And That's Why We Drink - E120 Burial Physics and the Troll of Jackass Hill

Episode Date: May 19, 2019

Please pardon our fuzzy audio as we come to you “long-distance” from our neighboring hotel rooms! This week Em tells the story of Ohio’s Gore Orphanage, full of seance rooms, upside-down graves, and maybe also breakfast cereal… In other words, it's all Fiction + Fact in Em’s Almanac. Meanwhile, Christine covers a long-awaited story about her LEAST favorite body part… the Cleveland Torso Murderer! (PLEASE, for the love of all that is holy, don’t send us a crocheted torso…) Please consider supporting the companies that support us! Rothy’s are stylish, comfortable, AND made out of recycled plastic water bottles! Visit Rothys.com/drink today to get your new favorite flats! Visit ritual.com/DRINK to get 10% off your first three months of a healthier lifestyle! Our listeners can try ZipRecruiter for FREE by visiting this exclusive web address: ZipRecruiter.com/drink!

Hello? Hello? Oh my goodness, fresh! Hi. Hi, I think it's working. Good. Well, we'll find out. It made me...

It's being really quiet. Hold on. What the hell? What did you do? I don't know. Do you want to ask Eva or do you want to just run with this? Let's just run with it i can hear you great well for those who are wondering what the fuck we're talking about well we're also

wondering what the fuck we're talking about. Well, we're also wondering what the fuck we're talking about. So, welcome. We are doing our first long distance recording together. It is the first ever. Although it's not really long distance. It's only like seven feet away from you. It is. We have walls between us.

Betwixt us. Betwixt. One might say. We realized our audio was not the best. Well, we knew that going into the last episode that we recorded. But we are trying something new, testing out some different long-distance ways to record some shows for you. Right. We are on the Anchor app, which is what Eva and I both use to do the other shows we do um and i figured

eva said it works pretty well long distance so m had to go to their hotel room and i'm in mine and we're calling each other well talk about crime ugly mug so that's nice i don't have to smell your ugly smell so my what my what? Your ugly smell. See, this is what it's like to be friends with us. It's super insulting. Well, what do we do? What do we talk about? It's weird to not see your face.

I don't really know. I know you could be making really rude faces at me and I would never know. Just a finger. Just a finger. Well, I will say that we promise this is the last episode we're doing away from the studio for a long time. We're nearing the end.

Today we are in the next couple hours we're heading over to the venue for Albany. Tomorrow we have our show in Huntington and then we're done with our tour. Oh my god it i i feel like it's been eight years the light is uh finally showing itself at the end of this tunnel oh my goodness not to say that we aren't grateful for all the experiences but oh my god i just want

to go to sleep i just i think we're just very tired and um i think eva probably never wants to look at us ever again she's probably forgotten what her boyfriend even looks like i know it's so sad this last leg was a really god's test for all of our relationships because we uh have been gone for i think a full 18 days or something like that um like two weeks three weeks two wish two and a half something like that long time long enough it feels like 11 years um but we were in let's see madison and minneapolis that was super fun uh we went to the webbies yep which is why we were in new york and yeah we're uh jet setting but we go back to la in a couple days the day this comes out actually also uh can we i don't have i can't we can't do our thing where our eyes meet

and you know what i'm saying telepathically so okay i'm just i'm just gonna take a leap here um okay if you think that i shouldn't have said it then edit it out later but um so we do have uh the last four shows in september but we do want to say that after tomorrow's show, outside of those four episodes, we are officially done touring for the rest of 2019. That's right. That's right, yeah. I think

we should leave that one in, unless Eva says otherwise. I hope you got us while we were hot because you're not seeing us again until 2020. Yeah, we're taking a break. We have a lot of other projects we're working on and we uh realized we kind of need to stay in la uh for the most part to kind of work get some of the get the ball rolling i guess on some stuff yeah we have a lot of ideas and we have not been able to do any of them because we've been traveling on airplanes on a lot of airplanes automobiles a lot of ubers a lot of lifts and uh we we had

things we had ideas that we already wanted to start working on but because we were traveling it was just kind of impossible and so we don't want to ignore the other things right work on so and then for our future shows we want them to be like super on point. So we're taking a break to make sure we get everything situated before our next tour and then coming at you hot. Yes. So we'll see how that goes. But if you are someone out there who is wondering if we're going to randomly announce another show, we are not announcing any more shows. This was it for for 2019 but we are um we have been talking to well there's one show we haven't announced yet that is happening so there's one mystery city that we're going to right oh great okay yeah so come to that one so that's your last chance and then new orleans we're going to new orleans new orleans the two salt lake cities right then and then another one in September. Yippee.

But when that one comes out, we don't want you to think that anything else is coming out. That's it. So good luck. Hunger Games style, if you want to suggest. Hunger Games. Mostly for us. We're in the Hunger Games, I think. Right.

I will say, too, speaking of seeing us, I just went downstairs. We're at the hotel to get a snack and I don't know if the woman behind the counter told you this um when you guys went down did she talk to you no okay she comes up to me and she's like I just wanted to let you know um when you guys got in the elevator these two ladies started freaking out and pointing at you and when I asked them what was going on they said they're the reason we drove all the way from Toronto to come to come down and see them uh their show tonight in our hotel so we're neighbors whoever you are we're we're neighbors they're also Canadians so that's true come find me can you imagine if they're the room between us listening to us oh my god they have to hear us

like screaming for the next hour great they're gonna ask to be moved they like us we even put eve on a separate floor just to make sure she gets some time away um but yeah so whoever you are hello and sorry we didn't see you we're very oblivious um also let's talk about like um i mean we we haven't done one of these for a while so and also i see you all the time so i don't know how often we get to organically riff. But we should talk about the Webbys, man. Oh, my God. The Webbys just happened.

It was a whirlwind. It was so crazy. We did our first red carpet. We did the red carpet twice. Thank you to Lisa Lampanelli. Yeah, we were so bad at it the first time. We were so bad at it. We were so nervous.

We didn't know what we were doing. Apparently, supposed to be looking in a different same directions they kept saying like oh look at this camera look at this camera and we'd both look at different cameras and they were like you have to look at the same goddamn camera i can't be looking in different directions at least pictures yeah if you don't find any pictures of us on google it's because not a single time did we look at the same camera or if you find like blurry ones because we didn't know where when we were supposed to walk or i don't know but then lisa came and we did a little couple little talker for the future yes hopefully we do another red carpet someday we'll see maybe maybe we'll just go one by one next time so like we have all right true that's even scarier i don't know we'll see

but i want to i did want to say uh real quick like thank you to everybody who voted and like it was just such a cool experience and it's because you guys all voted so like we 100 have you to thanks for that um and yeah well okay fine 100 a thousand million percent a bajillion um a google percent if you will but what was i gonna say oh and then we posted some photos and everyone was so sweet and kind and i tried to respond to as many people as i could but i didn't get to respond to everybody on instagram and twitter but people were so kind and like supportive and calling us beautiful and handsome and we loved it so thank you guys for all the attention we do love it we do love the attention so you guys are super sweet so thank you and if i didn't get to respond to you i'm sorry i'm still working on it we uh we had oh do you want to tell

them about your kerfuffle with your dress i had a lot of kerfuffles i had a lot of uh wardrobe malfunctions in the last week well i only bring it up because so many people complimented your dress. I feel like you deserve the origin story. Sure. I purchased it an hour and a half before the event. Poor Renata had to, like, drag me around town because I did rent the runway, which I usually love. But unfortunately, I sized down. It was a risky move, and it didn't work.

And by the time the dresses arrived in Minneapolis, I was really sick. Ooh, sorry. I just smashed my head into a lamp uh everyone here is used uh yeah I uh by the time I was really sick and so I didn't get a chance to go shopping and then by the time we got to New York uh I tried on like 60 dresses nothing fit right I was basically at my wit's end and then Renata and I found the dress I wore the green dress I wore and thank the lord because that would have been real bad otherwise I uh I my suit was fine um just in case you looked very handsome uh it was a test for uh my relationship because I did not bring my suit with me. Oh, right. We have like a million other places to be before.

Like we have not been home since before Madison. Right. And so I didn't want to like have to carry a suit through several airports. And so I asked Allison to bring it. And I was nervous that something would go awry. Like either it would like get wrinkled like to a point of like no return i don't know that's what it was allison's fault i just had been separated from it for so long that i was worried something would happen yeah knowing us something

you know is bound to go wrong at some point so i was very uh very excited to wear my suit but i'm more excited i have not announced it on an episode. I've only announced it at live episodes. Oh, wait. Because we had the webbies, I was like, okay, well, I'm just going to go buy a suit because I've been to so many like weddings in the last couple months and or in the last year or so. And so it's, it's getting ridiculous to be renting suits at this point. So I'm just going to go buy one.

