And That's Why We Drink - E129 A Tipsy Alien and Your Least Favorite Word

Episode Date: July 21, 2019

It's flap o' clock somewhere in the universe! Join us for Flappy Hour this week as Em and Christine chat Braxy the Flatwoods Monster of West Virginia (not to be mistaken for the western part of Virginia). Then we take a hard left turn into the extremely traumatizing case of the murders of Shari Faye Smith and Debra May Helmick in South Carolina. We've also got some tips for how to be bougie on a budget if you just have to have that 10 foot alien cryptid statue in your town square... and that's why we drink!Please consider supporting the companies that support us! Get $65 off your first month of Talkspace when you use the code DRINK at Talkspace.comGet 15% off your Modcloth order of $100 or more! Go to modcloth.com and enter code WHYFor a limited time, get your first month of medication from Cove FREE. Go to WITHCOVE.com/DRINKGet 2 months of Skillshare classes for free when you go to skillshare.com/drink2

Welcome. Thank you. Welcome. Happy to be here. Oh, we are recording live. Live in New York. in California. How are you? Good, not great. Why? I'm so sleepy. So here's the thing. Here we go. You asked. I know. You've opened the box. You always make me ask, so I figured I might as well do it. Yay. Okay. I like you knowing my need for attention. Okay. So I have a friend. His name is Ross. Oh, I thought you were talking about Allison. I was like, yeah. No, we're starting from the beginning. Oh, God. Okay.

I have a friend named Ross. He was once my Lyft driver. We got stuck in traffic and bonded over how we didn't have many friends. So we decided to be friends. So I've hung out with him quite often. And I found out that just like I love superheroes and Back to the Future, he is a big fan of Jurassic Park. Sure. So...

Seems like a winning combo. Up until yesterday, yes. like i love superheroes and back to the future he is a big fan of jurassic park sure so seems like a winning combo up until yesterday yes so then he found out that the new jurassic world uh ride was at universal and he said oh will you go with me and i said yes like a fool big fool because i was like of course i'll go like i'm i want to go with someone who's all fucking hyped to be there. And what I forgot to put into the equation was that he would want to be there before everyone else. And so he said, OK, well, meet me at my house at six. And I was like, a.m. And he said, yes, six a.m.

Big mistake. So that way we can be the first people there. No. And I said, OK, when does the park open? Thinking it must be like six oh one. And he said, oh, it doesn't open till people there. No. And I said, okay, when does the park open? Thinking it must be like 6.01. And he said, oh, it doesn't open till 8.30. No. Wait, are you serious?

So I was like, do you really expect me to stand in line for two and a half hours before the park opens? And he said, yep. Did you do that for real? I did. I'm a good friend. Okay. I hope you learned your lesson about looking for friends. This is what happens.

This is why I should have stayed alone. I should have been a hermit. Hello. This is what I do. I sit in good friend. Okay. I hope you learned your lesson about looking for friends. This is what happens. This is why I should have stayed alone. I should have been a hermit. Hello. This is what I do. I sit in my house. Well, so I, I'm using it as my friends and they don't make me go anywhere at six in the morning. I'm using it as an IOU because I don't know if you've heard, but Marvel land is opening.

No, I haven't. Thanks for letting me know. I will be going often and I will be wanting to beat everyone at all the rides. So now he has no reason to say no to me. You can hold it over his head. That is a good thing about a friend is you can use one another. I've proven myself. Power dynamic.

Okay. But so. And at least I'm not going to be the one sucker who has to fall for it. Ross can take my place. Oh, I know not to invite you. I'd be like, look over there. And you'd be like, I don't get it. So I would take Allison a thousand thousand times but now i'm only

going to take her 500 and i'm going to make ross go 500 times well allison's in a cast right now so good luck so round two of my story is because i woke up so early to hang out with ross i got zero sleep because i usually go to bed only a couple hours before 6 a.m right and uh so i was super tired all day plus i was in the heat all day And then I came home and I was just ready to pass out. And then Allison told me that she she's had this weird issue with her foot for a long time. And we finally found out yesterday that she fractured it. Yeah, that's. And so now she's in a cast for a month and it's on her right foot, which means she can't drive herself to work. So when I was like, oh, I can't wait to fall asleep. She was like, oh, well, hopefully I'll wake up early because you have to take me to work and you have to do it every day for the next 30 days. So this is like the universe punishing you for trying to be sociable. Yeah.

So I'm in the middle of trying to fix my sleep schedule and like consistently stay up, wake up early. This was my second morning waking up early and I hated it. That sounds terrible. I woke up at eight and I was like, uh, this is so early. I deserve three more hours of sleep. I, there's something wrong with my natural circadian rhythm. I've never been able to fall asleep before like 3am. Right.

And so when I had a day job that sucked and i just could never fix i can never fix it yeah and also now's the time so apparently now's the time and so i'm just super tired is does the answer to how i'm doing well how are you doing oh i'm okay good not great good not great why oh i'm actually okay i just kind of wanted to use that phrase um i like the phrase it it's a good feels right it's a good not great phrase yeah um so stupid uh no i i did want to say everyone's been so nice about like when i said i'd cut back on drinking so many people have reached out and been like hey just want you like wanted to touch uh touch base and say like i've been trying to do that too or like i've been considering it and now

i'm gonna go through with it and it's just been really cool and a lot of people have reached out and like people our age so people in their 20s, which I feel like traditionally when you're in your 20s, it's just kind of a given that like you can drink all the time whenever you want, whatever. And so people have been like super understanding and kind and I just really appreciate that. So it's going well. Nice. I got a little nervous because I had a few drinks the other day and I was like, am I

going to fall back into the hole? But I was fine. And I feel like I've found a good balance. Knock on wood. Also, I'm really excited because Eva has put started putting our episodes up on YouTube. Oh, yes. I was like, what did Eva do? There was this monster who was stealing our content and putting it on YouTube and thousands of people were listening to it on YouTube. And I kept trying to tell YouTube it's mine. And they were like, we can find zero evidence that it belongs to you. though we'd we'd submitted like legal documents that it was our trademark and everything seal on that from the U.S. Patent Office notarized piece of paper

that YouTube was like well that's not enough why don't you prove it and so someone kept listening someone kept posting all of our stuff yeah and people didn't know better because like why would they know that it's not us right and so anyway i finally like went full full tilt on this youtube thing and i wrote this long ass thing and was like my lawyer my patent lawyer who's my dad's golf partner by the way it's like my patent lawyer would get involved and so finally youtube was like okay and they took it down so now instead eva is putting up um our episodes because i know a lot of people like to listen to them on YouTube for some reason. So I don't know.

But anyway, go help us. Yeah. At least beat the numbers that that other guy had. Seriously. And it's going kind of slow because it takes like hours to upload for some reason, apparently. Because each episode is like an hour and a half. Sure. So, yeah.

So Eva's putting them up right now. I think she said she's on episode 20 right now. So if you guys want to subscribe to our YouTube channel, we sometimes put weird shit up there. I don't know. It's been a while. It's been a while. One day. One day.

We have thoughts. So maybe in the future we're going to have some stuff. Just subscribe now so if we ever put something on there, you'll be happily surprised. J-I-C. You know. J-I-C. FYI. Yeah.

