And That's Why We Drink - E250 An Engineer of Good Times and Witches on Speed Dial

Episode Date: November 21, 2021

This week we're going rogue to robe and hosting bread candle seances, folks! It's Eva's second episode and we're talking paranormal, true crime and AAAHH!!! Real Monsters as humans. First Em pays homage to our 250th episode with a little numerology, then tells the oldest ghost tale they could find aka the Glenluce Devil. Then Eva covers the wild case of the Pillow Pyro. And did we meet great grandpappy Gilbert Bagelbites this week?? If we did, that's certainly why we drink!  Big shout out to writer and Trial Crewer Ellen Tremiti for contributing her fantastic research! You can find her @etphoneh on socials as well as her latest short story in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.

yay there we are we're here welcome to uh round two of and that's why we drank minus christine but featuring uh our guest star eva. Hello. Plus and minus. Minus and plus. We miss Christine. In PEMDOS, it maybe cancels out or something. I'm not sure. PEMDOS. I wanted to shout out, for those of you who are watching on YouTube,

Eva has the cooleest shirt I've ever seen. It's from, was it Dumb Good? Yeah, it's from Dumb Good. It's All Real Monsters. It's great eva is wearing the all real monster shirt because we just had a conversation uh recently where i actually so i just came back i don't know if just came back is the right thing to say in november uh but i recently was in denver and there's a comic book place there called um Vision Comics and Oddities and in there they have so by the way also in Denver fun fact the like country's biggest

comic book shop is there which is absolutely worth the hype I saw like five Captain America shields in there there's like a whole Star Wars area whole Star Trek area. It was like the size of Walmart, Eva. It was insane. There's also, on more the outskirts of town, there was a really cool comic book called Vision Comics and Oddities. And some artist over there made this art statue

installment of the Avril Monsters that it doesn't look like the cartoon version it looks like if they were to like come to life and anyway I showed it to Eva I'll show up we'll put the picture on Instagram but they look like real I don't know how to describe what would you say Eva like real little monsters yeah it's almost like you know like obviously Avril Monsters is animated and so they look like cartoons but this looks like as if Avril Monsters is animated, and so they look like cartoons, but this looks like as if Avril Monsters was, like, made of human parts? Is that, like, the right way to put it?

It's a very, it's like when people, like, show, like, what The Simpsons would look like in real life, and it's, like, people with, like, really stretched out yellow skin heads. It's very weird. It's exactly that, yeah. It's very odd. I don't know how to process it. And also, what's the one with the eyeballs? it's very weird it's exactly that yeah it's very odd i don't know how to process it and also uh what's the one with the eyeballs that's why we talked about it because we were talking about pan's labyrinth and how he and the guy from our real monsters might be cousins because they both

hold their eyeballs yes and here for the youtube i'll show you on the back yeah see can you see there he is there he is i i always appreciated how starchy his armpit hair was to go directly directly out never never flip down he flat irons that shit and then hairsprays the shit out of it yes but because he's naked on the show which i don't know how nickelodeon got away with that but uh the statue of him too is naked and so another picture we will post of them uh i did get a close up of his little tushy so just in case you post of them uh i did get a close-up of his little tushy so just in case you want to know what the avril monster's real butt would look like in real life i have that on my phone and it will go on our instagram uh real tushy there's also a great this was the story i wanted to take you to uh that i think you came in after i did in denver

but it was called like totally 80s or 80s something. Just if anyone's in Denver and you need something to do, just type in like 80s store and it'll come up. It was, it blew my fucking mind. Have I ever showed you pictures of that place, Eva? No, that sounds so fun. Eva, it was an emporium of 80s. It was everything 80s and 90s.

Any trinket, any McDonald's toy, any stuffed animal, any and 90s any trinket any mcdonald's toy any stuffed animal any popular game any stuffed animal any i mean i think i just said that whatever every single thing it was like from ceiling to floor everything was like crammed together on the shelves because there was just so much to get through there was a ghostbusters section there was um i shockingly very few back to the future stuff. There was Muppet stuff. There was Flintstones area. Oh, my gosh. There was a Star Wars section.

I mean, it was any toy from that era, if you remember it, or even like the as seen on TV, you know, kind of tchotchkes and stuff. We'll post pictures of that, too, on our Instagram. It blew my freaking mind i facetimed allison almost crying being like i found my my haze and anyway i we that was a tangent but i appreciate your shirt eva wore for you referencing a thing we cut out referencing a thing we cut out and found a way to insert back in i also uh something that even i have discussed that nobody else knows about is i got this thing on etsy and it just came in the mail and i have yet to open

it so if you're on youtube this is going to be a site for you but yes unboxing it's an unboxing and i haven't seen it yet it's completely wrapped up i want to give a shout out to the person on Etsy called trans in thesis. And the, the card that came with it said, I hope this gives you goosebumps just to give anyone an idea of what this might be. I just remembered what it was. It was a 3am purchase. So I did,

it was out of my control. I just pressed buy now. And apparently this person is a goosebumps fan and makes little coffin shaped bookshelves and in the coffin shaped bookshelf has little like mini mini mini mini size of your like finger maybe miniature copies of all the Goosebumps books. And so I bought the whole set because I'm a crazy person and it looks amazing. Hang on. So there's, I just opened it. There's a, there's plastic in here, I guess, to keep all the books from falling out.

But it's got, it's even if you're watching on YouTube, it's got little skulls and candles. Oh my God. Let me see if I can pull one of these books out. I was going to say, all those books are little Loose Boys. You can literally pull every one of them out, and they are real Goosebumps books. Oh, my God. Apparently, they're the original 62 Goosebumps books from the 90s. We can read them?

Is there text in there? No. If there was, my Hulk fingers would just break through the entire thing. But from the back, the front and the back and the sides all have all of the Goosebumps info. Please check our YouTube so you know what I'm talking about so you can freak out with me. Because we're on air, I'm not going to get to like explore this as much as I'd like to. But I did tell Eva at 3 a.m. that I bought it. So I wanted you to be here for the unboxing. Oh my God, I'm honored.

This is going right on my little tchotchke shelf. And again, that was trans and thesis if you want one for yourself. So it's delightful. How are you Eva? Because I just said a lot of talking. Oh my gosh, no, thank you. Okay, I love that. Love a 3am purchase. I'm doing great. I speaking of 3am purchases, Rachel, my girlfriend, recently just purchased a nighttime purchase of a bread, a baked bread smelling candle, scented candle. What? Okay.

How did she find this? It is so good. I actually don't know. Does it smell like bread? It smells exactly like bread. So we actually had some bread the next day that was from California Pizza Kitchen. And it tasted exactly the way that bread candle smelled. Okay, so California Pizza Kitchen, you just got the endorsement of a lifetime that this candle smells exactly like your product.

Yes. Wow. This sounds like something that like in the 80s, early 90s, my mom would have used as like a diet trick of like, you can just you can just light up the candle and feel like you're eating carbs. You don't have to eat it. We ate it and smelled it. So, OK, so where did they get where? Where did she get this candle? So, you know, yeah, one of them, I think the second one she ended up getting on Amazon.

But I do think the first one was from like a company like a like a candle company. I'll find the company and I'll like link it maybe on our Instagram at some point because you know like so good I've thought of I thought I had thought of all the things a candle could smell like but to capture the smell of bread is like just so obvious it was under my nose the whole time literally but like I but I just never thought I just typed in bread candle and And the first one that comes up, oh my God, hang on. There's a candle in here called the Stinky Candle Company. And I'm gonna have to get one for the witch for Christmas. That might be it.

Cause they do other, like, let me make sure. Let me see. I'm sorry. There's the Stinky Candle Company. I don't know if this is the company that you bought it from. They have a number two pencil scented candle. Do they really? That might be it.

Cause they also have a spooky season scented one and it smells like somehow weirdly exactly like what you would think Halloween would smell like. Really? It's like the coolest. I'm going to get the company from Rachel because it's so good. Stinky candle company also has a pizza candle. I don't know about that,

but they do have a, they do have a bread candle. And then there was another place called Another One Bites the Crust. That apparently is another bread. Oh, my God, there's so many bread candles. Anyway, thank you for that revelation. Bringing it here. Yeah, I'll find the exact one and I'll link it on the maybe like Insta stories or something.

But, yeah, it was a good one. And, yeah, speaking of 3 a.m purchases i think i'm doing good i think that one is a sane enough explanation it should just be like put in the the normal run-of-the-mill like 6 p.m purchases like that one just makes sense that you could buy it at any hour no one would judge you yeah yeah yeah including 3 a.m right well okay so eva big news that i don't think either of us have totally processed or christine was aware of before she left us to have a baby yes is that this is episode 250 okay i meant to text you about that because as i was like you know creating all the links and

like uploads that like link for later i was like oh my god are you kidding me? Uh-oh. Like, uh, hello? This is a big one. Oh my God. I have, I tried, speaking of 3 a.m. and just losing my mind, I literally tried looking up trivia about the number 250 just to like see if anything would come up so we could embrace this moment. Fun fact, there's not like a lot of trivia about individual numbers. This actually does have one thing, which I will mention in a second.

But first I wanted to do the numerology of 250. Okay. I was literally just, if you didn't mention that, I was going to be like, wait, can we look that up though? I did it for us. Don't even worry. So, okay. I got this information from affinity numerology and a website called the secret of tarot um so 250 i mentioned this a

couple episodes back for some reason oh uh the friday the 13th episode okay that's what it was yes and uh so i guess in numerology each in the number, each digit in the number brings its own energy to the number. And then there's like a like a combined energy. And so when you combine the energy from two, five and zero, you're combining the energies of two, which stands for duality and cooperation. Number five, which stands for individuality, because oh uh number five which stands for individuality because it's the middle point of zero and ten so it's kind of like either it stands alone or it's a turning point into the next chapter um or zero which means birth or rebirth or supreme and it it's kind of comprehensive in that it it i don't know, is involved in every number.

I'm not too sure. But birth slash rebirth slash the universe. So when you add the coexistence of number two, the freedom and individuality of number five, and the inclusiveness of the number zero, that was a quote from the website, you end up getting these values or this essence out of 250. So if you happen to stumble across the number 250 and you're like, oh, what did that mean? If you're into like, you know, finding numbers in your environment. If you see 250, this is what it means. It represents intuition, introspection, wisdom, duality, relationships, personal freedom, and potential.

And so if you, I guess if you were to clump those all together, the message you might get, this is one of like many interpretations, but you could take it as to evolve or have a rebirth into the next phase of life, you need to trust your relationship with the universe and use your inner wisdom to analyze the challenges ahead. relationship with the universe and use your inner wisdom to analyze the challenges ahead. I love that. And it's very telling. I think it resonated with me because of this episode of like, oh, like, I should use my I should trust the universe, fingers crossed that we get 250 more. Yeah, use your inner wisdom to analyze the challenges ahead, which I the only challenge I can think of is why don't I have this fucking bread candle? But, you know, if something else comes by, then like I can think of like those, you know, intuition and introspection were apparently like the main focus of this number.

Oh my gosh. I love that. I feel like it also has some like tones of like, you know, not quite like taking a break, but like regrouping in a way that feels really pertinent to like you know christine having a baby and like you know literal birth and literal birth yeah yeah wow okay eva like oh that was all numerology by the way uh shout out to eva's like personal hobbies because this woman this woman knows a thing or two about tarot so i appreciate quarantine, you just reading me my own life every day. Oh my gosh. What was from the tarot, the medieval cat tarot deck that you gave me?

Well, but then don't they say that like you, like a, oh, tarot cards, you have to be given them as a gift, right? You can't buy them yourself or is it the opposite? You know, I've heard that. I think you actually told me that when you gave them to me and i've heard that before too maybe i was trying to justify why i bought you more tarot cards like hi this is more powerful than you even know um okay so the other fun fact uh about 250 the only fun fact i could really find was that in chinese slang, 250 means idiot.

