And That's Why We Drink - E278 A Birthday Demon and a Lunar Lemon

Episode Date: June 5, 2022

It's our birthday episode and Christine's podcast room might be turning into Jumanji?! Please hold for Blaise to come save us from multiple bugs. First Em covers a ghost story with a feminist twist, Alma Fielding and the Croyden poltergeist. Then Christine covers the gut-wrenching tale of Cletus Hehmz and the kidnapping of Chloe Fisherman. We also get a sneak peek into the discovery of an entirely new cryptid: Penne a la Gnome... and that's why we drink!

like how long was i sitting out here waiting yes i when you said 50 minutes i time to go i ran downstairs and grabbed it and carried it up but it is now melting oops and now there is a butterfly grasshopper. What is that? Oh, my God. What is that? It's green. What's happening?

It's literally neon. Oh, my God. What is that? It's Mothman. He's come to save us. I hired him for an hour for your birthday, actually. Happy birthday. There's some stripping. I can take a man if I want to.

Oh, here goes Gio. He's going to try and eat it. If you want me to handle it, I am going to kill it. And I know you don't want me to kill bugs. But it's murder or nothing. Your call. Your call. Welcome to our birthday episode.

This is a special. Are we recording? Yes. The only problem is this cake is melting. Yeah. I want to eat it. Should we freeze it now or should we eat? I think it should be our reward.

My little demon. That's what I call you usually. Why would you eat off his tushy like that? I'm sorry. You just ate some demon ass on her birthday, you freak. And what of it? Are you shaming me? No, I'm proud of you.

Someone's got to do it. Yeah, you're right. We should probably just put it in the freezer, huh? Look, even the proud of you. Someone's got to do it. Yeah, you're right. We should probably just put it in the freezer. Look, even the letters are sad. They're like, either you're going to do this or you're not going to do this. Okay, I'm going to go put it in the freezer. You put it in the freezer. I'm going to monitor this bug because this is out of control. I know you're going to kill it while I'm gone. I won't kill it. If it stays over there, we're good.

Okay, as long as it stays there, we're in the clear, I think. Okay. I do feel unsafe, but let the record show, Em does feel extremely uncomfortable. I don't enjoy my time. Even Gio's watching it. At one point, Gio's just going to snap, and it'll be quiet, and we'll know he's won. When the silence has happened. Hopefully people can't hear the buzzing.

I was telling you, it sounds like literally someone's phone is on vibrate on the other side of the room. And every time it hits the wall, it sounds like a marble hear the buzzing. I was telling you, it sounds like literally someone's phone is on vibrate on the other side of the room. And every time it hits the wall, it sounds like a marble hit the wall. It's so stupid loud. Okay. Anyway, hi. Happy birthday, Christine. I'm going to get a little hat too.

This is the birthday episode. It's very chaotic. Em is with me. Obviously, we're in the same room. It would be wild if we weren't. Imagine if we just CGI'd me in here because we got that good at it in our 30s or we both had weird green bugs in our room and i was like i'm i'm leaving my home you better not have one at your place i'm coming over okay here's what here's what happened what happened em and i were supposed to i'm just catching everyone up oh well

em and i were supposed this is not gonna fit on my head it's because you've got something on your head already okay my head's bigger than yours and it worked so i don't know what's what's what's going on here folks i think it's because you already have a thing on your head probably it doesn't want to share the space of that that's prime real estate there that noggin ew it doesn't look right okay forget it okay it didn't happen i'll wear my trashy classy headband. You did make my cheeks feel very skinny there. Just so we're clear. Happy birthday.

Thank you. So, yeah, we were supposed to, so our birthday is next weekend. We were supposed to record a birthday episode. We were like, let's do it tomorrow. And then. We have book signings tomorrow. Book signings, book signings book signings and we got m was flying in today and i was like oh let's just record the episode tonight then

after you land so it's like 10 o'clock and if you recall the episode where christine fell asleep uh as i told the story this is probably going to be part two to that part two this is probably just us bringing in this uh our new generation or our new our new era all sleepy all sleepy and um so yeah i was like shit i gotta run to target so i bought some decor you can't see it because it's behind the camera right but um christine really fucking nailed it especially considering i was expecting nothing so well um there are presents and snacks and there is a dinosaur balloon who i love i've already gotten attached and there's a banner it says happy birthday it's so classy

and she she with its monochromatic flair and there's a rose gold inflatable like three foot tall 30 so i've got like the three and the o which everyone usually does like instagram pics with so i'll have to do that yeah it'll be definitely as glam as all those Instagram pics you see. Certainly as choogy as the kids might want. And then Christine had a whole cake and my favorite little demon buddy. I love him. Okay, so Eva and I a while ago, we surprised Christine and we flew to Kentucky and threw her a spooky baby shower obviously before Leona was born surprised me like I didn't know they were in my home yeah

we set it up with Blaze it was chaotic and we just we showed up while she was gone oh and Zandy was in on it which is how you weren't here um and one of the things that so when Eva and I landed we were like we're gonna go to like a party city and get a bunch of spooky stuff and then bring it to the house and decorate and like surprise her there was this one thing that i got there um and it was like this i don't even know what you'd call it but it's a random latex demon so creepy i don't know what he's meant for but i put him on top of a cake what is he meant for i don't know what he's like he even has like a like a clip inside him i don't know what's going on he has like a binder clip inside him he came like that he is so frightening but he when he's sitting on top of a cake it looks like he's leaning over

to be like hiya pal you know what it says inside it you're not gonna believe it it says ghoulish no it doesn't yes it does ghoulish i love him i think he's so sweet and his eyes don't match. And his little tushy is so plump. I don't, they made a perfect little demon tush out of rubber and his little legs flail. So I put this on the cake for my baby shower and then looked at me and said, I want that. And I was like, this is for you, but it's for me. Yeah. I was like, you can have it. You were like, no, I want it on my cake for my birthday. And this was, again, like over six months. It was like eight months ago. And so I have kept it in pristine condition inside a cabinet in my kitchen, despite Blaze's attempts to throw it away.

So every time you open that cabinet, he would just say... Every freaking time. Hi, pal. Yep. And he would say, hi, bro. He does not sound like that. Don't demonize him. I'm so sorry.

You know what I'm saying. And his little tush was always staring back at me. That little tush, I'm telling you what, it's one of my top three favorite tushes. So today I got him out. And there is a great picture of us holding him from my baby shower. So we can post that on Instagram. Oh, that's fun. I actually just found a picture from your baby shower that I really like of us that I might be posting later.

Oh, I love him so much. And the cake the cake by the way every cake we've ever had together um because obviously christine turns a year older than me so we don't know obviously as you can tell by my wizened features all of your wrinkles uh but well if you've seen any of the cakes we've ever posted that we give each other there's always we don't know what to do candle number wise and so uh the first time i was turning 25 and you were turning 26 2 5 6 so we put 2 5 6 so if you hid one of them it looked like 25 and if you had one it looks like so for a photo op you could just kind of cover one or the other yeah so it said 2 5 6 then it said 2 6 7 2 7 8 2 8 9 jesus that's a lot and then last year was the hard one because it was 29 and 30. Oh, so we probably didn't even do it.

We didn't do it. Because it was COVID. Because I was scared. But now we're back. We're back at our bullshit. We can share the first digit now. And now we're on the little demon cake. Christine had 301, 30 and 31.

And you were like, what am I, 301? And I was like, well, I wish. I feel like it. So anyway, thank you. You really made my day. I really thought I was just going to get off the plane. I felt so bad. You were on a flight.

You were like, I leave at 830 in the morning. And I was like, I thought you land at 830 p.m. And you were like, I do. It's a five-hour layover. It's both. I take one at 830 and I land at 830. But anyway, it was a long day. And we're book signing this week so it was

like we have two book signings that are already a lot and taking up a lot of mental space and so we just kind of just squeeze in and i was so sad i couldn't come to la for your b-day i will say there was well no i i well you i'm invited apparently to my mom's other birthday party for me so you have two opportunities and you're saying no to both it's father's day I know I didn't even realize it was father's day and then I think you said it you were like oh it's father's day that week and I was like well yeah because blaze made mother's day so special I'm not mad I can't just he said I could go and I was like maybe I'll fly in him and I don't know I don't know it's the same thing so one of the things Allison's birthday this year she's already told me I can go, but I already feel guilty about it.

