And That's Why We Drink - E172 The Paranormal Cinematic Universe and a Cosmopolitan Globetrotter

Episode Date: May 17, 2020

Everything happens for a reason... especially when you want an orange lava burst juice box! We're back on our game this week and, with the exception of 6 minutes where Em's face freezes for no earthly reason (we're so sorry), we've got video for you again (check out our YouTube page here)! We're bringing you some intense and layered stories this week with the history of Harry Price, the first official ghost hunter! Then Christine takes us to Bethesda, Maryland and the home of the yacht club frat bro, with the wild and gruesome murder of Jayna Murray, also known as the Lululemon Murder. There's also quite a bit of undercarriage ectoplasm to discuss this week... and that's why we drink! Please consider supporting the companies that support us! Go to DAILYHARVEST.com and enter promo code DRINK to get $25 off your first box!Engage your brain with fun puzzles and collect tons of cute characters. Download Best Fiends FREE on the Apple App Store or Google Play!

all right it looks like it's working all right time to really test this out oh my you would think after three years we'd have like a solid format like a like a good trusted routine by now but like every goddamn day is a different we kind of just stumble in and say now what um so hello we are uh attempting to record this um finally i have sorry about last week releasing a live episode that was not the plan um but m's computer kind of you know took a turn well so my so i have the same laptop that i got when i graduated college so i've had it for as long as i've known christine literally yeah and it was and it's worked it's still work i feel i've been having like such a guilt complex over this because basically my computer has worked totally fine until we started recording from home. And I think my computer just couldn't handle that much.

And then I started having to delete all my storage for it to work. And even then it only worked for like 10 minutes and then it would mess up again. So I ended up having to go out and get a whole new laptop. And I feel like such a douche. No, I got one last year and I had the same thing where I'd had it since 2012. And so I'd had it like, I don't know, seven years. And I felt really guilty because I was like, well, technically it works, but it's just too slow for work stuff. What I did, because I'm the master at like, you know, attempting to overcome my constant guilt.

So what I did was I gave my old one to Blaze and he uses it now from home when he needs it. So if you know anyone who could just use the laptop, that's what I did. So that's what I... Well, a while ago, Allison really wanted a new laptop because she's had one since 2009 or some bullshit like that. Since she met me. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And so we kept saying like, oh, well, you know, I plan on getting a new laptop.

Eventually you can have mine because it's at least like a 2015 or 2014. And it's like you can use that one. But then hers, I think, like crapped out too recently. Oh, so she got a new one already. She got an iPad and hasn't needed a computer sense or something. she got a she got an ipad and hasn't needed a computer sense or something so i just felt really bad because other than recording audio that laptop still works flawlessly you wouldn't know was from like six years ago so i felt really bad so i don't know i was with you one time when you turned it on and we had to sit there for like 15 minutes oh you're right okay

maybe it maybe it was aging a little quicker than i and i only know that because i have a new computer and i was like, oh, shit. I didn't realize how old my last computer was. But look at it as your work. Maybe I just. It's a work expense. You're doing it for the listeners. You're right.

Also, I do want to make one more comment that my hair is getting insane. Oh, it's like Jimmy Neutron. I look like, yeah, I look like the guy from The Incredibles. Holy smokes. And I've never noticed how like janky my glasses are. Do you notice how sideways they are? Oh, mine are like that because my ears are crooked. My ears are too, but I've never, like, been so self-conscious about my ears.

Like, this is normal, but this is like an inch above my ear. Wow. So basically the reason we haven't been filming these, I guess, is because of our many flaws. I look like a Mr. Potato Head that like wasn't made properly in the factory. My ear's all messed up. Okay. Well, anyway, now that we're done complaining, I mean, that's a joke. We're never done complaining.

I did want to say, oh, Em, what are you drinking today? This is relevant. Oh, I'm drinking an orange lava burst high C. I'm drinking two of them. A juice, a literal juice box. Well, Christine was taking a little bit to like figure out how to record. And I was like, this is perfect because I need my, I was yawning every 30 seconds. And I was like, I need my sugar.

Actually, what you said was everything happens for a reason. I need a juice box. I'd been thinking about it. And then I took that as my as my moment. Well, I have just things I want to say before we start and then I forget and then I get mad at myself later. So a couple updates, especially since we didn't record last week, is that our patreon we're like still plugging away on there so there's new stuff happening we are selling tour merch officially because a lot of people have requested that since they can't come to a live show that they wanted to order something like to wear to the next live show to the rescheduled show or they

didn't get a chance to buy it at the show they went to. So we released it to donators, quote unquote, for now until the 22nd. And then on the 22nd, we're going to release it publicly. And that's one update. Oh, and we never talked about Eva Write That Down on Patreon. We literally never once. I know. And I feel bad. So Eva's doing this amazing thing called Eva Write That Down, where she's literally going like the actual things that we've told her

to write down. She's going through her old notebooks when she actually wrote them down and took us seriously. LOL. Back when she was brand new and literally thought that she had to write these things. I guess this is my job. Our most wild demands. It's so funny. Landish requests. The first one was like a holy water super soaker. And like watching her just read them for the first time being like, wait, was so amazing. So that's on Patreon too. I just want to point out we're trying to like put content out there since we can't be together. And Eva's doing some stuff.

CK's doing some stuff. And our patron of the week is Chloe. Yay. Yay, Chloe. Thank you, Chloe Mays. stuff ck is doing some stuff and um our patron of the week is chloe yay yay chloe thank you also our the merch uh goes out to the public right on the 22nd yeah okay and um that's at atwwdmerch.com and uh this is kind of delayed i'm sure anyone who's a uh die hard uh of their show already knows this but because we didn't get to say it last week because I was busy getting a new laptop, I was on a recent episode of Morbid. So I just wanted to give them a shout out. Thank you for having me. It was very fun. We ended up

recording for like three hours. It's a long episode. I was like, holy shit, I have two hours left in this episode. Well, I felt really bad because I wanted to like come with a story that was going to be like really good and really juicy. And then I ended up like picking this story kind of out of thin air. And then after I picked it, I started doing more research on it. And I was like, holy shit, this story is too juicy. And I couldn't find anything to cut out. So then I ended up having like a full-blown normal. No, but it's great.

That's why it's fun. I just, I felt that, but they, they were troopers. They sat there for the whole 45 minutes. And like, we, I feel like we've been talking to them for a while. Like they came to one of our Boston shows. We had put them on the list for our Boston show, which obviously got canceled or postponed. Sorry. Um, cause that's where they are located. And, um, I feel like finally we're like making actual i feel like buddies and like dms and text but now it's like actual content collab collab you know yeah now we're we are not just business buds now we're just buds bud buds yeah oh my yeah anyway so that's very exciting that was a great episode. Check that out. And yeah, that's all my updates. I think that's all my updates. I don't do much. I don't do as much

as Christine does with your YouTube shows and stuff like that. I'm just like, I got Marvel Monday. And that's like, what do I do? I've literally not changed out of this sweatshirt in three days. Also, you're in a sweatshirt. So that means you're not in your like hot as hell room right now. Yeah, you know, I thought that was a good idea. Cause I was like, look, I want to promote our merch. And then I was like, wait, it's so hot in here, but actually it's, it's better. I put the AC on for like three hours before coming in here and turning it off. So it feels like fine. It's like 75 degrees. So it's not great. Not terrible. Good. Not great. Good. Not great. Yeah. So, um, anyway. Oh, also quick note. This is extremely. Yeah. So anyway. Oh, also, quick note.

This is extremely important. If you are watching this on YouTube, you can see, look, your friend Skylar. You can see Deb the Web and Skylar reflected in this picture. I'll move it so everyone can see. I was like, what is that square? Oh, that's Deb the Web and Skylar waving to you, Em. They miss you. The fact that they legitimately wave because there's some sort of weird draft in that section of your ceiling.

It's the grossest because I'm like, this is precious. Like a spider web is waving. But that also means at any second it could just decide to let go and fly right into my face. Float. Just very gently drape on me. There's so many memes going around that are like, oh, like day 70 in quarantine. And I'm like befriending all the spiders. And I'm like, please, I've been doing that since 1991. Like you've been at it. I started this trend.

Come on, everyone. Join me. Befriend your neighborhood bugs. Anyway, that's my only end. Friend your neighborhood bugs. Anyway, that's my only answer. Great. I have not made friends with any bugs. Aw, what a bummer for you. I know. I hate that for you. I'm fine with it.

I think I'm going to make it through. That's about it on my end. I'm still just friends with the two other humans that live here. Oh, wow. That must be tough. Which, by the way, is a test to, like, you know, this is day 58 for us. And I'm not sick of either of them. I think that's a good sign.

That is a good sign. I haven't been annoyed once by either of them. This is like the ultimate relationship test, I think, for everyone. Even if you're alone, like a relationship with yourself. I feel like it's just like the ultimate test. Today we got, did you hear about the extension? Yes. Yeah.

So I guess we're going to be doing this for a while. A while. A while. Yeah. So that's same old, same old, I guess, over here. It's about to be same old, same old. It's going to get same old, same old. So anyway.

Anyway, I'm also drinking a smoothie because people are going to wonder why I have it. Are you not going to tell us what's in it? It's actually a Daily Harvest smoothie, which is actually a sponsor of today's episode, which I did not do on purpose. Well, you're going to like my story. I didn't know this existed. So, I mean, full disclosure, one of the things that I'm always terrified of with our show is that one day I'm going to run out of material. It just freaks me out because compared to the world of crime and murder. How sad is that?

Like, I'm never going to run out. Nervous laughing. But so, I'm always nervous that I'm going to run out of at least juicy material because, like two thirds of the stories that I could cover I can't because they're either really short or like there's not really a lot to them um so when it comes to like the really meaty stories dare I say um I always get nervous but I recently found this website that actually had a like a good list of topics that I had never heard of, and they're all pretty juicy. So I'm feeling a little relief. Are we allowed to know the website, or is that like your secret?

Well, the answer is yes. I just don't remember the website right now. I have it somewhere in my sources. My bad. Sorry. It's like not at the top of my head. I don't remember. I really don't remember.

