And That's Why We Drink - E201 Pi Day Advent Season and a Ouija Planchette Flasher

Episode Date: December 13, 2020

Episode 201 is one linguine all the way to the top! Mostly because we discover that if we die under strange circumstances and there's not a ouija board session with us entered as witness testimony, we'll be pissed. This week Em covers the Fox Sisters, whose claim to fame is foot cracking and accidentally founding American Spiritualism. Then Christine takes us to Australia for the wildly mysterious death of Phoebe Handsjuk and a deep dive on the science of trash shoots. And maybe we're just a product of our times, but we're not sure we would recognize the specific sounds of coffin-making... and that's why we drink! Please consider supporting the companies that support us! Don’t wait. Do something nice for yourself. Go to Brooklinen.com and use promo code drink to get 10% off your first order and free shipping.BetterHELP wants you to start living a happier life TODAY. Visit https://betterhelp.com/drink and join the over 1,000,000 people taking charge of their mental health with the help of an experienced professional.Listen at home, or wherever you are — your holidays will be merrier with fun, festive tunes. Remember: for a limited time, new subscribers can get three months of Amazon Music Unlimited for FREE. Go to Amazon.com/whywedrink.

hello everyone this is episode 201 and we started a few minutes ago but then i started singing and everything broke so unfortunately i did put those two together but you're not wrong um that i started singing a really really good song by way, that I made up in my head. It was so good. It was so good. Like, I can't, I couldn't even sing it again. Like, you'll never even know it because like, it was too good. Your ears would bleed.

That's exactly right. It was like heavenly choir singing. And then all of a sudden, all the audio equipment just died. Again, your ears would bleed. So here we are in my very monotone, not singing voice. Welcome to episode 201. Welcome. And that's why we drink.

I missed you, but I feel like I saw you recently. I also miss you. And I feel like I haven't talked to you, even though you called me at six in the morning today. So that's okay. I'm glad you said something. First of all, I should have not been behind the wheel because I was just saying just saying I missed you because in my head I was like, didn't we talk recently? And it was this morning. Okay, got it. I've taken a nap, by the way. I've been taking a nap.

Okay, good. I was gonna ask because I answered the phone. It was like 9am my time I was taking Gio to daycare. And I was like, Oh my god, it's 6am M's time something must be terribly wrong. And so I answer and I'm like, Hello, and M goes, I know you have phone anxiety, but everything's fine. And I was like, it's not my phone anxiety. It's the fact that you're awake at six in the morning, something must be wrong. I did. I call. I called with the intention that the first thing I'd say is don't panic, everything's fine. I was also behind the wheel. So it was a bad, bad combination. Wait, we also FaceTimed last night and whatever that checks out so yesterday i was like i'm gonna do this cool digital escape room m created i mean

lemon created uh and you know as vengeance for the lemon napping from from yesteryear literally like almost exactly a year ago that's right i gave you your first escape room oh um oh my god and that video is going to take me another year to edit and so if you haven't seen it it's on the patreon of the lemon napping incident escape room in m's apartment and so m was like i'm gonna do a 200th episode uh extravaganza and make a digital escape room and boy oh boy uh was it tough and people on the internet were freaking out at you and i was like asking for clues i mean it was tough i uh i appreciate that although a lot of people have struggled through it they're very committed to getting it through it um yes there i don't

think i've heard of anyone who's just given up entirely everyone's like I'm gonna come back at this with a fresh mind the next day and I'm like wow that's dedication um I really I and granted again I'm the person who made it so like I really don't get a place but I feel like I tried a lot harder on the lemon escape room I don't do enough escape rooms to get like I didn't really understand that you can reuse numbers include like I think I just didn't totally understand how it worked I think the third one maybe I'll be like okay yeah fucking got this listen uh I'm getting way too good at create obviously I'm getting way too good at creating escape rooms so I think it's going to be a little side hustle of mine uh I also I was shocked that I was able to do that I I did it in a day, which like, if I can do that one in a day, like think of what I could

accomplish in the time. Like Allison's gone. Oh my God. Too powerful. See you at the end of this month when I run my own escape room business. So I'm out of our haunted apartment. What else? I am.

I'm glad you liked it. I was nervous that it wasn't going to be hard enough, but apparently I need to calm the fuck down. No, you need to calm the fuck down. It was very difficult. We had to, I had to print things. I had to like Google things. I had to search like, and that's part of the game.

Like you have to go into our podcast and find like clues. I mean, it is nutso. And I was just like so wildly impressed. And there was a point. Okay. To be fair, one of the reasons I got stuck was because I, as Em says, knew Lemon too well and had some insider info that other listeners didn't have. So I got the number wrong anyway.

But so just saying. You were too good at your job was the problem. I was too good at knowing Lemon who apparently had Lemon-napped me. But so Em posted the link so you can actually go do it. I also made a bit.ly to post it on Twitter, so it's bit.ly slash lemonsrevenge, I think it's called. Yeah. So, you can go there. It's really fun, and let us know if you beat it, because it took me a long time.

I filmed it, and it was an hour and 40 minutes of filming to get me through this thing. I knew it was an hour and 40 minutes, because Allison asked me how long it took you and i went through our text and i was like oh she started at 2 30 and she ended at 4 15 okay about 35 minutes was me screaming about how lemont like i couldn't figure out that one date correctly but i and helped me i'm impressed with how far you got because last night a lot of people were dming me being like i can't figure it out and they were on like the earliest clue and i was like oh i don't want to be the one to tell you but like if you can't figure that one out you're probably not going to make it you're on your own at this point and it's all through my google drive so like i can see all the responses like

and so i can see how many people actually successfully got through the escape room and right now it's only like 30 people so like and like hundreds have tried this thing so i feel very um very difficult i feel like such an asshole but whatever someone no you don't i you love the power i do like that i have caused a stir but i i would like to unstir it sometimes i think a lot of us are afraid of your impressed and afraid of your mind and how its operations um but anyway yeah so go try it oh here's okay if you're on our thing like this is just like a glimpse into like the chaotic uh things that were happening you know what's so funny everyone has been sending me their notes like i have so many dms right now of random people's notes.

And one person blew my mind, like made it wildly more difficult than I did. Cause they were like, am I on the right track? And sent me these words that were not even like, they were like Egyptian. And I was like, what is happening here?

Like hieroglyphics. It's very interesting to see how the human mind works. It's just all a downward spiral, but different downwards different downwards so anyway we've talked a lot about that but yes please i i made it for the 200th episode i'm very happy that you liked it and i'm glad other people are at least doing something during quarantine with their mind yeah the only thing that we realized that was like pretty wild i mean there's a lot of things we realized that was pretty wild but one of the things that like stuck with me is that in both, so Em was like, remember that first lemon napping video, which I need to rewatch. I haven't watched it in like a year. It's so funny. Where I guess

there's a certain point where I'm screaming fish, but I don't know particularly why. But apparently there was a point where I just kept screaming fish. And that was part, I just got so worked up. And Em tells me this on FaceTime last night after I did the escape room. And I went, Em, you know what? During this thing by myself in my podcast studio while I was recording it, there was a point where I was screaming, fish? Is it a fish? And I don't know what my brain turns into. It tapped into your previous PTSD from the last escape room. It must just be some weird avenue that gets unlocked when I'm doing a puzzle, a brain

puzzle. But for whatever reason, I just start shouting fish repeatedly. You know, Mark Zuckerberg would, it really has fucked me up, I think, because I have that same problem. But like when my brain blanks, like when I'm like, what was I just thinking about? My first thought is always Facebook. And I have no idea. What?

I have no clue why. Ew, that's so creepy. I'm sitting in front of a TV and I'm i have no i have no clue why i am i'm just sitting in front of a tv and i'm like what show do i want to watch the first thing in my head is facebook and like when i really get in front of a computer i think like maybe like there is a chip in me i'm not sure at this point but like every time there's some sort of a chip in you yeah that's for sure every time i have to like reboot my my like it'll go into manual mode of my thinking the first thought is so sad because in 20 years people will be like what's facebook and you'll be like uh you know a model 2005 where like people just can't access like your iphone that doesn't

everyone has right now yeah oh my god anyway sorry but that i just wanted to bring that out because wow that was a fun ride and also like. And also, like, really infuriating, but also fun once it was solved. Now that I know it's a little too much, the next one I make, I'll try to loosen it up a little bit. So sorry about that. But I probably will be making more of these in the future. I think this one, just because it was for the 200th, it was, you know, I wanted everyone to have the experience. But I think in the future it would be a really nice addition to Patreon. So oh, yeah, I think from now on, I will be making escape rooms. And you know, that might just be like something that Patreon folks get. So

and I'm editing the video of me and then I FaceTime to M during it. So I'm going to make that into a Patreon video if you so choose to watch my pain i i absolutely will do it on repeat so um my story today is something i have wanted to cover a for a while i knew of it since like the um maybe it was the harry price or houdini episodes um and I've known about it, but I never really looked into it. And now that I've done the research, I was like, whoa, there were some twisty tourneys here I didn't see coming. And it's very fun. So please let me introduce to you the Fox sisters,

who are also known, according to Google, as the Rochester Knockers. They're also known as the Spirit Knockers of Rochester, and they're also known as the Rochester Wrappings. That's what the case is called. Alliteration. A little alliteration. They're also known as the people who accidentally founded American spiritualism. Oh, that sounds like some bullshit we would do

oops it was an accident okay so i want you to remember that you said that i didn't fucking i didn't put this in your mind but i'm also gonna say near the end of this in like the late end of this in the early end of this there's a a lot of similarities between okay okay some weird things happen so um but yeah so i guess spiritualism usually the founders are people like sir arthur conan doyle and all that but when it comes to um the two waves of spiritualism in america the the first one came from the fox sisters and they they did not mean to do this so uh-huh fun fact i didn't know this was an accident um so this happens it starts in hydesville new york and we're in the 1840s you know it well so um 1848 the fox family they have six kids i think the husband's name is john and i'm pretty sure the mom's name was margaret

um the six kids were maggie and kate who are our main characters and there was also leah who we should remember for later and then david elizabeth and maria elizabeth and maria we like never hear about again so you don't have to forget them you don't have to worry about them got it um so the the last four there leah david elizabeth and maria were much older and by the time this story was happening um they had already all moved out. So it was just Maggie and Kate in the house. Got it. Maggie was 14 and Kate was 11.

So this happens. The whole thing starts on March 4th. Pi Day. So we're off to a good start. That's March 14th. Oh, shit. You're right. Damn.

Well, I got nothing i and that's our favorite holiday and you forgot how dare i i actually i'm very embarrassed i did know it was no one's gonna believe me whatever okay so uh on not pi day which happens 364 times a year uh it's the first day of advent of pie day it's okay uh-huh yeah it's the season of pie day i in my head i heard this like the rent song season of love but season no no no no no no no no you know what happens when we sing technology breaks down um and then uh like 525 000 different flavors okay we another time another time okay another time okay so the foxes were living uh currently in a smaller cottage and they were waiting for their house to be built um and while they were uh kind of in transition

between these homes i'm pretty sure this ended up happening in both homes, but it started in the cottage. They started hearing these knockings or as they were referred to back then as wrappings. But I wanted to make sure I said knockings first. So people didn't think these little trade songs, preteen girls are like trying to sing like bottoms up, you know, that's what I think is happening.

I don't care what you say. That's exactly what's going on. I mean, in today's world, they're all singing WAP. And so like, you know, maybe they like that. that's what i think is happening i don't care what you say that's exactly what's going on i mean in today's world they're all singing wop and so like you know maybe they like that just like facebook your first thought is bottoms up you're like these are my two reference points i know um i saw somebody post online that trace songs had a super shredder event he certainly did uh like the real Trey Songz yeah actually okay not my upstairs noisy neighbors but they're absurd they're upstairs noisy neighbor Trey Songz uh yeah he apparently threw a party of like 500 people after he had already been

positive for COVID a couple months ago oh great um so wow Cal Sup surprise he's pretty uh inconsiderate um that's all i'm gonna say just all this rapping around you here in your apartment just rapping and knocking and getting covid um so uh so they were hearing all these rappings um which i hear all the time from trey songs also so it also sounds like jeff the mongoose starting here bingo and i think jeff the mongoose was was it right around the same time oh i don't i certainly don't know give or take 50 years i'm sure i'm correct um just like a decade like a century in one direction i could be right i'm probably still fucking not which is the most embarrassing part um so their father was like, okay, what is going on? Where are all these knockings coming from?

So he's looking around. He doesn't know where they're coming from. And they just kind of ignore it because they're like, well, I don't know what that is. But, you know, here we are. It's just knocking. And it started getting really wild and really loud. And it started actually responding to them. They noticed that oh boy

like they noticed that they were able to say like well why don't you knock if you're gonna knock that many times knock this many times and then it would actually do it so i guess the parents were super christians and they were like oh the devil is it has arrived i mean that's also us too like oh we hear a strange noise it's definitely satan himself the devil has arrived is Um, that's also us too. Like, Oh, we hear a strange noise. It's definitely Satan himself. The devil has arrived is what I tell Eva when you land in LA. Um, shut up. You big butt head.

Um, and so, uh, they thought, okay, so Christine's here and, but their 11 year old Kate apparently like thought it was also the devil and decided to try to communicate immediately

with of course was again this kind of sounds a little bit like little you of like yes oh you said that's a demon well in that case we ought to really get to know each other thank god I keep a word under my bed mom that since you threw away the last one yep I feel like you've got like one like you've got like one of those like old flasher jackets where like they like people would like sell you yeah where they would like sell you watches on the street but you only have different like ouija planchettes you know and they're all mine i just want to show them off i'm like you can't buy them you you tuck it away fast like no no no these aren't for sale these are for sale i just want you to i'm just bragging it is flashing technically you're just like flashing

your planchettes and then hiding them again um so and we know that kate thought this was the devil because she was calling this source or this spirit or this whatever was calling it mr split foot which apparently back then was a term for the devil because like yeah like cloven hooves oh so kate was saying mr split foot do as i do and then would like knock three times and then there would be three knocks so and things like that start happening pretty often um this is where i i had a little tangent but i'm proud of it um they started testing out different patterns and speeds and so they were um just seeing how far they could go with it and it was almost like a simon says according to a few sources and then that made me want to deep dive simon says so um here's what we

have on simon says are you ready yes okay according to worldories.net the earliest reference to simon says is in 1842 which is literally six years before this story happened so that's interesting it really could just be a totally coincidence totally a coincidence um but so it was in a column in a boston magazine and the article was called all sorts of paragraphs which i really i really stop it appreciate the like the acceptance of like even i don't know what i'm gonna fucking write this like m's term paper here this is my title all sorts of paragraphs all sorts of who's to say what's in it but you know what you're you know what to expect at this point so uh so in in the the article called All Sorts of Paragraphs, they were talking about, I guess, someone named Simon. And this was the description for Simon.

