And That's Why We Drink - E263 Best Friend TV Show Betrayal and the Era of Frappuccinos

Episode Date: February 20, 2022

What's an EVP again? It's episode 263 and the ghosts just have a few questions about the ghost hunting equipment. This week Em takes us to North Carolina to cover the story of the haunted house known as Korner's Folly. Then Christine covers the tragic disappearance and murder of Joyce Chiang in the Washington, D.C. area. And lastly, Christine is seeking a new best friend who WILL keep their shared TV shows sacred... and that's why we drink!

ding dong it's me it's me again the rain is healing energy oh um how are you doing i uh i'm fine but so yesterday i burnt the roof of my mouth really bad. I was going to say you burnt the roof of your apartment or something. And I was like, Oh no, no, I don't know why I assumed you burned your building down, but it's a fair assumption, but no, I burnt the roof of my mouth, like scalded it. Like I, I, as it was, the food I was eating was so hot that I couldn't even move. So I felt it on the roof of my mouth burning. I felt it in the moment. And then the food got stuck to the roof of my mouth because it was so burnt on.

Ew. It was really, really grotesque. And so I'm dealing currently with like a charred roof of my mouth. And so my whole mouth feels really dry. And I can't even drink water because tonight later I'm going to not tonight later I'm going to a doctor's appointment and I have to fast for it. And I'm not even allowed to drink water. And so my whole mouth is a desert right now. You have to fast including water. So you get blood drawn. Have fun. I know. And I hate needles. So it's not drawn. Have fun. I know.

And I hate needles. It's not going to be a fun day. You do. Well, I mean, I don't know someone who's like, ah, needles. But I really am like for sure on the deep end of the spectrum where I like. Me too, man. I cry every time I see a needle. And no, it's.

Me too. It goes against all human nature to like let someone stab you. Absolutely it does. Thank you for finally acknowledging it. You're welcome. Me too. It goes against all human nature to let someone stab you. Absolutely it does. Thank you for finally acknowledging it. You're welcome. How are you doing? Well, I'm sorry to pile on.

Uh-oh. I'm not happy with you. With me? Why? Actually, I'm quite mad at you. Okay. Why? Don't even give me that attitude.

I wanted to talk about this in our last episode, I was like it's my first episode back I want to be you know I want I want to people to have missed me now I'm back to my real self and I'm mad at you and you hurt my feelings why because you and i had a special tv show that we watched and i went on instagram and i'm like looking at your video and all of a sudden i'm like oh my god m is watching our show with allison and rj are you gonna tell people what the show is uh we already talked about the show a lot on the podcast and how it was our show and now you you, Allison, RJ, I guess it's your show now. It's called Are You The One? Em and I had a special game. We had Em had like a whole flow chart.

It was like a whole thing. And then Em was like, I was like, let's watch it on FaceTime together. And I was like, yeah. And then Em visited recently and Blaze was like, you guys should go watch your show. And Em was like, didn't react. And I was like, that's weird. You beat me to the punch you were like oh well i know i you i you said something first i just assumed you didn't

want to watch any of it no i said that and you didn't react and i was like that's odd so i was like i guess m doesn't want to watch it so i was like whatever and then a few days later you were watching some totally other season so i was like wow m has been watching this without me and now my feelings are hurt i'm sorry i hurt your feelings but i told my brother and blaze in a fully third party perspective and they both were like yeah that's pretty cold um okay i'm sorry i'd be pissed too and i was like thank you to be fair we were watching it in september and hadn't seen any of it since i thought that was like like not happening anymore. We were watching old, old seasons. It's not like, oh, it was live. And we were like, missing it. I know. Okay, you're right. You're

right. You're right. I'm sorry. I, it hurt my feeling. And then I DM'd you about it. And you like, kept changing the subject. And I was like, No, you don't understand. I'm actually sad. I did not. I did not read the room that it was actually a sad experience. I thought it was like, oh, we were watching a show. And then months had passed and we weren't watching it. Don't several months me. I had to give birth. I told her to – okay. I'm sorry I was busy.

I said let's FaceTime and watch it and you were like, totally. And then all of a sudden, next thing I know – anyway, now I don't have anyone to watch it with. So that's fun. If somebody wants to watch it with me, you can DM me and we'll have an experience together. Okay. Well, I'm very sorry I hurt your feelings. Let's consider the fact that I burnt a hole through my head yesterday with food. Oh my god, here we go.

All right. Em's having a hard day. I'm sorry. It's on me, right? Okay. I'm the bad guy. All right. Fine.

Okay. The end. I don't know what to say, but I am sorry i did not know that i hurt your feelings you are sorry but you burnt the roof of your mouth is that what your final i am sorry that i hurt feelings comma i burnt the roof of my mouth pretty badly comma i don't see how those are related but that's just me you let me finish my sentence comma they are not related does that work i don't know It's just me. Let me finish my sentence. Comma, they are not related. Does that work? I don't know.

Do you want me to sit in the silence of shame? No. I can. I just feel sad and you don't seem to care. How can I make you feel better? What do you need to feel safe? I need to have our show back, but I guess it's too late for that. So I guess. Okay.

It's not too late. I haven't watched all the seasons. You didn't even tell me you were watching it. I could have watched it with you guys. Nope. That's true. You could have. I guess I just wasn't good enough to watch it with.

I guess not. Wow. That hurts. I'm sorry. It was. I thought we had a good time. I guess I was not. Wow, that hurts. I'm sorry. I thought we had a good time. I guess I was wrong. You were right and I was wrong. I'm just going to keep saying I was wrong because it's true.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. All right. Well, welcome to the show. This is In That's Why We Drink where we obviously talk about true crime, crimes against humanity, aka what Emma's done, paranormal stuff, and Christina seeking a new friend. So if you want to

apply, feel free. That can be my punishment. I can do all of the logistics of finding you the new friend, if you'd like. I know you're busy. You have shows to watch, so don't worry. I'll handle it. I can see when I'm not, I know you're busy. You have shows to watch. So don't worry, I'll handle it. Okay, good.

I can see when I'm not needed or wanted, so it's fine. Okay, well, you let me know how it goes then. You'll probably find, okay, if you're making a friend, let's put it out there. If you're looking for a friend, what are the three qualities you're looking for? Here's the thing, I have three friends. And so when I have a show with one friend, that all listen you took something very special from me so now i have to

go find another friend so you'll look for loyalty someone who doesn't betray you that would be a hot priority number one you can betray me like i don't care but just you know with don't you know a be better at lying about it i'm just not good at lying about it i would okay tv shows are too far you can betray me in some way but like you know you can steal my heart heart but not my tv show experience okay um that's all i really i feel like i still haven't gotten any character qualities out of you, though, on, like, what you're looking for with this new friend search. Well, you know, it's just – Not a bad liar.

It's just hurt – not a bad liar. That's a big one. That's it. That's all it takes. It's just hurtful how ready you are to pawn me off on someone else, you know. Okay, someone who's slower to – Abandon me yeah yeah abandon me nice that'd be nice okay so i'd say loyalty is a fair quality you're looking for i guess so

yeah i guess we can sum it up hmm okay so i i don't think i can be helpful there obviously i'm the obviously the worst tm tm tm so all right i wish you well on your search and until further notice i did keep one promise which is that uh i told you last episode i would do your numerology chart for i'm always crazy 444 you sure did you sure did and it didn't go as expected um so i had to force the narrative if you what what happened so for i'm always crazy four for four the life path i got for you was a 15 which one plus five equals six so it simplifies to six heart's desire one and then i didn't look at the other ones just because life path and heart desire were like the two most important. So I was like, I'm just going to stick with those.

But then I saw one, you know how like in astrology there's like everyone knows their sun sign, but they don't always know like all the other extra things. Same thing in numerology where there's other numbers. I just wasn't aware of what they were called. But there's one called Rational Thought. And I was like, I was like, I have to know what the number is for I'm always crazy. Okay. And to clarify, everybody, I'm always with a Z. Crazy444 was my middle school AIM username. So if you needed some context, it was pretty obvious, I guess. But here it is if you needed it. Honestly, nothing really has enough context uh on our show i feel like

someone's always asking us like somebody's always confused for good reason to this day people are like who's lemon so maybe i'm always crazy four for four did need the uh the extra definition so your life path six a heart's desire one and then obviously when i saw rational thought i was like let's see where that takes us and it it was negative eight. So, um, for your life path number, this was a quote that I got from creative numerology. It said, people are attracted by your exciting aura. I'm always crazy four for four. There you are walking through life on a high wire, perfectly balanced and at ease. So that was kind of like an in the middle statement i was fine with but for the most part i got overwhelming uh descriptions about harmony and

balance and correct and responsibility and caretaking and i was like oh this is really really boring yeah um care to also all highly incorrect because i mean all it was was like comic sans gavin de graw lyrics like chaos ensues right chaos so i decided i was like i can't work with this so i this is where i forced the narrative because i was like i don't want to come back and say i'm always crazy for before it was secretly the most harmonious maybe that is maybe that's the key. Maybe I need to go back to those days and then I'll really find balance in life, you know?

Sure. What if I changed my username on Instagram? Honestly, that would be hilarious. I'm going to work on it. Okay. If you did that, I'll Venmo you $5. Oh, okay. I like to Venmo people things during dares because I feel like they're more inclined to do it.