We'll say it next week or something. I'll check my bookmarks later and let everyone know. Cool. So anyway, one of the topics that I found was the story of a man named Harry Price. And I don't know if you've heard of Harry Price. No. I had not. Apparently he is the original ghost hunter. What?

What, what, what? What, what, what, what? What, what, what? what oh the high c is kicking in oh christ okay we're lava bursting over here okay so every time people are like do you miss them i'm like um let's think for a minute and now it answers the question answers itself it does you never have to answer it just be like refer to this minute of this episode. This time stamp. So Harry Price is known as the original ghost hunter, also known as the father of ghost hunting. So this story is a little long.

So I'm going to try to speed through, you know, whatever the boring intro is, although I don't think it's really boring at all. So we start back in 1881, as you do. And 1881. Oh, where should I start again? Can you just say, like, the beginning in whatever? I heard as you do, but I didn't hear what happened before. Oh, sorry. So I'm just going to start a little bit a while ago so um harry price

is known as the original ghost hunter he's also known as the father of ghost hunting so um i'm going it's a little long this story but i'm gonna try to quickly get through the um i guess the boring intro the history it's not. It's not boring, though. It's all really juicy. So what's interesting about this is my stories, I like to think of them as the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I know you do. We all know you do.

Because once you cover enough of these cases, they start overlapping when it comes to characters. Oh, that's right. Like with Houdini and stuff. So Houdini gets mentioned a little bit in here um and if you if you did listen to our houdini episode you're going to realize there's a lot of um similarities and like it's almost like the exact same story with different twists okay so this is in 1881 um where harry price is born in london apparently he would like he was

outspoken about saying he was born somewhere else but every record is like no dude you were born in london what a weird thing to say okay or to lie about i i don't know why he would he was still like born in the same area i think but anyway he was born in london um and his parents were a grocer and a traveling salesman and at eight years old he saw his first performance by a stage magician named the great sakka and that began his interest in the supernatural he was like this is the money maker i'm pretty sure he knew he was like this this is the moneymaker. I'm pretty sure. He knew. He was like, this is what's going to absolutely get me to the top. Same with me, by the way, when I saw a clown for the first time. Oh, God.

That's it. That's it. I can stop here. I can see my McMansion now. With a chimney that honks like a clown knows. Oh, I found, you can't see it, but on my little stepstool geek corner, I like to call it my geek corner, I found my sassy nose. Oh, good.

Oh, the one that's like molded to your nose? That freaks me out. That's the one. Oh, I did a clown episode on the X-Teen Files this week, and I talked about you. I talked about you. I watched it last night. I was like, God damn it. So, uh, yeah. So at eight, he saw his first stage magician and was like, this is obviously

the route for me. Obviously. Um, he became an amateur conjurer himself and began collecting books on magic. And his first, he actually had his first investigation in the spiritual world when he was 15. So his first, it's not really his official first ghost hunt, but he started getting interested in magic and kind of the same route as Houdini, where he was like, if I'm a conjurer, I know all the tricks of the trade,

so I want to start debunking stuff. So he started kind of doing amateur investigations at 15 with one of his friends. Also at 15, he founded the Carleton Dramatic Society where they wrote a bunch of plays. And one of the plays that he wrote actually was a drama about his early experience with a poltergeist. Oh, interesting. Okay. And I would love to see a copy of that. I looked, I could not find his drama about his poltergeist. Oh, interesting. Okay. And I would love to see a copy of that.

I looked, I could not find his drama about his poltergeist. Maybe they'll produce our Broadway idea. I'm ready. We're in a quarantine. Nobody's doing anything. We can have the time. Nobody's doing anything. We're not.

No, I'm kidding. But you think you have more time on the couch to really think about an idea like that. Yeah, you really do have more time to, like, stew in your own, like, psycho brain like we do. If someone doesn't do it soon enough, I'm going to just figure it out myself. So, anyway, apparently one of his first dramas was about an early poltergeist experience. first dramas was about an early poltergeist experience um and then in 1908 uh he actually met and married his wife constance mary knight who happened to be very wealthy so that gave him the opportunity to settle down and become a ghost hunter for a living he just lived off of her and became a ghost why not um that's what allison did just kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

You're not wrong. I'm just teasing. Allison's like literally works every second of every day. She literally works 12 hours a day and then I'm every now and then I'll be like, why? Like, come on. Just come on over here. We'll hang out. I'll buy you a pizza or something.

So... Fun. He... It sounds like a good life to me. Uh, hang on. Let me drink some more of my high C. Oh my God. We're back.

We're back. Okay. Oh God. So he, this is very much also like Houdini. Harry Price was originally a spiritualist and he went to a bunch of meetings and he visited a bunch of public seances and he always thought they were interesting but never convincing which is apparently a direct quote from him okay and

with his background in magic he again thought that it could exist but it was probably a bunch of frauds just taking people's money um but he was much more open-minded to it than houdini so if you remember from the houdini story at some some point he just gave up. He was like, I've given you enough chances. It just isn't flying with me. Every single one of you is a fucking fraud. And I can't think any other way. This guy, Harry Price, he's like, it's probably fraudulent, but I bet there's at least one or two really serious people out there that I just can't explain. So he was open-minded, but still as critical as possible. And being used to, or I guess being used often for entertainment when it comes to spiritualist medium stuff,

it was often used as entertainment. Plus it was, this was the time for new technology. And so those combined, he had an understanding of like, okay, so mediums are at an all time high because there's all this new technology out there. People are dying to have like public seances and things like that.

So this is like the time for mediums to exist. Everyone's in love with the idea of spiritualism right and so and that was the moment where he was like well if this is the peak time for mediums to be out there this is the peak time for me to really investigate this and find for myself where the real ones are okay um sorry it must be the lava burst. I don't think my throat can handle it. So basically, there were also many critics. So there was a group called the Society of Psychical Research. Right. And basically, they were very intense critics, and their purpose was to use science to debunk this stuff.

And they used scientific methods. I'm using a quote, I think, from Wikipedia. So who knows how reliable it is. But they used scientific methods to uncover fraudulent mediums, expose their methods, and replicate them in exhibits. So kind of what Houdini was doing. Sure. He was like, I'm going to prove you wrong. And then also demonstrate it on stage.

But in 1920, Price joined because he was critical of it. And so, you know, he could still stand to be with other critics and try to debunk it the best he could. He also helped republish a book called Revelations of a Spirit Medium, where he exposed a bunch of tricks by hack mediums which is exactly what houdini did it's very weird that they had very similar lives like very parallel yeah um but even though he was in the spr the society of psychical research um he wasn't liked by a lot of the members um specifically because he did endorse some mediums when their whole goal was to debunk a bunch of them but he was like no i think this one's probably genuine and they were like are you because he did endorse some mediums when their whole goal was to debunk a bunch of them.

But he was like, no, I think this one's probably genuine. And they were like, are you kidding me? Like, you're part of our group where we don't believe in this shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He also wasn't upper class, and he was not formally educated, and a lot of people in the society were. So they already just judged him to begin with.

Oh, that's shitty. I think they were also intimidated by the fact that he didn't have formal training in scientifically debunking this stuff, and he was able to keep up with them. So I think— I see. He's a natural. Yeah, they were a little butthurt. That's a direct quote also, I think. They were from Wikipedia, if anybody.

From Wikipedia. So I think they were from Wikipedia. Yeah. So they still respected his help in debunking when he would, especially given his background in like conjuring and sleight of hand. I mean, he was very useful when he chose to help them. He also joined something called the Ghost Club, which I don't know why I'm not a part of that. Hell yeah. And he's it was arguably the oldest paranormal research organization in the world. I think it closed, though.

I think I looked up how to join and they said it was closed. I think we've had this conversation about so many organizations where you're like, I tried to join. I can't. I just need to bring them all back up and I can just be the founder of all of them. What do you think? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll just a big umbrella corporation and that's why we drink presents um he also joined this is kind of me actually he also joined the magic club wow yeah it is you and he made uh friends with other spiritualists, including Houdini. And apparently Price was on Houdini's little team for the Mina Crandon case, which is the Witch of Lime Street, which I wrote down is episode 156.

Is that with her undercarriage or whatever? Mm-hmm. Oh, I will never forget that. The one who like pulled ectoplasm out of something between her undercarriage. And so anyway, he was apparently part of that team. So the whole story, if you're going backwards and you're hearing this story before you get to the Mina Crandon case, know that Price was on that team. Let me see. Oh, yeah, I guess that's true. Some people haven't heard it yet. And then when you get to Houdini, this will all be a very similar story, I guess. So in 1922, that was when the SPR gave Harry Price his like first assignment, like, OK, you're going to debunk this person.

And so this was his like first, first effort to expose someone, and it was a spirit photographer named William Hope. Spirit photography is something I plan on eventually doing a story on. Yes. But basically William Hope was one of the first people where he would take pictures of you, and every single time, without fail, there happened to be one of your dead relatives in the picture. without fail there happened to be one of your dead relatives

in the picture and so William Hope ends it up that his whole job was to debunk him

and basically they found out that he had prepared plates and basically was doing double exposures got it so that there was

already a person on the frame so then he took another picture and then all of a sudden it looked like there were two people what if he used

like the wrong like he put the wrong plate in it and they're like, I don't recognize that. And he's like, shit, that's like the next person's great grandma. Like I feel like. Like they got out of order. They mixed up. Yeah, I feel like it's so, I would fuck that up so bad. I would be even bad at like conning people.

A thousand percent. Well, apparently the way that they found that they figured it out was Harry Price using sleight of hand. He switched out the plates on William Hope and then they took the pictures and then the plates like all of a sudden didn't have either. They didn't have the, the dead relatives in them already. Or like, I think Harry Price had drawn some specific like etchings on the back of it.

