Before we get to our show, here is a podcast we think you're going to love. Hey, I'm Talisa. And I'm Sarah. We're the hosts of The Shit Show. A half-assed true crime podcast. Yeah, we're two moms who sit around chatting about true crime. Each week we cover lesser known cases and talk about the shit shows that are our lives. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Play, and pretty much on any other platform that you would listen to a podcast. You can find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at TheShitShowTCP. Okay, bye. Okay, bye.
All right. Hello, everyone. It's time for Perhaps It's You, your favorite Unsolved Mysteries rewatch podcast. I'm Liz. I'm Samantha. And we have a very special guest with us today. It's Friend of the Pod and your favorite ghost slut, Arden. Favorite and only trademark ghost slut. Absolutely. If there were 100 ghost sluts, you would still be 100. Yeah. There's no contest. I'm growing a legion of fellow ghost sluts. I am constantly sending Arden tattoo images that I find on Instagram that are somehow ghost slut related. And I never get sick of it. And it's somehow.
it's a surprising number of tattoos also of just like a slutty ghost and i'm like one artist who's that's like and now i kind of want one from her i think you need one if i was ever in la post plague with money to burn um i think i think it needs to happen you know when you when you learn a new word for the first time and then suddenly you hear that word all the time in your everyday life it's one of those things you've never seen a ghost slut tattoo until you finally know what a ghost slut is and then they're all over your instagram you're like a stripper shoe with a ghost like shining a giant thing a giant soul yeah oh perfect i love the little pin-up ones too i think that that would be like the style of ghostlet that i would get personally um it doesn't really match the vibe of any of my other tattoos but who cares yeah that's not important i don't think that's a thing no i'm not a coloring book you know you can do whatever you want you can do whatever you want i can how many ghostlet tattoos are you gonna get samantha at least five yeah perfect how's that gordon ramsay uh is daddy tramp stamp Well, COVID put a halt on me. You know what? My Gordon Ramsay is a daddy's leave. We go to my basement every session. Only in my dreams. I mean, that's like a good dream to have. Not that dream where you show up somewhere and you realize no one is wearing a mask and you're not wearing a mask and you're going to die. That's the new you show up to class naked or whatever. Yeah.
I had a dream that my mom took me bowling in El Paso and I got COVID. Thanks a lot, mom. Yeah, I remember you mentioned that. I was like, what a sad way to get COVID. Although, do y'all have the thing where every time you have any maybe tangible symptom of anything, I could stub my toe and be like, can I still smell? Am I? I had to clear my throat the other day and I was like, could this be COVID?
This is why I need to keep buying perfume off eBay so I can spray it and then go, oh, I can still smile. I must be fine. That's my test. Yes. It's really a health care. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, no, I like the problem is, is I feel gross most of the time, but especially in winter. I just generally feel terrible. I should not live here. And yet here I am. Like the only time I felt like in good health all of last winter was when I was in New Orleans. And I was like, oh, wow, I think this might be.
What your body actually wants. Climate and French 75 induced health. We need to get enough podcast that we can all start snowboarding in New Orleans in the winter. That's the ultimate dream. Yes. We'll just be here for, for the one week of spring, summer, fall. We'll be here during hurricane season. Yeah, exactly. And then we'll go and, you know, learn about ghosts and eat jambalaya. Yeah. Oh God. I want to cry. I want to cry thinking about going to like.
you know, Olive Garden right now. Right. Suddenly all these things sound really good. I scared Samantha by being like, I would go to a wedding right now. Yes. That did scare me. Liz blinked twice. I was like, I just want to get dressed up. I want to spend like five hours getting ready for something. Five listeners. Liz once thanked me for not inviting her to my wedding. It's true. I was like, I just got to buy you a present. That's it. My wedding was great. There was tacos and like bottomless self-serve margaritas. So you missed it. Well, now you're making me take it back.
I still appreciate the thought of not inviting me. Yeah. We had to know new friends. My husband is way more of an introvert and I already was like dominating the guest list. So I was like, okay.
You're just too popular. I hear you. Yeah, it's a problem. It's like how no one takes me seriously. I can see you having that problem. I really don't. I forget that I'm also a catfish. I'm really glad that we're not video recording right now. Oh my god, no. 5% of the time. I don't ever have to leave the house. I live in pajamas, so it's fine. There's no way we would video record this podcast. I still put on real clothes because otherwise I get way too depressed. My hair is still drying. No makeup. Glasses on. Settling in.
I'm drinking wine out of a Halloween glass. That all sounds pretty good. That all sounds, yeah, nice and cozy. Well, we brought Arden on today to do all of our work for us, basically. I have wanted to have you back on the podcast for a while, and Anastasia seemed like the ripe opportunity. I knew you had a lot of opinions. I do have a lot of opinions. And this turned out to be the longest segment since Alcatraz.
Yeah. Why is there so much Anastasia information? And why is some of it the same as other Anastasia information we already went over? We noticed that it was originally aired in three parts, which seems like two and a half parts too many. I actually had to recap some of the information in the, you know, since your last Anastasia episode. Can you imagine being like, can't wait to tone back in to find out what happens? Well, they don't even know if you saw that, right? And you're like flipping through the channels and then you come back and you're like, who is Anastasia? What's happening? Yeah. Before we get started, I do have one.
Oh, right. I forgot about that part of the show. Well, they're not big updates, but I do want to give a thank you to two people, to Robin and to Patrick, who sent us some holiday treats from our Amazon wish list. It was a very pleasant surprise. They came on the same day at different times. So we got two packages on the same day at different times. And I really appreciated it. Yes. I'm actually saving the box of snacks that Robin sent because I think they're going to keep until Liz and I can have an outdoor.
picnic of some sort and enjoy our snacks together. We also got cheesies from Patrick, which I really appreciate. Patrick, I know you were concerned that there was only one bag left in stock, but what you didn't know is that the big boy cheesies, which are what we put on our Amazon wishlist, have three little bags inside. So there's one for me, one for Liz, and then I did let my husband take the other one. A time-locked vault to ensure that... I put them in the other room so one, I wouldn't be tempted. Two, my husband wouldn't sneak them and three, my dogs wouldn't climb on the counter and snatch them, which are all...
Good possibility. So they're actually in a drawer in the other room waiting. I did. I maybe ate a few of the little snacks that came in the box, but there's plenty more. So don't worry about it. All right. It's fine. I'm just jealous.
Well, it kind of sucks that we can't have snack time anymore. And maybe some, I'm sure some listeners to our podcast appreciate that we don't spend like 20 minutes at the beginning of the episode making mouth noises and eating snacks. But that was always one of my favorite parts of recording in person. And we don't get that under anymore. But I've gotten the honor to, you know, hear your mouth noises in real life. I mean, it's quite an honor. Thank you so much. Arden has seen us really plow down some all-you-can-eat sushi.
She's very familiar with her mouth noises. No face and spirited away whenever we go for all you can eat sushi. So I cannot judge you. In fact, I'm not even looking hugely. Oh, that's true. I have no idea how much anyone else eats. I'm very laser focused. I got work to do. The waitress always looks concerned. And that's my favorite part. You know you're doing all you can eat sushi correctly when your waitress has a little bit of an apprehensive look. They're a little worried about how much you're eating and or if you frighten.
other patrons in the restaurant. I remember one specific instance, which I was actually there with my work, and the people that I work with can eat a lot of sushi. Like, they put us to shame. And we were on the opposite side of a hibachi from a group that clearly had never been there before, and they each ordered, like, one roll. You know, their order came, and they each had, like, one little roll. And meanwhile, plates upon plates of sushi are showing up to our table and just, like, shoveling it down. You gotta be your money's worth when you go for all you can. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Particularly sushi. And it's a deal, really. It ends up fast. I know it's been mentioned before, but hearing Samantha order sushi, it's just chef's kiss.
the sexiest thing it really is like marry me never order sushi like that or samantha's like okay we're gonna take four of this role two of it's just like it's just like this whole thing off the top of her head and everybody's just looking at her like who is this angel got it yeah it's one of my only talents it's it's so so great yeah oh my god kyoto i miss you so much uh but we're on if you're watching along at home season six episode three i'm pulling out my notes because there's there's some great stack quotes which i'm like calm down he can't he's too excited i am insanely extra and so like game recognized game but um i in my notes last night i wrote lol okay rob do you think robert stack thinks of himself as like american royalty he's like finally a story that's on like my level yes she was more royal than a princess It's just a different structure of monarchy. More royal than a princess artist. K-Rob. So she was more royal to princess. Also, as we journey to Russia, y'all did not go to Russia. That was not in the budget. Are you calling Robert Stack a liar? I'm not calling him a truther.