And I don't know if I'm going to do it or not, but I was asked to be a plus one to a wedding in literally Italy. What? I was like, and it's on Allison's birthday and Allison wouldn't be the plus one. And I was like, go. Yeah. I'll hang out with with alice okay and we'll just be bitter that you're in italy okay i don't know if i'm gonna do it i've never really left the country on my own like we've gone to canada but like i've like yeah not to say canada like that but i've never like gone overseas yeah i'm really it really freaks me out it's like out of my comfort zone and i would be with friends that are are reckless. So I'm scared in advance. So anyway, I don't know how we get back on track,

but I guess it's our birthday episodes or who cares. We can do what we want. I'm drinking boxed wine. I'm drinking, Christine got me white grape juice, which I love. And also it reminds me of the sparkling juice that people get to celebrate. Love that.

Should have got some of that. Actually, I have some of that in the fridge, but I'm not going back downstairs i don't blame you okay christine literally tried to surprise me um like seeing all the birthday stuff in here for the first time and she started filming right after i took like four flights of stairs i felt so bad i was just like oh my god i did not plan for that and you were like you were like bent over you're like this is not how i want to be reacting. I promise I'm excited.

And I was like, oh. I was very excited. I just also couldn't breathe. And then you said, oh, what am I, 301? And I was like, maybe. I certainly walk upstairs like I'm 301. Okay. Well, Christine, do you have any guesstimates for what's happening for your birthday? Oh, I don't know because it's on a Saturday and Blake.

So my friend Ray, who was also my doula, wrote a poetry book and she's a poet. And I was like, whoa, cool. I'm friends with a poet. That made me feel really like fancy. And she's going to write a poem for you. She better. There's a poetry slam for Christine only. Okay, but let me shout out her poetry book because it has a skull on the front, which we love.

Done. And it's called American Bitch. And I know. And it's a skull on the front, which we love. Done. And it's called American Bitch. And I know. And it's a lot of poetry about being Jewish in America. And it's really excellent. She hand dropped off my copy. I felt very loved. And she's doing a-

Did you do a book swap? Did you sign each other's books? Oh, my God. I didn't even give her a book. She probably doesn't want one. She's like- You know what you are then? An American bitch.

I know. That's why the book is about me. All these poems but she was like uh she was like oh i'm doing this like poetry reading and like a like a little kind of like how we're doing our book signing tomorrow she's doing one on my birthday and i was like oh i want to come it's my birthday though so i don't know if i have anything planned that day but i'm trying to go but then blaze was like well you have plans at 11 and 2. Like 11 through 2?

No, like 11 and then again at 2. So it was 12 free? I don't know. So I'm trying to figure that out, and I don't – he's not good at secrets, so I don't want to ask too many questions because I feel like he'll be like, well, it's this, this, and this, and then I'll be like, well, what was the point of this? Allison's been doing a very good job keeping us – I can tell that she's it should tell pain she's in pain but she's doing good yeah blazes too and i don't know what the hell he has planned you know what my thing is that allison's doing maybe do you i do am i gonna love it i think i'm gonna love it i think you're gonna love it yes of course you're

gonna love it what am i gonna say no what okay that's fair like when the camera's off though no you're gonna love it of course i think course the way that she's been talking about it makes me feel like i'll love it you're gonna love it um i actually don't know that many details because again i unfortunately had to write a book and couldn't make it so i'm very bitter about that oh well so i didn't get any of this is it this is like the beginning of it all this is the beginning and the end is there anything you want for your birthday that you're going to treat yourself to um as you know about me i'm one of those people where i can convince myself to buy myself anything in about two minutes flat so i don't really have a lot of like patience to tell myself i'll treat myself later i will always find a reason to do it right now. So there's nothing off for the top of my head where I'm like,

that's a great question. Do you have anything? All the time. But I, cause I do hold, cause I, I live on a reward system, right?

Like I, otherwise I won't do anything. So I have to give myself rewards or else it won't be worth it for me. Um, and like writing that whole book. Oh my God, every chapter I was like, okay, do this and then you can eat some cake. Wow. I ate a lot of cake.

Well, Em wrote a whole book that way. So if you're wondering, I guess that works. It worked. For me, I was like, I'm eight months pregnant. And if I don't finish this book. Work this cake. Your punishment will be writing this book with a newborn child and i was like that fear is enough see so you do fear or reward sometimes the reward is not being afraid that you

know what is the is abolishing that fear okay i get it i get it um so my current thing well i am i haven't given an update and i know it's been like months for everybody but there's like a whole thing i need to complain about that hasn't i can't totally complain about i can't i haven't given any updates about the troll hole yeah i love the troll and i'm aware i'm aware that i haven't been talking about it and people are probably one person out there me is probably like itching to see what it's gonna look like but here's the thing i've been waiting for this stupid couch to show up oh no and this is now currently the second couch we've had to fight for. I've been waiting literally since March or April now to get a couch in there. And basically, I want it to be a fold-out, but an actual really good fold-out because

the people who are probably visiting us the most are our parents with not great backs. And so it needs to be a very specific quality couch but the way to get it into that room they're all sized weird and it's we have a weird hallway so the first couch that we got people were like the move they literally brought the couch and then they just looked at our hallway and they're like we're not no way yeah oh no and so then i was like can you tell me the measurement so when i go get another couch i don't run into this again it's next to us now the bug it's here look how green it is i really don't want to don't you feel special that it visited us today what a way to spin that narrative i'm nothing if not yes i feel so lucky

anyway the couch i'm still waiting on the second couch but i have a feeling the second couch i'm gonna deal with the same goddamn thing so i am not showing you the troll hole until the couch is there because then i can set up everything around the couch but it's still like kind of barren it's the center anyway my birthday gift to myself is this troll hole whenever it happens i can't wait to see the troll hole me too someday um far far away far far away i now honestly there's nothing else i can think of my brain can't function anymore with this buzzing it sounds like glue came to life what does that mean it's like sticky oh it does doesn't it sounds feels like a post-it note is tearing off of itself oh my god you're right geo don't leave i thought he was leaving i was like

you have like he's gonna save the day job to do he will get it look he's all he's focused m i'm sweating i'm also sweating where does it go oh it's there it's right above my head so at my home we have this thing that's like a gun. It's like a salt gun. Oh, I know about these. With the laser sighting and everything. That's so awful. But you know what?

I don't have to live in fear. I read reviews of those on Beachy Sandy one time. The Assault. And? Yeah, I don't love the name. The Assault Rifle. It's kind of disturbing. In today's age, it's not.

I used to have a bug vacuum. Okay, that's much worse. No, it's not. Because you would suck it in. And then you take them outside. Take the little dust buster and do reverse button and release it. And he goes outside. Okay, I guess it's still definitely traumatic probably for the bug.

Well, okay, it's not an assault rifle you're trying to shoot it with i will say that thing came in handy with the cockroaches yeah well okay happily i'm sorry if i'll i'm okay with killing cockroaches yeah i'm not really that concerned about the cockroaches as much as i am about this beautiful green friend we have he's so beautiful i want to never be he comes anywhere near me i'm gonna scream bloody murder he's literally so close we obviously we're gonna edit some of this out but i i think we should leave all of it in if people want to know what we're like outside of the podcast usually we just like are in fear of something today it's of most things we usually find a reason to complain and be afraid

well anyway uh i've lost all sort of train of thought i may have had before so um i apologize oh sorry smacked you whatever um i'm not used to being in the same room as you anymore i know um i guess we talk about scary things besides our biological clocks slowly fading into the abyss. Our skin crinkling away. I woke up today and it did feel a little less elastic. So I was feeling nervous. Yeah. Okay.