And all of a sudden they weren't there. So it was just kind of easy at that point to see that there were like there were loaded plates yeah um so that was the first time that he was assigned to expose someone and then he did it pretty quickly and um this pissed off many staunch believers including uh sir arthur conan doyle oh no is a big character in the houdini episode um this really is like the avengers to me where like all of a sudden all these characters are just showing up and it's like i didn't think i'd see you again what's happening i've you probably cried the whole time you were doing the research i did you did if one of them started flying or

had like a red and blue shield i was gonna lose to lose my mind. So the undercarriage, I feel like anything's possible at this point with these people. They are all over the map. That one was, I'm going to claim that one to be Dr. Strange. That was the weird one right there. Okay. So anyway, so this pissed off a lot of staunch believers that want someone that they really admired all of a sudden was exposed as a fraud, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. someone that they really admired, all of a sudden was exposed as a fraud,

including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. So they were forever rivals. And Sir Conan Doyle actually was quoted saying that one day Harry Price would meet the same fate as Houdini. Oh, geez. Okay. And if you remember anything from the Houdini episode, you know that him and Sir Conan Doyle used to be friends, and then they ended up hating each other.

And, I mean, this is just Broadway meant to be friends and then they ended up hating each other and i mean this is just broadway meant to drama i know it's so gossipy it writes itself it does this could like be an episode of like one of my christian stories except the opposite um so anyway the uh spr the society of psychical research also had problems with harry price like i said earlier he wasn't a staunch skeptic until he met um in 1923 he met a woman named stella cranshaw and this was one of his first personal cases where he was trying to uh debunk i think it started that he was trying to debunk the fact that she claimed to be a medium or that she might be a medium and then it was like his first real case where he was like i genuinely believe her and so if the spr didn't if the spr didn't like him before they really don't like him after he

met stella cranshaw he's like she's different she's not like all the other ones different yeah i'm different so yeah yep that's it that's our broadway hit tmtm no one's ever written that before brand new content for your ears it'll be on her and that's how you drink soundtrack at the end of the year so uh 1923 he met stella cranshot literally met her on the train and they struck up a conversation about the paranormal, as you and I did on a tractor. On a tractor. Oh, my God. And she said, oh, well, speaking of the paranormal, I have these weird things happening around me. There's all these weird tappings on tables and there's objects flying around and, like, I don't know what's going on.

And Harry Price said, you might be a medium. It sounds like there's a lot of activity following you around. Would you mind if I decided to test you? And if we did like a series of seances. And so she was like, okay, sure. And so he brought her, he rented out a space in a place called the London Spiritualist Alliance. So just know them as like the LSA. But he rented out a place. It was like they had a bunch of labs and things like that and he rented out the space to conduct seances on stella to see if she was a

medium and in the first seance stella had all of a sudden this like spirit come forward through her and basically started talking to the members at the table and the spirit guide also began tapping on the tables and there were recorded drastic temperature drops um and harry price actually brought a number of devices into the seance room so this was kind of one of his like another version of his original investigations is he was one of the first people to, I guess, kind of separately from Houdini, who was specifically looking for illusions. This guy was coming in trying to debunk things with equipment. It's a fine line, but they were both trying to debunk it in different ways. This guy just happened to bring his own equipment that he was building because it didn't exist yet.

Sure. So it was't exist yet. Sure. So it was his real way of investigating. So he brought in his own stuff. And at that seance, items were thrown out of drawers. There was, I guess what she was best known for is that she would make sparks on request. So she kind of got the name Electric Girl. Ooh. Because all of a sudden she would just, like,

things would just start sparking. Oh, no. Like, first of all, dangerous. Yes. But he, so one of the pieces of equipment that he made and then brought was called a telekinetoscope. And it was basically a telegraph with a red light on it that would turn on if the keys were pressed. But he put this big glass dome on top of it so nobody could touch it.

So it could only happen telekinetically. Sure. And apparently that went off a few times. She levitated a table so high that the people that were sitting at the table, in order to keep their hands on the table, they had to stand up to keep their hands on the table. And then three of the legs on the table broke off, and then the table folded on itself and collapsed. What the hell? And then she was like, maybe that means I'm a medium or something.

What's going on? What? Like, it's hard. Everybody can't just set tables on fire at will. So she ended up doing 11 more seances, and she started showing signs of being just wildly exhausted. So she had, like, a racing pulse. She started shaking like she was having seizures. Oh, motorcycle. And she also ended up getting fired from her job because she was taking

so many days off to do these seances. Um, but so this ended up becoming like her little part-time gig and it was exhausting her because he, Harry Price genuinely could not figure out a way that this was happening. And so this was the first case where he was like, I think she's a legitimate medium. But every time we do a seance, we're like, making her overwork herself. And so we can only, she only has so many in her. Right. So the Society of Psychical Research, the SPR, obviously didn't believe him. And they were like, okay, well, if you bring her to our headquarters and test her, then like, we can do it in our own environment and like see what's actually being tested on her. We don't want to just take your word for it because you're already

too open-minded for us. So she came in for two more sessions and she was less powerful because she was so overexhausted, assuming that she's a real medium, but it was enough to still impress the SPR and they couldn't figure out how she was doing it either okay here we go so I think they didn't like him because he made them challenge their their own beliefs but listen we could analyze that for a long time and we will but hopefully off microphone to spare you all so they did a few uh she did a few more settings later, like three years later with Harry Price. Apparently they had some, they butted heads at one point and separated. But then they got back together to do a few more tests. And Harry Price still stands that she was weaker than she used to be, but she was clearly powerful.

And he was convinced. But so this case is what got him in the public eye of like really investigating these things and being taken seriously especially when the spr was like we don't we don't know we don't know how this happened that's wild so um there were a few more he was actually part of many famous cases but um starting in 1923 the famous cases that he started covering were um these are just some of the stories which at some point I can probably cover if there's enough information on them. But apparently these were super famous mediums at the time that he exposed. So there was Jan Guzik, Eva Carrara, Maria Silbert, George Valiantin, Fredericksburg, not Fredericksburg, that's my hometown um frederick munnings and then the battersea

poltergeist apparently all of these he was a part of and investigated and exposed them and so he was getting known really well for covering these cases so in each of these he ended up finding uh either ectoplasm that was like chewed up paper or apparently there was one person who said that there was a spirit talking through him in Italian, even though he didn't speak Italian. And then I guess Harry went to the seance and heard him speaking Italian and found out it was a word for word match from an Italian dictionary book that he had just memorized. That's actually kind of funny. I know. It's amazing. How did he find the one book that this had just memorized um that's actually kind of funny i know like it's amazing how did he find the one book that this guy had memorized but um and then oh no i thought the guy memorized it

yeah no no he the the guy who said he could speak italian that a spirit was speaking italian through yeah had memorized the book oh got it got it got it um and then a lot of people were moving things they had learned how to use their feet and their toes to move things under the table. Man, people are weird. So those were like the first big cases he'd covered. So in 1925, he was actually given an honorary position at the American Society of Psychical Research. And since the SBR and him were always butting heads, Price ended up joining the London Spiritualist Alliance,

the LSA that I mentioned earlier. Yeah. So he was still part of the SPR, which was more critical and not much of a believer, and he ended up joining the LSA, which is, by the way, where he did the tests on Stella, but it was also more open-minded, and so he was joining that because it just seemed to be a better fit for him. But out of spite, he stayed with the SPR just to piss them off.

He's like, I'm never leaving. He was like, I'm never leaving. I believe in mediums, and also I'm joining a more open-minded group, but also I'm a member here. But also I'm going to keep paying my dues here, I guess. so um harry price suggested that there was this um new that there should be this new organization where they objectively investigated all sorts of supernatural stuff and because even though there were groups that were either believers or non-believers since he was the first one creating this equipment and wanting to do really in-depth scientific research to investigate it and not actually have a hypothesis going in,

just straight up believe like it could be one or the other. He said there should be an investigation where you just go in, investigate, and see what you come up with. And so the LSA approved that, and they were like, you're right, we should be open-minded and try to figure out how we can determine these things. So they created, the LSA created the National Laboratory of Psychical Research and they let Harry Price be the director. And they built the first lab in Britain ever for psychical research and a thousand members had joined within like two years. So all of a sudden, a lot of people wanted to volunteer and really intensely investigate this stuff and take it seriously

with scientific methods so um just like the spr harry price's new group was quote aim to scientifically test and evaluate phenomenon but with a more open mind like the lsa so um kind of a venn diagram middle of the two of them. And apparently there was no expense spared because now there were a thousand people probably donating to this thing. These are just some of the things that they put into the very first investigative lab. Okay. So this is a quote. This is, it says that the lab had, or the NLPR or whatever. They had world-class laboratories, lecture theaters,

workshops, dark rooms for photography, seance rooms with seven cameras, all in different directions. Oh shit. One of which was capable of stereoscopic photography, UV filter lighting, flashlights,

daylights, spotlights, thermographic recording devices, a dictaphone, and a whole room with wired microphones that fed their output into an entirely separate room for recording. And just to remind you, like, this was at a time, this was, like, early 1920s where, like, most places didn't have electricity.

So, like, all of a sudden they have this, like, massive, like. This is more elaborate than anything we've ever had for the podcast. So, like, you the podcast. So like. You're right. A lot. I didn't even know what half of those words were. But basically whatever they could come up with. And then on top of that, whatever he was creating daily out of his own mind to help him investigate.

He's like Inspector Gadget, but ghosty. Like the paranormal. Like it's like if Zach Bagans and Inspector Gadget had a baby. That's a terrible image. Thank you. Zach Gadget, but ghosty. Like the paranormal. It's like if Zach Bagans and Inspector Gadget had a baby. That's a terrible image. Thank you. Zach Gadget. Zach Gadget. Inspector Bagans.

No? I like Inspector Bagans. We should probably not put his name. I was like, that'd be a fun title. And then I was like, we probably shouldn't put his name in the title because we're really trying to make sure we hold off on like getting sued as long as possible. Please don't sue us, Inspector Bagans. That's our second hit on our Christmas album coming out December 2020. Inspector Bagans.

I miss that song. Once again, we're stealing content from other people. Perfect. Please don't sue us. So they later renamed this lab the London University Council for Psychical Investigation. And this was the first time. So it wasn't necessarily part of London University, but they put it in. I think they were still using some of their resources or something like that.

