okay we're just gonna do this now is it recording it's recording all right hello hello everyone it's perhaps it's you hopefully hopefully it is it's supposed to be uh perhaps it's you oh my god Just take me out back. That seems a little extreme. This is supposed to be an Unsolved Mysteries rewatch podcast, but we have a special episode today. Yep. And also I'm slowly losing the plot. So it's slowly. Haha, that was a joke. I'm very quickly. We've had some technical issues. We're recording in person. It's exciting. I can see Liz's face as I'm talking. She can see the despair. She can see any flicker of hope dash from my eyes. Yeah, we've.
When we first started recording remotely, we didn't know what we were doing. And now I feel like we don't know what we're doing recording in person. Yeah. I'm blaming Mac for changing our setup, even though we didn't know what we were doing. Even though he actually fixed it. Even though he actually fixed it. I don't understand what this thing does. I don't understand why nothing lights up on the board anymore. I don't even know what that thing is. It's a little box. Yeah. With some knobs on the top. Probably stealing our souls. I don't know what it's doing. I managed to somehow bend the connector to plug in my computer and charge it. For that, again, not taking responsibility. I blame Lenny because the other day he jumped on my computer while I was using it.
Well, anyway, if we so much as bump this computer, this whole thing might just go off the rails. Yeah, then you're just not getting an episode, I think. The episode will just be a recording of my sobs. People will love that. You can listen to it as you fall asleep. I'll cry you to sleep for you. How about that? This is supposed to be a super fun episode. This is our listener stories episode. Yeah, finally finishing season six. Yes. Not quite a year later. Almost a year later. Season six.
comes into you know you know like the absolute last person running a marathon where that like cart is behind them to like pick up the flags and stuff yeah we're that person that is how this feels like technically we're gonna finish but it's almost like not an accomplishment anymore because yeah like they're trying to open up the roads they're like oh my god hurry up we need buses to come through here that is a little bit how this feels our permit only goes till 2 p.m like move it along really happy to see season six go i gotta say i don't know what difference it makes we're just gonna go right on into season seven but i do want to just like check that off the list like done We did season six. Finished. Yeah. We do have an exciting... I wanted to record in person today so we could actually do snack hour for once. I have a variety of snacks in front of me. You may have listened to the episode where we had Front of the Pod Arden on and we ate some chocolates from our favorite holy site, Lourdes in France.
Do any other podcasts have favorite holy sites? I don't think so. Yeah, they're slacking. So I brought them. We tried one kind. I brought all three out for Samantha to try. And we actually translated what the different things mean. Yeah. So the first one I opened up, I think just has everything in it. It's the variety pack. These are all little stones. They really do look like rocks. And some of them are as hard as rocks and might break your teeth as if you were chewing on a rock. I think the nougat ones are really very hard. And the problem with the variety pack is you don't know what you're getting when you pull them out. So you're either getting a nougat, a chocolate, something that just says fruits. Not sure. Or I think...
Almond is that word. So they're good. I told Liz that I ate approximately six of these while she was trying to get us set up here. And they all tasted different. So there's quite a variety in this one. And then these are just chocolate. Yeah. Those are the ones I think I have with Argon. Standard. And then these are a whole bag of nougats, which we haven't opened. Those are huge and also are going to break all of our teeth. Do you want a few of the variety? Just the mystery? I do like how much they look like rocks. They really do look like rocks. Very convincing. I am not aware. I ordered these thinking they were also made with the Lord's Miracle Water, like the mints.
I don't actually see any evidence of that on the packaging. No, I don't think so. Oh, I think these just might be something they sell there you can get as a souvenir. You probably hear Liz breaking her teeth on a lured rock right now. Why did I pick the biggest one to eat? I like the variety pack, I gotta say. Yeah, they are good. There's something extremely French about them. I don't know what that means exactly. You get like a little picture of St. Bernadette with a bunch of sheep on them.
Also, when we were eating the mints, there was a word printed on the mint and we didn't know what it was. And I looked that up and that's actually the manufacturer of those mints. Oh, okay. It's not something really cool and special. It's not something holy. No. Let me finish up this rock here. I'm gonna eat a rock. Oh. I got a nougat. If you're doing some sort of cake with like an outdoor scene, man oh man, you need these rocks. These would be perfect. People will think you put real rocks on the cake.
As one does. Okay, other things, because we haven't had snack time in a while, is that I got us packed with the Shriekers Skittles. This was a Halloween item, and it says, some are so sour they will make you shriek. I don't know. Beware. Dare if you try. I think this is an improvement concept over the Rotten Zombie Skittle from last year.
Flavors include citrus cream, shocking lime, rattled raspberry, spine-tingling tangerine. Which one do you think is the most sour? Ghoulish green apple. I don't know, shocking lime? Shocking lime. So I love sour candies. I don't think you do. I'm fine with them. You seek them out in a way I don't. I am the type of person that will seek out warheads because I love sour candy that much. The problem with sour candy is it's never that sour. So this will be interesting and see if this is actually super sour. I'm going to eat one. I think this is a lime. I just ate a lime. I was not that impressed with the sourness, actually.
that just tastes like a normal skittle well it says some are so sour you shriek oh so you're surprised yeah so we got to keep eating out the one wasn't sour at all oh did you get a sour one no i just put a bunch in my mouth none of those seem not sour okay one was kind of sour I think they're just randomly somewhere sour-er. Sorry. But it's not, it's not streaking. I mean, they're good, but. I'm not streaking. No. Sour Skittles, like the actual sour Skittles. If you eat too many of those, it like burns your tongue. Oh my God, that's not bad. It's not pleasant. And they're not that sour. It's just like something about that dust that coats the Skittle. It's like irritating to your tongue if you like actually eat the whole little package. Well, those weren't sour, but they were good. Yeah. I mean, I kind of find candy without any chocolate to be a waste of my time, but they're fine. Oh, that's blasphemous. The look, the scathing look, Samantha just gave me across the table.
You know, look, I'm a bitch who knows what she likes. The other last, don't worry, snack time haters, this is the last one. You're ready to hear me chill. Cookies and scream M&Ms. Chocolate and white chocolate and white chocolate candies. Here we see the red M&M literally screaming while holding some non-name Oreos. I'm interested in cookies and cream M&Ms. I got these a little while ago at Walgreens. You have to buy this sort of thing way before Halloween because they will clear that shit out for Christmas stuff. We're washing it down with some blueberry lemonade polar water. Samantha was very nice to bring over.
Okay, here you go. Try our cookies and scream now. I like it. I like how novelty M&Ms are bigger. Get that filling in there. Okay. Oh, I don't like the aftertaste. Oh, yeah. It's like artificial. It's very chemically aftertaste. At first, it kind of tastes like frosting, which I was not against. Not really like a cookie, but like frosting. I think I can eat any more of those. It's really gross. But... That aftertaste is disgusting. It almost has a like burnt coffee aftertaste, just a tiny bit. It does taste burnt. Like burnt, right? But not an eye. Okay.
The other day, Samantha and I were with some friends roasting some marshmallows. And I don't know how you like your marshmallow, but I personally like a blackened, crisp. I want that sugar to really caramelize on there, right? So I was just letting my marshmallow fucking bread. It was on fire. It was great. And I'm assuming that she's not listening, but someone that was there insulted my taste buds.
Liz was told that she has broken taste buds? Either they were broken or bad. Bad taste buds. That was the phrasing. This was a week ago. This is bringing it up. Okay. Yeah. Samantha's heard me complain about this more than one. I personally like my marshmallow just perfectly toasted brown. So you're a patient.
I almost want to say caring sort. I'm a type A in a way that can sit there and carefully toast the marshmallow. Where my solution to things a lot of times is to just burn it down. Right? So I think it really does reflect our different personalities. So the reason that I brought up this dispergement of my character is that I do sometimes like the taste of something that is burnt. However, these cookies and cream M&Ms are bad. So disgusting.
Okay, so the aftertaste starts out like chemicals. Yeah. And it ends like burnt coffee. You're right. Or burnt something. It's not good though. I'm going to set these three aside. I cannot eat them. It almost tastes like, I would say, and not super strongly, like it's more chemically, but almost like old. You know how Starbucks just burns their coffee? It kind of tastes like day old Starbucks. Yeah. It's like watered down. I'm going to eat a few Skittles to get this taste out of my mouth. I don't recommend the cookies and scream M&Ms, but you're like, Liz, we can't even get those anymore. Well, you know what? I don't. Good. Yeah, you're not missing out. You're welcome. Yeah. These Skittles that I was less excited about, but knew Samantha needed.