Anyway, that's all. So I just thought I would mention that. Cool. While I had the chance. Nice. Yeah. So thank you to Eva. FYI. Yeah. Anyway, that's all. So I just thought I would mention that. Cool. While I had the chance. Nice. Yeah. So thank you to Eva for being proactive. Yeah.

And thank you not to that person who stole our shit. It's someone who listens to us, too. So you know who you are. Don't do that. It's illegal. It says on the thing on YouTube, like, I own this content. It was mean of you. Don't do that.

Anyway, I do want to... Actually, let me double check that I'm allowed to say it. Oh! I just want to make sure. Say it. Say it. Oh, my God. Okay, we sold out New Orleans. Update.

Oh, we did? Yeah. Yay! Very nice. Let's see. We have a couple tickets left in Atlanta. Oh, man. That's exciting.

Should I say it and ask for permission later? And then if I don't have permission, I'll just tell Eva to delete this. Sure. Okay. So since my episode on McRaven Mansion, I have been in touch with one of the tour tour guides that I talked about the one named JJ on the well because they uh tweeted at us right they tweeted okay yeah so they wow it was it was a while ago so I don't know if I'll be able to find the original tweet but they said I did a really good job on on my story so I'm very proud. Isn't that super exciting? I always get so nervous that someone who is, like, well knowledgeable about this.

Or, like, historically aware of something. Yeah, or someone, maybe it's, like, someone who had an experience, and I'm, like, butchering their experience. I get so nervous I'm going to get sued every day. That happens with the fuck. Hello, at least you're not doing people's murder stories. Hello, I could be talking about something that's crazy haunted, and's not at all and i've just like ruined i could be talking about how somebody murdered someone and they didn't okay you're right you're right you're right no but some i somebody i just get nervous i get too nervous too because someone reached out recently

and eva for today and said like friends with bryce lespie's girlfriend and i'm like oh no but they were really supportive and said i did a good job too but i'm always like i probably said something because i mean i said stuff about his parents and like right you don't know anyway sorry so i feel so i feel the anxiety my first reaction when they wrote to us yeah i said like i hope i didn't fuck it up like sure please know that please don't sue me like biggest fear i everything's a legend that should have been the title of our podcast just to cover our asses subtitle so uh i was asking so their name is jay uh-huh i don't mean to be misgendering with they but i'm just gonna make just i want to be inclusive so uh jay ended up telling me that uh they weren't

zach's favorite person in the world which i just that line alone everyone was like oh and so i was like oh why and uh just i ended up dming jay just to be like tell me why and apparently uh there was some other creepy stuff going on behind the scenes that like no one got to see um like on camera like things were happening when the cameras were off sure um. Um, Jay said that when they actually left, apparently the spirits were so pissed that Zach and the whole crew were there that after the whole crew left, the management had to stay behind and keep relocking the doors because they would lock the door to the porch. And then when they like left, the doors would fly open. So they'd have to go relock it.

But when they got to the door, they would see into the building and see that other doors were now wide open. The ghosts were acting were now wide open the ghosts were acting out basically the ghosts were acting out they did not like zach being there i can't imagine why and so then i also said um i just asked too i was like or did any of the spirits ever follow you home or make you feel unsafe after that night just because i was curious about their personal stories, because I like asking personal questions to strangers. And so Jay said, the only spirit, this is through my DMs, by the way. I'm just reading my DMs. The only spirit to ever follow me home was Mary Elizabeth,

who was the 15-year-old. Yes, the died in childbirth. Yes. The only one to follow me home was Mary Elizabeth, but she would just do little things. Like once I couldn't find my earring, I walked out. And when I came back, she had put it in the center of my dresser. No, I know.

No, just little things, just little terrifying things. Um, we had a good connection. I actually slept in her bed before, which is just creepy. Why would you do that? Uh, Jay said, I know I'm nuts, but I had a solid reason. So I didn't find out the rest of that. I'm just going to trust you do that? Jay said, I know I'm nuts, but I had a solid reason. So I didn't find out the rest of that. I'm just going to trust you on that. Andrew, who was the super creepy one that was like attacking everybody.

Ew. Andrew always made me uncomfortable, tugged on my skirt, called my name, or you could just feel him staring. Mary doesn't like him either. And Bob, remember the guy who got, he like threw a brick at the soldiers and then he got shot fuck with the chrysanthemums bob tried to scare me a few times when i became manager but he was just being protective over his home he would wake me up if i fell asleep by tapping on something he yelled at one of my guests who was playing inappropriate music during work hours and then this is the creepy one because i didn't know about this tell me

i also would play ball with peekaboo during investigations who is peekaboo i don't fucking know you didn't ask i listen jay okay so jay's peekaboo he also used to turn the civil war around it sounds like i almost said civil war hang on i'm gonna say it civil war he turned the civil war around it was incredible everyone unified uh just took one brick he also used to turn the silverware around just before i came in on tour i swear he did it to bug me it only happened with me i'll send you i'll send you a picture of him in a second. Of him? He's a little boy. Also, sorry for the long message. I could seriously talk about this house for days.

So Jay sent me this picture and said, you can see him peeking from behind the chair. I'm going to die. Which means like this, I guess she calls him peekaboo. Yeah. Sorry. They call him peekaboo. Because they play peekaboo together and this is a picture stop it they got and we don't know who it is yeah i just want you to come over oh

sorry oh my god okay hold on here i'll just throw you my phone oh okay ready behind the chair oh oh my god that's a child that's definitely a child's face oh no isn't that crazy i don't like that oh my god it's like absolutely the silhouette of a child my we have this mirror at my house do you really yeah in your haunted ass house at my dad's house not surprised but anyway i just wanted to share those stories thank you jay for reaching out wowza it's also very cool to me that someone from like ghost adventures like regardless of scale like okay you were only in one episode but you were on ghost adventures and you used to our podcast that's so cool i mean the second m sent that i was like we were one degree we are one degree away from

data bites yeah yeah bananas bananas anyway sorry for that long no that thing amazing um other than that i'm good for telling you a story that was trippy the kid in the behind the the fact that we just call him peekaboo i don't like that just the worst it makes it sound like a little demon yeah a demon named peekaboo it sounds like what was that thing we did a story on a popper popper the ghost yeah who popped all the bottles peekaboo and popper that'd be a cool little children's book oh actually wait you write this down we should start like you know berenstain bears had like a series of children's books we should have a series of different ghosts and demons for children i call popper and peekaboo okay cool and at the on the back of each one we'll show them

like how to sage just in case they conjure something no don't play we're not gonna tell children to play with matches and fire please no we'll play with the demons those those are less flammable i think that's probably safer than telling a child how to use a lighter i'm just gonna be up front with you you should, we could do like what like, like Nickelodeon Magazine and all of them have done where it's like, get a parent to approve it. Nickelodeon Magazine, please. Yeah.

Have your mom call. Get a magazine for you. We want your mom to call us. We want your mom to sage the entire house after you read our book. I'm Christine. Oh God. Here's my cell phone number.

Actually, no, here's my lawyer. Actually never call him my patent lawyer he's golfing with my dad you can talk to him my story today we're idiots okay my story today which is uh one of the many books to come out in Barnes & Noble one day in the children's section, is a cryptid. Okay. Slash alien. Okay. Oh, where's this going? So here's the thing.