And then the deal that was going on that day when i came in and said i want to buy a suit i guess it the way it broke down was basically only for an extra 80 dollars you could get a whole custom suit basically which um i know it doesn't really make a lot of sense but in in the most basic structure of it that is the deal that i was given and i was like well hell yeah i went to take it and so uh they were asking me like what kind of suit I wanted and I was like I don't know I've never worn like I've worn suits but I don't know I don't know how to custom one customize one and they asked well who are people I look up to that wear suits because maybe I could like match their kind of suit

and I wasn't thinking about them in a suit i was just thinking about like male role models in general and i was like well captain america and then he the guy that was helping me was like oh well we can just make a custom captain america suit oh okay i mean come on that's like that sounds like a great 80 deal um for real though and unfortunately it is not a captain america avengers suit it is just a navy suit with a lot of really shiny red on the inside. So don't get too excited, but it is still very cool. I also made it very clear because obviously it's a mainly red, white, and blue suit. Oh, right.

It's going to look like only a basic navy suit until I i should like flash the inside of it to people and m is gonna flash you still so don't worry i surely will and uh uh he the people who are checking out checking me out at the register were like oh wow you're really patriotic and i was like no no no no captain america not like general america general there it is m's a lot of things but the first and foremost m's a patriot that's what i always say i'm i'm colonel america colonel america um yeah uh i'm very excited for that yeah and then we we had the webbies we just left the city this morning yeah and now we're in a hotel trying to tell you stories. Yeah, so we're going to actually do that.

I promise. Oh, I did. I didn't really get to, like, talk about this or share this. But the webbies were doing this, like, wear your cause thing. And so I got to wear this cool. I bought this pin. I typed in help dogs and cats pin on the internet. cool i bought this pin i typed in help dogs and cats pin on the internet and i found uh like a a uh what you might call it a shop don't shop adopt adopt don't shop jesus what is wrong with

me a lot um adopt don't shop pin and i got to wear that on my dress which was kind of cool and uh yeah so it was really neat we saw jenny slate it was super fun i was one degree away from three different avengers that's right my mom uh who is in love with michael douglas realized that she was sitting five feet away from him the entire night yep renata also the loss her goddamn mind and started talking about her keeps talking about her boyfriend now so she and linda need to fight it like hunger game style fight it out i told I told Neil deGrasse Tyson I love him. Oh, perfect. A lot of good things came out of that.

A lot of good things happened. Also, I was in the same room as Sean Evans, who is the host of Hot Ones. That's right. You did get very excited about that. Boy, howdy, I would give anything to be on that show. Boy, howdy. I remember in his speech, Adam Richmanman who was also a hero of mine from Man vs Food oh right yeah he introduced Sean Evans and said something along the lines of like

if you really want to see a good episode you should see the one where this comedian like poops his pants because they're so hot and I remember whispering to myself I would give anything to poop my pants to be on that show oh oh you whispered it but it was not quiet enough for the whole table not to hear don't you worry thank god linda was at the table so like i didn't think god bernie schieffer was at the table one day guys i'm gonna vision board that immediately the pooping part especially that if i walk out of there and did not poop my pants it's gonna be a bad day oh my god yeah it was a it was a good time I know the the hot ones is definitely on your vision board for sure I'm not good at super spicy so I'll just watch probably um I'll hate I'll hate it but I'll love it but

we'll we'll all love it for sure um and one last thing speaking before we start speaking of wardrobe malfunctions I want to uh issue an official apology to the city of Madison, Wisconsin, whom I apparently camel-toed aggressively on the first night of our show. I think it was Madison, either Minneapolis or Madison. I think it was Madison. To be fair, I did not know that this was happening. You told me later that this was the situation. If you had known, Em, I would have kicked you in the face because you didn't say anything. But apparently at the end, we were standing and talking.

And poor Eva, the next day, like 10 minutes before we were supposed to leave for the venue, I was like, hey, so this is a little awkward. And I'm like, she's quitting. Eva's leaving us. Like my first thought was just, and it's like this long paragraph. And I was like oh god but then i burst out laughing because it was like you had kind of a camel toe last night and i didn't know if i should tell you but she decided to tell me in case i wore the same fucking leggings

the perks of being our assistant like she had no idea going into our this job that she would have to warn us of camel toe how sad for for her um and i felt really bad because she felt so uncomfortable and i was like i appreciate you telling me it's you told you you know the fashion code you uh warned me so anyway i want to apologize to madison for showing my parts to you unfortunately you also do it pretty freely on facebook live but that's fine that's right i've already shown that the upper parts accidentally in our swimming pool facebook live that was an incident to be remembered so i'm kind of spreading the wealth here from top to bottom from top to bottom so i want to apologize for that thank god no uh parts were

shown at the webbies on the red carpet yet knock on wood meanwhile i'm always aggressively clothed so if anyone's thinking they're gonna get anything out of me no sir no ma'am oh man well we'll see we'll see i don't jinx it fingers crossed you are gonna flash everyone in your captain america suit so you betcha for sure okay. Well, I guess we tell stories now? Is that what we do? I forgot after all this time. It really feels like a million years. The day we start recording again in your studio, I'm going to

not even know how to act. We're going to get lost on the way there. I don't even remember what your house looks like anymore. Who's Gio? Oh, oh. Too far. Too far. Too far. Meanwhile... Oh, sorry. too far, too far, too far. Meanwhile. Oh, sorry.

I actually found a picture of him earlier that I'll send you. I, I got emotional earlier. Okay. I like how you have to send it to me. I'm like, I'm sure pretty sure I probably have it already, but thank you.

You can send it to me. We're all going to have a good time together. Okay. So this is, I'm covering again again a live show story me too that we from a show that the recording did not our voices did not get recorded accurately so that story kind of falls to the wayside and gets essentially scrapped unless we are going to report it over again so right here's my second we don't want the story lost to the ages.

Right, right. We want other people beyond the years that were present to enjoy this. So this is my story from Cleveland. Ooh, is it bad that I'm doing my Cleveland story too? Oh, I don't know. I guess not. Okay. Well, if you were in Cleveland, I apologize.

I'm just really fucking amped about my Cleveland story um I like I like my story too okay cool well what are the odds of that all right well I guess we're both well there have been there have been times uh fun fact behind the scenes where I'm like oh man I don't know how I feel about this story hopefully they like it and then they do most of the time hopefully people are lying but they're clapping for my camel toe it's very distracting oh good yeah if this story sounds bad just show your camel toe on instagram or something so they can uh happily happily okay yeah you'll take one for the team so uh this is it's um from Lorain County Ohio which apparently is near Cleveland. Okay. At least enough

people in the audience clapped as if they knew what I was talking about, so good for you. Oh, this is the show Jim Harreld was at, by the way, you guys. Yes. Our fucking hero. Our hero, the guy that is the reason we even have paranormal stories in the show. Exactly. Like, Em and I were both on

his show before, well, I was on it before we even started a podcast, and then you were on it later but like oh my god he's our hero so he came to the show and we were very honored but anyway sorry go ahead no no that's important to mention he was such a doll such a such a doll jim harold the living doll so uh don't you dare also shout out if you want to go listen to his show it's uh jim harrell's campfire oh right he actually has a lot of shows but um the one we fell in love with yes is the campfire right um so here we go so this is the story of the gore orphanage oh shit okay okay so i already forgot about it. Yeah, right. It sounds

good already when you say Gore Orphanage. It does! Sounds like a bad horror movie title. I don't know why they don't call it Gore Orphanage, but... Well, we do now. Well, we officially will. So Gore Orphanage was originally called

Swift Mansion. It's coming back to me now okay so um in 1817 oh okay so i'm trying to i did these notes when i was like very like on top of it with this story and now i'm going to try to piece it together for everyone so that'll be fun okay great super fun gore orphanage was originally called the swift mansion and then apparently that's something that not a lot of people know because the phrase Gore Orphanage has just become so overwhelmingly known that nobody even calls it Swift Mansion anymore.