Oh, that's fun. Apparently 250, it's pronounced er bai wu. I'm sure I'm fucking up the inflections and all that, but er bai wu is 250. And there's two reasons why. They don't know the official story, but there's two main stories as to why 250 became uh the word for idiot so the first reason is the shorter reason is that in ancient china they used to have these copper coins and if you had a thousand of them it was called a Diao, which is their like was like a unit of currency.

So if you had a thousand of them you had a Diao. D-A-I-O for anyone wondering how badly I'm butchering the pronunciation. So half of a Diao or half of a thousand would be 500 of these coins or a bond Diao apparently in china there's uh in culturally from what i found on the internet uh culturally there's like this air of modesty where like you almost kind of like are self-deprecating about your own intelligence where like oh like i'm only like half smart so instead of calling themselves fully smart they would say like oh i'm bondiao as in like half of a thousand if that makes sense yeah and so but actual stupid people idiots would be called a quarter of a thousand instead of just the half thousand that you're like being modest about so a quarter of a thousand is 250 and so

they would be like stupid or an idiot got it the second reason is a story a very quick story of that in forever ago there was a chinese kingdom called qi which is qi so in qi the king's i the way that the story was told to me is that it was his best friend could have just been like someone he was close with but i'm gonna go with bestie because it like makes me feel better so in the story the king's best friend was named suci and i guess to get at the king they killed his best friend they killed suit some like some bad guy killed suci so the king decided to figure out who was his best friend's murderer he put out this announcement saying fun fact suci was actually an enemy of the state and you did me a favor so please come to the palace

so I can reward you oh shit and I will reward you with one with a thousand or like one Diao a thousand coins

and the trick was they think they're coming here for a Diao but they're actually just gonna get killed oh yikes and so just because they killed my best going to get killed oh yeah and so uh just because they

killed my best friend i'm gonna kill them back so four different people fell for this trap and they all showed up at the uh at the kingdom being like i'm the one that killed su chi and he was singing like y'all are fucking idiots like i need to kill one of you and if none of you own up to it i have to kill all of you just to be safe oh and so he ended up saying like okay like if none of you own up to it i have to kill all of you just to be safe oh and so he ended up saying like okay like if none of you are gonna back down and like honestly say you didn't kill him i'm gonna have to assume all four of you did so here's your 1000 coins reward i'll give you 250 each and then he killed them so it was like you're you were foolish enough to fall for that fake campaign but also falsely admitting to murder. At least three of them were.

So that's why 250 means idiot. Oh my gosh. Wow. What a deep dive. What a deep dive. So interesting. I had nothing else to offer, but that's my trivia about the number 250.

Oh my gosh. That's so cool. Okay. Now I'm ready to tell you my spooky story. Yes. Okay. Yes. I'm sorry.

We talked so much. We literally, after yesterday, were like, we won't talk as much. And then I inserted like five fucking stories into the beginning. We're on it. We're here. We're zip zapping. We're doing it. So, Eva, for episode 250, I tried to find the earliest account of a poltergeist.

Whoa, cool. And this is the story of the Devil of Glenliss. The story is from the 1650s, which is 20 years earlier than the last story I just did about the witch Elizabeth Knapp, quote, the witch, or the possession of. So the story is from the 1650s. It is allegedly the, quote, earliest documented account of poltergeist activity. And the, although I feel like I've said that about a few stories at this point, but whatever. The story was published by a guy named George Sinclair. It's a story in one of his books.

So quick fun facts about george sinclair he was he was he seemed very like he would have been one of our people because he was super interested in like demonology and witches and ghosts but he was actually like just a mathematician or an engineer this wasn't like he kind of just fell into demonology i guess by the way i realized i just said oh he's one of us because he's a mathematician and an engineer um i thought because of demonologists yes that's what i meant but i'm sure like i do not think i'm an engineer i don't even know we're an engineer of good times so so um the way he fell into it was that in 1654 he was a professor and he held philosophy and math chairs and then in 1655 he for some reason one of like his like claims to fame

was as a while a professor he contributed to inventing a type of diving bell that helped with shipwrecks oh and then a year later he ends up getting fired from his professor job but he became a mineral surveyor which led to him like supervising the city's water piping huh so he like i don't know he went from one thing to a very different thing but got really invested in minerals and the city's water. So through this, he ended up actually being the person in Scotland, fun fact, to figure out how to drain water from coal mines. Oh, interesting.

He's got that. He's got the diving bell thing. He's all over the place. He's a skilled lad. He is. He's a skilled lad. So then he becomes a math professor at the University of Edinburgh, and he, quote, based on the principle of siphons, invented the early example of a perpetual motion machine. So he's, I don't know what that means,

but it sounds like it was yet another thing to put on his little resume. Wow. And then five years later, he ended up dying. But his biggest accomplishment was in the 1670s while he was working in minerals and water piping he published a book i guess he published a bunch of books but this was the book he kind of got better known for um it was a book about minerals and water piping and it was called hydrostatics the force weight and pressure of fluid bodies it sounds like a textbook i would have to buy for school and never fucking touch yeah yeah well he ended up modifying it i don't know what is going on in there or what was going on in his mind either but he ended up republishing this book with like new additions like demonology so like wait what it's a random like water physics book that also has to do with

the demons oh my god i want to talk to him did he see demons in the mines did he see demons in the pipes all of a sudden like i need a school textbook and it's from 1680 so i don't think it even exists anymore but it was called he renamed it to hydrostatical experiments with miscellany observations and a relation of an evil spirit and also a discourse concerning coal okay wait i don't know why this made me think of like parents trying to make children eat broccoli and like like hiding it like under cheese or like in absolutely it's Absolutely. It's like, hi, here, scientists. I'm one of you. And also, would you like to read about these demons?

Because I'm going to make you in this textbook. It was like the reverse of putting a pill in cheese. It was like, oh, the cheese is actually in the middle. It's actually all the demons. Yeah. Hydrostatical experiments with miscellany observations and a relation of an evil spirit and also a discourse concerning coal. So like he really did just slip it in there and hope no one noticed.

He was like, I've got a lot to say about a lot of things. It reminds me, there's like one book that's like I see on the internet all the time, or it was like something about like love, sex and raising wolves or something. It was something weird where everyone's like, what is going on in this book? There's a lot of twists and turns in the title alone. So anyway, when he wrote that and somehow inserted evil spirit content, it included one story called The Devil of Glenliss. And so I guess you're like reading on page one about hydrostatics and you get to page 20 and all of a

sudden there's the devil of glenliss and i guess it was like maybe the devil is involved in our science i maybe he maybe for the time he thought the science is the devil science is the i don't know but he was also a scientist and he invented shit i don't understand where he was going with it huh maybe it was like one of those i'm trying to think of like, because I feel like growing up, there was a lot of like, you know, contention between like, you know, Christianity and science. But then there were some Christians who were like, No, God is in everything. So God is in science, too. Oh, yeah, it's like similar to that of like, well, God can be in the science, the devil can sure be in the science. I'm stretching. You know, no, know no i mean honestly that makes

more sense than my flippant i don't know so you know what's so funny is that in this book he had people who were critics of the book like duh someone should be and one of them ended up writing a whole pamphlet arguing that this book was like not accurate or why his why his argument wasn't wasn't true and what's so weird is in this whole pamphlet of criticisms about the book not once was like the witches and ghost part touched like no he like he went in truly for the science critiquing the science and like i guess he just saw that there was a chapter about a devil and just went never mind i'm not gonna read that part oh that's so interesting you would think if you wrote a whole science textbook and then threw demons in there the first person to send

you uh like a critique what the first sentence would be like yo what the fuck is up with the demon chapter like maybe put that maybe write a separate book do you want to like yeah discuss that separately? No. And fucking everyone just told, he must've really slipped it in there. Like, like a really good pill in the cheese. Okay. So he wrote this hydrostatics book.

Then he made an updated version that had the devil part in it that people somehow just completely ignored. Then that story, I guess he realized like, huh, it didn't really do well in a textbook about science. So let me republish the story of the devil in a different book about actual demons. Got it, got it, got it. And so in 1685, George Sinclair, who is like writing all these like textbooks and shit, he also writes a book called satan's invisible world discovered oh and that's where he inserts the that story in for a second time and that's when it gets super popular got it got it and the book itself was quote an exploration of demonic activity and an attempt to refute atheism i guess to be like oh demons are real and therefore god's real oh i see got it and uh

so yeah so this is when the story blew up and apparently this book was like actually super popular at the time like in the 1680s like everyone knew someone who had this book the hottest read off the presses hey all they had before was apparently like hydrostatic textbooks and they were like oh and the same guy is now writing demon content let's skip that one at the library okay wait that is really fun though right doesn't that feel so weird yeah it feels like a carl sagan thing with his book cosmos like if you're going to talk about the universe and science enough i feel like it's expected that someone will ask you questions about spirits but i maybe that's me inserting my own interests no that makes sense

because if you're already going into realms of like kind of like not conjecture but like things that are beyond sort of normal understand normal quote-unquote normal understanding maybe it goes into that i i feel like i feel like it's a like carl sagan and then after him like neil degrasse tyson i feel like i for some reason care so much about their opinions on like the afterlife and spirits so i guess it's not too far off that someone who's already in science and talking about this kind of stuff would have an opinion yeah um so anyway that's again just me totally just like a wild random thought of my own but anyway i'm trying to explain why on earth people took this seriously so the story itself that he wrote called the devil in glenlis that he is now republished into this

new story about satan uh the setting of the story it's actually a few years uh earlier it's in 1654 and it's in the rural village of glenless which i did see on the internet was in galloway or gallway scotland got it um it was like a smaller rural village in that area so uh the family that we're going to talk about is the campbell family the husband's name was gilbert and he was a weaver in town oh and. And him and his family lived in Glenliss. So he was married to a woman named Gristle Wiley, which, wow, okay, cool name. Gristle Wiley, also one I want to hear

on a come up on a Ouija board. Right, that's absolutely one you can expect on a Ouija board. And they had several kids, but the main ones for this story are Thomas and, I think it's Janet. It was spelled differently, but I think it over time developed into Janet. Got it.

So it's Gilbert, his wife, Gristle Wiley, and then there are two kids that are crucial to the story, Thomas and Janet. One night, a beggar named Alexander Agnew, which weird that we knew the beggar's full name, but okay. Yeah. He knocks on their door and asks if they have any food or money and if they could help him. The Campbells didn't have anything, so they ended up turning him away. But as this beggar left, he threatened the family. And a lot of people like to start the story off by saying it was his doing that he like put a curse on the home.

But we don't actually know if it was related at all. It's just, I i think good storytelling sure so the first thing right after like he leaves weird shit does start to happen in the house and then there is some people who their theory of the story of oh the beggar like snuck into your house and caused all these problems but it's just again that could be you know a version of storytelling we have no proof of it i feel like that's kind of the age-old thing of like is it is it a ghost or did someone break into your house like the true crime versus paranormal like both are scary which one is it

in the 1670s or whatever we were thinking that i guess so uh the first thing that they noticed was that there was a whistling that started being heard around the property and it was like in the house on the land it didn't matter where you were people could hear this whistling and it went on for months like months and months and months and it started to drive the family crazy what i think is funny that you'll notice throughout this story is that the the demon it's instead of of trying to harm anyone, it's like pure intention is to just annoy the shit out of them. And so it started with this whistling where the family was going crazy.

They just could not figure out where it was coming from. One day, Janet goes down to the well for water, and while she's there, she hears a very loud whistling in her ear, and then she hears this voice. She says it sounded like it was coming right next to her. Uh, the voice said, I'll cast the into the well.

Ooh, I'll throw you in. And, uh, I think there was another witness that said they also heard this, but either way, the story goes that Janet heard it like right in her ear, but nobody else was there.

Um, or nobody else was that close to her to have said that. So, uh uh the whistling apparently sounded according to janet quote as children used to make with their small slender glass whistles oh which oh what first of all maybe i'm just from another time but who are who's giving children small slender glass whistles yeah that sounds like a choking hazard or a shatter hazard. Also that.

I feel like if you blow on this whistle a little too hard, you got little pieces of glass in your mouth. I agree. I've never seen a glass whistle before. I think of kazoos. Was it just because a kazoo hadn't been invented yet? They're like bright neon green plastic. Not quite yet.