I see all of your tweets. I know this Area 51 nonsense is blowing up. I know a lot of people wanted me to cover Area 51, but I cannot do to answer your questions yes we are there right now we're reporting live reporting live at area 51 don't worry about it california uh it just i trust me area 51 is on my list for the future but that is just so much information a big story i could not research it in the time that it would have taken me to do it justice since that since it it in the time that it would have taken me to do it justice. Since it came in the news. Yeah, you would have needed a lot. Exactly.

So I'm compromising and I'm giving you an alien story. Also, if something breaks, especially if a true crime thing breaks and they just caught somebody or whatever, I always wait a few weeks because... The more information might come. Yeah, you want to hear the full story and wait until you get all the details. Right, right, right. So anyway, no, you're not getting area 51 sorry but i'm negotiating with you children and giving you an alien story ish okay um so this is a story that i heard about growing up because it was in west virginia which in case you didn't know

it's close to virginia which people is in case you didn't know it's east of virginia actually it's pretty incredible well people like us who who don't know what salt is might actually have been surprised by that. A lot of scientists messaged me and were very kind. You know what's wild? I have met a lot of people in California where when I say I'm from Virginia, they put them together. They've assumed that it's West Virginia and Virginia are the same thing. What? It's very weird.

That it's part of the state? It's just like the western half of the state? When I worked my day job, I worked there for three years and told people all the time, no, it's Virginia. No, it's Virginia. But people who knew me forever were like, oh yeah, I'm from West Virginia. I was like, no. What a weird thing. I don't know if they just think I'm talking about like the west part of Virginia and they just decided that West Virginia was a good answer. I don't know. I don't know. But since I moved out here for some reason, there statistically has been more times I've had to correct people. All right.

So anyway, if you're in Virginia or West Virginia, apparently this is the same state. And it's at least this story is close enough that even though I was only surrounding West Virginia, I did hear about it growing up. Okay. So this is the cryptid slash alien story of the Flatwoods monster slash the Braxton County monster slash the green monster slash the Phantom of Flatwoods slash the Frametown monster slash Braxy. God damn it. It's taking up all the good names. Braxy? Braxy. I like that one the best. Double X. Okay, what the hell is this? Okay, so we're going to call it the Flatwoods Monster.

That's a long children's book title. You have to really pick one. I just have to give you all six names. Yeah. Okay, Flatwoods Monster. Let me readjust real quick. I was, like, sinking into the couch. Yeah, no worries. It was upsetting my coccyx.

Super. All right, so the flatwoods monster and i only ever heard about the flatwoods monster when it came to like camping okay um i guess because they assume they're like they'll get you in the woods i don't know that's all i heard about if people are trying to figure out my like personal experience with the flatwoods monster it's not a big experience. It did get you in the woods. It did not. That's good. Or did it? And I'm just a...

You're just a shell of what you once were. Thank you. Well, ain't that the truth. But... That came out a little too quick out of my mouth. It was too soon, yeah. Yeah, I... I felt that one more than I think you wanted it.

Should have played it a little more jokey than I did. Sorry about that. Should have done it with a slight chuckle at the end yeah yeah i dropped the ball so the flatwoods monster has been featured in many pieces of pop culture nickelodeon magazine to be yes page one actually it was on the cover it's the first edition uh it's been on the nintendo game amagon i'm probably pissing people off i don't know. Also, The Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask. Majora's Mask. The Wii U game, The Wonderful 101.

Also, it's been on the shows Mountain Monsters, Monster Quest, Project Blue Book, and a documentary called The Flatwoods Monster, A Legacy of Fear. Oh, okay. Like I said, it's more cryptid than anything else. It's like if there was a big cryptid umbrella the alien part of it is underneath the umbrella okay cryptid first and it is seen in the forests of flatwoods west virginia it's also been seen in frame town west virginia which i guess is pretty close and at the time of this story the town of flatwoods west virginia was a village of less than 300 people oh okay very small town very teeny the monster is described as being 10 feet tall and

four feet wide it this is kind of confusing its body is either wearing a robotic suit or it is a robotic being wearing it wearing nothing like its skin is made of machine basically listen all right we've heard weirder gonna go with it some people were saying oh it's it's wearing a robotic suit or it's wearing a spacecraft and some people were like no it is a robotic suit or a spacecraft it is wearing a spacecraft. And some people were like, no, it is a robotic suit or a spacecraft. It is wearing a spacecraft. Who are you wearing? Space. I'm wearing NASA, bitch.

What the fuck? I don't know. Okay. Instead of it being an organic being, it might have just been a machine. Okay. But not from Earth, obviously. Well, obviously. It's also described as having a cowl in the shape of an ace of spades. So it looks like a big hood on its head.

Ew, that is creepy. And it's got a red round head. It has two eyes that glow green-orange. This cannot make up its mind, huh? It's like, I don't know what I am. And then again, the body is made of or wearing a metallic armored structure lined with thick vertical pipes. This thing cannot get you in the woods because it walks at 0.2 miles per hour. It sounds like it needs to get oiled or something. Yes.

People have said that the body is either black or green. Or orange or red or technicolor um they say black or green because it was only seen in the dark so i guess you couldn't really tell what the actual color was that's fair um most say that the monster was armless but others say that it actually had two small um lanky arms on the front that you just couldn't see if you weren't looking at the right angle so those little t-rex arms exactly okay i see so it really was like little dinosaur arms sorry got my heartburn again i did start taking pills just so everyone starts asking and like a lot of people tweeted out and gave me comments about heartburn.

Like, good advice. So thank you for your advice. A lot of people gave different kinds of advice. I saw some being like, don't take medicine. I saw some saying take medicine. I follow the people who said take medicine. So now I'm on medicine. Except I didn't take any today.

Did you get a prescription? No, I just went to CVS. Oh, whoa, whoa. Okay, so back to this alien cyborg monster cryptid so you're taking nacl to be clear i'm actually taking chalk yeah i want to be sure that we're all salt only chalk salt okay yes um from the civil war which is clearly the 1700s of the 1860s and also never mind i'm gonna stop talking yeah let's rehash every idiotic thing we said last week what's a rhombus so a so there's the flatwoods monster and then there's

the frame town monster which are supposedly the same thing although based on different towns it had different descriptions okay so the flatwoods monster the one is the one i have been describing the frametown monster apparently is only metallic from the waist down and from the waist up he is a reptile i'm sorry i shouldn't laugh at it's gonna get me well who knows so ridiculous sounding so it's supposedly the same thing people think that maybe it started morphing into a reptile by the time people saw it in Frametown. Okay. I don't know. It's the same monster, but different descriptions.

So the story is in 1952, and there were four boys playing football in their school playground at night after hours. Bad boys. Uh-oh, little rebels. So they all saw a ball of fire flying across the sky and it landed on a hilltop in bailey fisher farm so they went to uh two of those four boys were brothers so they went to those two kids house um they told their mom that they saw a ufo and the mom named kathleen uh went with them to the farm to try to find it, including other locals. So there was Kathleen, her four sons, two of the other sons were at the house, so now

her four sons, and then their friends, Neil, Jean, Tommy, Ronnie, and a local beautician who is unnamed. She's the only one without a name. Well, that's not very nice very nice fun fact one of them had a dog so the dog also went with one of these people one of these people had a dog okay the one named gene had a dog oh uh gene also had a last name do you want to know what the last name is nah lemon no way yeah are you being serious gene lemon didn't this happen one time and it turned out to be it's happening too often is what's happening.