I'm going to say the set for this mystery really did look like it was someone's basement. Yeah, that's true. I get that it's like a Russian bunker or something is the majority of it. But also I want to talk about the weird discrepancies in historical fashion because sometimes it's really good in this segment and sometimes it's terrible. Like, I get that, you know, you're not, like, dressing up for your execution, maybe. I would, personally. I mean, if I knew, I absolutely would. They were prepared, which is fair. They had time to put on their jewel hidden corset, though. I used to give them half an hour to dress, which I'm like, that seems pretty reasonable. That's what I used to do myself, working from home. And I'm not putting on jewel corsets again. It seems to take me two minutes to get dressed and walk to my office, but...
You don't have a corset, a jewel hiding corset. I do have my regular corsets that I put on to work from home with camera off, but no. Actually, I'll take that back. I have been known to wear a corset. I do not doubt it. That's how I picture you in my mind. I'm going to send you a great Snapchat after this that proves that. So at the beginning, we talk about some general overview of the family and that she was both this very opulent lifestyle, but also a disappointment, which I'm like, that seems rude.
She didn't have enough penises. Also, the assumption that she became a tomboy because her dad wanted her to be a boy instead. That seems rude. Yeah, that might be a stretch. I really appreciate the roller skates. Yes, that's what I was going to say. I love that footage of her roller skating on a yacht. That is the life. Also, that was really cute. It made me a teeny bit sad. I'm not going to lie. I'm like, oh, that's kind of adorable. It really is. So then we smash cut to them, you know, being...
Taken from their regular palace to go be prisoners in a different palace. What a rough life. That's rough. It's rough where you have to go to your other bed. Ellen's pandemic. She was basically in jail. A giant jail the size of a town. Yeah, it's fine. It's fine. But the costumes they have in their execution scene looked like they sold them from A Christmas Carol. They probably did. I'm sure it's just leftovers from some other historical history. I don't know. They're like, this will do.
This is fine. They're not quite in the right time period. I don't know. It bothered me. I know that's been a key. They probably found them in an old trunk like on some set and they were like, yeah, this is fine. This looks old timey. Yeah. No one will know. No one's going to be watching this on YouTube in 30 years. It's fine. And so they, you know, they discuss their, some of their family went into hiding, but obviously they did not. They were under guard and then eventually they were executed, which I think pretty much everyone knows about that. I don't think I need to go into detail that, uh, Tsar is not around anymore. The, oh God, how did they describe it? Like.
It was very heavy-handed anti-communist rhetoric in this segment. To the point that it was just hilarious to me. Yeah, that's why we couldn't have Mac on this segment. Yeah, he would get too mad. He would be too mad. Radical Bolsheviks. Other people were living in multi-palace splendor. In their jewel corsets. Yeah, it's fine. Let that be a lesson to the one percenters listening to this podcast. I'm sure there are many.
You can try to roller skate your way into my heart. In the end. Watch out. Yeah. Maybe she's wearing roller skates at the time. She could have roller skated away. Yeah. Well, maybe she did, Liz. Maybe she did. That should have been presented as a theory. I mean, I feel like she roller skated away. Better evidence than most of what we get for this case. Prove she did it. I think I can prove that, actually. We smash cut to someone jumping off a shorter distance than I've jumped off many diving boards into a river. I get that you don't want someone to die in reality.
And this woman is pulled out of this creek from this diving board and taken to, it's in Berlin now, smash cut, in Berlin. Woman jumped off a very low bridge a few years later, which to me is the weirdest part. It's like, okay, a few years later in Berlin. woman jumps off the world's lowest bridge and is brought to a german asylum which looks much cleaner and nicer than i assume it actually was like maybe now like maybe now like a like a german mental institution is probably much nicer than like ours but i mean if it is this nice i'll keep that in mind as a backup plan the way i think about swedish prison i was like yeah if things are really bad for me here i'm definitely going to sweden and committing one way flight to Sweden or like Finland commit like a crime that's bad enough that they'll punish you but not like murder no just like burn down an old shed or something yeah and then be like oh I must I must go to prison for this get me the worst lawyer in your country what you'll get me retirement plan yeah same same but anyway so she's she's hanging out in this day spa slash asylum
and uh her her friend uh who's apparently obsessed with royalty magazines to which i was like what if i met megan markle like while i was institutionalized that would be so wild and you just had like a people magazine right with you and you're like oh this is you some random poor like mixed race woman in this asylum with me and she's like i am not megan markle that's a little racist please go away and you just keep insisting because there's a reason you're in the asylum and that reason you think everyone is royalty yes that might be why did we look into that no yeah it must be true um i my personal Maybe I'll save my, like, other theories for the end, but it's pretty clear. I think that this sort of, like, planted either a seed of, like, maybe this might be a fun drift, or sadly, maybe some, like, seed of additional mental instability on top of some existing stuff going on. I think the timeline is important, because they set up the episode as if, what's her name, Anna? Anna?
um anna anderson which that is a fake name i'll give her that i'm not sure that's her real name that's what she goes by they set it up as if she shows up at this institution and immediately starts declaring that she's anastasia which is not true her like friend or roommate or something at the at the asylum are you right anastasia insists that she's anastasia but then she says she's the other sister at first and then eventually switches to anastasia probably because i'm not really sure but she eventually switches to anastasia she at first is not saying she's anastasia she's saying she's one of the others i can't remember which one so this is it's kind of sketchy this is sketchier than they made it seem in the preview yes Anna Anderson is, why even go to that step? Be like, this is my pseudonym. Because she originally was committed as Miss Unknown. She wouldn't give them her name, which to her defenders lends credence to this. Like, she was in hiding. She didn't want to know. But then she had an additional pseudonym. I'm like, okay. Miss Unknown has this wonderful, like, quality to it. Yeah, it's a little hot. Miss Unknown. Yes, a Carmen Sandiego-themed burlesket act. I'm into it. That's all I want now.
That's all I hope to be. You'll never know where in the world those nipple pasties are. Trench coat and some nipple pasties. Got to be right back. Quick pause. But so she only starts declaring this very slowly and over time, which I think is really telling. But then she gets somehow people hear about this, which is very strange to me. Yeah, they were not clear on how that happened. But I'm guessing just like town gossip, I guess. I don't know. Maybe the physicians or whoever runs.
This asylum? It may seem like they reached out to these relatives of the Tsar's family that were living there in the country and they then just showed up or sent some representative? They sent a representative who has an amazing outfit. This is where I was like, okay, I forgive the past Christmas Carol community theater outfits because this one is on point. Love it. Maybe the actor just had that and brought it from home. Like, I'm a vintage enthusiast. I'm going to wear my own clothes. Fair. Killing it. But so she shows up and she's like, cool, cool, cool. But she must have been convinced enough that people eventually showed up.
I find it super weird that she doesn't speak any Russian, apparently at any point. Yeah! That seems suspicious to me. What about that part? Yeah. I forgot. There's another point further in the episode where she's like an old woman and they ask her if she can speak Russian and she's like, no, I won't. Which I'm, at least, you know, it's 50 years since you've spoken Russian. Like, language is, you forget it. I could understand that. But two years later, you forgot all Russian. Yeah. She forgot her mother tongue. Okay, Anna. Seems possible.
