And That's Why We Drink - E259 Ectoplasm Happy Hour and a Haunted Lawnmower

Episode Date: January 23, 2022

It's episode 259 and we have the second in our series of Wine and Crime co-hosts with Lucy! This week we cover a lot of bases (pun intended) as Lucy brings us the truly wild tale of Ten Cent Beer night, one of the most "notable brawls in baseball history". Then Em brings us the story of a spirit determined to haunt your lawnmower, Pete the Poltergeist. And if you're in the Des Moines area, go get the daily special for us at Lucy's restaurant Lachele's Fine Foods! ...and that's why we drink!

hello everybody welcome back to and that's why we drink and we are in the uh the wine and crime phase of our maternity leave tour as i'm calling it last week we had kenyon and this year uh this year this week we have lovely Lucy. Thank you for coming on and filling in while Christine takes care of a whole other human being. I can't believe that. That's so wild. Technically, the baby has been here when this comes out for four months now, and I can't believe it. It's really weird to have a friend with a baby.

Yeah. Do you have any friends with babies yet uh one but she has two babies so yeah yeah it's weird it's weird it's really it's only it's it's particularly weird to me because i just think of her as like i don't know i think of like silly sleepover christine who's getting drunk all the time. And it's like, Oh, now she's got like someone else to take care of. It's crazy. Yeah.

It's like, it's like they morph from like one individual to like something that's not even multiple individuals. It's like this. So some transcendent to identities of one or something. I don't know. It's, it's just very weird.

Two plus. identities in one or something i don't know it's it's just very much two plus it's very weird to watch because uh we'll like have like work phone calls now and i hear a baby in the background i'm like what is going on anyway it's just it's weird to be in one phase of life while she's in another and just to see like i mean it's just it's i'm sure it would be so weird if she saw me with a baby all of a sudden it's just it's such a it's interesting to see so I'm in the I'm in the phase right now where all of my friends are having babies at one time so I think I'm just seeing it kind of piled on yeah everywhere I turn there's a now a baby I'm like what is going on in this world so it's it's a shift in identity for sure it sure is how are you to give us give everyone an update for those of you who also listen to

Wine and Crime. Oh, wow. Lucy, my update. Um, well, I got my COVID booster. Yay. And you said that put you out a little bit. Yep, I got it two days ago. I was super out of it yesterday. But that said, I this is all anecdotal. I don't want anyone to be afraid of getting their booster because you should all get your booster slash vaccination if you haven't already. Other than that, restaurants going well, it's Lachelle's Fine Foods in Des Moines. If you haven't been there, if you live in the Des Moines area, you should definitely check it out. Please go and also follow their Instagram because it's every day, right? They put out like a daily or almost every day. They put out some sort of daily sandwich that looks like the tastiest thing.

I'm too far away to try. Yep. We've got specials Wednesdays through Saturdays for the most part. Then we have Sunday brunch also. So yeah, if you're in the area. You also do brunch? Sure do. Wow.

I can't. Wait, I'm actually supposed to be in. I'm not going to be in Iowa, but I'm going to be pretty darn close in April. And I'm really hoping I can make a trek on over and try some stuff. So I out, I'll be nicely triple boosted for a long time. But, uh, you caught me in the middle of like a weird, uh, game of the sniffles where like,

I'm trying to see if something's going to happen or not. Um, I don't know if it's, if I'm going to get a full blown cold or if it's just like a weird seasonal things, it's been raining here in Los Angeles, completely shuts down when it rains. Um,

so I'm apologizing in advance to you and everybody if I have to pause to blow my nose every now and then. We'll forgive you. Well, you planned, you prepared a little story for us today, yes? I sure did. So usually I go first, but it's dealer's choice. You're the guest. Would you like to go first or second?

Oh, well, shit, I'll go first. Okay, great. Give you time to blow out your nose. Yes, I'll do. Instead of like a live theater reaction at all, you'll just get my nose blowing. Do you have a shout out at all? Are you going back out on tour? We are.

As of right now, we haven't announced anything except for a vancouver comedy festival show that we're doing i don't even know what it's called vancouver comedy festival this is embarrassing that's okay i was as you said it i was like i think i've done that but i was it is it um just for laughs yeah it's just for laughs i knew I knew it, but I didn't want to say it until I confirmed. But yeah, it's hosted by Trevor Noah. Are you fucking kidding me? I know. It's pretty wild.

Oh my god. I'm so excited. We went two years ago, and I can tell you that you're going to have a great time. So I'm very excited for you. OK, so take it away. you um okay so take it away okay well i just want to preface if um anyone listening is also a patreon subscriber to wine and crime you may have heard this story but okay so for our wine and crime um patreon exclusive content we do these special short episodes called Drunk Dives. I love them.

And it's episodes where we get like particularly drunk and then just like take turns going through one specific crime. I have always had one. I've always had a question about that. Okay, shoot. So you do actually intentionally get a little tipsy like is that a fun pre-game before work situation we were like i gotta do it for the big bucks so we usually do a drunk dive after a full recording of like a regular episode so then if we're able to we just make sure to like actually drink during the episodes then we're a little toasty for the drunk dive.

I see. This particular drunk dive that I did, I got really toasty. So my delivery of this drunk dive was subpar. So this is like my redemption. I see. Yeah. I hope. Hey, I'll take it.

It's the cleaned up version, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. yeah, yeah. Okay, so tonight we're going to talk about baseball, which is normally very boring, right? You know, to me it is, yeah. Do you know anything about baseball? Do you know like the lingo or are you a baseball fan? So it's a fine, to a baseball fan, they they would say i'm not i don't know a lot about baseball but i do know general jargon and i am a fan of minor league baseball which oh but

purely because like like actually i'm wearing my um my home teams my uh my hometown's minor league baseball logo right now just to give you just to give you an idea of why i's minor league baseball logo right now. That's amazing. Just to give you an idea of why I love minor league baseball, the logo that I'm currently wearing is George Washington's mother throwing the first pitch. Wait, what? Why? That's why I like minor league baseball because everything they do, you're like,

why is that what we're doing here? None of it makes sense. The teams have crazy names. They have all these weird annual traditions where everyone changes their team names once a week to random food. It's very bonkers. So to answer your question about... It's very confusing. It makes no sense. And that's, I think I thrive in chaos, which is why I love it. Okay. But other than that, I don't know anything about baseball. Like normal baseball, forget it. I don't know anything. Okay, well, we'll test your skills today. Okay, perfect. Okay, so it's normally kind of boring, no offense, but

not always, evidently. Not today, folks. Not today, folks. So tonight I will be telling you the tale of Ten Cent Beer Night. What? That sounds like a minor league baseball thing. Beer night. What? That sounds like a minor league baseball thing. It was a major league thing. Ten cent beer night. It's a very bad idea and we'll get to it.

Okay. But first, here's a little bit of background. Okay. So you may have heard of the baseball team, the Cleveland Indians, which are now known as the Cleveland Guardians. Yes. Okay. Thank God. Thank God.