Simon is a great talker. Sometimes he says up, sometimes he says down, and sometimes he says wiggle waggle. It's always cheapest to do as Simon says. What the fuck? This is All Sorts of Paragraphs. This is All Sorts of Words all sorts of words all sorts of nonsense all sorts of sanity like i i don't know apparently that's the earliest reference and i guess that's where it might have stemmed from but then um it definitely at least happened

around that time because only a few years later there was an article of actually i guess simon says the game itself hasn't officially been mentioned yet. But this article must have gotten some like viral attention because of a few articles or a few years later, there was another newspaper that was talking about a person named Simon. And they had to like specifically indicate in their newspaper uh they said simon not of wiggle waggle fame oh so like apparently my mistake so like apparently this wiggling waggling simon has like gained quite a fan base and some notoriety and this newspaper by the way was in oregon so literally on the other side of the country what is going on it's not the same guy like was there only two simons i'm crying this

is so wild it's like which just which one is it the wiggle waggle or the or like the one in the bible or the one in oregon oh my god anyway that was, uh, not so my shallow dive, if you will, on Simon says. Wiggle waggle. My wiggling waggling fingers on the keyboard found all that about Simon says. Oh my God. So, uh, yeah, so we're back to Kate is like doing all these tests to see how much she can get out of this knocking spirit. And Maggie, um, saw that it was responding intelligently to kate so maggie asked uh the

spirit to wrap or knock out the ages of each of uh the kids and the spirit actually did it successfully including a seventh child that passed away when he was three oh no so that's odd um so they decided that they were going to do kind of what any paranormal investigator would do now where like you kind of set um boundaries for yourself when like there's like uh equipment and you're trying to use it to communicate like you know this means yes this means no so they said one knock for no and two knocks for yes and the first questions that they asked were, are you a spirit? Were you killed in this house? And is the person who killed you still living?

And all of those responses got yes. Or all those questions got yes to them. So through this, the family, I guess over time, figured out that this was a 31-year-old man who had died in the house. Which I can't imagine if you're like how old are you and you had to count 31 knocks okay that's a good point can you imagine if they're like wait was that 32 or 31 and he's like not again i feel like i'm i'm one knock i'm like i'm over it i can't i'm a baby don't worry about it so uh apparently this is happening for the entire month um super and now we're at the the last day of march we're at uh march 31st and the mom was apparently so freaked

out at this point because the knocking just wasn't ending it was clearly intelligent at this point the mom had one of the older kids come over uh her son david and he was like being kind of like i guess snobby about it or he was like i guess he didn't believe it and so he was acting kind of condescending and he basically told her like well whatever you do don't tell the neighbors because like um like when you find out what it actually is and it's something really simple you're gonna feel really stupid and then he just i see you're gonna embarrass yourself well apparently maggie overheard that and was like okay fuck you and immediately went and told all the neighbors and then oh okay and then invited all all of them over for their own opinion um and so all these skeptical neighbors came over

they all huddled into the family bedroom and uh the sisters were there and the mom was also there so uh i think it was the mom who said count to five this that was like the first real command during this little session and the room banged out five five knocks um and they were really really heavy thuds that freaked them out for a second but i'm sure they were like okay someone's you know being kind of foolish or you know this could be anything and i guess with enough demands like that and realizing everyone was in the house and no one else could have been doing it the neighbor started started to believe it themselves so um they ended up i guess one of the neighbors also chimed in and said like well what's my age and it got the answer right um one of the questions was if you're an injured spirit manifested by three raps and then

there were three knocks according to uh the paris review one neighbor named william deusler uh which i can imagine quickly turned into deouchler in high school um he uh he tried talking to the spirit and he basically he his technique which like makes sense but like sounds wildly inconvenient was like a equals one b equals two ah yes all the way to z equals 26 so like if this guy wanted to like catch some z's that'd be like 80 knocks in a row. And you're going to you're not going to be able to successfully count all of those. I promise. How irritating.

Yes. Not the most efficient, I would imagine. Can you imagine like, what's your favorite animal? And he wanted to say zebra. And it's like 100 knocks. It's like, okay, I don't know anymore. I don't care anymore, actually. It's an aardvark.

know anymore i don't care anymore actually what's this an aardvark um so uh so this william dusler guy said let's do it that way and we can ask you more questions that way i have to imagine this session then lasted about 10 hours of everyone counting knocks together um and through this they learned that the spirit was named charles b rosna okay and uh he was a peddler that apparently was robbed of 500 and then killed in uh in the bedroom they were standing in and he had been killed five years ago by the then resident john bell like that's a sounds like he's really trying to it sounds like one of those situations where remember we both covered it at different times i think we both mentioned it where like there was a ghost who like yes success board like successfully helped confirm

a murder or like there's like it was the only paranormal testimony that was taken seriously admitted it in court like they admitted it as testimony in court a Ouija board session yeah like called out the murderer yeah yeah yeah if I mysteriously die I swear to god if there is not a legal testimony documenting uh my court case via Ouija board I will be so pissed um you're gonna be knocking and I'm just gonna be like god that's annoying i don't know what that is and you're like it's me can you chill can you like go towards the light or something because i have a migraine

um so uh through that same technique they also found out that charles was murdered fun fact on a tuesday at midnight midnight and that he was buried in the basement oh no uh-oh um so john john fox and the neighbors went down to inspect the cellar for remains and they ended up finding strands of hair bones and some even say they've also found teeth but apparently they were unidentifiable uh yeah it's 1848 i can't imagine you like had the forensics abilities of today um but so apparently they like found body remains down there no um so that was the real uh the kicker for the neighbors to believe it and they started spreading this information like crazy. And it kind of just got, I don't know,

I guess the news went a little wildfire, and the spirit started getting chattier because more people wanted to stop by and see the spirit. Aha. So basically the spirit is now telling the family that not only could it hear them and respond to them, but it has been able to see them the whole time. And they're now testing this by holding fingers up. How many fingers am I holding up? So as the story became more widespread, the spirit also seems to very quickly become more closed off to um responding to other people it was now um the phrasing that they used

was something along the lines of like it's it was attaching to the the girls um but i think what was happening if this was fake is that they just were getting really nervous that they were going to get caught in something and so like in too deep a little bit and yeah and so now the spirit is telling everyone like oh i only work through the pre the preteens yeah you know how it is and so if anyone wants to ask questions if they came to visit and wanted to ask a question they could but it had to be through maggie or kate aha okay yeah so uh the spirit would suspiciously only be responsive with the sisters. And within a few weeks, the Fox house was swarmed with people visiting for a chance to witness the spirit themselves. Which I wonder why they kept calling it a spirit if they knew his name was Charles.

Yeah. So I think what was happening was now the story has has also developed into oh they can talk to many spirits who will all communicate this way um so visitors uh were really like swarming the town like it was getting really bad and the fox family had to move in the middle of the night um oh because so many people were like trying to like break down their house to like get in and like what like talk to like have these children tell them if their like ancestors were around um which i can't imagine like imagine how terrifying that would be as like an 11 year old and people are like tell me about my dead

you know so and so um so they ended up having to move they moved to their brother son slash brother david's um spearmint farm which brother, son slash brother David's spearmint farm, which is precious. Oh, goodness. When I think spearmint farm, I think like instead of like fields of corn, I think of like fields of like green trident gum. Yes, yes. I don't know how to think of it in any other way. It's definitely not like actual spearmint.

Did you know I have spearmint in my new garden? No. Does it look like trident? A little bit. No. I tasted it. It tastes like, like I tasted it and I was like, oh, this is spearmint, which is like such a random thought.

Weird. But it's not even just mint. It's like spearmint, which is really specific. But yeah, it tastes just like it. You should grow peppermint next to it and then tell me if you can taste the difference well i have regular mint i don't know how much of that is pepper i don't know what the difference is between i know peppermint is blue trident um oh i see well what flavor is the zebra stripes because that's the one that i love fruity stripes yeah how do i i would like to how do you how do you hmm um i think you just like squeeze a lot of

juices into gum i don't really i'm not sure how gum is made um well but you also have to like have a little blue zebra tattoo on it so it sounds like you add zebra to the fruit smoothie and those were so fun and gross they were very delicious and to this day if i see fruity stripes i will buy it but wow the flavor goes out in three two one like it's yeah you're it's like you're eating one bite of something and then you have just like a silly putty in your mouth or something exactly it's uh you basically eat the entire package because like you're just trying to feel something if you're a youth out there it was this gum with zebra on it and it was super strong tasting but then it would like yeah evaporate in a second but

the rappers had these like pictures and you would like it was like okay like fruit roll-ups like fruit rolls with like the blue tattoos that you could put on your tongue and you would like put it on your tongue and it would like have ink and And oh, my God, it was so fun. It was the first of its kind in the 90s. I think it was the first ever like you can get the first and only of any kind of you can take out the gum. But first on the wrapper, you can put your put your tongue on it and have a zebra tattoo. And also, like, I'm sure that was not FDA approved. No, certainly not.

I think it was pen ink. I was actually like scared to say because i was like what if that was just me and i was like you did what with your no it was a tattoo but wait did you just put it on your tongue because i would put it on my arm oh i always only put it on my tongue it didn't even cross my mind i could put it somewhere else i just thought it never worked so maybe i was just smearing it all over my arm you really could have gotten the exact same effect with like a one of those like extra wide like blue Crayola markers. Oh, I'm sure I did too.

Just smear it all over your body. I honestly don't know if it was even supposed to be a tattoo or if it was just really cheap ink and I thought it served a purpose. Well, I'm glad it wasn't just me. I felt like really embarrassed for a minute there. No, Fruity Stripes was, I had three gums that I chewed when I was a child. It was the entire pack of Fruity Stripes. It was strawberry bubblicious, which to this day makes my mouth literally salivate. Like I need to swallow.

And, oh, and then the sour apple bubble tape. I love that shit. Yeah. And during Halloween, it glowed in the dark. Anyway, we could talk about gum for a while apparently i did apparently and we did and we do i didn't know that was possible but learning new things every day so they moved there to their brother's spearmint farm that's how this happened oh oops like the willy wonk of gum okay so So David actually, while they were all there,

researched this John Bell guy who allegedly killed the spirit they're talking to. And he did check out. There was a guy named John Bell that used to live in their house five years before they moved in. So that didn't seem good. And visitors also at this point have heard the rumors that they moved to the Spearmint Farm. So now they're also like taking over the spearman farm no um and david uh basically started talking to neighbors uh i don't really know what their plan was if all of them were just going to uproot or something but

before they left he wanted to get down to the bottom of this john bell stuff and he was starting to talk to neighbors who did say that they remember seeing a peddler coming into town who they did not recognize. I guess at the time they knew all the peddlers in town. But there was one person they couldn't recognize who did stay at the Bell house the one night they were there, that they were in town. And they remember hearing a fight at John Bell's house. And then the next day, never seeing the peddler again, but John Bell was wearing his clothes.

What? Okay. So it sounds fishy. Yes, it does. Only 12 days after, by the way, like everything I've been saying happened within like a 12 day span of like

the neighbors heard about it. And now the entire town is covered with tourists trying to learn about this um so in that 12 day time period that was also when people were starting to to make like tourist pamphlets about the two sisters about matt about maggie and kate fox and uh so this pamphlet was starting to get spread to different areas. And one of the wider regions it got to happened to be where their sister lived, Leah. And so at the time, there wasn't telephones. So she had no idea this was going on with her family.

She found out through a fucking pamphlet. She was like, my sisters can what? Oh, no. And so, uh, I guess she had a daughter named Lizzie and, uh, I don't know if this is important later, but apparently her husband left her and left her with no money,

but left her with Lizzie. Um, so just to remember that for like the end of this, but, uh, it was apparently i guess she saw this pamphlet immediately went home and brought lizzie with her um just to make sure that everyone was okay and when leah got home she saw that they were being swarmed like she saw that like this was kind of, I guess, the version of like a fandom in the 1840s.

And so this is the first little plot twist, which I never knew about. She saw this for herself because she was like, I did not know they could do this. I didn't know that this started up in the house. She found out that like apparently these knockings were legitimate and like she couldn't figure it out and people were going goo goo gaga for it and she a la chris jenner became their momager or i guess their sissager oh my god she saw she saw dollar signs and she did when'm going to rock the nation with this. She's a single mama and she is resourceful. Exactly.

Exactly. She was like, I know exactly what I'm going to do. Step aside. Even if I know nothing about it at all yet. I love it. So she wanted to bring the girls back with her. I think she lived in Rochester. I think her home was in Rochester.

And she wanted to bring the girls. with her i think she lived in rochester i think her like her home was in rochester and she uh wanted to bring the girls but kate was too young and had to go to school still i apparently at 14 you didn't have to do that anymore so maggie was allowed to go um and so i don't know if you did you watch the hamilton movie yes okay so you know how there's like that one song where they're like, Angelica, Eliza, and then there's like that random third sister who goes, and Peggy. Yes. Okay, so I very much feel like Kate has become the Peggy here.

Poor Kate. It was like the Maggie and Kate show. And then Leah was like, my turn. And also, Kate, you have to go to school and you're not involved anymore and leah like push her out so it's the fox sisters it's three of them but kate is like no longer part of the story for a little bit she's an arithmetic class she's too busy with her social studies um so even though maggie and kate are separated kate goes back with leah and leah's daughter and the knockings are still happening all the spooky stuff is still happening even though the

sisters are separated um but then again leah realizes very quickly that she got herself into some hot water because not only are there knockings but strange things are starting to happen which like you signed up for like there were you you thought your sister was haunted and you wanted to bring her back with you and now you're complaining that the place is haunted like what is going on so um i guess uh leah's daughter started waking up to icy hands on her and she saw a bible get thrown across the room and leah also said that she was getting touched um they also started hearing the sounds of construction but what i find interesting is they would specifically define it as the sound of someone building a coffin which like that's a very specific

thing to know how would you know it's just cutting wood and nailing like wait how do you know what it's a coffin but they described as like oh it, we hear the sounds of a coffin being made all the time. And it's like, maybe I don't know how to build a coffin. Maybe there's a specific piece of equipment that only gets used for coffins. But apparently they just knew that that was what was going on. Maybe back then there were more things being built and you just had like an ear for it. But that seems very specific. It's like when you're blindfolded, but you know, like exactly which left and right directions to take you to like your

favorite restaurant i mean i don't since i have no concept of direction but yeah i can imagine that's what it would be like i wish one time in high school me and my friends we all try to surprise our friend take them to red robin and by the time we got in the parking lot they were like oh we're at red robin like wow they were like hardcore blindfolded like oh i see you were like half their face i was like how did you know how we got here so people just i guess you're right have like a weird knack for certain things and like to be able to know oh you cut for this long and then nail it this many times obviously that's a coffin that's being made oh my god so i'm guessing that's what it was or they're just being dramatic which could also very much be it also it could be both yeah um so uh apparently lizzie the daughter of leah just hated

this entire arrangement was like why did we even have to invite this fucking person into our house like why is there knocking all the time now why do i have to feel like icy hands see bibles getting thrown like like i don't i didn't sign up for this. Yeah. And the neighbors are also complaining about the knocking. So Maggie is just like causing all sorts of problems. And Leah decides, okay, well, we're just going to move to a bigger house. Because now they can afford it because she's starting to exploit her sister's talents.