So they let the name be attached to it. But this was the first time that paranormal research was actually being linked to like mainstream science okay so it was a legitimate location or a legitimate place that was vouching for the fact that this was a legitimate psychical research lab so it was the first time it was really being taken seriously by someone right um so by 1926 there were two there was a medium and there was a poltergeist case that Harry Price believed were genuine. One of them, the poltergeist case, was of a woman named Eleonora Zugan. That's beautiful. Wow.

Can you imagine? Rolls off the tongue. Can you imagine the face that I just made on like a teacher doing roll call? Like. Yeah. Professor M came out to play hard that time. Yeah. That was a tough one.

Wow. So apparently Eleonora. Like Eleanor with an A? Eleanor. Like E-L-E-O-N-e-o nora elia nora sure okay ellie we're gonna call her ellie cute so uh in 1926 he met ellie who was experiencing violent poltergeist activities such as flying objects being slapped bitten and pinched God. And so now that Harry Price, remember, now has this, like, massive lab at his hands,

and, like, he's the director, he gets to bring any case he wants in, and he can just study them at his leisure. So he was like, okay, you sound like a pretty good candidate. Let's bring you in for testing. And she had, apparently, he wrote in his records that she showed signs of telekinesis and stigmata that was appearing on her body in ways she could not control herself.

Oh, God. Okay. And what's weird about her, though, is that all of her symptoms of any possession just ended the second she hit puberty. And he was like, well, I guess you're done here. Like, you're not possessed anymore and nothing happened. That's weird. That's a weird one. And then in 1927, there was well, there was this 18th century prophet named Joanna Southcott. And apparently Joanna, when she died, left this wooden box with one of her friends with the instructions of like, this is a quote.

This should not be opened except in a national crisis and in the presence of 24 bishops. Open it. Somebody open it, please. We're currently in a crisis. So apparently in 1927, that box showed up at the lab that he was running. And he was like, he did everything he could. He had mediums checking it out. He x-rayed it. He did whatever tests he could, but he couldn't figure anything out. And so he ended up just opening it in front of like one bishop. And like, he's like, I just found one instead of 24. It's also not a national crisis.

And but when he opened it up, there was just trinkets in there, like a lottery ticket. And there was like a pistol. That's what he thinks. He probably like unleashed something. A pistol. Hold on. Like a Pandora's box of sorts, but for the coronavirus. Oh, man. So there ended up being nothing in that box. Not that he deemed worthy, but so that was another thing that he ended up debunking. This was the only lab out there where like if you brought a case in, you didn't know what his results were going to be because sometimes he would debunk things and other things he really thought it was true.

So one of the big ones was in 1929. It was this guy named Rudy Schneider, um, who claimed he could levitate items. And so Harry Price wired everyone's, this was during a seance. He took wire and wired down everyone's hands and feet around the table. And he had this display board that he had created where there was a light that would signal if anyone moved and it would like break the circuit. So it was pretty much like, if you move, we will know.

So you can't try to do something quickly. So despite all these controls, Rudy was still able to create ectoplasm I don't know if it was from his undercarriage it was probably it's always from that's one thing

I've learned from this podcast if you've got a crutch you can create ectoplasm apparently yikes yeah I wasn't gonna say it I'm glad you did

well apparently he was also still able to make the table levitate and there were wrappings on the table like knockings I was picturing like candy wrappers sorry okay there's just like a bunch of like tray songs everywhere just it's just like high c wrappers all over the place from m just storming through storming through that's what they call me so uh one of there was an sbr

investigator again just to remind you guys that more of a critical debunker. Right. He even showed up to the seance and he said that Rudy was, quote, absolutely genuine. Like there was it was like this guy was he was wired down. If he moves at all, there was going to be like a warning or an alert and nothing. Oh, OK. That's what happened. Kind of cool.

warning or an alert and nothing. Ooh. And all this stuff still happened. Kind of cool. So after this case, Harry Price, he comes back later, Rudy does. But after this case, Harry Price feels like he kind of proved himself to the SPR. Like, look, I made my own lab. I've debunked enough people. Even some of your people are saying that this is genuine. Like, I'm going to move away from just mediumship and I'm going to branch into all realms of paranormal. And this is where the SPR really doesn't approve. They're like the only thing we've ever paid attention to are fraudulent mediums. Like, if you're branching out, then you're like kind of going against what we're trying to focus on here. But so that was when they really split from each other.

Okay. And after that, basically, if you were a member of the SPR, it was just known that you probably hated him. And so. He was just on a list. On a black list. Even though he's still a member, they still have to, like, include him in the Christmas card. But. They would just, like, put, like, a little demon face on his picture and the card.

So in 1932, which was three years later, Rudy does come back for additional testing, but this time Price isn't using the same equipment he used last time. This time he's using their version

in the 1930s of an infrared camera that had a, I don't know that existed by the way, and it has a motion sensor. So basically if there's any movement,

the camera's going to snap a picture. But he was trying to do a more of a controlled study and not announce what equipment he was using so rudy didn't know what was available aha so uh they start this seance and harry finds out that uh oh let me read this note it's a lot of words hang on on. Uh-oh. Danger zone for our podcast. Oh, so me reading. So basically during this seance, he finds out because he now has this infrared camera

that if there was any movement at all, you know, there'd be a picture taken and he's not using the stuff that, the equipment that had people wired down last time. Right. So during the seance, he actually found out that when the room was pitch black, he found out because his camera sensed movement and took a picture. And he looked back at the picture later and saw that Rudy was actually moving things when no one was looking. So I guess it definitely made him seem more fraudulent that now that he wasn't tied down, he was able do more things during the seance right because he thought nobody was looking but so we didn't figure out like how he

did it the first time we don't know how he did the first time but we know that at least during this seance he was clearly doing things that were incriminating himself i wonder if like the first time he like knew what they were going to do you know like prepared it somehow you would imagine because if you're if you know your hands are going to be tied down or you're really going to be tied down maybe you could have in advance like tied some like invisible fishing line to yourself and moved things or yeah like that way even if you're tied down you can still move your hands a little oh that's true you know yeah or maybe like somebody was in on it with them or something i don't know i feel like these people always have like others in cahoots with them.

A plant. Yeah, so many cahoots. Love a good cahoot. Love a good cahoot. That's what this goddamn podcast says is us in cahoots. It's just cahoots all the time. It's cahoots all the way to the top. So also I'm pretty sure Rudy, like just like how I didn't know an infrared camera existed in the 1930s,

Rudy probably didn't think that technology existed. That's true. He's like, there's no way they can see me in the dark. Right. So anyway, they found out that at least in that seance, he was a fraud. And so before he actually ended up exposing Rudy, which by the way, he thought would be a big step because he was owning up to the fact that he was wrong initially because oh yeah the first tests he said in the first test he said like oh rudy is absolutely genuine and if he came forward with these notes then he thought he was at least owning

up and making himself look more legitimate but a lot of people i guess were prepared to see this as like oh so we just should never believe anything you say, because every genuine case you found might actually just be something. Right. They might have just been too slick for you. And so that ended up happening. But before he released the news that this guy was a fraud, he found out that the SPR, who now hates him, he found out that they were also going to do their own individual tests on Rudy. And he knew that they didn't have infrared cameras. And so he knew that they were going to come out saying again that this guy is the real deal. And so knowing that they hated each other, he waited for them to come out with their results and say that this guy is great so that he could then put out his results and say actually he's a fraud and the SPR doesn't know how to investigate properly.

I love it. Just to piss them off. I am so petty. I love it. I love it. It's the pettiest. And so the SPR obviously is furious, and they accuse Price of like faking this photo.

Like who even knows what infrared is? Like this guy is like totally faking this damn but they had uh other experts who are members of the spr but they're like the experts and i don't know debunking photography and they had to admit they were like no this picture is genuine like his evidence is real and we look like assholes snap So if it wasn't already done, now it's kaput. Like, they hate each other. The cahoots are kaput, as we say in the German language. Is that what they say?

I hope to speak German one day then. Yes. I have a dictionary you can memorize and fool all your friends. I only know the one sentence and that's all I need. I think the Germans will get it. I'll get you part. So here's a good, this is one you're really going to enjoy. So in 1931, here's another massive case that he ended up being a part of, which again was a medium. He was trying to branch out, but he was still known for all his medium work. So he still kept having

to debunk this stuff. Excuse me. So in 1931, one of the most famous cases he ever covered was the medium Helen Duncan claiming she could regurgitate ectoplasm. Ew. So the lab that he was in charge of, they decided that they were going to literally pay her to be examined under scientific conditions because they had just never heard of anyone throwing it up before. Yeah. And basically Helen, she was so insistent that she not be x-rayed. She was like, I don't want to be x-rayed.

I don't want you to do that. And they ended up trying to do it anyway. She freaked out, and so she ended up, like, booking it, like, sprinting out of the lab. Oh, my God.

Her husband had to chase her down the street. She was like, it was totally, like, this dramatic news. Everyone could see her running her down the street. She was, like, it was totally, like, this dramatic news. Everyone could see her running down the street. And she had, like, she was clearly carrying something. And so, basically, Harry Price ended up finding out that, like, even though she destroyed the control test that they had, she probably handed off whatever fake ectoplasm they were going to find.

She handed it off to her husband when he chased her down. Right. And he ended up learning later that the ectoplasm, first of all, he was right. That's exactly what happened. And the ectoplasm that she had planned on regurgitating was a combination of cheesecloth. Oh, she ate that. Paper soaked in egg white. Oh. Rubber gloves. Oh, rubber gloves.

No, don't eat that. And then faces that she had clipped out of magazines as the spirits. OK, I'm sorry. This is like next level. Next level. So she she literally thought that like she would throw like, eggs and gloves and cheesecloth. And, like, a vision board. She, like, ate a vision board and, like, puked it onto everyone. I mean, I guess maybe that's one way.

