And That's Why We Drink - E231 A Royal Jalapeño Crib and the Worst Quilt Ever Ever Quilted

Episode Date: July 11, 2021

Welcome to episode 231 where we share Something Corporate facts... we mean new, wild paranormal and true crime stories! This week Em covers a haunted lady in different color attire than the usual white or gray, the Brown Lady of Raynham Hall. Then Christine covers the extremely disturbing murder of 12 year-old Shanda Sharer by Indiana teens. We may also have quite a lengthy update on the love life of Christine's Sim... and that's why we drink! Listen on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts! Please consider supporting the companies that support us! Just go to Canva.me/atwwd to get your FREE 45-day extended trial!Visit mejuri.com/drink for 10% off your first order!Go to DAILYHARVEST.com/DRINK to get up to $40 off your first box!Through August 1st, 2021, you can get $20 off your first purchase of $100 or more at Rothys.com/DRINKTry 5 pairs of glasses at home for free at warbyparker.com/drinkStay fresh, stay clean with Native by going to NativeDeo.com/atwwd, or use promo code atwwd at checkout, and get 20% off your first order!

you ready okay ready set and go oh hold on ready set go wow she's gotten so much nicer she's calmed down a little bit it's like every week that zoom is putting in a new update because they keep getting complaints about this voice. Most of you don't know what we're talking about, but it's Zoom yells at you every time you record. And she's really taken some anger management courses and calmed down a bit. She has. She's learned. She's discovered propranolol.

You know, she's having a good time. She's having a good time. Hi, Christy. I haven't seen you in so long. I missed you so much i was being a real creep and like i knew you didn't really have a good internet but i was like stalking your instagram to see if you were posting from the bahamas i took actually so little pictures of the bahamas i don't know if it will ever officially be on record that i went

i like i well i saw on facebook that linda posted some and you were in the background. So I think that's enough of a like, I trust that it exists. It would at least hold me in court. Like, that's enough. Yeah. Yeah. I had a I had a okay time. I say okay, because I was also very violently ill. So I don't know what I was expecting. Because I've been inside for so long I think like all of the travel my body was like what the fuck is this yeah why are you doing this to me I mean you called me the day the morning you got back and you were like hello it's me and I was like oh no and got flu to 2.0 here we go you know the last two times I've been sick first of all I'm proud of myself because I've been waiting since flu to get sick again to see how long it took me and it took me almost three years. So like, or took me over two years. So I'm happy about that. 19. It was 2019. March 2019. And yeah, July

2021. So I'm proud of myself. I did not get sick for two whole years during a pandemic. But wow, both of those really kicked my ass. And they both started with Florida. So I don't know. Wow, Florida is, you know, you know, fill in the blank. I know. How are you? I catch me up.

Why do you drink this week? What's the 411? Oh, thanks for asking. Well, it's here. It's hit me. Pregnancy is kicking my butt. Welcome to my world now. I was wondering, I was wondering because when we started recording or when we got on Zoom today,

you looked I you you did not seem like yourself. Okay, well, no. Well, yes, but no. Also, because wow. Have you ever had RLS? I thought you were gonna say have you ever had a baby in your belly pregnant wound rls oh restless leg syndrome oh my god so i used to get it all the time like just in high school and like growing like in college it was always an issue and so it's it's something that like 30 of people experienced during pregnancy apparently and it is kicking my butt like it is making me so miserable that i posted i literally went at like 1am last night I went on to our close friends on Instagram which is like our Patreon folks and I was like help me does anybody know what to do so explain if you don't mind explain to an ignoramus

as me what it makes it so is it just like your muscles are sore after so long because you don't stop doing it or it's just distracting? It's almost like, so have you ever had it? It's so hard to explain. I guess not because I've never had. You would know. It's like one of those things where like the second, because I used to see commercials for it and I was like, what a weird, dumb thing. And then like the night, the first night I ever had it, I was like, oh, I know exactly

what this is. So it's basically like you experience this like uncontrollable and it's usually at least for me when i'm so tired that i'm about to fall asleep and um it's like you experience like uncontrollable need to like move your legs and they feel like burning itching like oh painful and it's almost like if you don't move them it like hurt it's like physically painful um and for me they get really hot i mean it's it's and it's like on you're just unable to sleep um and so i had i literally last night was like wrapping my legs in cold towels i was like walking around the cold tile to like see if that would help i was stretching can you can you take

ice packs and like strap them to your legs yeah so i did ice packs but that it like still didn't work and then i tried heating pad that didn't work. So what I ended up doing, which by the way, fun fact, if you're if you're suffering from this, and you don't know what to do, this actually really worked. I took icy hot, and I put it all up my feet and legs. Interesting. And that actually seemed to work for once. And I don't know if that's just because it'd been over an hour, and I was just so miserable, or if it actually worked. But it's man, I tell you, it kicks your butt. It's happening right now? No, it's only when at least for me, it's only when I go to sleep. Oh, good. I was gonna say, yo, if you need to take a lap, like I get it. No,

it's it's it's like a sleep disorder thing. And it's a neurological thing. And nobody really understands it. They think it might be like an iron deficiency or Yeah, nobody really knows. The only thing i've ever had was uh like you know i'm i'm a fidgeter so i'll that's it i've never had pain with it though so that sucks it's it's so hard to explain it's like a painful itching but like it doesn't go i don't know anyway hey you graduated you you clearly like tell me you're 30 without telling me you're 30 is now all those like weird commercials make sense you know that's true that's true all the like price is right commercials suddenly apply to me like

all the medicare ones and all that yeah um and also i have like pelvic pain i can barely walk sometimes i mean oh shit i'm i'm hurting man and what's the pelvic pain like because there's a human head in there yeah there's a human body and it's like two and a half pounds now or more or something i don't know so it's it's starting to big kid starting to weigh on me um yeah so anyway otherwise it's okay is this the trimester where they like just explode in size so apparently they've the baby has grown four times in the last like month or four times its size in a month or so. So it's like just suddenly gotten really big. And then all of a sudden it's like, it's like, hi.

It's like, hello, let me out. And then when this comes out, I'll officially be in my third trimester. So it's the final stretch. Aren't you supposed to just be nothing but uncomfortable for the next several months? Yeah, that's what they say. And I kept joking like, well, everyone says that. So knock on wood, I'm feeling fine. And then one day I woke up and was like, I don't know. I literally said like two days ago, I was like, oh, Christine, like, are you feeling?

I was feeling great when we talked. Yeah. Not anymore. So quickly. All of a sudden, the little baby's got ears and went, oh, really? You're feeling that great? Okay. Shit, I'm not doing my job right.

Oh, and before I forget, I'm going gonna ask you why you drink in a moment but i wanted to mention before we forget that we did a gift we finally did our birthday gift exchange which we never even talked about oh my god we put it on patreon and it's it's um it was just a blast because our patrons got us freaking i should have known i we should have known that they were gonna knock it out of the park once more because i never know what to expect because it's always something so out of left field. But every time I'm like, whoa, I had no idea that this is exactly what I wanted. But like completely spot on. They literally mailed us like creepy, like personalized creepy coats for each of us.

They picked out patches and assembled a creepy coat. Whoever was the assembler by the way is like the ultra avenger at this point in my mind like nailed it out of the park there was a whole ass coat for me which was also custom because it had buffalo plaid inside yep they had a coat for you they had a coat for eva customized lemons they had like a spooky nasa cat one for eva and they had one for the baby. So we can have a geo, a bandana. And then I pulled out a baby denim coat,

like a creepy biker. I burst into tears. It has like an, and that's why we stink patch. Like they were all like, like they were personalized ones, copy and paste copy. Oh yeah.

I got a control C and then the little baby one had a control V. Anyway, I cried on camera. So if you want to watch that, it's on our Patreon, but just thank you to our patrons who set that up um it was just so wonderful and personal and like special i allison and i had so much fun at because i thought i'd see i think i was like not processing it when we first were looking at it because i thought i had seen every patch and then we went through it again yes and with or through or through with Allison and I was like, oh, my God, that's so fun.

Oh, my God, that's so fun. Oh, my God, look at this one. Oh, my God. Yeah. Every time I look at it, there's either a new patch or a pin on there that everyone like hand selected for us. So it's like completely customized, completely like the thought that went into it is insane. There's literally one on mine that is a pill, like an antidepressant breaking open and filled

with lemons. Like what? How do you even find something like that? mind that is a pill like an antidepressant breaking open and filled with lemons like what how do you find something like that i mean also one of one of mine was the london fog society oh yeah uh london fog friday logo so like i know we have uh some really wonderful artistic listeners who actually like have their own etsy shops and they took our logos turned them into patches and then those were on our jacket oh my i mean they're so personal and perfect and the baby one is gonna it's hanging already in the little nursery it's very sweet and special baby come home in that i was gonna say that should be the hospital outfit like let me put on like just tell the nurse just just leave this here just

drape it onto the crib until the baby's here just swaddle it in this denim please uh sorry there's like pins in it no there's probably no pins in that one also let's not forget on the back on the inside backing of it there was also like one whole sheet that people had written messages for us and they just sewed that whole sheet of messages into the back of our jacket yeah and there was a whole website that went with this too we got sent a link it's called everybody sent us or something there was a whole website that went with this, too. We got sent a link where everybody sent us. It's called a kudo board or something. It looked like our own Tumblr feed or something. And it was just people just sending in pictures and nice messages. It was insane.

So we got really just like emotional worked up. And we had recorded already. So we hadn't been able to talk about it. So I wanted to give a shout out for that. And then Em and I gave each other our gifts. Yeah. And that was really fun. And that's also in the video and was really cool i mean one of them is right here it's my i was warrant of arrest for being

a witch which i just love i got it from salem it's apparently a copy of it's this the same look or the same vibe as the i already measured it so i'm gonna get a frame it's like a weird shape uh weird size so i'm gonna get a frame for it and hang it right here um but i don gonna get a frame it's like a weird shape uh weird size so i'm gonna get a frame for it and hang it right here um but i don't have a frame for it yet but that's amazing it's so cool people are gonna see it and be like oh my god what school did you go to and you're gonna be like the school of witchcraft they're gonna be like what school did you go to in 1725 like why is this so beat up um what was i gonna say about oh you're the president that you got me the the rock that's what i'm gonna say christine got me a fucking rock for my birthday you're welcome it's it has

while i've been sick game changer wait really oh good oh yeah oh that makes me i had nothing to do in bed all day so anyway oh should we talk about the the the big gift we got each other or like the the thing we got if you would like to or should we not should we not maybe we can tell it on the next show since we already talked so much sure okay so do you want we'll announce what we got each other the big gift in the next episode um but do you have a reason why you drink this week amethy i i do it is uh it is christine focused it's christine christine forward it's's got notes of, you know, the America's Her scene shift. A sweat.

And yeah, okay. Got it. Yes, actually. Because now that I have come out of the closet. What? That I do Sims streams. Oh, I was like, hang on, hang on, hang on. You need to update me first.

Okay. Yeah, I was called out. I was like, hang on, hang on, hang on. You need to update me first? Okay. Yeah, I was called out. I was found out. And so now people know that I do the SimStreams. A significant amount of people came to this week's SimStream. Oh, see, I keep missing it. How do I know when it's happening? It's every Monday at 5.