Did I also get a pack from Mac? I did. I got a sour one. It's not that sour, but it is a little sour. It's good. I feel like I haven't truly enjoyed a Skittles since like the seventh grade. Yeah. The problem with Skittles, I feel like...
You can only eat a couple and then you get a stomachache. That's just me. I don't know. I would never buy these usually. Yeah, I'm not that into Skittles. In our leftover Halloween candy, we have some Skittles. We also had little packets of M&Ms that both me and Travis initially thought were peanut M&Ms, but we should have been alerted to the fact that they weren't because the package was blue. But they were the size and shape of a peanut M&M. They were caramel M&Ms and they were also disgusting. Oh, really? Yeah, they're just like too chewy and don't taste that much of caramel. And when you're biting into it expecting a peanut M&M and you get that instead, that's very disappointing. We both independently had the same reaction to eating those M&Ms.
I feel like peanut M&Ms are like surprisingly delicious. Yes. I think maybe we've already talked about this, but what is your go-to movie candy? Licorice. Twizzlers, I should say. And Reese's Pieces. Reese's Pieces, Sam. Absolutely. If they were for some reason out of Reese's Pieces in a tragic scenario, I would go for Raisinets. But yeah, we always, I would get, so we could get our own candy and then we got one to share. It was always Twizzlers to share and then I would get Reese's Pieces for mine. Wow. That's a nice setup. Yeah. Good job, Samantha's family. Okay, before we get.
Deep into our listener stories. I at first thought maybe we wouldn't have enough listener stories. I was wrong. We have a bunch. But I was looking for some celebrity ghost stories to, you know, pad it out. Googling things like BD Wong ghost story as you do. How did that go? You know how Google recommends other searches to you when you search something? Based on what other people have searched? Yeah. Top recommendation. BD Wong wife.
So shout out to everyone wondering who BD Wong's wife is. Guess what? I got news for you. No one. Not me, sadly. My condolences to women just learning right now there's no hope of marrying BD Wong. I'm sorry. It is sad. We all have to grieve. It's a process we all have to go through. Yeah. BD Wong is married, but he does not have a wife.
Not everyone is straight. Okay, so that was hilarious. I also tried to find if Gordon Ramsay had seen a ghost. And what I got from that was this article from like 10 years ago when he was promoting Hotel Hell talking about being at some hotel that had ghost hunters in it. And he was saying that they must have terrible love lives because he would rather chase his wife around the bedroom than some ghost. And my reaction was kind of, Gordon, not everyone has 10 TV shows in 50 restaurants. Also, those are...
Kind of two different things. I was going to say, most people have time for both. Most people can ghost hunt and bone. They don't have to choose one or the other. He's the one that's packed his schedule so tight that he's like, I can't believe anyone hunts ghosts. I would rather make love to my beautiful wife. I was like, well, yeah, but people don't really have to make that choice. You're the one doing triathlons and opening a new restaurant every day. And having five TV shows, yeah. Yeah, you're the one that's made yourself so busy that that seems impossible to do. That's on you, Gordon. Yeah, ghost hunters, I don't think they're doing it every night. No.
Gordon. That is hilarious that that would be his reaction to ghost hunting, though. I'd rather have sex. Like, okay. You're irrelevant. So we do have two celebrity ghost stories, though. Do you want to go first? Yeah, I'll go first. So I'm... These are kind of in honor of Friend of the Pod Arden, because after I couldn't find celebrities that we had talked about more on the show, I decided to go with Arden's queens. Yep. So the first one we have is about Elvira. And this is coming from...
Den of Geek, everybody's favorite publication. Elvira's real name, Cassandra Peterson. So this is called The Haunting Elvira, Real Life Ghost Stories from the Mistress of the Dark. I mean, I think we all assume that Elvira would have seen a ghost. If I had learned, okay, not surprising that Gordon Ramsey hasn't seen a ghost. Not that surprising that B.D. Wong hasn't seen a ghost. But I would be very shocked to learn. The thing is, maybe B.D. Wong has seen a ghost, but he also produced something called Ghost Stories, and it made it very hard to Google. So if you happen to know where I can find some, you know, was B.D. Wong once on a talk show and he talked about seeing a ghost?
Let me know. BD Wong, are you listening and want to send us your ghost story? That's perhaps podcast at gmail.com. BD Wong's silence on his ghost encounters is deafening is all I'm saying. So these stories about Elvira are about her Briarcliff Manor home in Hollywood Hills. She bought the home in 89 after being Elvira for about a decade. It is a 20 room.
5,600 square foot mansion built in 1910. And she said that strange things started happening the day that she moved in. She heard footsteps on the empty third floor. And she recounts this in her book that came out recently. It's been a bestseller, her memoir. She witnessed an apparition of a woman dressed in a 1930s style nurse uniform. So full body apparition that warned her that she was going to take Peterson's sleeping ex-husband into the pool.
Okay. So murderous nurse ghost. Another time she encountered us the specter of a man in period clothing sitting by the fire. Okay. So this goes on to talk about how she finds out after meeting Mark Hamill that actually he used to live there in the 60s and one of his housemates died there. So perhaps that is one of the ghosts that are there, though I'm doubting it's either of those people. So I don't know.
That is Elvira's story. So, um, she also talks about using a Ouija board as a kid and something happened to their mom through a dental fire. But really, that's not as interesting as a murderous nurse ghost that wants to kill her ex. No. Okay, so my celebrity's ghost story is from none other than Dolly Parton. America's a sweetheart. Absolutely. The title of it, so this is from a publication called Inquisitor, spelled without an E. I think we check it every day. We wake up, we go to Inquisitor, and we see what the latest news is. It's titled Dolly Parton, My Grandma's Ghost Saved Me from a Fatal Airplane Crash.
Yeah, I had to include this because it sounds like something from beyond belief. So Dolly Parton reportedly claimed that the ghost of her grandmother saved her multiple times, once from a fatal plane crash and in another incident from financial disaster. Wow. Well, she really saved us all then because we know Dolly Parton played a key role in getting us all vaxxed. Thank you, Dolly Parton and Dolly Parton's grandma. Yeah. So she reportedly told a friend during a conversation that she was about to board a plane in Salt Lake City, Utah some years ago when she had a sudden vision of her dead grandmother. She saw the ghost of her grandmother standing in a corner and warning her not to catch the plane.
This is what she said, quote, suddenly I saw my grandma's ghost standing in the corner. She kept saying, don't catch the plane, don't catch the plane. So she said that when she recognized the apparition as her grandmother's ghost, she immediately changed her ticket and took another flight. She was shocked to learn later that the plane she avoided flying with crashed, killing all passengers on board. Oh my God. Wow.
In a separate incident, the ghost of Parton's grandmothers warned her not to sign a contract. The ghost, this is ghost plural, so I think it's both her grandmothers, warned her that the contract would eventually cost her millions of dollars. She declined to sign the contracts because of the warning, and it later proved to be true. I'm not really sure how a contract you didn't sign you could find out later. I don't know. There's no more details. I do know that she was once, okay, I'm just going to assume this is what happened. I do know that Elvis once wanted to sing I Think I Would Always Love You, and she was going to sign over the rights to him.
Well, maybe that was it. It doesn't say. And then she decided, no, actually, I'm going to keep it. And then she's, you know, made millions and millions off that song. Wow. Maybe that must be it. Can Dolly Parton's grandparents come advise me on my financial situation? I need some advice. Okay, question. Do you want to hear my mom's ghost story? Yes. Because I asked her for one. I didn't think that she had one because my mom doesn't generally believe in that stuff, but she absolutely did. And this is what it is. It's not that exciting. So my mom told me that the year I was born...
We lived in a house like kind of in the woods. We actually lived in two houses that were kind of set back in the woods. But it was a duplex and they shared the duplex with my aunt and uncle who had also had a baby the same year. And she said that they would always hear weird noises. And there was a running joke between both families that the old man, like they called this ghost the old man, but it was kind of a joke. They didn't like truly believe that the place was haunted. But weird things would happen. Like they had a front sitting area.