Not slender glass like the olden times with your hoop and stick so uh so apparently it sounded like those things that we have no frame of reference for gilbert started not only was the whistling getting bad but uh gilbert started finding all of his work equipment broken all over the house. Oh, no. And sometimes it would just go missing and found in totally weird places. Sometimes the missing items around his house would be found, like, by the door or under the bed or, like, would just never be found at all. And I guess his kids are trusting, but he went to them and they said, we're not doing that.

Like, we don't know where your stuff is going. At the same time, it was probably super believable when the kids said, I don't know what's going on, because very quickly after this, objects started flying around the house by unseen hands. Oh, okay. The family was getting grabbed and shoved, and apparently missing weaving equipment,

including the needles, is now either showing up or the needles themselves are like pricking them in the back. Oh no. So, and sometimes the needles are being found sometimes or not. So it's almost like they're getting stabbed by this invisible needle that went when the real needle went missing. Oh no.

So now they're getting like casually stabbed in their home just a little casual weaving stabbing you know you know i like to think with a weaving needle i don't know how i like to think it was dull i i don't know anything about weaving but i do know that um throughout the story it does say that the kids and the family like never were truly, truly physically harmed. Okay. So I'm thinking that if they were getting pricked by this thing, it was almost like they were more getting poked by a really dull stick. Yeah.

I don't know what a weaving needle looks like. So, I mean, I know what one of those big weaving looms looks like that has one. That's what I'm thinking too. Yeah. That has a like shuttle thing that goes back and forth. Yeah.

So I don't know. Let's, let's hope it was not too. Yeah. That has a like shuttle thing that goes back and forth. Yeah. So I don't know. Let's, let's hope it was not painful. Yeah. He also noticed that the threads that he used for work were being cut. Like they were literally with scissors just being sliced up. And then not only was his own work equipment getting cut up, all of the family's linen.

So their hats, their clothing, their shoes, their bed sheets, anything that you could take scissors or a knife to they were finding it like randomly in their home completely shredded god that's really scary that looks like i feel like that would look like the aftermath of like you know what's the horror or like edward scissorhands or something but like the what's the other one that has the knives for oh freddy krueger freddy krueger yeah that like that was just like the aftermath or coming for

you again like by the way um freddy krueger i uh oh oh a pokemon card just got delivered um this house is just a just a fun house for children fun house of 3 a.m. purchases. I feel so bad for Allison sometimes. I realized that, like, yesterday I had a whole conversation with her about Pokemon cards while I was drinking my juice box. And then, like, something else happened. And then, like, I ended the conversation with being like, can you make me chocolate milk? I was like, what is? I was like, I have just devolved as a human into either the best version of myself or the worst version but like Allison works with all these like corporate people and I was like never tell them

like it's just gonna make you look so bad like just like oh I talk about ghosts and drink my juice boxes like it's so stupid it might be a good recess for her it's certainly um it keeps her on her toes because she never knows how quickly I'm going to fall into another, you know, I don't know, trend from 1993. Um, okay. So we were talking about, oh, all the clothes getting shred up like Freddy Krueger. Fun fact. I said this years ago, but I haven't brought it up in a long time. My aunt dated Freddy Krueger in um college oh my god wait I feel like I vaguely remember you mentioning that that's so wild like the actor

yes no the actual demon who visits your dreams yeah Eva he just sweeps on in it's like can you be a little more like consistent the next time your sleep paralysis demon shows up be like um I'm sorry but you dated my friend's aunt um do you not remember her leave me alone um your tinder profile wasn't very like appealing can you like move along please no apparently his name is robert england i think um yeah they dated i don't think for a long time but they dated for a good time so um that's my that's my my only fun fact about halloween and personal history so i i say it too often but uh yes it's exactly like if my aunt's ex-boyfriend came to your house and ripped up all of his fucking clothes so anyway uh even creepier by the way speak it's more freddy krueger than you think it's not it has

nothing to do with um i don't think it has anything to do with like when you're sleeping or whatever but in the middle of the day you would just realize that the clothes you had on that were fine earlier are now completely torn up on the sides of you no so it's like like you're not even doing anything and all of a sudden it'll just sneak up and start cutting your your stuff would they like see the scissors or just the cuts would appear it just appear i think i have a feeling they would feel the sensation of their shirt being cut but they were never cut which is another reason why they say like oh this thing never physically harmed them i'm feeling if it like if it wasn't willing to cut them it probably wasn't willing to stab them too hard but i mean

it also sounds like it was a literal demon so i don't know where its standards are and it feels like probably at the time they wouldn't necessarily know that so if they're seeing it being sliced like oh my god i would think my skin was next for sure i mean it's at least the psychological torture is very much there yeah i don't know what it is about, like, these 1600s demons from the UK, but now rocks start getting thrown at them. Y'all fucking love rocks getting thrown at you. Like, that seems to not be a thing in, like, a lot of American stories, but all of the super old school stories from the UK, there's a ghost that is throwing rocks at people huh um maybe that was like going back to augur monsters and like monster school maybe that's what they learned in the uk ghost academy that i just created in my head you get it i get it so they're just getting

pelted with rocks i feel like i just did another story where the family was getting pelted with rocks. I feel like I just did another story where the family was getting pelted with rocks. And Gilbert notices that the rocks are being thrown in super high numbers at a great force, which makes him think it's no way it's the kids anymore because they're coming like down the roof. They're coming down the chimney. They're coming through the windows and the doors and the whole family is there. Again, shockingly, nobody's getting hurt. It's just to terrify them and furniture starts moving and drawers are opening and the contents of those drawers are flying everywhere

oh god bed sheets are getting ripped off of them while they sleep i mean it's you know their items and their articles of clothing are all getting destroyed um so it's just kind of the whole shebang, if you will. Like a tornado, like a paranormal tornado. That is what it is. The Twista, as I call it. So Gilbert, I guess to at least keep his clothes safe from getting cut up, he brings them to the neighbors for safekeeping. He's like, I can't explain this to you.

Can you just watch my clothes? Oh, help. And so I guess he had to eventually tell them what was going on. like i can't explain this to you can you just watch my clothes help and uh so the his i guess he had to eventually tell them what was going on and so his neighbors and his friends were like dude like move away what is wrong with you it's like why are you still there and i guess they couldn't afford anything else as the old story goes yeah um but they said at least send your kids away because the they it wasn't like oh because the devil could be hurting one of them it was like for science which makes sense why george sinclair would be into this story

but he uh they were like send your kids away to different locations and see which one of them the devil follows oh my god kids as bait they were like the kids literally might be the one that the demons after and and might be one in particular so figure out which one is the target and in that way you can at least like remove that child or something oh my god gilbert and his wife send the kids away and for those several days there was actually no activity in the house so oh shit write us a letter tell us in a couple weeks we'll know exactly um facetime me in 1680 and tell me which one of you is still getting cut. So the local minister, Minister Scott, told him to actually bring the children

back so the whole family could pray together. And all the kids are coming back one by one. And then the kid, Thomas, comes home and activity starts up again. So ding, ding, ding. We know who the target is. Well, that is such a scientific process. Hey, it worked. I'm not saying it was, it was like ethical science, but it was good science, you know? So the first two days that Tom comes back,

on both of those days, a different fire breaks out in the house by itself. Oh, fire. We've moved up from rocks to fire. We've moved all the way up from like needles to rocks to fire. Oh God. Luckily, both times neighbors walking by saw the fire and were able to put it out. These neighbors, by the way, are like on top of, it's like they've been waiting their whole

lives for some sort of paranormal shit. They were like, we already know what to do with the kids. We are, we are prepared to like watch your house every second of the day to put out a fire wow and gilbert ends up asking the minister that he was talking to earlier he says can tom go stay with you for a little bit while we figure this out because you're a holy man as in like you know maybe he'll be safer there yeah uh the minister takes tom in but i think his one source told me that his clothes also started getting torn up the minister the minister whatever happened the minister like literally brought the kid back he was like uh thank you returning to sender exactly so uh he came back and apparently it got really

bad again and now the kid is actually getting like beaten by this demon. Oh no. So he had to move out again. The minister took him back in being like, okay, like I guess my clothes can get cut up so a kid doesn't get hurt. So he goes back. This is like the third time he's been kicked out of his fucking house. Cause he had to go be with a random person. And now he's with the minister twice.

So now while Tom's gone for the third time, the family keeps hearing this voice. And at first they actually start trying to talk to this voice oh um they hear this demon i don't i don't know i guess it's maybe the same voice that janet heard by the well earlier but they start hearing this voice talking to them and so they start being i guess asking questions like who are you or like some sort of like commanding questions that enable conversation because this thing started talking and talking talking and never shutting up which is i guess another way to annoy the hell out of this family my god the very first podcast yeah and the the family eventually they were like i think it's best like we should have not done that. Let's just ignore whatever this voice is.

Let's just ignore it. But it got to a point where they were so afraid that this voice would just take any opportunity to chime in and talk to them that the family stopped talking to each other, too. Oh, no. They just lived in silence, hoping that this thing wouldn't try to talk to them. Is that like The Quiet Place? I've never seen it, but. No, but... I was like, I know the word quiet is in it,

so let me just throw that out there. I mean, I guess it has overlaps in that they are both quiet. Moving on. It actually are some similarities to it, but in a Quiet Place, it's this monster that, like, if it hears any sound, it, like, strikes to kill. Got it.

So they have to be super quiet so that this thing doesn't find them. Got it. It's like they're, like, they know they're prey. This thing, they just don't want to talk to it. It's like social anxiety. This thing, they're just giving the cold shoulder to. This thing, they're like, if you look the other direction long enough, he'll leave. Maybe he'll get the hint. It's like like it's the social version of a quiet place the minister starts

hearing voices too when he brings uh when he goes back over to pray with the family again so now the family isn't the only ones dealing with this the minister has heard it and uh he decides okay i'm gonna bring some other people over and uh we're just it's not just gonna be me praying i'm just gonna bring like a whole group of people and let's just all pray over your family together and see what happens because now there's like been two fires and the kids are still getting harassed and i'm sure the minister was like i don't want this kid at my house anymore my clothes keep getting scratched up. So like,

let's just find a way as a community to make this work. He's also like, my clothes are very specific. Like, right. Like he has like, what are they called? The things.

Oh, the big collar, the like ministers. The minister yesterday was called a black rogue. Right. So maybe he's got some sort of black robe thing i don't know rogue to rogue he uh so he calls all these people in town to um come pray over the family with him i think there's about five people there in total so i guess a lot of people were like no we've heard

about this and want nothing to do with it they're already hearing a voice right they're already hearing this voice talk to them as a family now the minister is really hearing the voice and the devil i guess i'm assuming he's the devil uh the demon who has been completely like cold shouldered by this family and has just wanted someone to talk to this whole time oh uh is very chatty today because the minister now comes in and is like, all right, let's fucking talk. Like, come on, demon, where are you? So this becomes what I consider the longest back and forth conversation

with a demon I've ever seen in my life. Oh my gosh, longer than the script from last week? I feel like the last one you did, they had like a script, like a back and forth script with Elizabeth. It's kind of also another back and forth script, but I did, it won't feel like it, but I did limit it.

There was like several more pages I could have put in and it just all kind of felt like the same thing. So I don't think we're really missing any like specific dirt. You know, all the demon dirt, no drama, no drama. I left all of the important stuff in.

So the minister comes over and all of a sudden he hears a voice. And the voice says, it's two Latin words. It says, Oh. And what's really important about it is the fact that apparently the minister later said that those were the first words of the quote latin rudiments that you learn in school so it was i think it was like kind of that creepy demon thing where it was like playing into one of your memories or like it knew something about you that like was important to you so he says cuam literar, which I guess let the minister know, like, oh, we're fucking going for it. We're in it, yeah.

