And That's Why We Drink - E127 Human Wine and the Postal Service Bark

Episode Date: July 7, 2019

Happy July! We're celebrating Em and Allison's love... and Alexander's third wheel status throughout the beginnings of their relationship. This week Em brings us a story they've been wanting to cover for a while now and it's a haunted doozy: the Italian Poveglia Island. Meanwhile Christine covers the extremely disturbing case of a Missourian teenage murderess Alyssa Bustamante. We also learn more about human ash as fertilizer than we ever wanted to know... and that's why we drink!Please consider supporting the companies that support us!Try ZipRecruiter for free when you go to ziprecruiter.com/drinkFor $20 off a suitcase, visit Awaytravel.com/DRINK20 and enter code DRINK20 at checkout For 20% off your first Native Deodorant purchase, go to nativedeodorant.com/DRINK and enter code DRINK at checkout

hello hello it's time to celebrate i don't know what i thought celebrate too it's because we're the same person oh okay welcome everyone happy uh belated fourth of july happy belated happy belated birthday captain america 101 and dalmatian year malia obama and malia and not anyone else no oh also happy anniversary to alison oh well i mean i said birthday but yes also happy anniversary yes but um also i saw on twitter someone said happy fourth of july to christine and lemon only and i was like yes that is the aesthetic that i'm trying to achieve today thank you what did you do for fourth of july oh we were really super duper low-key and had some beers and uh tried to climb the basketball hoop how about you that sounds like

a lot of upper body strength. I don't have. Oh, I was on the ground the whole time. I said, try to climb it. I didn't say you watched others do it. I see. I did. Um, what did I do? Well, I had my anniversary. Yay. That was really fun. Um, my brother reminisced on the time he was on your first date and was like, I'm going to go to Starbucks. Should you speak on his behalf and tell them what what he had to experience well he went so i blaze and i had just got engaged so we went up with geo to uh redwood forest and like we're or sequoia i don't know some sort of tree and we're running around up there and meanwhile you guys were uh kindling your love yes and uh allison was staying at my house and like probably you were there too

no comment no comment and um my poor brother was home alone and house and like probably you were there too no comment no comment and um my poor brother was home alone and like it was like oh you guys were going to some street festival or something i don't know it was the it was the fireworks in grand park oh it was it was fourth of july it was fourth of july that was literally my brother was literally there for your beautiful romantic first date great so he went with you and then he was texting me the whole time like, Oh God, like I'm the third wheel, like hardcore. And like, I don't want to like ditch them, but I don't know how to like get out of here. Like let them have their space. I was, I felt uncomfortable for him because I knew I was in that zone where like, Oh my God,

the first couple of days of like being all mushy gushy. I was like, I know what's happening. I know what I'm doing and I can't stop. And it's so funny. And I felt so bad. I was like, this poor guy is like just hanging out with two people. He's like, I'm going to get everyone some Starbucks. We hadn't even we had just said the night before that we had a crush on each other.

Oh, yeah. So it was like really like the hot zone of like 24 hours into like admitting that we were like into each other. Hadn't even held hands yet. He was with us when we held hands for the first time. Oh, I remember. I got a text. I got a live update. And I was like, please stop telling me.

He's like, I have to tell someone. I do feel really bad for him. I think we'll forever be in debt. I think it was weird, too, because Alexander and I had known Allison for so long. Right. Literally since he was 16, he had known her. So it was just like very weird, like, uh, you know, collision of our worlds. Yeah.

That he had to be stuck in the middle. No, we, uh, well, like it's kind of like how we have a birthday month, right? Our anniversary, like different things happened each day. And so like technically our first date was supposed to be the first, but then our real date was the second. But then on the third day we said we liked each other but then on the fourth was like our first kiss so like every day throughout the week was a different thing and zandy was there for at least 50 meanwhile blaze and i missed our six-month anniversary you got out of dodge before it really got weird meanwhile blaze and i like don't even pay attention

but however i will say that we decided where we were going to celebrate our one year anniversary, which is coming up in October, but not on my anniversary. But it just happened that Blaze had a trip for work planned to Canada. And I was like, he felt so bad. He's like, I feel like we were going to celebrate. I wish Allison had to go to Canada on our anniversary. And I was like, why don't we fucking go for anniversary? So we're leaving the country. I'm so bad. He's like, I feel like we were going to celebrate on this weekend. I wish Allison had to go to Canada on our anniversary. And I was like, why don't we fucking go for our anniversary? So we're leaving the country. I'm so excited for you.

Please bring me back something with a maple leaf on it. I'm very excited. Just for my own privacy sake, I will not say where I'm going to Canada just in case. Fair. But we are going to Canada and you will see it on my Instagram anyway. So very excited. Well, anyway, I had a blast with Allison on her anniversary. I got to give her my present, which I've been working on.

She gave me this awesome present that she'd been working on. And then we have a pool at our complex. So we went swimming. I saw that. I was like, what pool is that? I didn't realize you guys had a pool. We have a pool. It's fine.

It's fine. It's fine. But yeah, it was a good time. I made her a Spotifyify playlist i decided to share with the world i saw that you shared it i don't think it went to the actual playlist because it just went to spotify it worked a little bit because people uh i looked back later and there were people following the playlist okay i was like oh okay well someone saw it someone found it yeah oh my god anyway if you want to go listen to it, it's called Stinky Witch. The other one that we

accidentally made public because we need to share was our live playlist from the live shows and people have found that. I don't know how. I guess they just searched for us on Spotify. I don't know. And they're like, this isn't a podcast. Nope. It's just Christine making a lot of songs

for you. It's just like Britney Spears playing. What is this? It's a lot of follow-up play. And people would always tweet you when we were backstage being like, wow, this playlist is meant for you, Christine. And Christine would be like, I made it. I know. We would be like, wow, this venue really came through for you, Christine. I'm like, I fucking spent hours on this thing, dude.

Yep. Anyway. Anyway. Anyway. I also wanted to add that I'm really excited this week. My episode with Lisa on Let Lisa Help was released and I was really nervous to listen to it because it was really good. You listen to it.

Of course I listen to it. Oh, thank you. It was really good. I appreciate that. Very honest. I was nervous because I was like, I don't know what I said, but I feel like I got a little like worked up about things. But no, I think it was fine.

I liked it. It was fun. We talked about taking things personally, which is my crux flaw one big massive flaw of mine i was really nervous on mine too isn't it weird to like be on another it's like so nerve-wracking also like her the whole premise of her show is talking about something that like is really like like within you getting deep into stuff right and i was like your issues and i'm like how do i talk about this i need 75 more episodes to even get to you know the bottom of one you did a very good job i appreciate that yeah so both of our episodes

are now up yay um and we talk about very different things but i think we're both of them were really fun so yeah check them out uh let lisa help and we were just featured on spotify's true crime playlist which i'm really excited about they're doing all sorts of fun new podcast things yes um and they've been kind of like changing us out and helping us out and featuring us and i'm really amped about it so um i've gone back to listening to podcasts on spotify and it actually is pretty amazing you can like sort them from like newest to oldest so what i do is if i'm starting a new podcast i just sort it from oldest to newest and then just play like i can play it all the way out yeah and then i switch over to stinky, and then just play like, I can play it all the way. And then I switch over to stinky witch. And then I said, Why wouldn't you? Anyway, so check it out. I there's only a few podcasts I really listened to, but I always find myself starting in the middle.

Oh, really? I don't know why. I feel like sometimes that's good. Because like the beginning can be rocky. Yeah. And then I go back and I'm like, Oh, you have changed. Totally. Like you've learned a lot about what's politically correct. Right? Exactly. That happens a lot. It's probably with us too. I've talked to other people who also podcast and, uh, they, I feel like we all have this general understanding that behind the scenes, it's like editing is so scary because it's like, you have to make sure you, Oh yeah. Just cause people say things like that they don't even mean just kind of slips out and you're like, Oh, that didn't sound right right but if you leave it in by accident then all of a sudden like you just get a lot of nasty messages because apparently now you

hate gay people or something completely like i mean i didn't say anything i mean like we do but of course i especially think it's pretty clear that we do rainbows absolutely never i saw someone tweet like stop trying to take god's rainbow and i'm like that's super hilarious like you're not even kidding but oh god lord help you literally uh uh anyway anyway anyway anyway uh i guess that's that on that huh that's that on that all right my story today i think you will like i know you said that and i am itching to hear it itching you got the hankering i mean i'm itching a lot because it's just hot as hell in my house but and yeah i'm also itching to hear your story i have been i have been itching physically a lot lately you know i had to take geo to the vet emergency vet appointment on the day we were supposed to record why because