So they move to a bigger house in Rochester. And there are two people who, amongst everybody else who wants to meet Maggie, they really want to meet Maggie. Their names are Isaac and Amy. They're a married couple. They're former Quakers in the area. And they invite Maggie to their house for a personal session. And Isaac said he was originally as skeptical as Doubting Thomas until very distinct thumps started from under their floor. And there's no way that Maggie could have done them.

I guess here's a twist. So Isaac and Amy also started believing that not only was Maggie gifted, but they also were convinced that Leah was gifted. gifted but they also were convinced that leah was gifted because leah was now all of a sudden showing mediumistic powers kate who and peggy um because now she was also starting to be able to communicate with isaac and amy's deceased daughter which like oh this always gets real talk about pulling on the heartstrings talk about shady behavior so now this is something harry houdini would be exactly against yes so now leah and maggie both have the ability to communicate with spirits and they would have impromptu seances they would not accept money but they would accept extravagant gifts oh my god really which is what i say on my birthday

when people are like what do you want and i'm like i don't know but like if it if it happens to be luxurious i'll take it a pony yeah a pony for my pony okay really because i'm like you can give me cash if you want actually instead of a pony you know what i thought would be the perfect gift which like there's no way you can kindly ask for this it's like if i could really have gotten anything for christmas i would have wanted people to just reimburse me for all the shit i bought them like i would just oh that's nice buy it yourself yeah like i buy your own gift like my okay so one of my stepbrothers he always gives me always always always always gives me a 25 amazon gift card i know it's coming i'm gonna thank him and i'm gonna act shocked but so i always know for

christmas to get him something that's exactly 25 so i end up making i end up spending zero dollars but i wish i could text him be like look we both know what's about to happen like let's just not even try you know oh i see just buy something off amazon put my name on it yeah it's like you're welcome you're gonna give me 25 of stuff i'm gonna give you 25 of stuff let's just not even do that i like that we're saying this even though you and i like all we care about is like giving each other gifts because it's just fun so i so there's a difference between the gifts i give you and the gifts i give like family that i don't talk yeah i get it that's true like when i have to sit down and like really like think about what i should get you because i don't know you well enough i'm like why am i wasting the

time when i could just give you cash to do it yourself when the other person's doing the same thing to you and you're like yeah I get with you it's fine like with Allison it's fine because it's like I'm doing something that's really sentimental and there's emotional value and like time and effort that went into it and there's like a creativity aspect but when it's like I'm trying to find something on Amazon that you won't totally hate so I can get a thank you text. Because socially you have to. And that's like, listen, let's talk about consumerism. Okay, let's not. But that's a podcast for another day and another person.

That's not me. But let me just say, this is a bad look for the planet. Anyway, that's my take. I was thinking the whole time because I spent like X amount of dollars, which I will not say the number. But let's just say 6,000. Not 6,000, but not six either. Okay. You know, I was complaining to Allison about this.

I had a mini meltdown because I was like, if my parents just decided to like not have fucking scandals in their relationship and they were just happily married, me as an only child would have two Christmas responsibilities. dad i don't even have fucking siblings like i'm no yeah i'm in the clear i have to buy two people things awesome i know but because they decided to be fucking messy i have to literally buy things for 30 family members yeah exactly and i don't want to do that so if i can then i'm like and then i'm like oh so like my dad's seeing somebody and i'm like so i i need to like i would like to get her a gift but i'm like how nice of a like is she gonna get me a gift like this is so weird i don't know am i even gonna see her well now i've got my my mom i've got my stepdad i've got four step siblings i've got my dad i've got my stepmom i've got my two step siblings i've got one of those step-siblings has a boyfriend with two kids. And then now I'm dating someone who's a family, also in her own family of six.

And I want to get them things. So it's just, it adds up so quick. And I'm like, why did this? I don't want to spend any money. Can my present be that I don't have to get you a present? Can that just be it? Anyway, I'm off my soapbox now. Anyway, we're never off our soapbox,

but we'll sit on the soapbox for now. Anyway, it sounded a little bit like a bummer and like me screaming at you about my own selfish needs. But guess what? I'm a Gemini and this is my podcast. So anyway. And we're also in a tornado. So leave us alone.

And like a bunch of cows keep running into me. Okay. I feel like I'm not alone in that i think other people will you know oh no i think we're we all get it especially this year so especially this year because now extra shipping costs me oh my okay well and extra negative dollars yeah so they're now leah and maggie are like the dynamic duo and uh because lizzie isn't having any of this and she like already has made it very clear she doesn't want any of this spooky stuff happening around her she's sitting in on their

their seances that they're doing for people and you know getting gifts from and uh and lizzie's like heckling them during their own seances like her own mom and aunt and is like this isn't real and then guess what leah does sends her away so no sends her own kid away and now it's just leah and maggie the fox sisters raking in the cash this is getting dark um so leah started claiming that the spirits also were helping her creatively where they were giving her ideas for music because she was an avid piano player. Um, and so the spirits would apparently use the same spelling technique of like a equals one,

B equals two, but they would do it for like piano notes. It'd be like heart and soul. Just like the same key. You would hear like, do, do, do,

do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do,

do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do,

do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do,

do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do,

do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do do do do do tequila um and so they were basically spelling out different keys that that apparently she should do on the piano and that was how she was writing her music which is very now she's like chris jenner but now she's also a little sarah winchester because that's how she was getting design ideas yeah so i would argue that if i had to describe at least one of the fox sisters one of them is obviously Peggy Schuyler. The other is Kris Jenner meets Sarah Winchester, but make it musical. Wow.

What a story, though. What an aesthetic. What an aesthetic. So skeptics started weighing in on the seances. And first of all, they were like, why do the lights have to be so dim? Like, it was kind of sketchy. so dim like it was kind of sketchy um and leah by the way said that the lights had to be dark because the spirits uh they liked the dark and the light would uh drain their energy um sure soon the spirits announced that they would no longer interact with maggie and leah without a real

audience so now they're like oh my gosh so now these spirits have a writer, apparently. Yes. And so they have all these high demands. One of them specifically is that they need a public exhibition. Oh, my God. And the town heard these demands. And Rochester offered Corinthian Hall, a.k.a. the largest venue in Rochester. And the Fox sisters started performing on stage live shows stop you're right this is us but a little too weird a little too weird except I can't play piano very well so it's the one thing

missing you're my maestro or whatever I said oh yeah you're maestro no one else knows what we're talking about but I tried to call you my maestro when you played the piano one time and i spelled it wrong and it just i looked really stupid and i was like what's a maestro and i was just an asshole about it so i apologize no it's whatever my maestro wants my maestro gets okay so um so on opening night just so you know uh kate was too young to be on stage so she wasn't even like really invited to join the new fox sisters even though she was one of the original fox sisters and uh leah and maggie did the show without her so leah has really ripped the crown right off of kate's head seriously and 500 people came opening night and they made the equivalence to what is today eight

thousand dollars in that one night okay oh boy big bucks the audience was in awe but they also many of them were skeptics apparently everyone in town including religious zealots you know people who were scared people started freaking out and so they were calling them a fraud but sometimes it was just out of being afraid and so during their live shows it became commonplace that there were fraud search committees done either during or after the show. So like they were these at least one was a child and the other was Leah. And these audiences would request wild demands to like test that they were being legitimate so like they would um tie their ankles or like lie them on the ground in pillows to make sure the like sound

was still coming from somewhere and like they couldn't do their tricks basically um oh my god they would a lot of people thought like oh one one of them's cracking their knuckles one of them is coughing one of them is stomping their feet and so they were trying all these little experiments live while also just trying to give you a show which like i understand people were freaked out but can you imagine if every single time we did a live show people were like now you have to bind your ankles and be upside down and i'd be like stop cracking your knuckles yeah i was just thinking yeah all the religious zealots that come to our live shows would for sure. They're always in the front row, aren't they? They are.

So there was a few times where they had to literally like stand on glasses to make sure that they weren't channeling electricity because that was someone's theory. Oh, my. There was one time where they, or I guess it became a few times, where they had their feet covered with pillows and then they were sitting on cushions so that their feet couldn't be moved. And if they were making sounds with their feet, it would be muffled. And interestingly, whenever that was the experiment they did that no spirits showed up that night. But Leah would make a public statement later and say, oh, well, everyone was just in such a negative mood that it was it wasn't harmonious enough for the spirits to want to interact so you were doing it you ruined the energy in the room yeah okay and um uh at the same time there was one guy named andrew jackson

davis he later became known as john the baptist of spiritualism um okay yikes he uh he heard of the fox sisters and he thought that he had like predicted them like they were a prophecy um he had published this book where he basically said and i'm absolutely paraphrasing from his quote because the quote sounds kind of like very flowery and it was hard to get through um but basically he was saying that you know we as human beings have we are spirits that are inhabiting a body right now um and those spirits have the ability to communicate with spirits in the actual spiritual world right now so like some are inhabiting bodies on earth some are up in the sky or whatever in some other dimension and all of them have the ability to still communicate no

matter what phase they're going through and even though that's even though it's possible it's currently very difficult but one day there will be this day where this bridge and communication shows up and all the world will be at peace and because now all of a sudden all the spirits can communicate with each other and thank god that finally happened well he says that he he wrote that down and then uh he thinks that day happened the first time that the fox sisters heard knocking in their house okay um and he what's interesting about that is the same day that the fox sister started hearing things in their house he has a diary entry where apparently he wrote this about daylight this morning a warm breathing passed over my face and i heard a voice tender and strong saying brother the good work has begun behold a living demonstration is born which like okay that's a little ooky like what it is so uh when he heard that the girls were in

rochester he was like holy shit i gotta meet them so he went to uh he invited them to his house right away by the time he finally met them though leah's talents had now grown even wider and further than maggie's ever did um and she could now identify through knocking spirits dialects. And she could also now translate other languages into English. Oh, my God. So this Andrew Jackson Davis guy, he offered to help however he could. Because first of all, he thought that he like was a prophet. And he also thought that, you know, he could be seen because it was still so early in

their story of the fox sisters that he could make a name for himself as one of the founders of spiritualism uh-huh and so he wanted to like really get in there and do whatever he needed to so maggie leah and uh andrew jackson davis they all decided that they were uh going to go on a literal nationwide tour instead of just staying at this one location the corinthian why not so instead of having like a home venue they're now touring touring oh my god um so people came from all over uh apparently scientific american wrote a very not so pleasant article about them because it's scientific American and they were like this is not scientifically makes sense um one audience member was a famous opera singer in Sweden and apparently she was convinced that they were legit because she saw Leah translate

Swedish to her or something and so um because so because she was famous in Sweden, they now had famous European celebrity backing. So the news about the Fox sisters is now traveling to Europe. So they're getting like wide acclaim. Before they left to go on their official tour, they finished off their New York season. I don't know their time in New York by conducting,

by conducting sessions in a New York hotel. And they would do it three times a day for up to 30 attendees at a time. So that was 90 people. And they would do it for, I guess like the ticket admission was $1, which in today's world is $33. So wow. 33 times 90 people a day.

Jeez. You know, um, and these people weren't just like anyone. Like it was like you had to really fight to get a ticket. They were sensational. So a lot of their clients or their audience members happen to be really famous people. Now.

Um, one of them was, uh, PT Barnum. Oh, um, uh, there was also the poet William Cullenullen bryant and then the editor for

the new york tribune horace greeley um who actually like really like had a liking to them and even offered them like housing in his mansion he offered them free education and then leah told them that they couldn't take the education because they had to go on tour and they couldn't quit like the family business oh my god um yeah but kate can do it she's still in school apparently for the rest of her life exactly oh yeah well kate i think she was like i already got you out of this picture so nice try kate um apparently another one was uh william lloyd garrison who he witnessed this is a quote he quote witnessed a session in which the spirits wrapped in time to a popular song and spelled out a message and the message was spiritualism will work miracles and the cause of reform so now they're like basically this tour

is also becoming like a pr campaign for spiritualism because now people are getting these wild messages from beyond the grave about how great spiritualism is and also they like they're they're relevant too because they know all the popular songs so uh-huh because they're like now rapping to like music now they're rapping actually to bottoms up right yeah bottoms up and also apparently one of the most popular songs that came out that year was like Oh Susanna. So like. Oh my God, My Darling Clementine. Remixed with Bottoms Up would be quite a hit though.

That would be. I don't even know how you could. Actually, you know what? I bet you could do it because remember when the 2020 New Year's came and we had. Oh, yes. The New Year's Eve party and I found that. You had the Great Gatsby like mixed with modern day. There was a playlist where there was 20s versions of popular songs. It's like, I'm sure you could do like.

Oh, I'm sure. 1840s music to like today's music if you really wanted to. So anyway, that now it's, you you know people are hearing about spiritualism from the spirits themselves so it's like quite a marketing plan around this time kate was now finally out of school and old enough to join them and so uh they're getting the band back together and so kate leah and maggie are now a thesome, and they're known as the Fox sisters officially. I see. So Leah chose to stay in New York at this point, so Kate and Maggie could go on tour.

And I don't know why Leah stepped away. I don't really know that part. But Kate and Maggie went on tour. So it was almost like the OG Fox sisters were on tour now. And they went to, I really feel like their booking agent happened to be Andrew Russell because they went to Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus, St. Louis, DC and Philly.

Oh my God. That is like our run. Yeah. So soon though, very quickly, the reason there was only that many cities is because they were getting fucking harassed by so many skeptics. Again, zealots all across the country now who are coming to see them and judge them or call them blasphemous or say the devil is in them. One time Maggie even got kidnapped.