So in 1817, it started as Swift Mansion because Joseph Swift was deeded 150 acres of land for fighting in the war of 1812 and so he got all of this land and he named the land swift's hollow he's a patriot like you oh he's a lieutenant america so he doesn't really you know doesn't meet with the colonel but you're no yeah he's no colonel um so he was given 150 acres he called all of it swift's hollow and then he wanted to build a giant house on on swift's hollow which would be swift mansion so sure sure sure sure sure sure sure sure oh can you hear that that was the sound of my air conditioning turning on is that what that was okay sorry let me try to turn it off

i guess this really isn't that much different from recording at home, just like sounds cropping up everywhere. I don't think there's a button. Oh, wait. Hang on. Let me hang up here. Oh, my God. Okay. Sorry.

I don't know if we're keeping that in, but. Oh, sure. Why not? We're people just like you. We have to turn off the air conditioning manually and we don't know how so so uh where was i oh yeah so he's gonna build swift mansion on swift hollow okay um the giant house on the property cost uh five thousand dollars and that was in 1817 oh boy now boy. Now it costs $80,000.

Oh, okay. And he wanted to call the building Rosedale. That was like his name for it, but everyone called it Swift Mansion, so like he didn't even get that. Sad. So the official name is Rosedale, but everyone just knew it as Swift Mansion

because it was sitting on Swift's Hollow. Okay. It's like when people try to give themselves a nickname and it just doesn't stick. If we have to talk about that a billionth time, I've had so many people in my life be like, um, I go by this now, but like in a way where... It's usually me.

I have a new name. I mean, at this point, didn't we talk about our screen names or something? Oh, probably. Yeah. Obviously, if you, like, our screen names or something? Oh, probably. Yeah. Fucking probably. Obviously, if you're, like, if there's a very necessary need to remind people of your new name that you're going by, obviously that's different from what we're talking about. Right. It's like, I had, I don't even know if I want to say it because I don't know if they're going to listen.

But someone had a, someone decided to nickname themselves something very stupid when I was in high school. And I don't want to say it because I'm afraid that they might listen. I had the same thing happen and I was just debating whether or not to say it out loud. And then, and they were like, oh no, I go by this now. And we were like, no, you don't. No, you don't. And, and, but yeah yeah so i'm just gonna keep it as vague as possible and i'm keeping it vague because i just realized that a lot of people from

my high school listen to the show and i've definitely talked trash about many of them now i'm very nervous um one of them has recently instagrammed me and was like hey just so you know i've changed since i was 16 and i was like okay well oh oh oh make an enemy make an m m means m and m and m enemies oh great anyway um so whoops uh someone gave me a microphone and let me say my opinions about when i was in high school and it no surprise there it shat all over me so my bad trying to keep things vague now so yeah so the building was called Rosedale um but everyone called it Swift Mansion and it was at the time Ohio's most elaborate mansion even though it only cost $80,000 today which I not to sound like I don't want to sound elitist but I just assume when I hear mansion I think it's like millions of

dollars I was definitely expecting a higher price point yes so it has two front rooms it has six fireplaces uh a basement kitchen oh that's pretty fancy and then all right it had marble columns shipped from new york by boat and ox cart okay those poor oxes really can you imagine being an ox and being like, my fucking job today is to literally walk a marble column uphill. Like, through the nation. It's like, like a, why can't I think of it? Oregon Trail. Like Oregon Trail, but

so much worse and less fun. Except maybe you live at the end. Well, I guess that's true. You don't die of dysentery. So, eventually, Swiss Hollow, which is the live at the end well i guess that's true you don't die of dysentery so uh eventually swift's hollow which is the land um became known in town as swift's folly because uh the land was supposedly cursed because uh the family had a lot of bad luck huh for example in 1831 their daughter who was five uh did not survive her name and i'm saying this because it's important

later but the daughter's name was trifenia oh my which i've never heard and no me neither not even like old timey no it doesn't even sound it doesn't even sound old or new timey or current um but my fenia what an odd name okay i like I'm trying to like get through this podcast and like T-R-Y. Fenia. T-R-Y-P-H-E-N-I-A. Oh, you're spelling it. Okay. Yes. It sounds like a disease. It does. So good for her, I guess.

Good for her. That was her name. Well, and then she died, right? Not so good for her. Oops, never mind. So in 1841, 10 years later, their son died. Oh. His name was not Herman, because I thought that might have been an autocorrect problem. Okay.

I called him H. Herman. I found out that it was not misspelled, and his name was He-Man. What the fuck? Trifedia and He-Man. I mean, I'm very sad that he died. I just, I'm not laughing at him. I'm just laughing. That name is so wild.

You know, he is someone who deserves to give himself a nickname. Yes. I would respect that decision. However, I would never accept a nickname because I would just want to say heat man as often as possible truly so in the 1860s another bit of bad luck is that they had several financial issues and they ended up having to sell the mansion sad so when his kids died there are rumors that the kids were buried on the property an unchristian like burial process oh god forbid to quote appease the dark lord what so apparently they were buried in an unchristian like way okay so here's a quote they were buried straight up and down not lying flat as a burial would hell no and so for that they the reasoning is oh they must haunt the area now because they

did not have proper burials that is by the way terrifying whether it's for satan or christian or whatever the hell but do you imagine if you like dug up a body and it was just standing up perfectly straight that's horrifying to me or upside down if you just saw feet oh no no no no no no so uh so they think like okay well they weren't buried properly so they haunt the area but there is an argument that the swift children were not buried on the property they were buried on andrews cemetery which i guess is nearby so there are some records that indicate they're not actually on the property so that would not be an accurate rumor plus if the kids were buried standing up it is still technically christian as long as they're buried facing east

oh my what i've never even heard about this apparently it's like a technicality but i guess if like during the second coming as long as you're facing east so you can see jesus that you're fine because jesus is just east because he's just hanging out over he's over there somewhere but god forbid you're upside down jesus is going to get confused jesus is not going to be able to find you if uh so if they were buried standing up as long as they were facing the right way it doesn't matter it was still talking to be a proper burial so regardless of where they're buried it's just the argument of like just because they're standing up underground doesn't mean that they're they're not like sat just the argument of like just because they're standing up underground

doesn't mean that they're they're not like satan worshippers or something right okay um although it does seem like a much trickier hole to dig i think it's just well that's the other thing you have to go way deeper and then like keep testing out you'd have to keep measuring out whether or not they fit and then pull them back out and then dig again do you think that's why people are buried lying down just because it was so much more convenient to bury them? I would think so. I mean, I can't imagine that it would be logical to anyone to bury someone upside

down. Cause if you had to do like a two foot wide hole, but like six feet long, like that eventually you truly like the, the physics of getting a shovel to, you can't bend a shovel. It would just not work. It makes no sense.

So they sold the mansion due to money problems it ended up being sold to a guy named nicholas and his wife harriet and what on earth i'm sorry someone outside is vacuuming that sounded like a death that sounded truly like i heard a little girl screaming for her it sounds like screaming oh no i don't know what to do that That's the next whale noise, man. Oh, God, you're right. Never again. People are going to be like, wow, you really edited that in perfectly. I should go out and be like,

excuse me, I'm recording a podcast and I need you to please be quiet and stop doing your job. Do you fucking mind? Okay, so they've sold the mansion to a guy named Nicholasolas and his wife harriet and harriet's last name is kellogg i tried very hard to find out if she was related to the kellogg

family oh yeah um of course my first question she may be related i think there were like some signs that indicated she was related to them because the her ancestors names did match with people on the Kellogg farm or on the Kellogg family tree. OK. And she did have a Kellogg farm, but it wasn't in Wisconsin where apparently her family's from. So I tried to figure it out. Who's to say? Except I'm going to decide that you were going to say because it just makes it more fun. It makes it fun.