Which, I suppose you could be like, okay, she was traumatized. There was that creek incident. You have to take so many leaps. Like, every single part of this is like, well, maybe if... I don't know. She must have been very charismatic, is what I'm getting. I don't really get that from the actress in the... No. Sorry. Whatever that is, but no. But, Les, I wish you no ill will in your community theater Christmas character. But, not my favorite, but also not the worst actress, even. Actually, I do wish them ill will.
Liz would. Only Muppet Christmas Carol. That's the only version that should exist. All other versions. Get my ill will. I can't even disagree with that. But this is your daily reminder that Liz is very Aries alert. I do wish her ill will. I do wish ill will. Because if you're not willing to cry in front of a Muppet, you're not really committed to the Christmas Carol.
Where is Michael Caine's Oscar for Muppet Christmas Carol? Where he literally cries in front of a Muppet. He's like interacting with no people. I can't disagree with that. It's amazing. It's so good. It's so good. And it is the only Christmas Carol that I accept. I would love to see a community theater production of a Muppet Christmas Carol.
Yeah, minor detail. Okay, sorry. Go on. You just get really hairy actors. And not puppets. Or just like sock puppets. They're like really poorly made. Yeah. No, I would go see that. But also I think going to Olive Garden sounds like exotic now. So my idea of fun has definitely shifted over the last year. I saw a Staples the other day and was like, could I just go in and like look around? A Staples. That stationary smell. I was like, I'll just go see what color post-its they have. Maybe look at some pens. It was a Staples. That is sad, Liz. I'm not going to lie. It is.
I just wanted the feeling of browsing. Yeah. Oh, God. And smelling things. Anyway, I'm going to interrupt our depression spiral. Much like we're frequently interrupted during these bad reenactments by this historian slash author, James Blair Lovell, I think, or Lovell. Okay, you just look at that guy, and I don't know what this means, but you know he's a quack. You just look at that guy right in the eyes, and you're like, this guy's not legit. I can't explain it. My vibe off him is, like, he was not charismatic enough to be a cult leader, so he decided to be dead. Shady historian. The vibe you're getting be because he's convinced that a random woman named Anna Anderson is Anastasia.
Anna Chair Anderson. Who else could be Anna Stasia except Anna Anderson? If you're trying to hide right now, you choose a pseudonym that's very similar to part of your name. It's like, I'm not Arden. I'm Garden Olson. Not friend. Yeah. I'm just not Liz. First name not, last name Liz. I'm Beth Stalker. That's a terrible name. That's not good.
I get a lot of complaints. Yeah, people do not like me around. A lot of inquiries on my CV. But, uh, yeah, he interrupts us frequently with his weird piercing eyes. Um, he's not looking directly at the camera, thank God, because he's like... Like, I also feel like he would have hit on me when I was, like, 19 at a bar, or in his classroom, probably. Okay, you act like I'm so mean to everyone, and you're accusing this historian of, like... Historian slash author slash fraud, uh, yes. Of being a creep. He does seem like a creep, I'll say. I hope he's not listening to this, but... That seems like a stretch, but if, um, if you are, I'm very sorry, James.
Jimmy, you know, can I call you Jimmy? I want to personally apologize. Or good pal Jimmy, wherever he is. I mean, work on softening your gaze a little, just to prove your resolution. It's intense. It's intense. It's creepy. And you're not even looking at the camera. It's unnerving. Anyway, he is very devoted. Apparently they knew each other. I don't, I feel like this is one of those things that, you know, like you watch true crime shows and they're like, they left the room and I loved them. And you're like, were you really friends? Because I feel like you just wanted to go on TV. Yeah, exactly. I feel like they had that kind of relationship where maybe he like met her a couple of times.
and it really milks that for his like and that's how i feel about ann rule and her ted okay but where she's like perhaps no one knew him better than me and it's like yeah it's a little far but if i had that calm down calm down and you just volunteered with him he had a girlfriend he had a family He wasn't, like, the Unabomber living out in the middle of nowhere. He knew people. Because, you know, you don't like to think of, you're like, if you call into a suicide hotline, that's not really who you want. No, it's terrifying. And it is interesting. I just feel like she really, like, put herself into that story more than a... Sorry, Anne Rule. It's fair. Bless you, Anne Rule. But, yeah, that's a fair critique. I'm not going to go in as hard on Anne Rule, though, because she doesn't have a creepy glare. Maybe she does. I don't know. I haven't watched a lot of it. I can't say she doesn't.
She cannot have as creepy a glare. I'm going to just put that out there. Seems unlikely. Seems unlikely. So he talks a lot of nonsense about how they were BFFs, had friendship bracelets and whatnot. But also that she...
He makes a lot of weird assumptions about her actions. Things that could be considered maybe weird or suspicious. Where just her being like, oh, that's just her court etiquette. I'm like, okay, was she a roller skating tomboy? Or was she somehow a weird shut-in, but also really concerned about royal etiquette? Decided. She's everything. She's everything at once. She's truly miraculous. I feel like a lot of her behaviors, they dismiss by just saying she's royalty.
Or she's like, she's Russian. Don't mind her. She's Russian. I don't know. I have explained acquaintances behavior by the Russian, but only in, you know, in better ways. Also, I actually know those people. Or people who perhaps can speak Russian. That's right. Who might actually be Russian. Yeah. For sure German, but whatever.
Also, so one of the main things of evidence that's brought up, like, at least three times, I know it was broken down into segments, but it gets really irritating when you're watching it all the time. It's like, the photographs don't lie. And I'm like, okay, those two women and those two photographs do kind of look alike, but I bet I could find five different family photos of five different family members that look like a dead Russian princess. My first impression was they didn't look anything alike. No, they say that she had, like, a scar on her, like, above her ear or something, and that that mashed, apparently. I couldn't remember. The pictures are very fuzzy. It's hard in her mouth.
The comedy thing kind of, that doesn't seem that weird of a coincidence. Like, oh, this other woman also has something sort of weird with her foot. Like, I don't, they didn't put all, like, x-rays of the two, right? Like, there's no. Yeah, it's just like, oh, yeah, you also have a foot. It made me think of, remember when people found that old photo? This coincidence cannot be denied. Remember when people found that really old photo that looked, like, exactly like Keanu Reeves? Yeah. Or maybe it was, it was like, yeah. Like, you could find. Keanu Reeves is a vampire.
That doesn't prove that Canterbeeps is, like, traveling through time. You know, some people are like a vampire lizard. Okay. You're right. I'm sorry. Yeah. Correct. He hasn't aged that much since, like, the 90s either. So he's not. That's true. Could it be that he's rich and has access to excellent skin cream? No. Vampire. No. Vampire. So they explain away other, like, recent injuries that have scarred over. It's, like, maybe shrapnel from bullets ricocheting off her jewel corset. I'm not sure that. Okay.
These doctors like don't recognize bullet wounds or like, they were like, she's covered in unusual scars. And they were like, that can be explained by the firing squad. I was like, these doctors seem bad. I think it would be pretty distinctive. This is where a bullet entered your body. No, I have never been shot, gotta say. But, you know, my grandpa was, he had a bullet scar on his shoulder. It was pretty clear what it was.
from, like, Korea. You know, like, it was pretty clear that it was a bullet wound. I don't think, unless they all grazed her and she just fainted or something. I don't know. I mean, I guess that's an explanation of how she survived. Is that she just fainted? Details, some supposed details from, like, a soldier's son, I think, the night of, who was in that firing squad. I'm also going to take all of that with a grain of salt, right? Because it's years and years after the fact. It's not a firsthand account. Yeah. And it doesn't make that much sense. But apparently, the initial, like, volleys didn't hit her. And there are a lot of accounts that it took, like, a...
a creepy amount of time to kill the empress and her daughters because of said jewel corsets which okay they had a lot of diamonds and there's already like those are probably steel corsets to begin with so that makes a little sense you know your organs might be a little more shielded than usual but apparently none of them hit her badly and someone stabbed her in the foot and then like knocked her out stabbed her in the foot why that's not gonna do it that doesn't do anything pin her down i'm like yes this firing squad needed to pin down a 17 year old girl okay When they were armed. When I'm trying to assassinate someone, I definitely stab them in the foot. With your bayonet. Their most vulnerable part. You can stab them between the eyes with your bayonet. If you're out of ammo, I guess. Maybe we can say she was too beautiful. They couldn't bring themselves to do it. They could only damage her deformed foot. It was already not great. It's fine. This is beginning to sound a little bit like some weird fan fiction I would have read in middle school. The difference between Unsolved Mysteries and fan fiction is sometimes pretty thin, honestly. That checks out.