Then he hears the demon's voice again say, a dog. What? In, in now, not Latin? In not in Latin. Now we're back to English, apparently. He was like, got your attention, now let's talk about this pup over here. Honestly, it would have gotten my attention a lot more if

you said a dog first. I would have been like, where? Yeah, show me. So I guess the minister assumed that the demon was calling him a dog. And so the minister snapped at him, was like, he said something like, I'm not a fucking dog. Or like, yo, like, what's going on? The demon replies in very polite English and says, it was not you, sir.

I spoke it to, I meant by the dog there for there was a dog standing behind your back. I'm so sorry. The Steven is like, he is, this is an educated scholar demon. He's got Latin. He's got proper English. He's got manners. He went to etiquette school, for sure. I mean, he's also maybe feeling a little sassy because no one was talking to him. And now

he's like, no, I wasn't fucking talking to you. I want to get to this dog. Only one of us can have an ego here. Okay, don't think you're being I'm giving you all my attention. Oh, my gosh. So the men decide when he says like, oh oh because there was a dog standing behind your back the men decide that the demon is like trying to trick them they're like we don't see a dog so they just start praying and they hear a voice coming from under a bed and now it's still the demon voice now it's under the bed and apparently not only in proper english i guess it was in the proper country dialect so it's now speaking just like them and uh the demon says would you know the witches of glenliss i will call them there are witches now there's witches and he's got them on speed dial he was like no one else is talking to me so i'm

bringing all my friends over this dog these witches he was like um i'm not talking to you i wasn't talking about you calm the fuck down but also while you're here do you happen to know all of the witches of glenliss um so then i guess his version of the witches of glenliss he just rattled off a few names of people in town that had bad reputations oh interesting one of them gilbert later tells the group that one of them had actually died a while ago so why is he mentioning this guy and also how did this voice know about this person who died wait yeah that's interesting so he says this i guess with an earshot of the bed aka this voice

with a proper dialect and so he says like oh one of those names that person just died recently and the voice responds and says it's true she's dead but her spirit is with us oh so it's like okay so now you like you know some latin from his childhood uh the minister childhood you know about the afterlife and who's with you you are naming people in town so like you have a lot of information about these these these locals yeah um and then the minister says uh basically he says yo back the fuck up but then the proper language um he says quote the lord rebuke thee satan and put thee to silence we are not to receive any information from thee thou art but seeking to seduce this family, for Satan's kingdom is not divided against itself.

So he's basically saying, like, okay, shut up. Like, we don't want to hear what you have to say. Also, stop inviting your friends over. We didn't say you could do that. Also, stop rattling off names. Like, you, like, need the attention. Like, okay, you've got friends. Yeah, stop name dropping.

We get it. I know. So at one point, is uh the kid that was like has been getting carted back and forth i guess he came over with the minister so he is home for this poor tom like couldn't tom have just stayed home and like watched some prices right and like eaten some soup and like called it a day i mean maybe the demon wanted to do that too okay fair also i guess maybe the minister had to bring him to like almost like reel in the demon of like look who's here your favorite target right which like wow

like doing that with a kid like just luring in demons with this child yeah yikes so uh at one point tom hears uh the demon's voice while he's at the house and they're having this whole conversation he hears the demon threaten him for coming back and saying like, you knew better to stay away from here. Um, but the minister steps in, uh, sees the controversy happening and says,

the Lord will preserve this house and the lad too. Like, okay. God is protecting us and him. So like get out of his face face the devil or the demon then says he was put out already and shall not abide here and i shall pursue him to the end of the world tom yeah tom he's like he already left he knows better than to stay here and i will follow him no matter what anyway oh no so. So the minister says basically like,

God will stop you from bothering him. The demon says, we'll leave the house for a week and I'll leave for good. He doesn't say it as like sassy as I just did. It's like much more like old English, but he basically says like, if you leave the house for a week, I'll make a deal with you and I'll officially leave too.

But then the minister, I guess his thought process was like, if you leave the house for a week i'll make a deal with you and i'll officially leave too but then the minister i guess his thought process was like if you do that you are obeying a demon and it's like almost giving him more power so it's a trick okay so the minister was like god will remove you like we don't have to go anywhere god will remove you for us okay the demon is like i won't be removed i'm here to torment the family and then the minister is like well god will stop you eventually it's such a back and forth this is why i didn't put all of the information in um or like how i said there's like several more pages of dialogue it's like it feels like people breaking up and they're just like you know why don't you just leave well i'm not gonna leave well then i'll leave but don't you leave. So it became this weird, catty, unimportant conversation, as far as I'm concerned.

The last parts, I'll say, of the conversation, the demon says, I, sir, have a commission from God, which perhaps will last longer than you, which was implying, like, I'm here for a lot longer than you'll be on Earth. Oh. And interestingly, he ended up predicting the fact that less than a year later,

the minister did. What? Oh my God. In this, he was kind of taunting, like, you're not going to be here forever. And the demons,

I don't know. It was a weird coincidence. Huh? So after, uh, the prayers, uh, after like all these,

this group of people are here and still praying. Just by the way, like they all came over here. I'm assuming being told like, oh, the minister is like going to lead us through this prayer. But they're all praying and the minister is like just like catty with the demon. Like I would be there praying being like, dude, like, can you help us? Like, what are we supposed to do? You're leading this shit tell us what to say tell us what to do power numbers and he keeps getting distracted by just hanging out with the devil i guess after enough of this conversation i guess they all kind of got

fed up and started exploring the house and they were trying to find out where this voice was coming from thinking maybe they were being tricked and so they go into the kids bedroom and they said like oh well some of the kids were in bed at the same time that we heard a voice under this bed maybe it's just the kids okay like maybe this isn't real and so they started thinking like oh we're being tricked we're being bamboozled and then the demon voice which like all the kids i guess either aren't in bed right now i hope they're not in bed like there, there's a literal kind of, like, exorcism thing going on right now. Yeah.

So I hope the kids are not in the house or they've, like, gone down to the kitchen for a snack. Or, like, in the prayer circle or something, like in the middle of a sun ring or something. Yeah. Meanwhile, Tom is, like, strapped to a birding chair or something. Poor Tom. Tom's like, hi, please stop making me bait.

Well, so then they, I guess, at a time when the kids weren't in the room, they heard the voice again, kind of confirming like, oh, it's not the kids like we thought it was. And the voice, I guess, was offended at the thought that it might not be an actual demon. It could just be like simple human children. So the demon gets all angered up and he says, you lie. God shall judge you for your lying. And I and my father will come and fetch you to hell. Okay.

So we just learned two things. One, apparently his father is Satan. Okay. Two, loving that he needs daddy's help of like, yes, I will call my father.

He's like, I'm going to tell my dad. He's going to bring you down to hell for me. Cause I can't do it alone. So, uh, the minister then says, the Lord rebukes your spirit and casts you out.

And the demon replies with, it is written in ninth of Mark. The disciples could not cast him out. So I guess after that, it becomes like the the second that the minister heard the demon reciting bible verses i guess he took it as a challenge and for truly reading this it felt like it took a million years it was like three pages of old english of them just like duking it out in some weird scripture battle of like they just kept shouting verses to each other.

And as someone who has not read the Bible, I was very confused. I was like, what are we, what is going on? As someone who has read the Bible, I probably would have been confused and also over it. Like,

like it was also in like the weird English. So I kept trying to translate something I ultimately wouldn't even understand. And so it was just trust me that I'm going end it here for you where it's like he mentions one bible verse about how like the disciples couldn't cast him out and the minister took that as a challenge and for the next three pages they just like shouted verses at each other they're like one-upping each other on bible knowledge exactly the minister was like this demon's not gonna like pull a fast one on me so after all of that basically the minister says like who are you where did you come from and the demon says he is quote an evil spirit come from the bottomless pit of hell to vex this house i looked up what vex means and it literally just means like to annoy

the family so he literally's like i am just the family. So he literally was like, I am just the son of Satan. And clearly I'm just like a bored teenager and I'm here to piss off the family. Cause I can wait. I love that. I love that. It started and ended like that. So,

uh, then out of nowhere, a did not see this coming. A disembodied arm shows up in the room. Oh no. From elbow to to hand elbow to fingers ew and this hand starts banging on the floor no and tries to make the house rumble like make it shake um and then you hear the demon's voice saying come up father come up i will send my father among you wait what that's

like a it seems like a play or something like they're trying to get the trap door open it feels it feels like this demon is trying to like overtake this exorcism like he's like now they're both trying to summon a different demon i don't really understand whoa but anyway he's saying like i am the son of satan we will bring you to hell and now like come on up father like it's time to help me cart these people off oh my god and i guess gilbert the the main husband of this family who is watching all this happen i guess he it felt like he was taunting the demon he basically said like oh just like how i can hear you i'd love if i could actually see your face like it's a shame like you're not powerful enough to do that oh i'm sorry zach baggins

hello it's his father gilbert baggins okay do you mind great great great great great great grandfather his great grandpappy gilbert bagel bites um so he basically i and it felt like taunting that's not actually in the writing but that's just kind of how i took it where he was like oh i'd love if i could actually see you and the demon says we'll put out the candle and i shall come among you like fireballs which also sounds like something zag bagans would say yeah um but he basically says like put out the candle and in the dark i'll let you see me indeed um the demon then says at some point by the way has not shown himself so calling bullshit he then says if your son's prayers did not prevail with god uh it's old englishy but he basically

says if your prayers to god aren't working then my father and i will be victorious but one of the people praying says ah so you admit that there's a god and we can get rid of you by praying to heaven and this man i guess had just like bought a new hat or something in town um so this again this demon feels like a sassy adolescent who's like just trying to get in all of his gotchas yeah and so um when the man calls him out and says like oh so you're saying like if we pray to god you'll go away in some weird last ditch effort to like diss him the demon says sir you speak of prayer with your broad-lipped hat i'll bring a pair of shears from my father and and clip the lips of it okay i get why people think these are the kids now because like not that i think

they are but like that is a very sassy like child adult like teen thing to say like he like like he got caught in the fact that he admitted that god was real so now the demon's like well i'm gonna cut up your brand new hat make you feel real dumb and uh that'll show you won't it that'll show you and that'll it also feels in my mind this demon's gay like i just feel like i'm getting this like diva fashionista thing coming from him like kind of like the trope of like someone who's like you know super diva-y i don't know why but i think also because i was reading all this old english for hours and it just also feels very flowery and like well yeah

and it's like what's the worst that like this demon is trying to think of the worst thing and what's the worst the worst thing possible is that your fashion sense are you kidding me I mean he's like I get that it's just like uh all I'm doing is feeding into stereotypes and not trying to but I am getting a vibe from this demon that like he really likes to go attack your style i mean he's literally destroying their entire wardrobe oh my god that's right right like he is not i'm just saying so uh he says like i'll basically bring a pair of like scissors straight from hell and cut your hat up which we already know he had scissors because he's been cutting right like he's been doing it the whole time yeah i'm thinking of like a Tim Gunn on like Fashion Project

or what's it? Project Runway. Yeah, yeah. I feel like he's just like, oh, it's time to cut this up, you know? Time to make it something new. So he, what's interesting, and to answer your question earlier about like were they feeling the shirt get cut or not or were they just looking down seeing it cut?

After he like disses this guy and says like oh your brand new hat which by the way i love that he already knew that this guy had a brand new like he could see it from a mile away and was like i know a new hat when i see one but i guess after he like dissed this guy who was wearing the hat he actually heard and felt thick scissors cutting through his hat and so he lifted it up to check on it to see if it was being cut so i'm thinking that's what happened with the family earlier where they would feel their shirts being like tugged on with scissors got it at one point he threatens one of this is where it like gets like dark again at one point he threatens one of the kids

uh with a belt saying that he will tighten it around their bones oh it's a new threat yeah he tries to get gilbert's wife to give him some bread which is like bread candle would you like a bread candle honestly i did not see the ties until this moment that maybe he just wanted a bread candle maybe a sam's with bread candles would have like you get him back yeah you get it or i like that he was like i imagine he was just so tired of like this back and forth and he was like do you have any carbs like i need like i need something to keep going it's like michael scott carbo loading before the race so apparently like the wife did come in and like literally brought all these people praying bread, which I love that. Like,

and like, she's like the soccer mom with oranges. Like during halftime, she brought them some bread to like charge up for the rest of their praying. Love it. And at that time, the demons voice had something like, Oh,

break me off a piece of the bread. Um, but I guess the, the minister again was like, first of all, that's obeying the demon and that's breaking bread with the demon is literally making a sacrifice to him so don't listen to him um also like where is he where was this where was she going to toss the bread to like give him some i mean if the disembodied arm is

still there he was like hi hello can i grab some and then you see some disembodied teeth all of a sudden yeah yeah uh so after this horror this all of this everyone starts going home because they're like we are not getting anywhere the minister told the family to ignore whatever the demon said to just pray through it because that seemed to be working at least he like wasn't talking during that and the demon hears this and freaks out that he'll get like neglected again i guess because he goes what Will you not speak to me? I shall strike the children and do all manners of mischief. Oh, no. So everyone took it as like a trick.