I guess maybe that's one way to, like, you know, on Moses. It was literally a vision board. Your dreams. She's like, and then I'm going to throw up Zac Efron. Oh, gross, Em. So anyway, he ended up finding out. Like, can you imagine, by the way, being like, like taking yourself seriously as an investigator

and you find all these like little clippings from like J-14 or something. And like, I can't imagine swallowing rubber gloves. That's like so heinous to me. I don't know. I wonder how small they had to have been for her to be prepared to swallow that. Because I feel like, I know people out there are like more nauseous than I am about this kind of stuff. But like, I feel like my gag reflex would know I was eating something I couldn't put down. I can barely swallow a pill.

Like, I can't fathom that. Also, cheesecloth is like literal cloth right like it's meant to like drain out solids it's like gauze sort of yeah anyway so she apparently was swallowing all that and it was ectoplasm is this like the first literal vomitus we've had because this is i'm feeling real real rough right now it's pretty gnarly i gotta say so um anyway she was later even arrested for fraud because they were like you probably also need help and so yeah there's a lot happening here and he ended up writing a piece about this i think you can still find online called the cheesecloth worshipers ew okay and uh with pictures that he took from the legitimate experiment. So like it was kind of like a scientific journal. Like it was like kind of his first academic journal.

How? And so basically she ended up admitting later or she didn't admit but her former maid confessed to having helped her and her husband said that he was also in on it in case there was ever like something he needed to help cover during the the investigation wow that's nuts in 1932 uh harry price traveled to mount brocken in germany no okay i don't there's a lot of mounts in germany i gotta say sorry okay so he traveled to Mount Bracken, and apparently, so this was him trying to branch out into other phenomena. But apparently there was some black magic that he wanted to test to see if it was legitimate. And it was called the Blocksburg Trist. And apparently this is a ritual where you transform a goat into a, quote, youth of surpassing beauty called upon by a maiden. Oh, come on.

Leave these animals alone. So the, uh, come on that you just said is kind of how everyone took this. Okay, good. They were like, come on. Like, we were taking you so seriously. Like, you just got your name up there. You're pushing the envelope here, yeah.

You're basically writing academic journals, and now, like, you want us to believe that you're going to turn a fucking goat into a man and also so apparently this was um a famous actress um ura bon apparently she was also part of the experiment like she can't she was the maiden that helped with the with the the incantation. Wait, how do you spell her name? U-R-A. Oh, never mind. B-O-H-N.

Never mind. I don't know. I also have written A.K.A. Gloria Gordon. Maybe that was her American name. Maybe that was her stage name or something. Stage name? Yeah, I don't know. I should know, but these notes are like two weeks old now, so I'm not really sure who. Our brains don't work that way.

But so apparently she was like a famous actress at the time and she was also part of this ritual with him. So I think maybe it was supposed to be like a PR thing of like, look, now I have celebrities helping me with my experiments. Sure. And so a few things happened. First of all, people didn't take him seriously. He ended up later mentioning that like i didn't expect it to work but i'm still like open-minded to anything and i wanted everyone to know that like i'm prepared to debunk things or like even if i'm not taking something even if i don't believe it for myself

i'm still willing to investigate it for you so he he tried to spin it and he ended up saying that he only did it quote to prove the fallacy of transcendental magic. So he was like, I'm kind of on the same page as you guys, but I'm still doing this if it's something that is requested of me. Got it. Okay. But the other thing that came out of this is like how I just said he was now having almost celebrities join him on these investigations. So he was known, and one of the reasons the SPR didn't like him from the beginning is he was kind of one of the reasons the spr didn't like him from the beginning is he was kind

of an attention seeker um he loved attracting media with his experiments um and a lot of people saw that as a bad thing of like oh he just wants the attention but he saw it as like a business campaign where he was like nobody takes the paranormal yeah and scientific methods seriously but if i do something interesting enough during my experiments, then I'm at least spreading awareness to the masses that this is a real legitimate thing people should be investigating. I can get that.

Yeah, I understand it too, but definitely the people who didn't like him, it was very easy to pick at this and be like, yeah, it's like he's just doing it for attention, but he saw it as like, no, I'm making sure people know that this stuff exists. Right. So he did, for example, some of the things that he did more for, quote, attention was he did firewalking experiments to see if people could really do that or if it was just mind over matter.

to set up a firewalk for himself and instead of using charcoal excuse me instead of using charcoal for his firewalk he built the um the embers out of 50 copies of the new york times oh and so he did that and like he got permission from the times first and they loved it they were like yeah like everything's gonna know that like it was our paper he used for his experiment so he ended up like starting to like literally like publicize and market using like other brands like he was doing brand integration in his paranormal experiments wow he really was ahead of his time he was so he was like an influencer like a vintage influencer he knew if exactly he's like a hipster for sure like he if he had an instagram back in the day we would all be in trouble oh yeah we'd all be screwed but so. Unless we got him on board with this whole thing, then maybe we'd be. Can you imagine if we could have integrated and that's why we drank into his

experiments? I mean, who would be in trouble? Me or the ghosts? I don't know. As you sip your juice box. I think we all know the answer to that. But so I agree with you. Like the first reaction you had, I was like, ew, like, isn't that going to make like the New York Times hate him because he's burning their papers? Yeah, it seems like you're making a statement or something. But he knew that if I burn the most important paper, they're going to write about this. And so it's going to cultivate the most attention. So he ended up after that doing more kind of brand integration stuff. He started doing newspaper interviews. He did radio broadcasts. He started doing radio broadcasts from haunted places,

which made him the first real investigator because he was legitimizing this research on radio. Cool. So in 1936, he ended up forming the National Film Library or the British Film Institute. And he ended up broadcasting live from haunted houses on BBC. And this makes him the first celebrity ghost hunter. And he did further live broadcasts in the future and other haunted homes. But basically what I'm trying to tell you is he's the first Zach Bagans. Da da da da da. Inspector Bagans. But so basically I did this

whole story just to say that there was a Zach Bagans before Zach Bagans. I mean, he probably actually now that I'm thinking about it, we would be screwed because he would have blocked me too on Twitter and then we'd all be in big trouble. There's no chance that we would have made it. You would have had two people you were drunkenly tweeting at. Oh no. So he ended up, now that he had this fame, he was like literally a ghost hunter and he was known for this and he was doing interviews and marketing campaigns. So he was like literally Zach Bagans level. That's so cool. And he ended up reestablishing the ghost club after it closed the first time.

But he reestablished it to modernize it so he made it more skeptical so that people had to question things instead of just be diehard believers or skeptics. And he also allowed women into the ghost club. Oh. And he started, very Houdini of him him but he started proposing bills that would have him regulating mediums and like their fraudulent work if they're being paid so um he also got uh the university of london to set up the council for psychical research um which was i already mentioned that earlier sorry that was a similar note earlier, but it was still a major contribution. And he wrote telepathy and psychic tests. This was another way he was marketing himself.

He started writing telepathy and psychic tests for weekly periodicals so people could be like, ooh, am I a psychic? That's me always taking those kinds of things. Literally like content branding himself. Wow. taking literally like content branding himself wow and so he also ended up publishing three books by the 1940s um which i'm gonna get into this in a second because this is kind of like the biggest thing he's known for um it's tricky so what i was gonna say is that in the 1940s on top of all that other stuff that he did he uh published three books on the Borley Rectory, which that was a story I covered forever ago. Yes, I remember that.

Episode 64. So now that I've done this story, I actually really, really, really, I know that we always say we're going to eventually do like revival episodes where we re-discuss cases. Now that our like research has gotten better. But this made me want to do it all over again because, like, there's so much shit about him in the Borley Rectory

that I guarantee you I did not mention back in episode 64. We should do a revival. But so, if we ever do do those, Borley Rectory is going to be one of the first episodes

I cover. Sweet. So, in 1948, he ended up dying of a massive heart attack. Oh, no. But he ended up dying of a massive heart attack but he ended up uh the university of london ended up inheriting his books and he had a i told you back when he was like eight he started collecting books about witchcraft and stuff like that so by 1948 he had a collection of over 13,000 books. Holy shit.

And they were on, quote, witchcraft, the occult, prophecies, abnormal phenomena, all ranging from present day to 1472. The, I mean, the, I would give up my life savings to just own that library, truly. I mean, and also it had his own personal archives from all of his investigations. So it had his, quote, correspondence, publication drafts, libel case papers, investigation reports, press cuttings, and photographs from his experiments.

And all the cutout heads for his ectoplasm. And some things with a little vomit on them because they were spirits. But so anyway, his book collection is now at uh senate house library which is um part of the university of london and it's called the harry price library of magical literature which is so cool it really is so uh i do want to mention real quick in 1929 like i said he's best known hands down for the borley Rectory, which is, according to him, the most haunted house in England. And I'm not going to take up too much time, but there are some things I want to say about this. So the Borley Rectory investigation became, I guess he considers it the most haunted house in England.

And it's also like where he became officially like stamped and written down in paranormal history. Like he's known if there was a paranormal history class he would be mentioned got it because uh the borley rectory investigation that he did became the quote first documented attempt to track down ghosts in one single location so well the first ghost hunt ever really happened in the borley Rectory. That's amazing. It was also massive because he had spent so many years detailing his own investigations and his own experiments and trying to figure out any way to do scientific method, whether it was mediums or whatever the phenomena was.

But this was the first detailed notes of research, methods, interviews, and findings, which all included and made up the first blueprint for investigators in the future and set the standard for modern paranormal research whoa so he and what's weird about it is it was so detailed because it was a 24-7 investigation so he rented the rectory for a year and he lived there with a rotating group of like 40 other official observers. Right. For nonstop observation.