On the main level, on my parents' side. And the radio in there would constantly turn itself on. And also, they had a coffee pot that would start brewing by itself without anyone having done anything. And she said that one day, she was at home just with the babies or whatever. She was babysitting my cousin and me.
um, someone came to the door and it was a family who had lived there previously. Like she had, the woman that came to visit had actually grown up in the house and my mom invited them in and were like, we'll come in and you can see what we've done to the place. They kind of fixed it up. And, um, I don't remember how she said the conversation went, but she said that the woman who had lived there previously said that her father, um, they had called him the old man. That was like what they called him. That was like his, everybody called him the old man. And he would sit in that front sitting area and listen to football games on the radio. And he always had a cup of coffee when he was out there. That's creepy. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, I think the way the conversation went, according to my mom, if I'm remembering it correctly, is she was like joking. Like, oh, you know, we joke that the place is haunted or whatever by the old man. And the woman was like, by who? Yeah. It's like my father who lived here for like his whole life. Everybody called him the old man. That's really creepy. Yeah. So that's my mom's ghost story. I was one, so I don't remember it. I can't wait to tell you that sooner. I know. That's what I said. Okay. We have two stories from listener Indrid here. It says not Mothman's husband, unfortunately. So not that Indrid. Okay. Story one. I find a poorly disguised fairy ring. So, okay. First of all, we don't read these stories ahead of time.
So we're in this with you. Yeah, but I've never heard this before. Okay. Poorly disguised fairy ring. There is this walking trail near my house that consists of two parallel paths that cuts through space throughout. One of the paths is totally normal, but the other has really weird vibes and always has tons of mushrooms growing on it. So one day I was walking on the weird path because I foraged mushrooms as a hobby. Went down the nearby hillside. I saw police tape. I live in a pretty low violent crime area, so this is really unusual. There was no people around, so my true crime loving ass climbed down to see if there was anything still there. As I climbed down, something in the air shifted. I can only describe the way things felt down there as a...
Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. I have questions. Did you eventually learn why the police were there? Was it a murder? Was it something nefarious? Was it literally only police tape? Because that could have been a prank. Yeah. Or maybe the mushrooms had committed some sort of crime. Maybe they're poison. Maybe you shouldn't be foraging them. Something about mushrooms. I don't know if it's because we read that horror novel, which I'm not going to give a spoiler about, but it ended very strangely and involved mushrooms. Mushrooms are kind of creepy. Is it because they grow on decaying matter? Is it because they all communicate with one hive mind?
That is creepy, yes. Is it because they're fungus? I don't know. Okay. Story two. I get attacked and then ghosted by an incubus. Rude. Yeah, very rude. So for this story, you need to understand that I have a sleep disorder that's basically the opposite of sleep paralysis. Normally, your brain turns your muscle movement off so you don't act out your dreams. Except my brain doesn't do that. Now I sort of feel like my brain doesn't do that either because I do move around a lot of my sleep anyway. So I flail around a bunch when I dream and I have punched my ex in the dick multiple times. Multiple times? Oh, well, yeah, c'est la vie. So even though this has happened mostly while I was in bed, it definitely wasn't sleep paralysis.
For the past year or so, periodically, I'd either be trying to fall asleep or failing to wake up, and then I'd feel the edge of the bread depressed like someone had sat down. I don't have any pets, so it wasn't that either. At first, the presence would just run a hand over my body before disappearing. Oh, I just got chills. That's very creepy. But eventually would lie down next to me for several minutes. And I assume you didn't feel paralyzed, so this wouldn't be sleep paralysis. If I ever moved, the presence would disappear. But I was usually too freaked out to do anything. Fast forward to a month ago. I'm dreaming and some kind of demonic looking guy shows up. Back wings. I love that phrase. He just shows up. He just shows up. Back wings, black clothes, guy liner. Picture a hot goth dude who just happens to be from hell.
Well, I won't go into details. Okay. But after we redacted, oh my god, we were just kind of cuddling together when the guy suddenly shook his head and said, I should have known you'd get attached, and suddenly flew away. When I got up the next morning, I felt like I had been hit by a bus. Fucking rude. If you're going to drain my life force, the least you can do is spoon me afterwards. True. I agree. Love the podcast. I'm seriously making long-term plans to move to the Twin Cities area now after hearing all the awesome...
local things you promote. Well, where's our sponsorship from the tourism board or something? Okay, so I love that story. I think it might be the weirdest one we've ever received. I don't know. I don't know about that, but it is quite odd. So did the presents never come after the dream? I'm guessing because you were ghosted. I think the presents got what he wanted and bounced. Yeah, God, that is rude. Yeah, that is rude. Have you ever heard of exploding head syndrome?
It's not what you think. I learned about this not that long ago, which is a phenomenon where as you're about to fall asleep, there's this thing that'll happen to some people where they hear a loud bang, like a deafening bang, right as they're about to fall asleep. And it's called exploding head syndrome. I don't think anyone knows what causes it. That's very strange. Listen, I'd be very curious to hear if any of you have exploding head syndrome or if I've experienced that phenomenon. It terrifies me to even think about it. It's never happened to me. For some reason, that's what I was thinking. When you're about to fall asleep, you can have very strange visions almost. I'm not saying that's what happened to this person, but it just came to my mind.
Which are like, you're still awake, but you're kind of dreaming. Sure, yeah. Which I have had that happen to me before. It's a very unusual experience, especially if you are jolted awake before you actually fall asleep and you're like... You feel like you're falling. Yeah, or you remember what you... I wasn't asleep, but where did that come from? I was thinking about the most weird, random thing. Well, I think that demon was very rude, and I apologize on his behalf. I agree. You should at least hang out for a little while. Yeah.
To scold you like that too. Yeah. Yeah. Like it's your problem. Like you just showed up here. I didn't invite you in. Yeah. All right. Okay. This is from listener Nicole. Hello mystery aunts. I've been listening to perhaps it's you since you were on our strange skies. Thanks for listening. We ruined Rob's audio. Great time. We may have ruined his whole podcast. Be honest. I knew then that these cackling ladies are hilarious. Thank you. My story starts about early September. Does not specify what year.
I couldn't sleep one night and decided to move to the sofa downstairs instead of rolling around and keeping my husband awake. That's nice of you. It's okay. The sofa downstairs is super comfy and I usually fall asleep very quickly. I started to fall asleep when I heard what sounded like kids running around upstairs. Nope. Nope. Nope. Don't like it. Now, I have three kids, two of whom can walk. So this isn't out of the question, but from where I was laying, I could see most of the upstairs. We have a lofted upstairs with railings around most of the upstairs hall. I couldn't see into the bedrooms, but it's not like I live in a castle. You can't get a good run going up in those bedrooms. Oh, I get it. It's like a very small space. Yeah. We also have video cameras that record all movement on an app on my phone. The position of the camera catches both kids' doors. I went to check the app to see which kid was up and being noisy, but nobody had gotten out of bed.
Now I was a little freaked out, but I thought I was falling asleep and it could have been a dream or something. Sure. As I was putting my phone away and going back to sleep on the sofa, I saw a misty black child-sized person type thing walking the hall upstairs. Oh my God. I'm like freaked out right now just reading this. There was no sound coming from that area of the house. I turned the light on and the misty thing disappeared. I went to check the app and once again, nothing.
I stayed up most of the night talking myself out of being creeped out and wondering who had been marcened in my house. That is freaky, Nicole. Okay, there's more. Cut to last night. My four-year-old daughter has been recovering from a nasty stomach bug. She feels the need to tell me every time she has, oh gosh, diarrhea of the butt. Her words, not mine. So I have been getting woken up several times a night with a squeaky voice telling me what a disaster did or did not just happen in the bathroom.
How do parents do it? To have kids. So last night I was sleeping away when I felt her hand touch my leg and a squeaky voice start talking to me. Only one problem. It wasn't my daughter's voice. I sat up throwing the covers off myself. There was nothing else in the room. My husband was asleep. Obviously to me, he was asleep, oblivious to me nearly pissing the bed. As would I. I was very out of it, but the voice was still talking very softly and I could make out what I was saying. Or I couldn't make out what I was saying.