So the house developed... Oh, and now he's by my fucking room. I was going to say, I don't know how it's not happening. You're like only a few doors down from me. You'll start hearing a little girl screaming in a second. Hang on. What if I went outside and said, actually, can you move five rooms that way to make sure that

someone else gets to hear this? Oh, do you hear it oh i hear it yep there she goes eating her cereal on the kellogg farm so screaming upside down in her grave horrifying a little child buried upside down eating cereal we're gonna be sued by somebody for sure please don't sue us we don't know what we're talking about please don't the house developed an even creepier reputation because the wilbers so nicholas and his wife harriet they were spiritualists which at the time in the 1800s was very common because seances were becoming a big thing so being a spiritualist in the 1800s was kind of like just a well-known like you just walked past them all the time and everyone was open with it um so the house developed an even

creepier reputation because they were spiritualists but rumors spread that one of the 14 rooms in this house was used entirely for seances which came in handy because um apparently they basically the house was officially considered haunted after the wilbur's also lived there because not only did the swiss children die but then the wilbur's grandchildren began dying oh no so all these kids are dying and the wilbur's happen to be spiritualists and allegedly had a seance room and so when their grandchildren were dying from uh diphtheria they one was 11 one was nine and then there were two twin year olds uh two twins two year olds yeah twin two year olds 20 year olds and they died too yeah so there was four of them oh no so they all died diphtheria some believe that they died in the mansion while their

grandparents were taking care of them when they were sick but so the wilbur's had their seance room so they used to talk to their grandkids allegedly so after the swifts having their kids die and then possibly be buried upside down eating cornflakes on the property um and then and then the wilbur grandchildren dying and eating cereal in their graves apparently like they there's like if the stories are accurate that's like six children on the property terrifying okay but the argument to that is that um if all the records for them and the swift family are correct then instead of six kids being buried on the property none of them are they probably didn't die of the feria either because that hadn't started spreading into the area it didn't it

wouldn't start spreading into the area for another 20 years so when people say like oh yeah they died of that it just doesn't really make sense because it wasn't very common in this right area yet and there are records of those kids being buried at maple grove cemetery so there's a chance that they are also not on the property. So, so far, all of these are just rumors based on the fact that it's a creepy house and people have died that the people that they were related to. So in 1895, the Wilbur family sold the house

and then they ended up selling it to the Sutton family. And before it got sold to the Sutton family, it was vacant for a little bit and got an even bigger reputation for being haunted. Because if the stories were right, if people are ignoring the fact that these are rumors and treating them like they're facts, Which is what we do.

then there are at least six. Right. I mean, especially on That's Why We Drink. If we're totally neglecting logic, the stories suggest that there are now like six neglected children's graves on the property two of which are like standing up but then the Sutton family moved in they said nothing was weird when they lived there um then they ended up moving for different reasons so either they nicknamed it the haunted house of gore before they moved away

or what happened uh was because they left so quickly people assumed something bad happened and so they nicknamed it uh the haunted house of gore okay because they ran away so they were like oh it must be a whore house yeah like it's not it sounded like you just said whore house what if what maybe it was who knows uh my aunt in new york um one time i was trying to tell her that i like watching horror movies but it sounded like horror to her and so she's like what kind of fucking movies do you like because she's from new york so she's used to hearing like horror specific the the syllables are separate. Horror. Exactly. So anyway, so just to recap, that was in

1895, so the Wilbur family, the house was vacant for a while and then the Sutton family moved in and then when they moved, that's when it became the haunted house of gore. So it has now been the Swift Mansion and now the haunted house House of Gorsh

in 1902 it was bought by Reverend Sprunger which sounds like Springer in my head so I keep wanting to say it's bought by Jerry Springer wait the whorehouse was bought by Jerry Springer wait a minute I think we just

it's his next reality show or his next talk show Jerry Springer's whorehouse wait a minute i think we just it's his next reality show or his next talk show jerry wait a minute yeah i mean i think that's just called jerry springer but yeah we can we can okay okay fair and also he's a reverend in this one so uh in 1902 he it was bought by reverend sprunger not springer and his and i do want to say at this point um first of all that i'm hot and i'm going to take my sweatshirt off so hang on a second all this talk about whorehouses is getting you heated speaking of whorehouses i'm getting all hot okay so um so at this point i want to address that apparently for people who are aware of this urban legend the uh main character usually in the urban legend of this of this house and the folklore behind it is that the bad guy that lives

around here is called old man gore and apparently this that was reverend sprunger so the original name for old man gore was reverend sprung, who later in folklore becomes Old Man Gort. Got it. Okay. So Reverend Sprunger and his wife buy the house from the Suttons, and they wanted to build a self-sustaining religious commune. Oh, that's always a good sign. Love it. Love a good commune. So Reverend Sprunger, which I literally wrote wrote as spranger in my next bullet so the

freudian slips are real um so reverend sprunger like i said also called old man gore today um him and his wife uh had started a missionary called the light and hope missionary society and so when they bought this and they wanted to make it a religious commune, they named the building itself the Orphanage of Light and Hope. So that's where people started seeing the word orphanage on the property. It sounds uplifting. It sounds more uplifting than

the Haunted House of Gore. Just a little bit. Or the Whore Gore or whatever it was. Whore Gore. So they also bought the neighboring farms around the property um to just build to have like this mass accumulated amount of acres and then they also ran a print shop there just as a hobby and uh so it became 500 acres and the children were living on the neighboring farmland but the workers lived at

the old swift mansion so again i want to pause and a lot of people think that this building itself because it's called gore orphanage they think that the building i've been talking about gore orphanage is actually the orphanage but it was actually where the employees of the orphanage lived, and the orphanage was on neighboring farmland. Got it. Okay. Just so people are factual in their urban folklores. You gotta be. You gotta be. And then the print shop that they had,

because this whole area was either an orphanage or orphanage adjacent if you will they made the the uh print shop they used to actually make yearbooks for the kids which was pretty cool yearbooks very nice so their hobby became useful okay that's kind of cute so it's cute no and uh 19 in 1910 the census showed that on the property there were 45 people living there including 27 kids and 15 employees and at some point they had a goal of getting up to 125 children there at one time so apparently the property is big enough to hold that many kids okay so this is where it gets kind of bananas because um the folklore or the the stories that people now tell about the area are split between um reality and fiction at this

point so everything i've said so far is true um but the real story of what happens next has been switched in today's stories into a totally different story. So I'm going to give the real version of what happened first. And then I'm going to tell you what people say happened on this property. Oh, okay. So like the legend later. Yeah. I'm going to give you the facts first and then the legend. Okay.

Bring it on. We're calling this Fiction in Fact by m's almanac is what we're going to call it okay that's popping into my head that's what you're going to call it i'm going to call it something entirely different but go ahead fiction in fact with m's almanac so we're going to start with the facts god damn it so the real scenario of what happened is that there were three scandals that all happened at the same time on this property. So, which is a scandal on its own, I think, to have three mini scandals. That's the ultimate scandal. It's called Jerry Springer's Whorehouse.

We know this already. Scandal, scandal, scandal. That's the name of all of the ladies that live there. Triple scandal. So the scandal one is that a diary was found on the property of an employee, and in the diary it was revealed that Reverend Sprunger and his wife were cousins

or siblings. Uh-oh. So, one is much worse than the other, but they're both pretty bad, and they are very on brand with a Reverend Jerry Sprunger house. Yes, I think this is all falling into place in the almanac.

So far the aesthetic is at 100%. So scandal two is that there were apparently the Sprungers had multiple prior businesses in different parts of the country and all

of them had burned down. Uh oh. So this could be like a fraud an insurance fraud kind of thing or they could all just happen to be accidents but they do seem to have a track record of having businesses that are failing and then they burn them down. That's not a good sign. One of which

happened in Indiana and was an orphanage where three kids had died. Oh shit. So it was revealed that they had had One of which happened in Indiana and was an orphanage where three kids had died. Oh, shit. So it was revealed that they had had orphanages prior to this that were not successful and led to fatalities. Uh-oh. So, Scandal 3. All this happened in 1909, but I'm only mentioning that now because this is the one that was, like, headlining in newspapers in the area at the time so um this is confirmed by 1909 newspapers in the area scandal three is that some of the children from the orphanage ran away and told people what was happening on the property

oh so it's not great what's gonna what's gonna come out my mouth next yeah i don't feel good about this chapter of the almanac the almanac we're gonna close that lock it seal it throw it in the ocean set it on fire first right uh so so the kids this is some of the things that the kids were going through on the property their meals were made of leftover parts from slaughtered cows or pigs oh god and now you can react to that did you not hear me react to that no oh shit oh i did react wait react now react now oh shit there you go just go i'm so worried about the audio okay i went oh no all i heard was silence but um i wonder which part they'll hear because either the audience is going to hear you go oh no all i heard was silence but um i wonder which part they'll hear because either

the audience is going to hear you go oh no or they're going to hear me go okay react i know or they're going to hear both and be like okay that wasn't enough of a reaction from christine it's like okay 120 episodes in i'm getting needy i'm gonna need you to start really showing it and conveying your emotions you need affirmations i'm sorry to need you to start really showing it and conveying your emotions. You need affirmations. I'm sorry. Your oh no is not enough. Let me see. Oh yeah.