he got so itchy that he started scratching and started bleeding and so like his whole skin under his fur was just like bleeding how do you moisturize a dog's skin well so you it was like i tried like different things like feeding him coconut oil and like getting supplements and doing it from the inside yeah that's usually what they say and then i took him to the vet and they were like i think it's an allergic like he didn't have fleas or anything but they think he had an allergic reaction so they gave him a shot two hundred dollars later uh it worked oh for the first time in months he's like not itching i think what's he allergic to they said it's like seasonal because it happens every year cutie pie i know so he's like us just fucking sneezing all the time little stinky baby i know anyway so speaking of itching this whole house is just like yeah i have falling apart i have an

allergy my the tip of my nose specifically has an allergy to dust and every time i come into like this room specifically just because we stir so much shit up yeah it's always the tip of my nose and it's never anywhere else in your house it's just right where i sit it's very weird and i don't i think because i'm in a couch without like the animals so maybe maybe that's it also like the thing is we get so many gifts and this room is just full of shit people send us yeah so there's like four robert the dolls that were mailed some things are haunted from like 60 years ago so they do like just have dust on those is like i don't love that nose is like a creepy ass clown next to you i mean there's a lot of things that could be really bringing in dust from other parts of the world or realms or

other other parallel realms so this story uh people have been wanting me to cover for a long long time and i've wanted to cover for a long long time and it's one of my favorite i didn't know about the story yet but just what i had heard of it i was like oh i definitely want to cover it one day so it's been on the list for a while okay i'm also probably gonna mess up the pronunciation because. You would never. If I ever pronounce something correctly, be shocked at this point. 130 episodes later. Can you guys just start tweeting when we do things right and not wrong?

Can you guys just applaud us all the time? Can you just. We're Geminis and the ego. Did you know we're Geminis by the way? I don't know if we've mentioned that. Also, it's July and we're really bitter. Clearly that June is over. I'm so upset that I have to wait.

By the way, now that it's yesterday was July 4th. You're already a 12th through being 28. Fuck you. Are you telling me that? 11 months from now, we're going to have some cool presents coming your way. This is, by the way, the second time in the last two hours that you've mentioned my age. I like, I don't know why. Earlier, earlier I was like, oh, by the way, did you know you're a white 28 year old female I was like I didn't but thanks for checking it I was filling out something paperwork wise excuse me something out however thank you I did know my age I appreciate you informing me though uh okay so this is the story from Italy near Venice it is Poveglia Island hell yes okay cool you've heard of it yes okay dumbass me has been calling it

poveglia this entire time until i heard it in a youtube and you heard it in a youtube and in one whole youtube that's pretty cool so i know that it's pronounced povelia yes but for the last three five ten years i've been calling it poveglia i mean i think that's probably acceptable it's near edinburgh i think so oh my god the number ck messaged me and was like oh my look i'm a classic dumb american all right all your stereotypes about us are true uh so well ck literally said yeah shrek and i are actually the only ones from here so that i knew you were right about that he confirmed it i had at least one piece of information correct. You knew. So, Poveglia Island is somewhere between 17 and 18 acres. Every website had a different number.

So, I'm going to call it a 17.5-er. Oh, speaking of ranking things, how are you after that earthquake? Oh! Oh! I was thinking of the Richter scale. We forgot about the earthquake. Christine, we all know you're ready for the big one. Oh, I was like, everyone was like complaining.

I was like, this ain't fucking nothing, guys. You get ready. If you think this was big, this was 6.6 where it happened. We felt it at like a 4.1 in LA, which is like, it still was pretty intense. Yeah. I was in my house and I heard, I didn't feel it. I just heard everything fucking clanging. I thought my cat was knocking all my wine glasses over and I was pissed. I was like, Zola just sent me those and they're very expensive.

And then Blaze comes like fucking running downstairs and is like, did you feel that? That was the first earthquake he had ever experienced in his life. Oh, this was my second. Was it? Both times I was with Allison and equally freaked out. It was, this one was intense. Yeah. This one.

I thought the lamp was going to come like falling off the ceiling ceiling uh allison was actually in the middle of giving me her anniversary present so i think it got overshadowed by the earthquake oh no because we were in the middle of talking and all of a sudden i saw her and the whole house kind of sway you were like i'm gonna faint and all i said was dude earthquake and we both just bolted out of the apartment because we we live in a complex and it's like okay we got to get out of here because otherwise the whole place might fall on us that is not how you how many times do i have to tell you that's not we were in this we were in the stairwell by the doorway okay i thought you meant out of the building well out of our apartment okay all right fine but uh but yeah the whole place just started kind of moving everything's like like swinging it's

really creepy it's also very jarring as someone who's not on the ground floor i'm like i'm gonna go flying if something really bad yeah it's really jarring in an apartment i need to start my own earthquake podcast i think you should a lot of people would listen to it and also everyone's like christine are you so scared and i'm like no i don't think anyone understands my point that everyone else should be really scared i wasn't i wasn't scared my but i know that like if that's nothing like what's coming i need to be fucking terrified that's what i'm saying thank you finally listen just get fucking a first aid kit is all i'm saying get a first aid kit get some uh boxed water you just not you never know all right there could be worse things happening from other parts of the world or within our country listen bad things are

gonna happen okay that's just my whole life my therapist told me this week to stop thinking that way but i can't so my first thought when i was running out of my apartment was i forgot my starbucks exactly not my phone not my keys not trues my just my dumbass was like my cat just broke my expensive wine glass it wasn't even his fault i do like that uh allison and i had that connection it wasn't even his fault get it i hear you i hear you i like that allison and i just there was no questioning it i was like i just said earthquake and she just knew like okay you gotta go i appreciate that i appreciate it too okay so i 17.5 17.5 acres is pavilion island. And it's a secluded island that floats between Venice and Lido.

L-I-D-O. That sounds right. Okay. Historical records suggest that the island has had inhabitants on it since 2000 BC. Nice. But the first documented people to live there was from year 421, which again, as an American, I can't process that that was a year. You know there were, like, things happening here, too, right? Dinosaurs?

No, like Native American people. Like, native. Before white people showed up. Even 1775. I can't believe that's a year, because until 1776, it just, America just popped up, apparently. You're the one from, like, the colonial part of this country. How does this? I think I just assume that they manifested their own history. I don't know.

So in 421, it was first documented as a safe haven because people of Padua and Este. I think that's where Renee lived. OK, go on. Oh, Padua. All right. Okay, go on. Oh. Padua. All right. Well, at least I said it right. People were documented in 421 of having fled from those places

to live on this island because they were escaping the Germanic and Hun barbarian invasions of the Roman Empire. Oops. Uh-oh. So the islands at that time, they fled to these islands because they were so small and defenseless that they knew that military forces would leave them alone oh interesting they

like weren't interested in that yeah so they were like oh let's go and i say islands because povalia is one of a couple islands in a lagoon a lagoon a lagoon that's fun and uh so they're like okay well let's leave that area and move here got it so then a couple hundred years later in 864 um the governor or apparently it was called the doge d-o-g-e am i saying it wrong like doge like like doge like the dog yeah that's what i thought dog i mean i just i don't know if I'm pronouncing it right and the Italians are going to get mad at me. I just keep picturing that Shiba Inu. Dog. Dog.

So the governor who, apparently governor was called, it might be D-O-G-E. I have no idea. Dog or Doge. He was, he was killed in 864. Oh no. And so the next governor to take over for him, it's kind of confusing, but either the next governor allowed the 200 servants from the one that died to move to Pavilion and just live out their lives without being servants again. Oh. Or the story is that they fled after the governor died. Somehow they ended up there.

Somehow they ended up there. Either they were given permission right or not well either that was just a pr campaign or either they fled or the next governor in charge allowed them to move there got it so then more people are moving their pavilions population is steadily growing until 1379 in the chioggia War. Oh, dear. Chiogg, Chioggia War? Chioggia War? I have no freaking clue. Okay, so in 1379, since 421 to 1379,

population has slowly started to grow. In 1379, there was a war, and officials forced the residents of Pavilion to move so they could turn Pavilion into a navy outpost, and they even built an octagonal fort on the island, which still stands, and they used it to have arms ready for war and after that the island remained uninhabited for a long time so they just moved everyone out for the sake of it being a navy outpost and then nothing really

came of it okay and then the 1570s roll around and that is the beginning of the bubonic plague oh fuck you don't like that so thousands of people are dying the original plague in the 1340s apparently killed like 45 percent of europe which not to like throw marvel wherever i can but but to actually do that but to actually do that i i saw endgame again last week and uh the thought of like the whole thing is Thanos snaps his fingers and 50% of the world is wiped out. I really forgot about the fucking plague. It was like I can't imagine that happening in real life. And then I was reading this information.