It's happened at a live show. It's one of those things... But then it was layman. You were just pronouncing it wrong. No, this one's Lemon. It is literally Lemon. It is literally Lemon. Okay.

So, Gene Lemon's dog. I love Lemon. And in all of the articles I was reading, they were like, Lemon's dog. And I was like, ah, fuck. Now I'm thinking of Gio. Lemon has a dog, too. Ay. So, Kathleen hears about this from her kids all four of her kids run to the hilltop to see for

themselves including neil gene tommy ronnie a beautician and gene's dog whatever their name is uh so one of the local dogs i guess other dogs started like running together. They like all started running towards us, started barking and ran back a few minutes later with its tail between its legs. So they already knew something not so great was there. The group reached the top of the hill where they saw a large pulsating ball of fire like they had just seen flying in the sky. They also started smelling a sulfur-like odor that made their eyes and noses burn and eventually um gene lemon's dog refused to walk any further oh and so some distance ahead was uh that quote ball of fire it's kind of turned into

a pulsing red light okay so. So while looking near the light, Jean also saw glowing eyes. So he pointed his flashlight at it. And that's when everyone saw the creature for the first time. Oh, it had a red face surrounded by a pointed hood, like shape. Apparently its body had drape like folds.

Yeah. Super gross. Yeah. Some say it had arms. Some say it didn't. some say it was floating um and then there is one article i saw that said it covered kathleen with a strange oily substance ew um and people were saying that it looked very mechanical like it was a quote living machine not a flesh and blood creature what in the world so the can i ask a quick question yeah is the ball of fire like separate from the being or is that yeah i think

they thought that the it might have been the crashed ufo uh like there was a so it was near the it was near the crashed ufo okay i get it um and so the monster emitted a shrill hissing noise then glided towards them and then changed direction and flew off obviously what would the group do next fled they just fled they fled they they fled they fled in panic okay yes as you should do as you should do and they did the smart thing they contacted the local sheriff and a news reporter that night after they reported what they saw to the sheriff they all had severe nausea oh no swollen throats and some even had convulsions oh my god which a doctor said these were all symptoms of mustard gas oh my god how weird very weird that's when it starts getting weird oh that's when it starts that's when it starts getting weird oh that's when it starts that's

when it starts the mechanical thing in the sky boringly normal oh my god gene lemon's dog come on sounds like a normal wednesday am i right so the reporter and the sheriff went to the site with the farmer because remember it landed in the middle of a farm sure um they went to the farmer all three of them went out to where everyone said they saw something and they found no trace of an encounter. But there was still, according to the reporter, quote, a sickening burnt metallic odor still prevailing. So they knew something was there. This thing's not very subtle, though, huh? It just makes really gnarly farts, I guess.

I guess so. And also, I just I'm kind of like, I feel like typically aliens are much more advanced beings when you encounter them. And this one seems like it's just like bumbling around and like accidentally spraying oil and like clunking like it seems me as an alien yeah yeah it's like our attempt at being right it's just really a little bit sad just trying so hard like come on get your shit together um so there was a gross odor that was still around uh the reporter visited the site again the next day because remember the first time there was no trace of anything being there except for the smell right so the reporter goes back

found two tracks in the mud that they couldn't figure out and also found traces of a quote thick black oddly gummy deposit liquid so uh he reported them as being possible signs of a ufo because whatever the tracks were in the mud they could have not been from a car because that area hadn't been used for any traffic in the last year okay so for them to just show up out of nowhere it didn't make sense um the day after this event and the, uh, after the Flatwoods incident, um, there was a couple named George and Edith and they were driving through Frametown. So this is the reptilian description. The Frametown monster. Okay. So George and Edith are driving through, uh, Frametown and their car stalls all of a sudden and refuses to start again.

And all of a sudden they smell this really bad sulfuric odor in the air the couple got out of the car to see what was wrong with uh see what was wrong with their vehicle and they saw the creature that was described a lot like the flatwoods monster but according to their report it was reptilian from the waist up it was hovering and glowing um kind of far away from their car but they could see it in the distance hovering and glowing and then george says that he felt thousands of needle-like vibrations and then he got sick like like vomitous sick yeah when he got back in the car his wife said to turn around and the figure was even closer than before. Apparently it was 10 feet tall and had quote, a bloated stomach, long arms and was gliding rapidly. Oh God.

It lifted above the tree line and flew off, leaving a trail of light behind it. Okay. So that's the only story for the Frametown description of the monster. Got it. That was the only incident that happened in Frametown. It makes sense if they were saying he had like weird folded skin it reminds me of a big iguana or something yeah i'm thinking that like with it's like weird like weenus skin yeah yeah yeah like flat little flabs flabs you know one of my least favorite words is flap uh yeah you've said that it is kind of gross

it sounds like a like i get like a like a bird flapping its wings but like when you think of like skin yeah i don't like that actually and that's what i think of when i think of like drapes of skin body parts yeah gross it is you as an alien it is me and my flaps so uh interestingly so those were the two main stories but several other locals ended up reporting having seen a strange aircraft that night. Seven of those sightings were taken more seriously than others, but there were a lot of reports. So one reported seeing a bright orange object circling overhead the Flatwoods area. Two people said that they saw the creature 11 miles from the farm a week before the incident.

Oh, so before the boys ever found it, it was around for the week before. Okay. Um, there were reports of homes shaking violently and radios cutting out at the same time the UFO was seen landing. Apparently there's a, uh, an area there called James Knob and it was also reportedly hit by another UFO that people saw. There's a witness that saw a UFO taking off at 6.30 a.m. the morning after the UFO was seen, as if it, like, fixed the UFO that had crashed and was now leaving.

And there's a compiled account as of 2004 that there were hundreds of reports in multiple states of UFOs and landings reported that same night. Okay. Jesus. of reports and multiple states of ufos and landings reported that same night okay um so that that implies that a whole fleet of ufos were visiting earth that night oh that's really my nightmare all right and they're all that bumbling and weird and bad at being an alien that's less scary to me they're just all kind of i prefer that i prefer the flappy aliens to the flappy alien like accidentally spraying you with oil and crashing their vehicles. Whoops. Was he just drunk, actually?

He could have been a tipsy alien now that I think about it. It sounds like he was just... It was just, like, happy hour for him. Aw. It's five o'clock somewhere, he says. Even in space. Even on my planet, Glibglorb. I'm sorry.

I'm very sorry. It's Glap o'clock somewhere. Glap o'clock. I don't know. Glibglorb and Flap happened in my sorry. It's Glap-a-clock somewhere. Glap-a-clock. Glip, Glorb, and Flap happened in my head. It's Flap-a-clop. Heat is dangerous. Children, find an air conditioner. Guys, we're so hot. There's no air conditioning in here.