So they were forced to eat leftover parts of a slaughtered cow and or pigs. Some of the kids have testified that they were forced to eat a dead cow in the pasture as punishment for not caring for it properly. And we're talking like a brand new dead cow in the pasture as punishment for not caring for it properly. And we're talking like a brand new dead cow. Like still has its spot on its face. Did you say still has spots? Cows have spots. I know, but I didn't even think about that. And that's so horrifying.

Yeah, it's like a just fell over cow. Like the fur is still on it or whatever they have. And what the fuck? Were they they just like here's a fork yep basically or here just bite down fucking horrifying um and then another thing

many of them said happened was that they had to eat vegetables that were boiled in soiled underwear as punishment if they wet the bed oh my god which like the first time uh i told you this live all i said was they had to eat vegetables and you were like oh god forbid but then it got but then it got bad then it got actually really bad i had that thought to say at the same time as you said they ate a raw cow with spots. And then you said, and then they had to eat vegetables.

And I was like, oh, God forbid. Well, this time they had to eat vegetables, except they're literally boiling with, like, poopy underwear and pee underwear. That is. Which is so intentional. Like, that's like. That's what I was thinking. It's like, it's not like, hmm. It's not like a quick reaction. It's like a well thought out fucked up plan yes exactly so uh the rooms also are infested with rats so um in the winter they the rats would get cold and

climb into the children's beds and the kids would like get into bed and put their feet under the blankets and then the rats would bite them so that's awful um then there was uh apparently only one bathtub and all of the kids could only bathe twice a month each and the water was never ever ever changed so you get dirtier if you take a bath basically if there was 20 i think it was like 25 kids there and it had never been changed and like i don't even remember how long this place has been open at least seven years and it's never been changed

that's truly horrific truly horrific also because it only gets worse of course there were the kids were beaten obviously at this point right

they were rented out to farmers for outside work and they were The kids were beaten, obviously, at this point. Right. They were rented out to farmers for outside work, and they were not given any schooling. The kids were, I'm sorry that I have to say this out loud, but they were whipped until their skin looked like ground meat. Oh. No. meat oh no and uh they were not given any medical treatments except the power of prayer well that's all you need in jerry springer's whorehouse god well everyone does need a little jesus on jerry springer i guess that is fair but holy shit that's the worst thing you've ever said i well i'm sorry uh it has been heavily suggested that some of the orphans probably died on the property from this torture i also agree

with that oh wow heavily suggested yeah more like agreed upon um and then in 1909 they did do an investigation after this story came out but because it was so early on and it basically Ohio had no laws or regulations concerning this type of institution. So their hands were effectively tied. So all they could do was take away Reverend Sprunger's license. But because the kids were already orphans and had nowhere to go and there was no foster system they stayed on the property no so that being said a slightly great thing happens um where women in town said fuck that and uh they said if nothing could legally be done then they would handle it themselves and they all got together and rallied the troops and all of the women in the nearby town

built underground tunnels for the kids to escape oh my god they built literal underground tunnels literal underground tunnels holy shit and they told the kids how i don't know how they must have slipped a note or something but uh somehow got to the kids how to escape and how to get to the neighboring town and that if there was any house with a light on at night, it meant that their door was always open. Oh, my God. So women are awesome. So women are awesome. Yeah, what a shocker. I wish I were surprised that they were the only ones who did anything,

but here we are. I know. It's amazing that women get anything done, except they get everything done. They like run the whole house and then dig some tunnels also at night. Exactly. Let me do the dishes and cater to your every whim. Oh, and also save the world.

Also hold on. So Reverend Sprunger died three years later and then the orphanage closed four years later. So there were still kids on this property for another seven years, but hopefully it got better. Hopefully. So sadly, all of that was the real scenario, the facts of my almanac, if you will. The facts of the knack. The facts of the knack the facts of the knack and so now i'm going to tell you the fiction which is the story that most people hear today the fiction of the diction now oh my goodness wait a minute the fic of the dick and the fact of the knack

the fic of the pic of the dick oh my goodness pic of the dick. Oh my goodness. The fic of the dick pic, yes. That is Jerry Springer. That is Jerry Springer. Wait a minute. How have we done this? I have no idea. So this is the legend that has kind of, through the game of telephone and over time, been turned into. So this is what people think actually happened on the property.

Got it. And turned into. So this is what people think actually happened on the property. Got it. So definitely has been inspired by actual events. That the story goes that Reverend Sprunger hated children. Well. That's so far as accurate as can be.

That's still in the net. There are stories that he killed many of the children. And buried them on the property. Apparently, a lot of people think one night Reverend Sprunger just lit a match and locked everyone inside and killed all of the children in a fire. Another version is that one of the kids accidentally knocked over a lantern and the fire spread all over the property. But basically, the story that people hear these days is that an orphanage caught on fire and every child died. Oh, fuck. Okay.

So no real better than the previous story. Right. I guess not. This story, although it's not true about this property, was probably inspired by an actual story that did happen in a town nearby only a couple years later um so in 1908 there was a school fire in the town of collinwood where in real life 172 children died oh no that's shit. The newspaper headline was 175 little tots are devoured by hungry flames. Oh,

fuck. So, that happens elsewhere in the world, but because it was in a town nearby around the same year, I think people combined the stories or used it for inspiration to make a different fucked up story for this property and that's how people now think a fire happened here that makes sense

but uh just to like lay down some groundwork on how realistic that story is there were some fires on the property but none of them ended in any fatalities. And there is actually no record of any orphanage in the County ever catching on fire. So just kind of proof that this fire story is not accurate. Got it. That being said, the property was bought by investors and in 1923, it did catch on fire,

but nobody was inside. It probably happened from squatters. Oh, interesting. And then in 1992, it was bought by the Metro Parks. And in 2015, there was even a horror movie called Gore Orphanage starring Maria Olsen, who is from Percy Jackson, apparently. Oh, okay. Wait, what's it called?

What's the movie called? Gore Orphanage. I want to Google it. Gore Orphanage. Movie. Movie. Let's see what it has on a rotten tomato oh it has a 5.1 on imdb but on some it has a 2.5 out of 5 on something called dread central oh my god which i assume is like a horror movie review site sure anyway it looks very creepy so well it's based off this so uh the remains of this mansion uh there are still a few remains left so there's a foundation

uh columns bricks an old gate and uh like i said it is mistaken for the actual orphanage even though it's just the property of the orphanage where the employees lived. The orphanage itself was a quarter mile away over something called Crybaby Bridge. Oh. Okay. Which is equally haunted, apparently. Oh, okay. I believe it. So Crybaby Bridge connects the land between the actual orphanage and the land that Swift Mansion sits on that people think is the orphanage.

Okay, okay. So that all being said, here are now the ghosts. Yay, but not yay because they're probably children. They certainly are. Why certainly? Shut up. Why certainly? why certainly so um okay so there are shadow figures of kids running and playing in the woods there they are there are uh sometimes apparitions of children on fire yelling help me

that does not check out for me um there are the smell of smoke and burning flesh super and people see bright lights weaving through the woods as if their spirits are playing okay sometimes people see a shadow figure of a man lurking in the back who they think is old van gore slash rovin springer and if you take anything from the property it apparently brings bad luck until you return it yeah don't do that guys i'll tell you right now from fiction fact from m's almanac do not steal anything from the property don't from any property from any property uh this is super creepy people find tiny handprints all over their cars when they walk back to their car at the end of the no no that's foul they're like

all trying to get in right like bang bang bang some say that their cars get physically pushed away from the property as if the kids are trying to save you. Wait, that just got really sad. It did. Sorry. I should have known. The bridge, Crybaby Bridge, is also known to host occult rituals, including blood sacrifices. Cute.

And let's see. Apparently if you turn your car off on the bridge, you will hear children screaming. Great. Super. Super. You can hear footsteps, screams, laughter, children singing nursery rhymes. No, thanks.