Also, Em also likes to Venmo request money from people. I know that from experience. I do, but it's never a lot of money. No, it's not. It's like $1 or $5 sometimes. It was $5 during pride season. And I was like, you have to do this.

And there was, there were usually threats associated. And then for the rest of the time, it's like, like my one friend, Brandy, I, we Venmo each other back and forth a penny all the time.

We've been doing it for like three years. Oh my God. And it's always just like the meanest insult that goes with the penny. It started with like, because I'm older than you. And now it's like, I don't even know. I wouldn't. It started with like, because I'm older than you. And now it's like, I don't even know. I wouldn't know.

It's like, because you're older than me. Right. Exactly. Okay. So I thought the life path response of like harmony, blah, blah,

was super boring. So this is where I really went digging and I was desperate for like a chaotic response. And I found one for a life path six and it's from thesecretofthetarot.com and this is a direct quote the devil is associated primarily with sensuality and ego and both of these characteristics can be detected in number 15 by examining its individual digits the number one has many positive leadership qualities but it also faces the challenge of keeping ego in check.

The number five is the number of sensual or materialistic pleasures. And when a person is in an unbalanced psychological state, I'm always crazy, 444, these influences may develop into the sense of pride, covetous, and even addiction that are very much associated with the biblical interpretation of the devil. And I was like, that's the shit I needed. That's finally nail in the head.

So thank you, The Secret of the Tarot for I'm Always Crazy 444's to a T description. Someone gets it. And then for your heart's desire slash soul's urge, you got a number one, which basically everywhere I saw you were charismatic, but you're highly competitive overly confident remarkable willpower and doesn't wish to follow anyone and I was like that tracks it sort of does but also at the time I really all I wanted was somebody to think I was cool and um it didn't work so honestly it sounds like sounds like by name alone you manifested a whole, I don't know, scenario for yourself.

I guess if you look at my old MySpace, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, willpower, yeah. I can get behind that one for sure. And then, of course, my favorite is rational thought for I'm always crazy 444. Here's a quote. You are an investigator by nature. Sounds a little crazy.

Very. You tend to doubt in most of information until you experience it yourself. That also sounds like I'm always crazy. Exactly correct, yes. I think of I'm always crazy 444 as like desperately impulsive. Absolutely. If you are sure about something, you act spontaneously. And if you are not right, you aren't afraid to lose anyway.

Yeah, that sounds right. And I literally would pretend to be people's crushes just to get information out of them and stuff like that. So. Well, there you have it. That is I'm always crazy for four is very bare bones numerology. I love that. And I feel like I'm Always Crazy 444 is very bare bones numerology. I love that, Em, and I feel like I'm seen. I feel like it's finally, at least I'm Always Crazy 444 got the spotlight.

Because if all you wanted by making that was to look really cool, I don't know how cool it is that we just spent 10 minutes talking about it on your podcast. But hey, we talked about it on your podcast. That's pretty cool. You know what? That's pretty cool. I have a free radio show. As our moms say. That's pretty cool. You know what? That's pretty cool. I have a free radio show and as our moms say, as our moms say, and, um, I was featured on it. So good for me.

Yes. You were featured on your own show. I've gotten far in life. Just wait till next week when you're featured again. Uh, next, next week maybe we'll do rice pudding nine. Oh, okay. Now that's a chaotic one right there. That's a chaotic one. And also, that's when I really tried to come into my own and think, I'm always crazy with me trying to like be somebody, you know, Rice Pudding 9 was like, this is my live journal and you're going to learn about the ants I received in the mail. What was the rice pudding experience? Why rice pudding of all other foods?

I just really like rice pudding. To this day? Love it. Absolutely love it. Okay, well. I can't sit here and pretend like I'm surprised. Have you had it? Yes, I have had it.

You don't like it? You know what I thought? You know what I thought about it? That's what I thought. You don't like it? It just tastes like pudding. No. But better.

Okay, well. I feel like if you are the spokesman for rice pudding nine you are absolutely going to say anything positive about rice pudding until everyone backs away so you're right rice pudding delicious okay you are putting you are putting unfair things on me here all i said was that i love it and you said it was disgusting what is the grossest thing i eat in your opinion oh gosh you can get look this is you could i'm giving you a moment to throw whatever insult you'd like at me i don't know i don't want to insult you that's the thing i don't have a problem with what you eat. That's crazy. You have a problem with what I eat. I sure do. I sure do.

Oh, no. Rice Pudding 9 isn't available on Instagram. Crap. Did you put I'm always crazy 444, though? I'm going to do that now. If that's taken, something terrible has happened. It's Lemon, actually. It's his Finsta.

All right, everybody. Please go follow i'm always crazy 444 on instagram way i'm so excited okay i'm gonna venmo you but you have to keep it for a whole week okay i will okay no but i i changed my my other account to it it's a what other account it's a secret account that i had christine that i changed to i'm always crazy for for this you have a whole instagram account i don't know about uh-huh okay i delete all the posts off it yeah let's talk about who lies to who christine you've got a whole account okay hang on okay i'm still gonna venmo you it has 16 followers okay then, then I'll use $16.

Now I'm going to do seven. One for every day you keep it on there. Crazy pay. Okay. I'll see you in seven days. Except I won't because I don't know what the fuck this profile is. It is. It's I'm always crazy 444.

Okay, I'm going to look it up later. Okay. Here's my story for the day, Christine. And it's a short one, but I think it's still good. Okay. This is the story of Kerner's Folly. What the hell is that? So first of all, I want to give a shout out to history goes bump for the history of this because i couldn't really find any solid history of the house except on like its own website and then

through history goes bump so thank you for that it's a podcast right it's a podcast cool as far as i as far as i know i don't know if they're anything else i didn't know if they had a blog or something if that's where you got it like a blog or if it was from their podcast they also they also have a blog i think oh cool um so kerner's folly is i think at one point it was kind of by accident it was like a winchester mystery house situation oh so it has been deemed the strangest house in America. Above the Winchester? Okay. I'll argue and say the Winchester Mystery House far surpasses. It's hard to beat.

It's definitely more strange to me, but this is strange in a different way. Okay. So it was built by Jewel Gilmer Kerner. Jewel Kerner. Jewel. Oh, my God. Jewel Kerner. Oh, my God. kerner jewel joel kerner jewel oh my god jewel kerner um oh my god technically he built it from 1877 to 1880 and that was like when the actual construction of the home was built but like the

winchester mystery house it was always under constant renovation with new for new rooms or new designs so um this was in Kernersville, North Carolina. It was owned by Joseph Kerner. Oh, Kernersville itself was owned by Joseph Kerner, who I think is Jewel Kerner's grandfather. So I think his grandfather like owned the whole town at one point. Wow. Jewel was born in 1851.

He went to school for interior design. and when he came home from school, he started a sign painting business. Okay. Do you happen to be on the side of TikTok where you watch people paint signs? I don't think so. It is fascinating. Cool. If you're into the oddly satisfying satisfying stuff yes wow is it like vinyl like they peel it no it's like old school paint brush and it's like the really pretty

handwriting like it's like how people like will still paint like on like glass windows like ads yeah like how they do it so perfectly and don't mess up at all beyond me love that so he used to do he started a sign painting business um i don't know if this was a normal thing to do back then but apparently with his sign painting business he had a what history goes bump calls a brush name or like a pen name a brush name and so he didn't actually go by jewel kerner he went by i don't know do you what's his name joseph kerner or wait are we talking about his we're talking about jewel who built the house his grandfather owned the town sorry okay got it got it got it so jewel kerner opened the sign

painting business and he had a brush name i don't even know do you want to guess it's such a random thing to ask you to guess on i'll guess i'll tell you it's in it's uh the first and last name have the same letter like they start with the same yes you don't have to guess if you don't want to it's such a random thing to put you on the spot for um it's okay mickey mouse okay it was it was ruben rink so i was close you were yeah you were i mean if mickey mouse's name was ruben rink you were spot on so he started the ruben rink decorating and house furnishing company i feel like when your job is to paint the names of businesses you would have known to probably have a shorter business name than that.

Maybe he just wanted to brag and make the longest sign. Yeah, he was like, look at all I can do. Look at all these letters. Ruben Rink Decorating and House Furnishing Company. How many fonts can you paint out of that? Wow. Can you paint in curls empty because that would be something. every letter. In Kroll's MT

because that would be something. Imagine if Kroll's MT, the first documented time we see Kroll's MT was because someone sign painted that way. Some old timey sign. I'd be impressed.

I will say, it sounds like R was his best letter because with that Ruben ring, he probably was like showing off his fancy R. You know, it was like a,

whoo. A big swirly. Yeah. Oh yeah. It had to be. Had to be. So further on in life. So his sign painting business is super successful.

And he even ends up a few years down the road doing personal ceiling frescoes for people. Like this guy knows how to paint. Wait, I have one of those. You do. That's why your kid keeps laughing. Because it's a joke. No no it's a weird thing i didn't know a ceiling fresco was a thing and then i bought my house and they were like we got a ceiling fresco made and i was like that's you were like well i'm not going to paint over it out of guilt but we thought about painting over it we just couldn't do it anyway

i feel like if i walked into a house that was now my home and there was something really wildly ornate and elaborate on a wall on one wall and it's the wall that I don't even look at because it's above my head, I'd be like, whatever. That's exactly what we thought. We were like, we'll paint everything else and just like let that sit. Except your weird flower wall. Yeah, that part too. But that was the one where we were like felt guilty because there's like these creepy cherubs on it. And I'm like, they're going to haunt the shit out of me if i paint over their little butts and faces oh gross imagine if you just put wallpaper on it

and then let the next family take the wallpaper down and that would be funny and then they and then they very they just roll it back up i feel like oh stick it blue stick it back on i feel like that's a tiktok like look what I found under our wallpaper. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And then, well, anyway, let me know if you decide to do that. I will fund the wallpaper because I think that'd be very funny. Actually, I was thinking about doing like a TikTok of like the weird shit in my house because there's like some weird shit in the basement. There's that weird ceiling.