I don't know more of that story, but I feel like I should. I want to know more of that. She survived. I guess that's the most important part. The sisters decided it was all not worth it anymore because it was too intense. So during their last show, they spelled out, quote,

as if the spirits were doing this, they spelled out, oh man, we will now bid you farewell. And that was the last thing that they ever translated for people and then they left the tour um two weeks later though leah heard about this and heard that they like canceled their own tour and they were like out of the game i love that it takes two weeks for that news to reach like she needed another goddamn pamphlet or pigeon or something um so leah heard that her

sisters gave up and she went to the public and made a statement saying no no the show will go on like this she was like just because i left physically doesn't mean i'm not still their manager um these ghosts can't decide to quit apparently not damn no uh so leah thought that they were too integral at this point in spiritualism because all of a sudden now was a movement and people are really like starting to pick up on it right we're the center of this movement and she was basically like you're the poster children for this so like you can't back out or else it's gonna look really bad for a lot of spiritualists oh my god so leah uh uh basically said like you can't just walk away but soon spiritualism was booming

the fox sisters weren't the only people with this gift all of a sudden and they very quickly fell from fame they were no longer serious relevant everyone all of a sudden was a medium um and so 200 years prior to this though like let's not take away from the fact that they would have literally been burned at the stake and now people are paying hundreds of dollars to see them so like it's a good point just wanted to mention that so in 1850 which was right around this time the new haven journal reported that 40 families in upstate new york claimed to have the same powers as the fox sisters and then only a year later in new york there were over a hundred people who made this claim so like within a 24

month period the fox sisters went from being the only people who could speak to spirits to like being very small fish oh my gosh um or very small foxes i guess at this point um fish so fun fact there was ample evidence this whole time early on too that the fox sisters were frauds. One is that it was shocking how many famous people came forward. Specifically, Ben Franklin liked to talk to them a lot. But, I guess people noticed that Ben Franklin was

a pretty shitty speller and didn't know his grammar anymore. And one time a witness called them out and said, like, why can't Ben Franklin get it together? And Maggie apparently stormed out in the middle of a session or Leah stormed out in the middle of a session and said, oh, well, I never understood grammar or something. So it implied that, like, she was the one doing it.

The smooth lady. Also, you know, just as many famous ghosts would show as no ghosts at all depending on their mood so like if they weren't like feeling it that day all of a sudden the spirits like couldn't show up um especially if their demands weren't being met uh leah was also allegedly known to try to get information out of witnesses before the show started like how do you speak swedish again uh-huh oh what's your favorite sentence from and that's in swedish oh okay um uh and as the three sisters grew older this could be nothing at all but a lot of people speculate um all three of them ended up having really severe drinking problems and so a lot of people try to associate that with like the guilt of lying to the entire

world um and at a few shows like i said cushions were placed between their feet and floor and those shows always happen to be silent um near the end of their seances they started becoming more elaborate like objects started moving tables were levitating you could see shadows and apparitions and shit and a lot of people have argued like oh all of a sudden they had like competition and needed to up their ante yeah and so they were like probably learning new tricks just to stay relevant um but so this ends up being kind of badass in 1885 i guess the first wave of spiritualism was dying down. So maybe they just had nothing left to lose, but Maggie was fucking over it. And she,

I don't know how she did this or why this was the route she took, but it's very intentional. She booked the stage at the New York Academy of Music. And then she got on stage in front of everybody, took off her shoes and cracked her feet knuckles yep and she knew it and it was identical to the sounds of the rappings that people had heard and so once she had shown everyone exactly what was happening this was what she said on stage i have been cheaply instrumental in perpetuating the prod of spiritualism upon a too confiding public the greatest sorrow in my life has been that this is true and that though it has come late in my day

i am now prepared to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me god i am here tonight as one of the founders of spiritualism to denounce it as an absolute falsehood from beginning to end as the flimsiest of superstitions and the most wicked of blasphemy known to the world whoa so like really like hitting it out of the park on that one did she spell that out with her feet knuckles she just tap danced everywhere her little toenails like click clacked um so uh maggie also in uh maggie also said when we went to bed at night we used to tie an apple to a string and move the string up and down, causing the apple to bump on the floor, or we would drop the apple on the floor, making a strange noise every time it would rebound. Mother listened to this for a time. She would not understand it and did not suspect us as being capable of a trick because we were so young.

Some people actually think that all of this really started like they just got in over their heads and it was originally just supposed to be like a funny neighborhood april fool's prank because it was march 31st oh that's right so people think like they were just trying to like play a joke on the neighbors and it just got out of hand so like within 12 days they had to leave their house because they talk about like a cautionary tale, man. Don't you dare play with apples and strings. I tell you once, I'll tell you every time. You know what happens to kids who play with apples.

So allegedly, this is where I say Leah's husband left her with no money. And then she had this daughter. So a lot of people think that this is why Leaho like all of a sudden became so hell-bent on like running the show because she saw a real potential for income when she needed it most understandably yeah um and i mean i can understand like if you're like a mom that you need to like raise this kid and you have no money especially in the 1840s it's not like you're gonna get a job you know so um i think that's probably how this happened and when she was visiting her her um sisters they maybe confided in her like don't tell mom and dad but this is what we're doing and she probably blackmailed

them into letting her join wow um so spiritualists felt betrayed by maggie uh but many of them didn't feel betrayed they were very defensive and said like oh she's just like quote a washed up drunk and like she's just like she's not relevant anymore she had like she lost all of her money she's just complaining and trying to make spiritualism look bad um but apparently one source said that she that maggie later recanted saying that she did it to spite leah but not many people believe that they think that she was pretty darn serious when she booked a whole venue um she ended up marrying a very famous arctic explorer named alicia kent kane but the family didn't approve because maggie obviously looked a little looney tunes. And so they never legally wed. Kate continued in part-time mediumship.

And eventually her son, Ferdinand, damn, I can't say that word. He also became a medium starting at the age of three. So I don't know. That poor kid. Sounds like he was influenced. She's a stage mom and a half. Toddlers and tiaras am i right toddlers and ectoplasm seances toddlers and ectoplasm uh apparently this like they she knew when he was three that he had the gift because spirits would possess him and he would have an unearthly glow come out of his eyes yikes oh god no no no

um no anyway sad story becomes a worse story uh arguably all due in some way to their heavy drinking um they all died very early in life um leah died in 1890 and she was the oldest she died first maggie died two years later at only 59 and kate died a year later at 56 um the this is a fun fact the original table that the fox sisters used on tour is now at the rochester historical society um according to alice obscura the table as you can see in pictures was custom built to make the rapping sounds you just couldn't see it from off the stage um quote within the enclosed top of the table lies a spring connected to a long metal rod and when pushed the rod hits the inside of the table creating the wrapping sound um and as for the body remains i'm thinking those were probably planted as part of the april fool's joke um the ones that were found in the cellar when they first talking to the ghost um and the

fox family's property where this all started um is now hydesville memorial park in newark new york and uh apparently the park offers like you can see like i think if i saw one picture and i'm kind of going completely off that but i think they still have the foundation of the house built into the ground. And they do a haunted history trail tour. So if anything, the Fox sisters, they did, if this was just all accidentally like an April Fool's joke and they made spiritualism. joke and they made spiritualism um they at least if anything set the standard for what types of communication to expect during paranormal interaction even today i mean you hear knocking all the time in spooky tv shows and things like that it's usually the people's first go-to if you're here can you knock on something or bang on something um we still see knocking in spirit

sessions and general evidence of hauntings today and because of the fox sisters american spiritualism is still credited to uh at least to many people to have begun on march 31st which means that spiritualism is an aries so and it wouldn't be every would be wouldn't it uh she would be an aries spiritualism and my mother and your stepmother right yeah linda ellen and spiritualism the original fox sisters and that's the original fox sisters wow that was very long i'm so sorry what a tale though i mean i i can do that with my knuckle with my feet are you serious yeah oh i you can't i don't think I've tried.

I do have freakishly long toes, so I'm sure I could probably, like, do a little Kraken if I wanted to. But. It's like a specific thing. I remember learning it when I was little because a guy that. Is it not your toes? Sort of. It's like you're going like, I don't know.

I don't want to show you. I mean, I'll show you someday. Not on camera, but i'm aware that feet have like the most bones in any part of the human body but in my mind the foot is just one like oval shaped bone and so when people are like oh i can crack it i'm like you should not be able to it should be like no it's not cracking it it's like you hit it on the floor i still cannot do that hey let me see if i can hold on i don't have like i'm on car and on today's episode we have one of the fox sisters performing her famous toe crackle unfortunately i'm on carpet so it's not gonna work hang on

i heard it that was enough for me oh my god so if that was on that was on carpet if it's on wood you can hear it. Can you imagine though having to do that enough times to spell out that you're Charles B. Rosner? Yeah, that's why I was like, why didn't they name him Aardvark? Can you imagine? How old are you, Charles? 31. Do that 31 times, Christine. Okay. I would be like, again, like, I'm an infant. I'm one. Don't worry about it. But yeah, I remember my, like, one of my, whatever, this semi-stepdad when I was an infant. I'm one. Don't worry about it. But yeah, I remember my like one of my whatever this semi stepdad when I was growing up, we'd be in an elevator and he would do that.

And people would be like, what is that knocking sound? You could do it in your shoes. Yes. And so that's what he would do. And I remember he was like, yeah, you can do that. And so then I learned to do it with my foot. So I maybe I'm reincarnated. I'm pretty sure you're one of the Fox sisters.

You're definitely fucking Leah, too, I can tell. No, I guess you're Maggie because she's the one who was doing all the foot cracking. But OK, wow. So I mean, I know I'm wrong anatomically. But as someone who refuses to believe the foot is anything other than one long plate of bone. That's so creepy to me that you're saying that. The fact that I think it's just like cracking in half on the ground inside your shoes. It's so it's all wrong, but it's I I don't know what's better.

I hate this. Let's move on. It's all bad. I don't like love feet. So it's not great. I want a video later. Not to be like like can you send me a video of your feet but like i'm but to totally be like can you send me but like can you send me a very close-up version of because i need to see what the fuck happened it sounds like you just broke your foot like it's so funny because you said that and i was like wait a

second i used to be able to do that and so the whole time you're talking i was like oh yeah i'm doing it again um anyway that's a skill i only want to see for science purposes and then never from far away and then completely forget i want you to like clonk me in the head after i see the video you send me so i can't forget oh my god oh boy what a tale anyway i a tale for you, and it's also twisty turn. So it is the story of Phoebe Hanchuk. I don't know if I'm pronouncing her last name right. It's a Norwegian name, I believe, Hanchuk. Okay, cool. It takes place in Australia, though.

So this is a murder mystery. You know I love a good question mark. Yes, it's a creepy one. I actually heard it for the first time ever on crime junkie a long time ago like i don't know maybe sometime last year uh and i had like had it in my head and i was like it's phoebe something and then i eventually was like i need to like learn more about this so i went back and found the name so uh credit to them for where i first heard it and there is a podcast called Phoebe's Fall

from 2016 that basically like goes really in depth it's like a six episode podcast series so both of those are where like this this intel comes from I always feel bad when there's a story that literally can span multiple hours of episodes and like I want to do my best in my research but there's just no way it's going to happen no completely it's like when i did like did the zodiac and i'm like here's a 20 minute version of the zodiac and then it's like i've listened to like 85 episodes of professionals talking about this at that point you might as well just do like here's my seven part episode of the zodiac oh man all right so on thursday december 2nd 2010 a concierge of a luxury high-rise apartment in melbourne australia melbourne melbourne named beth was heading to the

apartments apartment buildings garbage room to find a broom so uh when she turned the key she tried to open the door but it got jammed like it was blocked by something so she peered in and saw what looked like a mannequin good night okay okay hmm okay i think it was on my favorite word or where they said it's never a mannequin i think it was from msm i'm not sure but it's a great quote take out the part that says it can it's a man it's just a man or a woe man in this case so she thought it was a mannequin until she saw a large pool of blood um it was the body of 24 year old Phoebe Handchuck who was a tenant at the Valencia apartment which is the building that they were in.

So after the discovery of Phoebe's body and the arrival of police, it was pretty soon deduced that Phoebe had fallen 12 floors through the trash chute. Holy fuck. Into the garbage room. And this was 40 meters or 131 feet. So she had fallen 12 stories. Wow. Through the trash chute into the garbage room i'm shocked

this is the first time i'm hearing a story 200 times now where it took someone to because i always thought i guess not always but in my head when i was little i always i thought there was like a horror movie trope where people got thrown down chutes like laundry shoes or like yeah it seemed maybe we just invented it because it seemed like something terrifying because i had the same thought that was in the same part of my brain with like oh the zebra stripe gum is actually a tattoo i was about to say then again we were like trying to tattoo ourselves with trash so like who knows literal trash oh boy so they figured out like she had fallen through this trash chute and they found her body with bruising on her neck, wrist and upper right arm. So that's important for later.

Okay. And they had figured out that she had fallen alive and cut her foot on the trash compactor. Okay. Speaking of feet to the point that it was nearly severed. And then she bled out while crawling looking for an exit oh see like you always hope that like before they hit the trash chute they died instant death like they yeah i know but apparent so but so the whole experience of mental torture was also involved got it yes exactly so basically it was a dark room and they

could basically figure out that after she had almost severed her foot, like she was trying to find an exit and bled out in about five to ten minutes during that time. Yeah. Oh my God. It's fucking horrible. So they went to her apartment, obviously upstairs, and in the apartment they found broken glass on the floor and blood on the cushion and computer keyboard of her apartment. Just a little amount, but it was definitely fresh blood. and blood on the cushion and computer keyboard of the apartment. Fuck. Okay. Just a little amount, but it was definitely fresh blood. The coroner, Peter White, considered briefly the possibility of murder,

but quickly ruled that Phoebe had intentionally climbed into the chute herself while on drugs and alcohol, not intending to die by suicide, but it was just a tragic accident. So wait, they think she... I mean, this sounds like a murder was just a tragic accident so wait they think she i mean this sounds like a murder not a tragic accident it sounds like someone threw her down the fucking chute like i don't think someone climbs in there like this is a paragraph what was it many paragraphs of nonsense or whatever this is oh what was it it's just something like a bunch of paragraphs or whatever this is the first of a bunch of paragraphs so the story's not over it's just something like a bunch of paragraphs or whatever this is the first of a

bunch of paragraphs so the story's not over let's just put it that way and had she not cut her foot she probably would have survived it sounds like i think it was yeah potentially like if she was you want to blot out she would just landed yeah that's a good point too um exactly so basically the coroner says oh she intentionally climbed into the trash chute and died because she was on drugs and alcohol. So that's where they landed. So Phoebe's friends, I'm just going to tell you, like, rewind a little bit. So Phoebe herself, her friends remember her as having, she was like a very memorable person. So her friend Alicia Carville remembers, remembers quote when we used to go out she

would walk into the room and there were cat eyes and you can just see everyone turn their eyes to see her and her friend hazel brown said that she was so beautiful and was very creative in a private way through journals and drawing so apparently i know she seemed like a lovely person so these two uh women went to school with her in melbourne and remembered her as having a very adventurous spirit so this story i feel like it's very fitting to describe her personality uh alicia recalls i got her an interview for mcdonald's and she got the job she had her first shift which went okay then she had her second shift and she didn't like it anymore and when you when you yeah that's gemini and when you leave you have to return your uniform.