I was like, oh, my God, that's actually happened before. They're like in Europe. Half of Europe is just gone now. Well, I think this is my time to say, I also this week, the reason my therapist told me to stop thinking the way that I do is that I've spent a lot of time thinking about the state of our planet and all the fucked up shit we've done to it and continue to do to it despite, you know, smart science people saying, please stop. Besides like fact-based evidence telling us what's going to happen if we don't change.

You're murdering all the animals. You're killing all the plants. And that's my science version point being essentially if we don't fix this shit in five years it is possible scientists in australia have concluded that one third of the world will die of overheat over overheat overheating i don't know the right word of the sun of the sun and the problem is it's going to be obviously layers less developed nations that can't fuck help themselves and so we're fucking everyone over anyway so a third of the population of the earth might die because we can't you know get our shit together and don't care okay oh my god

we as a podcast should have like a month where we all like be super green or something we should have it every day dude yeah but i mean like as like a movement like get everyone like motivated and then hopefully carry it on. We'll figure it out. We'll talk about it. We'll do like a little, you know, like when we were younger and they had like a recycling program. I don't know. You know how there's like meatless Mondays and things like that. Yes. We should figure out like a time where we just like really go bananas about being green. We'll figure it out. I already do that because ranata and tim raised me to be a crazy person you know what's funny we should all do it and save the planet nowadays it's not crazy you're the only one that's not being crazy when i was little i got made so much fun of because i didn't

use like fucking my mom had like reusable tupperware and shit like that and i got so much shit at school now my sister who's like kind of cool that's your public school is like head of some eco-friendly and it's cool now to like care about the planet. It was not when I was a child. I loved seeing the movie 22 Jump Street where they have to go back to high school and it's like, okay, you're, you're clearly the cool jock. So you go back and be the cool jock and you're clearly the fucking nerd that no one's going

to like. So go be the nerd. And then they went back to high school in today's world. And he was trying to be like a cool jock. And they were like, you don't care about the planet? You're such a jackass. You're such a fucking asshole. Why are you being rude to people? Yeah.

Yeah. That's exactly. And I'm like, now everyone, which is good. I mean, literally the people younger than us are finally like doing walkouts and like give a shit about the planet. So at least someone does. It's crazy that in history books, kids are going to like kids that are growing up in this world are going to be like, you mean it was cool to not care about the planet like what is wrong with those dumb asses yeah

it was cool to do a lot of really horrifying shit in 2019 yes anyway let's talk about the plague aka what's coming up in our near future precursor uh so in the 1570s the bubonic plague was hitting venice or it was about to start hitting Venice, and it really came into full swing around 1630. Uh-oh. By 1645, on a side note, the Venetian government built five forts to protect the entrances to the lagoon, and one of them was Poveglia. So they put up all these, like, security checkpoints. Oh, my. There was a fort at Poveglia that became a checkpoint officially in the 1770s um for goods

entering venice okay by ship so you would have to go there first and they would do like a full inspection of everything you brought you're bringing in in 1793 there were two ships that arrived to that fort that apparently had reports of plague infestations on board. Oh, no. Apparently there were two people on board who had symptoms or suggestible symptoms that maybe they had become sufferers of the plague and it just hadn't gotten bad yet. So in that moment, the island was sealed off and became a temporary confinement station to guarantee that the plague wasn't coming into Venice by accident. How horrifying. And Venice was known to have the strictest sanitary laws in the area. And so their government required that all those passing through had to live on Pavilion for 40 days before coming into the town.

Oh my God. You have to pass like a... Like it was literally like a quarantined... Holy shit. So that became the thing after there were almost two scares of the plague coming into Venice. Wow. Or more plague coming into Venice. I guess there were already people in Venice that were sick, but they were trying to prevent more illness coming in.

So after those two scares, they were like, all right, fuck this. It's not a port anymore. We're making this literally a temporary quarantine station. Oh, OK. Where whether or not you're sick, if you have a boat of 100 people and they're all coming in, I don't care if you are all the healthiest hundred people you all have to be on this island for 40 days but prove your health improve your healthy to be able to come in later okay so fun fact that's actually how quarantine the word was created no way it's italian for 40 what yeah seriously mind blown so another word before it was called a quarantine it was called a

lazaretto okay it was basically a stop for medical inspections i was like that sounds like a nice chocolate bar oh that does sound good like cherry ganache it sounds like a caramel coffee or something so while people were basically living on this island for 40 days they had their own rooms and apartments they were given food and water and they could use the mail system. However, any outgoing letters in case you had the plague, they were, quote, stabbed and sprinkled with vinegar and fumigated before leaving the island. They were stabbed? Just like make sure that nothing's good. It's all going to release. Wow.

OK. So after 40 days on the island, people were either declared healthy or literally left there to die it was like you have to prove you're healthy otherwise you're here because we're not letting you out we're not letting you in you're just here now oh my god that's horrifying so it went from becoming a temporary quarantine station to a permanent quarantine station sure you're leaving everyone who's dying on the island yeah and also let's say there was one person who was sick. All 99 other people who were healthy are now stuck on that island, too, because they might have come in contact with you. This is not good.

So once it was only a permanent quarantine station, it also became a dumping ground for already dead victims of the plague. So for people who were dying in the city, they had been burying these people at such a rapid rate. They didn't have anywhere left to bury them in all of Venice. Oh, my God. And the stench apparently was getting too bad for the whole city. So they began moving all these dead bodies to Poveglia. Oh, my God. Because they thought like, oh, well, the only people staying there anyway are people who are already doomed from the plague.

So fuck them. There's no harm in putting dead bodies next to them. There's no harm in making the rest next time because they're about to be dead bodies the rest of their lives living hell okay so they were putting these bodies into mass burial pits god and then setting them on fire to stop the germs from spreading oh sure sure sure sure due to mass paranoia in the towns not only did dead bodies start getting sent there but people with any version of potential symptoms of the plague. Oh my God. So if you even just looked sick.

This is like an asylum, but like for plague sufferers. Yeah. Like they were just. Something's wrong with you. Get them out. If you had a hunch someone had the plague. Oh God. Or someone coughed once.

The whole everyone looks at you. You would literally get banished to Pavilion. Oh my God. I had no idea. So rumors say that the, say the living that were sent there, this is totally alleged. I only heard this from, I think, one or two sources, so I don't want to say it definitely happened. The YouTube. The YouTube.

Rumors say that the living that were sent there were also thrown on top of the piles of dead patients and burned alive with them. Just to kill off the plague before it got worse. Just get them over with. That's horrifying. Doctors who brought the patients by boat to the island to make sure that they didn't contract the disease, they would wear these scary ass looking bird masks. Oh, those long ones. Like the things with the long beaks.

The thing my sister wears on Halloween for fun. Oh my god she's a creep so apparently there was a scary reason for it to look that scary or for it to look like a bird mask yeah if you guys look up plague doctor's masks yeah it looks like a bird it has like a really long beak to it like a pointy it's creepy as hell the point of it was that the beak part was hollow and it was stuffed with a bunch of herbs. Oh, sure. So that way you would burn the herbs inside the mask and those fumes are what you would inhale instead of the germs. And they also thought like if you surrounded yourself with flowers and stuff that the smell would like protect you from germs.

It would like purify you. Yeah. In the air and stuff. So doctors, imagine the last thing you see is like leaving your home and you're in a boat with this doctor with this fuming, steaming, smoking bird mask. And you're literally being dropped off. Like rode through the... Rode through to your death, essentially. How horrifying.

So, Pavilion continued to do this until 1805. So, that's a solid... That's really recent. I mean, all things considered. Yeah. Apparently 160,000 bodies died there. Oh, dear. Either died there or were already dead and are now buried there.

So 160,000. Oh, my God. And that means they burned 160,000 bodies. So one of the fun facts of pavilion is that the ground, the soil is half dirt, half human ash. No. So if that doesn't scream haunted to you,

is that good fertilizer? Oh, okay. We're getting there apparently. So pavilion, uh, continued this way until 1805. Like I said,

um, 160,000 dead bodies, half dirt, half ash on the ground, which is horrible because if you go visit even as a tourist, like you're walking away with humans on your feet. Horrifying. Horrifying. Like multiple, like a lot. Thousands of bodies. Ugh.