There's the mural of the angels. I don't know. I'll think about it. You've got a creepy house. It's bizarre. I really don't know how you found such a wild house. It also at one point was like different apartments. And so it looks like five little homes in some spaces.

Yeah, it's like different sections. It's such a weird house. You really Christine'd it. It was the most Christine thing you could have done for a house. If you just showed me like a plain old house and you were like, this is it. I'd be like, no, it's not. Lie. Show me the fresco. Unless I feel haunted by multiple cherubs on your walls, I don't want it. So yes, he went by Reuben Rink and he also, a good chunk of his life, I don't know if this was

like his main client or just his most famous client or I don't know. I feel like I kept seeing this in any history I looked up for the house. They mentioned that he was the advertisement and sign painter for Bull Durham Tobacco. Oh, so I don't know. I think I don't know. I'm not from the area. So I also don't know if Bill Durham Tobacco is like a big thing today. And maybe that's why they keep mentioning it. But I saw it all over the place and I was like,

now I'm feeling like a little mob mentality that I should also mention it. So I see. So while having long-term clients, he also kept himself unique to other design companies because he made his house into his own portfolio, which is why it's considered the strangest house in America, because he had all of these rooms. He had like over 20 rooms and every single thing, the fireplaces, the windows, the doorways, it was known for no one thing to be similar to the rest in the house. And so that way

he could bring clients into his home. And if he was going to build their house for them, they could see all the elements in his house and like it was basically a walking tour of what do you want wow so um i know he had like 15 fireplaces or something oh my god none of them were ever used because they were all supposed to be like 15 different types of display fireplaces for his clients can you imagine being freezing and your wife is like, please, let's just light one. And he's like, no, not for the clients. That one has a gold leaf painted in it. We can't light it on fire. But don't tell my clients when they come in here. They need to buy that. Right. So until he died, Jules was constantly redoing his house to show clients his skills and what they could expect from working with him. So like I said, every window and doorframe

was different. So clients could walk through and select what they wanted. And again, he built the house in 1877, but he was constantly rebuilding and redesigning until his death in 1924. So that's what 23 plus 24 is 47 years. I'll trust you on that that the place has over 20 rooms of all sizes apparently there was like big like ballroom spaces but then there was also like tiny little crannies they had ceilings of all different heights this the house actually looked like it was three stories from outside but when you walked in it was seven levels whoa um there were 130 stairs or 130 steps and eight different sizes of brick all over the house okay so it got its name kerner's folly because someone walked by and saw how chaotic it looked and said surely this will be jewel kerner's folly oh that's not very nice well he liked the sound

anyway so he ran with it oh he he embraced it okay yeah he was like all right kerner's folly and so i mean it's a cool name it's definitely a cool name especially then when you pair it with the strangest house in america it's like absolutely so jewel later married uh alice i think her first name was polly uh and but she went by alice her first name was polly but i she went by Alice. Her first name was Polly, but I think she went by Alice. And they ended up having two kids named Gilmer and I think it's Dore. It's D-O-R-E. So it's not, it's Dora with an E.

Dora? Dora? I don't know. Dora? Okay. Oh my God, Dora. It was one of his portfolio pieces. He should have had window and door.

That should have been his. It's my door. So the family, I guess they were big in theater, and so they also used their house to co-found multiple theater organizations, and those places actually held performances in his house. So he built a theater upstairs. Do you remember the Whaley house? How there was like a theater up inside the house?

It was kind of like that. Interesting. That's the first thing I thought of. Yeah. Yeah. I remember that was the first time I'd ever seen like a small theater in an actual home and I was like, whoa. There was like a stage.

Yeah. It was strange. And it was like enough for like at least 50 of the townspeople to come and squish into the room it wasn't like a huge house or anything no it was weird it was a weird thing and i guess they also did it so they co-founded as a family the kernersville orchestra the juvenile lyceum which was a drama club for kids which sounds a lot darker than it was yeah it does and cupid's park theater which were all in the house okay um and they all performed there so after jewel and alice died their daughter door uh maybe it's dory dory oh i don't know i'm so stupid how is that not an option i mean i don't know i could be very wrong i have no clue their daughter dory used the home as a vacation home with uh her family and then she eventually

rented it out to be an antique store and a funeral parlor which is interesting in hindsight now that we know it's haunted yeah and over time it was just kind of abandoned but eventually i think it was 26 families in town got together and created the Kerners Folly Foundation. Kerners Folly Foundation. And they bought the house and are now restoring the building back to what it looked like from 1890 to 1950, which LOL, like if it was constantly being rebuilt and redesigned, 1890 to 1915 is like, what, 25 years? years of half of the house's lifetime of being rebuilt you're gonna give it that many aesthetics wait 1950 or 1915 1915 sorry oh oh okay 1890 to 1915 got you okay but yeah if they were built if he was constantly redoing that house for 47 years

and they're bringing the building back to 25 of those 47 years to be yeah it's like what in the world is it gonna look like it would be cool if they made every room like they quartered it and you could see like what one quarter you know what i mean like through the years you just peel back the wallpaper there's a cherub on this wall then you leave the wallpaper on this it's like looking through records like you keep doing it with wallpaper and you just keep seeing what it looked like a year before that i actually like that i do too also it'd be really fun if you're like someone who does like minis or like make sculptures like or does like um like i know doll houses are like a really big

thing for some people to like like recreate actual buildings uh if you wanted to make kerner's folly and like somehow make it where like the walls like flap down and it's more and more versions of the same house that'd be kind of badass oh you can swap out oh that'd be really cool if you're looking for like a very complicated dollhouse to make there you go that like maybe we're the only clients but i'd be very happy about it hey so um so that's the history of the house although i do want to make a note that uh it's awkward because i don't know how accurate this is and i don't know if it's like trying to sound better than it is but i will say jules family when he was growing up they had enslaved people on the property and uh the one that took care of him and his brother they called aunt dealie because i guess

they couldn't pronounce when they were young dearie which is what she called them okay so it became like they called her they tried to call her aunt dearie, and it became Aunt Dealy. I don't know how true this is, but it's alleged that they had a very good relationship with each other, and they stayed friends after he grew up, and she even moved into Kerner's Folly with him. But then again, I don't know if that means, like, did he keep her as a, you know? Right, like help, right. It's like, yeah, like, was she just getting to, like, max and relax? And, like, was this their claim or was this her claim? Exactly. It gets a little messy.

So I don't know what the full truth is, but from what I've been able to find, it sounds like he really did think of her as his mom because his mom died when he was younger. And so he, from what I'm seeing, it seems like he as a child really really loved her right and he even wanted her buried next to them which again i don't know if that's like a good thing or a bad thing but like maybe now she's not being buried next to her own family you know um but i did want to say that so i guess he was supposed to get buried at a certain church with the rest of his family but and he wanted her buried with the family but the church because of segregation they said no she can't be buried with us oh yikes okay and so he ended up buying the plot next door and made it his own personal family cemetery so she could also be buried with them

and the headstone that he wrote for her was very it's the headstone itself seemed very sweet but i don't know if there were any underlying sure yeah so anyway i just i didn't want to not address the fact that there were enslaved people on this property i got you yeah yeah yeah so um i know it sounds like a weird insert into this story but i didn't no no i mean it's part of the history and context i guess so um as it is and also i don't know what the full solid truth of the history is but all i could see was one side of this and it was that they at least seemed to be really close until they both died so right i don't know so in 2009 this is where the ghosts show up now so that was the whole history of the house but in 2009 the house was officially deemed haunted after an investigation was done by the

carolina chapter of spars and spars stands for southern paranormal and anomaly research society i was just thinking about how these ghosts because i started watching a haunting again on discovery plus and i started thinking about like how all these ghost hunting groups have just the most fun names um and i think it's because they get to have the s and the p yeah like there's just a lot of like fun little acronyms and the one that i always think of is when we did that tour in kentucky and they were like oh the group is called pink the paranormal investigators of northern kentucky and i was like yeah it's so random there was my my mom for a while she went through this phase where like if you're even remotely in the south they were selling like dish towels and stuff with the acronym sluts and it was southern ladies under tremendous stress or

something oh my god it was like i could not have guessed what the fuck that stood for she went through a phase where she like really loved the sluts acronym and i was like but yeah i really it's like in the paranormal world i feel like you've already got spirits you've got paranormal orbs could be an o anomaly i hadn't seen before as an a orbs society i'm trying to think of all the like the letters you know you could insert in there if you needed like g for ghost g for ghost yeah hmm fun stuff i'm trying to think of like a silly acronym i can't do it on the fly but yeah so they were spars and they are actually like apparently a subgroup of taps which are the people who had the show ghost hunters right

um tap stands for the atlantic paranormal society and i guess spars is like somehow involved in them i don't know if they're the same or if one is like in charge of the other but there you have it so uh yeah in 2009 they did a an investigation and the group got several evps and light anomalies and they were very insistent in every interview that these light anomalies were not bugs or dust and they like followed the trail and the pattern i still don't totally understand enough about orbs. It's hard. I'm very, I'm, I'm not skeptical about a lot of things, but I am skeptical about orbs.