So she took off her uniform, left it in the ice room, left through the back door, and ran home in her underwear. I like her. I do, too. I was like, okay, I get it. She's spunky. Say no more. She's got chutzpah, I think. Yeah, as they say.

As Grandma Maul would say. So she had somewhat of a reckless spirit, some of her friends said. When they were 13, they already started going out to clubs and Phoebe began consuming copious amounts of alcohol and started testing drugs. And her mom said that this changed her and amplified her quote sensitive mercurial personality so she said when she started drinking and doing drugs like it really messed with her because she was such a sensitive person and she had also been on antidepressants since she was 16 so she had like an interesting relationship with substances that her family often like had to check in on and uh were worried about and what year was this again

that she died this is 2010 oh this is much 2010 more recent than i thought okay yeah it's like yeah it's 10 uh less than 10 oh no exactly 10 years ago this week wow so yeah okay creepy um so the family she her family was very close uh She grew up with parents Natalie and Len, and her brother's names were Nikolai and Tom. She was really active. She would spend eight hours at the gym at a time. I mean, same. You and I can both relate to that. Every second.

I actually have to get going. Actually, I'm in the, can't you see I'm on the treadmill right this very moment? You can't tell. This is a fake leg. I'm actually doing a squat squat just one squat this whole time oh are you i'm actually cracking my feet on the floor you know over and over again that's my workout can confirm because i heard it with my stupid ears my ears that failed me they should have shut off in that moment stupid ears okay um so let's see so anyway she's very active uh she trained and studied karate as well as kickboxing she was known to be quote deadly with her kicks damn um and i know she was apparently

fast-tracked to get a black belt in two years and it usually takes five so like she was just kicking ass let's just put it that way god um but God. But despite her athleticism, the big huge question mark about this case was how on earth did she get into this garbage chute? I'm saying. Yeah. So to have ended up in the garbage room, the coroner suggested that Phoebe climbed herself into this hatch and lowered herself into the drop.

And the coroner, Peter White said, quote, Phoebe's long-term enthusiasm for climbing and penchant for undertaking physically challenging activity was a factor in this event. And that's how he explained that she got herself into the trash chute. Which, like, I mean, if it's a story about, like, you know, alcohol and drugs,

it's like, what a sad way to go. But also, like, I understand it a little bit. Because my first thought is like okay a trash chute is just such a fucking gross way to like i'm just like a germ freak but um i mean like i think of my hometown friends and like wow there was nothing drunk deirdre loved to do in high school more than like climb to like the top of a building so like i get right right right trying to like for the sake of the story like have some weird little adventure but like doing something dangerous yeah like yeah but the shoot that's a that's a real brave one like that's um yeah because hmm that one's just like beyond my uh my understanding i'm gonna need

a little more explanation i guess i would say like like what was the goal what was the goal yeah what was the end goal here um so phoebe's family understandably couldn't wrap their heads around the coroner's explanation so phoebe's grandfather he becomes like the central figure of the story his name is lauren campbell and he was a retired uh detective and so when he found the story out about his granddaughter and like what the coroner had said and that they ruled that it was just an accident he basically stepped up and was like i'm gonna do my own experiments and figure out if this is even possible okay good so the yeah exactly he kind of stepped up and like was the only one kind of representing her like cognitive called bullshit or like at least yeah

yeah it's like what's going on here who like did something about it so it's a galvanized steel chute um and if you can imagine it's sort of like i mean i've had different apartment buildings with different trash chutes but it's basically one of the kind that you pull like a drawer it's like uh we have that's the one we have at our apartment it's like it looks like an oven basically like yes exactly so i pull this door down and then you throw things down and then you close the door back up yes exactly and um on crime junkie brit described it as like a library drop-off yeah um well i guess you don't read many books you say uh that's your hair so maybe maybe i'll say uh trust me i know enough about food i know what an oven looks like yeah

um yeah so it's kind of like an accordion style but and it uh it's it closes by itself like once you let go of it it like on a spring yeah yes exactly it's like spring loaded basically so this trash chute is about 530 millimeters wide which is about 20 inches wide okay so i've heard various 18 to 20 inches wide so i mean that's like a foot and a half sure like not very wide um and it was six feet above the ground so six feet above the grounds yes like the opening to the dumpster? I think the opening to the top was six feet off the ground. Okay. Got it. So basically.

So like she would have had to climb and basically be upside down by the time she got in there. To get in there. Right. Assuming the spring didn't like close up on her legs. Yes. However, since she fell on her foot, it was determined she went down feet first. Oh. So she couldn't have gone in head so

she almost like got her foot in like hoist herself up and then kind of like sat and tried to like almost go sledding down on her butt yes so the the only way it could have happened is if she had climbed up and gone yeah feet first like like a water slide like try yes like the world's worst water slide like instead of water to get to make it all slippery. It's trash and steel. It's banana peels. Yes. So while Lauren wasn't saying her grandfather, he wasn't saying like, oh, it's impossible to put a person here. But he was saying like, how would Phoebe have climbed in herself? She was a small woman. However, he was like, I'm skeptical of this so

what he did is he gathered two of phoebe's friends who had like similar really small stature and were pretty athletic to test out how she could have climbed into this chute so you can see this um online oh basically they have like a harness on so that they don't actually fall in good but he's basically yeah he's basically testing like can you um lift yourself up six feet into this tiny little pocket like see if you can do it and so there's videos of it and they're they're really trying um and technically okay so she would have like i said have to open the hatch climb in um while attempting to like grip the wall or something right yeah there's not like a handle um you know inside the chute so trying to grip the wall or something right yeah there's not like a handle um you know inside the chute so

trying to grip the wall or something and slide in uh and then seat yourself like you said as if like a sled or a water slide or something um and then lower yourself in that way so you can watch the demonstration online but there are two women and you can see them with like immense difficulty uh try to get themselves into the shoot and they do eventually um but it is not easy and uh they have to balance themselves against the wall and basically because of the angle of like you have to go from top down you have to balance yourself on the wall like there's no way you could get in without touching anything right okay um did they find fingerprints on the walls and stuff so sorry this is literally no this is literally my next

bullet on the day of phoebe's death not one fingerprint was found on the trash chute or the surrounding walls yeah unless you're like fucking spider-man you can't just like yeah or like an olympian like box jumper or something like you can't just like yeah or like an olympian like box jumper or something like you can't just like get from the ground to six feet up without your hands helping you in some way well and somebody would have had to open the chute too you know and so when i'm thinking and they're like well so but then i'm thinking if there were no fingerprints so like somebody had to wipe it down right because right yeah other people are using it for trash right so like you'd imagine somebody had has touched this thing right yeah that checks out i don't know in my mind i'm like yeah like someone would have had to come back for cleanup and like it would have

to be more than like the apartment complex janitor like you know yeah but what i'm saying is like even if she did it herself like wouldn't somebody else have used this trash chute ever to point that like a finger oh got it got it got it got it you know what i mean like it's just weird to me that there were literally no finger like if we tested our trash shoots i'm sure there would be plenty of gross fingerprints coronavirus on it yeah yeah okay fair point so yeah it feels like someone like bleached the whole thing down to me i'm like weirded out and i guess uh i did hear that like on galvanized steel, it's hard to leave fingerprints. But even on the wall, there were no fingerprints. So yeah, either somebody had to like be really stealth about it or somebody wiped it down.

The only thing I can think of is like if you brought tools with you that were also small enough to fit down there. But then like I guess you could like I'm thinking like if she brought a weight to hold the the door open while she climbed inside but then you'd also have to like i mean there's no way to like balance yourself on that while you sit yourself down without touching the wall yeah yeah yeah pretty much so it was maybe she was the broom maybe she was like kind of like doing a little balance act right the broom well oh the broom was in the garbage room downstairs. Like the lady went to go get the broom. So like she hadn't actually, she was about to be down.

Unless she brought the broom, but I don't, yeah. Yes, exactly. Okay, got it. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I know. It's very bizarre and confusing.

So basically it proved impossible in their experiments to do this without leaving any fingerprints by yourself anyway. And if she had used her hands or if somebody had used their hands, who wiped them away? Right. Essentially. Yeah. So they do this testing on the original, on the actual shoot where she went down and they're able to figure out like how somebody might be able to get into the shoot.

But then they are thinking um okay well now we should see what he wants to figure out about the actual drop itself and he's not about to drop her friends down the chute so i know exactly and so instead what they do is he contacts the company who made the steel hatch and he has them build a replica to see how far like the, the testers, the Guinea pigs can get into the chute. Wow.

This person's really dedicated and I appreciate it. Yeah. He's not stopping at anything basically. So they are figure out that it is possible, but very difficult to get into the trash chute alone. And so what he does is he conducts an experiment where a male demonstrator carries a female demonstrator who is pretending to be unconscious. Oh, smart. To see, like, how that would work.

And it's actually really creepy to watch because this woman is, like, splayed out. Like dead weight? I mean, really. Yeah, like dead weight. And he's trying to, like, hoist her in. It's very disturbing, disturbing honestly to watch um so in this context the man is able to place her into the hatch with more ease and she doesn't touch uh the hatch like she would have if she were by herself so that requires no none of her fingerprints to be around the wall or anything got it um so lauren is starting to think uh like maybe this is what happened maybe this is not accidental

like they apparently thought um there is one other possible explanation which is that she was put in the shoot by someone else so lauren starts to get kind of stuck on this theory um and what he discerns from his experiment is that it's easy easier uh for someone to dispose of say you know a body type like phoebe's a woman uh like phoebe then it would be for her to climb in herself it would just like i feel like he didn't need any of those experiments to know no yeah look i'm glad we have the data now but but apparently he did because nobody believed him so once you did the experiment i know it's really it's really fucked up so he was like great just like i expected or just like i suspected uh this is not just an easy feat for her to just like hop on in and right you know toss herself down the trash chute so um on the day of phoebe's death i have like a little timeline

here according to phoebe's partner uh her boyfriend aunt so i think his full name's anthony but he goes by aunt okay and hample and he and phoebe lived together so he according to him he had left for work at 8 30 in the morning and she was still sleeping with their dog, Yoshi. And she had been recovering from a drinking, what he called a bender from earlier that week. So at 8.45 a.m., she sent an email and used her computer. At 11.43, there was a fire alarm in the building, like a drill, pretty much. And you can see the CCTV footage

where Phoebe leaves the apartment with the dog as part of the fire drill. So that is actually the last time she's ever seen uh on footage did they see her go back up to her apartment or just leave the apartment for the um i believe it was just a well so while this video is going on you can actually see her with the dog and you actually see her kind of like stumble against a wall oh which some people say like oh well maybe she's drunk um but she also like yeah or but she also has a dog so it's like maybe she just got pulled or tripped or you know who knows i could understand i would

my thought would be it was that if she had just come back from drinking and now there's like this loud ass alarm maybe she had like she fell over from like the hangover sound of it or something yeah well so that was when she was already outside so like she had left the building with the dog oh okay i was thinking her going down the hallway or something no yeah like outside you can kind of see i think it's outside i haven't seen that video i've only seen a still shot of her leaving the building with the dog so i'm not sure if it's outside or inside either way there is a point falling yes yes got it she had hit a wall at some point or like kind of stumbled essentially she stumbled a little bit got it so as a person who drinks and as a person who's very clumsy i stumble whether or not i'm drinking so i feel like it's not necessarily yeah i feel like

it's not necessarily proof you know what i mean like yeah you can point to it and say like i bet she's drunk but like there's just no proof of that uh sure from the video itself um so there is a picture of her returning into the building at 11 50 so she does go back inside cool okay that's after yeah um and she uses the computer again so that's just further proof that she made it like not only inside but back to her apartment and arguably currently doing daily life things instead of yes exactly just like normal day-to-day stuff so at 11 50 which is seven minutes after the alarm um you can see you're going back into the building and as soon as she gets back into her apartment she uses her computer again and this is like around noon ish like a little before noon

so basically sometime between noon and 7 p.m she goes into this shoot noon and 7 p.m that's a wide gap that is a wide gap yes so and they don't have any cameras on the on the dumpster or anything oh i'll tell you okay it gets infuriating em well p.s it's already there because nobody chose to use common sense that it's easier for someone to get thrown down a chute than climb into a chute yeah and and and honestly um the common sense just gets less common and more scarce. Yikes. Okay. Got it. Don't worry. I'm prepared.

So there's not like too much activity that day that kind of points to anything leading up to her death. But if you go back a little ways longer, there's some odd activity that has occurred. So I'm just going to tell you like leading up to the day of her death, some of the stuff that was happening. So Phoebe had moved into this apartment with Ant earlier that year, earlier in 2010. And previously she had dated mostly kind of like grungy, like musician types. Okay. But Ant was kind of this like classier, older guy. He was in his early 40s and she was 24. So there was like a substantial age gap uh between them sure and they had met

in 2009 she was working at a high market hair salon and he was an events promoter with clients like kylie minogue paris hilton and acdc hey oh okay hey oh and so uh he was like kind of swanky and her family actually really liked him uh he helped Phoebe's brother get a job. But at the same time, they kind of had a feeling that this relationship wasn't forever. Oh, okay. They were like, yeah, we like him, okay. Or we like him. He's a nice guy.

Mr. Right now, but not Mr. Right. Mr. Right now. Exactly. I see. I couldn't have said it better myself. Look, look. There's nothing I'm better at than relationship labels. Than gossiping about relationships.

Than finding ways to beat around the bush. Yeah, that's exactly my forte. Oh, boy. So according to Phoebe's mom, Natalie, what she found strange is that although Phoebe had lived in the apartment for nearly a year before her death, there was little to show her presence anywhere in the apartment for nearly a year before her death, there was little to show her presence anywhere in the apartment. So, as you know, I like to just leave trash piles of my belongings wherever I go. Whether it's your house, my house, the ground on the sidewalk.