Plus nearby islands, because remember I told you it's kind of with some other islands nearby. Right. Other islands next to bavalia also had mass burial pits of like a thousand plus plague victims so the whole area's pretty much got some bad energy to it and it's been estimated that the nearby islands had about 500 deaths per day oh god this was discovered when one of the islands i think it was called vecchio oh vecchio vecchio um had work crews digging so that they could they wanted to make a museum like in honor of all the people so they were digging to make a museum and they found a massive grave pit so they had archaeologists

come look at it and they basically in one pit found the remains of over 1500 bodies oh my god were the people burying them the plague doctors or like who had that job i can't even imagine what a shitty job i i would think the plague doctor not like the ones burning them right no i must be some maybe there was just someone who like they were like prisoners have to do this or something maybe yeah i know that i think murderers were also sentenced there or something oh great um so that would make sense oh it just sounds awful so what the archaeologists also found fun fact is they found that the people that were burying these bodies at the time had a fear of vampires because i fucking would too to be honest at the at that

time the mass graves were regularly reopened to add bodies. Sure. And when they would open them, they regularly reported seeing the dead bodies have bloated stomachs and blood was pouring out of their mouths. And there were holes in the sheets covering their faces. So they thought that these people were coming to life and trying to, like, drink the blood of the bodies around them. Oh, God.

So they thought it might be vampires. was just well why not right so they thought it was vampires drinking the other body's blood now we know that those things are just signs of normal decomposition and i guess you don't usually open up graves necessarily to see that they were just seeing it at a weird time that most people don't see it yeah um i guess the bloated stomach is like your organs are kind of all concentrating into your stomach and shit like that that was one of them gas is releasing and then the blood was something else but oh god sadly it's a normal thing that happens um cremate me please i would like this to be my permanent will right but then uh so to kill the vampires or to prevent them becoming real vampires, the bodies that they did find was that there were stones or bricks that were put in the quote vampires, the body's mouths. Oh, my.

Because whoever was burying them or whoever put the brick in their mouths thought that they were keeping them from being able to drink anyone else's blood. So they wouldn't be able to survive as vampires because they couldn't get to anyone's blood. You got a rock in your mouth. Yeah, exactly. Nice try. So that's just kind of like a weird thing. They also found like proof that the fear of vampires was real. Interesting. So anyway, that's just something about the side islands. Fun fact. So in 1805, now that this was no longer happening, Napoleon used this island. Love a good Napoleon. To store weapons and converted the bell tower into a lighthouse. Okay. There were many small battles that took place there.

So just adding to the death count. Sure, why not? And then, could it get worse? In 1922, a mental asylum was opened on the property. Oh, dear God. Oh, dear God. Could it get worse? It was run by a doctor who conducted experiments.

Absolutely not. Including lobotomies. No. With tools such as hand drills, chisels, and hammers with no anesthetic and no sterilization. Sure, because why? There were also water baths, shock treatment, and apparently a, quote, special kind of torture in the bell tower which is still unknown in details but the doctor apparently loved treating patients there sick bastard he tortured

and killed many of the patients allegedly butchering them the patients here regularly reported seeing ghosts i can't imagine why uh-huh um they said that they would hear and see people screaming in their rooms and it would keep them from sleeping but of course because it's a mental Uh-huh. climbed up to the top of the bell tower and jumped off, but many say that he was pushed. And there is a rumor that people saw a mist surrounding his body once he hit the ground, still alive, and the mist choked him to death. Oh my, okay. Another version is that he never jumped off the bell tower, but that patients rallied together and bricked him inside the tower.

And for those who don't know what bricking is, it's literally putting a an alive person in between two sets of brick walls and making them just live in the walls and making them not an alive person exactly also you should know because we talked about it in an episode yes we did and our manager josh never stops talking about bricking people it's his favorite thing he loves bringing up he like heard that episode and was like that's all i can think about and we were like oh that's good glad that that's the the mark we've led for you sorry josh so uh in the 1960s uh the hospital was closed finally in the 1960s and this is all through world war ii and stuff i wonder how i don't know i just wonder what role something

something could have easily happened i just wonder what role something something could have easily happened i just wonder anyway so the island was abandoned and has been sealed off by the government ever since uh the island was actually sold at auction multiple times and fails to keep its owners but in 2014 uh it was finally sold to someone by nate by the name luigi he got he bought a 99 year lease and he it was basically sold for the equivalent of our for like 700 000 dollars in u.s dollars in u.s dollars and uh he says he plans to spend around 27 million u.s dollars to restore the island i thought you were gonna say 27 million years on the island. I was like, have fun.

I don't want to go. And he wants to have it be used by the public in some way. It's been implied he wants to build a luxury hotel on top of it. Sorry. What are you thinking, Luigi? So it's not really clear what his plan is, but until future plans are established, the island is still totally dilapidated. Oh, God.

It's feared by locals. I bet. No boats make regular stops at the island, and mainlanders refuse to go near it. Local fishermen don't want to disturb human remains, so they don't fish near it because apparently enough times they have pulled things out of the water. Right. Oh, God. I didn't think you have a net out there. I mean, I don't even want to know. They've found a lot of weird shit so now they just don't

go there locals don't go there when people like you and me are like let's go visit that area they're like no they're like you're a dumb dumb american stop yes so italian tourism prohibits visiting the island and requires a lengthy application process if you actually want to go on the island you have to have a really fucking good reason smart especially because that guy owns it now right like it's probably private sure but it's not like he lives there it's it looks like a haunted ass got it okay um also there's rumors that he only bought it just so the government couldn't decide for him what happened to it he wanted to just kind of keep looking creepy he's just like i like it the way it is exactly so uh according to

a lot of websites although they all say that italian tourism refuses visitors to be there if you find someone with a bow and pay them enough money they will drive you there and then leave you and they'll be like fuck you bye yeah if you arrange a time for them to pick you up a couple hours later they will for the right dollar amount. For the right amount. No thanks. It has been listed as one of the world's most illegal places to visit. Really? And unless you have government permission, you cannot go there.

Some of the only people with government permission happen to be grape harvesters. Grape harvesters? From when you asked earlier if it was good fertilizer. Shut up. Because Pavilion Island has one of the most thriving grape vineyards in Italy. So that's the key. Just have a bunch of human ash in the ground. Yes.

It's the key. So people who are paid and willing will go to this island to gather fruit, but even most of them refuse to go alone. Such a beautiful thing from such a dark past. Truly. Some human wine. Here's also another fun fact, really quick. I was looking at videos of this, and someone somehow paid someone to get them to the island, and so he was walking around playing Pokemon Go.

Okay. Fun fact. The Pokemon you can find on Pvalia island tell me our voltorb oh my god crabby eckins and tentacool there's a crabby out there there's a crabby there's a voltorb there's a fucking crabby by my old apartment in glendale don't go to fucking povalia to find yourself just go to glendale just i've never gotten a voltorb though and i wonder why because there's no electricity in the middle of the water that i have either i understand like well you can find an ekans anywhere but i get the water pokemon being sure makes sense i don't understand the voltorb anyway

uh oh i know why electric shock treatment oh i was thinking electromagnetic activity or that actually is pokemon go an EMF detector? What? Or that. I think that we just figured that out. I mean, so all along this app. Guys, just go. If you're ever in a haunted house, just put on Pokemon Go.

And if you see an electric Pokemon, you know you found a ghost. Sure. What if you see another Pokemon? Psychic? Like a Haunter? Ghastly? Listen, these all scream haunted to me. You know what would be actually a really genius business plan is if you went and only like paid off Pokemon Go to have like ghost Pokemon in haunted houses.

But then you would also encourage people to be going into those haunted houses. Yeah, I don't know if that seems very sensible, but I like where your head's at. I promise you. The last thing I was thinking about was it being sensible. I'm going for cool and fun. Valid. You're the hip, hip, cool one.

Hip. I thought hip, hip, hooray. That's kind of where I was going to. So it is also described as the most haunted place on earth. It's also been known as the island of madness, the island of death and the Island of No Return.

So a lot of good names there. So honeymoon. Honeymoon. Zola. So there happens to be one quote that I got from one guy who happened to be named Giovanni. No. This is sweet.

Oh my God. I bet he was so handsome. He was probably. So so he i don't this was like a very weird quote that i found that had really no context to it but it's about pavilion island i'm gonna add it geo apparently said watch out for paulo he is the bad one he was a doctor there oh no and he will cause you troubles i know them all paulo marco giorgio giorgio is an okay friendly phantasma my father would take me fishing there as a boy and when i was older i stayed there alone myself for 15 nights when i came back i told everyone what happened to me the ghosts and what they did

paulo's ghost mostly always pushing me and things moving and then that was like the end of the article sorry what that word did so much more information and i could not find it excuse me giovanni what is your dad doing sending you out there for 15 days right and also what are you doing having such a grand old time why on the first day did you not leave with a creepy doctor named paulo oh anyway giovanni always making i bet he was a scorpio nonsensical decisions listen i know so he was trying to install all the pokemon go electric pokemon oh my god so the ghosts uh from what i gathered the spirits are known to touch you push you hit you scratch you choke you many people hear moans screams voices crying and coughing a lot of people see uh mists a lot of

people see shadow figures one person has even heard a deep voice say leave immediately okay i will okay you're right i'm wrong people have been stared at have like felt the deep dark hatred nope they've been shoved into walls they've been been chased down corridors, which is the worst. It's like the feeling of running up a basement when it's dark. That like impending, like something's about to grab you feeling. Yeah. Like I can't, like you can't see anything, but you know, you're being chased. And also you're alone on a fucking Island.