But for the sake of this story, which takes place in the 70s, I will be referring to them by their name at the time, which is not cool and was never cool, but that's what it was. Okay. So the Cleveland Indians, I'm acknowledging that at the top. Got it. Anyway, so the Indians were known to hold various promotions, such as Nickel Beer Day in 1971. it feels like just a problem waiting who pitched it and then who said yes there was a i'm actually i forgot to

tell you but i'm hysterical so get ready for. Get ready for this to go really well. Okay. I think we'll get to who pitched it, actually, or at least who shut it down. Thank you. So Nickel Beer Day, everyone had a good time, a good laugh, some cheap beer, et cetera. So the team's managers held another fun alcoholic promotional event in 1974. And this time, the idea was to sell 12-ounce beers at 3.2 ABV. So 3.2 is a very light beer, even lighter than light by today's standards. And here's a fun fact. Minnesota is the only state to recognize 3.2 percent alcohol

rather than rounding it up to four percent oh that is fun it's very very light okay very light beer but it's still l l and i know you're coming from wine and crime straight over to and that's why we drink so in theory between the two titles i shouldn't know anything about alcohol but is it by by light beer do you mean the flavor is light or the alcohol content is light or both i would say both okay got it probably both there's a lot of water content in a light beer so like a lot of people would call that like like if you were like in the world of toxic masculinity you'd call it like a sissy drink because it's like super watered down and like not that great.

I would think so. Yeah. Like a like an IPA, not a light beer. Got it. A stout, not a light beer. Got it. But like a like a Bud Light, a light beer. Oh, OK.

I am learning things probably all by myself, but I'm learning them. So here's a quote from the star tribune when popular support for prohibition dried up politicians realized that it might take years to undo the 18th amendment so they looked for a shortcut prohibition outlawed intoxicating liquor but they didn't mention actual alcohol content. They just called it intoxicating liquor. Got it. So because it was so light, it was technically not intoxicating?

Exactly, yes. So after hearing expert testimony from one T.C. Hafenreffer of Boston who said that 3.2% was the number brewers could hit and still make non-intoxicating beer. Congress acted swiftly and well, here we are. Quote, it seems like that was about as low as you could go and still have the brewing process work out so that there was something that was properly flavorful, says beer historian Doug Hoverson. Okay.

So 3.2%, kind of the lowest you could get. Right. And that's what we're dealing with here. And may I take a, may I predict the future of this story? I would love for you to. Are people going to say, let's see how much I can drink until I can get fucked up? Is that where we're going with this? I think that could be assumed that that was a conversation. Yeah. It seems like a fun game. If like your goal is to get really drunk and they give you the lightest beer possible,

how many will it take? Well, here's the thing. you can have 3.2% ABV alcohol. All that means is that you're not going to get drunk off of like one or two. That doesn't mean that you're not going to get drunk off of like 10 or 15. Right. Yeah, that bottle itself is non-intoxicating. But the case, the case is still pretty intoxicating. And I think a good thing to note here is that there wasn't a cap on the number of beers one could buy for 10 cents. Oh, no. Okay.

I see where we're heading. There were things that could have been prevented, we'll say. So back to baseball. On April 28th, 1974, which was eight days before our actual story, this is a leading up to. Love it. At a game between the Texas Rangers and the Cleveland Indians, there was a bench clearing brawl between the two teams at Arlington Stadium in Texas. So lots of jargon here. Just please bear with me. And don't ask me any questions.

I won't. I didn't plan to. I heard bench-clearing brawl, and I thought I would have loved to be there because I love the drama. But that's all it... Love the drama. I didn't really need any more jargon other than that.

It was already flashy enough. Okay, it's very flashy. Yeah. Okay. In the fourth inning of that game, Texas player Tom Grieve was walked. Like I said, I'm not 100% sure what that means, but I think it was a good thing for Texas and a bad thing for Cleveland. Okay. Again, no questions. Sure. The next batter hit a double play ball to Indians third baseman John Lowenstein. He stepped on the third base bag to retire Grieve and threw the ball to second base, but Randall disrupted the play with a hard slide into second baseman Jack Brohammer. Uh-oh.

The Indians retaliated in the bottom of the eighth when pitcher Milt Wilcox threw behind Randall's legs, Randall eventually laid down a bunt. Gross. When Wilcox attempted to field it and tag Randall out, which he did successfully, Randall hit him with his forearm, which sounds like it was against the rules. Okay, sure. I don't, again, no questions, but I don't think that was allowed. Sure. Indians first baseman John Ellis responded by punching Randall. Oh.

Again, I don't think that's within the confines of the rules. That feels not, that doesn't feel right. Okay. It doesn't feel right yet. So punched Randall and both benches emptied for a brawl after the brawl was broken up as indians players and coaches were returning to the dugout they were struck by food and beer hurled by texas rangers fans okay so when you ask me if i'm into baseball if this was baseball i would be like number one expert this is like hockey

baseball this feels like a reality show baseball game this feels like also someone's name was bro hammer and i have been wanting to comment on it for a minute like that sounds like that sounds like a guy who would be in a bench clearing brawl where food is just getting thrown into the yard. Brohammer or brohammer. Oh, there's only one M, but it's one M away from straight up brohammer. I'm going to call him brohammer because we both know he would have found a way.

I'm sure his, his name was used a lot and reference points of how strong and powerful he was. I don't know. It's just a name that sounds exactly like he was meant for this brawl it was bro hammer we're just going with it um okay so both benches emptied for a brawl after the brawl was broken up as indians players and oh yeah i already said that struck by food and beer hurled by texas rangers fans catcher dave duncan had to be restrained from going into the stands to brawl with the Texas fans.

Oh, my God. So, like, everyone from both sides are real hot. Everyone's very. Feisty. Very feisty. Yeah. And keep in mind, this was not the game with the alcohol promo. Oh, right.

This is a regular game. This is eight days before. Yeah. So that happened. And then a week later, someone's going to not even I was gonna say a week later, someone tried to pitch this idea. But this was already in the works. This was a thing. Yeah.

Wow. This was a thing. It was being promoted. It was a thing in Cleveland. So this Texas game was not suspended or forfeited. No players from either team were ejected, and the Rangers won 3-0. So wah-wah. Okay.

Okay, so Cleveland's pissed. After the game, a Cleveland reporter asked Rangers manager Billy Martin, quote, are you going to take your armor to Cleveland? To which Martin replied, nah, they won't have enough fans there to worry about. Oh, I love the additional shit talking after the fact. Yeah. Also, big mistake. Huge.

Uh-oh. During the week leading up to the team's next meeting in cleveland sports radio talk show host pete franklin and indians radio announcer joe tate made comments that fueled the fans animosity towards the rangers in addition the plane dealer which is a cleveland newspaper printed a cartoon the day of the game showing this is so fucking gross the former cleveland indians former mascot was called chief wahoo oh yeah oh okay it's like a straight like crayola red faced cartoon oh like a native american with like a the feathers and everything. Just like the worst of the worst typecasts stereotype situation. Yeah.

Gross. It's not great. So let's all be grateful that they've changed all that shit around. Yeah. Okay. What? So this newspaper printed a cartoon the day of the game showing their horrible mascot holding a pair of boxing gloves with the caption be ready for anything oh okay so this kind of had like january 6th vibes

do you know what i mean like yes except like half the people i went to high school with weren't there finally oh god i know welcome. I know. Welcome to Virginia for you. Oh. Slash, we're definitely not even born yet. We're not even born yet. And unfortunately, history seems to keep repeating itself. But you're right. This very much feels a little insurrection-y.

It's a little insurrection-y, yeah. So Cleveland's 10-cent beer night promotion drew 25 134 fans to cleveland stadium for the tuesday night game which was twice the number that they expected they're really it's they're they're storming i'm just saying you're not wrong they're showing up they're heading to the capitol not wrong. They're showing up. They're heading to the capital. They're showing bravery. Or whatever. I can't take it.