Fuck no. And the worst thing I've ever heard. Apparently, there are tiny bloody footprints that are seen in the snow oh no in the snow oh forget it but also don't like walk any like they don't end up anywhere and they don't start from anywhere they just show up in the middle of the snow that is just horrifying apparently there are also apparitions of children climbing trees which I hate that means they're taller than me and they can land on me

they're like birds they're like little monkeys there's apparently an EVP of a child saying the name Tryphenia which is the name that I mentioned all the way in the beginning which is the daughters and so that's why i brought it up earlier because like it's such a random name like

it has to be her so specific yeah there's also a photo of a little girl hiding behind a tree no thanks absolutely not and then uh even before cars people were driving their buggies all the way over here to their horse and buggy to see, quote, old man gore. Because apparently back then, before there was this rumor of children dying by fire, there was still some sort of urban legend about old man gore. And he would apparently chase you with an axe oh my god oh my god so people didn't have cars but they would like put their buggies in park and then wait for someone to chase them with it scarier because you can't like lock the door you know yeah you can't roll up a window exactly you just have to like be right there be prepared. To be slashed with an axe. Yeah, exactly.

Apparently you can hear crackling of fire. You can hear children crying. And you can see apparitions of tombstones glowing. Okay. Not something I want to see. No, thanks. Some people have filmed shadows and mists running past them or through the trees. And apparently you can hear doors slamming even though there are no doors there anymore.

Oh, that actually is kind of weird. There's a shadow figure of a man that is known to chase you out of the woods. Yay! Yikes. And apparently people can't breathe and only then can you hear the sounds of pitter-pattering feet following you from behind. The bloody footprints. The bloody footprints. You can hear a deep

voice calling your name and apparently there are also time loops. So if you're there for only a couple seconds or if you feel like you've been there for a couple seconds, you've actually been there for several hours. That is super creepy. There is also a communal nightmare that people have

reported where they have all said they've gone there and then had this nightmare. So if you go there you might have this nightmare of a man surrounded by children and then you're able to walk through him and then you fall straight into a pit of fire

it's a communal nightmare like everybody has this apparently more than one person has had this dream where they see this man fall into a pit of fire and then there's like children screaming or something around you i want nothing to do with that so uh two fun facts that i will leave you with uh one is that the most common thing that happens there that's ghostly is that people say they hear the sounds of children screaming that's the most common haunt okay and uh they enough investigators have actually come out and figured out why people are hearing children screaming so they've been able to debunk it and they say it's actually you can't see it from the property but you're very close to a nearby highway oh and so the high-pitched hum of traffic on the highway plus the wind makes the sound of children

screaming you're kidding oh my god so when they're combined together it sounds like kids screaming but you wouldn't know how close you are to a highway unless you really started digging around can you imagine if you lived somewhere nearby and that was just kind of like the sound when you open your windows all the time imagine like being friends with someone who lived there and having your first sleep over there good point and then being like i'm not fucking ever going back and then they're like no it's just the wind and you're like fuck off they're like that sound always happens at night what the fuck so um okay so the last fun fact i have is uh why it's actually called gore orphanage like how the hell that name showed up because a lot of people think oh it must

be because of the gory story of the orphanage but um but then keep in mind like the building i've been talking about isn't even the gore orphanage so anyway some background on its actual name um gore orphanage quote gore orphanage isn't actually the name of any building on the property gore orphanage is actually the name of the road that the property sits on so the it's actually called gore orphanage road which uh it originally back when it was swift mansion all those years ago the road was called baldwin road so the very beginning of this property, it was Baldwin Road and Swift Mansion sat on the property of Baldwin Road. But then the way that Gore Orphanage, the way that Baldwin Road got changed to be renamed Gore Orphanage Road was because apparently Gore has nothing to do with Gore-y. Gore actually comes from a map or a topo like topological topological math world um mapish it's a it's a uh a property term so a gore is actually a wedge-shaped piece

of land that uh was not originally on a map but in new updated versions has been added to a map okay interesting i did not know that so apparently this property near baldwin road had never actually been put on a map until recent years so it was turned into this this gore this wedge shaped piece of land this gore was now put on the map so they changed it from baldwin road to gore road that's so weird but then but then the orphanage came and then all these urban legends started about what happened in the orphanage so then in honor of the kids that lived there they added orphanage to the name of the road so it went from baldwin road to gore road to gore orphanage road what an unfortunate uh coincidence i know they really missed out with Gorefenage.

Gorefenage, right? So close, yet so far. So it is technically Gore Orphanage Road, and the building itself is not called Gore Orphanage, although that's what people want to call it. The building itself is still technically called Swift Mansion. So that is the story of the gore orphanage okay okay okay very spooky ooky very spooky even with the like corrections and fun facts it's still like really

fucking creepy spooky ooky fiction in fact from m zominak okay perfect this is the thing that i hate the most but the one that i'm very excited to tell and i never thought i would tell it twice but here we are this is the cleveland torso murders done okay you want me to scream for you yeah no no don't offer it and then take it away i don't know i i didn't i don't want to um okay cool uh i'm going to tell you about the torso murder okay bird also known btw as the mad butcher of kingsbury run okay okay so it's in the 1930s um cleveland was a city on the rise i think i wrote that so that people in cleveland would get excited oh i'm sure uh and despite the great depression they were still kind of uh doing well cleveland was pretty successful city because of the steel and manufacturing industry

um but as the city was finally starting to get back on its feet after the great depression one of the most gruesome serial killers of all time started ravaging the streets of Cleveland, mostly targeting the homeless and transient population as well as sex workers. So, woof. Woof. It all started September 5th, 1934. A young man was walking along the shores of Lake Erie when he discovered a woman's body. And when I say body, i mean he discovered her lower torso oh shit just on the side of the road you know um cuyahoga county coroner aj pierce noted uh that

there was like a chemical preservative on her skin which had made it red and leathery i remember the red and leathery isn't that grotesque oh god unfortunately the rest of her body was never found uh she was dubbed the lady of the lake because she had washed up uh from the lake oh my god and uh she was never identified which is just really sad but she was estimated to be in her mid-30s okay uh which i guess they just deduced from her leathery torso which is horrifying to me yes and probably everyone i hope so okay so like i said the cleveland torso murder was also called mad butcher of kingsbury run um and that's because most of the subsequent murder victims after the lady of the lake were discovered in kingsbury run which according to

the internet is a ravine that runs uh diagonally through cleveland uh and it was kind of a like for lack of a better term like a sketchy area it was uh pretty dangerous especially at night they also called it the roaring third and it was home to bars brothels flop houses and gambling dens all my favorite places right it's where we hang out basically yeah that's where we met They also called it the Roaring Third, and it was home to bars, brothels, flop houses, and gambling dens. All my favorite places. Right. It's where we hang out, basically. Yeah, it's where we met, actually.

It is. Oh, my gosh, it is. How romantic. It's also where we do our live shows at the Funny Bone. Yeah. The flop house. Yep. Oh, great.

Now they're going to sue me for, like, defamation. I take it back. I'm going to let them. I'm going'm gonna let him let him do it uh let's see okay so i had a high population of out-of-towners um coming in on the trains to look for work as well as sex workers and homeless people uh and apparently me and m where we met uh so with that setting in mind a year after the lady on the lake was discovered two teenage boys were walking along the base of something in cleveland that i found called jackass hill oh which maybe is i was gonna say that's where we met never mind but that i guess

it is in the same area so yeah that's my home i'm a little troll that lives on Jackass Hill. That's your booty. Just vacuuming it all the time. And when I tried to Google Jackass Hill, because I was like, I need to know if this is a real place. It took me to something called deadohio.com, which I feel like is a website that maybe you should write down because it seems like it had a lot of creepy stories. Sounds like my jam. It does. It probably has the the gorfinage story on it um okay so they were walking along the base of jackass hill my home uh when they stumbled upon the body of a man who had been decapitated so there's some details actually that i didn't say in the live show that i'm going to add here oh great so oops sorry but it was a little too horrifying to tell jim harold as i looked into

his eyes right right right so i'm gonna say it's through uh through my ears then great right through the walls of this hotel yeah um so they stumbled upon the body of a man he had been decapitated and emasculated oh no they had taken off his junk uh and his body was naked except for a pair of socks through fingerprints investigators were able to identify the man as edward androssi who was a 28 year old man who frequented the roaring third and i'm not sure whether they found his head so who knows uh nearby police discovered a second body. It was a different man, but it was pretty close. He was also decapitated and also emasculated.

That's the right word, isn't it? Yeah. Okay. It at least makes incredible sense. They cut off his wee-wee. Yeah. For what you know. Oh, yeah.

We all know about that. we all know about that um he was also decapitated and by the way i should say that i believe oh gosh you know what i'm not gonna say now because i might be wrong i think uh they were killed by decapitation i'm pretty sure no which is just horrific first however the rest of the mutilation like the uh cutting off body parts and the torso and all that happened after death so like at least there's that it wasn't like a torture element right seemingly um but they were killed via decapitation. Yeah. Also another detail I think that I left out of the live show. Okay.

