This week on hometown ghost stories.

St. Charles, Illinois, sits on the Fox River 40 miles west of Chicago,

and for a town this size, it carries a remarkable amount of darkness.

Two buildings have defined it for nearly a hundred years.

Something still lurks on the sixth floor of the Hotel Baker,

and at the Arcata Theater, the hauntings have scared patrons and performers alike for years.

This is hometown ghost stories. St. Charles, Illinois.

Hometown Ghost Stories contains serious and often distressing events and is not intended for all audiences.

Listener discretion is advised.

The second to last night of a tour is supposed to be an easy one.

Six weeks of shows behind you.

One more to go. And the only thing left to do,

not screw it up. I've been tour managing long enough that load in is automatic. I don't think about it

anymore. The way that you don't think about driving a car, you get in, you start it, and an hour later,

you're just there.

But that afternoon at the Arcata, something kept pulling me out of rhythm.

It started with the guitar amps.

Both of them, same model, same settings we'd been running the entire tour,

cutting out for a few seconds at a time, then coming back clean, like nothing had happened. We swapped the cables,

checked the tubes, ran the signal chain from the top. Everything checked out. The amps kept cutting.

Then the bass dropped its tuning between sound check and doors, not drifted, just dropped.

All at once, like someone had reached down and turned the pegs.

...