Okay, yes. I'm on board, kind of. So the Rangers quickly took a 5-1 lead, like LOL. Okay. Meanwhile, throughout the game, the inebriated crowd grew more and more unruly. Go figure. Mm-hmm.

Early in the game, Cleveland's Leron Lee hit a line drive into the stomach of Rangers pitcher Ferguson Jenkins, after which Jenkins dropped to the ground. That feels on purpose. That feels like that was the day that guy wanted perfect aim. You know? I think so. Yeah.

Yeah. Imagine though, like, I'm not surprised you're on a baseball team. That's a professional baseball team. If you can aim that well, like I'm impressed. I'm pissed, but I'm impressed. I'm a little impressed. Yeah. It's a little petty, but you know, if your aim is going to be that good, like hitting a baseball. If you've got it, flaunt's a little petty but you know if your aim's gonna be that good

like hitting a baseball if you've got it flaunt it i guess you know it's like the serena williams of baseball except serena would never don't put her in that camp no but she could aim she has good venus i also watched king richard recently and it was really good oh i love okay hang on we can talk about that later but yes i'm on board with you it's really good uh okay so jenkins dropped to the ground fans in the upper deck of the stadium cheered and then chanted hit him again hit him again harder harder oh my god so they loved it obviously they were eating it up they were eating it with a spoon. A woman, oh my God. A woman ran out to the Indians on deck circle and flashed her breasts. And a naked man sprinted to second base as Grieve hit his second home run of the game.

One inning later, a father and son pair ran onto the outfield and mooned the fans in the bleachers. So they're getting progressively more nude, A, and B, just like more rowdy. I said it once, I'll say it twice. If this were baseball on a regular basis, I would be really involved in baseball. I know, right? Same.

So as the game progressed, more fans ran onto the field and caused problems. Ranger first baseman Mike Hargrove was pelted with hot dogs and spit. And at one point was nearly struck by an empty gallon jug of Mad Dog 2020. And if you know, you know. Oh my God. Wow. Have you heard of Mad Dog 2020 no i think i don't is it glass i'm assuming it might be a mid well probably but it might be a midwest thing it's

how can i explain it um i've only encountered it one time and it was supposed to be a joke it's like it's like cool it's like ectoplasma colored malt liquor what hang on i'm googling google it yeah google it i just i thought it looks and tastes like antifreeze it's really alcoholic it's disgusting it's the opposite of that nickel beer they're offering oh wow it's really neon it's really gross so it doesn't it's not even fun the whole the whole point is to get fucked up yeah okay yeah it's like if you're on a budget and you need to get fucking wasted i see i see so if i ever decide to really just go from like zero to 60 i just gotta take a smell of mad dog 2020 and i'll be right there i would say zero to 120 zero to 2020 um zero to 2020 i well i thought the the dramatic part of that was that

it was like an empty gallon I just assumed it was like glass or something and he was getting like really like conked on the head it didn't even occur to me probably but the fact that it was mad dog 2020 and it was empty and it was a gallon jug it says a lot more now I'm on board it's also fucked up I'm curious to see the transition between people drinking mad dog for these baseball games to like a week later there's like the lightest beer in the world on tap for a dime so i oh no this this is the game that we're talking about now okay okay gotcha so mad dog is still somehow slipping its way into the scene. I would say that they were supplementing their 10 cent beer with the Mad Dog.

Or maybe pre-gaming with the Mad Dog. It was a supplement. One was a supplement to the other. It doesn't sound like you pre-game with Mad Dog. It sounds like you start enjoy and complete with Mad Dog. I don't think enjoy is the right word. But yes, I get what you're saying. Yeah.

So at some point, someone threw lit firecrackers into the Rangers' bullpen. Wow. In the bottom of the ninth, the Indians managed to rally, tying the game 5-5. And they had Rustyres on second base representing their potential winning run high stakes high drama high tension however with a crowd that had been drinking heavily for nine innings this situation finally came to a head finally yeah after the ahead. Finally. Yeah. After the Indians had managed to tie the game, a 19-year-old fan named Terry Yerkick

Yerkis, Yerkick ran onto the field and attempted to steal Texas outfielder Jeff Burroughs' cap. Terry. Confronting the fan, Burroughs tripped. Thinking that Burroughs had been attacked by Terry, classic Terry, Texas manager Billy Martin charged onto the field with his players right behind him, some of them wielding bats. and clubs fashioned from portions of the stadium seats that they had torn apart.

Oh my God. Surged onto the field and others hurled bottles from the stands. 200 fans surrounded the 25 Rangers players with more fans rushing out onto the field. Wow. So this is just a full blown mob at this point. Just like a baseball. Riot. Riot. A riot. Yeah. I'm glad you said it. I was wondering if I should say it. It was a riot. Yeah.

It was a riot. I have photos of this, which I will email to you if you want to include them in your whatever. But there's just like it's just it's really intense. Or if you want to Google it right now, just Google Tencent Beer Night. There's just ample photos. I mean, so I again, I don't want to. I hope that you cover at some point in this story, like the aftermath of people being like, well, that didn't work. You know, like did marketing ever make up like a press release apologizing or? Well, we'll get to it.

But also, no, not really. Gotcha. Oh, wow. Not really. It really is just a mess. These pictures. A fucking mess. Wow.

So realizing that the Rangers lives might be in danger cleveland manager ken esperamonte ordered his players to grab bats and to help the rangers attacking the team's own fans in the process so that the indians players were just like uh it's gone too far we have to protect our rival team players because our fans are fucking drunk and insane wow it really it became like an everyman for himself almost yeah oh my gosh rioters began throwing steel folding chairs and cleveland relief pitcher tom hill hillgen dorf was hit in the head by one of said steel folding chairs hargrove after subduing one rioter in a fistfight, had to fight another on his way back to the Texas dugout. The two teams retreated off the field

through the dugouts in groups with players protecting each other. So at this point, it's just baseball players versus the fans. Right. Yeah. Teams have nothing to do with with it it was all the fans versus all the players wow like teams are becoming their own teams they're uniting into one big old team wow they're one mega team wow i you know i feel like this is some how have i not heard about this before i feel like this is oh also i'm looking it up and apparently this was uh june 4th which by the way is christine's birthday so it's like she's here in spirit um yeah this would totally be something that i feel like should be like brought up in conversation to this day it's crazy you'd think so so the teams fled into their clubhouses and closed and locked the doors. The completely uncontrolled, unhinged crowd

pulled up and stole bases and anything else that it found. So they were just, they were in the dugouts. They were stealing the bases off the field. They were just all over the place. They were uncontrolled. Sure. I mean, I can't imagine, like you're already doing something very reckless

and you have now found your way into like your favorite team's dugout. Of course, you're going to start stealing shit and looting and all this crap. Who wouldn't? Yeah. So rioters threw a vast array of objects, including cups, rocks, bottles, batteries from radios, hot dogs, popcorn containers and folding chairs. hot dogs popcorn containers and folding chairs umpire crew chief nestor chylak kylak realizing that order would not be restored in a timely fashion forfeited the game to texas he too was then a victim of the rioters as one struck and cut his head with part of a stadium seat and also cut his hand by a rock being thrown at it.

Oh, my God. He later called the fans, quote, uncontrollable beasts and stated that he'd never seen anything like what had happened, quote, except in a zoo. Wow. I mean, I would be there's there's no other way to say it, but anyone would be terrified in that situation. I mean, Horrifying. People, and like you said earlier that people were even like breaking the stadium chairs off of the stadium platforms.