After what seemed like forever, the voice faded away and I again tried to talk myself out of being creeped out. I eventually fell back asleep. In the morning, I asked my husband if he remembered anything about the night before. He told me he remembered our daughter coming into our room and our daughter and I talking for a while. When I told him that didn't happen, we checked the video recordings, but all the kids slept through the night. No one got up. Don't like it.
This might be the scariest story since New Michelle. That is freaky. Nicole, I think you should move immediately. Nicole, you might want to contact someone about getting this ghost to move over. I don't know why child ghosts- I was just about to say that. I think we say this every time, but child ghosts are scarier than adult ghosts. I don't know why. I think every horror movie where there is a slow lullaby in the trailer only proves this to be true, but I don't like that at all. I'm scared for you. Please let us know that you're okay. Yeah, I, Nicole, I don't know. That is terrifying. I don't like it. I don't like it at all. I don't like it. Okay, I'm gonna read a story by Tawny now.
Hello, Mystery Ants. I just listened to your most recent episode about amazing parental intuition, and I immediately thought of my friend Sam. We were BFFs in my youth, and I remember her telling me about two times she had a bad feeling and trusted her gut. Her dad was in the military and away on tour when her first premonition happened. One day, she was just minding her own business when suddenly she got a sharp pain in her left ring finger, but it stopped hurting, so she didn't think much about it. I'm assuming she didn't. Maybe it kept her up at nightclub. Anyway, she found out later that her dad ended up having ring avulsion.
I'm gagging just writing this. When his ring was caught, I don't know exactly how it happened, and he ended up losing the finger. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. Oh, my God. When she asked what happened, she found out it happened at the exact same time she had that stabbing pain on her finger. Wow. That's wild. Okay. Next, premonition didn't happen until 2009. Well, we were traveling through Europe. We arrived at our hostel in...
Wow. Sorry if that's really, really wrong. After trekking up a huge hill in the pouring rain, it could have been an average hill, but I'm remembering it as never ending. No, I'm sure it was huge. You know, sometimes you're just not in the mood for a hill and it's pretty much every day. Okay. And decided to opt out of exploring the city and sleep instead. I understand. Sam laughed while I went to sleep. I ended up sleeping about eight hours straight. And when I woke up, I really had to go to the bathroom. It was only then that I noticed that the hostile door locks from the outside. Okay. Nope. And that I was locked inside. What?
and yeah and i'm assuming that like most hostels you don't have your own bathroom so i realized i only had two options i could piss myself or go pee in the sink Why was there just a sink? Budget traveling. The bathroom was down the hall. Yeah, there's like a shared bathroom. It never really occurred to me to knock on the door or have someone left out. So I decided that I couldn't piss myself in Germany and decided to go in the sink. Okay. Yeah, sure. Look, this is not the first time this has happened. Door locked from the outside? I don't like it. I really don't like it. When I finished, I climbed off the sink and started cleaning it up. Then I heard the door being unlocked and it flew open. My friend Sam had been traveling around when she had a feeling that something was wrong. She told me that she just had a bad feeling and she had to come back to the hostel. Wow. I had to tell her that her bad feeling was because I was locked in a room and had to pee in the sink. I'm pretty sure we laughed.
But I definitely wish she had arrived before that had happened. Anyway, don't forget to check if you're in a hostel room. It has a bathroom and it doesn't lock from the outside. I've stayed in a handful of hostels. I never thought. Here's a picture of her in her hostel. And here's the hill that she had to go up. That looks like a big hill. Yeah. I wish that a sink was pictured. I really want to imagine how you had to like climb up there and squat over a sink. She said that it was quite tall. Anyway.
I would like to hear more stories like this of people's eerie premonitions or just like strange coincidences. That's pretty cool. I'm fascinated by that. Yeah. And look, listeners, if you're going to stay in the hostel now, this is not something I would have thought about. Just check how it locks. How does it lock? Does it lock from the outside? If it does, maybe you should cancel your reservation and go somewhere else. Okay. So this is from listener Jessica.
I will preface this email with the fact that I'm a big skeptic. Same, Scott. But also love to believe. Same. I will back my skepticism by saying I have worked with the dead for the last 25 years as a forensic anthropology student and someone who currently spends most of her days in morgues or funeral homes with the newly dead. Okay. Parentheses, not much activity. I mean, I think maybe that would be hard if you really...
Yeah. If you were very into paranormal stuff, I don't know that you're going to want to spend most of your day at the morgue. True. I have plenty of gross and interesting tales. I'm sure you do. I want to hear the gross ones. Liz does not. But when it comes to paranormal experiences that have stuck with me, they are relegated to the pets. Okay. Interesting. Okay. So story number, there's two stories. Story number one, astro projecting pet. I like this already. For my fifth birthday, I received the best and most unexpected gift, a puppy. That is the best gift. A beautiful brindle boxer.
We grew up together, and she was the best pupper anyone could ask for. From the day I got her, she slept in my bed. She was always my companion and protector. When I was nine, I remember waking up in the middle of the night, turning over, and as my eyes adjusted to the night, seeing her sitting in the doorway to my bedroom. I called her back to bed. She seemed to acknowledge my request, but remained sitting there vigilant, which was not unusual. She was always very stubborn. I called her name again, but no response. At that time, I sat up in bed to call her again and pat the spot at my feet she normally slept. When I went to pat her spot at the foot of the bed, what did I see? My dog sound asleep at my bed. At my feet.
That's wild. I was frozen in shock and confusion but not fear as I looked from my dog at my feet and the doorway. As I was processing this, I watched, quote, my dog from the doorway calmly walk to the vet and jump onto the dog resting at my feet. Soon, as I witnessed this dog at my feet, raising her head, looking at me, grunted, stretched, and went back to sleep. I swear to this day, I was fully awake and this happened. 30 years later, I still remember this instance and her so vividly. She was the absolute best. I like to think she was astral projecting in her sleep, both resting and staying ever vigilant. Wow. That's a really weird, but also sweet story. That's so nice. Okay, story number two is Ghost Cat.
Cool. I moved to a new house with my husband in 2019 along with two puppers and our 15-year-old cat. While said cat has free range of much of the house, he is restricted from our bedroom with close supervision because he likes to mark his territory, specifically my clothes. My husband had him for 13 years prior to us meeting and he still resents my presence. Sounds very much like a cat. From the time we moved in, I could occasionally see out of the corner of my eye a cat in our bedroom, always jumping on the dresser, the bed, or darting behind the dresser. I would get up to gather our cat up and put him back in the living room, but he was never actually there. He was securely out of the room.
I would tell my husband and I don't think he ever saw or believed me. After about six months in the house, I, um... I became pregnant. At this time, these instances of seeing a cat in our room intensified and my husband started seeing the cat too, though our cat was never actually there. We would search the room and look for an explanation, but there never seemed to be a reasonable explanation. I know I saw a cat and even at times felt one jump on our bed. This went on very intensely throughout my pregnancy. Baby is here now and I see this phantom cat much less, but it will still make an occasional appearance. I do know the previous owners had lots of cats, maybe a ghost cat or our old cat projecting himself into our room. Those are great stories. If you have...
Ghost stories about animals. I also want them. We want them. Send them in. I really love the astro-projecting boxer. That is a very sweet ghost story. Okay, we have one for my fellow podcaster, Joss.
Now, I don't personally remember this, and I don't think I experienced it firsthand, but this story gets repeated any time me and my parents talk about the paranormal. One night when I was five and my brother was four, the two of us, my parents, and my uncle Jack were all spending the night at my paternal grandparents' house. All five of us were sleeping in the living room, my brother and I on the couch, and my parents and uncle on the floor. My grandfather had died before I was born, and my grandmother at the time was in the hospital on her way out. Rough. In the middle of the night, as me and my brother were sleeping, my parents both woke up feeling someone walking over them.
My mom remembers thinking, the bathroom's on Jack's side, why is he over here? They look over to his side of the room and see my uncle sleeping. A moment or two later, they both hear large, heavy footsteps walking down the hall. It's so loud, my uncle wakes up. All three of them look at each other, and my dad and uncle realize the same thing. It's the footsteps of my grandfather, who always wore the same heavy boots, and had a very distinctive walk, walking down the hall. They've heard the footsteps since they were children, and there is no way it can be anything else. The footsteps stop, the three don't say anything, and everyone goes back to sleep.