Like this, there's nowhere to go. This is terrible. Okay. I'm going to run out of the corridor. And then what? And then, and then, and then you'll still, we'll still be here. And then the Ekansins will attack right uh people say that the doctor is the most violent spirit and the vicinity in general of the bell tower gets the most activity oh the torture which would make sense

yep because of the torture and because in theory that's also where the most violent one of them all died sure true lots of energy. People have heard things being thrown at them. They've heard footsteps running after them. And they have heard voices that have been caught on digital recorders. People have also heard the chiming of the bell tower, even though the bell was removed years ago. Oh, that is creepy, dude. There's apparently one spirit of a girl named Little Maria. Aw.

And she stands by the water and cries. Honey. There's a lot of electromagnetic energy spikes, a lot of cold blasts of air, a lot of heavy banging sounds, and lots of breathing from behind you. Gee, this is not fun. No. No, honey. Not even a little bit. Never mind.

Apparently people also very regularly smell burning. The smell of burning. Oh, God. Many psychics have said that the energy here is, quote, malignant. What a shock. And there is evidence of people being demonically possessed. Evidence. Ghost adventures.

So. Evidence. One family actually tried purchasing the property years ago, um, to live in as a private residence. And on their first night, they fled the Island. Oh, allegedly the family's daughter suffered a supernatural injury to her face. Oh, causing her to need up to 20 stitches because her face was quote, nearly ripped off.

M. So if that doesn't get you i don't know what will what the fuck also there this was especially scary on um my favorite show scariest places on earth oh the creepy alien voice creepiest because this location got a two-part series for episodes they got two episodes shit i think i've seen this they years ago they had a family of like five or six people actually like go stay there on the island this was before ghost adventures they were the first family to ever spend the night there oh god and so basically the whole first episode was an explanation of the like a usual episode sure the second episode was uh the filming of the family staying there

overnight yikes um but it didn't scare me too much it was a lot of they heard a lot of banging there were a lot of meter spikes there was a lot of uh it was mainly more them crying out of fear a lot yeah it sounds about right um someone felt a hand scratch them and they used a pendulum and it moved by itself but there was an effort there was never really like jump out scary things that i saw but then course, if someone's done it before them, they got to go for it themselves. So Ghost Adventures came to the site. I know even when you said no one is, it's the most illegal place on earth. And I was like, we all know who ended up there.

Well, one criminal got there. We all know. So, like I said, you have to, I'm guessing this is how they got access. Because you can technically, by Venetian government, get there with permission and you have to do out a full application. So I'm sure they just filled an application. That's how they got there. Um, so this apparently has been Zach's dream for 10 years.

Really? The place he's always wanted to investigate was Pavilion Island. Interesting. So he was very excited to be there. He got his wish. Very excited. So he is riding a boat towards the island wearing the doctor's bird mask. He is not.

Why am I even questioning you? And the guy that drove them there or sailed them there, shipped them there, drove them via boat, their escort. He was looking around when they like touched ground and said you have to call me tomorrow if you survive tonight ah also take off that mask it's very disrespectful sure uh so mid tour so the escort's like kind of following them and kind of showing them around

but you can tell he's not like probably paid him good money imagine like literally a whole massive city is like we don't go there and you're the only person doing it i believe so mid tour there zach's about to go into a building for the first time instead of just kind of circling the location and when they're about to go in the building the escort stops in the middle of interviewing and says that he wants to leave the island so fuck he's like he was like i don't we don't joke about this like okay it was fun to like walk around on human ashes yeah yeah but i'm not going in that building oh god and so the escort says like you're on your own just i'm i'm leaving so i guess this is kind of like a clip from before they even went to the

island but before they even took off the motor died on the boat. Oh, my God. Before they could even take off to go to the island. And then when Zach leaves the boat, the motor on the boat started by itself. Okay, bye. Also, in the theme intro of Ghost Adventures, when he says, You've reached your final destination. Hell.

Yeah. that was taken from this this is really so hell apparently is pavilion island to zach so who to whom did he say that the camera oh to me to us okay got it to the viewer um Okay, so now they're doing their lockdown. And he says out loud, I want you to hurt me. Are you a murderer? See, this is the stuff, like, listen, we watch the show. We joke, we joke, okay? I joke about his genes. I'm mostly bitter.

He blocked me. But, like, don't taunt things. I don't think that's smart to say I want you to hurt me. I mean, when there's literally, I would, I would say thousands of thousands of bodies. Yeah. And I find- You're very, I don't know if you're brave or dumb. I think you're disrespectful. To be, to be calling out that kind of energy.

I think that's just like, not a good idea. If we were ever on a haunted island together to investigate, I feel like we would be doing the opposite of investigating. And I would be like, please don't show up. I would just be hiding for sure. I don't want to be here. Honestly, I'm like, I don't even sit in my own house and go, hey, right. Come at me.

Hurt me. I mean, like, for all we know, Walt is the only spirit here and is super wonderful and nice and respectful. And I'm not even really trying to reach out. I would never like taunt him, you know? Like you hang out there. I'll hang out here. Let's not cross each other.

That being said, Emma and I are known to binge watch Ghost Adventures. I mean, we still love the show. We do. And like, don't at me about either way because I'm sorry. I'm just mad that he blocked me on Twitter. That really is what it all comes down to. Zach, if you're ever listening to this show, the only the the the seed that was planted forever ago was when you blocked her. And now it's somehow become a running thing.

Also, we like your jeans. Also, we love your jeans. Keep at it. I don't know if I would wear the mask, but you do you, guy. So do you. So he says, I you do you, guy. You do you. So he says, I want you to hurt me. Are you a murderer? Then that was the first time they hear a voice in this episode.

He says, I don't speak English. Interesting, because actually some of the stuff was in Italian. Really? And some of it was in English, which apparently people had known about before that you can hear different languages. Cool, okay. So at some point they say, is anyone there? And then the Trifield meter, which is another version of an EMF detector, the meter shows a huge spike in electricity,

like a spike that is very abnormal and probably one of the hugest ones that's ever happened on their show. Wow, and so that was in response to, is anyone there? Right. And there's no power on the island, too. And they're in the middle of water. So let anyone there right okay and there's no power on the island too and they're in the middle of water so let's keep in mind there's no electricity so further to be a spike at all let alone that massive spike sure it is kind of cool um then nick starts feeling really really ill zach says use my energy so to nick no use my energy to the spirits of like use my energy to react to us

i was like that's not quite how that works but at the same time uh you can hear when he says use my energy you can hear someone breathing into the recorder and nick actually hears in real time so it's loud enough that someone in real time is hearing it and at the exact same time that you hear the breath zach like bent like doubles over and is like feeling really drained the second he says use my to be fair he offered it up yeah but he did say use my energy and the second he said that he doubled over at the same time he gave it oxygen literally great they the second he got permission they got permission he was doubled over and felt drained. Damn. So the camera couch... Why can't I talk?

The gamma ray couch. I got it. I'm falling. The camera catches the sound of footsteps and also records an orb floating by them. And they hear a loud bang as if something fell down. And then Aaron feels energy running through him. Okay. As if something literally ran through him okay uh as if like something like literally ran through i see all three of them begin to feel really lightheaded and they

can't even stand up um and then there's a massive electricity spike um in the meters at the same time an orb flies by the meters and then the machine itself shuts down on its own then zach starts getting really angry all of a sudden. Uh oh. And Aaron says that they should leave the room and Zach is fighting him saying, no, we have to stay in the room. This is not something I want to be a part of. No.

No. He starts yelling. He has a lot of muscles, that guy. He starts yelling. I'm asking them to use our energy. And then at the same time that he's getting clearly heightened in anger. Sure. Nick hears a man's voice behind them.

And then Zach doesn't look like himself on camera. He starts staring at Aaron in a very, very creepy way. He starts cussing and he starts getting really pissed off. And they must have said something, but they had to bleep it out because there was clearly a cuss word. So all you hear is Aaron go there. Nick's camera is that on both of them so you can see the conversation happening and aaron goes who me and then zach at the top of his lungs in the angriest way possible screams yeah i fucking said you whoa and then starts screaming for them to get out aaron cannot get a fucking break on the show. I tell you what.