There is. We just can't use it because we want to protect your delicate ears from the noise. It's too loud when we record we just things we do for you i'm losing my mind uh yeah anyway it's been lost so esteemed esteemed ufologists sure also came to examine this they were like really starting to take it seriously some of the ufologists who are, quote, esteemed are John Keel, who is pretty big. I love John Keel. So he investigated this. He's Mothman, dude. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So did Gray Barker and Ivan Sanderson. Okay. All very esteemed. All very esteemed. Ivan Sanderson was a naturalist, so he took a lot of soil samples to see what could have possibly been. So he picked up the goop. He picked up the goop. He picked up the goop. His findings were never made public.

Oh. Interesting. Interesting. I'm not saying that means anything. I'm just saying it's interesting. I'm just saying it means something. I'm saying it means something private and mysterious. Something very important.

Something people don't want you to know. Mm-hmm. And then Gray Barker, he also reported the story in Fate magazine based on recorded interviews. And so the whole story ended up making local news. And then it got picked up by National Radio. And then it got picked up by even bigger papers. And Kathleen ended up going to New York to talk about it on at CBS. Oh, OK.

So I was getting like widespread attention. And it allegedly also prompted the Air Force to add it to their project blue book which i'm not going to get into because i think that could be a good story one day yes but it's a you've mentioned it it's a a big old archived a database a database if you will of alien encounters especially during the 50s and 60s so So cool and creepy, and I wish I had a coffee book version. Ugh, can you imagine? I would love that very much. So it's now apparently added into the Project Blue Book.

Oh my god, we could do a children's book version. Wait a minute. Project Baby Blue Book. No, I'll work on it. God. We'll figure it out. But no, I'm down. I love it.

We could do like, we could teach kids colors, like Project Red Book, Project Green Book, Project Blue Book. As long as it rhymes, I think we can make any of this into a children's book. One fish, two fish, red book, blue book. But yeah, that sounds good. Cool. One flab, two flab. Oh, God.

One flab, two flab, red book, blue book. Flabby hour. Wait a minute. I forget. I forget what the words we made up. Flabby bird, yeah. Flabby hour wait i forget i forget what the words we made up flabby bird yeah so uh so other weird things that happened um commander of the west virginia national guard captain dale leave it he quote examined the area himself with 50 air force personnel

and found an oily substance and a six meter wide circle of depressed grass with no explanation kathleen also this is the weirdest part kathleen also claims that a couple days after the incident two mysterious men there it is dressed in black there it is said that they were magazine reporters and they demanded to be shown the crash site i'm telling you when she When she took them there, they went into the woods, and they came out with strange oily stains on their clothes and never mentioned them to her again. They were just like, don't mind us. They were like, don't look.

Where's the dry cleaner? So after Kathleen's report to Gray Barker about that, Gray Barker wrote about this and, in a way, incidentally introduced the concept of the men in black. The, aha. Bingo. Bingo bango. If you're wondering wondering the inspo from the mib i'm telling you that is one of the creepiest parts of these alien things to me the men in black and theaters now man too yes so gray barker went on to actually

become a prominent ufo and mythology writer so this was one of his like first big cases but fun fun fact about the men in black it is or a scary fact about the men in black very frightening been around since 52 at least yeah so the skeptics out there say that the oil tracks were actually just from a tractor on the farm or a chevy pickup from one of the locals looking around the site on his own uh the ball of fire everybody saw was most likely just a meteor since there was a meteor shower that night on the east coast the red light that everyone saw was an aircraft or a hazard beacon and the monster itself was most likely a female barn owl and people in their barn owls listen there's a lot of farms with ufos on them which makes me think

there's a lot of barn owls being mistaken for aliens i see probably a female barn owl because um that was apparently the time of the year where a barn owl would have just had new babies and all the people there might have probably been near her nest so she's protecting her young and those are scary yeah so female barn owls are very large. They're larger than the male ones. They have an orange-brown color. They hiss when threatened, and they swoop their head down and puff up their wings to appear larger, which would explain the ace of spades shape.

Yeah, true. Also, the sulfuric smell could have been an irritated type of grass in the area, which I don't know about, but that seems to be the main argument. Also, the sulfuric smell could have been an irritated type of grass in the area. Okay. Which I don't know about, but that seems to be the main argument. Okay. And the symptoms that the witnesses experienced later could have just been an after effect, like the symptoms of being really sick. Sure. Could have just been an after effect from overexertion and sensory overload because

they were really afraid. Right. So it could have just been they were nauseous after just going through a lot mentally and like i don't know about them but at least for me like the if i think about it like if someone it's so easy to like get yourself in that headspace of like oh i also feel nauseous or you know if other people are saying i feel sick i mean if someone vomits in front of me like i instantly feel nauseous so i feel like it's not surprising to me and also realistically of the like 10 people that were

there five of them were mother and sons so right right if one of them was sick and watch the other one get sick and got sick and watch the other one got sick and got sick i mean that's it's very easy to half of the witnesses yeah so it could have been framed really well by the news that like oh a lot of the victims got ill totally or they could like as a family they could have fucking had like a stomach flu or something not a big deal um mom cooked some bad pork right the beautician brought over her famous brownies right right the fumes from the beautician being there oh that's true so until the 2000s people of flatwoods were actually really ashamed and embarrassed of the monster and they refused to talk about it don't be embarrassed because they thought it gave the town of flatwoods a bad reputation okay andrew smith ended up becoming uh who i have not mentioned

yet i'm saying it like you know i was like yeah mr smith so there's a guy named andrew smith he ended up only a couple years ago becoming the director of the braxton county visitors bureau also known as the cbb so he became like the town's tourism manager. He knew that only a couple towns over in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, they had embraced Mothman and they had had wild success in tourism because of it. So he thought, well, we should be able to do that too. And so he decided that he was going to pull a Mothman tourism stunt and also like basically give the town the same amount of success totally as point pleasant so he was like okay if they could do it with mothman we can do it own it with the flatwoods monster exactly so he decided that he wanted to make a life-size statue of the monster but then he realized a 10-foot statue was going to be way too expensive so he decided to

be bougie on a budget and he combined the monster with like the most classic tourist highlight he could think of which is the giant chair are you serious listen i love a good item that is not the size it's supposed to be oh obviously love a good largest golf tee come on when i lived in pasadena i lived next to the world's largest fork. Really? And it was in the middle of two roads, so it was a fork in the road. Oh, I like that. Killed me. Have you ever been to the ball of twine? No.

That's a fun one. You can put your own twine. You literally wrap your own twine on it to make it bigger. God, get out of here. I know. I helped make it. Stop it. I put it on my LinkedIn.

You know what's super... Stop it. You know what's super disappointing? As I saw the world's largest styrofoam cup and it wasn't fucking styrofoam i it was cement really rude but it was chiseled to look like a classic like styrofoam cup at the office you know what this means hmm this is where we step in and make the world's actual giantest everyone bring your styrofoam to a soon toto-be-determined location.

Actually, don't, because it's very bad for the environment. And we will burn it all. No, we won't, because then we'll kill the environment. How about we all make a giant eco-friendly tote bag? Wait a minute. Let's just make a greenhouse, actually. So yeah, he wanted to combine the flatwoods monster with the giant chair so in 2015 so it's only a couple years ago he built five different giant chairs that were 10 feet tall 10 feet to represent the monster and he made monster

chairs oh my goodness so he painted each one by himself like this he just decided this was his big project and he just handled it wait i love it he painted each one by himself. Like this, he just decided this was his big project and he just handled it. Wait, I love it. He painted each one uniquely to have its own cool, different design. And he placed them at the five biggest locations of Flatwoods. I don't know if they were the five biggest locations, but they were at least like notable established tourist attractions or like places that visitors already go to. Sure. That way it was going to grab attention right away.