So he literally recruited them through the times. And so this is the original personal ad that he put in. This was May 25th, 1937. So he wrote,

Haunted house. Responsible persons of leisure and intelligence, intrepid, critical, and unbiased are invited to join Rota of observers in a year's night and day investigation of alleged haunted house in home in home counties. Printed instructions supplied scientific training or ability to operate simple instruments on advantage and advantage. Sorry. House situated in lonely Ham hamlet so own car is essential and then after that he uh he put that out on the times and he got like hundreds of people i bet and so he ended up breaking it down to like 40 people and he also uh for this investigation

since he was bringing in 40 strangers they needed to rely on for the next 365 days nonstop, he wrote the first ever handbook on conducting paranormal investigations, which became known officially in the paranormal community as the Blue Book. And he gave one to each observer and he taught them how to investigate and what equipment to use. And he gave all the researchers freedom to investigate however they wanted. So some of them would journal, some of them would do seances, but basically, uh, he, of the 40 people, he created a group of quote, all different professions, outlooks, and interests. Some came alone and others came in groups as skeptics, believers, and, or debunkers. And then, um, so basically he had people from all walks of life

studying however they felt most comfortable. So that way he didn't have to do any like hard cutting experiments. It was like all these people were investigating in their own ways and they still couldn't figure out what the fuck was going on. Jesus, wow. So one of the pros to this was that he actually didn't, so this is a quote, Price did not see, I heard a bunch of cars. Price, this is a quote, Price did not see a vast majority of the findings. It was independent observers who often had no idea what others were experiencing.

So it was a whole other way of investigating where it was like, I don't even have to be there. a whole other way of investigating where it was like, I don't even have to be there. So if you think that I'm setting something up or I'm creating some sort of trap where there's definitely going to be spirits, we had 40 different people from, you know, of all characteristics and all beliefs, they all found shit and we cannot explain this. And so, um, again, after he died in 1948, and then after he died, three different people from the SPR ended up publishing their own reports about the Borley rectory to make him look bad. And it got it became called the Borley Report. And they basically said that Price ended up faking a bunch of the phenomena. said that his claims were faked. This is a quote from the Borley report that Price's claims were quote, either faked or due to natural causes such as rats and strange acoustics and the odd shape

of the house. But something so anyway, they tried to say that, you know, he faked it, but a lot of people still back him and say like, no, no, like this was like, like unprecedented. This was like the investigation that made paranormal research a legitimate thing. And one thing he would love for someone who loved attention, ITV actually made a movie about him called Harry Price Ghost Hunter, which helped spread awareness. Heck yeah. And one of my favorite things about him is that he was the first to ever use – well, so he was the first to use experimental measures to test paranormal things in labs but he was also the first um he was the first person to have his own ghost kit so since he was the original investigator i'm gonna tell you the things

that he had in the very first never seen before ghost kit so he, he built it specifically for the Borley rectory. These were all original items of his. And then he made sure that when he, uh, when he had other people come on, he made sure that they also had these items. So in the very first original ghost kit, a sketch pad, pencils to plot a location, steel tape, plaster, string, tools to seal doors and windows, miscellaneous electric apparatuses and bells to set up sound for breached areas. And this is all obviously a quote. Atoms and co-reflex cameras that had infrared film, cine cameracamera AFKA NovaPan film. Yikes. Sure, yeah. Obviously.

Trigger weights and trigger thermographs to show any change in temperature or movement. A bottle of mercury to use in a bowl to show any temperature changes or tremors in the room. Flashlights and matches for low lights or as trigger objects. Chalk to mark the areas of activity. Brushes and powdered graphite for developing potential fingerprints and a remote control motion picture camera with portable telephones for contact between investigators so basically walkie-talkies wow so uh he was one of the biggest influencers in paranormal investigation in modern ghost hunting. And he also created the ghost kit, the very first how to investigative book.

And because of him, he brought ghost research to the general public. And one thing I will say to final, to end this all is that besides the Borley rectory, two of the other best known cases of his were Jeff, the talking mongoose and the Seance of Rosalie, both which I will be talking about next week. Okay.

Oh my God, a mongoose. I can't wait. And I'm so sorry that was so long, but again, it was just like so good and so juicy. I feel bad because I keep shifting, but I'm like in the... I know exactly where you are because I used to sit there.

Yeah, the hot zone. Of course, I have this I have your sweatshirt off. I am wearing literally nothing underneath the sweatshirt. Nobody wants to take a break. I need to be paid a lot more for that kind of content. Step aside. No, I'm fine. I'm really sure I'm just complaining, you know, like I like, listen, there's nothing I love more than a good complaint. So yeah, I'm full of them. No, I'll just tell you my story, I guess. I'm excited about this one. This is like a juicy episode. Um, uh, this has been, so this has been requested. It was in the media recently again, and like it came up again. I don't know why or like what prompted it, but it kind of recirculated on Twitter and was like trending again. So people started tagging me in it. And I actually knew about it ahead of time because

this takes place in D.C. and I was living in D.C. when this happened. And then I realized after I'd already done the notes, I saw an email from Kirsten to my Xteen Files email saying like, you should cover this. And I was like, well, Kirsten, it's your lucky day because I am doing that. This is the Lululemon murder. Huh? I've never heard of this. You haven't? It was in DC. Yeah. I'm sure I know immediately now why everyone wanted you to cover it if it's got the word lemon in it. Oh, well, I didn't actually put that together until you just said it. So it was all you said lemon and I just blacked out. Nobody actually mentioned lemon in any of the tweets or anything. I don't think I think people just associate the brand so much that nobody it didn't occur to anyone. I see. I just heard I heard lemons annoying little voice in my head going, I'm involved. Finally, some more attention.

No, this is the Lululemon murder. And this took place in 2016, I believe. Oh, sorry. 2011, 2011. Okay. Obviously I was living here in 2016. This took place in 2011. Were you in DC at this point? No, I was in college. I was in Virginia, but I was not near. Oh, okay. Okay, cool. So I will tell you about this. I remember this happening, which is like extra creepy. So I will tell you about the people involved first. So the first, um, person involved, uh, and there's two of them is Jaina Murray and she was born November 22nd, 1980 in Kansas to a close knit military family. And they moved to Texas, uh, where Jaina grew up and excelled in high school track and field

as well as dance. She broke local records for the discus throw. So super athletic. She was described by her friends and family as fun and adventurous. She studied in Madrid, Spain for two years for college, did a semester at sea, was like, you know, very cosmopolitan, I guess you would say. A globetrotter. A globetrotter. That's a better word. It's one of my favorite words. I love that word.

She graduated from Georgetown, sorry, George Washington University in D.C. with a bachelor's in international marketing. And that's where my brother went to school. He was there in 2011, actually, at GW. Fun fact. She also earned a master of fine arts in public and media relations so she had a master's she was a globetrotter she was a discus champ i guess of course uh so she was all over the place but um really successful and her mba thesis was on the retail structure of lululemon and if you guys don't know what Lululemon is,

it is a very, it's like an upscale athleisure brand. Athleisure, another word I love more than anything. Such a good word. Such a good word. That I've probably never said out loud until this very moment. And I remember like when Lululemon was kind of up, like coming up and coming and like this huge deal and people I knew called it Lululemon. And I was like, I don't think that's how you say it. Maybe that's what they really tried for in the beginning. And then they heard everyone saying Lululemon. They might have. And then the company was like, you're right.

You're right. Because for a while I didn't know which one it was. I was like, that sounds douchey, but this is like an upscale athleisure brand. So you never know. Um, but yeah, so Lululemon is at least how I've always known it to be. Sure. Um, and so that is, so she did a, her thesis on the retail structure of Lululemon, which was really popular at the time and still is, I guess. Um, and she actually applied for and was hired by Lululemon as a sales team leader once she was done with school. Oh, okay. So she was like super friendly. She became friends with

all her coworkers. A lot of them called her my best friend in the documentaries I watched, which like, wow, some drama. Must be nice. They're all, they're all, she's all their best friends. I know. On her 30th birthday she like went bungee jumping with all her friends like she was just you know a globetrotter as you said and uh so she was two months away from graduating from her master's um in 2011 and she her boyfriend had just moved to seattle and her plan was to move to seattle to continue working for lululemon but like at their corporate offices, and so that was the big plan. Now that is where we leave off with Jaina. And now there's one more person I want to tell you about who's Brittany Norwood

and Brittany was born in 1982 in Washington state. Uh, she was also very athletic. She was extremely talented soccer player. Um, she was on the all-star and state teams. She got a scholar, a soccer scholarship to Stony Brook university in Long Island for college. And she was named most valuable defensive player. She was like on the Adidas regional team. Like she just very successful, very athletic. And her coach actually at the time said, Brittany hates losing more than she likes winning. So that's kind of her, like, that's a general overview of her personality, if you will. Gotcha. But they both like more or less seem very successful in their paths. Yeah. Yeah. Like going to college on very successful in a very like traditional American

way of like, I'm an athlete getting a scholarship. The dream. Yeah. Right. Like the American dream. Exactly. And so she, she was like really successful for all intents and purposes. However, there's a big but, and it's not yours. I was going to say.

I don't know why I said that. I loved it though. I was like, whose should I say? And then I was like, it's funny. Everybody say M's. So the big butt in the room is actually that she had built up a reputation as a kleptomaniac or a thief among her teammates and friends. This is Brittany. Yes.

Okay. Wow. I know. So there is like a catch in this American dream. So her friends, roommates, and teammates all had accused her of being a kleptomaniac. And oops, I forgot this was double-sided. I was like, what the hell? Magic. I like got to like the most dramatic part really quickly. I was like, oh.

And then everyone was dead. Yeah, I was like, this is not, we need to be a little smoother transition. So she was never actually arrested for stealing anything, but she was caught and accused so many times that she actually lost her scholarship in 2003. And kind of that kind of set her on like a period of being like lost and directionless. Like she didn't have, you know, her scholarship anymore, which was like her whole life was soccer. And so in 2008, fast forward a few years, Brittany and a former roommate were sued by a landlord in DC for unpaid rent. And then in 2009, a hairstylist alleged that Brittany stole her weaves by claiming that someone in the shop had robbed her while she got her hair done. by claiming that someone in the shop had robbed her while she got her hair done.