Oh, fuck. I just need to like. Eight your time. I just need to like pay attention. Well, you really don't need to be there because I'm about to just update you on what you missed. Oh, great. Actually, let's do that instead. And then you can.

I know you're going to go back and watch it. I am. You, Miss Christine, have a girlfriend. What? Lucky me. What happened to me? Everything. Look look i could not have played cupid more because i fought for you and you were really wrecking it at one point see you know what people always wanted me to date zb in the in the game and i was like no so it started i was getting

confident and in the game i was just seeing who you would even flirt with so you were flirting with everyone this week well that's how that sounds about right i'm not picky i'm not a picky person you know what's interesting is so there's this one guy he's like a default character on the sims i don't know who he is but i hate him oh jay huntington the third and wow he cannot take a hint but like he is so interested in you and you are not there for it and then anyone with the third i'm like calm down like he has the sweater no no no no no yeah like a cardigan around his shoulders no no no um he uh he can't take a hint and then i was like let's see like how fluid we are in this game with even zach bagans and so I had Zach flirting with Jay Huntsman to the third oh he got rejected if I felt really rejected okay did he jump into the pool and take the ladder out himself he uh he really actually was quite defeated um but then uh he did the two of you flirted with

each other I would never let it get farther than that but i just wanted to see what where it went um and then there was like a neighbor walking by and i was like let's see like what the plan is here and for one of your options it said for some of the characters i don't know whose sexuality they're gatekeeping here uh but like either one person clearly isn't interested in that in that person or the other. Because when you click on certain characters, it won't give you the romance option. So I don't know. Maybe we just don't. Maybe we just don't. Maybe there's just certain like personality traits that don't mesh or something.

Maybe. Or I don't know enough about Sims that maybe people are defining like who they'd be attracted to and who they're not. And I'm still trying to figure out who you and Zach are attracted to. So every time it says that there's no romance option, I'm like, is it, is it for you or is it for them? I don't know.

Oh, good point. Good point. So either way, I don't know how it works, but, um, you,

I clicked on one neighbor person and while I was like playing for you, it said romance. And I went, Oh my God, absolutely. And you went, you went on a oh my god absolutely and you went you went on a whole ass date like you traveled away from the house you went to a bar the house okay that now that means something very serious you went to a juice bar you went to a lounge and you guys had

so much fun you didn't even make it into the building you were just talking talking talking but at one point you got real nervous because i think you made a joke that she didn't think was funny and all of a sudden i don't know where you start like this like green vapor started pouring out of you and i was like is she is christine stinky did she put on her native everyone in the comments was like christine needs to put on native do you oh no anyway uh we you're not officially girlfriends yet but uh you had a great time i you uh got up to level two in charisma so i'm very proud of you oh my god i was really doing all i could for you so i hope you enjoy that if you'd like to see christine flirt with an avatar, and she also had no control of it because I was controlling it,

then go watch my Sims 3. I trust you with my romantic life. Don't worry. Christine, look, you helped me with my romantic life. That's right. Here, here, you know? Wait, that's so cute. Oh, I feel so happy.

Thank you for spicing up my online presence. I'm trying. Look, well, let's see how it... She might break up with you at any second we don't know so apparently i stink which is like yeah we fix it we fix it it's okay you're in the clear thank god and there's that that's why i drink uh that's why i drink now too so yay and yikes all at the same time perfect well uh and then i i guess that's it we do and for those of you who don't, we'll also say this at the end again.

But we do have our live show coming up on the 17th. So please come to that. It's at 4 o'clock Pacific, 7 o'clock Eastern. It's a live stream like our past virtual live shows. $10 a ticket. And it's going to charity. So please help us out. We would really appreciate it.

It's really, really special and fun. We're trying to get the word out as fast as possible because it's coming up soon. It's July 17th. Did we say that already? Yes. It's a Saturday and it's a Poetry Slam charity auction. We're going to read listener stories. It's going to be so much fun.

And if you want a ticket, bit.ly slash ATWWD Cryptid Slam. We also have a link on our socials for it. Yes. Yeah. And we have some really fun, like we even have two types of dildos, I think. That's how fun it's going to be. It's definitely a more, not your mama's and that's why we drink. That's right.

Exactly. And one of my favorite, so there's a lot of small businesses that are contributing product or, you know, their own products. And and like it's just really special and cool and so you can um their auction we're auctioning those off and like my favorite jewelry noelle walsh uh is her name and she's great and i have so much of her jewelry but she made us custom milkshake and wine earrings um there's just so much fun stuff so if if you want to check it out, please do. It's Saturday. It's $10 a ticket. Again, like I've said, proceeds are all going to charity. So it's going to be a good time. And if you would like to submit your cryptid poetry slam, you can do so at atwwd

from our couches at gmail.com. And we will be picking some of the best ones we'll be reading them during this poetry slam and uh auctioning off some super fun things including many wooden dildos also uh a lemon ouija board oh yeah that's right god there's so much cool shit and um so i think some signed shit too from us i don't know but also uh if you have a story of a personal encounter with a cryptid we're reading those too so it it's not just poetry, but also like listener stories. So send it in. If you have an encounter with America's Hersey and Shifter. God forbid.

Please don't send that in. I don't want to know. All right. So here's my story for the day. This is from the uk this is the brown lady of raynham hall what uh also let's clarify early brown lady means the lady wearing brown i see just so anyone so like the lady in white the lady in brown yes situation. Except this time we call her the brown lady, which I don't love. Also, just only like half a step up, but I'm very happy I'm not reporting on either a woman in black or a woman in white for once. Like at least it's just a different color.

Or red. Sometimes it's red. There's always a brunette in a red dress in a hotel and I don't get it. Yep. Well, today we get the Lady in Brown. So Raynham Hall is one of the oldest buildings in Norfolk. And it's been owned by the same family for over 400 years or almost 400 years. And the Lady in Brown, as I'm going to call her, she was she said to be the spirit of a woman named dorothy walpole who died uh over 100 years ago her brother was uh britain's first prime minister and so that might be how people know her

uh her brother was robert walpole i'm probably saying the name wrong no i recognize that name yeah okay well then this is the story of his sister, who is also a famous ghost. So she's a famous ghost. He's a prime minister. Power couple. Look at that family. Yeah. Power siblings.

So real quick, I just wanted to give you some background on Dorothy before we talked about the ghost story. So Dorothy was born in 1686. She is the 13th child to the Walpoles. So Dorothy was born in 1686. She is the 13th child to the Walpoles. And she was married to Charles Townshend, who I guess lived near Raynham Hall. Fun fact, Charles has also been known as Turnip Townshend because he brought turnips to England and was involved in their like crop rotation. How fun for him.

Helped introduce them into crop rotation. involved in their like crop rotation or like for him helped introduce them into crop rotation so they charles and dorothy ended up getting married but there's really it's unsure how they ended up married it feels like there's a different story uh or a different um a different version depending on wherever you look uh one of them was that they that char Charles actually lived with the family since he was a kid. And there was like a 12-year gap. So she was a literal baby and he was like a preteen. Cool, cool, cool. And over time as they got older when Dorothy was at the ripe age of 15 and he was 27, they got married basically.

That's one version. Cool. they got married basically um that's one version cool i'm i will say it was like the 1600s so i don't know historically if that was less disgusting i mean it's not the first 15 year old we've seen get married on this show so fair very fair uh the another version is that they had an arranged marriage even though dorothy was repulsed by him oh okay well that was somehow worse even though the other one's a child i don't know yep both of them technically are child i guess if it's an arranged marriage or no that's not true there's still young adults who get arranged marriages i just in my head it sounds like like the father demanded this even though she didn't want to do it so well that could be

but like maybe he's the with an older man i feel like that used to happen with like true small girls like they marry them off to their like friends and business partners and shit so sick okay so and then uh the third one the third version is that they liked each other but i guess the families didn't approve originally i'm going with this version it's just the least upsetting to me uh-huh they went off on their merry ways and had their own lives and then ended up getting back together so charles in this in this story charles married a woman named elizabeth they had like a shitload of children and dorothy ended up apparently because she just lost her mind over the heartbreak of losing

Charles she had some really scandalous behavior during those years one of them was that she hooked up with this guy named Lord Wharton and Lord Wharton apparently is a real pistol his

son created was one of the original founders of the hellfire clubs which i don't know if you know what those are i actually have thought about covering them because they're kind of spooky adjacent yeah but it's basically like i would imagine some version of like bohemian grove where it was like uh high society but nefarious secret club and that his son created those so but lord wharton himself was said according to i think this was steampunk journal they said that lord wharton was like drunkenly broken to a church and defecated everywhere um he apparently gave his wife syphilis from all of his affairs um and basically when his wife died then he got back together with dorothy

so or charles got back together with dorothy after her time with lord wharton and you know running around town being crazy wow so when charles and dorothy finally got together whatever the version of the story you want to pay attention to is they had based on different accounts they had seven to eleven kids all of that are big numbers by the way so even seven kids is too much for me yeah but they had seven to eleven and fun fact the youngest was born at windsor castle oh cool and they needed to borrow a royal crib or a cradle yeah me, me too. Yeah, actually, let's just go to Windsor Castle when your water's about to break. Yeah, just be like, Oh, no, I need a I need a royal crib. I'm just gonna eat a lot of jalapenos on the floor of this castle and see what happens. And then put on this creepy coat. You'll understand. So eventually, the the couple started fighting there are a lot of

rumors that charles reputation is that he was actually trash he was had a real anger issue he apparently was uh an advocate for violence oh that's fun and so the running theory or the running alleged story is that eventually to really get back at dorothy he sent his their kids to live somewhere else so she had no access to them and then locked her away in random hall oh jesus okay um where she died at 40 so she didn't live a super long maybe back then it was a super long life but by 40 she was gone and uh one article from the lineup says that charles actually probably after locking her away held a mock funeral so people wouldn't come looking for her thinking she had already died oh my god and then over time she actually died in the hall from either depending on different sources uh malnourishment literal murder or most frequently they say smallpox oh and not syphilis that wasn't an option because

that was my guess it is apparently not confirmed whether or not she got syphilis from lord wharton got it i just figure with a guy named lord wharton who's spreading stds around like everyone's bound to get it i i there's got to be a joke in there somewhere about lord genital warts and yeah or something you know uh but anyway so it's unclear if she ever contracted anything from him okay but they're saying she probably died from smallpox but there is also you know they assume if he if her abusive husband was locking her away he could have just not fed her or killed her great great great so um there although he charles is said to have this violent temper and been the reason for dorothy's death the current people to be or the current uh

townshends to be living at raynham Hall, they said, quote, people said that Dorothy was locked away and badly treated, but in the 1960s we uncovered paperwork and medical reports suggesting she had a happy life and was much loved. So they say that that's all a story. I'm sure there's other people who say that could have been planted

or whatever. Sure, like forged. Yeah, so who's to say, but there are two sides to every story and fun fact one of the townshend descendants so one of the more recent ancestors are uh to to dorothy and charles his name is senzo and he is one of the audio engineers and producers who has worked with Florence and the Machine, Snow Patrol, U2, and the Rolling Stones. Oh, okay. Casual. Jesus. NBD. NBD. I like how Snow Patrol is in there with like the Rolling Stones. No offense, Snow Patrol, but it's like, wow, what a different era of music. There is a range. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe he was starting with Snow Patrol and like worked his way up to Rolling Stones. Maybe he started at Rolling Stones because of nepotism. And now he's like really humbling himself. And like kind of like actually working with like Bansky Respects instead versus like the fame, you know?