Okay. already go to sure that way it was going to grab attention right away okay so for town events he also had a seven foot braxy mascot made by the same company that made point pleasant smothman mascot cute so um if there's like ever a festival or like a a parade or something he'll he'll dress up as braxy and like walk around the town he He wears it. Yeah. Oh, I thought it was like a statue. No, he made like a mascot costume. Oh, I see. So he also began displaying Flatwoods or Braxy monster memorabilia in the tourism office and eventually expanded it into a Flatwoods monster museum.

Oh, there's a restaurant in town called The Spot, and it has rebranded itself to offer monster themed food and decor. Love it. And it's actually next to one of the chairs. And so recently they thought that the chairs, like, was a big hit and was, like, this huge campaign. And, like, everyone wanted pictures by the chair and everyone wanted to go see the chairs when they were in Flatwoods. And so now the CVB, or the Tourism Company, has now begun a new campaign called free Braxie. Okay.

To encourage everyone to visit and document their, like going to each of the chairs. So they made a mission. It's very much for like little kids. Yeah. But the mission is. And me, because I'm really already invested. The mission is that the men in black are trying to cover up the existence of Braxie. So it's your job to ensure that they don't let you forget who Braxie is.

And so you just take a you go to each of the chairs and you take a picture. And when you get a picture at all five chairs, you submit them to basically CVB. But they call it Braxie HQ. Oh, my God. Braxie headquarters. Oh, yeah. And if you send all five of them in and they'll send you back a free Braxy sticker. Wait that's super cute. And so it's just kind of a good way to let

little you know it's like a family activity and I uh what if what if that were like actually some government like some Braxy headquarters but it was like really real like they were trying to like gather intel and so they're like kids take photos i'm so surprised that we don't know yet of a government operative that has somehow swindled the children into doing the work for them snapchat dummy oh right right wait a minute that's already been handled yeah don't worry it's all over and we've all fallen for it oh yeah guilty i literally you know that new face app thing yes so apparently i just read an article that like the like a bot changed it on wikipedia what oh you haven't read that one no oh that like it was the founders now or whoever i think i think it's a russian company they own literally every all of your photos now if you gave access it was so it was actually a chinese company

and a bot changed because so many people have downloaded it a bot was somehow able to switch it on wikipedia to say russian oh so it like created like a scare yeah but well so now china owns all my companies china owns all your pictures even better if you if you add any app wherever that whatever country whatever country that app is from they now have access to all your data in case you didn't know that i mean it's the thing this is why my father's terrified of the internet yeah even though he just got a facebook right but i mean even though and it's true like it sounds so scary and whatever but it's like we're already screwed guys they already have all our freaking information yeah i mean if you have anything with

a camera built in you're listening to this on a smartphone like they already they have it all they can have my i felt better because i saw like, I think like Kristen Bell posting and I was like, if they have Kristen Bell's photos, they don't care about my photos. Right, exactly. They have Kristen Bell's and all the Queer Eye guys' photos. They don't need mine. So, well, so basically the whole town is now, you know, changed their tune and they are trying to embrace Braxie.

I love that. The only part of the town that has not yet embraced the monster's new popularity is the farm where the UFO site happened. Really? They're not into it? Tourists are apparently forbidden. Okay, well then I guess they're probably fucking over it. They're like, this is a farm. I need to work. Please stop trying to drag your children through our fields.

Allegedly the tourists are forbidden. However, I did read another article that said for a couple of years, they even tested out having a green monster festival. Oh. And one of the events was you would take field trips to the site where it happened. Oh. So maybe that happened and then the farmers were like, I'm over this. Like, please stop dragging people to our farm. Yeah.

I'm not sure. Also, I feel like if, since there's a Mothman Festival, I feel like they're probably super overshadowed. Yeah, exactly. By that every year. It's like, okay, we'll come here on Mothman Festivals, like, often. What they should do is put it right the day before the Mothman festival. Right, right, right. Try and draw the early birds.

Or they should have, like, Mothman festival, and then, like, they should have a nighttime festival, like, a fair that everyone can go to when the Mothman stuff closes. Oh, like a party, like a nightclub version? Like an after party. An after party. Flatwoods after party. After party in Flatwoods. Yeah.

Aw. I'd go to that. Anyway, that's the story of the Flatwoods yeah oh i'd go to that anyway that's the story of the flatwoods monster okay i like that very much that's weird i've never heard of that i guess mothman probably does overshadow it huh i'm sure yeah um i do love a good mothman though i will say i know you do remember you thought your mug i got you for your birthday oh i use it literally this morning it's on my nightstand it's uh i got christina mug with a bunch of mothman cartoons on it but they're a little

pastel color so it looks like a like a little kids princess mug but when you look at the actual characters they're all mothman it's super cute they have a lot they're like it's like a very 90s pastel color yeah and then it's like a little mothman guys it's super cute it's my favorite one skip skip stop skip stop okay so i'm about to bring the party down oh i'm glad i was here to boost it up for a second this is my after party right it makes you feel like crap um this is a very messed up story. I mean, I guess most of my stories are messed up, but I guess I also wrote these notes in the middle of the night, so it kind of extra messed me up. I hear you. Uh, this is the story of the murders of Sherry Smith and Deborah Helmick in South Carolina.

Hmm. Um, okay. So I found a new website that I have never used before called Crimola.com. Crimola. Sounds like something we would make up. Yeah. Stupidly on the show. Very stupidly, yes.

Crimola, I think is how you say it. Crimola? Crimola. Crimeola? Maybe. And then obviously Murderpedia. And then a website called UPI.com. So, which is a news site.

So this took place in South Carolina in the mid-'80s. So it's May 31, 1985. We're going to jump right in, so I'm sorry. It's not even, like, one of those things I can brace myself for. No. Okay. No, just close your eyes and remember, what's his name? Flappy?

Just remember Braxy. Braxy, Braxy, not Flappy. Okay okay braxy and his flaps flappy braxy oh okay may 31st 1985 sharon sherry faye smith 17 only days away from her high school graduation drove home from a pool party and pulled up to her mailbox which was down the driveway from her family's house in lexington south carolina so her dad bob was upstairs in his office and he noticed that she had pulled up next to the mailbox um went back to his work but after a few minutes uh he realized she had not she hadn't come inside oh shit and he later said she always came and gave her daddy a big hug so he was like waiting for her to come in

and say hi so like the second she got out of the car someone was waiting for her fuck so it seems so he looks back outside he notices her car is still there the front door is open the engine is running her purse is inside but she is gone oh shit so as you suspected so uh sherry had a rare form of diabetes and so bob and uh sherry's mom realized knew that she wouldn't have intentionally gone anywhere without her medication like she wouldn't have just right like seen a friend and jumped off she would have taken her medication with her um so suddenly the parents are terrified obviously they call the police who of course immediately uh assume sherry is just a runaway um but they were like no you don't understand like she her car was running she left her purse she has this like rare illness she's going to die if she doesn't get her medication