Our house. Our shared house. Our haven of our affair, emotional affair. Yeah, I love it. We're like, we're going to callmz and be like guess what and they're gonna be like we don't we should do like some home alone like that like cut out posters like do like some shadow art and then like call like world star or like tmz and just have them just snoop who knows what's going on but it's us it's just an anonymous tip yeah i don't know why i'm not

saying it's it's us here's my exact name and how you spell it and pronounce it for tv but i mean it could be someone else and don't pronounce it wrong please oh boy um so yeah it was just weird okay speaking of like as somebody who literally can't like i don't even want to turn the computer it's horrifying like just like i leave stuff everywhere but like she just didn't have stuff like in the apartment there were a couple photos of her and aunt but all her stuff were still in storage downstairs so it was just odd like it it felt off because she had lived there almost a year so it was like that's weird yeah it feels a little cold like she's um yeah she almost like she has a plan to leave yeah like one foot out the door almost yes exactly like she's not as i almost like she has a plan to leave yeah like one foot out the door

almost yes exactly like she's not as i like to beat around the bush as well and that's why and that's what i love uh yeah it feels like she's um like kind of already planning to not get comfy there yes exactly nothing felt comfy about it so phoebe had actually told her mom that the relationship was fraying and was getting more volatile. And she was worried Ant was going to pop the question on their upcoming trip to Paris that Christmas. And remember, this took place December of 2010, like early December. So she confided in her family, including her mom, her grandmother and her brother Tom, about her relationship. She said Ant was kind of controlling and she felt like she was losing her voice. her relationship she said aunt was kind of controlling and she felt like she was losing her voice and remember this is someone her friends described as like reckless and like not necessarily

in a bad way but just that was her you know um she was just kind of um it sounds like she was i mean it sounds like at least in her relationship if it matches her personality she was probably a little like flighty and like didn't want to settle you know like yeah yeah yeah yeah it's almost like she was feeling stifled yeah yeah exactly and she felt like she couldn't like be herself um and while while together with aunt phoebe had actually cut her hair dramatically like really short and dyed it black and you can see this uh in the cctv footage of her during the fire drill um and according to phoebe's grandmother she basically looked like the spitting image of aunt's sister christina and she saw this as like an indication that she was just trying to like fit into this mold for aunt and like kind of fit what he wanted and so she like

changed her appearance and it was like a dramatic change like she didn't have short hair her hair was not black right so it was just like a very sudden change. And her family was like, she looks a lot like his sister. Maybe she's trying to like emulate that. I mean, I would have taken that as kind of like a red herring of sorts of being like, if she's still like adventurous and reckless, like she strikes me as someone who would like go get green hair for no reason. Who'd cut her hair. Exactly.

And she worked at a hair salon. So it's like, I don't think it's that weird. Friends was in training and they had to do a dye job. You know, I've always wished i had a friend like that i um i was always afraid someone was gonna ask me because like i'm not that i'm particular about my hair like i don't care as long as it doesn't look terrible i don't care what it looks like but i'm terrified the one time someone like needed to practice i would like have a massive like chunk of hair missing like so see that just happens to me now i you know my bald spot i like i'd never like what my hair looks like ever under any circumstance so to

me i'm like listen try away if you find some miracle where it looks good then like you're my hero great hair well that's very kind thank you um i don't love it but you know that's a story for another day uh anyway so she had uh dyed her hair yada yada and her family was like yeah she seemed like she was not herself anymore so in october of 2010 this was two years prior to her death um phoebe had had a big argument with aunt and uh natalie phoebe's mom remembers that uh phoebe was saying aunt was getting more and more aggressive um she felt like she wasn't able to assert herself in the relationship and she actually traveled after this argument to malakuta which is a town in australia to see jeanette her grandmother i just love grandma jeanette i just i don't even know her but i love

her it reminds me of grandma pam pam and grandma jeanette would be quite a duo the fox sisters 2.0 i love that um according to jeanette phoebe had somewhat made up her mind that she was going to stay in malakuta she had even lined up a summer job um remember october there is like springtime it's like opposite seasons was not even australia thank you yeah yeah yeah i was like summer job okay that's what yeah well i was just because it was you and i just have blind loyalty i was like that makes sense but yeah yeah yeah now i'm picking it up if there was a reason for that yeah yeah it's uh it's december or it's october at this point but she's like i'm gonna pick up a summer job at a golf course here where my grandma lives. And Jeanette was like, I think Phoebe wanted to break up with him, but she was encouraging him,

her to go back and do it in person rather than pull a Christine and just like send an awkward text and be like, anyway, bye, which is how I do things. So like the least confrontational person ever. Don't worry. I'm working on it in therapy. Okay. So Phoebe took her grandma's advice, went to Melbourne, went back home to Melbourne, but they didn't break up. So I don't know if they just rectified things. They got back together or, you know, they never actually split. But Phoebe's behavior got even more unexplainable. So this is an email that Phoebe had written to her mom, Natalie, around this time. I'm

just going to read it. I've been thinking about my birthday present, and I'd like you to hang on to that for me. There may be a time in my life where I need to get away without much notice, and I'd like to have an international flight available for me. I also ask that you don't mention any of this to anyone, and I won't bring it up until I need it. No. Yeesh. Yeah, that's different than being reckless or adventurous because like, even though it sounds like it could be reckless and adventurous because it's like,

oh, like if, you know, there might be a time where I do something random. But like, usually when you're reckless and adventurous, it comes with spontaneity, not intent. Yes. Yes. Wow, that was really deep and i mean um i'm the love guru so that's right you're beating around all the bushes that's what they call me like i i know how to how to really massage the mind and with some chutzpah that's me yeah um so it's just a little shady and like yeah maybe she was just like i don't know

maybe i'll wanna but yeah you're right it's like planning ahead it's a little strange it sounds ominous too of like i might need to leave the country like don't tell anyone yeah but don't tell anyone is like just affirming like i have a secret something bad yeah and um the week before death there were more red flags so this one gives me goose cam i gotta say so the day before she died wednesday december 1st of 2010 she had sent a group text like a mass text to her mom her grandmother aunt a few other family members and her boss and this is what the text read in all caps hi family comma i am in bed about to sleep, and when I wake, I will transform into the most incredible human being you've ever seen.

Not, I will go to hospital. It's safer there, and I hear the special tonight is tomato soup. Delicious, nutritious. I love you all very much, but not enough to send an individual text. Sorry about that, but time is sleep, and I must be on my way. Merrily, merrily, merrily merrily merrily life is but a dream exo okay either it's drugs or she made an escape room like it's one god it sounds like em's escape room it sounds like a riddle like she's trying to like oh because like i know like

i'm saying that like in a jokey way but also like in a serious way it sounds like maybe like allison and i have very like we have a code word if something's going down like that there could have been something in there where she was implying something to someone yeah yeah it was i think i mean it sounds to me personally and again obviously i'm no expert by any means but it sounds to me either like drugs or uh mental illness you know you see like she's not she's not sounding stable no matter what no it doesn't and you know you see like she's not she's not sounding stable no matter what no it doesn't and you know you see people writing messages and stuff uh in a manic state or what have you and sometimes they do come off very i i don't know bubbly and like aggressive and strange

and like that does happen so in my mind that's kind of where my head went um but the fact that she also did experiment with drugs and things who knows um yeah and also that combined with like kind of the paranoia of i might need to leave the country is like a little bit yeah of a weird combo happening the same month so i do i mean i i really personally just wanted to be like she was trying to give someone a tip off because i'd love for that to be a twist in the story but i do think like first of all the first sign of her not being stable was that she put her mom in a group chat with her boss it's like that was enough for me i was like oh boyfriend's in there mom and the boss yeah this is bad yeah yeah so no completely do we i mean i guess i know your answer where you think she wrote that is one of the theories that she was already dead and someone wrote that for two people okay no because this was this was before she did this

was the day before she died oh the day before okay cool yeah yeah so she this was pre-fire drill pre all that so she had just sent this kind of mysteriously the day before and that's why people are now associating her stumbling with the dog with like probably some sort of substance abuse yeah because they're just all at the same time and because she had a tendency to drink and do drugs and i will tell you about the tox report in a little bit okay um so automatically for obvious reasons jeanette the grandmother's reaction is that something is not right here. Phoebe's in trouble. Jeanette's onto something.

Yeah, Jeanette's onto something. And this is not the kind of text Phoebe would send. So it's not like they're like, oh, Phoebe, with her silly nursery rhymes.

With her troll under the bridge riddles. Like, you know. Oh my God. Tomato soup. What could it mean? Yeah. So they were like,

you know, grandma's like, this is not, I love how grandma and grandpa are like, step aside, everybody like you know grandma's like this is not i love how grandma and grandpa are like step aside everybody i know what's up look when when there's a crisis like they can really come to the forefront and fuck some shit up if they need to lauren and jeanette they are on the case yep um so in phoebe's like okay on sunday before she died phoebe had a skype call with her mom natalie and natalie remembers that the lights were all off in phoebe's room when she called so she was in a dark room and natalie

had asked phoebe whether things had been patched up with aunt and instead of responding she lifted a finger to silence her and natalie thinks phoebe wanted to say something but couldn't so phoebe said aunt's watching a movie in the other room and that was it like don't talk about it so she was like that was a little shady um and then on monday phoebe met with her psychologist who remembers that she was at a pretty low point um and they had been working on a plan to reduce her drinking which had worked for a little while until she had relapsed and her psychologist felt she was depressed um and said it was the closest to suicidal ideation that she had seen her oh shit however um she said she didn't necessarily think

she was suicidal but it's also like that's such a i mean i think the word i guess like a nuanced way of sure it's it's not that black and white you know you can't be like oh the therapist said she was this way it's like there's so much more that goes into right you know that relationship and it's not just like a one again a one-two step like it's there's a lot going on there exactly it's just kind of like a broad statement um and it's not evidence in my opinion and that evening um phoebe and aunt had gone to dinner which ended in a huge screaming match um phoebe stormed off to meet up with her friend bren for a drink uh but the bar closed early so uh aunt called phoebe so okay sorry the bar closed early so the drink lasted only 30 minutes and during that time aunt called phoebe

27 times girl okay i don't like that no so i'm like that's i mean not good that in case there are confused people out there that screams abuse i'm pretty sure yeah yeah the 27 calling someone 27 times while they're with a friend and not answering is alarming to me it's a red flag at the it's a it's a red flag um it's not a green flag no it's somewhere i would say it's like maroon it's peach yeah it's a little peachy um so bren then went home because he was working the next day and phoebe basically just like refused to go home and went out and ended up at a friend's house and tuesday morning she went to the apartment but aunt had already left for work and as soon as she got home she made calls to the crisis line her doctor and her psychologist who yeah who spoke to her for 30 minutes because she

was like really distressed about her drinking relapse um and her bender as they called it and she was really upset about her relationship so she was like clearly not in a good place by any means um and after this she headed out again for another big night of drinking right so on wednesday 10 30 a.m is when she sent the tomato soup message uh and it's and it's important to note that it was 10 30 on wednesday because it was sent from her iphone and this is uh so the iphone had originally belonged to aunt and she had an iPhone and a Nokia. Okay. But Phoebe had dropped her iPhone on the street on Monday and broken it. And so now we reach this inconsistency where up until a year after her disappearance, aunt

maintains that on Wednesday he had brought Phoebe's iPhone to the shop to get repaired. In which case, how on earth was she able to send this tomato soup message from the iphone aha i see and like i think probably one of our first thoughts would be like oh i message like we know she had a laptop maybe right i did a little research i message was not invented until 2011 whoa miss christine jean that is my theme song just detective schieffer on the case okay so i was like because that's my first thought like you and i sometimes will be like on the phone and texting yeah on our computers you know it's just whatever but uh so i was like i don't think it could have been sent from her laptop so the confusion is well he says he went brought it

to the shop on wednesday but she texted from it on wednesday so just odd um so years later he kind of recanted that and said oh well maybe i dropped it off on thursday but of course the shop doesn't have a record of it so okay it's just kind of like hmm just fishy sure um so all we have is a of that whole story is a receipt that shows that aunt's dad picked the phone up a few days after phoebe died so we know that the phone was picked up after from the repair shop we're just not sure when it was dropped off um so on the wednesday after phoebe's death uh nat Natalie and Len were called in for a meeting at Len's house with detectives Clanchy and Wallace. That sounds like a Roger Rabbit 1940s investigation team. Yes! Okay, I'm glad you said that.

I looked up the name Clanchy like three times. I was like, are we sure it's Clanchy? Yeah, it is Clanchy. Like not Clancy or something? Right. I was like, I must have just put an H. Nope, it's clanchy yeah it is clancy or something right i was like i must have just put an h nope it's clanchy okay so clancy and wallace were the homicide team investigating phoebe's death and uh they basically told natalie and len uh that there was no additional party involved she did this herself which is basically what they said from the beginning

and so as said before the family was still like i don't think that's true like you're not looking into this enough so there were more questions apart from like the trash chute incident that lauren had already proven was extremely difficult sure um so there were other things for example phoebe's sunglasses were found near her body and uh they were like well if she walked to the trash chute why was she wearing sunglasses like indoors to it's just a weird another weird discrepancy could have been like hanging on her shirt or in her pocket or something yeah i was thinking that too or above your head yeah so to me i'm like that's not a huge deal but you know it's it's

something that they couldn't explain um and the coroner had said so there was bruising all up like i said earlier on her wrist yeah and her upper arm and elbow and the coroner had said phoebe was trying to control her descent on the sides of the chute oh okay um however for me okay this is what they talked about this in crime junkie 2 of like if you got in that chute you weren't going with your arms down like your arms were above your head right right and so like i guess you could kind of push sideways but basically the way that they had explained it was that she was using her hands to try and stop the fall i see but like if her hands were above her there's not really much you can do to try and stop your own fall maybe cover your own head if that yeah there's really nothing else yeah

you're kind of just crammed in there um and so i thought that was odd um also the autopsy the medical evidence in the autopsy didn't really prove much of this at all so it's just another theory they kind of came up with and stuck to also if she were controlling her descent and trying to stop herself she would have had more dirt on her and the shoot because the shoot was obviously filthy and she wasn't found with like any marks or like dirt on her arms or anything and so that was another weird thing of like you'd think she would be like pushing against the sides of the shoot right or you know something if that's what the bruising was from yeah but there was no dirt or trash found on her, you know, skin.

So another weird. I feel I would argue that would definitely be there. Like that's not even like a like, oh, maybe it would. Like that's a. I argue that if you tried not to touch the walls, you'd still be covered in trash. You go to trash and try not to get dirty. Let's put that way. I try to put trash in a trash chute and I come home like, why?

It's so nasty. Yeah, exactly. I try to put trash in a trash chute and I come home like, why? It's so nasty. I smell that. So the handjacks are struggling with this whole situation, especially because the police just keep saying, oh, no, she did it on purpose. And they're like, well, what the hell? You know, so seemingly everybody else seemed to be doing just fine. So Phoebe's boyfriend, Ant, only five days after her death, took to uh you know your favorite word took to face i don't know if it's my favorite word it's certainly my genetic code at this point um he took to facebook to inform his friends that he had made peace uh okay hang on sorry that's not quite what he said. Oh, okay. That's kind of my opinion, but he didn't quite say that. So he informed his friends that Phoebe took her own life to ease her pain.