Sure. Yeah. Maybe. who do i always confuse them with something corporate i always do you remember something corporate yeah of course every time i think of snow patrol or something corporate i play the opposite songs oh really yeah so what's snow patrol is hey there delilah right or no that's plain white that's a plain white tease uh something i only something corporate was one of my favorite bands here that's snow patrol. That's Snow Patrol. Yeah. Right? And Something Corporate is the. Chasing cars. Sorry. Is Something Corporate is the predecessor to Jack's Mannequin.

Yes. Yes. So anyway, sorry to. Warped Tour 2004. 2007 and 2010, baby. Sorry, my bad. Jack's Mannequin was always there. Anyway, sorry to Andrewahon if you're listening

to this and i said that they were humbling you yeah ouch sorry sorry you were one of my favorites to be clear i watched you dance on a piano many years in a row um okay so anyway so that's just like a random fun fact about their descendants but basically all that to say dorothy is the brown lady of raymond hall okay so in 1835 so this is like 200 years after she was born and she died in 1726 i think 17 okay so like a little over 100 years later yeah yeah about 111 110 years there There was a Christmas party at Raymond Hall, and two guests, Lucia Stone and Colonel Loftus, they all sound like board game characters to me. It's literally Clue.

Like, I was just thinking the same thing. Like, Colonel, okay, it was the Colonel and the Paul. Colonel Mustard. So they were both at a Christmas dinner party in 1835. They're walking around, and they saw in a corridor, there was a shadow of a woman in an outdated brown dress and they were they like making fun of her like oh what a fucking old school ew she came to this party wearing that are you kidding me store yeah who do you think you are what was goodwill in 1835 like christine i gotta know the petticoats were for 25 cents a piece

um so they saw her in a quarter corridor and uh she was in an outdated brown dress and they originally thought she was another guest at the party but they remember seeing this woman in a brown dress who they didn't see anywhere else that night but they saw her again the following night which makes me think this christmas dinner party lasted like 24 hours shit yeah well i guess maybe it's one of those where like people come and stay at the castle and they have like a fun little like weekend as if i know anything about that i'm like you know how they do that at castles when there weren't cars and highways like i feel like if you were going to come somewhere to like raymond hall like you're gonna stay for a few days right right because you have to take all your stuff and you're listen i

watched down abby and game of thrones you take all your stuff without wheels on the boxes that hold your stuff are you kidding me like can you imagine can you remember the christine can you remember can you remember can you imagine living in a time where you're going somewhere and when you go somewhere you go for weeks and you have to pack weeks worth of shit because there aren't also like washers and dryers like right right right you have to pack stuff and now petticoats and shit petticoats if you're like me and you pack like 30 pairs of underwear for a weekend because you're afraid you're gonna like get all over yourself at some point. Oh.

Do you not do that? I literally went to the Bahamas and I packed like 40 pairs of underwear. I'm terrible at packing. What if I have explosive diarrhea? Like what happens? You never know. Imagine bringing 40 pairs of underwear because you're literally going to be there for 40 days, which means 100 pairs of underwear, by the way. Did they wear underwear?

I was going to say, I don't think it was the same where you just had like 40 pairs of underwear laying around i think they had like fancy you know okay frilly layers and shit you're bringing like five times more than you currently do and also your suitcase doesn't have fucking wheels and also you have to ride a horse all the way there okay but listen inconvenient servants and shit who carried it right like it wasn't like oh i have all these petticoats i have to carry them like okay they had they had these poor people to carry them for them you have a point i really also did uh just completely tangent off sorry about that everyone no no but you're right wheels are great invention wheeled luggage is a great invention i really complain about like having to unpack my one suitcase i brought oh same can you imagine like your whole job is now to unpack like 10 trunks of shit and only there's no elevators btw

i didn't even think about that or air conditioning i mean you would not oh you know survive there look i totally believe in reincarnation but i'm pretty sure that like i took one life in a world where there wasn't air conditioning and i said i'm hanging out in purgatory for another 300 years like literally send me to hell oh wait I'll go back I'll go back when there's some AC invented maybe I was the inventor of AC because honestly it's entirely like you probably invented the refrigerator or something because it would match I mean it's air conditioning for your food those Those are my two favorite things. That's right. Okay, so they're at a party. They think they see someone. And then the following night, aha, that's where we left off.

The following night, Colonel Loftus, he sees this woman again, but this time with, quote, luminescent skin and empty eye sockets. Oh, no, no, no no so different sources told me different things it was clearly just lost in translation which means i don't know which one to believe but people say that her eye sockets were quote dark in her glowing face as in like her face was glowing and the holes where her eyes should be were not glowing or i saw on another website that only her eye sockets were glowing both so bad i don't know which one i want more or less both include eye sockets which i'm not interested in i would like nothing to do with anybody's eye sockets i think i want the dark eye sockets because at least that means like

they're not enhanced and therefore probably the thing it also wants me to focus on um i'm gonna roll with the fact that her face because two different sources said luminescent skin and empty eye sockets and dark in her glowing face so it sounds like those make more those yeah like she's glowing but she doesn't have eyes sort of there you have it yeah okay that's what we're gonna with. Super duper. And I would like a source where it says she has eyes, but I don't get that. I would love that. Is that not an option? Okay, got it.

Apparently after Colonel Loftus saw this apparition, that was the beginning of this building also experiencing doors opening and closing and seeing shadows. Apparently at one point, like animals would freak out just because they didn't know what was going on or they would see something so it's interesting that like it took

200 years for someone's ghost to like kick in because you would think by 200 years they've almost like hit their quota and their time to like head off right i mean not that it matters but oh yes 100 but like still yeah that's weird i if i were to die right now, I wouldn't wait until 2121. No, you would like wait four seconds and show up at my house. Yeah, you would know before I hit the floor because you'd get smacked in the face by something that didn't. My refrigerator would open and I'd be like, oh, fuck. Your air conditioning would go to like the snowflake symbol but no i so i think it's interesting that apparently yeah what a patient ghost that's not me that's not either of us at all like maybe she just had shit to do and she

got bored in heaven and was like okay i guess i'm going back down yeah or maybe they she had to wait for somebody specific to like able to see her. And only this Colonel dude had the sight. The chosen one. The chosen one. The last thing we need is someone named Colonel Woffus thinking that they're the chosen one. A million percent. I had the same thought. Or maybe people were just ignoring ghosts until the 1830s.

Maybe they just thought she was roaming around. Maybe she's around this whole time. It's me. A hundred years. What what's going on can anyone say something should i do i have to take my eyes out for anybody to notice me yo apparently apparently she she said bet i'll do it it worked so um a year later she was seen again by captain frederick marriott uh who was friends with Charles Dickens, by the way. Oh. And he heard about this alleged ghost and intentionally went to Random Hall to investigate in the 1830s. So think of him as Zach Bagans.

Yes, I do. He apparently was a skeptic, but to make sure that he could see something, he stayed in the room where Colonel Loftus said he saw her. And he didn't witness anything until the third night. her um and he didn't witness anything until the third night so while him and two other people in the room were hanging out or i think they were walking up to their i think i don't know what they were doing i guess walking up and down the halls or heading to their bedrooms they saw this woman crying and approaching them and they thought it was one of the women that came with them or one of the employees like walking towards the nurseries. And Marriott tried to hide himself because he thought this was a real woman. And he apparently was in like basically pajamas, like basically half nude.

Yeah. And so for modesty, he tried to hide himself from the woman. He like hid behind a curtain in his 1830s underwear. He hid behind his bedroom door. Oh, my God. A bedroom door and his boxers, I guess. I love that. And those weird little sock suspenders.

Oh, for sure, for sure. And so all three of them hid behind a door, which I think is like low-key queer baiting, and I'm here for it. Oh, my God. And the woman still kept getting closer and closer but as she got closer marriott realized that he recognized her because she had a portrait of there was a portrait of her in his room oh and so then he realized oh you're a ghost and so uh he drew his gun

out of his underwear okay out of his out of his skivvies uh-huh pointed it at an already dead person and then asked what she was doing there and apparently dorothy stopped in her tracks and held a light up to her face which i did not know she had a light to begin with uh she's like conjured a candle i guess and she quote grinned in a malicious and diabolical manner at him no no no aka she probably smiled or wasn't interested in him because she was literally held at gunpoint and he got offended and i'm assuming he just said she had a diabolical malicious intent okay but any ghost that smiles at me i'm gonna be like that's fucking diabolical i don't have any interest in this this is not okay okay spirited smile

from a dead ghost that's fair i guess i've had a ghost smile at me before it was my grandpa so i just assume just kidding i assume like it's different i assume the vibe was that it was actually probably like pretty neutral and he just got like freaked out and like made the story scarier but you know what for all know, she literally doesn't have eyes. Maybe it is pretty diabolical. Okay, but also it sounds so creepy that she was crying and then she just stopped and smiled. Like something about that sounds very sinister, you know? You've completely converted me to your side.

But also how is she crying without eyes? Okay, whatever. You can have tear ducts and no eyeballs, right? Oh, can you? I guess. Doctors, are you there? Can you let us know know are you an eye doctor please finally put your medical degree to use and answer this question for us

um so anyway yeah crying and then also this feels like a different person though because you're yeah maybe they have eyeballs also the face isn't glowing i don't hear anything about a glowing face also where did this light source come from? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a little different MO here. Maybe she's like, okay, finally people are seeing me. I really have to try out all my acts. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

She's been practicing. Anyway, grinned diabolically. And now I'm on your side. And it was 100% malicious. This freaked him out so badly that he ran into the hall and shot at her. But before the bullet hit her, she faded away. And the bullet is still said to be wedged in the corridor's panels. That's actually really cool.

Like, not the shooting part, but the fact that the bullet was still there. That's pretty cool. And that it was shot at a ghost. So, like, we know nobody was going to get hurt also. A bullet I can get behind for sure. Finally. So, Dorothy was not seen again until George IV stayed at Raynham Hall. I didn't see a year for this.

But George IV stayed there and said that she was a pale woman with messy hair. She's dressed in brown. Wasn't like the most like polite description of her. And he said about the experience, quote, I will not pass another hour in this cursed house for I have seen what I hope to God I may never see again.

Oh, shit. Girl, she's not that ugly. Give it a rest. Next time she was seen was 100 years later at another Christmas party. She loves Christmas parties. She just wants to party, man. She, look, it gets chilly out.