Like, I mean. Yeah. They were busting up the stadium and crafting like clubs and weapons out of it. Yeah. And like, I don't know what baseball stadiums were like in the 70s. But I imagine they weren't very different than today and that they're confusing to get out of like you're trapped in a state of panic over there. Like just scary. Like, oh my gosh, I know very intense. So this writing continued for about 20 minutes as Joe Tate and Herb Score called the Riot live on the radio

because there's still like commentary happening. Oh I totally forgot about that. Yeah. It's like a full on like live game. Yeah and if you could hear it on the radio of course they're going to start updating people. Can you imagine just being in the car being like man I really wanted to go to that Rangers

game and like now like I bet I'm going to miss a great show and now you're that rangers game or and like now like i bet i'm gonna miss a great show and now you're just hearing all of this and you're like whoa i'm so glad i didn't even make it there i would have loved to listen to that on the radio honestly the volume would have been cranked to 10 i would have been like everyone stop what you're doing well kind of like speaking of insurrectiony when i was watching on januaryth, the live coverage on CNN. It's like, oh my God. We were recording when the insurrection happened

because as we were talking, I started getting all these texts from people. It was a very jarring moment because I was like, clearly something important is going on because so many people are reaching out, but I got to record and we didn't find out until afterwards

what had happened. My God. I was watching it i was watching the i'm a fucking nerd so i was watching the the the the final vote like the count yeah live and then and then they were like they'd like break away to show scenes from outside the capitol and i like i was texting my friends i was like uh fucking turn on cnn right now can you i mean i i'm saying can you imagine to someone who literally did it but to think you're to have a very uh a

very one-way anticipation of what to be watching on the screen and then all of a sudden it's just full chaos i mean yeah that's probably exactly what they were going through too listening on the radio being like wait what's going on at that stadium across the street from my house? Exactly. Yeah. Similar vibes, I think. OK, so as they're calling this riot live on the radio, Herb Skor mentioned the security guards inability to handle the crowd. Tate said, quote, Oh, this is an absolute tragedy.

No shit, Tate. Yeah. Thank you for your two cents thanks tate the cleveland police department finally arrived to restore order arresting nine fans which like only nine yeah what were what were those nine doing that were so different compared to everyone else's actions maybe sticking around everyone else like gone home i don't know yeah out of 25 000 people yeah like that makes me wonder like were were those nine doing anything particularly horrible were they doing nothing and they just like got they just won the lottery and

got to leave or were they like i mean were they were there only nine security guards who were able to grab a hold of them? Just gave up? I don't know. I guess. Only nine cops showed up. So Indians players escorted the Rangers back to their team bus. So the Indians players at this point are the security guards for all the Texas Rangers players. Poor guys.

guards for all the Texas Rangers players. Poor guys. Cleveland general manager Phil Seggie blamed the umpires for losing control of the game. Since when is it the umpire's job to control the fans? Hey, since when is it the baseball player's jobs to be security, you know? True. At this point, everyone's playing multiple parts but if we're blaming somebody for this breaking out in the first place it wasn't the umpires like the umpires are there to like and again i know very little about baseball

but the umpires are there to like call fouls and yeah strikes and things like that as far as i know yes that as far as i know they're not supposed to be like the police force of the baseball stadium that's for sure exactly so the sporting news wrote that quote seggy's perspective might have been different had he been in kylak's shoes in the midst of the knife wielding bottle throwing chair tossing fist swinging drunks so basically they're saying this guy was not he's the general manager he was not on the field you can blame whoever he wants he wasn't there wow american league president lee lee mcphail there are so many names in here and they're all like very Polish. Yeah, I was going to say like they all seem to be doing a number on you.

They really are. American League President Lee McPhail commented, quote, there was no question that beer played a part in the riot. Gee, Lee, you think? And water is wet. Thank you so much for the insight. And water is wet. Thank you so much for the insight. So the next beer night promotion on July 18th.

Lucy, I really, I thought that was, I thought you were going to say the end. Nope. I told you. I told you they kind of acknowledged this and kind of didn't. What did they say? Were they like, well, that was a crazy accident of a first time, but next time will be better. They stitched up a loophole,

at least one. So their next promotion attracted 41,848 fans, which was almost twice as many as the first one. Right. With beer again selling for 10 cents per cup, but this time with a limit of two cups per person at the reduced price and no major riots were reported.

Okay. Well, I thank God for such a massive loophole to be discovered so quickly. Wow. Do you know even who the fuck didn't think to like put a cap on the number of dime beers that you could have god imagine if it were a dime mad dog 2020s though because like would would it have been a worse experience or would one dime have been all people were willing to spend and it would have i mean either way it would have all been rowdy for sure. That was pretty rowdy. There was a lot of blood. I don't know if you've Googled it, but there's a lot of men wielding baseball bats and blood and empty beer cans.

I wonder from a psychology perspective what it was like to be in a socially recognized masculine space. And then all of a sudden everyone is now encouraged to like fight and be as like hyper masculine as possible. I wonder how that played a factor into it. And then throw in a bunch of beer. Like, you know, like just 100% a bad situation. It's like a gladiator kind of thing. Yeah. Wow.

You even have kind of like a, what is it? An arena. Like a coliseum sort of situation. Yeah. Oh, my God. People in uniform. I mean, who knows? We haven't evolved all that much, it turns out.

Like, where are the tigers so yeah that's my story if it's a great that was a great story way to thanks what a doozy and then also um i don't know if you noticed you probably did with a simple google search but wow there is a lot of merchandise available about 10 cent beer night yeah there's like modern quote quote unquote vintage merch associated with 10 cent beer there's like i kind of want to get some there's cups and koozies and i survived and like a bobblehead uh I'll I'll send the picture to you too after this but it's a bobblehead that says bobblehead night then dollar dog night jersey night helmet night and then 10 cent beer night and there's a big ass x on the shirt that

says canceled on that one wow well they were all about their promos i guess they sure were well yeah well done that was excellent and that does feel very minor league it feels like a little out of pocket for major league people to be messing around with but it is kind of it is it kind of smacks of minor league doesn't it it's you know when we do like live shows i'm sure you've seen this too that at bars there's like a two drink minimum and now i'm glad there's at least like there's probably also a maximum we haven't heard about because like now i'm like it could be like 10 cent beer night really quick it could get really crazy well this is a spooky story for you it's not super spooky it's actually maybe a little sillier um but if there's one thing and that's why we drink listeners love it is a poltergeist story and very rarely do i get to find these anymore because shockingly not a lot of poltergeists

in the world that have a lot of well documented evidence behind them. But here is one who happens to be named Pete the poltergeist. So it was also featured on the pilot episode of a show called Strange But True. And I don't actually know if there were any other episodes after the pilot episode. So this might be a one of a kind. So it takes place in the 80s in Cardiff, Wales. Oh, I forgot to ask before we get into this. Do you have a reason why you drink this week? I totally forgot to ask you if you're drinking, why you're drinking, if anything's going on in your life. Oh, I'm not drinking tonight anyway, because I'm just freshly over my booster hangover.