They were all awake. Yeah. i mean i guess you're a little groggy from sleep maybe you're like whatever sometime later my dad is back at his parents house i think with a couple other uncles they're hanging out near a ceramic jesus that hung on their parents door since they were children at one point they hear a large crash and rush to see that ceramic jesus shattered on the floor not like it fell off the wall but like someone had taken it and threw it to the ground as hard as they could soon after they got the news that my grandmother had passed away wow why'd she want to smash jesus i don't know if she was mad That's only one of the stories my family, mostly my father, has experienced, but I think that's the most significant. Why are you holding out on these other stories? And what do you think your grandma was trying to say? By smashing Jesus. Was that just the thing that would make the most noise? I want to believe that there is a deeper meaning to that. That she was on the other side and she was like, guess what? You don't need this. Interesting. Wow. I think, okay, if you are sleeping in a room with a bunch of other people, you all wake up and hear the same ghost footsteps. Talk about it. Don't keep that bottle down. Yeah, let it out. That's only going to eat away at you. Yeah, no, you got to talk this out. Okay.
Our next story is from... Who are you from? This might be another podcast. Okay. I don't actually see a name on here, but it's Professional Demeanor. The subject line is, I hope I didn't send you this story before and forgot. OMG, anyway, scary story time. Well, let's hear it. Hi, Sam and Liz. First of all, you are the best podcasters because you don't have sponsors, so you're not obligated to say maybe Amazon is normal or all men could not be murderers, perhaps. I love your podcast so much. Thank you. What a nice thing to say. I mean, I am very flattered by that compliment, but also we would sell out if we could.
Liz, don't say that. I was ready to sell out that first episode that we did. I was like, bring me my mattress. You were willing to sell out for one mattress. I really wasn't. No one's been interested, so we can keep it very real. I have had a few unexplained things happen to me, but this one was most impactful. Again, do not hold out on us. Give us all your spooky stories. It is also super long, so I won't be offended if you don't read it. Now we're reading this. Also, it doesn't seem that long. We've had some multi-pagers. This is like one page and change. When I was about nine or so, I went to this event called the 100-mile yard sale. Where is this? And why have I never been there? Where everyone in town had a yard sale.
I was looking in vain for Pokemon toys, of course, at this house. Got bored and went around back. I love the specificity. Very relatable. There was a dog tied up to a clothesline lying down. I noticed the air felt very heavy. The same consistency as when you touch a dead animal on the side of the road and their skin is really dense under their fur. Okay, I don't understand that. Yeah, I'm going to say I don't spend a lot of time touching dead animals at the side of the road. You know what? This person doesn't. This is what this felt like. I believe you. Okay, very well. I thought it meant maybe the dog was going to die soon.
I went to pet him and comfort him and he lunged at me and bit my neck. I was fine, just had superficial injuries and I didn't tell on the dog because I didn't want him to get put down. That's nice of you. 10 years later, I am dumpster diving furniture and selling it on Craigslist because I'm in college and starving to death. Okay. I get a very nice email about a coffee table I had listed for $15. The email wasn't too forward or detailed or weird, but subtly pleasant. Like I thought maybe this was a girl my age and we could be friends. Okay.
The day and time of the sale, a real friend happened to be by and offered to bring it down the stairs with me. That's a nice friend. When we got out the door, I noticed a nondescript little man just around the corner outside the building, like where you would hide to jump out and scare someone. What? Just saying a weird turn. Yeah, I don't understand how the dog 10 years ago relates to this, but I'm assuming they connect. I got the exact, okay, the exact same heavy dead air feeling that I had a decade ago. I wanted to get away from him, so we stood in the parking lot in the hot sun for about 10 minutes. I could still feel the heavy air and he wasn't leaving, just standing there, not looking at us.
So I called out to him, hey, did you order a table? And he, totally shocked and awkward, said yes. He popped his truck, the trunk of a tiny red sports car that could not, oh, his trunk, sorry. He popped open his trunk, which was the trunk of a tiny red sports car that could not fit a table, parentheses, but it could fit me. Yeah. He didn't have exact change, only 20s. He seemed completely unprepared to buy a table from me. I'm positive he was just trying to meet up with me to hit me over the head and kidnap me and was thrown off when I came down with another person.
We stopped it in the back of the car and he drove off. I wonder if he brought the table home and his wife was like, hi, why do we have another coffee table? Or maybe he threw it away on the way home and got a ticket for dumping. Doesn't haunt him every night? I hope so. So do I.
That's scary. It sounds like this was an instance of intuition. I don't know what intuition you had about the dog. Maybe that it was aggressive. Maybe something was telling you not to approach the dog. Maybe it wasn't well. Yeah, yeah. And then you've got that intuition again with this dude who seems a little sketchy, honestly. Do you think that's even who replied to the Craigslist ad? Or just she said, are you here for a table? And he was like, uh, yeah. That's what it sounds like. Because she says that the interaction with the person who wanted to buy the table sounded like someone a lot younger. Maybe someone who kind of sounded, I mean, this is stereotyping, but female. Yeah. So yeah, it didn't seem like that was him. And also he didn't seem like he had $15. He just had a couple of 20s. Yeah.
So, um, there is another story about ghosts riding a bus. Okay. Okay. You mentioned ghosts riding the bus. My husband used to drive the bus and I would sleep on it until he was done, including when he was washing it, which took about five minutes. Every time I slept on the bus in the wash bay, I would have these ridiculously long dreams about being on the bus and awake and it being full of ghosts. I would look behind the seats and they would be sitting in every seat. One time, a little boy reached up between the seat and the wall and grabbed my bag strap and choked me, making my throat hurt even when I woke up.
One time another little boy grabbed my knees and tried to pull them down so I would look at him. The best time was when a girl touched me through my blanket and said, are you the real girl? And showed me how to get out of my body. We went all the way to New York and it was dark and raining and we zoomed along the pavement and scared people who were walking by. Okay. Sounds like a wild bus. There's something romantic about sleeping on the bus while your husband drives it. A little bit. It's very picturesque to me. Yeah, I like the idea. I don't know what your name is, but thank you for writing in your very interesting stories. Yes. Okay. Now we have one from Leslie.
The first thing is some personal paranormal experiences. I live in California, and some years ago, I took a paranormal investigators class with my mother. I like that you combined that with living in, like, since I live in California, obviously, I took a paranormal investigative class. It was so interesting, and at the end of the two-month course, they had an overnight stay at a haunted location. Their usual location was actually not available, so my teacher asked another paranormal group an hour away if they had a site.
Turns out they had a good one. There is a state park of a town which volunteers have been working on preserving. It was the first African-American town in California. The town's name is Allensworth. They have a school, a church, a hotel, and some homes. We got to investigate the sites and stay the night in the hotel. Think Little House on the Prairie wouldn't structure small homes. It was so amazing. How it was set up was there was two paranormal groups, the class, and a park ranger. For four hours, eight to midnight was a class experience, which was visiting the homes, asking questions, trying to get an EVP.
After midnight, one group and some of the class went to bed. Well, the main group who had investigated the park asked if anybody wanted to go to the sites again. My mother and I were like, hell yeah, we want to go. There were weird sounds, cold spots, the whole lot, and which can be explained. But the experience was really cemented by this site being haunted. Was it? Oh, what really cemented it is being haunted was in the church. One of the investigators was at the pulpit. Okay. Basically trying to get any experience to respond by being aggressive. Oh, some Zach Bagans bullshit. That's what that is. Okay. The ghosts live there. You need to be Minnesotan about this.
You gotta be polite to ghosts in their home. Come at me, bro! Yeah, don't be begging ghosts to scratch you. Okay, anyway. I am not about that, so I was trying to tune him out, and instead I began to look around the building, I sat in a pew. Others in the church were watching the investigator as if it was a real sermon. All of a sudden, I see this light on the back wall to my left. The light was rectangular the size of a small window, and in their light there was the shadow of a head and shoulders. I was shocked, and before I could say anything, the investigator at the pulpit yells that someone was looking in at the window.
I hop up and ran outside with another investigator for the main group. We both ran around the church to see if anyone was around. This was a state park and even though it's a small town, no cars were around. No one could have walked off to the church. And also when I look to the stained glass window, I noticed it was about 10 feet off the ground. That is so creepy. So there's no way anyone could look through and it was the only window.