And so after he said, yeah, I fucking said you, and then starts like telling them to leave, he began shaking like until he like drops the equipment. Oh God. And then he starts. That's expensive equipment. And then he starts like hitting the wall and Aaron has to walk him out of the house. But so also from the theme intro,

when he's like hitting the wall and screaming stop oh god that is also from this oh my god so this is like the origin for and this is also like the first hour of let's put this way they've had like 18 seasons of the show and that's still like the most noteworthy thing to put in the intro but what like what season was that from i think like one or two oh really early. But yeah, so where he screams stop and he also says, welcome to your destination, hell.

Oh yeah, that much I know about. So Zach says that all he remembers is feeling total hatred towards them and then losing his memory. That's frightening. And then he feels really dizzy. So they actually pause and if we ever have a ghost show show we should do this just so we're

clear we should not do this no we should do this part okay every time not just when it gets really bad they pause the investigation and say a prayer and have like a bunch of holy water around them and shit i see so let's just actually so the jewish one of us wants to suddenly uh pray the rosary whoever's gonna save me that's what i believe in i see very i'm very open-minded especially in times of crisis understood so um oh my god if they're like if something is like if a demon is near me and there's a pool of holy water i'm going swimming in that pool and i'm gonna believe it's gonna save me just so we're clear sure uh so they pause the investigation do like this whole prayer thing then they go to the fields where all the plague victims were burned. And then Zach says that his legs begin to feel weird.

They can smell burning. And then they hear a scream, which is caught on camera. And then between the fields and the asylum, people apparently report seeing white apparitions and shadows. While they're on the ground, they mention that the soil is half human ash. And they actually, while on camera, find the remnant of a skull. Damn. Holy shit. So, and keep in mind, like, it's not hard to believe that that wasn't planted.

Because, like, that wasn't, like, written into the show. Because since people started getting burnt there, the only thing that happened after that was an asylum. Like, a mental hospital opened up and then it was abandoned so like this ground still really hasn't been touched in a hundred hundreds of years sure um so zach puts on the bird mask again okay and he says he can hear children and voices calling or the camera can hear children and voices calling to them and a voice um an evp on the recorder actually caught a voice shouting zach oh no even with a mask on they recognized his jeans well as he's as he's wearing the mask he says do you remember me like someone wearing this mask wait

what he he's wearing the bird mask and saying do you remember me to the spirits like do you remember oh oh oh someone who looked like this yes he's basically pretending he's a doctor of their time and saying do you remember me do you remember like seeing this face oh my god and then he says show yourself and what's very cool is they had actually talked about this before so before they even really like started interviewing in the fields aaron was talking about how like they had this setup and they had this like huge floodlight for infrared that they were going to put out in the field they were kind of talking about equipment sure and then um he says show yourself while he's in this bird mask and you can hear someone running in the field

you can hear them running up the bridge towards the camera, and then the floodlight itself gets knocked off the tripod. Oh, God. Okay. So it's weird that they hadn't mentioned it at all, and then that happened. Creepy. They got an EVP of someone saying,

Come here. I'm here. In the hall. They heard disembodied voices in the field. The camera caught a mist in the field at the same time that they heard, um, that they were hearing voices. Uh, the cameras also caught footsteps and moaning on the recorder. Um, when Nick was alone, he heard a moan and the camera saw an unexplained black mist floating

down. And it's really, you can't make that shit up. Like I, I saw it and I, I believe that like the, it was, it looked exactly like the mist that I told you used to like float above my bedroom. Super. A perfect black misting moving cloud no thanks at the same time that nick is hearing a moan um and then after that black floating thing disappeared nick's camera malfunctioned uh-huh um zach's alone and he gets an evp of someone in english saying let's fight oh no it's like I saw you earlier.

I know. I remember. You'll throw down. And then Zach felt something touch him. He felt like it was freezing, even though the temperature goes up 10 degrees while he's in that room. Like the ambient temperature goes 10 degrees up, but he still feels like he's freezing cold.

He, Zach also hears another voice when the temperature immediately drops from 82 down to 68. Oh, dear. On his infrared thermometer. That's weird. He sees the temperature changing. And Aaron hears something get thrown at him. And then he says, is that you? And then on camera, there's this loud ass moan.

Ew. Because he's in the bell tower. Of course, they put him in the most haunted part. Poor Aaron. Then they hear another loud bang, like something something fell down and then his camera stops recording on its own when they're all together again they ask the spirits to make a noise and then a noise happens behind them and then a nick hears a man's voice and then a scream is caught on camera finally zach challenges a ghost once more and there is an evp of someone saying hey then the camera shutting off on its own and when

zach leaves the room an evp is clearly mocking him because it says bye bye oh my god and that's the pavilion island slash zach's experience jesus zach attacks if you will zach attacks bagel bites i listen i tell you i watch the show occasionally i will say i don't love the like the like taunting ghosts i also think there are some very very questionable things that have been said and done on the show regarding women and treatment of women i'm just saying so i don't want people to be like i hear you you know i hear there are some things where I go, oh, yeah, don't fucking say that. But yeah, creepy as hell, dude. Super creepy.

I'm sorry. Half of it was like Zach's tax. But at the same time, it's quite a story. It's a recurring segment on our show. It is. That is not good. I don't like that place. No, it all sounds horrible.

I don't like it. No, it all sounds horrible. I don't like it. You know, just how I was telling you, I don't really understand how anything happened before 1776. Uh-huh. Made me think of that Ron Swanson quote, where he was like, history began on July 4th, 1776. Everything before that was a mistake. And I kind of just like to attribute that to my ability to to cope you know sure so we need we all need a way i and that's the way i chose apparently so if the introduction to uh white

people on this continent is your way to cope then happy fourth of july happy birthday america we love you anyway sort of sometimes there's more proof that i'm an ignorant american no no yeah no um oh my anyway you know the first place i ever got drunk was italy huh that's a pretty appropriate place to do it. The first place I ever drank wine. Also very... Also very on brand. On brand, huh? Yeah. How old were you? 16. Good for you.

17. Good for you. I don't know. Renee and I... Well, see, I'm also a German citizen, so I was like, loophole in my Catholic brain was it's legal here. So it was technically... Just like the first time I smoked weed was in Colorado after it was legalized because

I just can't... You do like chasing an aesthetic, don't you like, uh, being very good about following rules. Like how sad is that? Huh? I mean, you're even willing to go to Italy for it, I guess. I guess so. I guess I have to just go to Italy if I want to have some wine. Well, now I drink it out of a cardboard box. See how my, how things have changed. Italy is frowning. Italy doesn't like my behavior very much. Hey, at least I'm not yelling at their ghost to hurt me. True. Ready, Freddies, for my story?

I am. Great. I am doing a story today about a girl that I'd never heard of before. Oh. Her name is Alyssa Bustamante. Okay. She. Bustamante.

Okay, so I will say I got this information from All That's Interesting, Associated Press, Murderpedia, and Daily News, and I tried to, like, really get all the information I could. There's not too, too much. But what I did find is really horrifying, so. Wonderful. Wonderful. Also on brand. Also on brand. and we don't even need to go to italy we just have to go to missouri yes so 2009 saint martin's missouri okay alissa bustamante is a 15 year old girl has that like emo look like

if you look her up she has like the um, um, like the chopped haircut, the straight hair with the bangs across the face, like super thick eyeliner. Very high school for 2009. Black nail polish. Yeah. Like she's doing that whole thing. Probably listens to Billy Talent like I did, you know, the things that I wanted to do. Were we 15?

No, we were. No, we were. 17. I was 17. I was 18. Okay. So close enough. I mean, we, we went to high school with a bunch of girls.

Right. Like she was still on MySpace. so it was like still in existence. So it's a Friday, and Alyssa has the day off from school for whatever reason. She's like, hmm, what do I want to do today? Oh, I know. I want to know what it feels like to murder someone. Oh, shit. So she's the murderer.

Correct. I thought we were about to hear about her murder. Nope. Surprise. Plot twist. Plot twist on bullet three. Okay. murderer correct i thought we were about to hear about her murder nope surprise plot twist plot twist on bullet three okay between 2002 and 2009 so i'm going to give you a little background on alissa she was raised by her grandparents um her mother had a history of drug and alcohol abuse which led her to end up in jail her father was serving jail time as well for assault

so her grandparents took legal custody of her and her three younger siblings in california and then to get away from their former lives uh they all moved to kind of this ranch in uh missouri in a town called saint martin's which was just west of jefferson city which is the capital so her grandparents were like we're going to move all the kids to this nice small town and like get away from all the drama of their past. Despite her parents' setbacks and like her kind of turbulent upbringing, Alyssa was a pretty good student. She got A's and B's. She attended youth group at the local LDS church with her family, but she also struggled deeply with depression.