That's what Jim Harold always says. He's like, yeah, orbs are one thing I tend to be more skeptical about. And I'm like, me too. It's just hard because so many weird things happen on cameras as it is that it's hard to like say there's no way it was.

It's also, it's the same thing with like saying like oh and then people saw shadows and it's like okay but everything's got a shadow it's like right if you saw a shadow of a full body with a cowboy hat and he was walking towards you that's one thing but if you're just seeing shadows move around out of the corner of your eye or whatever and then with like um with like a certain a certain someone um when it's like oh i feel like a negative energy i'm like well okay that's also hard to like validate i don't know like yeah i and i've had i feel like anyone who's had like a sleep paralysis demon or something feels like they've had that feeling where it's like this

is not an i'm not fucking around this is a crazy feeling yeah but like poor bagel bites like it doesn't translate well to television no and that's the thing like i've had that too and it's like oh shit now i get what he's talking about but like yeah like you said it just doesn't i don't expect anyone to believe me because i'm like well for entertainment value it doesn't do the purpose i'm like i'm also on ant value, it doesn't do the purpose. I'm like, I'm also on antidepressants. Like, if I feel something negative, like, it's not a fucking shock to anybody. But anyway. All right.

So, anyway, they claim that they saw a lot of light anomalies that could not be explained. They were very adamant about that. And Kerner's Folly has a, I don't know if they still do, but at one point had a literal paranormal advisor as part of their building. And her name was Deanna Kelly Sayed. Sayed? Sayed? And so she got to go on the investigation with them. And she said her favorite piece of evidence was this EVP of a girl very

clearly saying peekaboo. Ooh. Which hate that because that means she's playing a game of hiding with you. Yes. And she's like, I see you. I mean, yeah. It's like, I don't see you even when you're trying to show yourself. Bad.

They also asked, can you tell us your name? And got an EVP, Ann, which I don't know who Ann would be. But keep in mind, this was also a funeral parlor for a while. True. And keep in mind, there were enslaved people on this property. Right. And a bunch of theaters.

So like... A bunch of people were coming in and out of here. So the Winston-Salem Paranormal Society, and a whole other group... Winston-Salem Paran... Wisps. Wisps. Wisps.

Yeah, they could have like thrown in... You better hope you don't have a lisp though, because that's a rough one. Wisps. Wisps. Wisps. Yeah, they could have like thrown in... You better hope you don't have a lisp though because that's a rough one. Wisps. I know. Winston-Salem Paranormal Society. Wow. Oof. Yikes. My mom, when she used to have a lisp, she couldn't say her S's. And she still

does that thing. I guess it's pretty popular with people who have stutters or lisps. They like, in their mind, play every word out before they say it to make sure they're not going to get caught and so a lot of times she'll still not use words with an s she's still interesting like play it yeah yeah yeah yeah also every single one of her last names she's had all would be a real f you to her lisp like they if you were to write if she were to say all of her last names in a row that she's had with her lisp it's just like wow you just never stood a chance poor girl so uh she should have before she got married been like let me play this out

in my head i know it's not gonna work sorry i think it saved a lot of trouble after like three names i think she was like what like, what's a fourth? Hang on. My mom's names are all S too. That's weird. She first started it. Only one of them hasn't been an S. Wow.

For my mom. Well, same with, well, the K one. Is that, your mom never took that one? Kaiser? Oh, we're just saying it? Yeah. Well, that's her maiden name. Oh, okay.

Gotcha. Your sister, that's her middle name? Yep.cha you're a sister that's her middle name yep okay got it got it got it and then my mom changed um her own middle name which was christine deleted that right out of her fucking name she was like that name fucking sucks changed it to kaiser i was like cool cool glad we're on glad this is a thing now what so okay good for her i guess what is your dad's middle name uh you want to know franz joseph okay i don't want to know anymore never mind so wait so would that be frank joseph or francis joseph yeah it sounded like that okay so was it is it a double name it's a german too yeah yeah okay who who's france and who's

joseph i have no fucking clue i probably should know really i feel like if you're gonna get a double middle name it better be worth it it better mean something yeah i don't know i honestly that's a problem a really good question where's maria from uh that's my grandmother's name oh his mom yeah he's threatened to write a memoir or like a book about himself and i'm like oh i like how that's a threat it's a full threat to me it's a threat i don't know about anyone else but to me it's a personal threat um so maybe i'll find out in that book wow i my mom's middle name is diane which is so wild because I don't think of her. When I think of Diane's, I don't think of my mom.

And I'm like, oh, you've got a weird connection. I also remember being a little shamed when I was a child because I didn't like I thought I was really helping my mom out, like make a friend. But I remember being on a plane with her one time and we sat next to a woman and her name was Diane. And I remember being like, mom, mom, tell her that's your middle name. Tell her that's your middle name. And my mom was like, no, no, no. And like, clearly my mom just didn't want to talk to a stranger on the plane, but I took it personally. And I was like, I'm trying to get you a friend, homie. Like, like, what is your problem? And to this day you're sitting here going, what are the three? Christine,

I'll help you find a new friend. Oh my God. I'm just desperate to help people find friends, I guess. But with my, I remember in that moment, like never liking the name Diane again, because I just felt so, felt so embarrassed. Like I was trying so hard to help. That's so sad. I know. Wow. I've had worse trauma. Don't worry. Oh really? Oh wow. Can you imagine if that was the worst thing I had to like go to a therapist about? We wouldn't i don't think we'd know because we would just not get you know could not be on the same page i think we'd be like wow that must be tough for you to deal with every day sometimes allison and i are so different where i not to say like i'm not trying to like compare trauma and say i've had the worst things happen to me. But in between me and Allison, I definitely

have had more shit in my life, like a significant amount. And Allison is just like this sweet, happy, little, pure, innocent person. And like, I always say like, she's got happily married parents. And like, she's just- Oh, same with Blaze. We have the weirdest partners. We like pick the weirdest partners for ourselves. And so now when I talk about anything that happened in my childhood, she's like, are you okay? No. How many times do I have to tell you? Like you chose to date me knowing that there was a lot of baggage.

I don't know what your problem is. I gave place many years before he signed any paperwork to marry me. I was like, you've met all these people. This is your fucking problem now. Well, I've complained about like certain people in my family. And Allison's like, I don't get it. And I'm like, I appreciate that you're trying to get it. But I don't thank anyone who's just had like such a wonderful – like her life is – sounds so nice.

And I've asked her like, what's like the worst thing you've done, Allison? What's like the craziest I'm always crazy forever thing you've done? And she tells this story about one time she like – like I'm always crazy for her thing you've done and she tells this story about one time she like I like I don't even remember I can't even remember what it was because it was it was something about a street sign she like like the name had been spelled wrong and she tried to fix it or something that was like the craziest thing she's ever done and I was like oh no now I'm scared to tell you about all the abandoned houses I broke into. She can listen to this podcast and knows pretty well. Oh, but anyway, yeah, Blaze is the same way where I'm like, Blaze must think I'm a dumpster fire.

Like, just, I'm sure you live with that every day. I'm the barrier. He knows me and he's like, nothing surprises me anymore about other, Christine's friends and family. It's like, I don't know. I warned you. about other Christine's friends and family. It's like, I don't know. I warned you. Well, anyway, wild tangent there. Sorry, folks.

But the Winston-Salem Paranormal Society has... Wisps. They've come in to investigate and the house also does guided tours. I think they have other paranormal groups in there. And basically what all of the visitors and staff have seen over time are as follows. There are apparitions in the theater. Oh, the Wisps, they had a really good flashlight session one time that was super responsive,

both in the theater and also in the master bedroom, which apparently the bedroom is the most active. But they've had a flashlight session there where they were saying like turn off the flashlight if there's more than one spirit here and the flashlight turned off then turn it back on if you're a woman

and it would turn back on nice can you tap it off again really slowly and then it would very slowly turn off in the kids room there's a lot of giggling I guess they've someone has asked

can you turn the light out and then EVP came about of a voice saying, turn. One voice, I thought this was super interesting, is one of the voices, one of the EVPs came out while people were setting up for the night. And I guess they were talking about EVPs. And they got an EVP of a voice saying, what's an EVP? Which I love that. That was actually me in the background being like, shit, I forget. What's an EVP, Em? Can you explain it to me again? It might have been like the intern on his first night being like, I know I'm supposed to know

that. Like whispering it, trying to Google it, like, what's an EVP? The PA in the background's like, shit, why did they hire me for this job? There's also an EVP of the word haunted, which feels super condescending. It's like, thanks, I gathered that by hearing anything at all on this. Yeah, thank you for confirming it. I hope it said it condescendingly too, like haunted. You get it now? There's a spirit of a little girl seen all over the house people

hear her giggling people have heard girl maybe i think it's probably peekaboo girl um people have heard wailing people have seen shadows they have gotten pinched people have gotten tapped all over their body or on their clothes um there's an apparition of a woman in victorian clothing standing on the stage who has vanished in front of people. Uh, there are EVPs that will get caught as meters in the room are going off at the same time. So double confirmation. Um, EMFs have gone off.