So they tried to not respond to him. And as the minister was about to leave, the demon says to Gilbert's wife, Gristle Wiley, Gristle, put out the candle. And I guess the minister is like, don't listen to him like he's trying to pull a fast one on us and i guess she so she doesn't put out the candle and the demon starts getting really pissed off the like now all of a sudden they're not talking back to him they're not doing what he asks and so he's saying like put out the candle put out the candle put out the candle and he's doing it faster and more aggressively and louder until eventually their

his voice sounds like it's in their heads of like, put out the candle. I guess eventually they were just so annoyed by him, which is what he wanted anyway, that they did put out the candle. And in a very anticlimactic ending, the demon, I guess, realized this was just his fate, that he would be like kind of a big eye roll for the family and nothing else was going to come from it. Once they put out the candle, he just said, I'll trouble you no more. Oh, so I think he kind of gave up. He was like, the fun is over. Like people are getting tired of me. So I guess I I'm losing losing people's interest.

So I'm going to go away. Oh, my gosh. He was like, no bread. You're not talking to me. I'm bored. I got to go. Yeah, exactly. I already cut up the fashionable hat. So there's nothing more i can do here so uh he said i'll trouble you no more so after this

the family did experience some more instances of violence but i guess it started dying down um but it was still enough to freak gilbert out and he asked the ministers uh he asked the minister later on, like, should I just move my family? What should I do? Which like at this point, Gilbert,

like you clearly don't want to move the family. Like you've had a lot of time to have made this decision by now. Yeah. The ministers agree to help him again. And the activity does seem to die down for a little bit, but the new activity surfaces where the, uh, entity began hiding the family's food particularly

their meat which to me is the meanest most frustrating thing you could do they they would find meat like in the doorposts and in their clothes yeah that's also so like a unsanitary and b like if you don't find it soon enough you probably find it because it starts smelling so your house smells like rotting exactly that's the only clothes you have without tears and rips in them smells like funky meat yeah um sometimes it all their food went entirely missing and was never found again um and the food would literally sometimes even get snatched out of their hands or thrown at them when they were looking for it. Oh God. Uh,

the demon also started keeping them up at night with loud shuffling and growling and verbal threats of burning the house down. And after actually like threatening one time that he was going to burn the house down only a few nights later, one of the beds caught on fire. Oh shit. Um, which again,

people think like, Oh, it could be a kid burning his own bed if this is like the story that he's been keeping with yeah um but eventually the activity did maybe that one last fire was like the last real attempt at getting their attention and it didn't work because after that the activity did die down it left the family alone for good and the family ended up living there for many more years um and most obviously think that the demon was a hoax or one of the children or something the only thing that's interesting is

how something threw its voice that well um that i can think of uh and the story they say the story could have been completely made up or a real story that was enhanced for entertainment so maybe it wasn't really a demon but it just kind of became a story about a demon they also think that george sinclair could have written the story himself since he intentionally was putting the story in a book to prove that god is real oh right i forgot that this was like in a minerals textbook yes yes exactly this is like this is like the reward you get after finishing that really complicated chapter you know wait oh my god question what well i know you said so a lot of stories involve rock throwing but he was a mineral scientist a mineral scientist yo a mineral surveyor cold person yes actually i don't know but that's so smart maybe he heard the story and he like didn't really believe

in any of it but then he heard about the rock throwing and he was but that's so smart maybe he heard the story and he like didn't really believe in any of it but then he heard about the rock throwing and he was like that's something I relate to and that was like what kind of rocks maybe that was his first inspiration with this story where he was like oh rocks you say okay I'll come take a look at your demonic rocks that'll be interesting I did not even put that together Eva so. So smart. One thing, too. So he does say that he got this story from. So this is going to be kind of like a breaking the fourth wall situation. But so George Sinclair wrote this story or put the story out about the Campbell family.

Right. And there was Gilbert and Tom and all them. He got this story specifically from the son, Tom, who, like, was getting harassed by this demon. I guess he actually knew them in real life. And Tom, I think one source said that he was actually living with George Sinclair for a time. Oh. Because he was a student at the school that George was a professor at. Oh, wow.

And so I think maybe, like, they probably, I imagine, I'm totally making up the situation, I think maybe like they probably I imagine I'm totally making up the situation but I imagine over like dinner and like you awkwardly live with a professor or like the chair of your department and you're trying to just like make up conversation and maybe they found out that they had a common interest

in like he liked the occult and demonology and Tom was like oh I've got a story from my childhood you might be interested in and that might be where they clicked or something but totally making that up i'm totally guessing but in some way george sinclair apparently inherited the story from tom campbell and then wrote the story about them to put into his next book wow if that makes sense yeah yeah yeah so they think that either the story is completely fake it was a boring story that got enhanced

for entertainment uh george sinclair created it completely on his own in a way or at least spiced it up so that it would prove that god exists or they think that when tom told him the story he could have totally made it up to like impress his professor or or he he could have been telling a more enhanced version of his childhood or told a faulty childhood memory version of this story so interesting there's a lot of what ifs on the accuracy something tells me it's not 100 true um but i did want to say two fun facts uh the location of the home if you happen to be in this area uh i guess the place is now known as geist ha it's g-h-a-i-s-t instead of it's like ghost but an a-i instead of an o and then h-a apostrophe i have no idea how to pronounce that properly, but that is allegedly the location of where the Campbell home used to be.

There was like a whole website where someone who likes the story enough actually tried to like map out where all the locations were. It was very interesting. So the, the, the area of the home is guys top and the well where they first heard the demon speak for the first time is now known as deals well which is d-e apostrophe i-l almost like oh dell's well like devil maybe oh it's

devil but an apostrophe instead of the v oh interesting so maybe it could be devil's well and there's also a space in that area also called campbell's croft which might be about the campbell family oh interesting anyway if you live near there and you care about in that area also called Campbell's Croft, which might be about the Campbell family. Oh, interesting. Anyway, if you live near there and you care about locations to my stories, you can go there and soak it all up. And then the last fact that I have is that the beggar from the story

from the very beginning, Alexander Agnew. Oh, yeah. He is also involved in local history in a different way because not only was he the beggar in this story but he was also known as the jock of broad scotland and two years after he would have allegedly knocked on the door and been turned away and cursed the campbell family two years later he was hanged at Dumfries for blasphemy. Oh. Because he, I guess before he died, they asked him for the last time, is there a god?

This was his response. He said, quote, I know no god, only salt, meal, and water. Which a lot of people. Sorry. What's that? And rock. And rock. and mineral coal so i guess uh i guess when the beggar so he when he got hanged for blasphemy and his response was i only know of salt meal and water

they tried to use that in the story or people have tried to use that with the story and say that like he might have been the one harassing the family the whole time because all he wanted was salt meal and water when he came begging at the house yeah um and of course he would be the demon because he knows no god he only knows like food and the things that will help him survive it became like this weird additional allegory or this weird theory about like how he inspired the story from the beginning. I don't know. It just became a weird thing.

But anyway, that is the story of the devil of Glenliss. Oh, my gosh. That's so interesting. Wait, I have a question. Did they think that so they just thought that it was a story based on the beggar or they thought that the beggar was actually the one kind of harassing them because of. I thought that the beggar was actually the one kind of harassing them because of. I think one of the theories is that the beggar might have been the person pulling the strings and been the demon the whole time. Got it. Or this was just fanciful writing that the beggar gave the author some inspiration, like some way to bookend the story of like.

Oh, I see. He could have just honestly been like a storytelling ploy in book ending of you know oh he started the story by harassing the family and then he ended up dying later because he knew no god or something it just oh gotcha okay gotcha who knows it was it's just he somehow got inserted into the story a lot of times when he was just like a homeless person who ended up dying of blasphemy so i'm not too sure oh my gosh that's so that whole story was so interesting em it feels like it was such a bookend too of like i forgot like about the beggar i forgot about the that it was like a textbook from the beginning and

all that came back at the end of the day it's the most interesting textbook you could hope to ever find in like an antique store from the 1600s oh please god if someone finds that textbook please if they're if someone can actually find me like hydrostatic bodily fluids or whatever it was called i don't remember i want that book so bad just so i can see the the demonic story inserted into the scientific yes wait that would be such a good present for Christine, too, with all of her, like, you know, the, like, prescription that she, the, like, whiskey prescription and then the witch thing that you gave us both. Wow, Christine is not here, so we have full, like, potential to tell everybody everything we saw in her house

because it blew both of our minds. Oh, that's true. Christine's house was so pretty. It was. It blew my freaking mind. Cause I'd only ever seen, I'd only seen what everyone on YouTube had seen, which was her face in that little corner of that one room. And I knew nothing else about that house.

And I guess she had kept forgetting that like, I hadn't seen her home before, but when we first got there, you and I were both literally jaw dropped. Oh yeah. We were like, wow,, you and I were both literally jaw dropped. Oh, yeah. We were like, wow, this is like historic. It's like beautiful. Also, even just like panning out from the screen, like the YouTube screen. Yes. Her podcast room is so insane. Pretty. Yeah. It was all pretty. Anyway, Christine, if you're listening in your stupid, beautiful house, we wish we were there. We're also also haunting it we are in your crawl spaces

yeah if you hear a bump upstairs that was me that was us all right tell me tell me uh your second tale my second tale oh my gosh well first thank you that was such a good story and i loved it thank you you. I appreciate it. Well, I try, I was like, what can I do for episode 250? And that was kind of the best I could come up with. Conjure up. Oh, you conjured a story about a bread demon. I love it. My favorite little gluten monster.

Gluten monster. Oh my God. I love that. Sesame Street. Are you listening? I would like you to do a character called the Gluten Monster and I would like to voice him and act him and eat all of the food he has to eat.

And yeah, as a character study, we would like all of the bread sent to us, pretty please. Okay, let me find my, those are not my notes. Where did they go? Uh-oh, just kidding, they're right here. Okay. LOL, can you imagine if you just didn't have no you know what I would be like you know what Eva we're already doing this is such a big ask

you could just not have done them I'll understand I found them hooray um I'm actually okay so these notes are especially great and fun and I think I mentioned last time uh my trial crew friends that I meet up with to listen to and watch all the true crime stuff um they so Ellen in particular god bless because Ellen when she found out I was doing this and I think Rachel might have like said something yeah I think Rachel was like hi Ellen ask for Eva if she needs help. Ellen was like, hey, do you need help or want help with notes? And I was like, yes, please. Yes, please. I feel like everyone does need to take a moment and appreciate,

like, this isn't just, like, you popping on and, like, just committing an hour of your time or two hours of your time. Like, it sounds like we're complaining about nothing but to do to do research for these stories takes a long time and for you to be able to come on and do four weeks of this is like you don't realize how helpful you're being and everyone in the world should do a little clink and cheers for Eva because this is it's very, it's very, very nice for you to. I totally understand why you would be asking other people for help. I would also like to ask other people for help.