Okay. So just, like, continuing this kind of weird, like, petty crime habit. Yeah, it seems like it's more of a pattern now than a habit. Yes, pattern. That's a good word. Sounds like it's a pretty, like, settled behavior at this point. Yeah, like, it's pretty ingrained, I would say. So by 2010, like, things pretty ingrained, I would say. So by 2010, like things seem to be a little bit better. She had a good job at a hotel near the White House, and she was really quickly promoted, raised in the ranks there. But her goal was to become a

personal trainer. She was still like really athletic. And her goal was she wanted to be a personal trainer with VIP clients in D.C. So like, you know, the top political, et cetera, influences, and she wanted to be their personal trainer. So that's kind of what she was like, making the connections for. And during this time in 2011, she got another job as a sales assistant at Lululemon. I see. There's the connection. And the Lululemon was in Georgetown. And I have, um, I remember my ex-boyfriend went to Georgetown and I used to pass that Lululemon all the time. Oh, so, you know, the one. So there's actually two locations in this story, which at first I was like, holy shit, but there's another one in Bethesda, which is close by. But like, um,

but this specific one, at least I remember walking by and like oh i was so poor and i was like i'm not even allowed in there like i'm not even gonna cross the threshold so i passed it many times feeling um defeated sure one time i passed john carrey and his wife on that street too i think i remember you telling me that before and i even didn't even know it my ex-boyfriend was like do you know who that was and i was like no I'm just looking at the Lululemon leggings and he was like that was John Carey and his wife I was like oh shit so yeah anyway fun fun times fun fact fun fact um so she started working at this shop in Georgetown like if you don't know it's like Georgetown's like the super kind of ritzy like uh boutique-y, wealthy area of D.C.

I have lots of memories at Georgetown. It was where my mom would go there sometimes, and then I'd get to go with her for like shopping. And then it would be like, let's go to Lululemon. And I was like, I don't want to. Yeah. I went there in college for, there's no frats at Georgetown, but there were things called, let's see, the Yacht Club. And so I went to those parties and they were quite an experience, I got to say. It was just like Country Club 2.0.

Yeah, I was a fly on that wall for most of the time. But they all drink Burnett's. College kids are all the same. It doesn't matter if you're in the goddamn Yacht Club or not. Like, you're all drink Burnett's. College kids are all the same. Doesn't matter if you're in the goddamn yacht club or not. Like, you're all drinking Burnett's and playing beer pong. The only difference is,

are you, like, in khakis and Sperry's or are you, like, in your sweatpants? So many Sperry's. Yuck. All right. Anyway, so she was at this Lululemon in Georgetown and she quit her hotel position

because she wanted to work at Lul and try to build more like connections. Sure. To become a personal trainer. Network, exactly. And so in late February of 2011, Brittany is transferred to the Lou Lemon location in Bethesda, which is another really affluent part of D.C. It's a suburb of D.C. And she and Jaina became co-workers. And so that's how these two paths intersect, if you will.

So in early March, it was about a month after she had started, Brittany scheduled an interview for a trainer position at an upscale gym around the corner from Lululemon in Bethesda. And she was, like, really hoping that this new interview at this upscale gym would be like her stepping stone. And so that night, March 11th, Jaina and Brittany were the last ones working. So they closed up the store and Lululemon company policy, at least at the time, was that the employees would check each other's bags to like check for shoplifting, basically. Gotcha. So Brittany checked Jaina's bag and Jaina checked Brittany's bag. And Jaina, when she looked into Brittany's bag, found a pair of yoga pants.

And we remember Brittany's habit or pattern, I guess. Her pattern, yeah. Her pattern. So she found a pair of yoga pants in Brittany's bag, and there was no receipt. And Brittany was like, oh, no, no, I bought those from another co-worker of ours. Like, she sold them to me. She must have forgotten to give me the receipt. And the computers had already been logged out, so they couldn't log in to, like, make sure of it. But so they go their separate ways at 945. And once she leaves, Jaina calls the associate that Brittany had said she bought the pants from and was like, did you sell Brittany these pants? And this woman said, no, I didn't

sell her anything. And so Jaina's like, that's kind of what I thought. Like, it seemed a little fishy that she didn't have a receipt. Yeah. So then she calls the store manager and she's like, yo, I don't know what to do. Like, it looks like Brittany might have stolen something. And the manager is like, okay, you know what? Thank you for letting me know tomorrow. I'll deal with it. Like we'll fire her tomorrow. Um, for now, just go home. We'll handle it. Sure. So around 10 PM, this is about 15 minutes later, uh, Jaina gets a call from Brittany and Brittany says, Hey, I left my wallet in the store, but I don't have the key. Can you come back to the store and let me in so I can grab my wallet? So Jaina drives all the way back to the store, parks out front, like puts her hazards on,

is parked like in a legal spot. And she and Brittany enter the shop together. So that's the night of March 11th. At 8 a.m. on March 12th, the store manager arrives to the store to find the doors unlocked. And she opens the door and finds the store ransacked and there is blood everywhere, like all over the store. She hears a moan. She runs outside, scared, calls the police. And a bystander comes up and is's like how can i help you um and she's like i think someone is hurt in there and so the bystander goes into the store and he finds jana murray she is dead um she is covered in blood and she has been beaten um and she is in the back back room of the store and so as he's on his way out to like, I don't know, talk to the police or talk

to the manager and tell her what he found, the bystander hears like noises coming from another room and he finds Brittany Norwood, who has also been beaten, but she's breathing, she's alive, and she has her hands zip tied and she's like, seems completely out of it, but she's alive. So police arrive at around 8, 12 AM and they take Brittany to the hospital. Like I said, she's still breathing, but she has cuts across her legs, her abdomen, her chest. She has a laceration on her head and her pants are cut open at the crotch. Oh no. And so when Brittany, and she had fallen unconscious when she

was being transferred to um the hospital but when she regains consciousness she tells police what had happened they're like what the fuck went on that night and she said she was she and jana went to the back to look for her wallet and uh when they went back, they didn't find it. When they returned to the front of the store, Jaina was hit in the face by one of two masked men. She said they dragged, one of them dragged Jaina to the back room and Brittany tells police that she heard Jaina fighting and screaming until the fighting and screaming faded away. And the other masked man, she said there were two, forced Brittany to get the keys to the safe, then dragged her by her hair to the bathroom where he beat, slashed and sexually assaulted her until she passed out, waking up only when she was put into the ambulance.

OK. So this initial story, like the scene of the crime initially supports this story. So the store had been ransacked. The registers and computers were overturned and smashed. Merchandise was everywhere. There were bloody footprints from a men's sized 14 sneakers all over the store. Jaina's pants were also cut open at the crotch and it does appear she had been sexually assaulted as well. It does appear she had been sexually assaulted as well.

Security footage from the back alley behind the store showed two men in dark clothing and knit hats hurrying down the alley right around the time when Jaina says that they were, I'm sorry, when Brittany says they were leaving the scene. So at this point, the Montgomery County Police alert the public about the suspect and they offer a $150,000 reward for any information leading to their arrest. They're like, there are these two men that were seen leave it passing the store who like brutally hurt these women. And as I said earlier, like Jaina obviously had not survived the attack. And so they take her and you know, inspect her body and they determine the full extent of her injuries.

So she had 331 distinct injuries to her body and they determined the full extent of her injuries so she had 331 distinct injuries to her body holy crap yeah this one's pretty brutal um she had 106 defensive wounds on her forearms and hands and had fought really hard for her life um there had been multiple weapons used against her including a wrench a hammer a hammer, a box cutter, a rope, a metal T-bar from a clothing stand, a lint roller, scissors, and a knife from the break room. Holy shit. Yeah. So this is like an extremely violent, brutal, malicious attack. I'm also trying to think like in this, like if there's two people versus two people, like why do you need that many tools?

Yeah. And you know what? The weird thing, too, is that all of them, all of the tools came from within the store. So they were all taken from the store and used in the store and left behind. I see. None of them were brought with them. So, yeah, somebody would have had to go find all of these tools within the store and then go ahead and use them. Right.

So this is probably the worst part. According to the medical examiner, Jana did not die until the final blow, which spine alert. I have a fear of spine. I've been dreading saying this comment for like two weeks now. She had a knife wound to the back of her neck which severed her spinal cord and penetrated her brain and that's what eventually or ultimately killed her oh my god it's really really brutal um her beating and death took about 20 minutes and she lived through 19 minutes and 45 seconds of it which is just like that's the kind of thing that when people

ask me about doing a show like this i'm like that's the kind of thing that when people ask me about doing a show like this i'm like that's the kind of thing that haunts me at night this is also why like we were scared to do live shows in the beginning because like yeah you're at a comedy club talking about this stuff and no one's gonna laugh and that's why it's so hard for me to find it was so hard for me to find live topics because i was like it has to find be a fine line of scary, but like not so gruesome that. Right. That everyone's uncomfortable. Yeah, exactly. So this is also a really upsetting point. I want to just preface real quick. The Montgomery County police captain says that after she had died, Jaina was also assaulted, sexually assaulted with a wooden hanger.

was also assaulted sexually assaulted with a wooden hanger so another terrible detail the store manager was like listen all I know is that last night Jaina called me and said she thinks Brittany had stolen something from the store and at this time they also find they happen to find the two men who were walking out back and they discover that these two men are dishwashers from a nearby restaurant and were just leaving work and had never actually been inside the store. So it was literally a very perfect coincidence. Total coincidence that these two men happened to be walking back behind the camera. So they're cleared as suspects. And there's only so the other thing that they're kind of like, well, you said there were two men, but there's only one set of footprints throughout the store. Oh, that's a good point. Yeah. And that hadn't really occurred to me either until they said it.

And I was like, wait, yeah. So they, they actually find the sneakers in the store and they had recently been washed and still contained blood evidence. So wait, they found the actual shoes still there. So someone took their shoes off to then run away? Yeah. So the shoes were actually the ones that the store used to measure and tailor pants. So they were like the store's

stock men's shoes that they used to like help tailor clothing, but they weren't actually owned by anybody. So they were't actually owned by anybody. So they were also from inside the store. From the inside. Okay.