But if I were to drink, I would probably say it's like almost to the holidays. I got a lot of shit to wrap, a lot of travel coming up. Ugh. And that would be the same reason I'm drinking too. It's just a lot of holiday planning. Anyway, I forgot to ask

and I'm sure people will scream at me on Twitter or something. So I wanted to see why you're drinking. Don't scream at Em. Don't. You can tweet though, but just nice things. So, okay. Not in all caps. So Pete the Poltergeist was in Cardiff, Wales.

And this takes place in the 80s in a lawnmower repair shop called mower services straight to the point very creative gotcha right it was owned by two men named john and fred matthews uh i was under the assumption that john and fred were brothers but i'm seeing from other sources that they might have been in-laws. Either way, they were somehow related to each other. Okay. And they own this mower repair shop together. It was a structure built. It was in a structure that had been built in the 1880s, so 100 years prior.

And it was originally houses, and then it was storefronts for a while, and there were no records of death on the property so just saying that ever records i know i wonder how many states they're actually i know each state is different when you move into a house that they legally have to tell you if someone has died in on your property or in your home but if it's like that old also if it was built in the 1880s that's true someone died there in 1890 right notice really and also like what happened on the property before because my house uh my childhood home was built for our family but it was also it's on a battlefield so like you tell tell me, like it was, you know,

Oh, you're definitely haunted. Oh, there's so, I feel like everyone that is from my town, cause Fredericksburg was one of the top 10 bloodiest battles of the civil war or something. Um, and I feel like every house I ever went to,

my friends had a creepy younger sibling who would just come in. I don't know where I'd be like, there's a soldier that walks in my room at night like it was just common everyone had a soldier that would just walk through their room so i know i love it so i'm and i there have been at least four ghosts that have been seen in my house and so i'm sure there's at least another 40 that aren't showing themselves at least at least uh are there any ghosts at your house uh not that i've seen when we first moved in so the owner the owner before we bought our house he um rented it to like college students and then before that we had

like a hoarder and then before that there was a family with a bunch of kids and one of the kids was drafted to vietnam and he ended up dying oh so he might like have come back to the place or something i think so basically when we moved in there was a lot of energy it was a lot of really chaotic energy and i did a lot of like cleansing and cleansing and all that stuff i think i have it to a to a point where we're good good i still feel like there's shit in our house but at least it's good stuff sure yeah but yeah no ghosts that i've seen every now and then there's something in this apartment but it's been pretty good at like keeping its place.

I'm also very direct with it where if I sense it at all I go, no thank you and it just goes away. So. I will say one quick thing. When we had our

crimes solved by psychics episode. Yeah. I interviewed my personal psychic. Yeah. Shout out Charles Tiemann. It's psychic-light.com he's amazing he used to work for the cia he's like legit fun he came to my house and i was like so do you like feel

anything in my house and the first fucking thing he said was there's a lot of fear coming from the basement good night absolutely not i was like i don't i don't want to talk about that like oh charles you have lost your job you have lost your friend because i am not here for that so i've done a lot of work in the basement and i feel like we're okay now but that was unnerving interesting i've i've told this story on here before. But a real quick version of it is that I was staying at my friend's house who she they didn't know going in that someone had died there. And in the middle of the night, I was I someone grabbed my ass in the middle of the night and it was not my friend and when i turned on my flashlight on my phone to see who was grabbing me there was a handprint in the blankets on my ass and when she ended up moving out later oh and apparently even when i wasn't there things would happen to her when she lived there like she would be shaving her legs and then in the shower and she'd put

the razor down and when she would like go to like wash her face she'd look back and the razor would be like sitting on the toilet in her bathroom like it would be it was crazy oh so i ended up i always remembered getting grabbed when i was sleeping there but when she moved out and they moved the bed the bed was already it was the room was furnished when she got there so she had never moved the bed and there was a decomposition stain under the bed of a body that had died there so it grabbed me because i was lying where it where a body had been it's very creepy very creepy that's the coolest thing i know we have a one of our friends is a forensic pathologist and another friend who's in forensic so they were able to be like that is absolutely a body stain so uh my cousin lived in an apartment in new york very very tiny tiny

little like a soho apartment it was like a hundred square feet like max and there was a person who died on her floor before she bought the place. And there's still a stain there. Yeah. It's like, what do you do? She still gets his mail. Oh,

he was there for like weeks before anybody found him. Oh no. The place. Have you ever smelled the dead body? It's really wild. It's the, it's, it's,

I've heard people say before before i had experienced it like oh when you smell it you know and i was like how does that happen and then i smelled it i was like oh that is 100 of dead body i can't imagine what her room must have been like if someone was just lying there for weeks that's so sad yeah well i mean it was obviously way before she moved in but oh yeah it was the tenant before she moved in, but they cleaned it. It didn't smell, but she like still received his mail for a while. I would leave him a little mailbox next to where his body had been. Just let him have his mail every now and then. Or just if a Christmas card came for him, I'd leave a little shrine for him. I think though, I think now it's all coming back to me. It was a murder. That's why it was so weird. He was murdered by one of his lovers. They think it was like an unsolved murder. Oh, no.

And it was it's like a street level apartment. So there's a window, but there's like a gate in front of it, you know? Yeah. But you can open that gate. Like she accepts her pizza deliveries through her window. But also it's so weird knowing that like maybe like was he like shot through the window or anything? Like was that window a part of the murder that she's now accepting pizzas through? I think it was an invited lover and there was like some sort of quarrel like an intimate homicide and then the lover left I don't remember for sure but it was something very dramatic like that but there's definitely a stain on her floor

I always wonder if every room I'm in whether I'm in someone else's apartment or my own and I haven't heard anything I'm like someone could have easily been murdered here how on earth would I know the difference and it's just so weird to just walk through any room and not know what the history of it is yeah well here's the history of this one makes life exciting this at this mower repair shop ah yes the mower repair shop so they didn't know of any deaths on the property but then again

that doesn't really mean anything as we just discussed and uh the poltergeist activity started as a lot of buildings do in europe around this time i don't know what it is but anytime i've covered like an older poltergeist poltergeist story out of the country every single one of them starts with random rocks being pelted at people it okay it makes no sense but it's so weirdly aggressive and for what like it makes no sense so they started hearing stones getting thrown at the building all the time and john and fred and the rest of the staff uh they would hear rocks getting thrown onto the roof i guess they had a tin roof and so it made a lot of noise and they would hear the rocks roll down and eventually they went to go check they thought maybe they were the kids in town or i don't know someone trying to piss them

off and nobody was ever there but the rocks would just keep hitting the roof and they weren't under a tree or anything for nuts to be found. It just made no sense. So when they went to go, when they went to go look one day and they didn't see anything, they just kept hearing the rocks. They went back to work in the garage. And I guess there's these things on lawnmowers called spanners, which are basically like a fan.

And I guess when they went back into the shop to work, after hearing the rocks on the roof, all of the spanners that had been hanging on the wall were now swinging alone by themselves. So one of the employees sees this and with his hands, like tries to like stop it. So it'll stop spinning. And after he stopped it, he,

it starts spinning again ew so it's like the wind no wind he is just doing it on his own he tries to go back and grab it again what there's already a ghost behind you or what no it's my husband might as well be the spookiest of them all uh so he went to go grab it again. And as he grabbed the spanner to stop it from swinging, a wrench on the shelf flew off of the shelf by itself. Ew. Did it hit him? It did not hit him.