That's fine. You got your money's worth on this ghost hunt. Yeah, really. After that, I stayed up all night. No shit. That's terrifying. That is really freaky. Because of this, this was at a park, the hotel was very small. You enter through a kitchen, you go through the dining room, and there's a long hallway that leads to the rooms. For safety, the park ranger locks the doors.
Doesn't sound too safe, but okay. So if you wanted to stay in there until the other group came back while everybody slapped, I stayed up till 4am. The group I was with only went back to the hotel once around 2 to use the restroom and get fresh batteries. The next morning, as my brother and I told some of our classmates about our experiences the night before, all of them were upset. We locked the doors around 12.30 and left. Could these people get out?
I assume they couldn't get in, but... Sounds like a fire hazard, but okay. I'm sure they were fine. One woman staying in the room by herself told us that she heard us leave, but then chairs in the dining room were being dragged back and forth. Oh my gosh. Okay, that's literally like out of poltergeist. Laughing was keeping many of the investigators up. Why in the sleep? Yeah, aren't you ghost hunting? Why are you trying to sleep through ghost laughter? When you're looking for ghosts. That is a fool's errand. Okay.
When we were informed them that we left and locked the door and were never in the dining room, only the kitchen, because we were trying not to wake up others, they were shocked to learn there was activity the whole night. My teacher actually went out to investigate and saw no one and went back to bed, which I was so mad. No one wanted to go out and try to do an EVP. These are bad ghost hunters. Yeah. Or they're people that have narcolepsy. They're like, no, we need to sleep. You didn't go to a ghost hunt to sleep. Yeah. They have ghost walks and visit the sites for only a few hours, but it was an experience I'll never forget. I mean, you saw a ghost look through a window. Wow. Okay, here's the second shorter one. I work in a government building with a basement we keep files in. There's rumors that a small girl is seen in the basement, and it's creepy AF because the shelves go back almost to the ceiling, so you can't see. Okay, I know exactly what you're talking about. You can't see around. You have to move past an aisle to check the stage noises out. You can only see right where you are. That is a...
Perfect place for a ghost to hide. Yeah. One day, my coworker and I took a cart of files to file away. When you enter the area, there is only one way in and out. There is a desk against the wall with a chair, then the stacks. We put our cart to the side. I pulled out a chair to sit on to organize some files and then stood up and pushed the chair under the desk. I moved the cart out of the way, handed my coworkers one stack and I had another. The files were organized by years and we went down the aisles. She was across from me and I could see her from my side. We worked for about 10 minutes. Once I was done, I told her I was ready. She had one last file and after putting it away, we both walked down the aisle to the front. The chair was no longer...
under the desk but had been pulled out and was sitting blocking the only doors these doors had to be pushed in to get inward to get in so the chair was blocking the door so no one could get in the desk is about 10 i don't like this the desk is about 10 feet from the doors no one could have come in and left the chair that way because we would have heard we would have been close enough to the front to know someone else was in the basement with us also how do they get back out yeah like it has to be someone that's in that room right there's only one way in and out I don't like that. My coworker thought the floor was planted and that's how the chair rolled. Yeah, right. Please. I told her it was pushed and if it did roll, then why not the cart? Yeah. Huh? Good question. After that, we both decided not to go in the basement alone. I mean, good call. One woman quit when her hair was pulled while she was filing. Wow.
Okay, I hope you thought these stories were good. It's too long here, but I have a Zodiac story if you were interested, and Zodiac is capitalized, so I assume that is the murderer. And yes, we would like that story, please. How many times do we have to say it? Oh my God. Do not send us incomplete ghost stories. Send us all your ghost stories. I don't like that at all. I hope your workplace is safe. Okay, I kind of skimmed this one, and this is fucking wild. Also, I don't understand why you're apologizing for how long this is. This is the shortest story we've ever received. They just don't know. Okay, this is from listener Chris, who must have sent us the story about the frog purse previously. Oh yeah, I think about that a lot.
So Chris says, at the end of season four, episode eight, you were talking about Samantha's haunted car. I decided to share my haunted car story too. And this puts my haunted car story to fucking shame. I had a cute 99 Chevy Cavalier white two-door. I loved it. Anyway, I was driving home after work one night around two or three in the morning. For some reason, I glanced in the rear view mirror and there he was, a little boy, about three or four years old, sitting in a car seat, looking like the little boy from The Grudge.
They had a ghost car seat? Apparently. I pulled over ASAP and caught my breath and started talking to him. What's your name? What do I call you? That's your question? My question would be, how quickly can I get you out of this car? Apparently, the ghost boy replied, the name Samuel came into my mind. Oh, no. Okay, Chris is saying the name Samuel just came in. He didn't speak. It just came into their mind. Okay, Samuel, you can stay in the car if you're good and don't scare me anymore. Chris, you are way braver than me. Why? Why would you say that? At that point, a peaceful feeling came over Chris.
Who said, okay, let's go home. After that, things were calm. Occasionally, he would reach out and touch my elbow while I was driving. Nope. But he never scared me again. You don't call that scary? Apparently. Okay, so I need a few more details, Chris. I know you were concerned about the length of the story, but I'm telling you, you could have given me a lot more here.
Chris is making it seem like this boy was just always in the car when they were driving. Yeah, but why? Chris says, a few years later, I lost my ability to drive when I became legally blind and had to sell the car. I said goodbye to Samuel. I'm guessing he didn't like the new owner. The guy hit a deer and totaled the car. He wasn't hurt, but the car was a complete loss. I hope Samuel finds peace one day. Sorry, this was so long. It wasn't. Love y'all. I don't know why you would let that boy just stay in your car. I don't know either. Is Samuel chipping in for gas? No. In a car seat. A little boy in a car seat just showed up in my car. Looking like he's from the grudge. That is terrifying. Speaking to you telepathically.
You said that Samuel never scared you again. I would be scared for the rest of my life. You did touch your elbow while you were driving. I don't know what you call that. That is fucking terrifying. Chris, wow. I'm blown away by that story. That is wild. I don't like it. Okay. I have one last one, and then I think you have the very last one. I do, and this one is quite long. Okay.
So I have one from Ayla that says, hello, you beautiful banshees. Hello to you. Okay, so some backstory. I was born in 86 to younger parents, smack dab in the middle of Iowa. It turns out they weren't a very good couple together, and I ended up bouncing back and forth between the two of them. And so the courts finally gave my father cultful custody. While I spent the majority of my life living with him, there were two times I lived with my mom as my primary guardian. The first time, I think I was maybe four. Oh, and my mom had followed a guy to an old dingy two-story punk house in Boston. Great. Great environment for a child.
Think constant revolving door of mermaids partying and lots of hairspray and worn and leather boots. Okay. My mom and I each had a room and they were right next to each other with conjoining doors so she could get to me without going into the hallway. And oof, that hallway, let me tell you. Things are fuzzy because I was just a wee babe, but I 1000% remember being terrified of that hallway. One side of it had doors that lead to different rooms, but the other side was just a railing that looked down to the first floor living room. Sorry, the first floor living room. I refused to walk down that hallway and would only crawl, fearful that I was going to fall through.
fair this will come up later more backstory my maternal grandfather was murdered by the mafia wow i did not see that coming yeah when my mom was only 11 and she and her sisters were the one that found them when they came home from school oh my god that's terrible i'm so sorry okay so now moving on to the story picture it boston 1990 And my punk AF witchy mom has been desperately trying to contact her father through, you guessed it, a Ouija board. Of course. Parentheses, do not try this at home. Oh, I would. Yeah, we have, actually. I have and will. Okay. We tried to contact Robert Stack. Did not have much luck, but. No, I don't think he was very interested. After many attempts, she was finally able to speak to someone. Someone who said they knew her father from the war. My grandpa was a World War II vet. And they could bring him with the next time she reached out. I don't trust this ghost. Well, he didn't. Yeah. Or rather, until my mom performed certain tasks for him.
Okay. This is not a good ghost. They're good ghosts and they're bad ghosts. This is not a good ghost. It started out simple enough. Leaving this offering, place a crystal under your pillow, etc. But then it started to get dark. Real dark. I'm scared to keep reading this. I know. The last time my mom ever reached out to this entity, he told her that her father was close. He could be in the room right now. That very nice if she made a small sacrifice. Oh my god. What was the sacrifice, you ask? The female child in the next room. A.K.A. my chubby little ass.