My notes today are on my literal notes app on my phone. I was going to do that. And then I was like, is that going to look unprofessional? So I'm glad I'm not the only one. Well, I don't know if it looks professional or not, but I certainly did literally my notes on the plane so this was amazing honestly I'm impressed with myself I did I'm impressed with you I did all of our notes in two hours on my phone on your phone without internet okay is this this seems like that was the most you're gonna want to know why because I had a reward coming at the end this seems like

we're supposed to be my little demon. Impressed, but hello. Oh, you mean the one with the butt. I think we're supposed to be impressed by the way you're framing this, but also saying I did notes with no internet on my phone in two hours kind of doesn't sound like research. I don't know. It doesn't. But you know what? I promise it is.

Okay. Because I, so while we were sitting on the plane, I was getting all the links. And then that way, when I could do airplane mode, the links were already there. Got it. Just do a little swipe, swipe, swipe. Okay. So I did use internet, but not active internet. Okay.

I was going to say, this sounds like you just came out of your dumb little brain. Oh, can I tell you what was supposed to come out of my dumb little brain? What? Oh, this story was going to be so much better. Not to like totally like fuck up my own notes. You already gave us so much confidence. Okay. In the story for your,

for your birthday, I was going to do, um, a revisiting of America's first scene shifter. Oh dear Lord. And I was going here. I'll prove it to you. My last birthday.

That was your 30. That was your present birthday was those notes wow and so um i was and i wanted to do a revisiting and talk about how a whole year later the society of cryptid crypt cryptid explorers or whatever bullshit i came up with society of cryptid exploration they had discovered that in fact last time i reported on this america's first scene shifter seemed that they might be uh giving birth to a new cryptid and uh and then i was gonna report on the cryptid that's precious and i i tried so hard these were the things i was going to try to way to write about creatively but i didn't i couldn't under pressure i couldn't figure it out so we're just gonna're just going to tell you what my raw bullet notes.

This is even better. So first of all, here were the names I was trying to come up with because Leona Renee Lampunyala is kind of a crazy fucking name to re redo. Um, I am aware that lemon was a word in the name. Oh Jesus. If you rearrange the letters, not even think of it for those who are somehow sorely listening to this for the first time ever america's hearse and shifter is an anagram for christine maria schieffer right which is the cryptid i was talking about in that episode right in front of

your very eyes and so i was trying to come up with an anagram for your kid's name and apparently you only named your baby with all l's and e's so correct it was really hard well yeah renee has three e's in it. Alone, yeah. And so at one point, here's what I ended up with. Because I found the word gnome, and I was trying to think of another cryptid. So I was like, okay, she'll be a gnome. That's cute. And then at one point, I was trying to literally just do what I could with all these goddamn E's and N's. And so there were some extra letters left, so this one didn't work.

But my personal favorite was i was going to name the cryptid penne a la gnome i'm penne a la vodka yeah another one was this was just um oh where was it there was one that i really wanted to make work it was um there was only like five letters left and I was so upset. But Lunar Eel Gnome. I thought that would have sounded like a really cool cryptid. Lunar is in there too? Yeah, Lunar Eel Gnome.

Lunar Lemon. Wow. Also, actually, if I was willing to sacrifice a bunch of letters, Lunar and Lemon both worked. The Lunar Lemon. Whoa. Just saying. Anyway, I tried. And these were the things I was going to try to write about her.

Besides the fact that, you know, in the last few months we have a new cryptid on our radar. That her fangs finally came in. She's teething currently. She does. She has one little fang. She's got one little fang. That's so cute. Unlike our predictions.

Because we originally had overheard from the SCE that America's Heartcene Shifter's little offspring would be born with fangs. Full of them. Full of teeth. All sharp little razors. Full of fangs. Also, I was going to mention that she had similar facial features to America's Hercene Shifter. I was going to mention that it's known for its loud wailing and cackling in dark rooms. I didn't know how I was going to insert this, but I know she loves to play chase right now where someone runs up on her.

I was going to talk about her best friend in the forest because remember the her scene shifter loves animals. I was going to talk about how she has also found her own friend in the woods named Crinkle Fox. Crispy Fox. Crispy Fox. Fuck. Close. He crinkles. Crispy Fox sounds the same to me.

Also, I was going to make Blaze comment on it, as I did for you. I was going to mention how she loves the ceiling. She loves the ceiling. I was going to talk about how, interestingly, this cryptid is named somewhere after Detective Ede, who had the smoking gun file. You're completely right. On America's Heart Seen Shifter. So I feel like almost she was part of the taxonomy naming of this cryptid. It's an homage.

Yes. I was going to re-bring of the taxonomy naming of this creature. Yes. I was going to re-bring up the numerology episode and talk about our predictions for this cryptid. But she's a Libra. And also that her entrance into this world was announced by Zach Bagans. Okay. That's when we knew it was all. So there's like your half-assed birthday present from me, Christine.

Okay. Actually, that was so good, though. I tried so hard. No, that was so good. But there's your lunar lemon gnome. That made me so happy. That was so... My lunar lemon gnome that made me so happy that was so my lunar no lemon no i tried we'll try again on her birthday maybe oh yeah there you go i loved it and then we'll have more updates she might have a few more fangs so you know she better if she just like only shows up with one tooth i will write about that in the dossier that

is this cryptid so okay instead for your birthday i tried, we did a topic that I know you enjoy, which is a poltergeist story. Oh, hell yes. So this is in 1938. And this is the story of, pause for the sound effect. I'm listening. I'm not peeing, I promise. This feels like our, like, back in the old days. You know, we're just as hot in here because the AC is off. look who's not trying to turn the ac on there he is he literally that was the

loudest bug fart i've ever heard in my life he was trying to turn on the ac i don't blame him it's hot in here oh also i think we're gonna do i'm we're gonna do for our aftermath episode for the patreon folks we're gonna do the little prezzy opening yes definitely geo what are you doing get it why there's another one i told you no there's literally two literally told you i told you i told you i told you there's two of these green monsters it literally flew out from there from where oh shit what that's a closet and what's happening what do we do what do we do okay i'm gonna leave it when you handle it all right we both know how i'd handle it it wouldn't make you do it i don't care i'm not gonna do it on your wallpaper blaze says oh i thought that came from outside that scream

like a coyote he says do you need me to get it? Yeah. Ah! Oh, yeah. Yes. Yes. Please, please. I'm sorry.

I know you have a sleeping baby. I said, yes, help. So he's coming. Blaze. Winds in the east. Blaze, there are two of them now. I'm glad you have two hands, Blaze. Blaze, there's two of them and they keep flying at me.

That one and that one. Why are they green? Are they beetles what are they what's a leaf bug like leaf me alone wait that makes me sad don't kill it you gotta kill it this is why i didn't do anything oh there's another bug here. They're coming through the air conditioning. Oh, no. Not the air conditioning. How could you forsake us? It just turned into my nemesis.

Is this the bonus footage after the episode? Here you go. Remember when I gave you that doll to give to your baby? To give to my precious doll? Never once saw the light of day with that baby. Instead, it just kills bugs I didn't kill it I'm sad now

thank you Blaze oh they're all inside of it sometimes I wish I had I lived in a house with more testosterone because alison and i would just absolutely leave we would move you say that and yet you didn't move that's because we that's because okay it's a bloodbath at our place with cockroaches in terms of like peacefully letting like catch and release forget it yeah well we'd leave not with cockroaches not happening okay anyway back to this if i see a third bug christine i swear to god i'm just going

back to la i'm moving with you i'm moving with you to burbank okay let's try this again alma fielding on the croydon poltergeist this was in 1938 and it was right after a wave of spiritualism fielding on the Croydon poltergeist. This was in 1938 and it was right after a wave of spiritualism and Thornton Heath is a borough is in a borough called Croydon. So Alma was born in 1903. She had a big sister and a little brother and was she always wanted to be an entertainer or a performer in some way and her uncle was training her to become a circus performer. Whoa. But I guess she fell off her bike one time and i don't know if that was during clown training or something it was a 10-foot bike it was a one-wheeled 10-foot unicycle and it was on a tightrope right we failed to mention it was she was also juggling