She smells like gingerbread in the air. She's ready to throw down. Oh, hell yeah. Remember, in one of those versions, she was like having some scandalous behavior at one point in her life. She knows how to like have a good time. She knows how to get down for sure with some eggnog. And apparently she was seen and given the same description that Colonel Loftus had once given,

that she was in a brown dress. She's wearing a cap this time. She had empty eye sockets. And although nobody else saw her that night, many employees quit after hearing the story, which fair. I get it. And one person was so rattled by the story. And that was the property owner who had actually seen her before

but thought that he was just seeing things and finally someone else said no i just saw that woman and it confirmed for him oh there's a ghost so the property owner wanted to get it checked out but the police never found anything i mean who else would you call i guess he called the police and they were like well if it's a ghost i can't help you and some kids have also claimed to see uh this apparition on the stairs uh another one of the descendants of the townsons or town chins uh her name was gladys and in the 1930s she says that her son and her son's friend saw the ghost on the stairs and they could see the stairs through her um and people so apparently this isn't the only ghost at random hall but this is just the most popular one there

are also the spirits of two children there's a spirit of a dog that you can hear running around and charles son charles the second aka the red cavalier and he has been seen in his old bedroom. And apparently he's very handsome. And we are all the same people just living in different time periods because apparently he was so good looking that a bunch of women intentionally stayed in this haunted house in his room, hoping to like, Oh, hell yeah.

Get a sighting of him. Interestingly, any of the women who were known as like the hotties of the time they never encountered him but the only uh story we have of him actually coming forward to a woman staying in his room was a spinster oh hell yeah he's like i have my type don't judge he smiled and bowed and faded away what a gentleman what a gentleman so anyway that is the the people who have seen this ghost but what the brown lady of random hall is best known for is there's this really popular i'm gonna get my phone and oh oh i can text it to you on my phone okay my internet

is still a little wild uh uh let me see i'm gonna send you the picture because i'm sure you've seen it before brown lady of raynham hall ghost so this has become like a really famous picture of like what it's on covers of a lot of uh ghost books it's i don't know i feel like you've probably seen it at least on a poster or it's some sort of like compilation of ghost pictures i just sent it to you i don't know i i feel like you'll you'll have seen it or at least something similar to it oh oh so it's like an actual i thought it was gonna be like a drawing but it's like an actual photograph yeah so this is like one of the most popular one of the most famous ghost images out there okay well if you're on the youtube um since i don't have editing software i

can't really add it but i'll show you on my phone there it is cool i have blur this isn't working because your blur is on it's a blur of a blur um but yeah so it's one of the more popular like ghost pictures out there and basically it looks like a shrouded woman walking down the stairs essentially and so uh it was taken in the 30s and there was this person named i think i don't know if it's Indra or Andra or Andre. I-N-D-R-E. And some sources also said I-N-D-R-A. Oh, it's probably just Indra.

Indra? Okay. So Indra Sheera. So I mentioned earlier Gladys Townsend talking about how her son and his friends saw something on the stairs. Mm-hmm. her son and his friends saw something on the stairs. So that was in, uh,

that was a story written up by Gladys in true ghost stories. And so Indra Shira is this person who read that article and asked Gladys, Hey, could I come take pictures and visit the area? I am trying to do an article for country life, which I think was a magazine at the time. So Indra Shira came with his friend boss art director lover person maybe i'm unsure maybe just trying to spice things up over here i look i'm always here for the potentially queer elements of a story uh so indra shira came with his friend named captain provond oh hell yeah this guy's gonna

see a ghost for sure like he's already primed for this material he shot pictures they shot pictures all day um like eight hours of shooting pictures together in this building and they never got anything until all of a sudden indra shira claims that there was a mist he saw really quickly on the stairs and he's like quick quick take a picture take a picture and so they got a picture of the stairs and that is the picture that came up oh wow okay so they got some good material out of that wow but they were even joking that they probably saw nothing you know like it was just such a quick flash of a moment that even by the time they registered, they'd seen something and then taken a picture, nothing would come up. And yet that image still showed up.

So fun fact, apparently the flash or the shutter speed, I don't know how cameras work, especially in the 1930s. But apparently the flash, the bulb on this camera only went off at 1 50th of a second. So that's how long it could have taken for this picture to get. They're thinking that this spirit was only there for 1 50th of a second and they by complete luck got a picture of this thing existing

in that one moment. Ooh. Which is also really interesting though from a skeptical perspective of like it was only there for a 50th of a second but you were able to see it, grab your picture, like grab your camera. You know? So anyway

or maybe you could sense it but not see it and then the camera only picked it up. Or maybe it was there for like a second and since the camera takes a 50th of a second it just happened to be within that, I don't know. I feel like maybe it was there for like a second and since the camera takes a 50th of a second it just happened to be within that i don't know i feel like maybe they're longer and they just happen to capture it during that time i don't know yeah i don't know all i know is i felt the need to let everyone know that the bulb moved out of 50th of a second i appreciate the news the update thank you

i don't know what it does but if you're someone into photography let me know if that was special to you if that was special so when they were later when they were later looking through the photos and they saw this thing they consulted with chemists about it to make sure like the photography science of it was accurate and they also had um they had them watch them develop the photo again just so like you right to guarantee that like they weren't doing anything. Or so they claim. The picture went into Country Life Magazine as well as Life Magazine in the US. Nice.

And the picture really blew up. Although it should be noted that it is called the Rainham Ghost, not the Brown Lady of Rainham Hall. So sometimes people will say, oh, that's a different ghost. They don't know what it is but it's not referred to as the brown lady of random ghost which like you can't tell if it's a lady

in brown anyway so right but the pic got really popular the pic the pic got really popular you can tell how i write my notes yeah the picture got really popular and the spr came to investigate um and they this by the way is still considered one of their most flawed investigations because apparently it's just like they did not uh i guess they didn't do it as scientifically as they should have or whatever the case may be but anytime i guess the spr has mentioned this case they're like not one of our proudest moments we did not handle it well so there you have that and a bunch of parapsychologists are also started coming in because they wanted to do their own investigations and one of them

was dr nandor fodor who i eventually want to cover because he's kind of like a harry price uh situation where he knows that name i don't know why though he's been a part of a lot of cases you might i might have mentioned him in the past and it's kind of creeping up on you but so i want to cover him he event he was a part of this uh investigation he actually also i wanted to say fun fact because you are preggers that he believed that pregnant people could telepathically communicate with their babies so oh that's fun give it a shot let me know if the doc is correct um so he came to random hall in 1937 and he was hoping to get a picture just like indre shiras um because he thought that the picture had been faked for fame and so he wanted to try to replicate it to prove that there was anything

even there also because we're talking about the spr sir, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had something to say. He said this picture, quote, was caused by not properly cleaning the reusable glass plates used to produce the negatives. So it was basically some sort of issue, like a double exposure issue or something with the camera, which is interesting because he was such a devout spiritualist. So for him to be saying oh it was just a camera issue also like you wouldn't know that really right unless you

actually see the camera equipment and you're like oh they didn't clean it properly like how would you even make that call right and also uh this was the 1930s that was like the second wave of spiritualism coming through and this was a really popular time for spirit photography where a bunch of fraudulent people were fucking with cameras to take creepy pictures right to prove that something was there so i don't know it was just a big time for shit like this to be going on maybe he thought he knew what he was looking at maybe it is legitimate i mean they do say that like oh we had chemists watch how we developed the negative and it's like i don't know under what scientific circumstances or conditions

you had like were the chemists your friends that could like vouch for you or did you do this with like the spr in a lab and they can confirm that yeah like there's no solid evidence going either way so everyone's just kind of making up their own opinions um again also this was one of the spr's most flawed investigation so even if they told us what lab conditions they did this under it probably wasn't accurate they would have to redo it so many people thought that this picture also maybe that's why they called it the random ghost versus the brown lady at random hall a lot of people said that's also not dorothy based on the eyewitness accounts we've gotten that does not look like dorothy um if anything if you look at the picture it looks like the

virgin mary which uh because i guess her clothing her covered head yeah i mean she has like a veil like a covered veil on i guess well a lot of skeptics say that if this was a double exposure or some sort of intentional spear photography uh they would have used like a statue which was super accessible you could grab a statue of virgin mary almost anywhere like on any street corner just like at the goodwill obviously in the 1800s uh here's Here's actually a quote. This is from an article called The Brown Lady of Random Hall, Re-examination of a Classic Ghost Photograph and a Possible Explanation in 2009. In this scenario, Captain Prevaughn would take the photograph of the staircase, then back in the studio, place a statue in front of a black velvet background.

With an even light source to reduce the modeling an overexposed photograph would be taken of the statue so it would be a picture of the stairs that an overexposed picture of the nothing but the statue uh leaving little detail but mainly a bright shape this would produce a negative that was mainly white with the darker shape on top and basically when the photos have any photos that have been used when trying this method to replicate the ghost image they were pretty spot on and it does look like a statue that was pretty easy to find so they think it was just i could see that photo trickery so remember that the ghost picture was taken right after again the second wave of spiritualism there were frauds all over

the place indra shira could have been one there were also magicians at the time who tried to uh to replicate the picture and were successful with it and what's interesting though is that harry price himself also said that this picture was legitimate so he's on camp this isn't spirit photography oh okay but it's such a it doesn't it just sounds like i feel like i've been with these like characters for so long i i feel like i know them at this point which is insane but i feel like harry price would usually be like yeah this could go either way and sir arthur conan doyle would say that's definitely a ghost yeah but harry price is like this is definitely a ghost and sir arthur conan doyle is like that was fake really odd feel. And Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is like, that was fake. That's really odd.

So it doesn't feel right. So I don't know what was going on that year, but people were not on top of it. Bizarre. If it was real, many people say that it wasn't Dorothy, again, because it looked nothing like the Dorothy we've seen. She wasn't wearing brown. She had eyes, maybe. She also never appeared as a white mist to anybody so they're thinking this might just be a different ghost from the building um the spr though another reason why

they think that this isn't legit is because indra shira they found out was a fake name and in one of their articles they said quote both indra Sheera and Captain Provan were aliases. I know their real names. And then they didn't exactly say who it was, but they said that Indra Sheera had a wife whose stage name was Madam Indra Sheera. And she was also like a performing medium of the time. Oh. So didn't say exactly who it was, but did say like we know who this could have been. And the ghost is

still haunts random hall apparently there are still whispers and sounds of clothing shifting around or being swishing when you walk by apparently heavy chairs will move on their own or rearrange themselves and the current people living there have said she isn't there to haunt the house but she is there we're glad she's around so that's nice that's the brown lady of rain oh wow so even if that photo is fake then i mean still it sounds like something's still going on there yeah i feel like it's such a it was such a weird uh usually i feel like i do a much better job of like explaining all of the different sides but there was like like to you know whether or not this photo is legit but there was no lab conditions i could find it was just a bunch of people giving

different opinions so and it's hard with photography because like yeah you could fake it probably pretty easily but like how do you prove that it's it's like i don't know i don't know at some point i think i'm gonna do do an episode just on spirit photography. And like, that would be cool. So anyway. Oh, that would be cool. You could find some that like people can't disprove. That's bingo.

Interesting. Interesting. Interesting. Anyway, so that that is a lot of arguments on the famous picture from that house. A little history on Dorothy. Maybe a fun fact or two about something corporate i don't know a little bit we like to spice things up um we never stay in one decade or one century nope oh okay well um um i have a story for you that's

just deeply upsetting and i'm so sorry every time christine i'm sorry one day maybe you know what we should do where like every like blue moon uh you do a crime that's like actually a very like a precious crime like a like a dog ate like went up to a picnic and stole their chicken yeah yeah like something precious or like a crime on like a Nick Jr. show where like Swiper like came through and like finally robbed Dora for once and for all. I mean, I did that with the Grinch, right? Like it wasn't even real. It was pretty fun, though. So like if you ever come up with another one, I'm telling you, I would like totally be down

with it. Okay, well, you know what? Noted. Duly noted. But not today. Okay, great. My bad. noted um but not today okay great my bad um also at some point if i just like aggressively pause the recording which i realize i can do um it's because my cats and dog are all staring at me

and it's almost their dinner time and i'm gonna just try to ignore them but if they if they start getting too loud i might have to just run and throw it sounds like that's fine I thought it sounded to me like something more um diabolical and malicious because like I just have a council of animals staring at me they do that a lot it's definitely sinister in its own way but it's mostly it's mostly about food so it's not really ghostly to be fair I would be the fourth sitting on the floor staring at you waiting for food so yeah I've experienced it enough in my lifetime around you. Remember that time we went to Starbucks? I think about this all the time.