So their bodies were also covered with that same weird chemical preservative as the Lady of the Lake. And I wrote in here, I remember this. I wrote, tell them not to Google this because there are literal pictures of the bodies and torsos like on google images with no fucking warning um and like the red leathery skin like just be very careful don't do it at work unless your work is our work then you can google it right right right um i also okay let's So, right. So the mutilation happened after death, but they were killed via decapitation. Uh, so they used fingerprinting again and they were able to identify this body, um, as, Oh, I forgot. There's another body that I just skipped over.

Oh, well, yay. Okay. I think I literally did this in the show too. I get really too excited and then i get wrapped up in my own head oh good good so january 1936 a woman oh god i forgot about this a woman discovers two half bushel baskets left alongside the heart manufacturing building on central avenue she opens the baskets to find the body of a female neatly wrapped in newspaper into like split between the two baskets oh no like her newspaper into like split between the two baskets

oh no like her body parts are split between the two baskets and she had been neatly wrapped in newspaper and had also been decapitated and her head was not in either basket oh my god yeah horrifying oh my god um let's Okay. So fingerprinting allowed authorities to identify this body as a woman named Florence Polillo. Okay. And she was a waitress and sex worker who also lived in the Roaring Third. Okay. And a few months later, in June of 36, two young boys were walking through the park when they discovered the head of a man wrapped in a pair of pants. Okay. Can you imagine? You're like, oh, cool. A a pair of pants. Can you imagine?

You're like, oh, cool. A new pair of pants. Like, finally, bargain on the street. Bargain! And then a head rolls out. Oh, God. Pro tip, just don't pick stuff up off the... Pro tip, just don't do anything. Just stay in your house forever.

Just don't leave the house. And also, don't go shopping in the park for clothes. It's just a bad idea. So they found the head, which just, I'm sure they were traumatized for the rest of their lives, so that's great. And then the next day police found the body that belonged

to the head, and it had been dumped in front of the police station. So that is creepy um unfortunately the man couldn't be identified although they made like a plaster cast of the guy's head um and they made diagrams of his tattoos and then they fucking displayed them at the world fair that year which took place in cleveland that's like an exhibit as like a it's like a don't be this guy like a carnival exhibit basically okay like i thought i was reading and i was like oh okay they're going to like post a plaster cast to see if anyone can

identify him nope oh my they charge people to go look at it that's revolting. Isn't that horrifying? Cleveland, good job. Right. So then in July of 36, a teenage girl is walking through the woods. Don't do that either, guys. Guys. Come on, figure this out. When she finds the remains of a 40-year-old man decapitated and emasculated once again. Fuck.

Same MO. Jesus. The head is not there. Two months later in September, a man is trying to hop a train in Kingsbury Street when he trips over the upper half of a man's torso. I'm already clumsy. Imagine if I was. Oh, my God. That was a full body.

I just fell over. If we lived in Cleveland in the 30s, we'd be tripping all the time over all the body parts yeah laying around in pants and in baskets oh my god oh my god yeah so he's trying to jump on the train he just fucking falls on top of the torso just my nightmare um and then this guy was also in his late 20s and he was decapitated again same mo also emasculated uh at this point everyone like i said in cleveland is like losing their shit because people are basically tripping over dead body parts all the time and nobody knows who the killer is and the police can't figure it out and so there was this guy his name is elliot ness which is a i recognized the word and then everyone started

screaming it's a beer and i was like oh my god i've had that beer before oh really yeah i remember people screaming it's a beer how sad i was like he's so familiar as if like i had some history lesson where i learned that and then everyone's like no they named a beer after him and i'm like you just remember drinking him it's so sad but look it's good for something i guess um so this guy elliot ness was a beer and also he was the safety director uh and he was known for enforcing prohibition in chicago which is hilarious actually now that i think of it that they named a beer after him right like he doesn't deserve that at all maybe they were just like throwing in his face like oh right nice try you're right now he deserves it now he deserves it um now he's getting

you drunk haha um but he also helped bring down al capone which is kind of cool so he was like a big wig um and he was on this torso case uh they called a meeting between all these like coroners and experts and uh they called the meeting the torso clinic which like what the fuck is that about i don't know um okay cool so let's see so the police put detectives peter murillo martin zaluski on the case they uh basically started going around like pretending to be homeless people and like had like a bindle with a bag on a stick on like walking around pretending it was very like pathetic so they were trying to go undercover but they still couldn't figure anything out and then in february a man found the upper half of a woman's torso uh never identified and then a teenager discovered a skull so now it's

just happening like quickly and fast and it's almost like uh the person who's doing it knows that the police can't catch them okay um so let it up they interviewed oh yeah they interviewed more than 1500 people um all the while these bodies keep being found found um and it actually would be the biggest police investigation in cleveland history oh wow and um again more skeletal remains were found uh yada yada there's a couple more bodies so sorry i'm just gonna go through them here in july 1937 a member of the national guard was standing near a bridge when he saw the remains of a body floating in the river, also decapitated. In April 1938, a man discovered the remains of the next victim, which were wrapped up in burlap bags. Like, again, separated and put in two different bags.

and put in two different bags and then for the first time the coroner noticed drugs in this victim system but it wasn't they weren't sure if it was like if the killer had drugged the person or if the person had been on drugs before they were killed so essentially that didn't help them at all and then elliot ness kind of like lost his goddamn mind and snapped and on august 18th 1938 around midnight he and a group of 35 police officers raided kingsbury run and they basically went into the shantytowns gathered up every man they could find to interview and then they fucking set it on fire they just like oh good like sayonara they're like well none of these people are the murderer so but i'm still pissed off so just set all their homes on fire oh my god so like not good really bad um not good in the press not good for people and then um all the guy also all the men that they had interviewed who were displaced were then

charged with being homeless uh and arrested oh shit after they just burned all their shantytowns down it's horrifying anyway um but in july of 1939 uh the county sheriff finally made an arrest and it was 52 year old bohemian bricklayer frank dolezal and he knew both florence and the other victim uh who had been the other two victims that had been identified so they were like okay he knows both of them so he must be the guy he confessed but then later recanted his confession and said that he had been beaten into confessing and to prove that he had six broken ribs and the only person he had been with uh was the sheriff and so clearly we know what happened there uh his confession seemed very coached and uh all the detectives were kind of like okay we think maybe this isn't the right guy uh but then they found before they could do anything about it they found dolazal in his cell

he allegedly had died by suicide um by hanging himself but allegedly is the word i used because he was five foot eight inches tall but apparently had hanged himself from a bar that was five foot seven inches off the ground oh i remember you saying that yeah so it's like possible but it again is just very very fishy and so the sheriff was like nope that was him like quick case closed uh but most people most of the detectives even were like no we don't think that's the guy so there was another what's up the firm pass firm pass firm pass um but thanks for killing him that was a really shitty thing to do. So then they had one more suspect. His name was Dr. Francis Sweeney.

And in the 70s, so 40 years later, it was revealed that Elliot Ness had a secret suspect. And it was this guy, Dr. Sweeney, all along. So Sweeney was this doctor. So, again, it's kind of like, whatchamacallit, Black Dahlia, where a doctor would have the anatomical knowledge to cut up a body. Clearly there was some medical background in it. Yeah, exactly. And would know how to dispose of it and all that good stuff. His wife said he was abusive toward her and her children and that he would mysteriously disappear for days at a time.

Oh, shit. Shortly after the last murder dr sweeney actually checked himself into a psych hospital and the murder suddenly stopped uh so weird coincidence there in may 1938 nest secretly arrested sweeney and kept him in the old cleveland hotel for 14 days oh my apparently there were no miranda rights back then so he just kind of captured him fun fact did you see the last um gay of thrones with jonathan van ness no he calls them his the miranda lambert rights he said something like oh they didn't even read her her miranda lambert rights and i

i think i'm gonna just make that a thing that I do know. Wait, I really like that. I like it too. That's very clever. Anyway, sorry. I feel like I hadn't had any like any takeaways to throw in but the second I heard Miranda rights, I was like, I know something to mention. I appreciate it and I appreciate that it was lighthearted because

I feel like I'm just fucking dumping like dark depressing shit at you. Leave it to JVN. He always saves the day, man. Oh, love him. Love him. Right. So, this guy, like, captured...