fire so 40 feet above the ground but during that bike crash, I'm not totally sure what happened. She ended up sustaining long lasting issues from her injury. And I think that was kind of the beginning of the end of her thinking she was going to join the circus. She also grew up being known as very sickly. Oh, I don't know if that word's still used today but she was apparently constantly ill she had a chronic kidney illness um poor thing and by 1938 she apparently had several surgeries um i think many of them on her kidneys i'm not gonna lie surgery in the night nothing is scarier than surgery than surgery in the 19 in the 19 in 1938 specifically the thought of surgery now

is terrifying but the thought of surgery in the 1930s You know what's wild is imagine what people in the future would say about surgery about us. Do you know how often I think that? Because I think someday like oh in 30 years or 50 years I wonder if we'll look back and be like how barbaric was X, Y, or Z like can you believe we

did that without Yeah I wonder too because I feel like the I feel like back in like back before there was like anesthetic or antibiotics or um like novocaine or they knew to wash their hands like things like that or like just like it was just normal for you just have to literally bite down on a stick and just tough it out and deal with the pain like amputations and stuff i don't even know i don't even know how i would just pass out from the pain and never come back i'd be like forget it this is enough i'll leave goodbye without

like without any like numbing medication like that had to have been the greatest invention of all time in that at that of that generation you know people always say like i wonder why there are ghosts from the olden days but not today that's probably why because they had to go through shit like that if that happened to me leeches on your eyes and shit you like yeah you like leech you shot my leg off without any sort of anesthetic no wonder you're haunting a hospital i'd be fucking haunting a hospital i don't even think i'd be meaning to i would just my energy would be so chaotic just be screaming for the rest of time yeah well all right, all right. Well then here you go. This poor girl had a bunch of surgeries on her kidneys at a time when I guarantee you

she probably felt it afterwards. Um, and I can only hope they gave her like morphine and stuff like they did. Remember how you see those old things and it's like codeine prescription and like, or like Coca-Cola had like cocaine. And honestly, I hope she had a big pitcher of coca-cola towards drug them up whatever she wants um and she not only was a sickly child but apparently she also had some spooky stuff going on as a child which i think is interesting because there's that theory of like um and by theory i mean like it's a storyline in a lot of movies so someone's thought of it before that like ill children can see things almost as if there are spirits that

are like kind of sucking the life out of them oh leeching okay i see i see what you're saying i don't know if that plays into this at all but it's just like a connection i thought of yeah um but so she claims that a lot of spooky things happened to her growing up one is that she often reported seeing a long-faced man climb out of her wardrobe and stare at her at night goodbye like also the wardrobe like not even like walk through the door yeah like you had to make it extra weird extra creepy like through your clothes oh gross oh through the clothes yeah then that gives me the feeling of like i don't want to wear this shirt because how do you change in the morning man

touched it yeah he was climbing through this dress get it you know he was maybe trying on the dress i was gonna say as long as he was staring i got the foot of your bed like what do you think of this outfit should i do a twirl the long-faced man he just wants to be fashionable like he's probably like please don't call me the long-faced man call me the stylish man call me the fab fab fab guy i don't know the fabulous ghoul um so uh anyway so she was having things go on that was just a quick example from when she was a kid but in 1921 she ended up marrying a guy named less and uh apparently was against her parents wishes oh i would like to know more about that part of the story me too i certainly would like to be in on the drama yeah um one of the reasons she did marry less despite her parents not liking it is that she was secretly pregnant and she had their son the next year and his name

was don um and at this point in her life she's still having weird experiences so an example of that is uh in 1929 which when i say weird experience i'm not gonna label this supernatural just yet and i think you'll pick up on the vibes i'm coming with okay uh in 1929 she straight up lost her sight for no reason overnight oh but she claimed she could still see the world oh in a different way and apparently she was so convinced that she could still see the world just not with her eyes maybe with her third eye or something but she didn't even tell people that she was blind for weeks and nobody noticed okay and the only reason someone picked up on it was because um her husband noticed that when they were watching tv or a movie she wasn't looking at the screen which like oh no you could have just been looking like tire shoe or

something no there was a bug in the scene right yeah well there's that but so uh yeah so and then what year was this this was the this was 1929 was there a movie was there a tv wizard of oz i don't know a western i guess they had tvs i don't know i'm bad at the talkies a silent film sure so you gotta watch something you better because you can't listen that's true what the fuck is going on yeah i never really thought about how silent films are kind of ableist no i guess so huh i never even considered anything about so as a podcast or radio unless you got those transcriptions uh-huh okay fair enough uh so we're the talkies we're the talkies yeah we fed right into the system that's what

happened there oh i got excited you were like this is a problem now i feel like i have to reevaluate everything um but so yeah so she just told someone like oh yeah weeks ago i went blind and but i've still been able to completely oh did i forget to mention it yeah but i'm also completely functioning exactly as is. I just forget to look at the TV. One time. One time. And maybe because like something was happening.

There was a big green bug. Yeah. And so that was when her husband was like, oh my God, you went blind. We have to go to the doctor. And after eye drops, she was back to normal. Oh. You were picking up what I'm talking about. I think so.

So that's kind of the theme for the rest of the story so uh in 1930 uh alma was at a friend's house and out of nowhere she got so tired that she passed out on the couch can relate i've literally done that here i have a thing called a fainting couch. Not even. You just have a normal couch. The last time I was here, it was Christine, Blaze, Eva, and Lisa Lampanelli. I was lying somehow in the middle of all of you. Lisa was folding laundry above your head and Eva was to your left, like, talking. And you were in the middle.

I was in the middle of everyone. Like, I don't know what was going on. All I know is I thought we were having a great conversation and I blink in the middle i was in the middle of everyone like i i don't know what was going all i know is i thought we were having a great conversation and i blinked and then it was dark and then you how long were you asleep literally eva said two hours yeah it was almost two fucking hours i was like what are you talking about i was like i was just listening to everyone talk and then all of a sudden like and everyone was still sitting there which means for the last two hours y'all just watched me conked out. We were not trying to be polite and keep quiet so you could sleep.

Clearly, it doesn't matter. We were loud as ever. And I was like, there's no way you were asleep this whole time. You were out cold. Out cold. Like almost in a disturbing fashion. Like I felt like I time traveled. Yeah.

But I'm really good at sleeping. Yeah, I mean. I'm really good at it. I think I mean. I'm really good at it. I think it's our birthday episode. You can brag all you want. I don't have a lot of great traits, but like if someone said fall asleep right now for a million dollars, I could do it. I'll be honest.

I am terrible at sleeping, so I envy you in that way, but that's okay. It's weird. I have also like wild insomnia. So like if it's dark out, if it's dark out, I cannot sleep. If the sun is out, you game on. You give me that million bucks. You better believe it. So, um, anyway, she passed out in front of, I guess, all of her friends in the middle of the room and everyone just sat around her and watched. Um, and while she was sleeping, she had a dream that her late father walked up

to her and traced an X on the left side of her chest oh no and when she woke up the mark was still there no and so her husband was like i don't know go to the doctor for your dreams because something about she's kind of off something's happening yeah i can't fix it you're like blind and then you're not you're dreaming about your dad but like you know talk to someone else that is not me because i'm trying to watch a silent film with you and you are not participating and uh so she goes to the doctor and right where the mark was they found a cancerous tumor oh he was trying to help or did he put the tumor no he was trying to show this tumor i think he was trying to say like x marks the spot of like you gotta look right here okay okay and uh and so she ended up getting a mastectomy right in time apparently wow so that's

actually i cannot explain that that's pretty good i mean like i thought that the the dad was doing something ghoulish and horrible but he was like no no check that's like it's honestly like the the best part of the story i think oh great it doesn't get like really terrible but i think that's like the most heartwarming believable part to me can i tell you um just like a fun birthday story that's always okay so when i was little i had this uh poo bear like my winnie the pooh poo bear and he was like my ride or die stuffed animal love it and i would always have birthday parties for him because his birthday was february 6th your mom told me about this in your Herstein Shifter bio. Oh, no.