So essentially, he's saying, like, I've made peace with the fact that she did this on purpose. She died by suicide. Like, she wanted this to happen. Yeah. Like, I'm happy she's in a better place. Yeah, he's basically saying, he's basically confirming that it was a suicide by saying like she you know was in a what did he say she took her own life to ease her pain and meanwhile her family's like no like we don't think so aren't you on our side like don't you think like something happened so it's a little weird that he is the only one seeming to be

totally on board with the idea that this is a susan granted like this you know phoebe and allison are not the same person it seems in many ways but like if if i allison you know ended up i we found her body in a trash chute and like there's a good chance that someone threw her down there for me to act like oh no this was what was meant to be i would be i would hope someone would think that that was fishy yeah it's it's just a little bit like uh okay you already shut the case so quickly like you shut the door on this so quickly that you're already on board not curious about what could have happened or not even like disputing right yeah exactly like the rest of her friends and

family are all like hell no she didn't do this on purpose and yeah i mean granted maybe he knew her better and was like no i i really believe this so i mean you know who's to say but it was just something that seemed a little bit fishy um natalie and len phoebe's parents uh wanted to speak to aunt but uh they he was basically really hostile toward them and was like nope i'm too grief stricken uh so eventually natalie finally texted him and was like can we please chat alone so he's like okay sure come over and when they got there the following tuesday aunt had both his father and his mother there as well like as like backup yeah so like he wasn't alone in a room with the mom yes so during the meetup aunt's father apparently came up to len and said i'm sorry for loss, but she was a very troubled girl, obviously.

Yikes. Okay. I mean, this is not making him look good. Yes. No, it's not. And Natalie also remembered the dad saying, well, of course it was suicide. So like, yikes. Okay.

So it sounds shocking. However, you might learn or you might find it less shocking when you learn that anne's father was a former supreme court lawyer okay he was a public figure so basically yeah they had to shut the door on this and say it was obviously a suicide she was troubled yeah and please god don't ask any more questions because i could look really bad yeah yes yes just like leave it alone. It wasn't, we have nothing to do with this. So with this in mind, it basically comes as no surprise that aunt was never formally considered a

suspect. He just basically said he wasn't at home and they took his word for it. Oh, that's great. Great investigating there guys. Fantastic. Uh-huh. And in fact,

the coroner actually praised aunt for having taken care of phoebe during her drinking problems and depression out of town what are you talking about so on the day of phoebe's death aunt claimed to have been in meetings all afternoon however this isn't true because swipe records of like the key card to the apartment building show that he got back to the apartment at 6 p.m and her body wasn't discovered till 7 p.m uh-huh and that's a much smaller gap isn't that that is a there's a big old window of an hour where he's suddenly saying oh i was gone all afternoon but now there's this hour of time and he's kind of volatile and she's thinking of leaving and uh-huh uh-huh yep so aunt claims that when

he got home phoebe wasn't there there was already broken glass on the floor like i mentioned earlier blood on the cushion and computer keyboard he said the blood looked fresh he also saw phoebe's handbag on the kitchen counter and uh her hair straightener was plugged in and turned on so it basically suggests she was getting ready to leave because she was doing her hair yeah her purse was out and still there uh there's broken glass and blood so who knows what order of events took place here but um the fact that the hair straightener was still on is like really ominous to me i mean it's like i i mean i can just imagine with my own personal opinion of what probably happened i'm imagining that he plugged it in just to keep it

on for a little too long and then like like if he called the police or something i know this isn't how it happened because like she was found later but in my mind i think like if he were to plan this out in case someone noticed like he put the flat iron out on the sink to make it look like she had been there and all that. Yeah. I mean, my thought is that like she was straightening her hair and they got into a fight and he.

Oh no. In my head, it's much more ominous where like he like pulled it out so that he could like set up a scene. Yeah. I have no proof of that. It's just what in my head is happening. Cause I've already kind of like,

I guess in my head though, that makes it look fishier on him because if he's trying to say it was a suicide why on earth would he like plug in the hair straightener i got yeah i mean yeah like he's basically saying oh yeah she was really troubled and she decided to end her own life uh but then like you know they found the hair straightener on there was glass on on the floor. Yeah. No, you're right. I'm just trying to chalk it up in my head, I think. Yeah. No, I mean, it's very weird.

And like, maybe he did. Maybe he thought it would look better that way. I don't know. But so the hair straightener was on. And then even though he apparently found broken glass and blood in a hair straightener on, he had a beer and a cigarette. Yeah. Was he just like, he just went to bed?

He was like, oh, that's a weird. What a quirky day yeah took a nap watch some whose line is it anyway i don't know why that's the first show that came to my brain um anyway so he had a beer and some and a cigarette he made a series of calls one to a work colleague first then to a close friend and then okay now this is where things get real weird he ordered thai takeout from a Thai restaurant called the Golden Triangle. Okay. Now this is ultra weird because only hours later or like within the hour, basically, he and Phoebe were supposed to be meeting Phoebe's dad, Len, for dinner at the Golden Triangle for just a date dinner out with her dad.

I don't know how that makes it so fishy but i've decided he's guilty and like he knew he was going to this dinner so it's like it was almost like a slap in the face of like i know exactly what's supposed to happen and i i want to make it almost weird enough that you even know what i did but no one else will figure it out yeah it's almost like toying but like it's just so odd because it doesn't really make sense so like they were supposed to be meeting and so presumably she was doing her hair to get ready to meet her dad which was her plan and um it was just really strange because suddenly he's ordering it's not like he knew at this point she was like bailing on dinner like maybe he just thought oh she's late or who knows but it was just like why on earth would you be like okay dinner might be off i'm gonna order take out if she if he was under the impression

that she was alive and well and we're about to go to outback together and then i order out back in inside and like people are waiting for us like yeah what a weird rude thing and like so specifically just to mess with you yeah it's so weird and also like i'm listen it doesn't say this but in my mind he didn't order her an entree so i'm like what is he just ordering himself food and being like anyway she'll find her own food it feels like a petty thing of like oh like i knew we were going there and i already had a craving so now that i've eaten you can go be with your dad yeah you could yeah you can i'm bailing because yeah it's just so weird so it's just strange like that's weird did he forget like who knows maybe he just eats thai every day i don't think that's the case but it's just like

really strange so that same night uh 6 51 p.m remember they're supposed to meet with phoebe's dad so len calls phoebe's phone to be like, I'm running a bit late. And of course, it goes to voicemail. But again, within a, this is really strange, within a minute or two, Aunt calls Len. And get this, it's the first time he has ever telephoned Phoebe's dad. So like he's never called him before, ever. So he just happens to call him within two minutes of this call to to phoebe's iphone but he calls from his own phone and um basically just to say phoebe's not here so i'm not sure where she

is and he's like well we're supposed to meet and aunt's like i know but i don't i don't she's not home i don't know where she is like probably eating fucking pad thai in the background while he's talking to him but sitting on a couch with blood and glass on yeah exactly exactly so he's like basically phoebe's not here i don't know where she is and aunt claims that like the timing of this was coincidence because remember her phone was allegedly he had already brought it to the repair shop yeah um and so like the fact that So, like, the fact that, I'm sorry, Phoebe's dad called Phoebe's iPhone and then immediately he called him back. But he's saying, like, oh, no, it was just, like, I just happened to call him right when he called her phone. Her phone wasn't here.

It was at the repair shop. Which is, like, really weird. He's basically just saying, like, I didn't have her phone. I didn't have access to it. So, just another odd thing so shortly after uh he spoke to len uh aunt's takeout arrived if you recall uh yes and uh the takeout guy was actually the one who alerted him to the police presence at the building so the takeout guy's like have you seen what's going on here and he's like no what's happening and the takeout guy's like have you seen what's going on here and he's like no what's happening and the takeout guy's like yo there's like police everywhere and the building's taped off like

maybe was that was he trying to get an alibi to where he looked like really cool calm and collected oh or he needed someone to see him in the apartment yeah yeah and he's like what restaurant is exists oh this one the only one I can think of. He might have really been panicking about getting caught. And he was like, I didn't. And that's a very good point. You know? Like, he needs someone to spot him in the apartment.

Look, if I throw enough what ifs at you, one of them is going to stick every time. Throw spaghetti at me, and one time I'll catch it. Just one maybe. Open your mouth. I'm going to throw the whole pot at you. See what happens. One Alfreda. One Alfreda. One linguine. One linguine. maybe open your mouth i'm gonna throw the whole pot at you see what one alfredo one alfredo one

a linguine one a linguine just throw it directly into my mouth it's noodles all the way to the top all right uh it's one linguine all the way to the top it sure is so the guy that's a good point m so maybe the guy's just like he's like what's going on and the guy's like it's so weird there's police everywhere and he's like wow you don't say i'm in my apartment drinking a beer yeah so you could be very well right um so while the crime scene's being investigated aunt aunt's father and mother were all sitting in the apartment while police were quote-unquote working the scene however uh the inquest actually had no idea like later they did an inquest into the case and they had no idea how the parents got into the apartment

because there was no like swipe for them to get in huh so basically this just points to like anybody could have gotten in it's an apartment building you can follow somebody inside like oh yeah i mean people just like follow me in all the time yeah yeah i mean even if i don't know who they are like i'll be oh can you hold the door you know yes exactly so it doesn't eliminate the possibility that somebody came in like a stranger um a dangerous person followed her who knows sure i don't know but basically it's just a little weird that they got in without swiping so who knows who else could have um now there was as you asked earlier cctv footage of the building okay but fun fact police didn't ask for it until two days after her death

uh when it was already taped over fuck okay i know basically they got there and were like it's a suicide police initially were like it's a suicide and then um would they have already i guess they wouldn't have but would they have connected her at all to like a like a wealthy person like her she was dating the son of a wealthy guy who wanted to keep things hush hush and so they just immediately turned a blind eye it could it could have yeah it definitely could have been that too like especially later when they did another investigation and like he was basically still untouched and they were like nope nothing to see here you know yeah it very well could have been like we don't want to mess with this like powerful family or you know it could very well have been that for sure

um i don't know if they know knew it right away but uh they could have yeah and been like oh yeah she was troubled that's it um so it gets worse because what's even more infuriating is that the garbage room where she landed they didn't check anything they didn't they didn't take the trash bags around her to see if like maybe she went with something else like maybe she was throwing away some of the broken glass from the apartment who knows uh but they didn't check anything they didn't check her surroundings um the trash bags nothing uh it gets worse they didn't take her phone and laptop in for testing until three months later oh my god and it took them two and a half years before they actually analyzed them what i know it's like worthless worthless what so like by 2013 they had a guess they were like i guess we'll finally check her emails yeah okay i'm sorry that sounds like that sounds

like a couple dirty cops or dirty dirty rich people doing some exchanges of goods something shady especially because as for the blood in the apartment they never fucking checked it or tested it for dna they just were like in i'm sorry in 2013 they did not check blood all over the apartment of a dead person who was found in the trash 10 but yes yes sorry 2010 there were small amounts of blood but that's almost sketchier to me because I'm like why were there small amounts of blood throughout the apartment also why was there blood on your lap I'm still trying to wrap my head like who like slices their foot open or something I was like let me like fill out and let me well and that's part of the email well that's part of the thought too is like maybe i mean if she

so if she was kind of in a state or on drugs like maybe she did cut herself oh you're right wasn't like what you know what i mean cognizant of the pain yeah but then again what if they got into a fight and he cut he got a cut and then he went on her computer to Google, like how to get rid of a body in a trash chute. And they never tested the blood. Traces of his shit. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. They could have literally checked the laptop, which they didn't for two and a half years and the blood. And they didn't. The fact that people know there was blood in this apartment and the police feel like they immediately reverted back to like that John Mulaney bit of like cops in the thirties where they're like, mop it up oh what a mess back to my hunch like are you fucking kidding you can't you cannot tell me that that's uh that there wasn't something shady happening behind the

scenes basically just decided it was suicide didn't want to bother with it and then once things kind of got rolling they were like well we already decided it's a suicide it's just too much work to really bother. It's not even that hard. The evidence is literally everywhere in the, just pick some up and put it in a little vial or a Q-tip. Yeah. And watch a CSI.

Don't worry. I know enough that like, you don't need much to, to literally just take it to an office and check the DNA. Yeah. So obviously Lorne, Phoebe's grandfather is like, like what the and he's an ex detective so he's like what the fuck truly so he calls the chief of police directly to try and uh

to he doesn't want to file a formal complaint he calls the chief of police to be like listen i'm going to talk to you directly um but instead of like an apology or like an explanation basically the guy just says i have total faith in my men and uh that's it so he doesn't even get like an explanation or anything also like your faith is whack dude like what are you talking about meanwhile lauren is like trying to test like trash shoots with like test subjects um so ant continued to act strange uh he basically was like really weird he's his sorry phoebe's friend said he was able to like turn his emotions on and off pretty rapidly for no good

reason um and yeah a major rift formed between the families they actually had their own separate funerals and memorial services like which i'm like get her name out of your mouth man if you're not gonna come to the family service like truly way truly um so aunt's family hosted theirs at a yacht club and according to friends who went it was like really cold and sterile and like didn't feel like personal to phoebe at all um and on the other hand phoebe's family did like a really beautiful norwegian um funeral where he they had a boat carved and at a lakeside. They did a farewell service, put her ashes and letters from family and friends, draped the boat in marigold and pushed it into the lake, which I was like, that's just beautiful. Like what peaceful men do. That's I know.