If you say like, can you go off 10 times in a row? It'll go off exactly 10 times in a row. Oh, wow. The house cleaner once heard footsteps on the staircase that were so real she thought someone might have been in the house with her um batteries have drained out of electronics and a lot out of their uh equipment right one of the theaters that's still used for practice actors say that they when they leave for the night they'll turn around and look back into the windows and see that all the lights are back on. Never look back in the windows. It's like, if you want to waste the electricity, that's not on me.

True, true point. And that sucks because then you get blamed for it probably by the people paying the electric bill. For the people who have lights that go on all the time and you think it's ghosts, like I wonder what it'd be like if you just taped the light switches down at night and just would the tape be ripped off the next day you know question great question there was a smoking room in the house and i guess it still smells like cigars sometimes in other areas of the house sometimes you smell cigars but you also smell cigarettes um when the house was in an antique store the staff would come in in the morning and the furniture had moved itself all around and what's super interesting about that is different sources said 80 some said 90 of the furniture in that antique store were was the kerners furniture they're like what are you what's my couch doing

in the window i know god uh ghosts so there's a book called ghosts of the triad and tales from the haunted heart of the piedmont in this book the two authors they were interviewing people for the book including diana the paranormal advisor for the house so when they were at the house and interviewing diana they said how many spirits are thought to be here and uh both of them heard a random voice in the house say five oh even though no one else was in the house so jules granddaughter also named polly uh i guess they also named jules and i was like that's so cute that'd be precious yeah no jules granddaughter um polly i guess she's been asked to comment on the house being haunted and she's or what her grandfather would think of this and she said he would be thrilled to death to know it was haunted

he always liked things that were out of the ordinary okay and that's kerner's folly make it a little a little i was trying to think of how to say folly or folly or no that doesn't work um just make it even more unique i guess if it's trying to be the strangest house. What is it? The weirdest house in America? Strangest house in America. Strangest. Yeah, I guess he would embrace it.

That's pretty wild. I mean, if you wanted your house to be weird and now it's also haunted, like. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like, why not at that point yeah um question where is that again north carolina kernersville north carolina sweet and it's spelled like corner with a k but it was so it was that's so i i never mentioned that earlier but it's kernersville with an E. It occurred like spelled exactly how it sounds.

Kernersville. And it was owned by Joseph Kerner. And I guess over time, maybe his last name changed or something. I can probably explain it, which is that Oumlaut is like the sound in German. So it probably just got changed from Kerner to Kerner. Yep. That tracks. Mm-hmm. Yep, that tracks. Interesting.

Yes. Especially because that's a very German name. Yeah. Josef, Franz Josef. Maybe that's who I'm named. Maybe that's who my dad's named after. I don't know. I don't know.

That would be a really silly coincidence, I think. Really weird for my grandparents. I mean, knowing your father, though though if he ever heard that we were talking about kruner's fellow he'd be like oh yeah i lived there as a child and i'd be like girl what like my mom would be like i drove a semi truck there and then modeled for this sign company and like whatever i just can't keep up with these people Okay, well, Em, I have something sad to tell you. Wow. That's every week. Yay.

Is it? Is it? Hmm. Well, you surprised me. I'll just tell you. It's the story of Joyce Chang. Okay. And she was a 28-year-old woman who was last seen Saturday, January 9th of 1999. year old woman who was last seen saturday january 9th of 1999 she lived with her younger brother roger in a basement apartment in the dupont circle area of washington dc good times she had originally moved to dc as part of her college internship and she worked for representative howard burman of california so she did the classic D.C. internship, political internship route.

She had graduated from Smith College and Georgetown Law School. Wow. I know. She's smarty pants. Earned her place as a lawyer at the INS, the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Wow.

Fucking badass. Yeah. And still lives in a basement apartment in dupont dc is expensive i gotta tell you uh you'd think a lawyer at the ins could get out of a basement apartment but no i'm one of my uh friends that lived in dc was a lawyer and him and his wife both like still had to live like out like they lived outside.C. just to pay rent. It's crazy. Just to get a decent place.

It's so hard. I feel like if you want a good apartment in D.C., it starts at like three grand a month or something. It's crazy. It's really nuts. Especially DuPont Circle. That's like a very swanky part of town. Okay. part of town um okay so on the evening of january 9th 1999 uh joyce had been to see a movie and had dinner with her friends before heading to one of her favorite hot spots a coffee shop called

starbucks oh i've heard of that this is 1999 so starbucks was like a quaint coffee shop at this point it was like yeah do you remember when starbucks became like a thing because i i remember it being like middle school they could be coming like i remember that was like the era of frappuccinos because we never heard of one before we definitely were in the era of frappuccinos now the kids are like can i get a flat white with oat milk and i'm like what like can i get a strawberry chip frappuccino with extra milk if i worked at starbucks i'd probably be like no you can have a double chocolate chip frappuccino with extra milk? If I worked at Starbucks, I'd probably be like, no, you can have a double chocolate chip Frappuccino just like we all did when we were 13. Where are your parents?

No. I'll get you good and sugared up. No Java chip, just chocolate for you. Yeah. So I guess Starbucks was found in the 90s, I believe, the first one. And I was just talking to my mom. She was like, oh, I went to the original. She went to the original Starbucks in Seattle, like way back in the day in the 90s.

Wow. And she's like, I remember being like so amazed. She's like, you just went in and ordered coffee and they like handed it to you. Like it was such a, I don't know, new experience. And she's like, yeah, and it was so good. Good times. So anyway, she went to her favorite quaint little coffee shop called starbucks and uh so roger her brother remembers at about 8 15 p.m my sister was with her friend kathy kathy had generously offered to give her a ride home because joyce didn't have

a car but joyce asked to make one quick stop at the Starbucks to grab a cup of tea. So she's in your camp here. The non-coffee, what are your, I'm sorry, society. I'm sorry. Society. I don't sleep much these days. Society. That's okay.

I don't sleep much ever. So I can relate to you on just having a constant fog on my brain, a London fog, if you will. A London fog. Well, whenever you have kids, you'll at least be prepared for that part of it. Yeah. So good for you. Yeah. I'd be like, okay, you really want to try to keep me from sleeping? Joke's on you, I've never slept. I was going to say, like, joke's on you.

Yeah. So instead of Kathy staying and then driving Joyce home, Joyce insisted that her apartment was only four blocks away. So Kathy could drop her off at the Starbucks and Joyce would walk home. And that must just be really rough for Kathy, who was like, all right, if you insist on walking home, I'll head out. So Kathy said Joyce seemed like she needed some alone time and wanted to walk home. So Kathy called it a night and drove off without her and Joyce never made it home. So Joyce Chang, she had been born December 7th of 1970 and was known to her friends as Joycey. She was of Taiwanese American descent, came from a very, very tight knit family. Her father was a chemical engineer and he and Joyce's mother had emigrated

from Taiwan to Chicago. And she was the only daughter with three brothers. So they had four kids and only one daughter. Unfortunately, in 1995, a tragedy hit the family when Joyce's father had a heart attack in the pool. Oh, shit. And then drowned in the pool. shit and then drowned in oh my god yeah fucking terrifying and so since then uh joyce's mom and older brother had moved to the san fernando valley and uh joyce went to smith like i said earlier and in her senior year she was elected student government president uh president she attended georgetown university law in the. She was just like a very, very badass, smart lady. She was known for her kindness and bubbliness. Like the classic, the quote was like literally said she lit up a room, like the classic light up a room trope.

So she was definitely that type of girl. There was an article written by a guy named Eddie Dean in the Washington City paper, which like did a kind of deep dive into Joyce. And he told us about her personality as follows. Chang was never comfortable on the receiving end of a favor. It was she who most often did the giving, whether it was a homemade personalized birthday gift, a surprise phone call with her playful Hey Bud greeting, or some other beyond the call of duty gesture. She prided herself on her independence beholden to nobody. On a whim, she'd book a budget flight to some European capital for a solo visit to turn a long weekend

into another adventure. But her dislike and fear of driving had long ago become a sort of inside joke among Chang and her friends. Unless it was absolutely necessary, such as when she sometimes rented a car on business trips, the intrepid world traveler simply refused to get behind the wheel. So most social evenings ended with someone giving Chang a lift home, or at least part of the way home. She'd often have late night sessions at the office and have to take a cab home. Joyce would always scream that she had to pay the five or six or seven dollars every night to take a cab home because she didn't have a car, recall her brother roger at some point the family was going to help her buy one chang would also always bring her friends presents even if it were her own birthday oh wow it's so cute wow a lawyer

and an angel is what i'm hearing a literal angel she like her so her birthday is december 7th and she would bring people gifts on her birthday and be like, oh, well, it's so close to Christmas. And it was like, come on, it's your birthday. What a cutie. Yeah, she would literally give people their Christmas gifts on her birthday just so that she was the one giving the present. Maybe she had some crazy social anxiety about people paying attention to her. Yeah, I can understand that part definitely of like no don't be nice to me i don't want to i simply don't deserve it i simply don't

deserve it and i don't want to open a present because then it's just awkward for everybody a lot of people i don't have the anxiety of opening presents but apparently a lot of people have that anxiety and it's similar to like when a waiter sings happy birthday to you oh yeah absolutely or like even opening presents is like all eyes on you i hate it because well i mean i hate it too i also hate the waiter singing to me thing i oh that yeah if you're a server and someone it's someone's birthday maybe ask them first if they want attention. But I feel like a server's in a hard spot because it's like the one person is insisting

and then the other person's like, no. And then it's like, well, what do you do? I'm sure the server doesn't want to sing to them either. That's true. I would just bring them an extra large slice of cake and be like, oh, we can't sing because of COVID. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, try that. But don't blame it on me if it goes wrong. Blame it on me. Blame it on him, always. Blame everything on him. Yeah.