When we went to Starbucks and then we didn't get the orders we wanted, but because we had social anxiety, we drank them anyway. And then we went to Starbucks a second time that day. We went to a different Starbucks. It was so fun. I had like five Starbucks that day because I kept getting our orders wrong. We went to multiple Starbucks. What was that? That was a lot. And we were supposed to be recording and we just like kept driving to different Starbucks. We were like eight hours late to recording and

then we were like, how did we get in this situation? And we were surrounded by empty Starbucks cups. What a mess. Yeah. We were like over caffeinated and twitching. Yeah. That was a wild day. That's the most us thing ever. Like, it's okay. We'll just drink it anyway. It's such a small thing. And we've done so many more, like, memorable things together. But whenever I think of, like, a quick, fun story about you, I always immediately think of that Starbucks day. I love that day.

And also the day that our Postmates, like, Uber Eats or something didn't show up. So Allison and Eva went on, like, a mission to go find the track and down. Like, literally got in the car and chased the car down like took my phone with the gps and like went and found him on some street corner yeah uh and we just sat at home waiting for our food anyway oh okay well on that positive note i know a horrible horrible tale. This is the story of Shanda Sher. And I just want to warn everybody that this one is pretty dark and pretty heavy. I mean, you know, they all tend to be. But this one is violence toward a child. So if that's something you're like, nope, I don't blame you for dipping.

Okay. So if you need to leave, feel free. But just go buy a ticket to our live show because we're going to talk about it at the end of the episode again. Not that this makes it a better or worse or more palatable story, but is there consistent violence to a child or is there only one moment we can trigger warning and have them skip 30 seconds through? It's consistent, isn't it? Just, no, I mean, I don't know. I don't want to make a call of when it's bad wednesday just it's just bad it's just very bad a very bad story and the whole basically the whole

it's just bad can we do an additional trigger warning right before uh i mean you'll know when it's happening it's not like a very sudden like okay everything was great until one day okay um it's just bad and a lot of people know it it's a very famous story so a lot of people probably already know the story um i'd heard of it before so if if you know it you know what's coming if not just be forewarned it's pretty brutal and it's about a child so here we go um there's m with their toilet is that a toilet paper it's toilet paper i first of all wherever you are to the person who sat next to me on the

plane coming home for seven hours and I was out I was on my worst day know how when you're sick you have like the worst fucking day the pinnacle of it yeah that was the day I had to be on a plane for seven hours and like all the pressure of being in the plane like my ears were popping my nose was like exploding it was

disgusting and I had zero shame because I was at the runny nose stage where I had were popping my nose was like exploding it was disgusting and i had zero shame because i was at the runny nose stage where i had to blow my nose every four minutes and i had i stole from the airport one of those like big industrial toilet paper rolls like oh m i just shoved it in my backpack and i just spent the entire i just kept pulling new pieces of toilet paper out every five minutes this is why i'm like i'm gonna wear a mask forever i don't think i ever want to go back to life without um without it it's really it was not good and i don't blame if that person probably cursed the day i was born i totally get it so shout out to whoever you were i wish i didn't have to sit next to you i'm sorry um yikes well

hopefully they are okay um and hopefully you're okay we'll see so okay we're going back to 1991 the year of our lord and savior the christine chapel um and we have 12 year old shanda share and she had just started attending hazelwood middle school in new albany indiana so according to all that's interesting which is one of my favorite websites she was a bubbly 12 year old and was by all accounts a normal girl who made friends easily and had fun at school dances so just a normal happy kid yeah yeah yeah i just know it's gonna get bad yeah it is uh shanda renee sharer she was born june 6 1979 in pineville kentucky and when she was really young her parents divorced their names were stephen sharer and jackie vought and uh shanda and her mom jackie were really really close and so were shanda and her dad but shanda lived with her mom for the most part

uh and until 1991 when shanda and jackie decided to move from Kentucky to Indiana to be closer to Shanda's dad and her stepmother. So as part of the move, Shanda had transferred to Hazelwood Middle School and it was kind of a rough transition. So toward the beginning of the academic year, Jackie got a call from the school uh saying shanda is in detention for the whole week oh and jackie's like that's weird like she's not really the type to get in detention but turns out that um when she came home shanda was covered in bruises and explained that she had gotten into a fist fight at school okay and what happened was shanda had gone so she had a new friend at school and the friend was like i want to break up with my boyfriend and i want to return his ring to him and so shanda said oh i'll return it for you so she goes up to the boy nathan and says like you

know so and so wants to break up with you here's your ring back and the boyfriend is like who the hell are you like get this is none of your business like he gets upset basically like shoot the messenger like who are you you know yeah handing my ring back to me from my girlfriend so he gets upset and then um there's kind of this like brief like back and forth and then this girl walks up and her name is amanda heverin and she says to shanna back off and leave nathan alone because he's my cousin and like basically backs up nathan and there's this youtuber named stephanie harlow who does a four-part like deep dive into this case and i'm just going to quote her to explain what happened so amanda then chest bumped shanda wrestled her to the floor and began hitting her a teacher finally intervened and sent them both to the teacher's office where they were

both reprimanded with a week of detention. Oh, OK. So that's how she started off the school year. It was like the third day of school. And that's how things are going. So bad omen. But instead of them becoming enemies, they're both in detention and they kind of laugh off their, you know rocky start uh and

become friends okay this is a twist this is i will tell you the story is full of twists and turns you have no idea what's coming this is very degrassi so far i know i'm not gonna say that by the end of this but like currently grassy like if from hell uh well i mean's like i mean it's very degrassi that like you would hate each other in the first half of the episode but after a fight and indetention you you you bond together in conflict yeah you laugh about your differences and uh realize all along yeah so they become it gets even more degrassi so they become really close. They start spending all their time together. And pretty soon, Jackie notices that Shanda's not putting much effort into her schoolwork. She finds out that Amanda has been teaching Shanda how to forge her mother's signature on progress reports.

And so Amanda's clearly a bad influence on her. And then quickly, the two of them start exchanging love letters. Okay. So far. Oh, don't get excited because again, this so Amanda's like 1516 and Shanna's 12. Oh, okay. It's a little bit in my opinion. I feel like there's well, we'll get there when you're 12 and 16. That's a big difference. That's a little bit, in my opinion, I feel like there's, well, we'll get there.

When you're 12 and 16, that's a big difference. That's a big difference. That's a big age difference. When I was 12, talking to a 13-year-old, like just saying hi in the halls would have to be a double dog dare. Oh, a million percent. I'm not flirting with a 16-year-old. Who do I think I am?

Yeah, exactly. I don't think I would even- And if I'm a 16-year-old, I'm not old not flirting with a 12 year old either by the fucking way like yeah i don't think i would have even known what was going on at 12 like that it would be a sexual thing or a romantic thing it was just all rooted in fear there's a lot happening here so it's not clear whether the romantic feelings were reciprocated by shan reciprocated by shanda because the letters that were that we have not we but you know that have been uh accessed are basically mostly from amanda to shanda and they we have they showed examples of them i watched a couple couple discovery plus shows um there was one

called like deadly women thrill kills or whatever there's just like a lot of these you know these kind of cliche crime shows about this sure but basically they showed the letters and for example one of them said i really like you do you like me it would be cool if so but there's not really much return from shanda it's mostly amanda to shanda if that makes sense sure sure so or shamanda i don't know there's i feel like this is a perfect couple name it would be a perfect like celebrity couple yeah a thousand percent i like it uh so anyway it's worth remembering again that shana's 12 at this point amanda's like 15 uh and based on a letter amanda sent shanda it seems like she had mixed feelings about this relationship uh amanda wrote i had a really great time with you so amanda's the older one

she wrote i had a really great time with you last night and i'm looking forward to more please don't cry anymore okay and uh oh i don't like what that means in my head yeah it's bad and shanda replied i loved last night too i want more too and always I want what we had last night, if you want. So it's a little bit like coercive. It seems a little coercive. And I don't want to blanket statement that. But from the evidence I've seen, it doesn't necessarily seem like they were both on the same level of romantic interest.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It feels like one is definitely taking advantage of someone else because of their age or one feels obligated because they're younger to yeah yeah exactly exactly and uh so her so it turns out later that this had become a sexual relationship and by october it became pretty apparent to the student body that there was something happening between shanda and Amanda. Shamanda, they were passing notes back and forth in class. They would like giggle, spend a lot of time together.

And while this may have been cute for them, it was not so cute for another student who was 16-year-old Melinda Loveless, who happens to be Amanda's girlfriend. Dun, dun, dun. Talk about Degrassi drama oh my gosh oh this is exactly like that season where page and alex were together okay whatever okay i've literally never watched degrassi so i have zero understanding of that show just know that it was real juicy i know drake was there i think um drake was there okay that's all i know uh so melinda with a fitting last name of loveless uh melinda loveless saw this relationship was like fuck that i was not happy and melinda herself uh basically is the last person you want to get on your bad side she was known to get into fights regularly um she had an extremely troubled home life i'm

gonna get into that right now so she was extremely troubled home life i'm gonna get into that right now so she was raised by her father larry and mother marjorie and larry would often let his friends borrow his wife marjorie for sex uh and force marjorie to partake in orgies um he was a very very very bad violent abusive man and he uh at one point like just as a fun example so larry loveless uh he was a vietnam vet he regularly went in and out of employment at one point he was a postal worker for three months but then they found out he had never delivered any mail he would just sit at home and burn the mail instead of delivering what the fuck this guy is off his rocker are you bonkers this guy is crackers what is burning your mail oh my god burning mail isn't his like just burning bills

burning people's bills i know that it's like a federal offense to open someone's mail i don't even know what it would be to burn a bunch of people's mail because of people like him there's a rule somewhere it says you cannot burn other people's mail 100 there has to be like you can't burn the flag and you also can't burn anybody's electric bills just like please follow the rules oh god um so he's just not a good guy and according to talk murder with me which is a great blog but also a podcast um they do a write-up on the case and say any money he did earn went toward motorcycles and guns. He was violent, verbally abusive, a drunk and a pervert. Larry violently raped Marjorie while their three daughters were in the home, able to hear everything.

He once beat Marjorie so badly she was hospitalized and the abuse drove Marjorie to attempt suicide multiple times. So this was the dynamic between Melinda's parents. So just she has a terrible home life and is known for acting out of school. And on top of all this, her dad also sexually abused her and her siblings. Oh, shit. She had to share a bed with her dad until she was 14. Oh, my God. He molested his daughters and nieces when they were children.