But a rock hit him out of nowhere from inside the building now after he had been hearing them on the roof. Oh, my God. So a rock appeared out of nowhere and hit him right in the gut. And he, I guess it got like, it looked like it had been thrown from the darker corner of the garage. So he picked it up

and he threw it back into the corner and it came flying back at him again. Like it was like they were playing catch or something. Very weird. Yeah, with a rock. Right. And nobody was ever in the corner. And this became a very regular thing.

This was like a daily multi multiple times a day daily occurrence where things were getting thrown from that corner of the garage it could be rocks it would be screws it would be bolts it would be little trinkets that had been found on the ground just anything and if you would throw a rock into the corner a different rock would throw would come back at you so it was never oh i'm throwing it and it's bouncing off the wall and back to me it was a completely different rock so and uh john himself when he got interviewed about this he said nine times out of ten if he threw an item into the corner of that garage and nobody else was in there with you it would fly back to you very creepy john also what like not just this one occasion this was like this was multiple times a day

daily for like five years oh my god it was just normal that things would just get thrown at you all the time uh would you want to keep working inhabiting that space i know i would be like buddy system every time there's no way i'm going back in there no way no way forget it or at least we're putting a light in there or something so i can see into the corner but then maybe the light would get thrown at me i'm not sure yeah don't put anything heavy over there yeah yeah maybe just like cotton balls you know so uh despite this none of the staff ever seemed to be scared of this entity or whatever was throwing things at them, which is weird because I would be sure as shit scared. But all of them were like, oh, he's just having fun.

Like they really just ran with this ghost playing games with them, which maybe they did for like self-preservation. Like it was better to be in denial than just like something's throwing rocks at you yeah maybe you get like kind of a vibe if they're kind of having fun or if it's i think the vibe i think you can read the room based on how hard the rock is getting thrown at you yeah touche if it's a little law but it just hits right near your toes that's one thing so over the over time the employees got used to all these items flying around the business uh they're they also got used to the sound of the rocks on the roof there were apparently like radical temperature changes where it would feel

normal and then out of nowhere it'd be ice cold and then it would go right back to normal and there was no gauging it there was no gradual change it would just oh just out of nowhere happen they all they also started experiencing this really gross stench which usually means it's something demonic if there's like a really particular powerful scent with poltergeist activity means it's demonic they lovingly named the poltergeist Pete. I don't know where Pete comes from, but they just, I think maybe they like alliteration and who doesn't. Uh, and Pete would also hide stuff from them.

That was their own personal objects. And then would hope for all of the staff to be like, where's my thing? Where's my thing? Uh, but I guess they realized that the poltergeist wanted attention and so they stopped caring it was kind of like a like a younger sibling thing of like oh they want your attention if you ignore them they'll leave you

alone the poltergeist would get upset if you ignored the fact that he stole your stuff and he would then throw it at you so classic poltergeist classic once i saw on one source like someone lost their keys and then when they gave up looking for the keys all of a sudden like something out of nowhere just slid the keys out of the corner of a building and like they landed at the guy's feet like fine fucking take them i kind of love that i do too It's very petty. It's very petty. So another time, this is where people realize that this spirit was also, I guess, kind of responding intelligently because you people start asking for particular items, and they would just drop into your lap out of nowhere. So one time Pete dropped a paperclip on a table uh with that like an employee was

just sitting there and a paper clip dropped on the table and when the employee said oh pete like why not send me some more and a whole box of paper clips out of the sky out of the roof or the ceiling just dropped onto the table cool and then the employee said why not some paper too and then just like a little angelic slips of paper just kind of floated down onto the table but like god i love pete he's very whimsical he's very he's here for the theatrics which i love he's also like so resourceful imagine if you're like in a crunch and you need something and you're like i need a pen and he just drops it in front of you yeah especially like in a mechanics like warehouse kind of shop or you know i can't imagine it's that organized well it's like where's my blah blah wrench well what's so funny is that they actually started using him for like inventory basically because they would say like,

I need a plug. And out of nowhere, like a spark plug would show up on the ground. Like it was just very convenient. It was like, he was like an assistant. Like he was being like a mentee. Honestly, he should be getting paid for his work.

I wonder if, you know, I want you to remember that you said that in a second. So, uh, so John actually apparently lived next door to the company and activity also started happening at his own house where pete started playing and breaking playing with and breaking a lot of john's kids toys apparently pete loved

the rubik's cube fun fact and the same thing would happen there where if you just asked for something it would just show up. So there were two examples I saw where John asked for a banana one time. And he also asked for random silverware and both times that like flew at him from a random room. It just appeared. Oh, another time John asked Pete about a small motor part that had been on the

table and he couldn't find it. He was like like where the hell is this piece and then it was literally in his hand when but then again it's like that's how i am with my glasses like i'm like where are they and then it's on my face like so i i don't know if that was a spooky one or but the way that john says it is his hands were clenched because he was so stressed trying to find this thing and then he felt something prick him and when he opened his hand it was magically there i'm gonna go with that i love that i love it too much it's the whimsy again i feel like that it makes sense so far here's a quote from fred about how clever

pete himself was in materializing items fred said he'd throw you anything you asked for he must make you must make a note of this you'd say and then he would throw you anything you asked for. He must make you must make a note of this, you'd say and then he would throw you a pen. You could say silly things like we've got to get this together and he'd throw you a staple. You know, this sort of thing he would associate with what we were speaking. It was so good that I would say my Pete, you're so clever. There's one thing you can't do or get for me though. And that's a Rolls Royce. And as I said that at my feet, and John was my witness, a Rolls Roy as i said that at my feet and john was my witness a rolls royce key ring landed at my feet with rr on it is that not bananas that was

like obviously already in their shop somewhere and i just materialize right it must have been because every story every story i had heard was that it was an item from somewhere in the building. So it must have like just come, he must have stolen it from someone else's pocket or something like a customer. I don't know. God, I love Pete. But you know, he couldn't get you a car, but he at least got you the key ring. He did the best he could. That reminds me, you knew he was listening. He was listening. And it reminds me of the time when uh when i first wanted a car and i was looking for cars with my mom i when i was like gonna go to college and i was like oh i don't even care what car i get i just really wanted to be this color and it was just like because that's

who i was and i was it was just this really pretty rich blue color and for christmas my mom got me a hair dryer of that color and she was like i'm not getting you a car but i got you this hair dryer so it reminds me of she knew you liked the color yeah exactly so i feel like he was like i can't get your rolls royce but i can certainly get you the key ring so people think you've got a rolls roy Royce. Yeah. So after this, when they were like, oh, this guy, this spirit can like basically summon at least accessories to cars. John was, John basically asked like, Pete, what if I asked for some money?

And sure enough, per request, Pete began dropping small coins in front of John and Fred regularly, quote, for almost five years every day. So the coins would simply appear with no explanation. One time in like their cup of tea, he was like just drinking tea and was like, oh, I could really use some change. And then change ended up in his cup. And they I hope they saved all that change and went on like an employee retreat at the end well i guess it was they were saying in one of the quotes that there were very particular

coins that would show up it was like never more than like 50 pence but like for some reason like it wouldn't be exactly 50 pence but there were times where up to like a five pound note or a 10 pound note would show up which is the equivalent to like seven i think up to like 15 bucks in u.s dollars it would just on nothing show up it would just show up i guess they averaged about five pound a month from all the coins that pete would bring them which was about seven dollars a month i'll take it i'll take it too. That's a Starbucks right there. Like for five years? For five years. That's always, that's like about, let's say 60, 70 bucks a year for five years.