um and this is no different so we we flash forward uh in time to her talking to her her act who would actually be her aunt if she was you know the grand duchess anastasia but um the aunt seems pretty unconvinced from the start like apparently she was like oh you are my niece but i don't know maybe she would just be nice or maybe you know you would presumably like regardless of how you feel politically on it like that would be very sad if it was your family and you would want to hold out hope we've seen so many cases on unsolved mysteries where it's like oh it is them it's for sure them it's like you're just you want to hold out hope and that's a human reaction but it seems pretty clear that she doesn't she's like it's weird that you don't speak russian or know my name It's only been a couple years. Remember what I gave you for Christmas like 18 months ago? That's odd. It doesn't seem to be that far of a relation. She's like, you always were an ungrateful child. No wonder you remember nothing. Always roller skating away on your weird foot. Do you think she'd custom skates? Maybe. Depends on the form. I mean, probably everything. For a royal family back then, it was probably made out of solid gold. Yeah, and diamonds. It's so hard to bayonet through it.
Oh, God. I'm going to hell. That's fine. There's other reasons for that, too. Yeah, you'll see me there. It's okay. It's cool. We'll chill. We'll go to the Olive Garden. I assume there's definitely an Olive Garden in hell. Hell's only chain were restaurants in, like, suburban. Oh, God. The thing is, though, there's a limit on the breadsticks. Oh, how dare they? Yeah, that's how you know it's hell. So they seem unconvinced. They make up this, like, theory that they wanted to cut her out because they didn't want to, like, share their family wealth with her, which, okay, if there was more evidence, that would be a pretty good reason.
to try to cut someone out. But really, like, so you went to this hospital to find this woman that you think might be your relation. And then you're like, psych, you are my relation and I don't want to share money with you. Okay, here's my question, because I don't think Unsolved Mysteries made it clear. She said there was like, what, $80 million in a secret bank account? Did that money actually exist? Or are they just assuming because they disappeared after that? I tried looking into this and I don't see any evidence of that. So they give that as the reason that they're like, oh, thank you for that information. Don't know why your dad did that particularly. My dad didn't tell me about most of his banking information.
And my dad wasn't even an emperor and I only have two brothers. So, but anyway, maybe they were super close with their roller skating and banking. So yeah, because apparently they were all excited to have her back in the family or whatever. And so they were like, well, what are you going to do for money? Like when you get out of the asylum, what are you going to do? And she's like, I'll be fine. My dad had that $80 million in that secret bank. And they were like, don't say.
Which would be super suspicious if that checked out, but I tried to look into it and I didn't see any information that wasn't about her. I don't have a secret bank card in, so maybe. Also, at the time, that was billions of dollars now. It could have also just cut her in. I realize that's not really how rich people work, but there was more than enough to go around. If they really thought she was part of the family, they could have included her in the money. I have a note about that, though, because that's both not how rich people work, but also weirdly exactly how rich people work, because after she gets out of this day spa asylum, she goes to live with some random duke.
Like they're not even related, which is a stretch for that family. Like you had to try hard to not be related to any form of European mobility. How come I never have just like, oh, I'm going to summer with a Duke. That sounds lit. I can pretend. She's not their cousin or anything, which again would make sense because they're related on a lot of sides. Like on her mom's side, her mom's grandma was Queen Victoria. She had a bunch of kids. They married a bunch of people. The Romanovs, you know, there's a reason why they're a little, a little off.
um bloodlines wise but like they have a lot of royal cousins this random duke and duchess take her in and she just lives with them for a bit was this before after was it her uncle that came the one that had the pictures so that was like her family's doctor's son's friend or something i don't know some dude that she would have known from childhood loose childhood acquaintance and i thought the fact that she like she recognized the photo the pictures or she remembered the stories or something i don't really remember convinced everybody that she was legit i don't know if that played a part in the i think that's just part of the long con though like So the thing was that, supposedly, he, back in the day, would paint these stories of, like, animals wearing little clothes, which sounds amazing. Which he still had, as an adult man. Which he had kept all these years. And he brought them. So he would make these little paintings, which I kind of want one of. And then she would, like, make up the story that went with it. And so he brought these paintings he still had, and she remembered the stories. But I was like, what if the stories just aren't that original? So she's like, oh, yes, I remember this one. It's about a duck that goes to school. They're stories, they're paintings of animals. Yeah. I don't remember the weird shit I made up as a kid. Like, as a weird, imaginative kid.
Yeah, I made up tons of shit. I don't remember any of it. No. No, so I think that if someone was like, oh, there's a painting of a duck and a lion. Oh, and the duck and the lion were friends. But apparently this really convinced him, especially. And that man whose name I did not write down, unfortunately. But he became one of her biggest supporters. And eventually I think he even helped her immigrate to the U.S. Yeah, he was conned hard. Was he with all the cats? No, that was his friend. He hooked her up with someone and they got married and then she just kept getting cats.
I was wondering about that. I'm like, are these new cats or are these the cats from before? So apparently the Duke bought her a cottage or something. She got a cottage. In a black forest. Is my dream. It sounds amazing. I know. I wrote down. Why did she come to the U.S.? She was living in a German forest with a million cats. Sounds great. Yeah, she was luring in children and shoving them into a stove. Keep that up. Why would you give that up? Also, when like her lawyer or someone sends over some like language experts and they're like, hey, your lawyer agreed to this. Can you like prove that you know Russian? She's like.
Nope. Also, get out. She was an eccentric old woman, though, and could definitely get away with it. She's like, I'm not talking to you. I'm a duchess. To which James Blair level is like, she would not stand for this common judge to shake her hand. I'm like, okay, buddy. Makes her sound like a real bitch. She doesn't seem like, I don't know. She seems fun. She's got cats. She's pushing children in the stoves. She's got hobbies. There was a picture of her at 58, and I was like, oh, baby girl.
That is a rough 58. Okay, yes. I think she was also lying about her age. There's no way that woman was 58. Also, she then immigrates to the U.S. and gets hooked up with that childhood friend's friend who they say was 19 years her junior. I'm like, he was like 50 years her junior. And there's nothing wrong with that. Consenting adults over 50, especially, you know, if you haven't learned by now, you can make up your own mind on who to marry.
I also feel like he was maybe trying to exploit her, which makes me a little sad, but apparently they continued gaining cats. I feel like they were exploiting each other somehow. Yeah, which is, you know, I've seen worse marriages. Fair, fair. They were described as the bane of their neighbor's existence, which I wrote down as like, yes, that is what you want. The vegetation like reclaimed their house and they just had like 40 cats running everywhere. Yeah.
I appreciate it because I'm a person that if I like something a little, like, I like it a lot. And clearly, this woman just wanted to live in a tangle of weeds with a bunch of cats. She's not content to have, like, I don't know, six cats. It's not quite cottagecore. It's, like, cats and... It's more of Grey Gardens core. Yes. Crumbling core. Yeah. Or you're not sure if you're eating cat food or pate, but... I've been testing out a lot of new cat foods for my spoiled cat lately, and that just hit me a little too hard. Oh, God. Well, good thing you're a vegetarian, so... I'm a vegetarian, though, so the tuna ones.
It still came on for me. Roll that up in some rice. Unlimited sushi. Everything's fine. Anyway, the theme of this episode is my descent into sushi themed despair. You're welcome, five listeners. Yeah, I feel that on like a spiritual level. She dies in the mid 80s at like 150. And then her husband dies a few years later.