So I get it. Well, I appreciate it. And I also was telling them earlier, I have a whole new respect for both of you in terms of like, you know, when we were touring, you know, the first go round and you got you both were doing like notes on planes, you know, and all of that, like having to like cram it in. I just was like, oh my gosh, like, wow, you guys both did so much work. Well, thank you. That's why we now have a scripted show, which by the way, shout out, if there's any tickets left to our tour, please come. Oh my gosh. So excited about that. Um, so yeah. Oh my gosh. Huge shout out to Ellen because Ellen is like basically the, the one in trial crew who like will actually listen to court transcripts. Will like, like she was, she was into true crime before it was cool.

Before like all the hype of it. So she already had just written out a bunch of different stories. And so she was like, you can use these. I'm not using these. So. Wow. God bless. Thank you, Ellen.

Wow. Love, love all of. So wow. God bless. Thank you, Ellen. Wow. Love, love all of you guys in trial crew. It just, as soon as she mentioned that, I was like, wow, I feel so much more like, like empowered to, to like know what to talk about. And it kind of reminded me too, again, of like, oh, I've always loved, you know, you know, I've always been interested in this kind of thing. And yeah. So especially the story in particular, because so I had initially heard the story on a really early, my favorite murder episode. And then I mentioned it to Ellen and Ellen was like, Oh yeah, I know that story. And so we talked about it for like hours one time at trial crew. It was so cool. And then I just loved that that was like one of hers on here because I was like, oh, my God, that I remember being so like mind blown by this case. So, yeah, huge shout out to Ellen, huge shout out to Trial Crew, huge shout out to Rachel.

Thanks, everyone. Thank you, everyone who has made this possible in any way. Yeah. Thank you, My Favorite Murder, for initiating the conversation. Truly. Yeah. So my sources definitely are Ellen. I did take Ellen's notes and I added,

I, you know, watched, I listened to the episode again. I like, you know, read a bunch of articles. Actually, there was one LA Times article that was really interesting. So that was one of my sources. But yeah, I used Ellen's notes. I used My Favorite Murder, episode 72, called Steven It Out.

The LA Times article from 1991. wikipedia and murderpedia gotcha cool so okay as i say all of this without even saying what i am covering so this is probably as frustrated as everyone is with me when i am so long-winded with all my whatever just what is what is it what is it what is it we're here we. Okay. So this is the story of the pillow pyro. A what now? The pillow pyro. So someone's going to set a pillow on fire. Is it the demon I was just talking about?

Correct. With some bread. Okay. The way. Got it. Got it. Okay. So the story starts in the 1980s.

It's known as the pillow pyro case. And I was going to say it's in honor of fire season because fires are old but like fires are always happening here and it just is it feels kind of ever also is it astrologically fire season what is it right now oh is it oh it's libra season libras are not fire oh okay oh, we tried. We did try. Okay. Okay. Okay, so this does actually factor into the sort of the initial telling of the story because the My Favorite Murder episode, Karen, having lived in Southern California during the time

that this was happening was really interesting because she was like, yeah, I remember this. There were just fires everywhere. Oh, shit. Just literally everywhere and kind of in a bigger way, like a different way than they because she was like yeah I remember this there were just fires everywhere oh shit just literally everywhere and kind of in a bigger way like a different way than they are now like you know now we hear about like the big like Altoona fire or the big like fire in Malibu or you know those specific ones yeah and then you hear about where they go and where they spread this was more like fires being started like brush fire here brush fire there in different places. Weird.

Okay. Yeah. So it was costing millions of dollars in damages and sadly cost four lives. Okay. Got it. So we start here with October 10th, 1984. Start here with October 10th, 1984. In South Pasadena, a huge fire erupted actually in a hardware store.

Oh. Yeah. So the hardware store is called Ole's Home Center. And sadly, in that fire is where the four people were killed. Oh, shit. Okay. Yeah. So also kind of in an homage to Christine's stories, this gets really sad really fast.

Okay, great. I thought I could evade that during her maternity leave and everyone would come here with happy crimes if that existed. But okay. We got a little trick or treat one last time, but this one gets pretty sad pretty fast. So the four people that were killed were two employees, one 17-year-old employee, one 26-year-old mother of two. Oh, shit. Then a grandmother and her two year old grandson god wow it got so much worse every time it's so bad it's that's awful so so bad um so in terms of like how big and intense that fire was in the um the hardware store karen's telling of it is from an old Forensics Files episode.

Okay. And so in that Forensics Files episode, there's an interview with another store employee who did survive. Basically, he was saying, like, yeah, I survived, but, like, it was so, like, just walls of fire. I can't, I mean, the trauma, I will never be able to wrap my head around. But knowing also that, like, you were in something where four people died, like, yeah. And also it could have been you.

Yeah. And also he suffered from trigger warning for burns, very intense burns to the point that he touched his arm and skin fell off. Oh shit. Oh my God. Wow. Holy crap. So super not great.

Um, obviously the fire department comes, they put out the blaze. The, um, building is super not great. Obviously, the fire department comes. They put out the blaze. The building is completely demolished. And then initially it's ruled an electrical fire. Okay. The initial, like kind of all the arson investigators and fire department, you know, are there the next couple of days. And that's how that's their initial ruling.

Fire department, you know, are there the next couple of days. And that's how that's their initial ruling. But arson investigator John Orr arrives on the scene and takes a look around and says, no way. You guys are wrong. This is arson. Oh, shit. OK. Yeah.

And John Orr knows his shit. Like he's been at the Glendale Fire Department for 11 years. He's had a super illustrious career in fire rescue. He's been in the Air Force on the airplane crash and rescue fire team whoa yeah and then like quickly rose through the the ranks to arson investigator in glendale wow okay yeah and what's his name uh john or john or okay or yeah gotcha um so as alan puts it he taught seminars he wrote essays on firefighting he had decades of experience under his belt cool um so everyone was like okay this is arson so they started looking into it more and they discover that the fire was set using a homemade incendiary

device that was made from a lit cigarette with three matches around it oh all wrapped so it was like a it wasn't like arson like oh a cigarette caught something else on fire that caused like this was an intentional yes it was it was its own little stick of fire yeah yes exactly it was wow the lit cigarette had the three matches around it it was wrapped in yellow writing paper like a legal pad paper and then all of that was rubber banded together and then wow thrown into the bedding section so literally for fuck's sake okay so on fire i see now where the name comes from yeah i got it got it and it's thought that like the the way that like you know as cigarettes go down that's when the match is lit and then it so it gave the person time to like throw it and leave so it's thought that that is lit and then it so it gave the person time to like

throw it and leave so it's thought that that person wasn't just like throwing it and then being there when it happens it also makes me think the person like this was not his first time committing arson if he already kind of like oh well if i do this the fire will burn this amount of time and i can it feels like it was like practiced or at least not, you know, your first fire. Very thought through for sure. Yeah. So the Wikipedia article that I read about it said that this created what's called, quote, flashover, which means that the fire basically consumes like everything that's combustible

lights on fire, like the same time instead of like spreading like fire usually does. It just is immediately like up. And that's why there were like just like walls of fire. Okay, got it. So, so wild. So then we kind of cut to a couple years later in January of 1987. There's an arson investigators convention in Fresno. Arson Investigators Convention in Fresno.

And basically it becomes a little bit like sort of a rising or arousing suspicion because there are a bunch of fires that break out around this convention area. Okay. Yeah. Up in Bakersfield and Tulare. So not quite the same area, but still in California and sort of in the general vicinity. Yeah. And they also start looking like arson so we have another character here so bakersfield fire captain marvin g casey starts looking into it more and here's where things get kind of wild like a little more wild so he starts connecting the dots on the map and is like

wait a minute a ton of these fires are starting in the same areas as fire and arson conventions like the one in fresno oh okay yeah so now i'm going to take you on a journey involving fingerprints please do oh my god also side note john orr and marvin g casey i know like they were fucking meant to be firemen well and also i feel like i did i was like so involved in that story last the last story i did in like the 1950s and i feel like these names still are very like they feel like from a different time almost i don't know why it's kind of why i mean it's such like a stupid thing to say, but like,

it really is wild how some names just sound like they were meant for a decade or a profession or. Yeah. Anyway, anyway, sorry. Yes. Please take me on this fingerprint journey.

Well, no, I was going to say it does sound, it's kind of like the way that some names, like I feel like every time someone says the name of like their high school rival or their high school, like boyfriend, I'm like,

yeah, that's a high school name. Even though that person is still walking around with that name. There's certain, and what's interesting is my two rhyme, but Chelsea or Kelsey, if you're a Chelsea or Kelsey, you are just perpetually in high school in my mind. Like there's no, there's, you never, you won't graduate. Like you just, it's not because you're not capable but because you were stuck in time for sure oh for

sure Kelsey's I've never known a Kelsey outside of high school that's yeah I've never met one tell us say hi to us Kelsey's we want to know what know them in real life are you okay you've been in high school for like 10 years girl you okay uh okay so on the fingerprint journey our boy captain casey so he's the captain of the glen or sorry that's john or that he's the captain of bakersfield bakersfield yes thank you so he comes up with a plan and he's like hey so if i think that this person is on the inside of the fire department or at least someone that was maybe at the conventions, why don't I just... We have... So he had a fingerprint from one of the fires in his area.

He had a fingerprint on a piece of notebook paper. So he was like... So smart. But his thought was like, oh, we'll just run this print against everyone in the fire department in this area in California. Like, you know, have that idea. Why don't we do that? And his higher ups are like, no, thank you. Oh, yeah.

They're kind of like, well, I think mostly what it was was like, you're crazy. Like how, why would, why would someone who has sworn to like, why would someone do the exact opposite thing that they are supposed to be doing? Why would someone in the fire department be setting these fires? That seems really silly. Right. Far fetched. Exactly.

Yeah. So he's like, but I guess, I mean, think about those times where like there was a, um, I forget what his name was. He stayed at the Cecil hotel for a while.

He was the, the, the guy who was an for a while he was the the the guy who was an investigative reporter and he was reporting his own crimes right yeah it definitely happened it's happened yeah yeah I feel like people are drawn to things for a lot of different reasons and yeah that could be that could be it for a lot of people so yeah not gonna spoil anything yet but another couple years go by so he's not given any um leeway to do that and so a couple years go by still with more fires set everywhere including one that breaks out near another conference this time near monterey

california okay so this time casey is like well i'm definitely right and like right like he's like i already had a hunch and this just confirmed it. Yeah. He's like, I don't really care what anyone says, except I need them to like, okay, I need to do some things because this is clearly happening. So what he does, he, instead of like, to kind of skirt the issue that happened last time, he actually makes a list since it was like, okay,

this conference and that other conference, he like who was at both conferences so he pulls the list of the people that were at both conferences and he comes up with 10 people like the names for 10 people so he finally is able since he has this list of 10 people maybe that's easier he goes to the higher ups again and they're like fine fingerprint those 10 people see what happens and nothing happens what oh I really thought that was a shoo-in situation I'm sure he did too I really thought like wow this story is gonna end really fast like I know yeah oh okay well because it's so clever it's like you want it to work because it's like oh you you did all this you did this work you thought it and it seems so it seems so, well, I mean, here I am as, like, an armchair expert of fucking nothing.

But, like, it seems so easy of, like, oh, it's happening in all these places where you have a log of people. Like, that tracks. Yeah, no, for sure. So, sadly, everyone on that list is cleared of suspicion. So we jump in time again this is kind of like a little hopper along a timeline here nice so we jump again to the 1990s to late 1990 early 1991 okay um when a suspiciously big series of fires breaks out in the L.A. area now. Like back to L.A. So this whole time we haven't been able to find this person and there's still fires going on?

Or has... Oh, wow. So there wasn't even like a gap of time where there wasn't fire. Oh, yeah. Sorry. These are just like the bigger fires that are happening. But throughout the span from like 1984 to like... I forget the ending. But I'll say it at the end.