What? This is a very involved Ouija board conversation. This is a demon. This is being catfished. I realize catfishing wasn't a thing back then, but this is ghost catfishing. This is a demon pretending to be a ghost that also, spelling this out letter by letter, kill the child in the next room. That would take a long time. Yeah, okay. This understandably freaked my mom the fuck out, and she immediately threw the Ouija board out her second store bedroom window into a dark, rank dumpster that was just outside. Luckily, this was fall winter, so the smell of heart garbage did not add to the already disgusting smell of stale beer and old cigarette smoke in the house, but I digress. Why is this?
a child in this place. I know. I'm guessing this is why the dad usually had custody. It seems a little messy. She thought that was the end, but oh no, that was not the end. She woke up this next morning and came into my room. She saw the now wet and rank Ouija board propped up at the end of my bed. My eyes just got huge. What? There's a demon after your kid. We moved back to Des Moines. The only logical response. Brought to you by the move to Des Moines council. Oh, but remember how I hated the hallway?
Well, to add some extra creepiness, turns out there was a man who was murdered, of course, who was murdered in the house in the 1940s. Yeah, yeah. Apparently, he was a real dick to his wife and just in general, and she ended up shooting him in the chest. Okay. Well, guess where she shot him? That's right, the hallway. Yep. Once the slug hit his chest, he stumbled backwards, fell over, broke the railing, and landed in the living room below where he bled to death. Okay. That's a dramatic way to go out. I know. I'm not sure if that was the man my mother was communicating with. No, your mom was communicating with a straight up demon. I'm pretty sure. That is not the ghost of a human. No, that is demon behavior. There was definitely something very wrong with that house. Yes.
The demon. I'm guessing there's a lot of things wrong with the house. Among them, the demon. I'm guessing the electrical was not up to code. But more importantly, your mother was communicating with an actual demon. And for some reason, wanted you dead. I'm sorry. Someone was playing a soup pot all night. Yeah. And there was a demon. Yeah. Nobody was getting their proper vitamins and minerals. And yeah. Also, a demon wanted to kill you. There was a lot of issues. Keep it up, ladies.
This is hands down my favorite Unsolved Mysteries podcast. Out of all 10,000 of them, that's amazing. I'm impressed. Five stars and all Robert's decks. Please give Lenny Briscoe some pets for me and tell him he's a very good boy. Thanks. I will not because... I'll do that right now. He's been kind of a pain today. Good boy, Lenny. I'm petting him right now on his head. He looks confused. He's laying at my feet, so I actually literally did pet his head. Okay, this is the last one. It is quite long.
I'm scared. I'm scared after that last demon one. This is from listener Mia, and the subject line of this email is nice Catholic ghost seeking nice Catholic family, dot, dot, dot, maybe? Okay. Interesting. Hi, Liz and Samantha. I've been meaning to write my ghost story for the last three seasons, but damn it, I'm avoiding the laundry, so today is the day. This is honestly, listeners, great advice. Great strategy. Next time you're avoiding doing the laundry, I am giving you a very important task to do, and that's sitting down at your computer and writing your ghost story in an email and sending it to us, perhaps it's you, podcast at gmail.com. You don't need to scroll through Instagram again. Nothing has changed.
But you should keep procrastinating. And that's by sending us that email. You're going to need a little backstory as it is necessary to both the context of the story and a helpful clue about the identity of the ghost. 25 years ago, my grandparents, who had raised me since I was a baby, decided to move back to their hometown. They were from a small rural area outside of Flint, Michigan. And after decades living in the city during the auto boom, they thought it would provide a nicer childhood for me if I had a lot of room to roam in fresh air and learn to do the things all farm kids do. Read Shovel Poop. Very true.
Everyone thinks growing up on a farm is very idyllic. Mostly it's just shoveling poop. Just lots of hard rack baking chores. My uncle's neighbor was considering selling a plot of acreage right between the two houses, so my grandparents put in an offer. When the offer was declined because the neighbor decided instead to build a home on that land for his mother-in-law, my grandparents started looking at other houses in the area, although I distinctly recall a number of complaints about how they wish they'd been able to procure the plot next to my uncle. Whenever we'd visit my uncle, Jim, for a night of games or dinner, we'd see the mother-in-law's house in various stages of completion. When it was nearly done, the mother-in-law went to walk down the road to see the progress.
And she was struck by a car and killed at the end of the driveway. Wow. I'm sorry, what? And then my grandparents immediately bought the house. Okay. All right, I would be looking into your grandparents a little bit.
That worked out really well for them. It really did. Wow, what a twist. Okay, so I was 12 when the house was finished and we moved in. We were happy there, truly, and if I heard floorboards creaking outside my bedroom multiple times a night and doors opening and closing, I wasn't too alarmed. I didn't believe in ghosts, so it was either my imagination or my grandpa trying to sneak late night junk food while my grandma couldn't school him. Sure, sure, all those things. Five years ago, my grandma began showing signs of dementia, so the decision was made to try to convince them that an assisted living facility was a better option. They agreed, but only if my husband and I were the buyers of their house. They really wanted me to have it, and we decided that this was a great idea.
How cool to raise my kids in the house where I was raised. It needed a lot of updates, but we're both pretty handy with power tools and like doing physical labor. They transitioned out and we transitioned in. The weird thing started during the first renovations, but they weren't glaring examples of paranormal activity. I put a masonry chisel down, turned my back for a few minutes, and then turned back around to find it moved to another spot.
This is what I've heard about ghosts a lot. Just move and shit. Yeah. A lot of that can be excused and was. Paintbrushes go missing, houses settle and creak. Some of it was mildly weird, but I didn't believe in ghosts. We completed enough work to move in and then put some of the other things on hold. My two youngest kids got my old bedroom and the two middle ones got my grandpa's old study.
My teenage son complained a lot about hearing footsteps and creaking floorboards at night, but I assured him it was either his imagination or his younger siblings getting up during the night. One night he was in my bedroom showing me a Snapchat filter and he appeared on the phone with dog ears and a lulling tongue. I know exactly the filter. And so did the blank space right next to him. What? A glitch? No big deal. The dogs... That is creepy. That is creepy. Like there's a face right next to you and you can't see it, but Snapchat picks it up.
That was super creepy. That facial restoration software has gotten too good. I know. So the dogs would routinely go completely batshit at a certain corner on our ensuite bathroom. Yeah, that's a ghost. Growling and snarling with their hackles up, tracking something back and forth with their eyes. I told my husband it was bugs. Again, I didn't believe in ghosts.
Things got weirder. A friend died, a very close friend. I spent a lot of time crying. I'm sorry to hear that. One day I was crying alone in my kitchen and I felt a hand touch my back gently. I spun around thinking it was the dog, but the dog wasn't in the kitchen. I sat in bed crying in my knitting station basket. I don't know how to explain this. It didn't tip over or spill. It was sitting on an old steamer trunk across the room and right before my eyes it lifted up and turned over midair before falling. Wow. I told my husband, actually, I think I might believe in ghosts.
I think I would too after seeing that. So doors would open and close. Things would move. Some I could explain. Others I could not. None of them upset me, though. Nothing felt malicious. Nothing even felt obstructive. I only told a few people what was going on, but always I struggled to communicate that it felt like something was trying to comfort me. It's Annie, said a few people. Annie is letting you know she's okay. That must have been the friend. No, I keep telling them it's not Annie. I can tell. We decided to complete further renovations this year. I wanted to completely gut the master bathroom, and there were a lot of updates in the kitchen. And I thought it would be nice to paint and update the exterior.
As soon as we got to work, things ramped up again. My husband and I were lying in bed one night discussing the next day's plans when things came flying off the closet shelf and hit the floor. The dog started going nuts again. Things moved, spilled again. The activity seemed centered in our bedroom and bathroom. One day, home alone, I was completing some work and got up to use the restroom. I passed through a spot in the hallway and stopped to double check because I smelled something familiar.
I couldn't place it. There was nothing there, but hovering like an invisible cloud was this very distinct smell. I walked a few steps forward, nothing. I walked a few steps the other way, nothing. I walked through it once more and I knew exactly what it was. Frankincense. It was clearly a cloud of frankincense, which of course I recognized. It's the same thing used in sensors at mass. We smell it all the time because we're Catholic. Just like my neighbors. Just like the woman who died at the end of my driveway 25 years ago.