It doesn't seem like, I think he died in like 1990. She died in 84, I think. And then it's, you get an update at the end. And it's like, okay, updates. They found the two missing bodies, which was some of their key evidence is that there were two, they found the mass grave, the Romanovs, but there were two people missing.
that couldn't be identified but then they find two more corpses and they're like oh no this is the empress at alexi so anastasia must have been one of the other bodies which also goes to show that like forensic anthropology is really cool but it's not as exact of a science especially like what like 80s forensic anthropology yeah like age estimates like that exact you know it's just kind of frustrating because this segment is so long because it's three segments and you go on this yeah it's like oh by the way none of that was true Thanks for playing. The update at the end really is, like, it was definitively determined that Anastasia was in one of the graves nearby. And in the wiki, they also have some additional information that, one, DNA evidence also proved that she was not in Anastasia. But she was identified as a German woman, shocker, from... What, that woman that spoke German and lived in Germany? Hard to believe. I'm going to try to pronounce her name. Bless her heart. Franzika Schwarzkowiczka.
There's a lot of... It's a pretty cool name. Yeah, boo to that. To live in the Black Forest just sounds cool. Yeah, she apparently had a pretty extensive history of mental illness even before her day spa visits. Yeah, because she was actually like 20, 30 years older than she was telling everybody, so she had a lot of history. But apparently they knew that by 1927. A private investigator figured out who she was in 1927. What's all mysteries doing then?
trying to get ratings Samantha jerking us around is what it's called this is a waste of everybody's time a private investigator hired by her uncle figured that out and was like yeah which also maybe that aunt I don't know if it's the same the aunt to that uncle you know but like maybe that aunt did initially believe it and then they were like um no we did some digging she's like okay bye thank you Anna nice to see you niece that can't even talk to me because you don't speak Russian Maybe that's why she moved to the United States. It's a little sad. She seemed to have an okay life overall, though. I mean, I feel like this con kind of worked out for her. It kind of did. Clearly not to the extent she wanted it to. But who's to say that her life would have been much worse or better if she continued living under her own identity, right? It didn't seem to be going too well.
So, you know, again. This is a lot like the Billy the Kid thing. Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately. Unfortunately. Did either of you watch American Horror Story Apocalypse? Yes. Where they make one of the witches go back and try to save Anastasia. It's the most random thing. Yeah, it was. I kind of remember that part of the storyline. Because it has nothing to do.
thing and it makes no sense. It's supposed to be like some butterfly effect shit. Yeah. It's like to prove she has this power. Go back in time and save Anastasia. Yeah. And I feel like even the character in the show is like, why? Why? What does that have to do with anything? Did they have friends who died? Yeah. Couldn't I do something way less random? Yeah. Like this episode, like it makes me a little sad, but I think overall it was pretty harmless also. I know she conned a bunch of people, but like she was conning them out of their life savings or anything like that. I don't need a spare. I'm not worried about it. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's fine.
But it's not nearly as sad as the rest of the episode. Yeah, woof, okay. I've got a very strange lost love to talk about. Yeah, this is the weirdest Oliver Twist story I've ever fucking seen in my life. This sounds entirely, like, the last, the Anastasia thing is kind of all made up, but this also sounds made up. So this is going back to December 1948 in Aniwa, Illinois. It was not a good time for Frank and Hildicron.
uh they were poor family they lived with their seven children in a small farmhouse the house had no plumbing and heating and we see a reenactment of all seven children sleeping together in one bed to keep warm which also is a vision of hell i mean it's pretty cute because they're kids but oh my god no those child actors were adorable and i tried really hard to focus on that so i didn't just cry so you didn't go one of those kids is definitely kicking you at all times during the night like there's no way out of it okay so this story really starts when the authorities come to evict them because landlords are terrible people and this is also happening in like december before christmas Gotta say. Yeah, they learned nothing from A Muppet Christmas Carol, which had not come out yet. So Frank was like a regular Christmas Carol with a round film. Oh, no. Did you know that the person that inspired Scrooge is like a relative of actor Carrie Ewell's? I know, I did not. Oh, weird. Okay. So, but the officers felt really bad throwing this family out into the cold. So they did the most logical thing, which was taking them to the jail. Robert Stack says that in the spirit of the season, they allowed them to go live at the jail.
that's like a good solution to this problem. Oh, we can jail you. You know that thing that's a punishment? We could do that. And they really did jail them. It wasn't like they let them stay in the officer's lounge or something. They wouldn't let the mom and dad see each other or leave. That's weird. Yeah, there's like no real explanation for that. I think that they honestly did want to punish the parents. So the mom is not allowed to leave the jail cell and the dad is not allowed to enter the jail. But the kids, who I guess they see as like innocent of this situation, are allowed to like roam freely. So they're just wandering around the fucking jail. Adorably, but still, yeah. They're just like talking to prisoners and like playing with jail cells. And we hear from Raymond, who was eight years old at this time, and he was like having a blast because.
He doesn't really know better. I used to have fun in the lumber yards my dad would drag me to as a child. Kids will have fun no better where they are because they're children. I used to go to my friend's house and literally play in a pile of coal. What? Yes. Yes. Yes. That's London in the eighties for you. There was just a pile. London detail that checks out now. I have no further questions. There was just a pile of coal at the courtyard of her housing complex. They still use coal for heat. And we would literally go fucking play in that. Yeah. Like, like, yeah, like Oliver Twist. We thought that was a great time. That pile of coal also probably had a weird name. Like the Jimmy Downs or something. No doubt. No doubt it did.
Yeah, in London. No further questions. No further questions. And I was saying blimey the entire time. That's what you need to know. So, yeah, the children are allowed to wander around the jail. Raymond thought that was just a good time. However, we also hear from Marie, who was only four, but she remembers her mom washing her in a tub in the jail cell. Oh, God, I hated that part. And she's super, she's super uncomfortable because she's like naked being bathed and police officers are just like wandering by being like, oh, hey. And she has like enough, I don't know, shame, whatever you call that. And she's like, this is not right. I don't want, I don't want a strange man watching me. Like I'm on display.
No, like, I felt super bad for her, but, like, I was naked from, like, ages zero to, like, ten when my mom was like, you must put on clothes. I was the opposite. I was the opposite of that child. I was very prim. Except for the Cole playing, I guess. I don't know. I feel like, like, a weird that, like, a four-year-old has that much sense of, like, body shame. That also makes me really sad. But I also understand that, like, yeah, that's a shitty situation. Yeah, I mean, it's not really police dudes, though. I mean, she's, like, staring at her babe, and she's like, uh, this is, like, I'm old enough to know this is not right. I don't know. Yeah.
She didn't want to take a bath again because she said she was afraid that that guy was going to walk by again. And that's just so sad. Dad vibes. Dad vibes. That's a four-year-old being like, hey, cab. But, um. The other thing is that she doesn't have a choice. Like, your mom just bathes you when she bathes you. So you don't have a choice of, like, you're powerless to, like, who's going to walk by and see me? I have no privacy. I don't know. Who is the police officer that thought this was, like, a good solution to this problem? And, like, why did he want these children just, like, running around?
Although so your point about them like wanting to still punish these parents on a weird like moralistic level checks out because a little bit later sorry for jumping ahead but they mentioned that their parents were banished from the state. yeah i had questions but i'm like is that one of the mean foster parents said i don't know if that's my parents and then they're like they're banished i'm like okay is that like scar yeah if people fail to pay their rent you're banished from illinois that doesn't make it like how many people would be banished that doesn't make any sense currently illinois would have like a zero population yeah fun fact about illinois no one lives there anymore That's weird. So this family situation ended up profiled in the local newspaper. And so that has the only known family portrait of them is them all in this jail cell. And the dad's not there because he's not allowed to enter. Like 90 pounds. It was like, yeah, yeah, it's, it's pretty great. And all the kids are just looking at the camera like, what? Okay. So after seeing this article, a social worker arranged for the girls to spend Christmas with foster families. Yeah, you probably have an idea where this is going. So the children didn't want to go, but because they were not.