So this person's just getting away with it for years. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. say it at the end. So this person's just getting away with it for years. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just like fires still everywhere. And these are just the bigger series of fires that people are able to get more clues from. These are the most notable ones. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

So basically, now that it's back in LA and there's a big series of fires, the LA Fire Department starts a task force, which is where the Pill pillow pyro name comes in because it was sort of nicknamed the pillow pyro task force through the um los angeles fire fire department great name yeah yeah yeah so then in 1991 um so the task force has been going for a little bit the task force is looking into like obviously all the throughout the years of all these fires and they get wind of casey's initial theory and they're like oh wait okay let's look into that finally so they're like retesting the the original theory from the 80s yeah exactly so they they hear about it and basically this guy one of um the guys on this task force tom campuzano he actually even meets with casey

because he hears tell of casey and his theory and he's like oh i think he's on to something i want to meet with him ah okay yeah and so he tom campuzano not to be confused with poor demonic demonically demonic child that tom that who's also involved in fires. Jeez. You know, when you said the bed was setting on fire, I was like, oh, what a segue into the story too. Hey, when you talked about your bread candle and all of a sudden bread showed up in my notes.

What a weirdly synchronized. Oh my God. Synchronized. Synchronized. Say. Also, what a mess of a day. Oh, my God. Synchronized. Say. Also, what a mess of a day. Listen, we got the weird weather happening. It's been all cloudy and rainy and weird.

I know, Eva. We haven't even talked about it. That's why I drank today. The weather is so gloomy, and y'all know I love a gloomy day. I know. It is pretty. It's nice and October vibes-y. We were just talking about that rainstorm the other day too, that like really threw us both off. I literally

called Eva in the middle of the night and I was like, are you okay? I thought you had died. I don't know what was, there was something about the way that the sky opened up and the lightning hit where I was like, someone must bust me dead. There's just no way. It's so eerie here. And I think I said back like, oh, I'm fine. I'm just locking every single door in my girlfriend's home because I'm worried that we're going to get murdered. It really is a freaky experience. It sounds so stupid because we both grew up on the East Coast. We know what rain is. But moving here and getting rain once a year, it becomes a really jarring experience.

You're just like oh my god what was that what was that yeah we're we've become soft on rain soft on rain absolutely um okay so tom meets with casey and is like hey you're on to something let's talk and actually casey ends up giving him that fingerprint from the initial he was was like, please finish what I, please finish what I started. Exactly. Yeah. He's like, now that these fires are in LA, there's more chance for clues where you are. So you take this fingerprint, run with it, see what you can find.

Which is funny. Like, I just realized this. I didn't think about this when I was doing this initially, I guess. But I don't know. It's like funny thinking about like Casey's original theory was that there was someone on the inside and he's passing over evidence to someone on the inside. I wonder if he had like misgivings about that. Oh, yeah. Like what if the one person that got away with it is the one you're handing the information to? Right. Yeah. I wonder if there was something that made him trust Tom and the task force more than most.

If I were him, I would have never even thought about it until like three days later in the car. And I would have been like, oh, no. I would have been like, oh, no. Because it actually is said that Casey's theory was not only that it was someone on the inside, but also that it was someone specifically in L.A. So this guy was in L.A. too. Yeah. There must have been something that cleared Tom to Casey because he did pass over the fingerprint. I guess so and so in 1991 with better technology and obviously people believing him and also Karen mentioned in the My Favorite Murder episode that there had potentially been a um a lab mix-up like a lab

error the first time the prints were run so tom runs these prints again this time against all uh applicants all former applicants for all law enforcement um i believe in the area and it gets a match wow so do you have any guesses who the match is oh it's well that means it's a character we discussed oh man is it is is it captain casey himself you would think because i did talk about him more but no it's the other person i talked about at the very beginning john or it's john or what yeah the first person on the first on the scene of that the guy who all also wait the guy who literally said oh it was definitely arson not yeah an electric fire the guy who could have cleared it as an electric fire and gotten away with it yes there's that shitty narcissism yes you can't catch me bullshit again

okay no exactly i bet you it was that thing and i think like karen and georgia kind of mentioned this a little bit too that thing of like right like a coming back to the scene of the crime and being like, no, I need you to know how, you know. Yeah. I need you to know that someone intentionally wanted to do this and hurt these people. Like, you're not getting it. Like, understand. Well, Christine recently just covered somebody who like was like, literally got away with it. But the only reason he didn't get away with it was because he kept feeding them like clues. There was some like, I mean,

that feels like, that feels like half of her stories were like the murderer just is so frantically like it's someone you don't know who it is, but it's right here. No, exactly how it feels. It's like, are you kidding me?

Like you literally, you had the authority. You were the only one with the authority who could have said oh ignore it and you chose for people to get curious about it right you probably would i mean he did get away with it for years years almost a decade like so long i always wonder about those people where like they're involved in a crime and they think they get away and then they find out the technology is getting better and then they're like oh like what did you think was gonna happen like of course eventually we'll have something that can help us figure out something we couldn't figure out before yeah

no for sure yeah and i wonder like how much of that plays into to that idea of like it does seem like there's such a right a spectrum of criminal intent maybe of like you know people that want to do it and never get caught and just keep doing it. And then people who want the notoriety for it, but obviously don't want the consequences of it. Yeah. It's so interesting. So, yeah, the fingerprint came back. John Orr, arson investigator for the Glendale Fire Department.

Wow. Which obviously is, like, the big crux of this case because i remember hearing that and being like what the fuck like oh my god that's it's so wild yeah yeah wow okay so john or also as i said earlier was like super well respected too like he was a total like definitely a pillar of the community he was the arson investigator he also was like neighboring ellen put this um this is like her wording here um other neighboring fire departments would send their firefighters to him for he would he he literally taught classes on like i mean again this gives me the vibe of a narcissist or like he knows he's like the man and like people go to him because he's

the man in power and so like of course the man could get away with something like this even if he's like pulling this like tugging on the string in front of you of like oh who could it be and feeling entitled to keep doing those things like he was teaching i think it was the la times article that mentioned this that like he was teaching his like classes on firefighting and arson investigation, all of that right up until the point where they found out it was him. God. Right up until. Wow. Okay.

So wild times. So once the fingerprint match, they obviously were like, wow, fuck, we need to get him off the streets because before another fire starts and like more people die. But this was easier said than done because while they had the fingerprint, for whatever reason, they did want more evidence before they arrested him. So I think it's at this point, the ATF, the alcohol and tobacco and firearms and explosives, that branch of the FBI, I believe, of the government basically gets involved at some point. And I think it's right here. It was kind of unclear in like a couple of the different sources.

But they get involved because they actually are the ones who start surveilling and tracking him. So they put a tracker, a GPS tracker on his car, which it was funny because when I first read this, I was like, oh, yeah, a GPS tracker. And then I read that he so the next bullet point is that he found the tracker. Oh, shit. But it's 1991. And so like, who really knows what that looks like or is and who? Yeah. You know, it's like a little bit newer of a thing. I'm imagining it's like literally like a black like thing that's like beeping red. It's like a like a very obvious pulsating tracking light from a movie. Okay, so Em, you're probably exactly correct because he thinks it's a bomb.

Like that's his first thought is like. Shut up. Yeah, he thinks it's a bomb on his car. And I when I talked to Ellen, when I told her I was doing the story, that was the point that she was like, that's my favorite part of the story. Or like she basically was like, that's the wildest part of the story is that basically he or one of the there are so many wild parts of the story but he thinks it's a bomb he calls into a bomb expert basically and then oh my god they basically find out that he is some I don't know

that exact like connections right there but basically they find out that he is talking to a bomb expert and so they're trying to be like god, like, let's tell him some bullshit about how to dismantle it and, like, well, I imagine, I don't know how, I don't, I feel like a bomb department wouldn't have been, like, well, maybe, or I don't know if, like, the, the, whatever the right word is for bombs and explosives and all that, but they, sure they have like an easy connection to the police right so like maybe i don't know i imagine he like called maybe the police first and then they called the bomb place or they called the bomb place and they checked with the cops like to say like oh we have a bomb we need to call the police and the police were like no no no like that's actually like our tracker like yeah yeah let's actually send you

to someone that you don't know is the ATF, but we're going to send you to the person who put that on your car. It was like a three-way call and the person on hold didn't realize that they were now conspiring together. Also, like I love my favorite part of the story is I also think this is my favorite part, but only because like, wow, technology has changed so much where he found something on his car and it was literally just a GPS device. it was like and he thought it was a bomb and he was like head of like he was like in charge of a whole group of like he should have known more than other people what a gps device

looked like in my mind and right he was like what is this no exactly yeah and then they were like basically telling him like oh here's how you dismantle it. And like basically I think ended up taking that one off. But yeah, basically like got away with, well, got away. Like the ATF got away with, he didn't figure out that that was a GPS at all, that they were onto him. And it did say in another article that they were able to track him. They put, so they had one that was in some like another part of his car. And then they had a smaller one that was somewhere like it's, it sounded like maybe in the,

like under the hood or like in the dash somewhere. So it sounded like they had another one, but that doesn't really play in a ton more except in this next part, which I think might be one of my favorite parts of the story, which is that. So I'm not sure exactly how soon after this was, but after the tracker situation and they're like, phew, but also we still need some more evidence on him. A fire breaks out on the Warner Brothers lot on the set of a TV show.

Yeah. Oh, my gosh. So wild. I'm actually going there this weekend. I'm going there on Saturday. Are you really? Are you doing the tour? Yes, I am doing the tour, but I have done it.

The worst part about having a tourist attraction 10 minutes from you that you actually love is I've done the tour so many times. I don't really need the tour. I just want to. Yeah. I just want to go stare at it. Yeah. Well, that's actually we just drove by because Rachel used to and still does work for Warner Brothers. And so we were driving by like her gate where she like used to go into work before COVID.

And I was like, oh my God, that's the same gate that like, you know, a friend of mine who works on Ellen like let us in once to, you know, go see the, oh, we went to a Conan taping. That's what we did. That was like super fun too. My favorite when I used to work on the CBS lot they they had like some gate that like secretly opened up to like chipotle and i was like oh i can get into this like a secret entrance i know yeah um so yeah so on the wb lot we don't know what tv show it was but it was a set of a tv show

um and it is like you know like a lot of us that know that have been on lots before there is a fire department on um lots which Karen mentions too. So it was that, I'm assuming that fire department that put out that fire. Sure. But the local fire department was called as well. And when John Orr got his call, they made sure to give him the wrong address and not say the WB lot. Genius. But he showed up at the WB lot anyway. Gotcha. Literally

the next bullet point in my notes is so they were like, hi, gotcha. Yeah, truly. Yep. Big time. Gotcha. So John Orr was arrested in December of 1991. Weirdly the same day that a new city fire chief was named. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So his name was Richard Hines, H-I-N-Z. And this is where this Los Angeles Times article, this LA Times article I read was really interesting. It was actually written two days after he was arrested.

And it was like super interesting because like it really put a big emphasis on like some of the context of what was happening at the time and how it affected the fire department employees at the time. And this article made a good point that was saying like this would have been a celebratory day for this person, for Richard Hines. But he ended up having to basically spend all of his time then working on like helping the morale of his firefighters and department sure because also like having to like doubly learn their trust gain their trust of like yeah no i'm not gonna set things on fire yeah lots of people some people might but i'm not not me no that was it too the article was saying that he had to spend a lot of time like defending the department as well i mean basically being like well it was this one person we don't think it was more people

but we know this is like a huge breach in trust so um there are a lot of uh i had a couple quotes here that i thought were really interesting these are all from the la times article um suspected arsonist john l orr was regarded as a mentor and sage by many of his firefighting colleagues a veteran arson investigator called upon by fire officials across southern California who were stumped by a tough case so he was like the guy that people went to to be like yeah hi I mean it's like it's like having your like your idol. I mean, I imagine in the fire department somewhat everyone's got like a favorite firefighter. Like it's like, yeah, I imagine you've got like your little ranks of like, oh, he's the coolest one. No, that's a good point.

Imagine like your idol, like being the reason that people have died, you know? Yeah, no, for sure. It's so, so true. Like any industry, even if it's not in your same industry, but especially if it is something that you personally do and you look up to that person. Yeah. Yeah. That's really, really tough.