And so in 1989, which is just a couple years before this so when she was 14 uh marjorie and larry divorced he moved to florida and obviously left melinda in a state of like you know trauma and uh she like i said acted out of school struggled with depression um and melinda now is in this scenario and she's looking at shamanda and going oh no yeah i don't think so i don't think so jesus christ okay apparently they'd been dating for more than a year so they were literally in a in an actual relationship uh and they were the same age and now there's this 12 year old who shows up on the scene and amanda is clearly like into her and melinda is not happy oh imagine you're in high school you finally like find someone

also like lesbians early 90s like 91 hard to find hard to come by and now your girlfriend is cheating on you with a 12 year old yeah with a child a literal child i mean you know you're technically a child but with like a and by cheating i mean i don't know probably assaulting yeah i don't i don't want to blanket same at the r word because but it sounds like the 12 year old also didn't want this or didn't know what was like didn't totally understand it could not consent to be clear like i would think so i don't know how does it work with two minors like i don't know how that would work it's there's a certain age like once it hits a certain like if you're five years younger or something oh okay something i don't know what it is and it's different for every state too so i'm not sure it's one of those weird lines where it's like this just i want to be clear that i don't think it's appropriate but i don't know if it's illegal

i don't know but um so melinda is oh and by the way like one of the i forget which episode it was but one of the discovery plus episodes i watched about this um case talked about how the lesbian movement in the 90s among teenagers was kind of like alongside a lot of the like grunge and like you know it was kind of like a movement that was happening and so high schoolers were in some places were really open about it and it was it's kind of like a surprising thing to look back on and be like oh that was so long ago like 30 years ago but I guess in some pockets or in some areas it like wasn't a big deal love that the grunge scene was where it all started yeah weird i know i guess i guess it makes sense like kind of that rebellious like

yeah i remember i remember growing up the only like queer people i could rely on were all the emo kids so it makes sense yeah yeah it's like that kind of counterculture type thing. So Melinda is confused by Amanda, her girlfriend's actions, and decides to write Shanda a letter. And the letter reads as follows. Shanda, don't be scared of me, please. I just want to be your friend. I just don't like when you speak to Amanda when I'm not there. I mean, why can't we all three be friends? You act like you've got something going on with her.

Amanda and I are going together and she loves me and I love her and she only wants to be friends with you i don't want you sneaking behind my back why don't you speak to amanda when she's with me you need to find a boyfriend because amanda is mine and you can even ask her please talk to both of us or you can forget about amanda you me amanda need to talk together to square this away then we can all be friends can you meet us at lunch your friend mel so basically shanda and amanda ignored this letter completely um which really pissed melinda off yeah why isn't melinda going to amanda and saying excuse me like what the fuck is cooking right now you know what i don't know and that kind of is a running theme like maybe she's just more pissed at at the you know in those like cliche rom-coms where it's like the girl is the villain.

Yeah. The other woman is the villain. You know, I don't know. Right, right, right. So this letter didn't faze them. And one day Melinda aggressively confronted Shanda in the school hallway. Shanda was really scared seeing Melinda like so aggressive and violent and promised she'd never see amanda again not true uh so this appeased melinda for a while until she spotted a heart-shaped letter in shanda's locker that said shanda loves amanda um i'm not clear who made that heart-shaped note

but it was in shanda's locker and again melinda confronted shanda grabbing her by the hair and yelling to like yelling at her to stay away from Amanda or else. And instead of like taking this, you know, warning to heart, they go to the I think it's a homecoming dance. It's a dance in October. And Shanda agrees to be Amanda's date. So they show up to this dance. And Amanda later says she didn't think melinda would be there because she hates school dances but i'm sort of like well if this girl's out to find out like right or to

you know catch you together like i don't i'm not surprised no fury like a woman scorned are you kidding me like melinda loveless is scorned exactly so not surprised she showed up and spotted them together and got pissed um so she turns up sees what she fears and like basically attacks chanda and amanda has to get kind of between them and is like you know trying to protect chanda from her girlfriend it's it's both of her girlfriends are fighting her girlfriends yeah it's kind of a mess like and again like you said amanda's in the middle here like she i wish she would kind of take some yeah what is the commons denominator here everybody like it's amanda i think amanda's kind of the the problem here but whatever so meanwhile uh melinda is you know pressuring shanda to step away from amanda and at the same time

back home jackie finds the love letters uh being written from amanda so degrassi so far yeah right like finds these romantic letters so she finds them uh and she sees that they're sexual and they say things like from amanda saying like i love your soft body like i mean oh and jackie like when she was interviewed was like i don't care that she was if she was gay i don't care that's not the point the point is like this 15 year old is writing to my 12 year old saying yeah whether it's a boy or girl or whomever like writing you know i want to touch you again it's like whoa it's just a lot and at 12 again like even at 15 i was probably too young for like i was you know immature whatever but like 12 is so tiny that's a lot you're not even a teenager i mean whatever

so and at the same time jackie also knows that like shanda's basically failing school and is getting detention probably knows like is this the same girl who was beating the shit out of my kid a while ago yeah that was one thing i totally forgot to mention like she got home one day and amanda was sitting on the porch with her with shanda and she was like isn't that the girl that like punched you and she's like oh no we're friends now and her mom was like red flag from day one well also like it sounds like from those letters were like this it sounded like shanda was like complying to something she didn't want to do i'm sure she has the memory of like our the first time we saw each

other she beat me up so if i don't do it completely if i don't do what she wants she could beat me up again well interesting you say that because when jackie asked shanda about the letters shanda tells her mom that at this point she's only seeing amanda because she's scared not a good not good not good not what you want to hear uh it has gotten to the point where shanda believes if she didn't have amanda then melinda's gonna attack her and she needs shanda to protect her but she also is only with shanda because she's scared like you know it's just a mess and this is what she tells her mother so who knows if she's just saying that to her mom or if it's the truth or what but that's what jackie hears and is like rut row this is not a safe experience for my

12 year old yep so jackie does everything in her power to keep amanda and these other girls away she uh she thought you know shanna was back on track but she discovered a letter shanda had written to amanda that said amanda i miss you and i will always love you no matter what happens so jackie and steven shanda's parents are like you need to go to another school we're taking you out of here and we're moving you to uh our lady of perpetual help school which is a catholic school yep uh that's i guess what happens when you're in a dramatic lesbian relationship. Catholic school it is. Sounds about right. Yeah. Maybe it was just like the only school in their district that would take someone halfway through a year. But it does feel homophobic.

100%. And the name of it, like Our Lady of Perpetual Help. It's like, if my mom sent me there, I'd be like, wow, message received. Exactly. I'd be like, OK, noted. We're just not friends anymore. OK. OK. So she got sent to and it was true. Like you said, they were able to get her in by the end of the week. So like she started right away.

And this so Melinda hears this is so pleased that finally Shanda is gone and she can have her girlfriend Amanda back. Unfortunately, Amanda is still in that finally shanda is gone and she can have her girlfriend amanda back unfortunately amanda is still in love with shanda and melinda writes amanda a letter saying why have you written her name on your effing folder it hurt so much when i saw it i didn't think you'd put her ugly name on your folder and you wrote it you must have liked her enough to have written her name why well i'm gone okay but at 16, to be fair, at 16... Big deal. That was a big fucking deal. Big fucking deal.

But also, like, Melinda needs to get it together. Melinda needs to get it together. Amanda... Everyone needs to get it to fucking together and leave the 12-year-old alone, okay? I agree. I'm with you, man. I'm with you. So Melinda then writes to Amanda again on November 26th saying, I'm real mad at you. I feel like I want toinda then writes to amanda again on november 26th saying i'm real

mad at you i feel like i want to cry i want shanda dead okay and now act one is over that's you're completely right that is the end of act one intermission except there's no intermission for anybody sorry nope not even a moment to breathe you can't even go buy raisinets i'm not gonna give you the moment to do it um don't pause me i'm not gonna no not you i'm talking to the people in their kitchen i'd like to go buy some raisinets um so things then also kick off for amanda because amanda's father discovers her hidden stash of love letters uh written to both melinda and shanta and he's like what the fuck like oh my god totally taken aback and amanda hadn't come out to her father yet so he's like totally flipped out you know they're in small town indiana in the early 90s sure that

had something to play and his reaction was to get the county's juvenile probation officer involved oh so so gay it's criminal so gay it's literally a crime and instead of sending her to the perpetual help school he calls uh the probation officer and the has the probation offer officer go to melinda and warn her to stay away from his daughter or else she would see legal charges of harassment made against her. So Melinda is just getting like attacked from all sides, at least in her own mind. Like she's not winning any of these quote unquote battles. I mean, she has an anger problem, but like also it sounds like with her history, like how could you not have a fucking exactly and also like this so far this poor girl so far with the history she's had to deal with at home her girlfriend is cheating

on her and now she's just gotten threatened by an adult probation officer to like criminal to not be upset that her girlfriend is cheating on her completely so far i know my opinion is going to change but so far team no no you're you're right because it's like you know i mean she shouldn't have like attacked her physically and like also team shanda anti amanda is where i am just anti amanda is is seems to be like the problem here in a lot of ways in my opinion so far so far okay so uh jesus this is just such a fucked up story okay so things are not going well uh for anybody at this point really um except chanda who is at her new school she's like making new friends um she's not responding to amanda's letters she's kind of taking her mother's you know warning to heart she probably in my opinion doesn't necessarily want to respond to amanda she

has her new friends her new life she's like happy and safe like please just let me forget about this i don't want to do it anymore yeah so she she's just living her life meanwhile all this shit is happening with this juvie probation officer and melinda like obviously this happened because amanda's father sent this guy to melinda's house to threaten her but in melinda's mind she's like this is not amanda's fault it's not her father's fault it's shanda's fault this all this happened because of shanda this is she's the problem it all started when shanda got involved her name is on my girlfriend's folder all bad so now we fast forward two months to january of 1992 15 year old hope rippy and 15 year old tony lawrence so there's hope and tony they get picked up by 17 year old laurie tackett in her car to drive to a rock concert and although lori and hope were friends this is the first time

that tony would meet lori who's driving the car and as they get in lori turns to hope and straight out says did you tell her yet and hope is like did i tell her what and tony's in the back seat going tell me what did you tell me what and lori's kind of laughing and says, we're going to kill a girl tonight. And, you know, being teenagers, Tony's like, okay, who's this crazy chick that you're like introducing me to? Yeah, truly. If I were Tony, I'd be like, please pull over. Like, what?

Like, I'm going home. Oh, my God. So Tony is a little bit like, what the hell? But also thinks like, well, I also thinks like well i don't like i don't take this seriously yeah yeah like why would you assume that this 17 year old girl is telling the truth or not just being dramatic and so she's like okay so she thinks this is a weird joke uh she shrugs it off they continue driving they uh stop in new albany to pick up another passenger it's melinda loveless so melinda who's friends with laurie who's driving the car uh doesn't know hope and tony they they're

just meeting for the first time before this concert so melinda comes bounding into the car excited to see everybody she has brought her wallet her purse her makeup and some other girly things and she's also carrying a massive kitchen knife oh okay so she hope and tony are like what the fuck like okay they're like we're just going to this concert and now laurie and uh this new girl are like have a knife and are saying they're gonna kill somebody it's yeah it just seems really wild but it's like i did not sign up for this i spent a lot of my teenage money uh i worked at starbucks so that i could go to this fucking concert please let me just go do you know how many snow cones i had to make to get the money for this concert and now my grunge night has been ruined and now there's a knife next to me in the car. Now there's a knife. Which now also makes probably them real fucking uncomfortable because now they're like violently being coerced into doing this.