Yeah, they had a bad feeling about it, and I don't think they had ever really been away from their mother. Yeah, especially with the four-year-olds. Like, some of them are really little. Yeah, but this ends up being the last time that she sees her children because after they're put with these foster families, guess what? They never go back. And it's unknown if her mother ended up giving up custody or if they were essentially stolen. I mean, they point out it's very possible that Hilda couldn't read. So if she was given something to sign...
would she have known what it says who knows right like yeah i had some questions about just like so you can either look at it one of two equally sad in my opinion ways either there's a good chance she was illiterate or like a very low reading comprehension considering how old the time and how poor this family was or maybe she did know what it was but felt either coerced or just like this was a no-win situation and maybe at least the foster families would be better than living in a jail cell yeah i mean what is the long-term solution here like They can't go on living in this jail cell forever. Her and seven children. You're late on jail rent now. I guess the dad isn't in the jail, like in theory, so he can work maybe, but I'm not sure where he's living. So that's not a very good plan.
I had questions about the dad. Are they just punishing them? Or is it maybe a sex thing? I think they held him responsible for not paying up. So he's not included in the charity. But I think also they wouldn't have wanted them to have sex in the jail. Or possibly make more children in the jail. But I think it's more just like they're punishing them for being poor.
There's nothing good in that whole segment. It's so strange. So by Christmas, Hilda and her male children were still at the jail. The girls had all been taken to foster care. So that's weird. Raymond remembers this because when they get their, you know, jail dinner on the tray, like slid in through the jail bars, it has a candy bar. So he knew it was Christmas and he was super excited because he hadn't had a candy bar in years. Forever. He said, yeah. Open the door. They're not actually imprisoned. You can't trust that Raymond. He's eight and he's, he's shifty and crafty.
He will shiv you so fast. He will adorably ask if he can pull the lever to open the gate. Yeah, these children seem, at least to reenact my children, super well behaved considering they're just left to run around to jail to their heart's content. There's like seven of them or something. Yeah, that's me. I also wrote God bless birth control in my notes.
For real. By the end of the month, the boys were also placed in foster homes. How that was arranged is not clear. The fate of Frank and Hilda is also a mystery. So Marie tells a story Samantha was referring to that her foster parents said that she couldn't see her parents because they'd been banished from Illinois. I don't think that's true. The legal protocol for banishment from the state of Illinois. Not even the town. It's not like they got run out of town and weren't welcome there. It's like, no, you can only go to the border with Indiana and then you have to stop.
eventually marie was able to track down raymond in a nearby town so they get a cute oh i forgot this part it's like yeah so the sisters are in different foster homes they like bump into each other sometimes because they're not living that far apart but the families like keep them apart it's so mean i have the most animosity against those that like that mom because i think this is from a very you know I don't think people approach it this way anymore. But I think like back in the day when you adopted children, you just pretended like you hadn't adopted them. You found them in a cabbage patch or you like miraculously conceived them and they were somehow your biological children. Yeah. And that was supposed to make the children feel like wanted and whatever, but it literally means that she's like sees her sister and can't go talk to her. Yeah. That part seemed extra. This is awful. So, but yeah, so Maria does track down Raymond. They're the first siblings to find each other. So we get a cute reenactment of their reunion.
And together they wanted to find the rest of their family. They did find one sister Carol in 93 before the segment aired. So after the airing. One that she found before. I think. I think so. I think they've kind of like a better idea of where Carol was. Right. Yeah. She was like somewhere nearby. Fortunately, after airing on Unsolved Mysteries, two more sisters and three brothers were located. And then we got a reunion as an update. That was really cute. And my fashion note is that Betty Jane, who one of the siblings is wearing rhinestone B, like a letter B earring. And it's just so chic. It's fashion.
going on in that reunion there's some real real fashion uh the only important note from unsolved mysteries was that if you had done the math you would have noticed that one sibling was still missing however she was since located uh and then the sad update is that marie passed away in 2015 yeah but um they got that reunion at least that was really sweet it is really sweet and they clearly you know wanted to find each other and just didn't really have a way of connecting them because there's like essentially no paperwork for this right they were just like taken out of the jail and And I think, like, all of these lost loves that are, like, adoption-related specifically are always like, nope, you're not allowed to know about this, or just, like, will straight up lie to you about this. Or that one where all the paperwork was in the back of this pharmacy, and it was like, yeah, you could go dig through that. So they did find out that Hilda had passed away in 77. I'm not sure if they ever found out exactly what happened to Frank.
But I'm glad that the siblings got reunited. The situation is super shitty. I refuse to believe this was the best solution to this problem. Yeah, seems like you could have maybe just given them money or let them live there still. I can't imagine there were a bunch of tenants just lined up to live in a farmhouse. Let them fucking stay there, at least. I mean, I don't even think that's the best solution because they had to sleep in the same bed because they were so cold. But it's better than living in the jail. The voiceover of, they took pity on them. You evicted them. Yeah. It was real rough.
Robert Stack wants us to be like, man, those boys in blue, they really did a good job blocking up that mom and her children that hadn't committed any crimes. Robert Stack thinks Elliot Ness is a great guy. Well, he has to because without Elliot Ness, he wouldn't have bought all those rocks. That's fair. That's fair. He did do that good deed for Robert Stack. Elliot Ness, I don't know if he did any good deed except his goodest deed, which was being a money trade for Robert Stack. Yeah. It's not great. It's not great.
Yeah, I think Robert Stack and I have some different opinions on law enforcement. Oh, you don't say. Well, the thing is, I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but Robert Stack has passed on. I know, in our Ouija session, we're going to have to skirt around that issue. I just don't know that it's really going to come up. It's going to talk to your uncle at Thanksgiving. Like, you just try to avoid it, you know? Yeah, yeah. Okay, we've got one more segment. This one is super quick and super sad. It's so sad. Buckle up, because this is going to give you whiplash. This is a Wanted. We are looking for Gerald Gervasoni.
27-year-old Jerry Gervasoni of New Jersey is wanted for strangling his 22-year-old girlfriend, Pauline, also known as Paula Pasiak. On July 9th, 1986, Paula and Jerry went on vacation together and decided to stay at her mother Barbara's house in the Lakeside Resort town of Kissimmee, Florida. During the visit, Paula and Jerry slept in Barbara's bedroom while Barbara slept on the couch, which is a really nice thing of this mom's life. She's like, no, no, you take my daughter and clearly my daughter's sleazy boyfriend, sleep in my bed. I'll have sex in my bed, children, while I hurt my back on the couch. Yeah.
Anyway, she seemed like a nice mom, which makes the ensuing events even worse. During the visit, Paula and Jerry, oh, I already said that. So on Saturday, July 13th, the couple told Barbara that they would be leaving the next morning to visit some of Jerry's relatives in Miami. The next day, when Barbara didn't see them, she assumed that they had left. But several days later, she started to notice a strong odor in her house. This is honestly one of the worst things I've seen. I mean, this reenactment is not gruesome. Just the idea of it is so horrible. It's so sad. It's horror movie level. Yeah.
A horror movie. You would think it was too cheesy. You'd be like, that would never happen. That's too overwhelming. Yeah, it's true. It is true. It's really true. So she searched through the house trying to identify where the smell was coming from, eventually deciding to look in her bedroom. She peeked underneath the bed and was shocked and horrified to find her daughter's corpse wrapped in a bamboo curtain underneath her bed, which presumably she'd been sleeping in since her daughter left. I hate it so much. So sad and so awful. I want to die. That's horrible.
Okay, authorities later heard from a friend of Gervasoni's, so he became the immediate suspect, obviously. Could a guiltier man be alive? I mean. So authorities later heard from a friend of Gervasoni's who said that he had picked up Gervasoni at the Newark airport in New Jersey three days after he and Paula had supposedly left. The friend said that Gervasoni had confessed to accidentally breaking Paula's neck in a struggle because she caught him stealing her mother's paycheck. He's the worst! And the way he confessed, it was like, because his friend was like, why are you in such a rush to get out of town? And he's like, we'll just say that I accidentally killed someone.