I laughed out loud. Okay, this is that woman's last name, Mrs. Heppensteel. I said, Mrs. Heppensteel, is that you? Are you coming to visit and see how your house is? That was the last encounter for many months. There's been just one more since then. I had oral surgery a few weeks ago. That was miserable. I feel ya. The painkillers made me sick and high and exhausted. I have a bleeding disorder and needed to be cleaned up frequently, but the blood loss also made me weak and getting out of bed was a problem. I'm sorry you went through that. That was rough. One day I was in bed with Penelope, my corgi puppy, next to me. Suddenly she went wild, barking at a space in the ensuite bathroom.
growling and snapping it lasted a few minutes before i settled down and even i even videotaped her behavior because it was out of character i sent it to a friend with a joking caption she must be back when i sat up and began heading to the bathroom i noticed the cabinet with my mouthwash was open um I think she's a great caretaker, and I don't mind sharing my home with a grandma again. I have a couple other weird ones, but this is long, so I'll save it for next season. Yes, please send the other stories. She did attach, we'll have to look this up, the video of Penny barking at the bathroom. You know, it makes sense that while you're renovating the house, the ghost activity would increase. Yeah, they don't want you messing up their space. Well, also, the most common type of ghost, supposedly, doesn't know that they're dead. So they're trying to go through the house how it was whenever they were alive, and suddenly you put a door in another place or something, and they're super confused. Smashing into it, yeah. Yes!
Okay, let's see if we can find this video. That was a really good story, Mia. Send your other ones. It sounds like you live in a haunted house. It's good. I like when people say that they're okay just like coexisting with the ghost and it doesn't like cause them stress and anxiety. I feel like if I had a ghost in my house, it would cause me stress and anxiety. Well, so long as it's not telling you to kill your child over a... That's true. But that's not a ghost with a demon. Big difference. Okay, here's the video. I'm gonna walk over. Okay, if my dog started doing that, it would freak the fuck out. It's freaking Lenny out right now. Lenny's listening. What does Polly be saying? Ghost? Ghost? Is that dog for ghost? Tell us.
Yeah, that was an agitated dog. I don't know. I feel like, okay, if you've had dogs for a while and kind of understand dog body language, like that dog is barking at something it's seeing. Yeah. But there's obviously nothing there.
There's Lenny saying hi, sounding like a blunder. Okay, well, that's the end of our listener stories for right now. Those are great stories. Okay, I think I found all the stories that we haven't read. If you have sent us a story and we haven't read it. Even if it was like season one, send it again. Send it again. It got lost in the shuffle. Also, I think sometimes the Gmail filters are too aggressive and we don't always get emails because you're not in our address book or whatever. So if we haven't read your story, it doesn't mean we don't like you.
It means we didn't get it. So send it again. And we don't pre-read the story. So I don't think you've been like screened out. We literally read every story. I get scared. And now I'm a little bit freaked out and it's dark out because daylight savings time is a joke. And.
That's a little freaky. Yeah, I'm freaked out about some of these stories. The ghost kid in the backseat. There was too many ghost children. The ghost kid running around upstairs. There was a lot. Actually, there was a lot of ghost children. I don't like it. And I approve of none of them. They were good stories, though. If you are one of these listeners and you thought that your story was too long and so you didn't send part of it, please send the rest of it. We will read your story. Doesn't matter how long it is. Hopefully it hasn't been so long since you sent it in that you stopped listening to this podcast and you got mad at us. We're not mad at you. We're just mad at our jobs. It's taken us a year to finish season six. Yeah, so some of these are quite old and I apologize, but we do appreciate getting them.
No, I'm just a little bit afraid. Honestly, all the stories we get from listeners are truly scary. And I'm not scared easily. No, they're freaky, though. But these are scary. Someone needs to make a movie about New Michelle. Yes. And maybe about that demon lover. The hot goth lover. That should be a good short film. That should be a sexy film. Get to work on that. Someone get to work on that. Yeah, and then that ghost looking through the window at that old church. That creeped me out. That scared the hell out of me. And the buzzkill other ghost hunter. They're just trying to sleep. It's almost like they're in a trance, man.
Oh, maybe that's it. They don't even care about the fact that there's clearly ghosts around them. The thing that they're hunting for, they're just like, we have to go to bed. Must go to bed. That's the only explanation I can think of. Yeah, I really enjoyed that. That was quite lovely. I did too. Thank you so much for sending in your stories and we would love to hear more. We didn't get any alien stories this time. So if you have seen a UFO or had some sort of other type of paranormal experience you can't explain. We once did a story about a gnome.
Yes. We've done one about a reptilian alien. We've done... I also like the idea of like, okay, so if you just had like a weird experience you can't explain, maybe you don't think necessarily it was paranormal, but it was like, you know, like these premonition stories. Yeah, I like those. Don't feel like you're limited to ghosts. Right. Weird deja vu. I want to hear that. A dream that ended up coming true. Yeah. Tell me that. If it happened to your friend, it doesn't have to be firsthand. Whatever. These all could be fucking made up. I don't know. I don't care. They were still good. They were still good. And I believe them 100%. Last night I had a dream that as a culture when...
children turned a certain age let's say 18 we put them in these ships that were designed like whales and we sent them into the ocean and they had to spend a year exploring the sea it was like rumspringa of the sea so if anybody wants to that should be a movie that's wild if anybody wants to option that movie get in touch i'm selling that idea yeah that was like all right you're 17 it's your sea to the ocean that you could put all of your stuff in like this submarine whale boat and then you had to go into the sea for a year wow and come back and that's when you got to be an adult What does that mean? Someone tell me. That's wild. Okay. Well, we'll be starting season seven. Shortly. Yep. Yeah. I have no idea what's in season seven. I'm not prepared. And I look forward to it. Okay. So real quick, I was watching, I think it was a YouTube video of just like weird stories that have happened to people and Unsolved Mysteries came up. And I don't know what season this is in, but apparently there is an Unsolved Mysteries of a missing person. And after Unsolved Mysteries aired the missing person case of this person, a guy watching remembered that many years prior to the Unsolved Mysteries episode.
He had found a dead body in a block of ice in, like, Wisconsin. And they never identified the body of this person. And so it was just a cold case. A very frozen cold case, yeah. And when he saw Unsolved Mysteries and saw the picture of this person that was missing, it was, like, someone's kid, he remembered that was the kid I saw. I don't think it was a kid. I think it was, like, 18 or early 20s. In a block of ice. I think it's still unsolved as far as how he got into the block of ice.
What? I know! I don't know what season... Okay, if any of you have watched every season of Unsolved Mysteries, I want you to tell me if you remember this mystery, because I want to skip ahead and watch that segment. I'm fascinated by this. You want to watch The Ice Block Kid? Yeah. That's really sad and terrifying and very spooky. I'm looking for... I don't think it's in season seven. It's probably in season 11 or something. We'll never get there, but... No, Samantha, we will. Believe in us. Someday. We're going to keep powering through. We'll be old. Yeah. Retired to our house in Anoka. Somehow I'll be a literal grandma, and yeah. We'll be wrapped in quilts that you made, and I'll be pretending to be a ghost for the ghost walk.
Sounds lovely. It does. I'm definitely eating fudge. Yes. That's all grandmas do, I assume. Yep. And smoking a Virginia Slim. Sounds amazing. Okay. Well, thank you so much for your stories. If you have a story, send them in. If we suddenly get a ton of stories, we can do, like, another episode on them. Sure. Why not? Just put that out there. And, yeah, that's it. So, you know, social media, give us a five-star review. Do Samantha's Solid and slam that subscribe button. Go on Patreon. Give us a dollar and you'll get bonus content. Oh, yeah, because we did skeleton stories.
recently which is the sort of forensic files like show focused on skeletons and it turns out that one of our listeners was involved in the episode bone island yes so that's going to be an update on our next patreon i wish i had known this before we recorded it's super cool i know it's just it's just funny that we happen to talk about that one but then of course we did because it's called bone island but um yeah so that's the sort of amazing content you get if you give us a dollar yep bone island bone island bone island and also there was a story about a bunch of bones and cauldrons true story yep true story Is that everything? I think so. Look, let's just be done. All right. Thanks, everyone. Bye. Great season six. Bye.