Remember you carried a bunch of dolls around and you would like use them to like threaten your brother or something? Well, yeah. Only if he deserved it. Only if he was in my fucking way. But so Pooh Bear would have a birthday party every year. And of course my mother would like make this homemade cake and invite people over and we'd do a big birthday celebration so february 6th um we did this birthday and i was probably five and i had it in my head that x marks a spot like that was something i had recently learned you know and so i had a great idea that all my friends and i

should go out back and look for treasure and so we started looking for x marks a spot and then we found an x um made of like little stones and like did you do this a little circle no and i thought oh my god there's something here we should dig it up and so we got um my stepdad at the time brian came out and i was like can you um dig here because we found a treasure and he was like, can you dig here? Because we found a treasure. And he was like, okay. And to humor us, he started digging. And we were like, wow, we see something. There's a box. The dog poop? No.

What? It was a dead cat. Oh! Like somebody had buried their deceased pet. I thought this was going to be the cutest story in the world. I thought they had gone out early that day thrown down an x hell no i never thought to do that it was just me being like i think i finally found treasure and then we found a box to be fair up until the ending as a kid i think i was a

goddamn pirate it was the most amazing moment we were were like, holy shit, we really did it. It's true. X works as fine. That's manifesting. I was thrilled. And then Brian all of a sudden went, why doesn't everyone go inside? And I was like, why? We just found treasure. And he was like, get inside now.

At least it wasn't a bunch of children opening the box and then screaming together. Oh, my God. No, thank God there was an adult with us. And then later, of course, that night as I was going to bed, I was like, mommy, why didn't we get to open the box? She like there was a dead cat and that's the most or not a way to end this yeah so anyway that's why i can't sleep at night or during the day okay that tracks anyway x marks the spot okay sorry that doesn't know and so uh yeah so then she basically they found out there was a tumor so she got it removed wow

and uh i think that was just in addition to all the other creepy stuff that had happened to her she could just add that to the to the list now just add it to the list of surgeries and long face man in a dress having a good time and feeling right um so in 1938 alma lived um in thornton heath as a housewife with uh her husband less and their 16 year old son don um and also they have a lodger who's living with them uh named george okay and she's 34 now all right and this is when the story really takes place so it starts february 13th and 1938 and while at another friend's, Alma feels pain in her stomach and she takes medication, which I think she assumed there was like a kidney situation going on. Sure. And so while she's in bed, I want to figure out how to actually say, cause there were the, the sources said different things.

Um, one source said that she was in bed because of stomach problems and less also happened to be on bedrest. But then one of the sources, it got confused and I don't know which one of it it was. She could have been in bedrest because of her stomach. And additionally on bedrest, because I guess she was getting dentures.

Oh. And so one of the things you have to do to have the dentures fit right in your mouth is pull all your fucking teeth out of course um again probably without any medication to make you feel good about it so obviously bed rest yeah yeah or like advil i don't know so cocaine and so she was either she was on bed rest for the stomach thing and her teeth or she was in bed on bed rest for the stomach thing and less was also on bed rest because it was deep at any way they were both lying in bed not feeling right and that is when um alma's looking at their fireplace in their bedroom and there's a mirror above the fireplace and she realizes that there are small handprints good night on the mirror nah and the handprints have six fingers okay instead of five

ew you just gave me goose cam i wasn't it just throws you off it's just like that's a game changer it does i don't know what it's about but i feel like you know when you have someone who has six fingers on one hand in your house. Yeah. I feel like that's something you certainly would have noticed by now. Like I knew someone who didn't have any fingers on their hand. And if they left like a handprint on the mirror, I would know exactly who it was. You're like, well, they were in my house. Yeah. I'd be like, that tracks.

I feel like if it's something as rare as six fingers, you usually keep track of that stuff. Especially a child. It's like. Yeah. Especially something like when it's small. You probably know if your only child is 16. Uh-huh don't know it doesn't make sense so uh at the really i think it was the same night that she notices this handprint um the couple wake up to the sound of glass shattering in their room oh god and when they wake up and they find out that a glass i

guess like a water cup or something but glass um that was on their nightstand had been pushed off and shattered all over the floor. Then another glass, instead of falling off the table, this one flies across the room and crashes into a wall and shatters. Oh, Jesus. Okay. For some reason, this is where her husband tells her to turn the lights off not on uh i guess they turned it on to see what the original shatter was and then he was like quick turn the lights off as if like like what does that do to anybody i don't know worst advice i've ever heard from a man ever, to be honest. Well, that's, that's, and I know what I'm saying.

Turn the lights off when a polder guy. Okay, good, good, good, good, good, good,

good, good, good. Um, so they were, she was trying to turn the, uh, so she turned the lights off and I guess they were just like sitting in bed,

wondering what was going on. They felt a cold breeze and all of a sudden their comforter flew up over their faces and they felt like they were trapped in the bed. Oh, well, actually, that's very scary. They it's like the lights turned off wasn't dark enough. They couldn't get out from under the cover. They tried reaching for the lamp, but even when they would try to turn it back on, the lamp wouldn't turn on now. Well, and they screamed until their son came in and when he opened the door to see what was going on a small container of skin cream flew at his face oh my god

then the lodger george comes running in to see if he can help and something throws a bunch of coins at him oh my god which i feel like that was common with these like old english poltergeist either like coins or little rocks or something yeah like like's a lot of throwing small things agreed agreed um and after all this uh the sun looks so i guess things kind of die down and then they're looking around the room to see what was going on and when the sun dawn is looking around the room wondering why they couldn't turn the light back on he looks at the lamp and the light bulb is now missing and then they look around the room and the light bulb is sitting in the center of one of the chairs on the other side of the room okay you know that's that retainer story yep you know how i feel about center of things didn't you have a story about like an earring

in the driveway or was that somebody that was that was my ex had that story yeah just like things like like also like it was both of them gently like perfectly laid out it wasn't even it doesn't like it's almost to let you know like oh you didn't accidentally drop this and it's not all placed there it's so creepy and it's like when my retainer was on in the middle of a cushion like a pillow decorative pillow and it's like on display on display almost yeah it's so it adds it such and since so many ghosts don't do that when ghosts do do it yeah i feel like they have like a voyeurism intentional yeah like you clearly want to be seen yeah and i'm looking around like oh my god are you trying to watch me find this yeah it's like yeah that also freaks me out because i'm like do you know that i

know now or did you did you put these down gently and then leave? Or have you been hiding behind a tree waiting for me to find them? And you're into me being freaked out. Spooky. Anyway. Um, I don't like that is what I'm saying about the light bulb. Yeah.

Hey, I read the room. Don't worry. Um, so the next day in the kitchen, it really goes from zero to 60. Like that happened like that whole bedroom situation one night. Right. And then the next next day shit is just constant so in the kitchen she's making breakfast and eggs

literally start breaking by themselves or flying across the room or shattering out of nowhere i feel like that must be a ghost's dream though an egg i feel like that's like so fragile oh yeah egg in a light bulb it's like well oh interesting you know it's like so fragile. Oh, yeah. Like an egg in a light bulb. It's like, well. Oh, interesting. You know, it's like, I'll just shatter this. It's pretty easy. Maybe that's why small coins and rocks, it's like easy to throw. I don't know. I always thought that too. I always thought like the lighter it is, the less energy it takes.

And you already have to take so much energy to move anything. To do a little thing. Yeah. So probably the lighter things are more fun. Like you never hear of like a car getting moved. Yeah. Thank God. Thank God.

Can you imagine if you're on the highway and a ghost goes never mind like what um so and then a plate also takes off across the room uh-oh and crashes into the wall so eventually throughout this story so many things are getting moved slash exploding on their own slash uh smashing into walls you know it's a lot of movement by unseen hands this includes items such as jewelry uh pots uh radios clocks plates vases um they're all either getting smashed into things exploding on their own or vanishing and reappearing in new rooms yuck and not knowing what to do about this, because she's like, I don't think the cops would help me.

No. Wow. It's been 100 years, girl. You're still on to something. So not knowing what to do, because she couldn't trust the police. Interesting. She called the newspaper. She was like, at least they'll talk about it and people will hear about it.

As long as we can trust the media. As long as people are talking about me. So she called the Sunday pictorial, a.k.a. the Sunday pick is what it was called. I love that for them. I love that too. You know you've made it when you get a nickname. You know it. And I guess they had at the time been running a series where they were putting out stories of people's personal experiences with the supernatural.