So in 2007, she tried to take her own life, and she ended up spending 10 days at a psychiatric facility in town and went on antidepressants. However, despite the medication, she regularly practiced cutting and she would often show her friends, her scars on her wrists. And she like posted photos on my space of her scars.

And it was just like a big part of who she was and what she put out there about herself. And she was also online, very like anti-authority. She wrote posts like quote, bad decisions make great stories. She had a YouTube account and a MySpace and she wrote her hobby. She filled out her profile and her hobbies were listed as killing people and cutting.

Oh, my God. Yeah. So she wasn't like really trying to hide anything. She was having a very tough time. Sure. Yes. And was not hiding it. It didn't seem like it was her number one secret.

Right. Got it. So she posted a YouTube video called, well, at this point, like she hadn't done anything, but so that was like her profile basically. And she had a YouTube channel and she had posted a YouTube video called idiots getting electrocuted by electric fence. Oh my God. Okay.

So in the video, it shows her with her two she has two nine-year-old twin brothers and she grabs an electric fence in the video and it's electrocuted so she's one of the idiots correct okay but then she's so she's like 15 and then she convinces her poor nine-year-old brothers to do it too and they fucking do it because they're nine right and she's demanding she's forcing them to do it so she gets them to touch the fence um and then she writes she like has like a little caption on the screen that reads this is where it gets good this is where we see my brothers get hurt it's like so fucked up shit okay so she's just troubled oh my god uh so anyway back to fast forward friday afternoon she's like what should i do i want to know what it feels like to murder someone

that was quite a leap okay yeah sure let's see what it looks like to hurt my brothers yep when and where they'll recover i guess she just had a lot of fun with that and then was like she was like imagine if i crank it up to 100 correct wow so next step obviously she decides she's gonna go out to the woods near her house and dig two large holes for bodies yep okay and she goes hmm not sure who to kill yet but i'll wait on it that's dark in a way i can't even think of. Right? See, Gio didn't like it either. He's like, same here, dude. Oh, my. He's like, don't let it be me.

Oh, my God. Fuck, hold on. Hi, guys. Sorry, as we were trying to get Gio to quiet down, we checked our phones. Yep. And Eva had texted us that apparently we were mentioned in Newsweek for the third time now yay about the Stranger Things listener story from last week yeah so I forget who the oh shoot yeah if you go back and listen to our most recent listeners episode I think it was the third or fourth story um someone submitted uh actually do I have it right here oh my god it's still

because we never threw it out because we never I never threw away my? Oh, my God. It's still... Because we never threw it out. Because we never... I never threw away my notes. Oh, my God. It was a story. Right next to me. Her last name was Silling Man. She'd been found... Hang on. Listener.

A true crime. No, I don't have it. Well, Silling Man, she had been found dead. Sorry to spoil it. In the mall's food court in the subway. Remember? Right. In the subway.

That's horrifying anyway if you go listen to uh our last listeners episode it was the person who went to high school with them yes and said that they knew ceiling and she had started dating a guy named emmet and right right right right oh my gosh well go listen to it and that episode of and that's why your drink was just mentioned uh in a stranger things article in newsweek uh thanks to the person who sent it in which we have no credit for sorry for not giving you credit and yet somehow taking credit I'm gonna look it up okay um sorry music. I had to look up who sent it in. It was Shelby. Shelby.

Thank you, Shelby. Thank you, Shelby. Shelby actually tweeted and said, oh no, a different Shelby tweeted and said, that feeling when Christine says your name and that she's going to read your story and then it's a different Shelby. Well, Shelby, sorry that we got mentioned in the Stranger Things article and you didn't, but it was all because of you. So we are telling all of our fans it is because of Shelby. It is. Thank you, Shelby.

Thank you, Shelby. Go look at the Newsweek article that you inspired. Look at that. Shelby. Pretty cool. All right. It's your story that we just told. It's your story.

We got the credit. Oops. Sorry. So let's see. Da da da da da. Where were we? We were. Oh, you said, because I said she dug two graves and you said that.

Yeah. And I was, that's super dark because like, I mean, I can't, I mean, I can't imagine digging literal graves with the intention of them being graves. Right. With the intention of it. But like to also like, oh, I'm digging a hole right now for a body that I don't even know just some random innocent life is going to be here. It gives like premeditation a whole new level.

Right. Cause it's not even like. You haven't even figured out here a whole new level because it's not even like you haven't even figured out your plan yeah it's not even spurred by like anger it's just like yeah yeah it's pretty fucked up and um i mean i used to kind of listen to like i was very catholic school like again i waited to get drunk till i was quote legally in a loophole where i could like that's how bad i was anti-authority but like i tried to be like oh billy talent like fuck the world nobody understands me but like this is just so like it's beyond the image exactly exactly exactly um wow so she digs two large holes out back in kind of like the wooded area and she's decided to like it's not just like two it's not like oh let me just see

what killing is like it's like let me see what killing multiple people like the first time won't be enough she's like hmm i'm just gonna plan way ahead you know okay um so then she's like okay i dug two graves so now i'm just gonna like go about my life as usual so she goes to school she hangs out with friends like normal life then four days later alissa finally decides on a victim. Oh boy. Someone who wronged her? Four houses down from the Bustamante family lived a nine-year-old girl named Elizabeth. Oh shit. As you yawn.

I know, but still, oh shit. As, okay, so her name is Elizabeth Olton. She's nine. She often came over to play with Alyssa's siblings, her younger half-sister. On October 21st, 2009, Alyssa convinces her younger sister to invite Elizabeth over to play with elisa's siblings her younger half-sister on october 21st 2009 elisa convinces her younger sister to invite elizabeth over to play ew yep so elizabeth's mother is like oh you know it's a school night i don't know about this and fine and elizabeth is like please i just

want to go play they only live four houses down the road and finally her mom's like okay but you have to come back home by six so she lets her go uh to play at alissa's house however she does not come home by six and she knows something is wrong when she calls the bustamante house and they're like oh no she left at five and they live four houses away so her mom's like that means something happened so within 45 minutes when they cannot find her they call the police and report her as missing they pinged elizabeth's cell phone police did and it showed up in the woods near the boost amante's house but they weren't able to locate her so the following day fbi agents knowing elizabeth was last seen at the boost amante house go over there and they question the whole family

sure so they're examining the property and they look they find they look back and they find what looks like a shallow grave interestingly enough out behind the house and they look, they find, they look out back and they find what looks like a shallow grave, interestingly enough, out behind the house. So they dig it up. They look inside. It's empty. And they ask Alyssa about it. And she says, I just like to dig holes. What the fuck?

And the FBI is like, hmm, let's keep tabs on this one. Right, right, right. She also told FBI in Missouri State. Gia, that scared the shit out of me. I thought for sure a ghost was coming on this one. Right, right, right. She also told FBI and Missouri State. Gio, that scared the shit out of me. I thought for sure a ghost was coming into this room. That's the male bark. I love Christine's maternal instincts towards Gio because she knows what every bark means. I do.

I love it. Oh, that's the dog. That's the male man. This is the male bark. What other barks does he have? There's the packages. So like UPS FedEx. Uh-huh. That's the mailman. This is the mail bark. What other barks does he have? There's the packages. So like UPS FedEx. Uh-huh.

Really? He, he, uh. He differentiates. There's a difference between mail and like specific mail. Yes. And like FedEx UPS. Because I believe it's because the same mail purse carrier comes every day. And occasionally like someone from UPS or FedEx will also come.

However, there is a separate bark for when there's a FedEx truck or UPS truck on the street. Fuck off. I know. It never ends, dude. So, like, he knows there's a bark for when he sees a truck. Right. There's a bark for when someone from that truck is approaching him. He's approaching the house.

And then there's a bark for general United States mail. Correct. U.S. Postal Service gets its own special bark. Wow. Yep. Okay. That one was U.S. Postal Service gets its own special bark. Wow. Yep. He, okay. That one was U.S. Postal Service. Shut up.