Blah, blah, blah. Sorry. Elliot Ness, safety director guy. He captures Sweeney, the doctor, puts him in a hotel for 14 days. No Miranda Lambert rights. Right. And then he has him take a lie detector test from the man who created the polygraph and the man who created which by the

way is so cool i know i'm like no i feel like not a lot of people can probably say that uh so fun fact there um and so he took the polygraph test and the guy who created it was like uh yeah he's fucking guilty i if he's not guilty i might as well throw my machine out the window oh nice great great um however there's one slight hitch in the plan which is that dr sweeney was the cousin of a congressman with a lot of sway and so he was released and was not allowed to be arrested anymore so oh shit okay so super duper for that and then so sweeney's released there's not much that elliot ness can do and three months later after his release the torso of a woman was found in a makeshift box and the box was sitting right

outside elliot ness's office window so like basically a taunt. Yeah. And then for decades, Elliot Ness received taunting notes from someone claiming to be Dr. Sweeney saying like, well, nice try. You didn't catch me. And obviously he didn't had tried to drug him and then take him to his office around 50th and east 55th on broadway street and more than 70 years later so there's this guy who's uh who's researched the case for 18 years his name's james bedall and he believes oh he believes sweeney's the perpetrator but he said that uh he found out through like old paperwork that dr sweeney's office was on broadway near the same intersection where this emile guy said uh he had been drugged by a doctor oh i see so it's entirely possible um but the

weird question that people can't answer is how he could have carried out the murders without all the blood like getting everywhere and drawing attention truly like what was he must have like brought out a tarp or something like because i mean for so many bodies to just be like dismembered and yeah it's a little drop of evidence yeah and then like carried around the city yeah so according to the police cleveland police Society, it's possible that he had an agreement with an undertaker that he could practice surgery on unclaimed bodies in the funeral home. Shut up. And guess what?

Directly next door to Sweeney's office was a funeral home with a concrete ramp. There it is. Uh-huh. And both locations were a short walk from the roaring third where most of the victims were then found oh really wow i'm so surprised oh my god yeah i just i'm so sad for that guy that they that ended up horrible hanged in the cell really yeah terrible um so that expert guy james bedall he got together with the great nephew of like one of Sweeney's doctor colleagues, and they used photos and diagrams to compare the movements of the torso killer and Dr. Sweeney's.

And I'm not going to get into the details, very confusing, but Badal basically called the results quote, creepy as hell. So essentially they match up. And Badal has said he is convinced that sweeney was the cleveland torso murderer um however the case is still very heavy heavily circumstantial and like probably wouldn't hold up in court okay um so there is somebody who does her name's doris o'donnell and she says no it was not dr sweeney um she said she believes someone at the funeral would have noticed something sketchy was going on so i was like well i don't know i think that's a stupid excuse to say someone's innocent but whatever sure so she said no somebody would have noticed so it can't be dr sweeney uh then i found

out that she might be a tad fucking biased because her uncle was the sheriff who beat the shit out of frank dolezal and tried to convince everyone to defend him yes and basically saying like no my uncle the sheriff like caught the right guy he my uncle the asshole is a sheriff exactly and like whether or not he did murder frank dolezal in his cell like he did beat the shit out of him great and force a confession so like either way he's a fucking asshat. So she happens to be related to him. So I don't really take her word very seriously. Sure. So it's also worth noting that there were similar murders committed right around the same time in Pennsylvania.

The lead detective on the case back in the 30s believes that the Cleveland torso murderer also committed committed those crimes and would like take the train back and forth but then they were like do you think sweeney could have done it and he's like i think he was too overweight to make the train trip back and forth i was like how can he be too overweight to make a train trip like i don't i mean like how big do you have to be to yeah and i've, seen photos of him. He doesn't look that overweight, so I don't really... I don't get what's going on. Were trains smaller then, or something? I mean, maybe?

Were they made of tissue paper? Yeah, I just thought that was a really weird... Again, I still think Sweeney's guilty, and I don't think that's a very convincing argument to say otherwise, but whatever. So, so obviously what the hell do i know not much however i think it's very convincing that it was dr sweeney most people think so too including elliot ness and james bedall however sweeney was never officially charged and over the course of four years the cleveland torso murder aka the

mad butcher of kingsbury run killed and decapitated officially 12 people although some estimate the number to be closer to 20 and to the to this day uh also like they they found like parts of certain bodies but not other parts of the bodies so like no who knows what happened to certain people's heads or this isn't meant to be funny did they ever find the penises i don't know i don't believe so that's interesting i wonder what actually happened to them i do too and i wonder too like why sometimes he would leave the heads laying around and then sometimes he would like dispose of them somewhere i like i don't know what the pattern is it's kind of weird i feel like the i feel like the

something as like intimate as a penis if that's the thing that's been missing all across the board it sounds like he kept them as trophies right you'd think he did something with them and it's and then you would think with the heads too but the some of them were found and some weren't so maybe he kept some of them like i don't know i have no idea but um yeah i don't believe that the people's weewees were found unfortunately got it um right so over the court right so blah blah blah i already said that um so some estimate the number to be closer to 20 people perhaps more and to this day it's been more than 80 years but the case still remains unsolved. So that is the torso murderer. My nightmare.

My personal nightmare. Geez. Never want to talk about torsos again. Okay. Got it. Noted. Tell me twice. Now we're going to get emails about torsos, so that's good.

Right. It's like the disembodied feet. The second you fucking said disembodied feet, we started getting, like, crocheted disembodied feet in the mail oh i remember i fucking know i know don't crochet me a torso please everybody thank you anyway for a while though sorry i kind of rushed through that we're getting close to our albany show time but i know we have to go to the venue in like a half hour or so lol okay well albany you're gonna see me with uh unbrushed hair so good for you neat i'm literally like just swirling my hand in my hair just you're gonna see em with swirled swirly hair and me with just makeup on my face and dirt in my hair cool we'll know the canadians were there that are in the hotel if we hear i like your swirled hair oh well they're not gonna hear this well if they're in on the other side of

the wall right now oh oh oh yes you're right you are totally right i don't know you might get a compliment from a canadian uh-huh wouldn't that be nice super nice oh god do you think they're gonna well we'll worry about that later i was. Do you think they're going to... We'll worry about that later. I was like, do you think they're going to be waiting in the lobby for us? Oh, God. No, I doubt it. Are you guys creepy? I don't think so.

They're Canadians. They're perfect. They don't know when we're leaving anyway. They can do no wrong. We'll put on fake mustaches. Oh, I love it. I'll swirl like my hair. I'll swirl.

We'll just swirl our hair. Thank you guys for listening. And we promise this is the last time for a while that our audio is going to be uh experiment um experimental we uh we will be back in la in a couple days and we will be recording the next episode like normal um with geo in my house with geo until then if you want to keep up with us on our social media we're at ATWWG Podcast. We also have a website, and that's whatwedrink.com. We also have a merch site. We also have our, well, I guess we don't have to worry about the tour list anymore. Yeah, I guess we have like four shows

left, so hurry up. We, let's see, we do have an email, and that's whatwedrink at gmail.com where you can send in your personal true crime and paranormal stories and Eva will read them and pick some for our next listeners episode

and we do one at the first of every month we also have a our PL box which is 1920 Hillhurst Ave number 265 Los Angeles California 90027 and if you want to send us some goodies we will open them in the next Patreon gift opening

video that we put out. And maybe I'll flash a boob there too. Maybe she'll flash too. Who knows? It's always an adventure. But thank you guys so much. And also, since this is the last time we're recording while we're still in the middle of

touring, thank you for the last several I think nearly 50 cities that we've done in the middle of touring thank you for the last several i think nearly 50 cities that we've done in the last four months unreal seriously guys it's been so much fun thank you to everyone who was very loud and affirming at all of our shows it made us feel good about ourselves and like came out to see us even after work or driving several hours or whatever it may be bringing dragging people along with you just thank you for for helping us and supporting us it's definitely why we want to come back in 2020 and give you an even better may be bringing dragging people along with you just thank you for for helping us and supporting us it's definitely why we want to come back in 2020 and give you an even better show so we are

in the middle of figuring out what the format's going to look like because we're kind of hoping it's going to be totally different than what you guys saw this time around right something new so fingers crossed uh if everything works out well then next season when we're touring the show is going to be nothing like it was it's going to be better so if you've seen us before you'll get to come back and have a whole new show true anyway thank you guys and

that's why we drink and that's why we drink and that's why we drink bye guys we miss you we'll see you soon next week bye