So friends recalled an endless list of such offerings from Chang, always personalized, including saffron that she brought back from a trip to Spain, a children's book from London for someone's toddlers, a tin whistle from Ireland, a handwritten cookbook in which she'd copied Asian recipes she couldn't find in any published cookbook. And for a girlfriend who had moved to the West Coast, she mailed her a kit containing jumper cables and emergency flares. So she just like got very personal, special gifts for everybody. Yeah, she seems like she's very, I don't know, just a very thoughtful person. Very thoughtful.

Yes, that's the word I was going to use too. So on the day of her disappearance, it was January 9th. It was a Saturday. And she had headed in to do a bit of work at the INS before meeting up with a few friends at a coffee shop. And Patty, her name was Patty First. She's a Justice Department lawyer and one of Joyce's friends, remembers Joyce being a little tired that day. She'd had a hard week at work. She had a cold, and she had just come back from an extremely long detail. So Patty remembers that they left the coffee shop. Joyce pulled up her hood. And this was not the Starbucks later on.

This was a different, this was earlier in the day. Got it. So they went to a coffee shop together. Joyce pulled up her hood. She pulled the strings to pull it tight around her face. Here, I can do it for you. Yes, please. Actually, the string fell out, but here we go.

Why do you look cool? I don't look cool. Look at me. You look. I look like a fool. Okay. She pulled the strings tight around her face. And Patty says it was hysterical. She was so tiny and she looked really funny. After dropping Patty at her home via Kathy's car. So the Joyce and Kathy dropped Patty off at home and then Joyce and Kathy were like, let's go out to dinner. So they went to dinner at Laurel Plaza.

And before leaving the restaurant around 830, she had to call a friend who was about to perform in a theater show that evening. So she's like, hold on. Let me call my friend to wish her luck in the theater show. She's just so cute. I'm just waiting for her to like have a flaw to her at this point. Yeah. Unfortunately, there aren't many that are listed anywhere. So it makes it harder to swallow this story but yeah so she uh so she calls her friend and after that

kathy drops joyce off at starbucks for her evening cup of herbal tea um apparently she was drinking tea because she had been told by her doctor to stay away from coffee because she was on the brink of getting some severe ulcers. Oh, shit. Okay. Same girl. Coffee does not do well for that. Yikes. And I imagine, I mean, I don't know why she has ulcers, but I know that ulcers can be exacerbated by stress.

And it sounds like she had quite a stressful job, too. So maybe that was part of it. I wonder if there's a correlation between lawyers and ulcers me too doctors and ulcers you know like really high stress jobs um because i'm a podcaster with ulcers and i don't think that equates you know i'm like i must be the outlier okay honestly maybe i don't know i'm gonna ruin your fucking study is what I'm going to do. You would definitely be like that one person who like fucks up the curve or something. Who's like nine out of 10 dentists agree.

And I'm like the 10th one. I'm like, oops. I agree too. They just don't want to tell you, you know. Yeah, I agree. And I forgot to raise my hand because I fell asleep. Yeah, that's probably what happened. Yeah.

So when Joyce's brother, Roger, noticed that his sister didn't come home Saturday night, he at first thought, oh, she's probably just crashing at a friend's house. But when she didn't answer his calls for two days after that and didn't show up for work on Monday, he obviously knew something was very wrong. And he filed a missing persons report. And because she worked as a federal employee, the FBI immediately got involved um because she works at the ins you never know right if that has something to do with her disappearance so on the same day that roger reported her missing um a couple strolling through anacostia park stumbled across a billfold like a like a small wallet along the riverbank and inside the billfold was joyce chang's government credit card oh shit yeah uh and that not good not good and it was five miles southeast of the starbucks and remember her

apartment was four blocks away from starbucks so she is right so what was she doing over there exactly like somewhere completely different so they handed the billfold to the park police and as days went by local media was going crazy about joyce's disappearance hoping someone would have seen her police were investigating the case and on january 12th um they discovered a cryptic clue outside the starbucks so there was a wall outside the starbucks and there was a message painted onto it. Was it painted by? Curls MT. Was it painted by Ruben Brink?

I really had the same thought. I was like, oh my God, a sign painted. There was a following message painted onto it. Good day, JC. May I never miss the thrill of being near you. Ew. Yuck. Oh, I hate that and so her brother in particular was

like i think this has to do with my sister those are her initials joyce chang and the content of the message may i never miss the thrill of being near you is like a little too weird to show up right after she disappears so you know they who knows um and then also they discovered that on the night she disappeared someone had called her pager but her pager had been left back at her apartment so after doing some digging the police were able to track the call coming from a hotel pay phone near dullis airport uh and so these are like two strange and mysterious events. And unfortunately, they were never able to decipher who was responsible for either of these. Really? Really.

Wow. Just sucks because it's like some weird, mysterious clue that just never gets placed or figured out. That's so odd. And for all we know, I guess it could have just been random. Right. There's no, yeah. It's so creepy. Even if it's not about her, it's so creepy even if it's not about her it's right it is creepy

and then even the phone call like maybe it was something maybe it was a wrong number you know you never know like yeah it sucks that they never figured it out um so on january 14th five days after her disappearance the couple who had found joyce chang's billfold were watching the news and were like wait that's the person the name and the face or the name i guess it was just the name oh no maybe it was her face i don't know but they recognized that it was essentially a combo it was her identity they recognized on the news and said that's what was in the billfold in that credit card that we found oh wow and so they called the police and they were like hey we found this billfold and they're like what did you do with it and they were like we handed it over to the park police

well turns out it had been in lost and found for uh that entire time oh my gosh so it could have been a big break in the case much earlier but it had just been sitting in lost and found so thank god this couple like happened to see this on the news and was like wait that looks like the thing we found it really is like kismet uh in some ways of like thank god like if you weren't watching the news that day like who knows yeah nothing would have ever it would have just stayed in lost and found for how long who knows how long so it turns out the billfold was in the lost and found so the fbi um got a hold of it and they reacted quickly by sending a 57 member search and rescue team down to the riverbank where the billfold had

been discovered and just as expected they found all sorts of items belonging to joyce uh in anacostia park they found her keys her like blockbuster rental card wow uh green suede jacket, which now had a tear in it, and her gloves, which she was wearing the night she disappeared. So authorities, it's really not good. Especially like in the middle of the park, in the middle of the night, and you don't have your jacket on, like that's not on purpose. Right. And yeah, something bad happened.

Exactly. So authorities continued their search along the riverbank, and eventually they found a body. Okay. Guess what? It's hers? It was not Joyce's. What? I know.

Who was it? So they did DNA testing, and they were able to profile the decomposed body to be that of 25-year-old Ridgely Tyrone Pleasance Jr. whose body had been in the river for two weeks. His mother had reported him missing but supposedly no search parties ever went out to find him. His cause of death was deemed to be drowning and to this day his death is a mystery and is classified as undetermined. Oh my gosh that's so wild. Isn't that freaky? Weird. So wait, his family never... Sorry, go ahead.

Oh, his mom had reported him missing, but nobody had ever done anything about it. That's so wild. Okay. So I guess she was just... It's just really wild. It's really sad that she reported her son missing nobody did anything about it and then two weeks later they're searching for somebody else

and find his body you know it's like i don't know it just makes me sad which also means that like if it weren't for that couple finding the wallet then they found two bodies true or at least they found a whole other body by accident that's true yeah that's true they exactly they like indirectly led to that happening um so as for joyce chang nationally she quickly became one of the most famous disappearances at the time her story was even featured on america's most wanted america fights back so i assume this is some sort of sub yeah of america's most wanted it feels like an at like an hour long yeah bonus footage or something yeah exactly there's a weekend special um so locally they had weekly vigils uh in dupont circle and more canvassing um

and judy chang joyce's mother had flown over to stay with roger her son as they continued to search for Joyce. She was a devout Catholic. She went to St. Matthew's Cathedral every single day and just prayed for her daughter to be found and returned safely. It wasn't until three months later, on April 1st, unfortunately, April Fool's Day, that the second tragedy of the case occurred. And that is when a canoeist was out uh on the potomac river in fairfax county um over eight miles from where joyce's belongings had been discovered in january and they spotted a body uh amongst the wow on the banks eight miles so she had just like

floated down or god that's terrible that's horrible it is um so when police arrived at the scene they thought it to be joyce because um they found a bank card with her name on it inside the stock inside her stocking on her leg i know it's fucking terrible um they you know did dna tests and after two weeks they found out uh their worst fears were confirmed it was Joyce and obviously everybody was heartbroken her brother later remembered when he was told the news quote that's when all hope just dashed that Joyce was alive and I quickly called my mother one of the most difficult phone calls I've ever had to make to tell my mother that her daughter was dead and that's a moment that I'll never forget oh my god i know like i

sound like a broken record and like an obvious one at that by saying that's terrible but like i don't know what else to say i know it this is just what i do to you every week and i'm sorry about it i know it's okay no wonder you wanted to find new friends didn't want to watch tv with me anymore you know i get it before before the episode started i said this one's for christine and then i spat on a picture of you and i went that's what happened i went i went this is a hundred percent intentional and i hope her feelings are hurt wow wow thank god that's what happened thank god it worked i know i know what a powerful hex you put on me. I know. Anyway, this is so fucking terrible. It is.