right so finally um the police take it somewhat seriously a search party it uh commences like the weekend of graduation so all these uh local kids and families are like part of this volunteer search effort you know parties are suspended and people are just looking out looking for sherry hundreds of volunteers local state and federal law enforcement all searching for her unfortunately there's no trace of her so things seem to be at a standstill until three days later when at 2 30 in the morning the smith's family phone rang so sherry's sister don answered the phone and the caller claimed that he had abducted sherry at gunpoint from her car shit he didn't demand a ransom he just wanted to let them know he had her he described articles of her clothing to prove that this wasn't a prank call

that he actually did have sherry uh he told them sherry was still alive and that a letter from her would be arriving soon oh my god so lo and behold police uh apprehend a letter i don't think apprehend is the right word i think that's for people the police uh get a letter get a letter uh at the post office it's addressed to the smiths and at the top of the sheet it's like a sheet of yellow legal paper at the top of the sheet in sherry's handwriting were the words last will and testament oh no i know it's so fucked up so i went digging they didn't have this on any of the articles but i found like an old transcript of the full letter so no i'm just gonna read it to you you. Okay. It said at the top of the sheet, Last Will and Testament, June 1st, 1985, 310 a.m. Okay, it's really sad.

Yeah. Okay, here we go. I love y'all. I love you, Mommy, Daddy, Robert, Dawn, and Richard, and everyone else and all the other friends and relatives. I'll be with my father now, so please, please don't worry. Just remember my witty personality and great special times we all shared together please don't ever let this ruin your lives just keep living one day at a time for jesus some good will come out of this my thoughts will always be with you and in you casket closed please i love you all so

damn much sorry dad i had to cuss for once jesus forgive me richard sweetie i really did and always will love you and treasure our special moments i ask one thing though accept jesus as your personal savior my family has been the greatest influence on my life sorry about the cruise money someday please go in my place i am sorry if i ever disappointed you in any way i only wanted to make you proud of me because i've always been proud of my family mom dad robert and don there's so much i want to say that i should have said before now i love you i know y'all love me and will miss me very much but if y'all stick together like we always did y'all can do it please do not become hard or upset everything works out for the good for those that love the lord all my love always i love y'all with all my heart sharon sherry smith p.s nana i love you so much i kind of always felt like your favorite

you were mine wow it's like so wow horrifying so this came in the mail and they were like okay so he's saying she's still alive um the fbi immediately get involved so they start they take over basically the whole house um they are escorting the whole family, all the siblings, anywhere they need to go. Escorting the mom to the grocery store, like making sure they are covering every base, every time. So the man continues to call. He's just like taunting the Smiths with phone calls. He calls eight times over the course of several days, each time telling them Sherry was still alive. The FBI is trying to tap these phone calls. He also describes raping her and sodomizing her after which he tells

her mother quote sherry is now part of me physically mentally emotionally spiritually our souls are now one oh my god fucking sick what sick bastard so authorities are attempting to trace these calls and every time they wind up at a public pay phone 20 miles away the receiver is off the hook there's no trace of anybody so they just can't they can't get a hold of who this person is um then on june 5th the man made his eighth call to the smith family he told them he had wrapped oh god okay he told them he had wrapped cherry's head in duct tape and suffocated her then gave directions to her body so they found her body in the spot that he had described but it was in such bad condition due to decomp that it was hard to determine the cause of death and autopsy results couldn't figure out if she was

raped as her abductor had claimed however it was believed she suffocated or died of dehydration possibly connected to her rare form of diabetes right so it wasn't clear whether he was just saying these things to like fuck with them how true they were he could have just been you know trying to get a rise out of them right right right and it was also determined that despite what he had said about sherry being alive for days after her abduction he had actually killed her within 12 hours so that sounds right i mean for her by it already be going through like that intense exactly exactly so they were like so he was lying when he said like oh she's still alive i'm still torturing her stuff like it was just to get a rise out of the family um so obviously sherry's family is heartbroken but

um like almost immediately after the killer strikes again shit so uh he oh sorry i messed up i'm sorry i messed up so he doesn't strike again oh thank god he does okay so it didn't stop the killer who continued, first of all, before he strikes again. Spoiler alert. He continues to call the Smith family even after they find Sherry's body. Oh, my God. Just say what? He's just taunting them.

And they have to answer because the FBI is trying to, like, tap the call so they can't ignore it. So he's taunting them. He calls to discuss funeral arrangements with them. Oh, my God. So he's just fucking like torturing these people and most of the time he's talking to her sister dawn um then while sherry's family was grieving and the fbi is still trying to track him down uh and the manhunt by the way would become the largest in south carolina history so while all this is going on like i

spoiled for everybody earlier the perpetrator strikes again so june 14th 1985 uh two weeks after sherry's kidnapping right pretty quick like really yeah right within like less than 10 days after they found her body um nine-year-old deborah may helmick was outside her house in richland county south carolina playing with her younger siblings shit middle of the day daylight, a car drives up, and a man just grabs Deborah and drives away. Oh, my God. Like that kind of panic people talked about back in, like, the 90s and stuff. Right, right, right.

Just, like, you don't, I mean, it's so outrageous, and, like, most kidnappings take place by people in your own family, so it's... Yeah, random acts of crime are just... Totally. A whole other ballpark. It sounds like a Lifetime movie. But so he basically, just like he did to the Smith family, the man would call the Hellmick family to taunt them about having their nine-year-old daughter. He called and told them he had murdered her.

Oh, my God. Murdered Deborah. He gave detailed directions leading to her body, which was also badly decomposed by the time it was located, making it difficult to determine her cause of death. So at this point, obviously, the FBI are desperate to catch this guy, but they don't have much information because he's calling from pay phones. But they do have that letter, that quote, last will and testament that Sherry had written to her family. FBI examined it using something called an electrostatic detection apparatus to determine residual indentations left on the paper. In other words, they were able to look at it and see if there were any impressions from other from writing. Got it.

From, you know, other sheets that had been on the legal pad. So they found incomplete phone numbers and they were able to track down one of these phone numbers. And it belonged to a local man and his wife. There was an elderly couple. At first, authorities weren't sure if maybe they had something to do with the murders. But when they described the killer's profile to the couple, they were like, we know who you're talking about. We know this man. So it turns out the man that they pointed to was an electrician who worked for the older man in the couple who frequently house sat for them. So they were like, oh, yeah, we know who that is.

He house sits for us all the time when we're out of town. Oh, no. And he works. He does some electrical work for us. His name is Larry Jean Bell. So June 27th, 1985, the FBI tracked larry gene bell and he is taken into custody and charged with two counts of first degree murder uh during his six-hour testimony at his trial bell continuously blurted out bizarre comments he carried on these like

ridiculous theatrics he refused to give answers but would just like talk and talk and talk for hours um whenever he didn't want to answer a question, he would shout, silence is golden. At one point, he even yelled out, I would like Dawn, so Sherry's sister, I would like Dawn E. Smith to marry me and attempted to propose to her on the stand. So he's crackers. Well, he later made statements indicating

that he was attempting to fake mental illness in order to receive a more lenient sentence. So he playing so he was insanity yeah he was playing the insanity card however he did claim to be jesus christ which is something that he um he a card that he continued to play until he died so it's so there's a chance he might have actually been mentally unwell it could be in some way i think he it's probably safe to say he was mentally unwell in some way or another. But I think maybe it seems like a lot of times these people exaggerate for the sake of trying to, like, play it off as, oh, I'm just crazy. I don't give me the death sentence, whatever. However, in prison, he reportedly smeared his own feces on himself and drank his own urine.