Otherwise, they'll get hurt. Yes, so now they're in the car with a girl with a knife that they don't even know exactly. And they're like, oh, oh, oh, okay. This is cool. Great. And Lori's older. She's 17 and is like clearly also part of the plan. So they ask like, like hey nice to meet you

what's up with the knife and melinda assures them that her only intention is to find the girl who had stolen her girlfriend and scare her a little bit she wants to make her listen once and for all so she has enlisted her newish friend laurie who had dropped out of school recently to help her do it now laurie who's the one driving the car and is the one who said like we're gonna kill a girl tonight uh also has a troubled background so she and melinda are kind of like this tornado they meet they have this like twist they each have like a really fucked up twisted childhood and they have some really violent tendencies and when they get together things just kind of implode so lori's

family was a fundamentalist christian family and she had gotten a lot of visits from child services because she was being abused and so she had been going in and out of the hospital due to self-harm she was diagnosed with bpd and she had a fascination with paranormal activity vampirism vampirism and the occult and she said that she later said her parents later said she had always wanted to know what it would feel like to kill somebody okay stab somebody with a knife yep so bad combo is kind of what i'm getting at like Like Melinda has vengeance on the mind. Sure. And this person has morbid curiosity of like, let's go for it.

Million percent. So one girl wants to be violent toward anyone. And one girl has a very specific plan of vengeance. So together they hatch this terrible, terrible plan. Their checkered pasts overlap into just one color like yeah completely yeah to just like the worst the worst of the worst of quilts i don't know the worst quill ever ever quilted um sorry the worst quilt ever ever quilted this is the shit like when i would write in journalism title name title name

i'm gonna fail this article it's like you're trying to like hit the the word limit on an essay it's not just a quilt it was also quilted so if anybody needs to know um so evidently melinda had shared these plans with laurie who then like, hell yeah, I'm in. And then Lori invited her childhood friend, Hope, who then invited her friend, Tony. So basically the only people who really know each other and who were part of this initial plan are Lori and Melinda. And then Hope and Tony are kind of like there, too. They've been invited along. and then Hope and Tony are kind of like there too.

They've been invited along. So before going to the rock concert, the four girls drive over to Shanda's father's house where Shanda was spending the weekend. And so around 8 p.m., Melinda makes Hope and Tony get out of the car and ring the doorbell. And when Shanda answers, they are instructed to tell her that they are there to take her to see Amanda because Amanda wants to see her.

So this is why Melinda didn't go to the door because she's like well if shanda sees me she's gonna be like no but so you know these two girls hope and tony who've never met shanda by the way show up at shanda's door and are like oh amanda wants to see you so shanda answers the door hope and tony tell her um you know we're here to bring you to amanda she wants to see you but shanda says okay my parents are up like come back later when my parents are asleep and i will sneak out like properly with you so sure they go to the fucking concert and then come back to shanda's dad's house around midnight and the concert if anyone's wondering was called Sunspring and I looked them up and they were a small I think like Louisville Kentucky band and they were like

seemingly like rock grunge whatever um but so that's the concert if anyone's wondering so they go back to Shanda's dad's house around midnight Shanda's gotten ready she's there waiting and Hope and Tony say come on get in the We're going to go meet Amanda at Witch's Castle, which is a local hangout for teenagers in the area. Okay. And there was a kind of an urban legend that five witches had been burned there. And so a lot of teenagers thought it was like pretty, I mean, you know, we would have gone and explored it. Right, exactly.

Absolutely. I'd be there. It's like somewhere like creepy and cool that, you know, we would have gone and explored it right exactly absolutely it's like somewhere like creepy and cool that you know people would hang out at and so they say amanda's there we're gonna go meet her so shanda hops in the back seat everybody's chatting but what shana doesn't know is that meanwhile melinda is hiding under a blanket in the back okay with a fucking knife so wow so like we're not okay okay yeah so here we go this nothing good happens from the rest of the in the rest of the story fun fact okay oh hey i could already tell oh what a surprise yeah so they're driving they're driving suddenly melinda jumps out from her hiding spot jumps onto shanda and holds a knife to her throat.

She tells Shanda, I'm going to slit your throat unless you swear that you'll break up with Amanda. Shanda is like so taken aback, obviously, that she can't even like speak. I mean, she has a knife to her throat. And so Melinda tells Lori, keep driving and stop when we get somewhere really far away and abandoned. Oh, shit. Yeah. So at this point, Hope and Tony are like, oh, God, oh god okay like this is scary but they're just trying to scare her you know like they they still think like oh we're just trying to scare her so having driven through a lot of forest uh laurie finally

stops at a remote trash dump and shanda again she's a literal 12 year old is just like begging to go home and she is forced out of the car where the girls take off all her clothes and then melinda and laurie who were kind of like the head honchos of this plan tie her up uh laurie begins taunting shanda and she sets shanda's smiley face t-shirt on fire and says that she would be the one to burn next in this place full of dead people oh my god so melinda and laurie start punching shanda uh until she's like on the ground essentially and basically just hurt her for seven hours like for hours seven hours and this is where it gets like really hard to grasp because it's like they're you know there's four teenage girls two of them are clearly like this was their intention and then two of them

have been dragged along and so you kind of see this very psychological like packed pack mentality and also like this fear of like these two other girls yeah like they're just going along with it so they go along with them oh my god yeah so girls. Yeah, like they're just going along with it so it doesn't happen to them. Oh my gosh. Yeah, so either they're scared or they are just like swept up in the drama. Like who knows? But they're just there for the ride essentially. Wow, okay. So Shanda is getting beaten up for hours and hours and hours.

And finally Melinda tries to slit Shanda's throat with the kitchen knife. But because it's too blunt blunt they end up just stabbing her with it and then they choke her with a rope until she's unconscious and they put her in the back in the back of the car in the trunk and the four girls drive back to laurie's house and once they get to laurie's house they clean themselves up they drink some soda from the fridge as you do when you're a literal fucking child yeah and so you know the parents probably come in i'm picturing and are like hey kids you know everyone's drinking sun kissed or whatever and it's like fucking a like can you

imagine being the parent later like looking back and being like i just saw my kid like just hanging out like at our our kitchen island drinking capri sun and it's like and there's a fucking literally just someone at night point yeah like subaru outside with a body in the trunk and it's like how would you even why would you even think that that would be happening so um they're drinking sodas and just when they're like okay we did our work whatever and the two girls hope and tony are probably like uh we're going home now they hear noises from outside and it's from the trunk so shanda is in the back and she's still alive and i guess as dumb teenagers they'd convinced themselves they'd already killed her and or that she was unconscious and they were

surprised they even like picked up her body and put it in a trunk. I thought they would just leave her out there. That's I know. I'm kind of surprised, too. And I don't I think a lot of this ends up being sort of like, you know, teenagers whose frontal lobes aren't fully developed and they don't really have a plan. They just kind of do whatever they think of in the moment, which is obviously how they were immediately caught. But we'll get there. which is obviously how they were immediately caught, but we'll get there. So they hear kicking and screaming from inside the trunk,

and Hope is basically pressured into, apparently, at least from one of the reenactments, it sort of looked like Melinda was here handing her a tool or something, and Hope was kind of hesitant, didn't want to. And so instead, Hope sprays her with Windex, it's like her violent act and mocks her saying you're not looking so hot now are you and keep in mind hot uh hope and tony have never even met this girl or laurie like they don't know who this child is and so melinda and laurie um like basically react right away the two of them drive off with shanda in the car leaving hope

and tony behind they stop at a gas station where they buy a two liter bottle of pepsi they empty it refill it with gasoline which is like where you're like okay they just had a thought and we're like this is what we do next oh my god so they find another empty location where they drag shanda out of the car they stab her again. They sexually assault her. And then finally they pour gasoline all over her and light her on fire. Yeah.

It's like every bad, bad thing you could do to a person. Every bad, bad thing. And they interview one of the officers who was involved in the case and like initially found her body and like was involved from day one and i mean his story is interesting in and of itself he was like the first black officer in southern indiana so he has his own like interesting backstory but he starts crying during this and it's like so awful to watch this like really seriously grown man who clearly seen a lot of shit in his life start crying after so many years of probably recounting this over and over again sure he says like all he can all he prays is that she

was unconscious at this point which you know it's not really a way to know necessarily but it's unclear so they light her on fire and drive off and melinda and laurie return to laurie's house where hope and tony are still waiting with their capri sons and they enthusiastically describe their murder teasing how apparently the only thing shanda could say before she died was mommy why the fuck did you okay i don't know i'm sorry i regret it every time i hear a child case and like yeah even like if it's fake like i've seen like like law and order episodes or whatever yeah we're like the last the kids last words were mommy it just makes it so much and they interview her mom and to see her mom talk about this it's like how do you even cope

or get through it i don't know um i wouldn't as i could i don't know how you you can't you don't come back you don't think you could really yeah i think you just live a new version of a new alternate life now yeah and like we do come back to her in the end and see kind of how what she has been doing which is you know people who find a way to go on are always so impressive to me because it's like i don't know how you would get to that point you know couldn't be me i would never if something ever happened to my kid or my parent either direction yeah i i'm gonna be a complete mess especially to know that you know i might have been their last thought during a violent act. Yeah. Yeah.

It makes it so much darker and worse if it even could be. Right. So they come back. They're joking about this murder. And then they all go out to McDonald's for breakfast where it was reported that they compared a burnt sausage to Shanda's body. So they're fucking like amused by this they're not horrified they're not like what did we do what have we done they're like pleased oh my god they're not like shit we took it too far melinda and laurie are like this was a fun evening like we had a great time just your average friday night hang just a

post-concert hangout yeah so while the four girls are there eating steven steve sharer who's at home is obviously panicking realizing his daughter's not home it's been eight hours so he's awake and his daughter's not in his bed so his step her stepmom's like she's not in her bed steve and he's like well fuck so they're calling everybody they even call amanda who's like i don't know where she is which is true at that yeah and also finally amanda like who's been like nothing but bad to the bone in this in this story she's like i'm off the fucking hook when she wasn't involved i was like wait what like i thought this was gonna be her part of this narrative but like no she wasn't even also like

imagine amanda who's like now grown up and like yep things like what the fuck was that about like yeah she's been interviewed on dr phil and i'll talk about that later too but like yeah she's definitely well also imagine being the parents like you just woke up and saw your kids gone you think like oh maybe she like just left or thought she was cool to leave with her friends for school but like she's already dead she's Yeah. She's been gone since for eight hours. Yeah. So fucking terrible. Obviously he's calling neighbors.

He's calling her friends. He eventually rings Jackie who makes this terrible call being like she's missing. And Jackie comes over and realizes that Shanda's purse is at home. And she's like Shanda never left her purse anywhere. She even went to the bathroom with it. So she's like shanda never left her purse anywhere she even went to the bathroom with it so she's like we need to call the police right now so they file a missing person's report and um meanwhile melissa calls amanda and says guess what i did because i love you so much wait melinda sorry melinda sorry i was like called Amanda. I was like, where are we?