And they had been washed and put back on the shelf where they were originally from. But they still contained blood evidence. So they were like, okay, that's, it was Jane's blood. So like, in theory, I'm assuming we get to the point where this is Brittany. So like someone. So someone. Spoilers. the point where this is britney so like someone so someone spoilers so she literally put on put on these shoes for tailoring then killed and then thought she could just like rinse them off with

water and put them back and no one would notice so essentially yes i mean i'll i'll kind of explain like why she did it but but yeah i mean mean, yes. It's just so stupid. Like you wouldn't at least think to throw it away or something. Yeah. Well, remember she was found in the store. So like she had left the store. Right. So you're right. Like literally the reason everything was found in the store was like a big telling point of like,

wouldn't somebody who came from the outside have taken that with them? With a box cutter? Like when they leave with their box cutter in their shoes and like not wash the shoes and put them back. Right. Exactly. So that's kind of where the thing, the tides turned and they were like,

okay, something's wrong here. They also found Jaina's car in a parking lot about a block away. And, uh, Brittany and Jaina's blood were both found inside the car. What? Yeah.

So it's just bad. I did not see see coming that me neither at the time um so there were some apple store employees uh who which was like shared a wall with lululemon um and two employees and a security guard told police they had heard a fight between two women around 10 30 p.m the night before and uh they heard a woman yelled talk to me don't do this talk to me what's going on followed by screams yelps yells and eventually a voice saying god help me please help me so the employees had done nothing uh assuming it was just drama quote unquote is the actual word they used um and this actually like has remnants or reminders of the the kitty genevieve story like the bystander myth right of psych 101 fame yeah um which actually which is you know the story of where

uh a woman was murdered and they said 32 bystanders were watching and everyone thought the other person would call the police. So no one called the police and she was murdered. And since then, that has been debunked as just really terrible journalism. There's actually a movie that her brother created called The Witness that delves into that. And in 2016, the New York Times called its own reporting on the case flawed, stating that the original story grossly exaggerated the number of witnesses and what they had perceived. Also, two people did call 911 and the events happened in multiple locations. So no one was like just standing there watching her murder. Anyway, that's just a side note. But so that kind

of reminds me of the story because it's like they just heard this through the wall and we're like, oh, I'm sure it's nothing. If it were something, someone else will handle it, you know? Right. And nothing was done. And you just wonder, like, if they had checked or if they had called the police, what would have happened? Not that I'm blaming them, but it's just like you wonder how close it could have been to being stopped. Anyway, police at this point are like, OK, Brittany, something is up with this chick. She is like clearly not telling us the truth and she's hiding something. So they ask her to submit DNA and fingerprints.

They're just like, oh, no, we just want to rule it out at the scene to make sure we find the right person's DNA. So at this point, Brittany says they ask, hey, were you ever in Jaina's car? And she's like, no, I wasn't. And bingo, bingo, bingo. They're like, well, we caught you already in a lie. They found they find Brittany's DNA, like I said, in Jaina's car, but also in the shoes. So ding, ding, ding, bingo, bingo, red flag. but also in the shoes.

So ding, ding, ding. Bingo, bango. Red flag. The medical examiner finds no evidence of sexual assault on Brittany despite her story that she had also been raped. And her wounds were superficial.

And the interesting thing too is that the blood on her cuts dried in a downward drip in front of her face and her limbs which suggests she was upright even though she was found on the floor and said she was being attacked.

It should have been like spread outward or something. It would have like off her head. It would have fallen onto the floor or however, but her head injury, which she said she received while on the floor was actually dripping the wrong direction. Yeah, physics was... Physics, exactly.

Basic physics. Basic physics 101. And also the fact that her hands were tied in front of her. They were like, this isn't normal for a criminal to do that. Like a person can zip tie their own hands in front of them, but it doesn't make sense to do because it's a lot easier to get out of if you're a criminal. So Brittany at this point realizes like she's been caught in a lie about being in jana's car and she voluntarily without being asked it goes down to the police station and when she's there she tells police oh well i remember now why i was in the car and they're like okay please enlighten us and she says i was in the car because the masked men forced me to move the car to some another location and so they're like

okay you remember that yeah a like why would you have lied or misremembered that and b so she said she was told to move the car and come back or they would kill her like they killed jana and they're like well if you were out there on your own why didn't you make a run for it or call the police and she had a car and she said she was by herself in the car right because they hadn't found anybody else's dna in there so um she said she was too scared so she came back and parked the car and walked back into the store which just like makes no sense you you know i don't think anyone would do that um whether you're scared or not and then on march 18 2011 uh so this is the same day

they're holding a vigil for jana outside the lululemon store in bethesda britney norwood is arrested on the charge of first degree murder so i know so i guess we knew we were heading here but now we're here well we we've anticipated the ride this whole time and now we're on it. So much fun, isn't it? Yeah. So the trial itself, the motive of theft was deemed inadmissible. So they, because this was hearsay. So the manager said, oh, well, Brittany called me or sorry, Jaina called me and said, Brittany had stolen something. And they were like, well, that's hearsay. So we can't use that as a motive in court. They didn't even have that ability to share that with the jury.

The prosecution proceeded without a motive and started to paint this like really fucked up picture of what happened. They said Brittany lured Jaina back to the store to get her wallet, but in reality was luring her back with the sole intention of killing her. They present the physical and forensic evidence to prove the following. So number one, Brittany had beaten Jaina for 20 minutes, stopping the assault to find different weapons and then resuming the beating. So like you said, you would have had to go and find all the different weapons. go and find all the different weapons um number two it's really awful um number two jana fought hard for her life um and there was you know as they had proven there were defensive wounds and blood spatter proving that she had been alive for a majority of it uh that she was alive until her 331st wound and then um they believe number four britney spent the rest of the night staging a fake

crime scene to cover her own crime so then the defense comes up and they basically take everyone by surprise they say yes britney did kill jana she admits to it however your big butt is back in. I, it, it, it swung too far and threw me. They say, yes, Brittany did kill Jaina, but it was not premeditated. It was just like the heat, like passion, you know, in the heat of the moment. Heat of the moment? Yeah. Like it was, she just got angry and snapped. Right.

Exactly. Okay. Me neither. So the defense was like, okay, this was just a crime of passion. We want a verdict of second-degree murder so that she has a chance at parole. The trial ends in a matter of weeks, and on November 6, 2011, after just an hour of deliberations, the jury finds Brittany Norwood guilty of first-degree murder,

despite not even hearing the motive about theft. They didn't even hear that like that was why she would have gone back or why she would have killed her. But they just believed from the evidence that she killed her, whether there was a reason or not. Right. On January 27th. So the Norwood family and the Murray family both spoke in court. It was like apparently extremely emotional. Yeah. The judge after this hands down his sentence and he sentences britney to life in prison without the possibility of parole and upon sentencing he says to britney quote you will live there will be christmases there will be telephone calls there

will be visits the only visits jana murray will have are those to her grave wow Wow. And so that is how she ended up being put away for life. And just a couple like last notes here. So Jaina was posthumously awarded her graduate degrees from Johns Hopkins. Brittany made one appeal, which was denied. And that was on April 29, 2015. She's currently serving her sentence at maryland women's correctional facility in jessup maryland and because her uh her appeal was denied she's pretty much stuck like there's virtually no chance of her getting out wow um okay the bethesda lululemon erected a colorful stained glass mural that says love, and they dedicated that to Jaina. And when they moved to a new location later that year, the mural didn't fit in their new window.

So they shipped it to Jaina's family, who now has it on display, which is really cool. So the store, Lululemon, actually continues to honor Jaina every year on the anniversary of her death. And her family created a foundation in her memory called the jana troxell murray foundation uh and the website seems to have not been updated in a long time and the donation page is under construction but it's the jana tmf.org if anyone wants to check that out and um yeah that's the story there's like a lifetime movie that's loosely based on it called i think secrets of my stepdaughter which i have not seen but seems like a Lifetime movie that's loosely based on it called, I think, Secrets of My Stepdaughter, which I have not seen, but seems like a stretch. Secrets of My Stepdaughter.

I don't know. But apparently that's based on it. Why did it come out recently again? Why did it come back up? You know, I don't know, but it like was trending on Twitter. And I think somebody just had like posted about it again, like maybe some crime show or blog or something posted about it. And so a lot of people who had never heard about it started get it's resurfacing exactly it just resurfaced um much like that weja meme that we just hate so much that just keeps coming back it will never end it'll never

end yeah so that's why a lot of people recently had uh requested it and i was like oh yeah i remember that when that happened um it was really scary so twists and turns it had to be so eerie going to work like after they cleaned up can you imagine like having to go back and be like everything's normal right like everything was covered in blood like imagine like the clothing they had to like probably take it all down and like put new stuff back up and like and like do it or like going into the break room where like her body is taken from and like the shoes having to use those men's shoes use them again yeah they had to replace those right oh so they did prove that what she did i forgot to answer that question that you brought up earlier so what she did was after she had murdered

her she was like shit now i need to stage a crime scene so she took those shoes put them on and then tracked uh jaina's blood all over the stores and attempted to be like, there was a man here. Right. So she hadn't had them on during the murder,

but she put them on afterward. So. Yikes. Anyway, that was a long episode, folks. Sorry about that. I think it was pretty juicy, though. I think they were both

really good stories. I was, like, invested. Anyway, I'm always invested. But this one was extra. Just like edge of your seat. Yeah. So anyway, that's it for today, I guess.

One was about magic. One was about lemons. It's just the most magical episode of all. And the most twisted. Definitely the most twisted. Well, I appreciated it. You did some good research on Christineine oh same to you my friend all right well thank you guys if you want to check out any of our stuff should we do like our

our little plug sure yeah uh so we have facebook twitter instagram well we have uh atwwd podcast yeah um and we have patreon you can look us up at wd your phone is buzzing i think oh it's an amber alert oh shit oh god this is a creepy episode oh yeah yeah well anyway you know we have stuff that's on social media go to and that's where you drink.com go to atw merch to buy your cool hoodie um and we will continue posting updated tour dates as they come in. And we love you all very much. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And. That's. Why. We. Drink. I'm going to go drink more Orange Lava Burst.

I'm going to go drink so much wine. Yay. Okay.