Um, let's see, where was it? I also found this other, um, quote that I, I liked because it was sad and like also kind of went to how, how, um, just how much they all were so ingrained in like the thought process of fires and what it was because um basically this uh let's see mario vasquez so this is all from the la times article as well mario vasquez a glendale fire captain and spokesman for the 165 member glendale firefighters association said the allegations against or caught everyone by surprise some of the guys told me they had trouble sleeping last night because they were thinking about this he said the news was so explosive that it's like an internal backdraft oh shit which then the

article goes on to say he was referring to a smoke blast that erupts in some building fires right yes yeah it also is very like i've i thought that quote was really you know it is really interesting because it does it shows that they're you know always relating to the fight like they're so ingrained in fighting fires that that was such a an impactful thing for them and then they were even using metaphors about fighting fires to talk about it too yeah yeah yeah so that was really kind of sad to like hear about all the the people that were so you know brought down by it so a little more about john or he was married and had two kids from a previous marriage he actually lived in eagle rock and had gone to eagle rock high school and glendale community college which is another, the Glendale Community College area is another site where there was like one of the biggest

fires that was in that timeframe. And I think even in California, like Southern California history, it was like one of the biggest fires. Wow. Okay. So he had also, he kind of had that sometimes that like criminal trope of having wanted to be a cop and not making it. of having wanted to be a cop and not making it. So he passed every test except the mental exam. Oh, wow. Yeah, which makes... That tells you something, I guess.

Yeah, not great. And some people, especially some ATF officers, view him as one of the worst arsonists in the 20th century. ATF officers have guessed that he set around 2000 fires between 1984 and 1991, but other sources put it closer to 10,000 fires. Holy 10,000 fires. Yeah. Anywhere between.

Yeah. Did they lighten them up? Suggest like, like what was the first number you said before 10,000? Oh, how many fires he's done? 2000.'s still so many it's still so many yeah wow this part really got me this was from ellen's notes um after he was arrested brush fires in the glendale area specifically and over 90 percent holy shit 90 wow oh my god yeah wow oh my god like all the fires literally we just became basically fireless wow almost all the fires were him every single fire so like what so then at that point it's like i i mean again i i don't

think i can't totally think like a i am that kind of narcissist criminal mindset of like oh well i'm doing this because i really want to make a name for myself it's like you've already done it buddy like why are you still doing this like what you need to be 99 of the fires like what is the deal here yeah that's a really good point because then at what point is to be 99 of the fires like what is the deal here yeah that's a really good point because then at what point is that like more of like a compulsion that he just couldn't yeah it feels like from doing or i feel like if you're setting 10 000 fires like that is that has to be a compulsion right right yeah it feels like it it definitely feels like more than just you know initially when you know it's him

showing up on the scene of the hardware store fire being like hey this is arson i didn't do it but you know type thing but it definitely feels that many seems much more like there's a bigger a bigger mental issue there yeah for sure and there's like little bits of that a little bit later down that i'll talk about but yeah for the most part there's not not a ton else that we know about it um because throughout his trial so here's the yeah the part about his trial throughout all of it he was um kept saying he was uh maintained his innocence oh okay this was not him yeah he was indicted with both state and federal charges for the fires and the murders separately um he pled not guilty and even turned

down a plea deal so early on in the trial process the i think it was the it must have been the prosecution um actually had the it was interesting because i feel like for the most part you hear that prosecution doesn't want to put the death penalty on because they don't think it'll get a conviction because people don't want to vote for the death penalty but in this case the wikipedia article was saying that the prosecution had put the death penalty on this case because they wanted to make sure he never got out so okay we're kind of upping it in that way it sounded like um but so they took a plea deal to him to say like hi if you would just admit to every fire you've set since you were a child like any fire all the time um and you agree to life in prison with no parole we'll take the death penalty off the table.

And he turned that down. He was like, no, I'm not going to do it. Wow. Yeah. Wow. So he was convicted in 1993 on the arson charges and 1998 for the murder charges. Yeah, again, he's maintained his innocence ever since. But aside from everything else, oh, sorry, I actually didn't write this part down,

but I wanted to mention it. Basically, the Wikipedia article was saying that he is not on any prison registries or like prison inmate registries. So they think he's actually being held under an alias in prison. Interesting. Which was really interesting. Yeah, because I didn't know they did that. I had no clue. I feel like there's a lot of people, not to compare crimes here, but I feel like there's a lot of other hardened criminals with uh infamous pasts that should have aliases in jail right exactly and like who gets that

because does is that like a luxury or like yeah exactly because like you were the chief of something maybe yeah i i would understand it maybe if you were like the chief of police and did something like this and there's a lot of people you arrested going into that you're going to see in jail like i feel like maybe a fireman wouldn't have to worry as much about that i don't know yeah it's unclear yeah so um aside from that um he was put in prison for it for life the death penalty was taken he um no longer is under the death penalty but aside from everything else that pointed to his guilt um when they arrested him they found a manuscript oh my god okay do you want to guess what his novel's about it was a threat level midnight

starring michael scarn agent michael scarn okay basically though it was no it was all about arson like it was all about him i mean it wasn't him the character's name i think was aaron styles um the novel was called point of origin and the care the main character sets massive fires all around the area killing a couple people including a child whose name is the same as the child that was oh for fuck's sake like the specifics of the manuscript to the specifics of it was basically his diary yeah yeah um and actually i think i think that's exactly what karen said too or georgia in the they were like he basically wrote this exact same like beat by beat down it seems like and like more disturbingly he also

wrote down like things that were you know not corroborated like he had never spoken on it no one had ever like caught him doing this but the character also like like would get erections watching the fires like couldn't get an erection until he set a fire so he so this was that makes more sense why there was like if he was doing 10 000 of of them, if I was like, oh, it feels like there's something else going on there. It's like a sexual compulsion. Exactly.

Yeah. Ellen wrote in her notes that it was like, it was likened to like a mistress, like his, you know, kind of like love of fires, the character. Oh. And also. Interesting. Yeah. The person that seems to be behind it all uh-huh yeah um so

there's actually also a movie called point of origin that is about this exact situation um it's an hbo movie from 2002 um starring ray leota as john orr but that was written by an actual screenwriter and from from what we, not an arsonist. Gotcha. Sure. That would be a real plot twist though. Oh my God. The plot twists continue.

The screenwriter just keeps going up and up and up. Yeah. So it's been covered by a lot of different TV shows, podcasts, movies, and books, including one that I definitely want to read, which is by a true crime writer who collaborated with John Orr's daughter,

Lori Kovac. The book is called Burned. And it's so interesting because she was on his side, it seems like originally where she testified on his behalf in the trials, but it was also to prevent him from getting the death penalty. So it might've also been kind of like, you know, at the time, maybe she was like, I just don't want to get the death penalty. But it does seem like years later, she did eventually come to realize how guilty he was. And she cut off all contact with him and wrote this book with this true crime author. firebug that i haven't listened to but i'm putting it on the list because um they actually include excerpts from his book which i feel like would be an interesting sure yeah of course to hear

but that is the story of john orr and the pillow pyro wow well done eva but talk about a twist i'm i guess we i was a baby when i guess he got found out because i was gonna say why don't i remember this but i was i wasn't thinking about this kind of stuff then um wow yeah i i would be interested to go back and listen to the my favorite murder episode of it to see like what was going on at the time and what karen was. Yeah. I mean, like, I don't know what her big thing would be, but usually, like, my version of, like, oh, I have memories of this experience was always the DC sniper for me. So I wonder, like, in L.A., what maybe this was her version of that,

of, like, oh, like, I know all about that. I heard about it all the time yeah that's super interesting yeah it definitely seemed like it and it seemed like such a different like interesting but different version of kind of what is happening now because of you know climate change with all of the right extra big fires that we're experiencing now you know a number of years later oh god can you imagine if one day we found out that 90% of all the fires we're dealing with is a different fire chief? Right. Well, that's like what kind of what it seems like at the time, who knows if they were like also thinking like, Oh my God is like,

they just didn't know. You know, it's like, yeah. Also climate change too. Like all the different things. Yeah. But wow, that was definitely something that I thought was really interesting to, and, and like, I was thinking back a couple years too to one of the um the big fires that I remember at the time I was working on the Disney lot and as I was driving out you could see like the Disney like kind of iconic like Disney buildings and then behind it it was just it was one of the fire the fire skies yeah just the fire skies was that um was that like 2015, 2016-ish? It was, yeah.

I remember that was my first fire sky I ever saw. Was it? I had just moved here and I was like, what's going on? I was like, literally, for people who haven't seen, I don't know if there's like a different word, but usually I just say fire sky and anyone in LA knows what I'm talking about. Yeah. But if you haven't seen one before, it really looks like the apocalypse is coming. Like the, the entire sky,

think of like the brightest blue you have ever, ever seen that vibrant of like solid orange, like neon orange. And then the, all the clouds are completely like black and Brown. And like, that was a crazy time. Cause anywhere you drove,

there was some of the, the fire sky was somewhere. Like you could drive from one area and see like the prettiest blue sky and 10 minutes down the road, all of a sudden you're under like this crazy orange brown cloud situation. It looked like literal fire was in the sky. It was the scariest thing. Yeah. And like it happened a few times over quarantine too. I feel like where the sky just turned like, and almost like sometimes orangey, like there's so much going on.

It's, it's really scary. Like, yeah. I feel like, you know, what's so funny is when we, we were just talking about how rain now freaks us out. The last few times there's been a, I don't think we've realized the like how many times has overlapped, but in the last couple of years, anytime there's been like a huge rainstorm, you and I have either been together and freaked out or called each other

afterwards and been like, are you okay? Like I'm freaking out right now. It's so weird that we like turned in our rain card for a fire sky card. And now when like, now when the sky looks like it's literally in flames, I'm like, whatever. Yeah. I'll be fine. Yeah. But a little drizzle and I'm like now when the sky looks like it's literally in flames I'm like whatever yeah I'll be fine yeah but a little drizzle and I'm like out for the count so a hundred percent it's funny how yeah it can just flip in your mind in terms of I guess just what you're used to or like I feel like you made a good point the other day too of like who knows what like because it never rains here like what it kicks up but in. I feel like chemically there's something in the, some sort of,

it feels like there's something different in the air that happens when it rains now where like I like feel this like existential dread. But when there's a fire sky and it's literally snowing ash on my car, I'm fine. You know, like. Yeah, yeah. Oh God, that's true. Imagine how much ash would have been, because that like seems somewhat normal to you that I've kind of come to just be like, oh, yeah, that just comes with living here.

That just happens. Well, the first time I saw a fire sky, I was like, oh, my God, is it snowing? And everyone was like, do not touch it. It is literal ash. Yeah. Anyway, just another reason for you to not visit America if if you don't have fire skies where you are. Truly. Anyway, thank you so't have fire skies where you are. Anyway, thank you so much, Eva, for coming on. I appreciate, you know, us bonding in bad weather and washing me up my little coffin man. And but I hope everyone is doing well. It's about to be Thanksgiving, right?

Oh, my gosh, it is. Yeah, this is this comes out. Oh, my gosh, I meant to look it up. I think it's about to be thanksgiving right oh my gosh it is yeah this is this comes out oh my gosh i meant to look it up i think it's like november wait this one comes out the 21st so the week of thanksgiving holy shit well i hope everyone's having a great thanksgiving where do you know where you'll be yet for for thanksgiving eva you know i actually don't i am right now thinking i might actually rachel invited me to go home and see her family. So I might go see her, her mom. Oh, that's precious. A little, a little gay turkey day. Yeah, exactly. Love it. Uh, I will be back. I, since last year we, we had Thanksgiving, you and I had Thanksgiving together last year. Yeah. Yeah. For, cause we were quarantine buddies. So we, I missed out on

my regular trip back to Seattle to see my family. So I'm going to be there. I think Allison is, I mean, it's still early. I don't know what the official plans are, but Allison said she might be coming with me this year. Oh, amazing. First time I won't be alone traveling to Seattle. Oh, that's so fun. So whatever y'all have planned, I hope things are going well.

And I hope you enjoy getting nice and round and have big bellies full of yummy food and don't even feel bad about it. Just embrace the experience. And I hope everyone has fun and a happy Turkey Day. Yeah. And that's why we drink.