No, I'm sorry. You were like, guess who called Melissa? And I went, I don't even know who that is. Who the fuck's Melissa? No, Melinda gets home and she like calls Amanda and is like, guess what I did for your love, basically. Motherfucker. And Amanda later said in a Dr. Phil interview that because Melinda was sort of late, sort of like talking about this in a serious tone and then kind of bursting into hysterics that like Amanda wasn't sure if Melinda was just like joking or was like sort of trying to sound scary. Like she like couldn't wrap her head around like that would actually do this because like, how could you really?

So either way, Melinda made Amanda promise she wouldn't tell a soul but it turns out amanda was not the one to worry about because according to murderpedia my other favorite website at 8 20 p.m a hysterical tony lawrence went to the jefferson county sheriff's office with her parents she gave a rambling statement identifying the victim as shanda saying she didn't know her last name because again she'd never even met this girl before uh naming the three other girls involved and describing the main events of the previous night so this um police office is 50 miles away from from the one where the missing persons report had been made so they don't even realize that there's a Shanda missing so they have to call around and they realize like okay there has been a report filed about someone named Shanda share. And when the cops find out that this girl was 12 years old, they're like, fuck, because the body had been found, but it was burned so badly.

They couldn't tell if it was an adult. They couldn't even tell who like if it was. And so when they learn it's a child, they were like, you know, obviously extra horrified because they couldn't even they didn't even realize. So with Tony's testimony, Detective Howard Henry drove to the Sharer's house to tell the family he collected Shanda's dental records to confirm that the body was Shanda's. And then Melinda Loveless and Lori Tackett were arrested and all four girls were put in custody. Good. Yeah. Tony's statement was pivotal not only in the prosecution, but also in how the news kind of got around to the rest of the world.

So there was not much information except for Tony's statement. So that was kind of what the news was able to cling to. the news was able to cling to and one of the most horrific things from the episode is hearing shanda's mother say nobody knew how to tell me how shanda had died so i had to learn from the news that she had been burned alive like that's how she found out how her daughter had been killed was from a fucking news report yeah um seeing this wow yeah yeah oh my god so which like i don't know how to process that that i don't know that's awful that's i i'm i get why the one wanted to tell her because it was so brutal but then i would also yeah it's like still worse to find out from the news you know somehow even though like yeah how would you tell her yeah how do you tell someone that but

then also like as her watching the show or watching the news or hearing about it knowing that at any moment you're about to find out the thing everyone's too too upset to tell you and hearing it and being like wait i didn't know that before the news knew it like that must just be a terrible feeling okay so um the prosecution declared its intention to try all four girls as adults um and at that point it looked like they were going to face the death penalty so they accepted plea bargains to avoid it and during the hearings that's when everything kind of came up so melinda's stories of her abuse during childhood um and then laurie's as well and a year later in february of 1993 larry

loveless who's melinda's dad was charged with rape sodomy and sexual battery he was arrested spent two years in prison awaiting trial but because of the statute of limitations, which was only five years in Indiana, he and the crimes that happened over 25 years ago, he some of them at least he was basically the charges were dropped all but one. And so he received a sentence but was released only like less than two years later. So he barely got any sort of like a slap on the wrist, essentially. Oh, my God. like less than two years later so he barely got any sort like a slap on the wrist essentially oh my god um and so as for the young women so hope and tony who were sort of along for the ride but also didn't it just it's frustrating because it's like well obviously like i understand why they would be scared in the moment but also like there were so many chances where they could have found an adult or run away or called somebody or yeah the house it's it's scary it's hard to pinpoint my feelings on it because obviously what they did was terrible but i am also aware that they could have been their own victims in their own right because they might have been threatened into helping

yeah so it's like well where do you how far do you place blame i know i know it makes it just so much more frustrating and like i had a really hard time with it and then i heard shanda's mom say you know she didn't have any sympathy for them she's like there's so many times they could have just grabbed a parent or an adult like at la's house and been like, there's a girl. See, my my thought, too, at one point. And yeah, that's also super valid. Like if I maybe they because their brains weren't fully developed, they hadn't they couldn't think that far into how to get themselves out of that. But my first thought was when they were going to go knock on Shanda's door and Melinda couldn't be there like why didn't two of them be like you need to fucking run like you

need to call because they remember at that point they just thought like melinda had said oh we're just gonna scare her like which obviously isn't good either but like they real i think i think if they knew we're about to stab this girl to death like right they wouldn't have but i think it was almost like oh they they never imagined it would get that far and then it got out and then all of a sudden they were out in the woods with someone with a knife who was ready to kill someone and like if they could do that to her they could do that to me but yeah they could have the dad was right there they could have said something because they were waiting at the house for the two yeah it's like i don't know if there were parents there i don't know that i was just joking about like no i'm walking in so i don't know that there was a parent but there was

probably a phone in the house they yeah or something there and when they found out that she's in the trunk alive you know like hopefully something kicked in and it's hard it's hard because like i want to be you know i want to understand the point of like well the peer pressure this the fear um their children but then you know if it were my child i think i'd be like why the fuck don't you say anything so it's like a really hard line to kind of draw but um for what it's worth tony and hope got lighter sentences they uh one of them got 20 one of them got 35 years and tony was released in 2000 after serving nine years. Hope served 14 and got out in 2006.

Both Melinda and Lori received 60 year sentences for the murder of Shanda Sharer. And it's still sort of it's still sort of wild that like Lori was even so heavily involved because she didn't even know the girl. But at the same time, there's just this background of like wanting to kill somebody and when her family her mom and sister went on dr phil and told dr phil that laurie had always believed it was her destiny to murder someone oh my god clearly it was just two wrong people meeting at the wrong time and things got out of hand um and amanda herself was also interviewed by dr phil and in it she comments that the time was really hard for her as well because she quote lost basketball scholarships and got kicked off the basketball team and it's like that's why it's hard right right like okay i guess i guess i get what you're saying though like it affected you even though you didn't do anything that wrong i guess but like okay okay i guess yeah i'm like that's not

what like how do you feel about two people you were dating and sleeping with one of them killed the other and like 15 years later i don't think i'd be hung up on the basketball scholarship but uh what do i know right right right i don't know as an adult i don't know that i would still be focused on that but whatever so laurie herself for what it's worth has shown remorse uh she was quoted in the interview saying i didn't know shanda at all i didn't go into that evening knowing anything was going to happen wanting anything to happen i didn't peer pressure that's all it was it spiraled out of control way too fast it's something that should have never happened but again like she was one of the ringleaders of this and was one of the more violent participants so who knows um so

she was released in january of 2018 and then melinda was released in september of 2019 and she had been channeling her efforts into a prison program called i can i can which stands for the indiana canine assistant network and basically while behind bars melinda was able to help train puppies to act as assistance dogs for those with special needs. And one of the dog breeders who works with ICANN is a burn victim similar to Shanda. And that was kind of like a notable thing, connection. She made it behind bars. And this breeder reached out to Jackie, Shanda's mom, and like urged her to come watch Melinda tend to the dogs in the training

program. So Jackie went reluctantly, but she was so moved by what she saw with Melinda, you know, working with these dogs, that she commented, I was really taken aback. I saw someone almost reborn. She was sincere. She was compassionate. I think the ICANN program allows her to have something in her life that she can show love back to and there's never betrayal on either side um so talk about bigger person than the mom truly i'd be like i hope one of those dogs eats you are you kidding me like completely yeah okay well bravo to you i know so she's a much bigger person than i think i would be um and this came a long way because in 2012, she did an interview where she commented where Jackie commented, I have many times said if you want to see a person who has absolutely nothing inside of them, look into Melinda's eyes because there's nothing there. And she even acknowledged like Melinda never should have gone through what she went through. But at the same time she also should never have yeah murdered my daughter right so it's kind of like a fucked up circle there um but seeing melinda take care of

puppies for a good cause jackie was so moved that she donated a puppy to melinda to work with excuse me like acid reflux sorry she's like things are coming out of your mouth that don't sound right in some ways panicking so she donated a puppy for her to work with um and jackie called the dog angel in honor of shanda and um jackie also had another loss um when steve her ex-husband passed away at the age of 53 um and the way jackie puts it is uh he drank himself to death she said he did everything short of putting a gun to his head like he just his life like ended that day basically that shanda was gone and he never recovered you know understandably and he ended up drinking himself to death according to her and although some people probably like us are like

just can't comprehend how jackie could be so like you know compassionate toward melinda um jackie has asserted it's my choice to make she's my she's my child as in shanda if you don't let good things come from bad things nothing gets better and i know what my child would want my child would want this so like just a very loving what a a good woman, wise person. And Melinda was so appreciative of Jackie's offering that she's since thanked her publicly saying she helped me to heal, forgive and grow whether she wanted that or not. She did a good thing. I would thank her. I couldn't thank her enough. Angel is in good hands and I'm doing it for Shanda. I'm

doing it for her. So if you want to learn more about this case um there's that stephanie harlow youtube series uh there are several shows on discovery plus um you can pull an m and borrow my password and watch ghost adventures or you can watch the episodes about this story um there's also a couple books michael quinn wrote a book called little lost angel and aphrodite jones who was interviewed on some of the shows wrote a a book called Cruel Sacrifice. And that is the story, the very, very, very, very, very, very dark, fucked up story of Shanda Scherer. Wow. Oh, my gosh. Sorry. Also sorry about that. No, you did. My bad. Look, it's not your fault that you're, well, it is your fault that your literal job is to talk about dark things. It's also your fault, to be fair it is more my fault i i you could have said no and you did but then you came back so it's back to your fault i did say no but everyone convinced me otherwise

well wow the unsung hero there really is a jackie i mean i also i'm all for you know people actually being rehabilitated and all that but like i i don't know if i'm big enough to forgive something like that if it were my kid so well done to jackie uh in a a very desperate shift to bring up positive information yeah um if you like spooky stories but you don't need true crime you're more into the cryptid thing we have our poetry slam if you're like done with me right now i get it if you would like to tell us your own stories instead of hearing really dark stories about other people um and your story happens to be the time you witnessed sasquatch or mothman or the loch ness monster um then please send in your stories or your own cryptid slam poetry if you'd like uh

send it in to atwwd from our couches at gmail.com and we have our live show on the 17th at 4 pacific 7 eastern um ten dollar tickets uh but it's going to be worth it because we are donating everything to asian americans advancing justice and you could win some really um great gifts so or when you could auction we're auctioning off some really great gifts so um and what's the link for tickets again I don't have it pulled up uh the link for our tickets if you just go to any of our socials it's in the link tree it's like I think there's a bitly too uh oh yes a bitly uh it's atwwd cryptid slam yeah so bit.ly slash atwwd cryptid slam you can also go to and we're very excited for it so if you want to you don't have to contribute to be a part of the show if

you just want to come watch you don't even have to to bid on anything but um it'll be a good time either way sorry for such a drastic shift from something dark into this i'm just desperately trying to end this on a uh on a higher note so uh thank you to everyone who listened and also i hope you come to our cryptid poetry slam virtual show and i promise there won't be any any any uh you know sadness it'll be very it'll be much more happy if you like creepy but uplifting if you like creepy happy things please come maybe even dildos how do you feel about dildos if you like a good dildo there you have it or there you have it come come on down shrug emoji we'll be there and that's why we drink