Ooh. And so she was like, aha, you have my attention and I have yours. So she invited them to her house to see for themselves how scary this was. And two reporters come over and they see a bunch of eggs breaking on their own, as well as dishes flying across the room.

Um, and one plate actually explodes in Alma's hands in front of them. Oh, no. I actually have a quote. This is from an article. This is from The Guardian, and this was when the reporters come from the Sunday pick. I just thought it was very well written.

A lot of my quotes, by the way, are from The Guardian in this. So the Sunday pick, as it was known to its readers, dispatched two reporters to Croydon, and as Alma opened the front door to them, they saw an egg fly down the corridor to land at their feet. As she led them to the kitchen, a pink China dog rattled to the floor and a sharp bladed tin opener, like a,

like a can opener cut through the air at head high, head height. Sorry. So a can opener came at their fucking faces. Jesus. In the front parlorlor a teacup and saucer lifted out of alma's hands as she sat with her guests and the saucer spinning and splintering went with a ping as if shot in midair she screamed as a second saucer exploded in her

fingers and sliced her thumb oh my god while the wound was being bandaged the reporters heard a crash in the kitchen and a wine glass had apparently escaped a locked cabinet and shattered on the floor they saw an egg whirl in through the living room door to crack against the sideboard a giant chunk of coal rose from the fireplace grate and sailed across the room inches from the head of one of the reporters and smacked into the wall whoa so they just see it's just it's like beauty and the beast like fucking chaos almost like a circus oh oh mg that's not actually in the notes at all i'm just kind of putting things together i am sensing this okay okay okay but it feels almost like someone would say this is a circus i live in this circus yep uh-huh um so a crowd began forming around um

alma's house after the paper came out oh shit because they were like what the fuck's going on and of course they publish her address yeah free tickets to the circus so one of them was actually apparently a clairvoyant who approached her and said that she was an ectoplasm carrier oh well and i had a nickel and her son is apparently in danger and this thing is after her son which an ectoplasm carrier is if like you're a like a carrier of a gene of it or like you actually hold ectoplasm and you're unaware that you know how to manifest and it's gonna come out your nose like those old egg white things yeah i don't know and also i i only saw this source in one place i didn't see like for all i know she should have just told this to somebody like oh a clairvoyant

came to me and said that i'm ectoplasm good point but i don't know i don't know it's a very unique story ectoplasm carry i've never heard that certainly. Certainly original script. Original. Uh-huh. And the next day's article in the Sunday Pick had the tagline after reporting on her. The tagline was, this is the most curious front page story we have ever printed. So talk about some PR. Talk about headlines. Making headlines. Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then. So the tagline. The papers come out and people are now hearing about this around town. And so only a week later, Nandor Fodor heard about Alma and her supernatural experiences. And I've heard of him before, but I never know how to pronounce his name because he's Hungarian. And anyway, he's apparently... I do know this information he's he's like a big investigator he was a big investigator in during the spiritualist movement um he was kind of on the same page as like harry price and uh sir arthur conan doyle i mean he was

like just a big um investigator into the paranormal I feel like I recognize the name from the previous story. Jeff the Mongoose. Yes. And this was confirmed when I Googled him and it was like, and a talking, and a talking mongoose. So I imagine that is why I recognize his name. Um, so he, uh, he was part of like the, the ghost club, which I'm a part of. he uh he was part of like the the ghost club which i'm a part of he was part of the london spiritualist alliance which i don't think that one's still open anymore he's also part of the

literal fairy society whoa um fairy investigation society is that f-a-e-r-i-e or is that f-a-i-r-y the first one wow um and he also wrote for light which was like a supernatural paranormal magazine that was big at the time um i think that spr is in charge of light or something is it like light like l-i-g-h-t oh we're just gonna keep doing this i don't know or is it like light like like light bright like spiritual light oh no l- no. L-I-G-H-T. Okay, got it, got it. And he also, so his way of going about investigating was that he, so Freud, he was a big fan of Freud. Was that F-R-E-D?

Okay. Sorry. I didn't know what word you were going to say next, so I was just going to fucking do it. So he was a big fan of- Ew, why? Well, at the time, Freud was like the hot shit a genius sure nowadays you know we don't feel questionable it's fine but he so his really his approach was he liked combining supernatural with psychological uh reasoning i love that i liked it too i mean i i like psychology i like supernatural i like

clumping them together but he um he often thought of supernatural events coming from repressed trauma whoa so he was one of those people that thought that you actually are causing the energy around you oh um there's actually a quote um where so this was his his thought which i think it came from a really freudian space um he said as the door to the unconscious swung open fodor reasoned that a suppressed feeling might escape its human host in material form whoa so he thought the like mediums were only more supernatural because maybe they had some like repressed trauma. And so they had like some more like electromagnetic energy around them or something like that. So accessing that trauma or unlocking it will like create a manifestation.

Like your subconscious was more powerful than you were aware of and causing things around you. Yeah. than you were aware of and causing things around you spooky yeah and uh it got him in some hot water every now and then because he was kind of um he it it sounded like he wasn't being very kind to mediums by saying like oh they're just people with a lot of repressed trauma and he sure okay it was just kind of like a i don't know if he meant it that way but it certainly probably wasn't being taken well in the spiritualist community because it was also uh taking away from it was invalidating anything that they had seen right it's sort of dismissing them it was like oh well what happened in your in your childhood right okay i see like i not at all the same but i got a lot of the same

kind of like repetitive experience of like any queer people where it's like oh what happened in your childhood to be queer made you this way yeah again not the same situation but i see what you're saying i can see from being asked that question before yeah i can see how mediums might have been offended if they were like they thought they were doing honest work sure and the answer is like a lot of fucked up shit why you want to know what does that have to do with anything or nothing at all i'm just really good at my job i had 16 kidney surgeries yeah exactly no anesthesia so uh he had actually gotten a lot of personal praise from freud where he had sent freud his work on uh combining spiritualism with uh bringing up repressed interesting childhood memories and freud had

written him back saying like you are making strides in this world love ciggy love monday and so uh when he heard about alma um when nandor fododor, uh, heard about Alma, he went into investigating this with a very particular mindset is that's mainly why I'm describing what his approach was just to let you know how he, he went into this with like, okay, what happened psychologically? Sure. Um, he also wanted to jump on this case really quickly because this was like right after a big wave of spiritualism. So a lot of investigators were going to hear about it and probably come

knocking on her door. And he went to be the first one in also because he had been either, either intentionally or accidentally, um, kind of shit talking about mediums. Yeah. Um, they were not very happy with him.

He actually had just been sued for libel. And so I think he was trying to get back into the good graces and he was like, oh, I can show them that my work is useful. And if I take on this case, then maybe I can like show mediums and clairvoyance and people and spiritualists in general that like I'm not trying to be offensive. I don't know. He was probably shooting himself in the foot anyway by trying to be helpful and probably going backwards on that but yeah but his his mindset was like this is going to be the thing that gets me back in the circle uh-huh and he sent his assistant uh laurie evans to the fielding house and laurie also saw glasses flying around and shattering and by this point alma also told them that a wardrobe had fallen down by itself,

which may or may not have been the same wardrobe that the long-faced man was in. Yep. And it had landed on top of her son's bed. Oh, no. He was not in the bed. But it almost, I'm wondering if this is where we also heard that a clairvoyant said her son's in danger. Oh, yeah. So Lori goes back and tells Nandor um about this experience and nandor decides that

he's going to go to the house he's going to bring his own eggs and glasses and he's going to introduce himself to the spirits by saying these are for you to break almost as like a gift and they apparently break that shit so fast they were like finally someone's giving me toys um and so basically nandor saw the same thing everyone else had already seen then one day it gets even creepier because then george wakes up or george wakes up one morning and he goes to the family and tells them in the middle of the night i woke up to you alma standing over my bed and smiling no and she denied the whole thing no no so that freaked them out fuck and at that point that's when Nandor's like okay Alma come to um my lab

and I'm going to study you two times a week three times or three hours per session so basically six hours per week and she and he was gonna pay her so oh that's nice it was like i just want to like study you and see what's going on and if this stuff is really happening and you're unaware of it i just want to get evidence of it in my lab that this is the real deal and uh each time she came to the lab she was strip searched apparently by women okay makes it better um and then put into basically one big stocking to like hold her down from like her like to like keep her from doing any sleight of hand stuff i guess it's so sure so like a sleeping bag situation yeah okay yeah what's that thing that i keep saying that was like on shark tank where it's like a hug oh my god yeah that keeps coming up in my ads i think

that might be my birthday gift to myself too i want one so bad there's one of robert hershevik like yeah in the on tiktok so i sleep every night with my hands in my pants and my underwear about this i i love like the the my hands being held yeah i put my fingers like that too yeah it just feels nice i feel like even if i if i'm sleeping on here yeah yeah if i'm sleeping on a couch i know my arms aren't gonna fall off the side either that or my arms are up here they're either up or they're down or they're secured there's no in between so um okay so she's basically in like one of those shark tank things pod yeah the hug pod. That's not what it's called. That's what I call it. I call it, it feels like a hug.