I wish I had something original to say, but, like, what else do you do? I mean, I don't have anything original to tell you. I just keep telling you the same horrible things every week. So, you know, it's my fault. So thanks to decomposition, the forensics team were unable to identify her cause of death. So it was left as undetermined. the forensics team were unable to identify her cause of death. So it was left as undetermined. And the investigation continued with even more gusto behind it because they were trying to figure out what the hell happened. So they created a Joyce Chang task force. Agents were using

floating devices to test the river currents to figure out like how her body had moved so far. And one of the most bizarre pieces of information the FBI apparently just couldn't wrap their heads around was the fact that no one had been using Joyce's bank card and in their heads they were able to justify it because of the fact that Joyce was Taiwanese American and this is like pretty fucked up but according to a friend of joyce's quote the police consulted one of their internal asian experts who said it wasn't such a big deal that she didn't use her atm card to withdraw any money because chinese americans keep their money in a mattress the ignorance of this is ridiculous she went to smith college so like they're literally theorizing like, oh, well, no wonder she's not using her bank card.

Oh, my God. Just like blatantly racist. Just like just like a random fucking stereotype. Yes. Yeah. Terrible. Holy crap. Turns out I was like, no, she's dead in the river.

But OK, I guess have your fucking theory. Wow. Yikes. So another theory was that maybe she had been kidnapped by an Asian prostitution ring, quote unquote. And with no clear cause of death, no evidence of foul play and basically no more information, the case was closed. And meanwhile, approximately 700 people went to St. Matthew's Cathedral, packed the cathedral for her memorial service. And thankfully, that wasn't totally the end so in may of 2001 which was two years later uh finally they revisited joyce's case um because they had some new information that had come to the table because a some certain someone named

chandra levy uh an intern in the office of California Congressman Gary Condie, was reported missing. Do you know the Chandra Levy case? I don't think so. Oh, okay. I guess you'll know more about it now. Okay. I feel like a lot of people were like, oh, when I made that connection. Yeah, not me, obviously.

Oh, okay. I didn't know because you're also from the dc or if this was something that was out and about i don't think well it was also 99 ish right um yeah this so no this is uh chandra levy was i believe 2002 she doesn't want okay i was still like nine so i don't think i was really paying attention. Okay. So, uh, Chandra and Joyce didn't know each other. Um, but there were some pretty serious similarities between their disappearances. Uh, so there's a website called my true crime stories and they pointed out some of the similarities. Joyce and Chandra had both served as interns for democratic congressmen from

California. The two congressman's offices were adjacent to each other. Both were petite brunettes. They lived within a few blocks from each other. Both had the same types of friends involved in the political arena and both frequented the same Starbucks coffee shop. Interesting. So just an odd amount of coincidences. However, at this point, the police had uh publicly that they were going to call joyce

chang's death a suicide wow yeah um and those who knew joyce were like what the fuck are you talking about yeah probably those who didn't know joyce were like what the fuck are you talking about um one friend amy commented this is a woman without a history of depression this is a woman who worked very hard in life and had everything to live for. And to lose who she is by saying she was someone who committed suicide, I think, is another injustice to her. So the following month, June 2002. Sorry. Also, like, what would have been her cause of death if it was?

So I do mention that later. OK. I guess I can mention it now but like basically the insinuation was that she just like walked into the river okay and like drowned herself okay like there's no other clear explanation for that but then why would you like have your i'm talking about joyce still but like why would you like have your, I'm talking about Joyce still, but like, why would you have like your card in your sock and stuff? And like five miles away, you just like decided you went to Starbucks for your tea and then just like walk to the river. Yeah.

It just doesn't make sense. No. And so publicly they were like, that's what we've determined. And it's like, okay. Publicly, it was a stupid determination. Pardon me, but publicly, yeah. Publicly, that's dumb. Respectfully, you're stupid.

Respectfully and publicly. So the following month, June 2002, a hiker up in Rock Creek Park was minding their own business hiking when they noticed their dog had stumbled upon something and wouldn't move off his spot uh and so what did the dog discover do we think a body a human skull yeah oh shit okay so police arrived at the crime scene where more human remains were found along with a sports bra and a cassette player and uh dental records confirmed the remains to be those of chandra levy and the case was treated as a homicide although an autopsy provided no conclusive answers as to the cause of death and the case went cold once again oh my god it's just terrible like fucking found off a hiking path i guess i don't know i don't know enough about that world to know like what anyone's expected to do after that if they hit a dead end but still it's like

damn like it's like i think you'd be able to get more out of it but i just feel like in in 2022 we have enough technology that most things should be solvable and like i'm maybe that's like such an ignorant thing to say but in my mind i'm like damn if we've got a tesla we should have like a robot who can just fucking i know but my stories i know but my thought about that is that it is possible but i don't think the funding or the people like i don't think the funding is there and i don't think the people are there like i don't think think about the backlog of rape kits that there's there's just not enough right resources to to run them like they could be run the dna could be run on all of them and it's like they're just so backlogged that

like such years and years so yeah i mean you're right we do have a fucking tesla we probably could have a robot that did all this shit but no instead we're putting fucking what's his face into space on a big penis so like what are our priorities i don't know trash anyway so respectfully publicly it's stupid publicly respectfully so dumb um so approximately seven years later march of 2009 a jail informant told police that a criminal had confessed to the murder of chandra levy and this was in 2009 so many years later this man was a name was a man by the name of ingmar guandique wait guandique guandique uh who about a month prior to chandra levy's disappearance had assaulted two women in the very same park so guandique is a a man from El Salvador who at the time was living illegally in the United States and was a Mara Salvatrucha member, aka MS-13. And if you don't know what

MS-13 is, they are an extremely dangerous international criminal gang with origins in Los Angeles that was originally set up to protect Salvadoran immigrants. So when the police dug a bit further into this claim, they discovered that Guandique had not gone to work the day that Chandra Levy went missing. And secondly, when reexamining her remains, evidence suggested that she had been attacked in the same way that he had attacked his other two victims. And third third his landlady remembered seeing scratches on his face the day that chandra levy was killed okay and finally most importantly a photo of chandra was found in his possessions oh done ding ding ding ding ding so in november of 2010 ingmar

guandique was convicted of murdering chandra levy under the speculation that he had tied her up in a secluded spot and left her to die of dehydration in the park. And then in a bananas, bonkers turn of events in 2015, the conviction was overturned because it turns out the informant in jail had like blatantly lied. Just made up the fucking story. Oh, no. in jail had like blatantly lied just made up the fucking story oh no so a woman was able to prove via tape recording uh that this jail informant blatantly just said i lied about the confession like he didn't make that confession oh my gosh what's wrong with people man so in july of 2016 it was decided he would not be retried for chandra's murder with police also assuring that nothing linked him to joyce chang either um so instead he was deported to el salvador and although he was never um so that was kind of the end of that story basically

um at least that thread of the story um and then like what i remember about the chandra levy case is what's what i'm about to mention which is that um even though he was never officially considered a suspect uh california congressman gary condy who she worked for was he was never like technically a suspect but people were definitely suspicious of him um especially because it turned out that he and chandra were having an affair okay well wow so that was sudden i too am suspicious we have added a member to the group hey welcome yeah wow um yeah this story was i remember this being a huge drama back in the day because it's like this young pretty intern goes missing turns out she was sleeping with the congressman like it was just a whole scandal you know yeah um and so and he was married obviously otherwise you know i mean

wouldn't be the classic scandal so uh he was ruled out as a suspect but it had a huge impact on his campaign um according to in touch weekly in 2002 he lost his house seat just mere weeks after chandra's remains were discovered in washington dc's rock creek park so kind of screwed his whole but i mean he was also sleeping with an intern so you know don't feel that sorry for him for you know messing up his career whatever yep um so strangely enough joyce chang's case was believed to be linked to another murder of a 28 year old brunette, this time of a woman called Christine Merzian. And Christine was a fellow in her second year of the policy fellowship program with the Center of Education in D.C. And she had been raped and murdered in August of 1998, which was five months before Joyce's death after walking home from a barbecue at 1030 p.m.

Wow. Terrible. And again, like since they found Joyce's body so much later, they weren't able to determine like if there was sexual assault, they weren't able to determine how she died. So that's kind of just up in the air. And though DNA testing would link Christine's case to eight others in Georgetown from 1991 to 1998. What? In what would be called the Potomac River Rapist case. What? Yeah. Oh, I don't.

Okay. I've never heard that name before. I don't think I have either, honestly. Wow. So that is something I guess I'll have to cover one day. Yeah. So the connection to Joyce's case was ruled out even though there were these eight other cases and now nine with Christine. So I don't know if they're connected or if they just didn't have enough to prove it.