I'm serious. Okay. You're a crazy person and he's a crazy dog. Oh, I'm aware. Who do you think raised him? That's amazing. Where do you think he gets it from? But he can like color coat or something.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. So, you know, we get each other sure oh he's back is this one like i want water instead of i want juice or something we back okay my bad where were we she were we? She had, she likes digging. Oh, right. She likes digging holes. So, uh, she had also told FBI and Missouri State Highway Patrol officials that Elizabeth,

the nine-year-old, had probably been kidnapped and that whoever had done so deserved to be convicted. Oh, okay. Okay. Sure. Cool. So, they keep investigating, especially around that area, obviously, where she disappeared. They go back to see where her cell phone,izabeth's cell phone had pinged and they find another shallow grave back behind the boost monte house that they hadn't spotted the first time this one so was the first

one intentionally a decoy no it was just one of the two that she had dug she just hadn't finished her killings yet correct perfect or who knows she just had left that one or she just really likes digging or maybe she really dug one and she was like i'm not done she's like this was so much fun my forearms hurt god um this hole that they found was covered with leaves unfortunately they find nine-year-old elizabeth's body inside well at least that was a quick find oh um sort of like a mystery you know yeah usually i don't get the answers yeah that's true at the end so at least this way we got an answer however this is also infuriating because there's not really a reason like there's not like a why i mean there's really no good news in your stories right there yeah there's usually not um here's what they

determined to have happened so elizabeth is over playing with elisa's little sister and she's like i have to go home my mom wants me home by also nine years old is so little by the way i just like third grade so elisa sees that elizabeth is leaving the house and elizabeth knows her and trusts her and elisa knows this so she intercepts her as she's leaving and says oh come here i want to show you something in the woods convinces her to follow her into the woods where she strangles her slits her throat and stabs her shit when questioned alissa told investigators she just wanted to know what it felt like to kill someone oh my god obviously alssa is charged with first-degree murder and is arrested. It's still, despite, like, her kind of persona, it's still shocking because she's a 15-year-old girl.

And, like, you know, I mean, like I said, there are a lot of people who at the time online were, like, ooh, anti-authority, but, like, didn't act on it. You know? Or, like, this is just such a next level thing that most adult obviously like right adults don't do let alone like a 15 year old teenager so people are still just like shocked even her own friends said like yeah she had this kind of like streak and stuff but like this is just so beyond right no one expects it's like actually yeah yeah and of like a nine-year-old girl i mean what the fuck so um she was known as being pretty shy also in real life and like relatively normal teen like she got good grades like she you know it just was so

out of out of the blue it was crazy so they had actually found her diary as well when they had originally swept the house um they had taken her diary before they even knew that she had done this. And so in court, she had actually tried to cover up the relevant entries by blotting out the blue ink, like by basically covering over it. Sure. But I guess she couldn't bring herself to like burn the pages. I don't know. She just like scribbled on it. But the FBI actually hired a handwriting expert who was able to find out the original. Right.

Like read what was underneath all the blue. Hmm. Whatever. The journal entry read, and I quote, I just fucking killed someone. I strangled them and slit their throat and stabbed them. Now they're dead. I don't know how to feel ATM. ATM at the moment.

Yep. Wow. A later entry read, It was ah-mazing. A-H. It was ah-mazing. As soon as you get over the, oh my god, O-H-M-Y-G-A-W-D, one word. Sure.

As soon as you get over the, oh my god, I can't do this, feeling, it's pretty enjoyable. Oh my god, what? I'm kind of nervous and shaky though right now. K, I gotta go to church now lol of all the ways to end that lol and they read it and gotta go to church yep she was like active at church too they read they read this in court like the handwriting expert like a fully grown adult had to read this out loud, like LOL. Oh my God. Yikes.

Of all places to go after a murderer. And also, why wouldn't you not write that in your diary? Why would you write that in your diary? Right. You could have, you could have forgotten a day and not written that. Or you could have known that the FBI wanted to look at it and then fucking ripped it out and burned it, dummy. I mean, really, you could have also not killed the person you could have started from the very beginning sure she's not making good calls so far there's big mistakes left and right in this story hindsight's 2020 i guess

sure right so okay i gotta go to church now lol and she like lived with her grandma so it's like uh that's the whole thing is sick that's awful so at one point uh alissa had also written that she intended to burn down a house and kill everyone inside oh my god but she never followed through with that on october 14th one week before elizabeth's killing alissa had written that she was unable to use her cell phone because the charger had died which meant she couldn't talk to anyone about the depression and rage that was building up inside her so she had like pretty intense issues obviously and she had been hospitalized for them before and so um she clearly had some pretty intense

rage that was building that built up right allegedly to this uh so she wrote if i don't talk about it i bottle it up and when i explode someone's going to die so i take back the allegedly she made it pretty clear yeah and it did happen right she told it herself uh so she read that in court and it was actually used by her defense attorney charlie moreland to basically say like this was you know a case of a teenager like with all this angst and rage and like mental health issues building up inside her that weren't addressed sure um and that's what happened so although she was a minor at the time of the murder alissa was tried as an adult due to the gruesome and premeditated nature of the murder i mean the fact that she was freaking digging grades a week before she knew she knew um she confessed in court

she pled guilty although her defense team like i said did point to her troubled childhood and her past mental health issues in an attempt to apply leniency to her sentence um didn't quite work as i said she was still tried as an adult and a few weeks before her trial in 2012 so this was actually already uh over two years after the murder um i watched so many crime shows that i forget how long it fucking takes for this stuff to happen right like by the time all of this is over she's already an adult anyway like it's just crazy so it took two years for this to even go to trial but so a little so what did she do the whole time that they were waiting for trial she was in jail just hanging out or was she like i don't think she was at home on bail i think she was probably i don't know it depends on if she was was she in juvie for two years or was she like i don't know usually you're it depends on your bail but like i imagine for this she probably was

kept locked up okay because she seemed to be in danger hanging out at home for two years being like oh well when i end up in jail i don't think so i don't think they would have let her get bailed out for that i doubt it i mean i'm not positive but i feel like usually that And then depending on your sentence, you can apply those years to like your sentence. You know what I mean? Got it. Again, I watched a lot of true crime shows, which helps me 0% with knowing how the actual law works. So I mean, if you don't know, I definitely don't know. So I mean, I imagined, I imagine she was too much of a threat to herself and others that she was probably not released fair, but who knows? weeks before um her trial in 2012 which is two years after the murder alissa accepts a plea deal to the lesser charge of second degree murder so she can avoid the death penalty

because that was on the table sure she was sentenced with life in prison with the possibility of parole so um although she is still in prison it is possible that she could get out in the future elizabeth's mother said the nine-year-old's mom whose name is patricia price she felt the original sentence was still too light um obviously i think anything she was sentenced with probably wouldn't have been enough obviously yeah uh she called elissa a monster um on the stand she said she hated everything about her she called her not human and when she said that the judge actually had to stop her because um it was like too impassioned i don't know the judge had to stop her when she i think when she said not human they

were like okay the jury right needs i don't know needs to keep considering her human i'm not sure but when she said when she got to that point the judge stopped her um but she did say she hates everything about her and she's not human um and obviously elizabeth's whole family was devastated by i mean it's just so shockingly random yeah and violent and horrible um elissa herself broke down sobbing when the verdict was read out. She apologized to Elizabeth's family quote. If I could give my life to bring her back, I would,

I just want to say, I'm sorry for what happened. I'm so sorry, but obviously that was too little too late. Right. Uh, Elizabeth's mother went ahead and filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Alyssa.

And the suit was settled in 2012 at $5 million. So Alyssa now owes that to her plus 9% interest every year that it's not paid. Um, and so that actually, I was like, well, where would she get that money? And then it was like, Oh, she actually is part of this deal. She's required to, to report if she makes money off of like giving interviews or got a TV or movie rights, life rights. So if she makes money off that that goes to elizabeth's family which i think is actually sure pretty great um in october 2012 a thriller loosely based on the events of elisa's case was released called my name is a by anonymous okay i don't

quite know what that means but um that is the latest news as As far as I can tell, she's still in prison. There's not really a chance of her to be released anytime soon. But she, I think, will be eligible for parole. I think I saw in different places either minimum 10 years or minimum 30 years. So those are very different. Let's average it out to 20 years. Yeah, there we go. So 20-ish, 20, 2032. Okay.

I don't know if that's correct. Yeah, that sounds right um yeah so either way uh there is no new news from her but she's currently incarcerated and um is being treated for some mental health issues crazy fortunately and yeah i'll keep you updated i know that was kind of short sorry no mine was super long so it's just very violent and horrible it's wonderful oops well happy days happy days i can't even point to zach baggins to lighten the mood like there's not even anything he can do at this point oh yeah yeah um thank you i guess i feel like that's how this always always say that more it's like i hate the hated that but thank you for the the journey thank you for the journey.

Thank you for the journey to hell. Thanks for the ride. My final destination. We're met with Zach Bagans in a stupid bird mask. Is that it for you? I think that's it for me. That's it for me. Do you have any updates? Yeah, well, we have a couple tickets left. Barely any, though, so go buy your tickets for Atlanta and New Orleans. Okay. That's it on my end. Please go do that.

Let's sell out. Yeah, let's sell out. And also, um, check us out on the interwebs. The interwebs. Yes. Yeah. Uh, all right. Thank you guys so much. Uh, we will catch you on the flip flop. Cool cats. Hip hip popping him. Hip hip. Hooray. And that's why we drink.