Initiative, an organization that removes barriers preventing people from finding life-sustaining employment in the trades.

They run a program called Building Union Diversity, better known as B.U.D.

- There are 16 different building and construction trades in St. Louis, so each one of those trades has a different point of entry, a different process that their apprentices follow to eventually journey out.

So our program seeks to help navigate that process.

- What they're doing is they learned a bunch of ties, that's why they're all over the place.

- [Anne Marie] Barriers to sustainable employment include lack of transportation, homelessness, or even a lack of awareness about career opportunities and navigating the complicated process.

- [Instructor] A little bit slower.

- [Anne Marie] Historically, access to opportunity in the trades was connected to which friend or family member could help you get your foot in the door.

Not anymore.

The trades want to expand the pool of people they recruit from, including women.

- And since I'm right-handed, I like to work right to left.

- [Anne Marie] This is Raine McDivitt.

She's a first-year-apprentice tile finisher with local 18.

- Tile finisher, they're going to help the setter, so they make cuts, grind anything down to make like the little teeny tiny nooks and crannies, and then you finish with grout that goes in between the tiles.

- [Anne Marie] And her pathway to this career was not a straight line.

- [Raine] I have actually never used this type of grout before.

Oh my gosh, I've dipped my toes in so much.

In high school, I started working at restaurants at 17.

I wound up going to Maryville.

It was awesome.

After five years, I graduated there with a degree in graphic design and a minor in psych.

And that's right when COVID hit.

(laughing) And then I was like, "Okay, no one's getting hired.

Let's do something else."

- [Anne Marie] Raine went through the Launch Code women's program and learned to code, but after securing an internship, she realized working eight hours a day at a computer was not what she wanted to do.

Then she came across the B.U.D.

program.

- Because if you don't know what you want to do in the trades, 'cause I didn't know anything about it.

- [Anne Marie] Yeah, and you didn't want to do another thing where you realize when you're done, that- - Right, I'm like, "I'm reaching 30.

I need to figure out what I'm gonna do here."

So I did that.

It's only six weeks long.

You get a stipend every week.

They give you pants that I wound up destroying but I still wear.

a hard hat, other personal protective equipment.

They really set you up for success.

- [Anne Marie] B.U.D.

is a six-week, union, construction pre-apprenticeship program offered at no charge to selected individuals.

No experience necessary.

Here, future tradespeople are exposed to plumbing, pipe fitting, tile setting, electrical, iron work, and others.

- Any piece of concrete that you ever stand on is gonna have rebar in it.

And so this is like the bones of a lot of buildings and a lot of structures.

- [Anne Marie] Of those in the B.U.D.

program, 40% were unemployed before enrolling.

91% complete the program and graduate.

82% have secured a job in the construction trades within six months of completion.

And 24% of those in the B.U.D.

program are women.

While the national average of women in the trades is just 4%.

- Important things about B.U.D.

and about the Missouri Works Initiative and the unions is that it is a program that faces the realities that some of the construction sites and job sites in our communities don't look like the people who make up those communities.

And so this program was really born from the idea to change that.

- [Anne Marie] Raine's apprenticeship will last three years.

Following that, she has the option to skill up and train to be a tile setter.

After five years, she'll be vested with a pension.

- I heard someone say you're close to being a master of your craft after 10 years.

I've always been more of like, a jack-of-all-trades type of gal and I'm like, "Whoa.

Master of craft after 10 years?

Hell yeah."

(light music fades) (lively music) - And that's "Living St.

Louis."

Remember, you can follow us on our social channels and you can reach out to us at ninepbs.org/lsl.

Goodnight and we'll see you next time.

(lively music) - [Announcer] "Living St. Louis" is funded in part by the Betsy and Thomas Patterson Foundation and the members of Nine PBS.

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