So it seemed like maybe he's really committing to it if he's faking it he's committing to it it's method acting is what it is right sure uh however if that is what he was trying to do it didn't work because the jury found him guilty and he was sentenced to death okay uh so weirdly enough um so bell who as i mentioned was an electrician chose instead of lethal injection that he wanted to die by the electric chair that's on brand yeah um when asked why uh he made that decision he said it was so he could be with his victims sooner ew yeah he claimed he wanted to go to heaven to be with his girls sooner. Absolutely not. Yeah. So he's literally still torturing these families, like even on death row.

So Larry Jean Bell was executed on October 4th, 1996. Interestingly enough, he also turned out to be a suspect in two other unsolved disappearances. Oh, really? solve disappearances oh really yeah so one of them was the 1984 disappearance of sandy elaine cornet who was happened to be the girlfriend of one of bell's co-workers oh weird yeah and then another woman named denise newsome porch who was last seen in july of 75 and lived in an apartment complex right near where bell lived they both vanished in charlotte north carolina and to this day their cases remain unsolved and they are classified as missing interesting so although he was a suspect he was never you know fully linked to him right got it a year after sherry smith's death her sister dawn uh who spent a lot of time

having to deal with the phone calls and the um taunting that bell you know inflicted on the family uh dawn was crowned miss south carolina in 1986 uh she is now known as dawn smith jordan and became a christian singer songwriter she's written a book on the family story throughout the ordeal called grace so amazing a true story of god's grace in the midst of life-shattering tragedy and she also recorded a song called sisters which was dedicated to sherry um so this is actually interesting i found this article um on a website called um it's a it's a web it's a organization sorry called prison fellowship and so i mean it's like you know a christian-based website but I did find this article about the family. And I think it's no, no surprise at this point that they're clearly, you know, identify as Christian.

But it's very interesting. It talks about how they forgave him, like forgave the killer. Okay. Forgave Belle. It says after Belle was arrested arrested officers brought sherry's mom hilda and her sister dawn to see bell in jail um before he was executed according to bob sherry's dad when hilda met bell quote she forgave him to his face and he was amazed at his wife's strength and mercy but he said he couldn't do it i wouldn't be able to yeah i would not be i don't think i

could do it i can't do it reading this let alone like being in the position you know um it took him another seven months to reach his own point of forgiveness and uh so this is from the article and for whatever reason it like really got me last night i was like losing it blown away by this but yeah so it said at the urging of a friend he went behind a secluded barn and quote quote, just blasted it out. I was really, really mad. I wanted to scream and holler at God. My friend said, go ahead. He can take it.

And it was such a relief to do that physical thing and get all those emotions out. Once he let them out, he was able to let them go. Bob's forgiveness of Belle dovetailed with his forgiveness of himself. Quote, I was supposed to take care of my children, and in my mind I had failed. Maybe I needed to forgive myself before I could forgive him. It happened almost at the same time. And that is a story of double murder Larry Jean. Oh my gosh.

That went quicker than I expected, but it was a heavy one. Yeah. It got me pretty good last night. Yeah. Oh, I don't know what it's like to have to be you and, like, read a bunch of really dark shit every day. It's just really, I have to be really careful because sometimes I do it at night and it's like, why am I doing this before I try to go to sleep?

Like, reading traumatic things. Like Last Wills and Testaments from children. Right, exactly. Exactly. To their parents, trying to comfort their own parents. I mean, it's really traumatic. But anyway, so, so yeah that one got me good it's very sad but you know it's the world i guess great yeah so what a motherfucker

yeah fuck him i can't and it was really sad because when i read about the execution and deborah the nine-year-old's dad witnessed the execution and sherry's parent family witnessed the execution and sherry's parents said like we're we have to forgive him that's the only way we can like function and like take care of our own children like this is our only way of moving on i have yet to understand that concept i it's very hard i think it's like probably a really big mature thing but i've never thought like oh if someone did something to a family member i'd be able to forgive them i can hardly forgive an ex-boyfriend like i can't i can't process that information but so then they

said that and the deborah's father was like no i he's like i hope he i don't know what he said he was like no fuck him i hope he rots in. Like this, he doesn't deserve my forgiveness. And so I can kind of, I can absolutely see both, you know, ways. I don't, I can't pretend to be that I would be like, you know, wise and mature. Like I couldn't be, I'm telling you right now, I would not be able to be. And that's not to say, you know, they didn't go through trauma and whatever. I think that they just handle it differently than I probably better. Yeah.

Better than completely than I would have been able to so anyway wow just really wild but oh my goodness very sad so that's that so i hope you enjoyed that happy ending let's talk about braxy again let's talk about braxy again see in his flaps god what's the word you hate the most besides moist everyone hates the word moist i don't care about that word. I don't get, I don't, I mean, I, I get why it's like gross to people, but like, it doesn't bother me. What about moist flaps? Is that really gross? I've heard moist panties really bothers people.

Yeah. I hate panties. My mom's favorite word is panties. Ew. Yeah. It's such a weird one. She says it all. I'm like, just say underwear.

Why would you say it? Like what? Oh, just like as underwear. Like, no, she says it in, yeah, in replacement of the word underwear. She's like, what say underwear. Why would you say it? Like, what? Oh, just like as underwear. Like, no, she says it in. Yeah. In replacement of the word underwear. She's like, what? My panties.

And I'm like, oh, my God, please stop talking. That's so bad, Linda. So gross. No, she calls like making out French kissing. OK, we've talked about this because I was like, there's something else she says. Yeah. French kissing. She was asking me about like someone I was dating in high school or in college.

And she's like, well, what about what? Did you like French kissing them? And I was like, we're never having a single conversation again. Vomitous. I almost just threw up in my mouth. Um, okay. So French kissing is the word that you hate. There's, I don't really have that. I don't know why I don't like, there aren't really words that bother me that much. I think I hate anything that, that implies my mother's talking about intimate things like panties. Oh yeah.. French. My mother's French kisser. I'm sure there's plenty of stuff. Yeah.

I think like words that remind me of like medical stuff. So like tendons. I don't like the word. I don't like spine tendons. I don't like syringe. I don't like any of those physical things. I don't really. The words don't bother me too much.

I think I just it makes it makes me. Yeah. Anyway. So on that note and anyway i hope everyone has a least favorite word and does not think about it today except you're probably being primed to think about it right now your favorite word think about moist flaps panties and french kissing gross that is not going in our children's book nope that. That can go in Linda's children's book. That'll be our dedication. Oh, no. That'll be the PG-13 version.

Gross. All right. Well, thank you guys. We'll leave you guys alone. I guess. See you next week. Yeah, I think there's like five tickets left for... Atlanta?

Yeah. Cool. So maybe... Unless everyone listening just like resold their tickets. Just like posted their tickets back on Ticketmaster. I don't want this anymore. Somebody else have it.

All right. So we'll see you guys in September if you're going to that. Otherwise, we'll see you next week when we chat about something else fucked up. Yay. And that's why we drink. Woo.