It's something about a hug. And I feel like a pee in a pod. Yeah, there you go. Hug pod. What if it is called that? And I just said it's not called that. Is it called? If it is, it was perfectly fucking named.

It's perfectly named. Because we didn't even mean to do that. Yeah. Each time she came to the lab, she was strip searched and basically put into like this little hug pod to prove that she didn't have any tools on her and that she wasn't going to do anything with her hands. Right. Um, another source said she was just put into different clothes than the clothes she was

brought. So I don't know if the hug pod, I don't know how legit that is. Okay. Um, and apparently during all the different times that she had gone to the lab to be studied she was able to conjure or manifest quote coins nuts stones a finch whoa live mice a terrapin which i'm pretty sure is a turtle yeah beetles which is why those little green ones were freaking me out oh no shards of antique pottery an oil lamp and jewelry ew shards of antique pottery, an oil lamp, and jewelry. Ew.

Shards of antique pottery? I don't know why that got me, but, like, what? Yeah. And, like, of all the things. And live animals? Yeah. Yeah, terrapin is a turtle because I think that's the Maryland. Oh, the Terps.

Yes. Yep. Uh-huh. Sports. Hashtag sports. Yeah. Terrapin. oh god oh no yeah so so they're like what's going on how's this happening and interestingly it was so one of those things that i mentioned was jewelry and it is interesting to report that sometimes alma would go jewelry shopping oh decide not to buy something in front of everybody, and yet it would just show up later in the lab. How mysterious.

As one source calls it, paranormal shoplifting. Really? I like that. Really? I like that. Here is actually when they wanted to test out where this jewelry was coming from or how it was showing itself. Nandor and four of his colleagues actually took her jewelry shopping. And here is a quote. Alma, in skittish spirits, agreed to see if her poltergeist could spirit a ring from the local branch of Woolworths. Woolworth my stupid mouth can't say it's a lot it's a lot and at the jewelry counter uh fodar fodar and his uh and his party watched alma select a ring with two stones and a curved bridge

they examined it and then returned it to the assistant it was the nicest ring there alma said but she did not want to buy it today. The shop girl eyed them suspiciously as they moved away. She said, or Fodor said, it looked fishy to her and she followed us. We began to feel uncomfortable. As the group turned into a road near the shop, Alma said that she heard a rattle in the box

that she was carrying. Oh my God. And Nandor took the box from her, opened it up and found the ring she had oh my god and he said my flesh creeped which is how i feel when christine walks in the room but also like why did your flesh creep because like aren't you like supposed to be like a big old researcher figure out why the like i don't i don't know i don't know i don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I feel the same way as you. And it got even wilder in the lab when one day Alma was able to summon, because they were doing seances in this research lab to see if she could conjure anything.

And during one of the seances, she summoned a Persian spirit guide. Oh, dear. Oh, no. Yeah. Uh-oh. Wild in a lot of ways. Also, like, do we know this person was Persian or did someone say they were Persian? A lot of questions.

Also, apparently, this spirit guide had a pet tiger. Oh, of course. He was Persian. And apparently, after each session where she would talk to this Persian spirit guide, when she would leave the room, she would be covered in scratches that was from the tiger. Sure. I think if a tiger scratched me, it wouldn't be a little scratch. I don't think you'd walk out of there. I think I'd be fucked up.

If a tiger scratched you, you'd probably be gone. For sure. Right? for sure right um another time she told nandor that she had a dream that a bat bit her and later showed her the punk showed him the puncture wounds in her neck that he was not there to witness being created so she could have just done it herself yeah which also means she's hurting herself for evidence i'm assuming by the way that none of this happened because all of the sources were pretty clear and the theory that this is not accurate.

I gotta say, I don't think you've covered this before. I don't think I have either. There is no way we would have. I have to go back and listen to the Thor and Heath Poulter guys. Maybe you shouldn't. Honestly, maybe I shouldn't. Maybe just leave it in the past. Maybe no one else listened to it either because I really don't want to find on my birthday.

Nonetheless, I don't want to find out how wrong I was. Dare you. At least once. Could have been right now or 100 episodes ago. Or then. Who knows? I don't want to find out. No.

Let's just assume that that one town happened to have two poltergeists. It's so wild. Here's another thing. One time she claimed to fall into a trance and then she ended up at Nandor's lab where she stood outside and saw a chauffeur standing there. And they think she was astral projecting or she was claiming astral projecting in this trance. So she shows up at the lab. She sees a chauffeur there. And the chauffeur also sees her, even though she didn't know he would be able to.

And then the chauffeur later claimed that he also saw her standing there and it looked like she was a solid full human body oh okay and mandor is like she could have literally just gone there and stood there oh and like the chauffeur saw her and she's telling everyone she wasn't there can you imagine she's jogging up to the front like i'm astral projecting he's like why are you running down the block yeah so i i think the skeptics are like she probably was just there considering i mean she like told everyone she was blind and then she wasn't and she told everyone i feel like there's a lot of things she's telling people and there's really no evidence of it say red flags a lot of red flags sure um and so and it's actually the

the reading the sources of this was very fun because all of them were like trying to very passively be like so she was lying they're like you get it yeah every source was pretty on top of it they were like okay so the theory is that this is all we're all on the same page um so her claims ended up getting darker oh which is fascinating in hindsight because this is a psychological perspective right he was looking from a psychological reference because the things that got darker is she is now claiming that a spirit is forcing itself on her at night oh but if you were playing the freudian game it's almost like she's now getting vulnerable and really talking about something that might have happened oh no assuming that there was repressed memories or

something i don't know what happened assuming that theory based on his theory this is kind of giving him some it's like playing into that theory yes um another one uh here's a random one here's another thing that she's now claiming is that on her last kidney surgery, she died on the table and she's been a ghost. Wait, hang on. What?

And she's partially dead. Oh, sure. And me too, by the way, she's partially dead and has been keeping it a secret. But sometimes when people aren't around, she can float or be invisible. But only when people aren't around she can float or be invisible

but only when people aren't around oh no uh but here's another one that is also from a psychological perspective if that's the route we're going could be telling uh she then tells them that there's a new experience she's been, which is she has the urge to hurt animals. Oh, no. Yeah. She really is a field day. Fuck this. In psychology today. She even reported seeing her cat have an injury and she was worried that she had done it while blacked out.

Oh, dear. Oh, no. And also since no one was around, for all we know, she did hurt the animal. And she's just saying like, Oh, I don't remember. Maybe I did. Oh, this is troubling. Yeah. This is troubling.

Um, so Nandor at the, uh, at this point is wildly aware that Alma is probably making these things up. And as a Freud fan, he believes that it was her way of dealing with repressed trauma. And he said he thought it was probably of sexual nature um and he assumed this because there was a previous case he worked on that was similar to alma's where he was able to conclude the same thing also the fact that one of the things she is now announcing after enough time spent with him is like i'm having fears like that or something like that's happening to me and maybe she was maybe she wanted to talk

about it but she was using this kind of like other storyline to kind of cushion the blow or so she didn't want to face it who knows yeah and also maybe that never happened i don't know but yeah this is the conclusion he came to and one source says that he also had learned after spending enough time with her that she was also grieving two miscarriages. Sorry. Plus growing up sick as a child. And also in this source, it said that her husband may have been impotent and she was sleeping with the lodger in the house. Oh, no. This was like this is quite the scandalous source.