He was so casual about it. I'm like, I don't know what you think is, like, a normal friend thing to share, but that's not it, buddy. Yeah, he was immediately like, ha ha, I'm kidding, I didn't actually kill someone, except I did. I don't know. He's a dirtbag. This is not a, like, goodbye Earl situation, either. Like, it's like an empathetic murder. No, this is not a goodbye Earl situation.
So the same friend soon learned that Paula was actually deceased and he immediately contacted the authorities. By the time an arrest warrant was issued for Jervasoni, however, he had vanished. And although seven years have passed, Barbara still hopes to get him caught. So this case was also profiled in America's Most Wanted, but we're going to give the credit to Unsolved Mysteries because he was captured. Jervasoni was found near Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada on October 21st, 1993. He was using the alias, I don't know if I can pronounce this, Gordon McKeiter. I don't know. He had previously lived in an apartment and his former landlord watched the broadcast. His former landlord, I just want to point out, was named...
Shoot, what was his name? Chris Hansen! Chris Hansen! For some reason, that left my brain. I was watching this episode, literally my only note, I'm reading off the wiki because I couldn't take it, my only note I wrote down was that the landlord that turned him in was named Chris Hansen. No, no, no, no was my only note in this segment. Oh, yeah, that's acceptable. So Chris Hansen turned him in, not that Chris Hansen, but another hero, Chris Hansen. His fingerprints confirmed his identity in 1960, no, in 1996, Germasoni was extradited to Florida. He stuck with his fake persona, too. He was like, no, I'm Gordon.
Yeah, no one got it. In May of 1997, he was found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. However, in 2000, his sentence was reduced to 17 years. So he was paroled in 2003, and he returned to New Jersey, where he was sentenced to three years in prison for a parole violation. He was released again in 2006, moved to Washington, and died in May 2013. Good job. He only served six years for that murder. I know. Six years for murdering your girlfriend in cold blood and murdering her body under her mom's head. It's so sad. Horrible. Horrible.
I hope he stubbed his toe every day of his life. I hope a lot worse. I mean, yeah. Also, I feel bad. I'm glad it's that friend that he just like overshared to, you know, turned him in. But like, I hope that friend, you know, recovered from that because that would be awful. If I just came to your house and was like, so are it? Yeah, I got to get out of town. And you're like, Liz, why do you need to get out of town? And you're like, because I accidentally killed Mac. I mean, I didn't. I didn't do that. Isn't that a funny joke that I told that I brutally murdered someone?
Domestic violence is a joking matter, as we all know. Always. Very funny. Just a well of humorous content there. Ugh. Such a piece of shit. So the problem with this episode is you sit through all this Anastasia stuff that goes on too long, you get this really weird lost love that is kind of sad, and then it's just like, you thought that was sad? You're fucking sadder. Yeah. That poor mom, she's just like, Christ, okay, I wrote this down because I was like, I really, she just at one point goes, I've become a very angry and very hateful person. I was like, of course you have. That's weird, hun.
What a very honest moment to just be like this. The worst possible thing happened. And now I hate everybody. And I was like, I feel that. Yeah. She's like mourning who she used to be. Yeah. Yeah. Like this. And I am mad about that as well, which is fucking fair. Yeah. I used to live in a world where I didn't think I might find a corpse under my bed of my daughter. Yeah. It's awful. Okay. We have to write this though. Okay. So we've got our categories. We've got mysteriousness.
It's not very mysterious. Thumbs down. Low on the mysterious scale. Thumbs down. How old was that woman, actually? Yeah, Anna Anderson thinks she's real mysterious, but I'm not buying it. Thumbs down. Thumbs down. Our next category is reenactments. Kind of all over the place. Those kids were really cute. They were. There were a lot of reenactments. The Anastasia ones, I feel like they both put in a lot of effort and not a lot of effort. Some were directed by different people. It is like kind of hodgepodge. I actually am kind of going to go thumbs down because of that, I think.
Yeah, I agree. What about fashion? It seems like it was similarly all over the place. I would say sideways. Yeah, at least we got a different era than we usually get, but then some of the costumes. You know what has very accurate costumes? Muppet Christmas Carol. That's the standard. They borrowed those costumes from a Muppet museum. Zero to Muppet Christmas Carol.
I would love that. Zero every time. Well, it's no Muppet Christmas girl. That's Liz again this week. Oh, what else do we have to write? Robert Stack? Okay, he got a little grandiose in this episode. Dramatic. I kind of like pulling down to earth. He's like thinking himself to be an honorary American Romanoff and acting like putting people in jail at Christmas is good. It's like an honorary Romanoff. Who would probably think. Yeah, no. Thumbs down, Robert Stack. Ground yourself.
He's a little big for his britches. Well, the only thing we have left to do besides recommendations is to rate this on our Robert Stacks scale. It's not zero to Muppet Christmas Carol. It's zero to five Robert Stacks. I don't know. I didn't really like this episode. I didn't really like it. I'm landing on a two. I'm not a big fan, gotta say. It was all sad and long, which is the worst combination in front of all this series. Sad and boring. Arden, how would you rate the cartoon, Anastasia? Okay, I do have a lot of thoughts on that.
Also very pro-Romanov cartoon. There's a whole song about how great the Tsar was. Like, all the peasants are like, oh, we miss being serfs. It was great. We love not eating. It's our favorite thing. Yeah, and, like, I'm not saying it was always excellent, you know, post-Tsar, but I don't think they were singing in the streets about how much they missed that royal family. It doesn't close up as well as it did as a child. I loved that movie as a kid, and my mom hated it, and now I kind of understand why, gotta say. It has a couple really good songs, though.
I feel like there's not enough cartoon Rasputin in our lives. That's very true. I feel like the more Rasputin content, the better. I would give the cartoon Anastasia movie 3.5 out of 5 Robert Stacks. I think that's fair.
Should I do a recommendation now? I think you probably should. I kind of had a scramble this week, even though we were off. I really didn't have a recommendation. But then I thought maybe you needed something to spend your stimulus money on. So I'm recommending the shop Die With Your Boots On, which is a clothing store in Salem that pretty much just sells black clothing. I mean, what more do you need? I've got a lot of links from Liz. It's true. It's true. It's annoying to me that I'm wearing out clothes, even though I don't go anywhere.
It's like no one even got to enjoy this. And yeah, these leggings are done. So I don't know. I needed more like comfy around the house clothes. And I ordered some, I guess, around Christmas time, maybe right after Christmas. And they just came and I'm very happy with my my black popcorn giant sweater. I've been looking for like the right oversized black cardigan. And now I finally have that. And I got a like tie dyed black sweatshirt and joggers, as we call them now.
Oh man, so comfortable. I got those in my usual size and they're like Billie Eilish baggy, but you know what? I'm lying around the house and I appreciate garments that I can walk a dog in and sleep in. That's something I'm really looking for in clothes right now. So these are perfect. Nice. But it's just a little clothing store in Salem and I suppose my style of dress could be described as Salem tourist. So it works for me. There you go. Check it out. And I was very happy with my purchases. So that is my recommendation if you have stimulus money burning a hole in your pocket and somehow need comfortable pants. Very nice.
Well, I also have something to recommend that you could spend. You would have to, I think, spend by a lot to spend your whole stimulus check. But if you're going to go that way, I'm not going to judge you. I'm recommending something potentially random, but it's a company that sells spices. Oh, OK. This is a company that they actually do have two retail stores in Minnesota, but I was previously on. They're previously unknown to me. I found them through a recommendation that I saw from a YouTuber I watch. And it's Penzi's Spices. Oh, yeah. Love them.
I'm obsessed, but I specifically wanted to recommend them because I discovered through that recommendation, two of their spice blends. So they sell regular spices, all kinds of spices. And I haven't gotten any, I placed a big order right after Christmas. I'm waiting for an order right now. It's supposed to come tomorrow. I appreciate that you can buy all their stuff online too, because I'm not really going to go to a store, certainly not for spices. That seems very unnecessary, but their online website is great. And you can also get a lot of samples.