Also, I was gonna like not trying to sound ignorant, but in in my head like if it's like in some magical place like iceland or nor like like uh norway like i just imagine it's like a viking funeral with a viking funeral so i was gonna say and then you said they like put basically put her out to sea in a boat and i was like holy shit it's kind of a little like and then they set it on fire no they didn't set it on fire i was like oh just draped it in marigolds like wonderful i know it's really beautiful um so essentially it was really tough because again anne's family's like big kahunas and basically he was friends with her his family was friends with like all the top lawyers in town so like they couldn't even get a fucking decent lawyer

to represent them cal surprise yeah and they had to hold fundraisers to even like pay their legal bills uh so they did an inquest and they found like that the the bruises weren't accounted for in the bruising on the arms wasn't accounted for in the coroner's original report um and another pathologist noted that the bruising is typically seen when someone is holding another person's arms really aggressively so it could have been like maybe carrying them to the to the chute or dragging trying to lift her maybe yes exactly like put your hands around their arms um and when phoebe died she had a therapeutic amount of still knocks which is like the equivalent of ambien basically okay

in her blood so she had basically been taking just like a normal dose of like ambien which to be fair like i've known people who take ambien and it can really it can rock your world yeah yeah especially if you're drinking sure alongside it um so she did have uh like a small amount of still knocks or ambien in her blood and she had 0.16 blood alcohol so she did have uh like a small amount of still nox or ambient in her blood and she had 0.16 blood alcohol so she was at the time of her death time three times the legal driving limit of alcohol in her system so she was intoxicated for sure and on like the equivalent of ambient so under that context or in that context you can maybe imagine like you know people sleepwalk people

do weird things like yeah maybe she was just you know quote unquote not in the right mind and like i mean i did this i get it like i yeah truly maybe truly maybe but like maybe i that's like to me like a like an 80 20 situation yeah yeah yeah i don't think that's the answer personally yeah one thing seems to make more sense to me yeah i agree and even the doctors at the inquest were skeptical because they were basically saying like uh it seems like you'd be less likely to complete a very difficult task like a physical labor of getting yourself in a trash chute if you were on sleeping pills and drunk you know it seems like you wouldn't i can't do that at my best energy level like let alone here knock yourself the

fuck out and try to lift yourself okay no yeah so i mean again people do weird things on ambient but like this is just next level and so they were like it was really fishy um also phoebe was claustrophobic so they were like i don't think in like her subconscious she would get inside a trash chute that seems like not like her at all right so when phoebe was found this is another weird fact that like just somehow got ignored during the initial investigation quote-unquote investigation so when phoebe was found her jeans were halfway down her thighs and there was no uh uh sign of sexual assault so it's just like why like there's it's just really strange because if she had gone head first then you can understand why maybe her pants had slid up sure but she went down feet first so like how did her pants get down her legs it's just an

odd um seemingly her pants were down her legs before she got in the trash chute in in my mind which again like i'm making up an entire situation that it doesn't even matter if it's relevant to the story i've just already decided this is how my brain works um i feel like maybe someone thought that if they took the clothes off then like it then she might look like she was a little more crazed or something. And it would almost like fit a profile of like her definitely being medically induced in some way. Or like,

maybe they thought that she would slide down faster without pants on. I don't know. I have no idea. But yeah, but they were like halfway on. It was just weird. Cause it was like, and then gave up and then was like,

okay, this is too much. I don't yeah maybe i mean maybe i i also wonder like okay so but the other thing that i find interesting is if your pants are halfway down your legs you're not lifting your legs six feet in the air that's an you know what i mean that's like because if your pants are not even on all the way like it's hard enough to climb into a when my pants are half off i can't even like walk across the room no i fall directly onto my face yeah exactly exactly so it's just weird and again there was no evidence of sexual assault um no one could really answer this question um maybe somebody said like maybe once she had fallen she tried to take them off remember she was still

alive when she fell like maybe she was trying to like tie off her foot or something exactly that was one of the thoughts like maybe she's trying to rip them to stop the bleeding um so again really strange so the inquest spanned three weeks um aunt only attended twice once to give evidence and once as a spectator and after all of that the coroner still found even though the doctors and all that uh testified he found that it was an accidental death so he didn't change his mind wow um and basically phoebe's family was like listen this coroner made up his mind from day one he wasn't going to change it uh so it's just really sad um and so since phoebe's inquest and the launch of this podcast phoebe's fall that i mentioned um the victorian government has pledged to reform the coroner's act um so that's at least you know

one good thing out of this obviously phoebe's grandfather has said like that is not enough you know sure um understandably um and ant has moved on i mean either way whether he did it or not which like again to be clear he's never been formally suspected but um he moved on so you know either way good for him however so he got remarried uh then he got divorced then he started dating again but then the most shocking thing not the most shocking but a pretty shocking thing happened in june of 2018 aunt's girlfriend 25 year old bailey schneider was found dead in her home okay and it was ruled a suicide shut the fuck up okay that's well that's the smoking gun right there fucking fishy so basically uh this is like from crime junkie but she lived at home with her parents and on

friday she'd gone to a party um also she was 25 she was also the same age and there was still that age gap it almost feels like he's like almost exact age it's like he's got an mo yeah so she got home around 8 30 or 9 like in the morning her parents saw her they passed ways and then later on when they got home they found her slumped on the kitchen floor dead with a cord around her neck now this is the wildest thing police ruled her death a suicide by hanging however there was not one item in that kitchen where she could have hanged herself from i was gonna say i have a guaranteed hunch that there was something tied around her neck and nowhere it could have nowhere connected to hanged her yes

exactly so it's like it's just like an extra fuck you because like, if you're gonna cover up a murder, like at least pretend to put some elbow grease in it. Like, yeah, you're not even trying. Like, I'll put this here for like the aesthetic and like, I it doesn't matter because I'm gonna get away with it anyway. Like, that's just like the most narcissistic part of it all. It's awful. So yeah, basically, there was nothing in the room to hang herself from.

They didn't take any evidence. They just decided it to hang herself from they didn't take any evidence they just decided it was a suicide they didn't take her phone and it took the family months of fighting before the police even took the phone as evidence so uh again like i'm not saying it's aunt it doesn't have to be him but like maybe it's someone affiliated with the family maybe it's somebody else an outsider a friend who knows like, it's just really weird that this happened, especially twice. Yeah. To, like, quote unquote, suicides that are questionable at best. Well, now it also makes sense things earlier I didn't totally understand them of, like,

oh, why she's dying her hair black and shit. Because, like, for someone who's, you know, probably who was thinking of fleeing, she probably got in a dispute of some physical version with him at some point i guarantee he threatened like do you know who my family is like you don't get to leave me yeah i can imagine that conversation having happened so she probably felt stuck and was like trying to just force herself to fit into the family because she probably felt like she couldn't leave anymore yeah it's and with the the emails to her mom saying like i'm i might need to leave the country yeah it makes so much sense but then you mix that with like the therapist was saying you know she was in a really terrible mental state she was

drinking on benders heavily she was taking recreational drugs and ambien and had already a history of you know mental illness it's like i wonder what i wonder what the um i mean i you know i hate to pry to into a new person or a new victim but like um i would be interested to see what the mental history of his other girlfriend that died was because it would be interesting to see if his mo are people who conveniently would have done this or, or like had more probable cause to seem off or unstable. So if something were to happen, the finger could be quickly pointed somewhere else. I wonder like,

if that's like, okay, they're much younger than me. And also, I mean, I don't, I want to make it clear. I don't give a shit like about like age differences and all that,

but it's just interesting. Coincidentally, that both people happen to be like 15 years his junior and they both died by very suspicious suicides so i wonder if there's also a mental history thing he tends to go for yeah i i'm not sure uh but the fact that like basically the the second quote-unquote suicide like couldn't have been a suicide is like the wildest part to me because i'm like with the first one yes people you know with elisa lamb and stuff like you want to believe some fantastical story but mental illness is a fucking killer sometimes

and like if she was really suffering or you know if she had an undiagnosed you know bipolar or things like that that can lead you to do manic things especially when you're on substances like i'm not saying he did it because it's like i understand the nuance of having being on drugs having a dependency problem like mental illness but then to have the second person quote unquote hang herself from nothing is like wait wait wait that part i can't it just i mean push aside but then it's like, yes, I understand. I like to think that we both are active allies for those in the mental illness community or mental health community. Not mental illness community. Yikes.

But, like, obviously, like, mental health could have been a factor or could have been the whole story for all we know but this second one happening just completely like i don't the mental health part doesn't even matter to me for me i found that really fishy yeah i don't even care like it's i i personally think like absolutely not did it have anything to do with her own personal health yeah and like again who knows if like i mean listen i watch all these shows how to get away with murder the uh scandal and all that like maybe shonda rimes style like there's another person in the family who's a killer and anybody he dates like they tar who know like i'm not saying it's him but i'm saying something fishy is happening here and uh it's but again also if he did kill her like why there's not really a clear reason um like i guess maybe in a fit of anger like they got into a fight and he

pushed her down the chute and yeah i mean that would make sense i guess um but there's other than that like i guess not really that much evidence i mean the family even liked him it's not like they were like he was such a terrible jerk i personally i mean again there's no like real clean-cut evidence of this but i kind of i really have a weird feeling that it's like some sort of serial killer thing where he has an mo and he goes after people who already have this kind of storyline or like dark past and like they're kind of reckless so if they were to leave out of nowhere no one would really be surprised and uh i again it has nothing to do with the story you've just told i just and also i'd like to be clear like this guy was not ever formally um considered a suspect and like

we are not saying he is because podcasts have been sued for less uh but no so i'm certainly not saying that but yeah no and it's very i find it also very fishy i will say i find it also extremely fishy um and just the whole thing together plus the second girlfriend is like what are you doing what's going on um either that or you're like the most unlucky man alive somehow you know it's like i don't know why i have such intense feelings about it this is just such a juicy like juicy in a bad way story i know anyway i'm sorry if i'm coming off intense i just like no no it's i just it's too i understand also like we do not want to get sued and i'm not saying i'm not saying anyone's a serial killer i'm just saying like if i were to put all the pieces together in my head if this were a law and order episode i would assume if i were guessing the end of this it would end with it not being the victim's fault here uh or you

know them being responsible for it in any way i think it's just too perfectly convenient okay but if i were writing the story it would be you'd think it's the boyfriend and then it's like the mom or something and she like has a vendetta against his girlfriends that's just hollywood baby that's like he has a type but somebody else is after them no okay anyway who knows this is uh clearly a mystery for a reason so uh these are like the last bullets years after her death christina hample um his uh his sister aunt's sister uh posted a facebook photo of phoebe she wrote i just stumbled across my favorite pic of beautiful phoebe i miss you darling you are a fragile little flower that no one watered you and your family were let down by the justice system and those

who represent it i can only hope that the truth will come out so they may have some peace and it was only up for 12 hours and was then deleted so it's like a little weird that either she deleted it or someone told her to delete it but also just a little strange that she deleted it pretty quickly um so it's also hard to be even sure what happened because like the evidence was never collected so like we don't even know half the story basically um but if you listen to phoebe's fall the podcast it's a six episode series and it has a lot of detail they interview phoebe's family members and friends so you can hear it firsthand um but anyway that is the story of phoebe handshook i'm sorry that was long and we have technical issues no it's it's not you i was just like screaming random information at you i just it's so weird it's too weird it's too weird because like it

really could be a mental health thing sure it really could be um a you know a family that happens to know enough dirty cops in some way i mean it just just be like why was nobody picking up the blood and looking at evidence i don't it's infuriating that alone makes me think like okay so this is not as innocent of a case as it seems in my head allegedly but if you think about it so many of these cases go that way where it's like guess what nobody got the cct footage guess what they just assumed right like i feel like there's so many mishandlings and this one's just like such a you know crazy example because it's a trash shoot but i feel like a lot of times like they're just like man it's a suicide this one's also i think just more shocking because it's like it's not

like you had to go digging for evidence it was literally in front of your very eyes it was like like it wasn't like oh it's so blatant what is this about we have to go open an investigation and really go digging for stuff it's like there is blood everywhere like there's blood you don't have to try broken glass there is literally trash bags already in trash bag like there's trash evidence in trash bags for you to just pick up and like nobody even like open them i think that's why it's more shocking because like yeah okay so there's no cctv footage wow shocker that's happened a million times like yeah it just it's so it's so gross that the the murder was so wild like a trap or the death i should say it was so wild like that alone too it's like wait so you

saw this person falling down a trash chute and you were like okay we don't need any more information it's like if somebody or a hanging where it wasn't wasn't attached to anything like i would literally be like how okay so clearly this body is on the floor where did they fall from oh nothing just wild i'm like how also like how many people have died in real life by having like a rope tied around their neck and they're being strangled like there's like or listen i'm listening to an audiobook where that exact thing happened and you know what there could have literally been like strangulation marks all over that body from another person and they would have been like well we don't have enough evidence like at that we didn't take any evidence at this point i have like if they weren't willing to do that for the first girlfriend like i have no faith in how

they handled the second one so like no it's just really icky and gross and terrible and i have no idea what happened and i really really really hope that it wasn't a mental health thing because that just makes it extra sad but um I mean I want to believe like I hope it's not a guy I hope it's not someone murdering his partner but I I don't I I don't know but it's just so sad I mean I'd like to talk to his ex-wife and be like what do you not like you know but just be like what do you think like what what, you know, but just be like, what do you think? Like, what is his personality behind closed doors? Yeah.

The one he married in between the two deaths. I want to know, like, what she thinks. Yeah. I just, I want to, I really hope it was all accidental. But, like, I, I don't know. I mean, there's, there's only so much. So, like. I feel like twice is becoming a pattern.

Like, especially with death. Like, quote-unquote suicide. Also, like, if it were substance abuse for her, or if she was, you know, like, not properly medicated for something else, like, really going on, then, like, why wasn't that, like, was that in the tox report? And they, like, said, like, how much shit was in her

other than, like, one Ambien? Like, I guess Ambien's crazy but you know it's she was pretty drunk so that part i guess you know mixed with ambien and you don't know how a body's gonna react like how each individual will react to that but you're just watching me so frustrated because i don't have an answer i'm just like i know that's really heated because i'm like maybe it's this one but maybe it's not this one i'm very these are the most fascinating to talk about but also like the most frustrating because you're like well fuck like anyway at the end you don't have an answer so hopefully someday they do get an answer because i can't imagine being the family like i can't imagine oh i'm as a stranger who just heard about it i'm pissed i

can't imagine exactly exactly so to reiterate we don't we're not uh claiming any one of them is what happened i have my uh my personal suspicions my personal hunch um but jesus like i'm just mad yeah i definitely have grievances above all else of like oh there could have been so much more information and like yeah they're probably it probably wouldn't be a mystery if exactly a certain group of people just did their fucking job just like got the footage of the hallway to see if she was alone walking to the garbage bada bing bada boom wow anyway on that note i'm so sorry i really hope i didn't bother anybody because i started screaming about mental health and i'm hoping i said nothing wildly offensive no no no i mean i think everyone knows should know where we stand on that topic um anyway I really hope I didn't bother anybody because I started screaming about mental health and I'm hoping I said nothing wildly offensive.

No, no, no. I mean, I think everyone knows, should know where we stand on that topic. Anyway, I just got, this is like one of the first ones that you've done where I got like really heated. Like I am so upset I don't have an answer. But great. Well, that being said, I'm going to go scream into a pillow now. Thank you guys for. I'm going to go knock my feet on the floor oh

wow i thought i couldn't feel worse and now you've combined both issues i've seen you're gonna have weird dreams tonight yikes i'm gonna start hearing knocking on doors and think you're like walking on walls my feet are coming okay well thank you guys so much if you want to uh follow us we have and that's why drink.com our socials are at wbd podcast um go buy our comic book go buy our comic book we have some some some some merch left but yes we have koozies and a comic book go buy it at wbd merch.com and that's why we drinkご視聴ありがとうございました