That's like 300 bucks. Yeah. That's nothing to frown on, you know? It's a pizza party. That's for sure a pizza party. You could at least- Great pizza party. So at least enough to buy yourself a Ouija board and talk to Pete, you know?

So. I think this was Fred who said this. In one hour, I collected 68 pence by just saying, send me some more money. Send me some more money. Which at this point, I feel like Pete is getting used. Like he has to know like i can conjure you just about anything and i feel like we have found a loophole and now i'm obligated at this point to keep giving you whatever you want

it's like wishing for more wishes yeah so earlier it was funnier when you said like oh well like pete should be getting paid and it's like ironically he's paying them like so well like what else is he gonna do on this honestly i feel like poltergeists are just bored ghosts right yeah with like more autonomy yeah you know it just like an awareness of like their capabilities i guess but also agency i guess i should wonder, though, as a poltergeist, like, how were they able to get their hands on, like, a 10-pound note? But they couldn't get more than that. Like, I wonder, like, ethically, was this poltergeist, like, that's, like, I can't go beyond this level? Or is there something, like, they can only conjure a certain thing at a time? Or, because, like, the Rolls-Royce keychain, he must've been getting it from somewhere in the shop.

He might've just been going into other people's wallets and just taking their spare change. And they never noticed because it was just like a quarter or whatever. That's so smart. And they also probably never actually made any additional money if it just kept getting like transferred

to different people in the building. It was just moving around. Just, yeah. Okay, that's totally the answer uh so originally it started as smaller coins just materializing in front of people but then when it became like fivers or tenors the money would just start showing up in random parts of the workshop that nobody would have put it so they were finding uh bills basically in like ceiling tiles. They found it one time stuck to like the surface of their car after it rained. And then eventually Fred and John were like, okay, like our whole staff knows about this spirit. I think they were afraid that their customers were going to start noticing something.

And so they wanted to have a serious interaction with the ghost. And they decided to hold a seance in the workshop. To make him go away? I think. I don't know if it was just like a meet and greet or something. They never really addressed it. But they had everyone that was in the building sit at the table with them, lock all the doors, lock all the windows so nobody else could get in.

And they had their hands visible to them at all times so everyone knew that if something was getting thrown out of the ceiling or out of the corner of a room nobody was pranking the staff and pretty immediately uh pete comes forward and drops a huge rock onto the table like krakatoa oh and then up when they start mentioning like oh we should take notes during this a pen gets thrown at them so it's very intelligently responding to them like at this point it's a little condescending uh and we fucking get it okay it's like i could have had my own pen or you know what if you had a pen like in your bag to use, if he almost like grabbed it out of the bag for you and put it on the table. That'd be nice. Yeah.

It's a little condescending though. I get it. So after this, Fred and John were like, okay, something intelligent is here. We need to reach out to professionals. And so they reached out to the SPR, which is the Society of Psychical Research. And so they reached out to the SPR, which is the Society of Psychical Research. It's like the big, the big honchos in terms of like studying the paranormal. And they got a hold of one of their researchers there named David Fontana, who would stop by sporadically and investigate from 1989 to 1992. So three years of going there every now and then just to like see if anything had changed and as far as i know based on what i was able to find he always found something new whenever he would go there like it was consistent proof of a spirit the first time he went he showed up and a rock was hurled at him and john said he's saying hello to you. It sounds like when you like meet your friend's dog and the dog is like clearly fucking hates you.

And your friend is like, oh, the puppy is saying hi. It's like, no, your dog hates me. I know it. It's fine. But it just doesn't feel good. Yeah, I just met one of my friend's dogs named Gus. Gus could not hate a person more than he hates me. And I didn't even do anything.

I just showed up and he was just confused by me. It felt very transphobic. And my friend kept being like, oh, Gussie loves you. Gussie loves you. And I was like, are you kidding yourself right now? Like Gus and I are in the same room. I can tell we are not making a friendship a strong friendship yeah what is gus like when he hates someone i don't like this so anyway the the poltergeist throws a rock in his head

and everyone goes oh he's saying hi so that's how it felt. I imagine. And in David Fontana's notes, after researching Pete, he said that Pete was a quote responsive poltergeist because he had both intent and the intelligence necessary to accomplish it, which. Okay. But we already knew all that based on the story so far.

So good observation, Dave. He also said that the spirit was more legitimate based on the story so far so good observation dave um he also said that the spirit was more legitimate based on other uh cases he had investigated because you never actually saw any of the materialized objects mid-flight they you always just saw them once they were coming at you or once they were hitting you but you never saw them crossing a room to get to you and so i guess his argument was if you only ever see the object appearing at its final destination instead of like from point a to point b you if someone else was

throwing it from across the room you would see it making its way to you but instead you just see it appear and drop to the floor and that's evidence of the poltergeist evidence that it is a poltergeist and not someone pranking everybody, I guess. Because you're not actually seeing it fly across the room, which would happen if someone was throwing it at you. Instead, it just literally like blinks in front of you and falls to the floor. Hmm. I've always wondered what it, what it, because, you know, ghosts and poltergeists and things that move things. Or like you blink and something's moved

or like your friend's razor yeah i've always wondered how i've always wondered that too like when i'm not looking if something were to move from this side of the table to this side of the table if my eyes were closed would it actually make its whole way across the table or is it literally like blinking away into some other realm and appearing on the other side of the table i have no idea i guess in this case it was doing that where it was the blinking disappearing from our universe for a moment to get to the next spot i mean who are we to argue sure i don't know a lot so i'm not gonna start here you know so interestingly in his uh historical research david did say that he saw a boy he found out that a boy had been killed on a road nearby

and so that might actually have been pete um and that story was confirmed later by the boy's sister so there was a death nearby we don't it never was on the official property um and the fact that the spr came out to investigate got the news of pete the poltergeist really swirling around the area so although fred and john were worried about losing business once like once the news started swirling they were worrying that they worried that people would find out and not go there anymore but now everyone's showing up because they want a glimpse of pete so i'd fucking go there yeah of course if anything's haunted it's immediately where i head so also if you can just go somewhere and ask for spare change right get it that's such a good point of like or what if you saw someone on their lunch break and you really

wanted that sandwich and you were like pete fucking yeah like just fucking steal it like like they won't know i just want it i don't want that rolls royce keychain i want the most expensive mower they have here get it oh shit drop it from the sky or just drops in your lap oh no like and it had already started no um so some of the people that actually witnessed the spirits here when they i guess they were either customers or visiting after they heard that there was a ghost there they had seen quote little note little nuts and bolts just flying around and dropping from nowhere. They had seen, quote, a stone whizzing around on the floor. And then another said that they saw, quote, stones and things were flying around and pinging off of the shelves.

And apparently cops and repairmen, who both came in at different times because there had been a break in, repairmen who both came in at different times because there had been a break-in um they also witnessed that this poltergeist was real because both of them kept getting pelted with stones while they were there working the case so i think he said akab is all i know let's just say just pelting random cops for no reason that were there to help so after all of the newfound attention and probably like additional attention that had been given to pete by people coming in and wanting to see him uh i think pete started getting stronger and one day at the shop fred actually sees pete and uh so the reports that the staff mentioned uh before he sees him though a bunch of other

reports come out where people had seen pete doing things other than just throwing items such as dust being dropped down someone's shirt like he just like dust you just drew like a handful of dust and just put it in the back of someone's shirt like when people do that with ice cubes but this is much grosser yeah uh he apparently would smash dishes and then they would magically be put back together uh a lawnmower as we were just joking about a lawnmower started on its own thank god it didn't fall from the ceiling onto someone's lap. And apparently he texted or he the tech. No, he did not text. But the text gobbledygook like that word was apparently typed out on a computer by itself in the office. And then the rest of the quote is.