But I specifically, and maybe, Arden, maybe you use these blends. You can tell me if you agree with my recommendation. I'm recommending the Sunny Paris. Classic. Which is amazing. So I'm not an egg person. Like, I don't really eat eggs for breakfast or any time. I mean, I don't hate them, but I'm not really that into eggs. Except since I discovered this spice blend, I...
I love eggs now. I want to eat them all the time because it's so delicious. It's like chives and onions. I don't know. I love it on salmon. Amazing. And the other one I want to recommend is their Italian herb blend, which is, I've never had a strong opinion about Italian seasoning. It's whatever. It's been whatever to me. But since I discovered theirs, I put this shit on everything and it makes everything I cook so much. I'm not a good cook. Travis is normally the cook in our family. I've started doing more cooking since quarantine. I'm enjoying it a little bit more, but I'm not good at it. Except when I put this on shit, it makes it delicious.
So, and then I also, I placed a big order for them and I wanted to make it count. So I bought like some of their hot chocolate. That was delicious. I bought some of their taco seasoning. That was super good. So cinnamon, they have excellent cinnamon. No, so we have so much cinnamon in this house. I should buy some and I was tempted to get some of their pumpkin pie spice, but I also have a lot of that. I have regular cinnamon and special cinnamon and they're my special cinnamon. You're going to be like, Oh, I have cinnamon. Then you're going to be like, Oh my God, I might've been wrong. I don't know what this other shit is. Cause this is cinnamon.
That's going to be fun. Okay. I'm definitely going to place another order. Since I haven't done a lot of cooking in my life, really this year is the first year. I've cooked, obviously, but it's mainly by the beans to an end. Like, I got to eat, so I got to cook. But I've never really enjoyed it until I've been forced to be at home all the time and needed something to do, so I might as well make some recipes. So I've never been one that's been like, you know, what's the latest in spices? But I feel like I'm getting there. And I've got to say, I really...
I'm just picturing someone like waking up in the morning, picking up their phone and being like, what's Siri? What's the latest in spices? Is that not what you do? It might be what I do now. Although I feel like I'm going to stick with that for a little while because I'm very happy with everything I've ordered. They're like a, like, you know, no ethical consumption under capitalism and all that. But like for a company, they're pretty good too. They do a lot of dirty work. They have the cutest packaging. Which I love from a spice company. It's just random. I love it.
Yeah, they really hate Trump. They package everything with a ton of bay leaves. So then you have those around. That's handy. Yeah, no, it's great. They do curbside pickup now at their stores. See, when I discovered that they had stores around here, like Liz, I was dying to go browse. That was one of my destinations post-COVID. We were vaccinated.
Oh, I didn't know they were based in Wisconsin. They have a store in Minneapolis and they have a store in St. Paul. Yep. The Minneapolis one is right, like, two doors down from my hairstylist, which I'm sad about now. It's a nice, like, brown spices, get hair done. Oh, that sounds really nice. Excellent. Recommend. You want to do post-COVID. As soon as I get that vaccine, all you can eat sushi, I'm going to go buy a bunch of cinnamon from Penzi. I'm going to get a blowout to go buy cinnamon. I didn't think that was going that way, but I will get my hair done to do anything. Like, just leaving the house will be such an event. That's what we decided. We're going to, like, get ready for prom.
like all the time every everyday activity it's just a meet up for brunch i can't wait arden did you have a recommendation you wanted to share with us i do actually um so and you guys actually already know this one so sort of i know there's been a lot of jokes about like oh people who bought 2020 planners you know i'm really regretting that now i did i did a 2020 planner the other day i pulled out my purse i was gonna switch purses and my 2020 planner was in it completely empty I still use mine. I'm very much a physical planner person just because actually writing things down helps me remember things. And if nothing else, I use it as a secondary package tracker so I can keep track of all my insane quarantine purchases to try to keep my serotonin afloat. That makes sense to me. I'm trying to manifest a better 2021.
with a new planner i got the coloring book of shadows planner for a magical 2021 uh which i i think liz might also be getting i actually got it after you recommended it i like it i'm really enjoying it it's part coloring book and it has some like witchy stuff but it's also a practical planner with like enough space to actually write stuff down because i think sometimes the really like ornate planners aren't yeah practical but this is sort of in vain with the pop witch planner you recommended a few years back which they don't seem to make anymore no the pop i got the pop which planner last year and then sadly didn't end up using my planner and she said that that was going to be the last year i'm sure it takes a lot of time to make and she wanted to like make other stuff um but i did get this planner because even though i hadn't been writing everything down i do need to like remember due dates and shit i was like all right i should probably actually put that in a planner and just trying to remember everything and like every week has a different like little coloring sheet It's really well designed. Yeah. A little brownie with like a magic spoon and she's like stirring some like tea and it's adorable. There's like places for your notes. There's things to color. There's like a awesome witchy information at the beginning and a place to like. Throughout like every season and every month has like a start that has like more information and all of like major like witch holidays have their own page too. And it's really cute. Also, I'm a terrible witch who's really bad at like remembering that's like, oh, it's the equinox today.
Whoops. So I think that's going to be helpful for me personally to be maybe a better witch in 2021. But I think, you know, if you can use a little brightness and a physical package planner and tracker for some reason, I think it's a good one. It was pretty inexpensive for the paperback, too. I sprung for the spiral bound. There's also a hardcover. I couldn't find a spiral. I think it was sold out. I was sad about that, but oh well. I didn't. I got softcover and I kind of regret it.
Well, you know, it's only got to make it through the year. It doesn't have to last. There's a part at the beginning where you can like do some sort of fortune telling for each month of the upcoming year. And I did like a year in advance tarot reading for the, you know, like new year. And so we'll see five listeners. We can see what happens. But according to my reading, basically nothing happened until September. And then September was the world card.
I don't know what's happening. Is that me getting the vaccine and I actually going to leave my house? I don't know. But everything was like, you know, like your home, your stable, like your creative energy is blocked. It was like very like nothing happens, nothing happens. And then it gets to September. So we'll see.
That doesn't sound bad, at least. No, it doesn't sound bad. But I was like, I hope it's not like somehow it's worse. Right. Yeah. A little positive. We're just traumatized now. And we're like, oh, something's happening. It must be worse. It must be bad. The meth gators are back with the murder hornets in their mouths. The meth gators got snow coats in their Minnesota. That is my nightmare. It's a meth gator that's going to like bring up embarrassing things you did as a child. Checks out. Oh, God. No, leave me alone. Okay.
So you should rate us five stars. You should subscribe to this podcast. You should, I don't know, sign up for a Patreon. You can hear us talk about the Unsolved Mysteries reboot and maybe get some coloring sheets. You should send them snacks.
You should send us snacks. We do have an Amazon wish list, so you can check it out. We don't plug that very often, but if there's something on there that you want to send to us, we wouldn't turn it down. Pro tip, get a little wine drunk, start going through it, decide they really deserve all of it, get a little bit drunk about it, send a snack, don't send a card, so they're really confused. Yes, it may have happened. You can find all our contact stuff at perhapsitsyou.com. If you have a spooky story of something that happened to you, you could email us at perhapsitsyoupodcast at gmail.com. Or if you've had a psychic dream, I would really love some more psychic dream stories.
And hopefully that one about me bowling and getting COVID is not real. I hope that was not a psychic dream. That was a stress dream, not a psychic dream. Mom, you were trying to make me bowl. I mean, I wouldn't go bowling if there wasn't a pandemic. I don't think we're ever going to do that. You're going to go put on someone else's shoes. I mean, it's not my first choice. I don't think that's how you get COVID, but also gross. I'm not going to chance it. All right. I'm definitely not. I'm not going tomorrow. Don't worry. I'm not risking death to go bowling, an activity I'm not even very interested in. It's not even roller skating. No, thanks.
I think that's it, everybody, right? Was that everything? Oh, Arden, did you want to say where people could find you? Oh, yeah. I'm at MPLS underscore mermaid on Instagram. If you want to, like, come see me, a ghost slut and a human slut on there, check it out. You want to see an Instagram page that's thousands of times more popular than ours? Go to that one. Yes. Thanks, everybody.