But with police determining there to be no connection between Joyce, Chandra, and Christine's cases. Now they're saying again, well, it was probably just suicide. They went back to that theory. Ew. Yeah. Like, instead of just handling it as three separate cases all of a sudden. Well, so they thought, like, oh, wait, maybe Joyce's case might be linked to Christine's, but they couldn't prove it. And they said maybe it was linked to Chandra's. They couldn't prove it.

And since they didn't have proof, they just said, well, I guess then it was. It's just a standalone. Yeah.'s. They couldn't prove it. And since they didn't have proof, they just said, well, I guess then it was. It's just a standalone. Yeah. Yeah. OK. Yeah, exactly. Basically, like instead of it becoming a part of developing.

Yeah. Further. It was just like, let's go back to that. So Gene Smith, chief of staff for Representative Barman, was very confused about how the suicide was thought to be like the most likely explanation um he questioned uh how joyce would have ended up five miles from the starbucks with no car first of all right when her friend kathy was literally driving her home right like she was no sense and then four blocks down the road yeah yeah exactly and also do we think anything happened in her actual home like she got dragged from her home no because roger was at home and so he remember he was waiting for her at home so he was like so we think something must have happened like

yeah something happened before she ever got home like probably in that four block which is just like fucking awful four blocks from home yeah it's not that far also i heard you talking about um that app but i think you called it moonlight but it's called noon light the one that yeah i did call it noon light i think my m's and n's just sounds oh maybe okay yeah uh that's a great app i know you already mentioned it but yes i do love i love that app so much it's so nice especially like even if it happens like i've had to use it one time and i was just sitting in the car and so i felt like someone was like circling my car. Yeah.

It's just nice to just have it on me. I mean, I was literally in my car, so I was able to like get out. But like it was it's nice. Yeah. I mean, anytime you feel unsafe and like it lets you plug in like your emergency contacts. So like they contact not only the police, but like you're in case of emergency person and have your location. It's really great. So I was very excited when you mentioned that.

So I was like, ah, I love that. I love it, too. So they're saying, yes, it's suicide. And Gene Smith is like, how is it suicide? He says no public transportation goes there. And on an extremely freezing cold day in January, commit suicide by wading into the Anacostia River and putting her head under the water. It is patently absurd on its face. Yes, it is. I agree with that. Like, what the fuck are you talking about? She wandered into the river. She took her jacket off, which had a big tear in it, by the way. She took her gloves off. Yeah, exactly. Like,

did everything to get as much hypothermia as possible? What? Yeah, it's just such a weird, it's so weird it doesn't really make sense um so then later it was finally officially ruled that joyce's uh joyce's death was actually a homicide and this was a hugely cathartic moment for the chang family um so her friend laura and phillips later commented i have a very heavy heart today it's been 12 long years there's some relief in hearing the police chief make her statement and rule this as a homicide. And then soon after, police announced they had found the culprits. It was thought that Steve Allen, a man serving a life

sentence in prison, and Neil Joaquin, a man who was deported to Guyana in 2006, were responsible. And according to my true crime stories, that site I mentioned earlier, authorities' hypothesis was that, quote, Steve Allen and Neil Joaquin abducted Joyce while she was walking home from Starbucks. They took her to the banks of the Anacostia River to rob her. Once there, investigators believed Joyce tried to flee, only to slip on the ice and fall into the river where she succumbed to the freezing temperature. Oh, shit. So wait, but she was still naked though she was not naked she wasn't oh okay remember they found her bank card in her stocking and everything right right right sorry sorry no no

but she she had been decomposed to the point that they couldn't figure out if there was a sexual assault or anything but the only clothes that were not found with her were the coat and the gloves right okay wow yeah that's what they think happened but again i don't think there's any way to prove that i feel like i'm gonna do that thing where i ask you a question that like why if you knew it you would have already said well no i mean i don't know like why do they think of all people it's those those two people. Like, what evidence do they have on those people? I don't know. And I assume they just announced it without the backstory.

But I'm assuming it was, like, either a confession or somebody told another informant. And obviously we know sometimes the informant, as with Chandra Levy, makes shit up. Yeah, I was going to say, like, you think this time they'd be extra careful and not make that mistake twice. I mean, maybe they, you know, were able to pin it on those guys. Maybe they confessed. I really, I don't actually know. I don't think they ever announced it. But both were already clearly in trouble for other things.

So I don't know. I don't know. Wow. So the case to this day, the two guys, even though they said these are our culprits, they were never actually charged with this murder, with Joyce's murder. Even though the guy, I mean, the one guy's. And I feel like that's such a hard thing. Joyce's murder even though the guy I mean the one guy's uh and I feel like that's such a hard thing because it's like yeah he's already in jail but like there's not that justice that the family can feel for like right saying he did this you know it's yeah shitty it's like it's like so

anticlimactic of like yeah okay well I guess we just have justices already kind of being served yeah and like not for not for her specifically yeah it feels kind of weird um so chang's case still has not been shut once and for all which i also imagine is hard to not have the closure um they did make uh some headway in christine merzian's case though so in november of 2019 which i guess pretty recent after some some DNA phenotyping, they found the Potomac River rapist. Wow. DNA strikes again. Which I guess means he will eventually be covering this story.

I really should be. And I don't even know if I should say who it is to like, well, I guess I can say it. He's just some six-year-old landscaper from South Carolina. Okay. But like, can you even like think about it like they would never have figured that out without dna this guy's just a random dude from south carolina who like i guess traveled up there and committed all these rapes and then imagine like went back home to landscapes and bushes like what imagine choosing to be like a criminal uh like the year before dna comes out and then

all of a sudden you hear about this like groundbreaking news of like this thing called dna exists and you're like oh fuck like and you're like wait i brushed my hair at the scene of the crime or something right yeah because i feel like before it was like as long as you hid fingerprints yeah i couldn't find you now it's like oh if you leave so much as like a skin cell or like hair or anything what's the deal with fingerprints are they still using that as like a as an official way to find people okay I didn't know if that had changed over time hey what's the deal with fingerprints I don't even know what the punchline to that is but I love it I don't either but I also thought it was kind of a fun little stand-up routine you could work on.

I'll shop it for you. Okay, thank you. Yeah. I expect this by next episode. Okay, got it. I'll do the numerology for Rice Pudding 9. Make a joke about fingerprints. God, I have so much homework for you.

I know. Oh, my God. So, yes, the Potomac River rapist was found. So at least there was headway in that case. And he would go on to be charged with a total of 10 rapes and the murder of Christine. And, you know, fortunately or unfortunately, he couldn't be linked to Joyce's case. Obviously, fortunately, because you never want to link somebody to another serial killer or not a serial killer but like a serial rapist but also like unfortunately there were no answers from this for joyce's family so for what it's worth her legacy lives on in 2009 her brother roger published the book my peace i

offer you on the disappearance of his sister and um ever since, her murder has been active with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. And her family also set up the Joyce Chang Memorial Scholarship to support one student a year with an internship at the Asian American Justice Center. And, I know, which is pretty cool. And there's also the Joyce Chang Memorial Award, which was set up by Georgetown University Law Center, to support an evening student with a demonstrable commitment to public service. So like how she went to night classes. So, yeah, that's the story of Joyce Chang.

And it's frustrating because there's just not really a clear answer. Wow. And it makes me wonder about like, so I watched that show Disappeared, which I've talked about a lot on the show. And like, there's so many just unsatisfying endings to these episodes where it's like, we just don't know whether they're dead or alive. And you just think about like how a body goes eight miles down river and a canoeist just happens to see it. Think about all the people who don't get spotted or who go missing. That was eight miles that canoeist went through like what who was also in that water and she just didn't bump into that yes like that other guy they found like yeah would never have been found if they hadn't searched it's just disturbing to think about so um that's that on that my friends wow leave me with a disturbing thought yeah i don't like that it that there was no official i know answer at the end of it all i am glad that they changed it from suicide because

it just seemed like that was kind of a cop out you know yeah at least at least at least the family didn't have to like spend the rest of their lives fighting against the suicide, you know, verdict. So hopefully some answers will come about. But until then, you know, be kind to yourself and others. That's my new slogan. As I'm about to go get stabbed in the arm with needles. So someone's about to not be very kind to me. I know. I really have never been so thirsty either until all of a sudden I was told I needed

to fast and I can't drink water like I've never I could go like probably days without drinking water or not even think about it and now that I've been told I can't I'm so fucking thirsty everyone please go drink a sip of water in my honor please because I can't do it right now and it's really awful you've never had a um have you ever had a colonoscopy no so they make you fast for like 24 hours or something 48 hours i don't remember even water no so you can drink water you can drink clear liquids and like at first it's like okay i can go like two days without eating and it all of a sudden is like hell you're like all i can drink is like orange or yellow gatorade and water and eating and it all of a sudden is like hell you're like all i can drink is like orange or yellow gatorade and water and broth and it sounds like oh i'll be fine and then like

about 12 hours in you're like all i want is like a graham cracker or fucking saltine oh nope geez i well i don't envy you during that moment but I also don't envy me right now. My mouth is the driest it's ever been in my life. And you burnt your mouth. Oh, no. I know. It really, it feels like a whole other roof of my mouth. It feels like super swollen. It's very gross.

But anyway, so I've got my mouth to take care of and my blood and my fasting. I can't wait to hear how your blood works out. Me too. Hopefully good stuff. Hopefully only good. hopefully at least neutral that's all yeah okay i'll take neutral too yeah all right well i'll give you the update next week i guess and that's why we drink