And on one occasion, blue flames emerged from a brass World Wari shell case that was on display in the workshop so he's also like starting like little cute fires he's of all of the words he could write on a computer he is choosing the word gobbledygook and spelling it right good for him so now after all of this activity it's just proof that he's getting stronger. And this is when Fred sees him. So Fred's working on a lawnmower and he felt like he was being watched. So he looked up and he sees the apparition of a little boy sitting on the shelf. And this is a quote from him describing what Pete looks like. He was a little boy,

which by the way, confirms that it might be the ghost of the little boy who died on the side of the road. He was a little boy dressed in 1940s clothes wearing a peaked cub cap dark short trousers a jacket and big black boots he was all gray no face but the face was there it's hard to explain he looked really out of proportion to me his body compared to his size says that his head should have been through the ceiling it's hard to explain but he looked really out of proportion ew his head and legs were just outlines there was nothing there and all you could see was his hand waving which i don't like that he's waving it's

one thing if he's sitting there staring at you but to wave means he wants to interact with you in my mind and his head should have been like up yeah ceiling like how big is he like what what size is he where his head should be through the ceiling that reminds me my my family calls it well you know when you have the flu and you're and you're sleeping and your dreams are like super fucked up yeah and they're like my family calls them the fast and slows but that's such a perfect way to describe it but like everything is out of proportion and like uncanny and like nightmarish yes yeah everything's just kind of like kind of how that feels like like like a growing and shrinking situation all at once like it's just fast and slow. Doesn't make any sense.

Yeah. That I that's probably I kind of get that same vibe from Pete the Poltergeist. And when Fred saw him, I guess John was also next to him but hadn't noticed. So Fred told John to turn around slowly and see the boy. But when John turned, the boy was gone. And when he was like, I don't see anything. Out of nowhere, a brick got hurled at john's head okay so no one's ever been hurt by these shenanigans and also yes and also no one's afraid of him which is so weird because if something was throwing bricks at me

after i tried to look at it i would be bothered yeah if a person i could see threw a brick at me i would be bothered let alone if i couldn't see it yeah i'd be bothered in pretty much any scenario where a brick is thrown at me especially if someone else had just seen it and was like look and then you're trying and it clearly didn't want you to see but it was still there you know yeah don't love that so after that fred saw pete like around five more times and very quickly pete started becoming very obsessed with fred and i guess possibly attached to fred in some way or it just seemed to be giving him more attention or things started getting thrown at him more he was leaving everyone else alone in 1993 the mower business ended up moving out of that location

but uh pete ended up moving to except to fred's house and set so he left the the mower business alone after that he retired and he just went home with fred and the same activity starts happening in fred's house including him appearing again because because Fred's grandson later told him that he saw a little boy sitting in grandpa's chair. So now we're seeing him more often. And Pete lived in that house with and like was very active with his poltergeist phenomena for around three years. Do you imagine being Fred's wife? And you're like, are you fucking kidding me? Like this thing that you've been talking about for years that throws bricks at you every

day now is in my home? Absolutely not. Yeah, no, I wouldn't be okay with that. That's an eviction notice. Yeah. Well, it's funny you say that because Fred described him as it was like having a lodger like someone's in my home. Fred said, you always knew when he was around

i'd feel a cold draft and the hairs on the back of my neck would stand on end he'd pull our hair and then put money in front of us it was like having a lodger which like first of all what lodger is pulling your hair and then giving you money but also i'm still shocked that no one is feeling uncomfortable around this thing, because I've always understood that if it's making you feel uncomfortable, it's because it wants you to feel uncomfortable. And so if it's putting hairs on the back of your neck and giving you a cold shiver down your spine, and it's also yanking your hair, it... But it's also paying you. It's like a tithing. It's like, yeah, I'm bugging you because I have to.

But here's a little bit. Here's a little sweet in the deal. You know, something to make it not as painful. Yeah, it's it's a weird service. He's offering the poltergeist. But so different sources, I guess I'm assuming it was Fred's wife who was like, this has to end. So different sources make it sound like Pete eventually left on his own or

that his activity got to be too much. And Fred and his wife had to get rid of him. So one source I saw was that Fred got in contact with a medium who told him that he needed to break any item that Pete liked to interact with, which I would think is the worst thing you can do and like piss off the ghost who's already almost hitting you with bricks every day yeah but i guess it was like breaking the like connection of like him being able to mess with your stuff i feel like if there's a medium out there who's listening to this right now they're gonna reach out to us and be like no that's not the right thing to do

yeah but that was what one of the sources said. Another source has Fred saying that it was like a very amorous breakup of like, or amicable breakup of not amorous. Yikes. But Fred said, quote, it has been a wonderful experience and I feel quite privileged and honored to

have him around, but we want to go back to our normal life. So i'm glad he's gone as long as he's all right which seems like a very diplomatic way of ending things and i think so at any rate i don't know what actually happened but they parted ways i guess and uh there haven't been any new sightings of pete since the 90s uh fred knew he was officially gone because I guess Pete had this trademark thing where he hated oranges. And he hated them in the house. It makes no sense. He hated oranges.

And if there were oranges in the house, he would try to like throw them out the windows or get rid of oranges. And Fred knew that the day Pete was never, never came back was the last time he had oranges in the house where he was doing dishes and after he had just washed a dish in that brand new dish all of a sudden he found an orange sitting there and that was the last time he ever saw any activity from Pete and oh so Pete was like okay I'm. You can have your oranges back. Yeah. And then he, like a ship in the night, as mysteriously as he came, he vanished. So that is the story of Pete the Poltergeist. I love Pete. Pete.

I don't think I'd want him in my lawnmower repair shop, but. He's like the friend that you don't invite to the party, but if someone else asks if he can be their plus one, you're like, yeah, just keep an eye on him. You know, like he's like the friend that you don't invite to the party but if someone else asks if he can be their plus one you're like yeah just keep an eye on him you know like he's like exactly he's fine i don't need for a minute i don't need my i don't need to text him i don't need to be that close with him but he can be around we all know those i'll be his instagram friend but not his facetime friend you know yeah not an irl friend right but yeah so that's that wow what a chaotic episode between the baseball brawls and the we kind of covered a lot of bases don't you do that to me that that was fun well i liked it i it, too. I really do appreciate you coming on here. We obviously love Wine and Crime.

So here's a big shout out. If you do not listen to Wine and Crime, please go do so. When do you put out episodes? What every day is it? It's every Thursday. And then we have monthly bonus episodes. We also have episodes of Gossip at the Corpse Cart, which is another like main feed kind of spin-off we talk about current events and then we have a shitload of patreon exclusive content so you do i every

time and every time we think of doing something patreon-y i'm like you've got again your base is loaded like you've got spooky little bitch you've got, you've got your drunk dives. Drunk dives. We got mansplaining. We've have Kenyon's new show. It's called unimpressed where she just like complains about some niche thing with a special guest. I'm supposed to be on that soon. Fun fact.

Oh, you'll have fun. Anyway, go join their Patreon because wow, like the amount of content is like out of control. So thank you so much for coming on. And then if Kenyon was on last week and you were here this week, I wonder who my co-host is going to be next week, folks. And that's why we drink.