This was like a, this is quite the scandalous source, but in theory, there were a lot of problems or things she was dealing with that could have had her like snap or she would have been using this story as a, I don't know what the right word would be, but she's using this story as a way to cope with everything. Right. And I mean, even like, I'm not saying any of them are true true but even if one of them were true yeah that's a lot like so even if yeah that's but then also remember he recently got sued for libel because he was so i don't know if even this information that we're hearing that he discovered about her and is useful it what was it the 30s right it was the 30s he could just be like oh she did this and she's hysterical guy and she's hysterical and her uterus is all fucked up yeah so she's already like coming up with stories that don't seem right so she is not sounding super valid she's at a disadvantage as far as like she's at a disadvantage men judging the situation he's also at a disadvantage because he's already been known to like not be saying the right stuff so he could be and and he's trying to get in the

good graces of a community he's now been kind of cast out of yeah so he could be just coming up with this shit to make his research look better interesting um and he also at any rate no matter who's right or wrong and in the research next he tells alma before you come to your next session at the lab i'd like you to get an x-ray and he doesn't give her the reason but really he wants to see if she has been smuggling things in despite being strip searched if you know what i'm saying she swallows a couple terrapins or she's putting things up places no not alive animals i don't know oh m okay we don't i don't give you an answer about that unfortunately that's a mystery for you to discover. Um, but so he doesn't tell her that he's just like, oh, I just need you to get an x-ray.

And the x-ray comes back on the same day that she has something heart shaped on her body. And sure enough, at that lab session, she does a seance or something and magically conjures a heart shaped locket. Which I think she had put on up there and then with her hands some sort of sleight of hand pulled it on out in the magic hug what do we call it the magic i thought you were no one would disagree i don't think i mean it's a it's a great euphemism thank you well so she had a heart-shaped locket in her magic hug and she pulled it on out of her magic hug so beep boop bop there we go bada bing bada boom so nandor told his cohorts because he saw the x-ray and then this happened he was like okay folks this is what's going on she's clearly like bullshitting us um but i don't want to study her anymore from

a supernatural like standpoint because she's clearly not this isn't supernatural this is fake right he was like i just want to study her from isn't supernatural this is fake right he was like i just want to study her from a psychological perspective which is like what an insult but also like he's i would too i'd be like i just want to keep watching you this is still fascinating yeah just in a different way yeah so i would have been one of those unethical people and been like yeah that's what we're absolutely doing now but apparently that goes completely against their values and emothy of course it does oh so we're just gonna do a psychological study she has no idea yeah we're just gonna psychologically study this woman but the nosy part of me i'm like okay let's do it

how far does this go oh my god um and so all of the people that were working with him and he was like the chief researcher at this institute by the way and all the people that that were working with him and he was like the chief researcher at this institute by the way and all the people that he was working with they were like this is unethical uh also like we've been noticing that i think one of the things that he did was like something with deception but he was starting to get so desperate to prove his point that he was no longer using proper methods anymore and so they were like this isn't't good. It's going too far. And also now we know she's not a supernatural being. So like, there's no point to this.

And so not only did they halt the investigation immediately, but he was also kicked out of his own lab. Oh no. Yeah. And so despite his desperation to solve the case, he did earn the respect back from some spiritualists. Um, and here's a quote instead of, um, catching her in it and then calling her out and exposing her to everybody. Um, he did not seek to denounce or humiliate her, especially when he was unsure. So he was trying to be more even everything that's in her file, by the way, is, quote, transcripts of his interviews with her and seances with her, lab reports, x-rays, copies of her contracts, scribbled notes, sketches, and photographs. recently for us um an author named kate summerscale got a hold of the notes and wrote a book on all the events and uh called the book the haunting of alma fielding and it was literally published during covid no way so it's brand spanking brand spanking new and in her book she also talks about the relationship that she notices between poltergeist cases and how those spirits most often affect women in in particular wow because if you look back on a bunch of poltergeist cases it's usually

women but it's also often children teenage girls or preteens or servants or enslaved people right or oh people with minimal to no power in the households oh whoa yeah you just gave me goose cam well that's that's miss kate for you and it was a really interesting take which now that i've heard it i'm like duh right but it it was just a really nice way to write in from a current feminist perspective totally to be like yeah a lot of those poltergeist cases obviously aren't true but there might have been a psychological reason for why these people without power were seeking control fascinating and so here's a quote that i thought was really good um also from the guardian and i don't know if this was kate herself or if this was the guardian

speaking about and it was one of them um women had enjoyed a spell of freedom during and immediately after the war when many of them went out to work but the popular press now encouraged them to keep to the home the daily mail even warned female readers against having too lively of a relationship even all the way down to their belongings one paper advertised don't wear a necklace if you're tempted to twiddle with it keep your hanky in your bag it's not meant to be twisted so don't fidget the adhd women were fucking struggling wow did you see the comments in my in that fucking instagram live we did where people were like stop touching your hair stop playing with your hair stop playing oh my god

the daily mail from the 1930s was in our instagram live crazy they knew and then they said um not to be your mom or a bunch of people were like not to be your mom but like stop playing with your hair it looks fine and then my mom who was in europe and i didn't even think she had was awake posted like as your mom yes stop playing and fiddling with your hair and touching your nervous face i i fidget i touch i play with my whatever i don't even notice it anymore everybody made me so self-conscious i can't i get nervous and can't climb stairs so you know we've all got everything so the rest of the quote is the ideal woman was contained composed and restrained but for a woman with psychic powers, or at least pretending to have psychic powers, different rules applied.

A medium could undertake extravagant feats of mobility, astral projection, transfiguration, time travel, levitation, and in doing so, escape the constraints of her gender and her class. Wow. So it makes total sense to me that. Especially it didn't even occur to me that like immediately after the war and during the war, they had their own freedom because all the men were fucking gone. Have you heard that? That happened in the US too. Where after the war, because they said, you know, they had the whole like, you know, go to work. Yeah.

We're women. We can do it. We can do it. We fill in. And then the second the men came back, they were like, anyway, now go home and make pies make pies yeah it was like we we just were holding up the entire economy we literally held the country together we held the fucking country together and were parents and worked and now you're like anyway go back to your fucking it's just the most condescending yes pat on the head of like great now go back and clean the kitchen for your hard work yes exactly go clean

the kitchen yeah yeah and so well it makes sense that also during a wave of spiritualism absolutely that all of them would be like i just found out how powerful i can be without you around and now if you're gonna keep me back in the kitchen like i'm just gonna make moves in a different way and show you that i can still control situations that'll freak you the fuck out absolutely or even subconsciously like even subconsciously yeah even if you didn't even do it on purpose but you were like i need some sort of like control over my surroundings yeah oh my god in the wild so i thought that was a great talking point that i hadn't really heard before i i there's always a way to throw feminism into anything i love it um so although that is a

great talking point the main theory at the time was that alma was an aspiring performer who never got to live out her dream right and she found an audience and began stretching the story to keep her audience interested when she realized that they were hitting dead ends i mean also can't totally i honestly it's literally and what is going on in this room? I record in here three days a week, and this is not an issue I've ever encountered. I feel fear. Okay, let's, I'm almost done. Okay, so, um, so the main thought is that she was an aspiring performer and she found an audience, so she ran with it. Or she could have truly been afflicted by something early on, like she was a little kid and saw the long face man like i've seen shit like she could have really just been especially there is the theory of if you're sicker maybe something was leeching onto you or felt you felt you were vulnerable to something um and maybe your talents only went so far and when you felt like people

weren't interested anymore she all of a sudden was making it much more dramatic just hoping for five more seconds of fame before she had to go back to like working in a kitchen and being a housewife right and so one theory is that it was all bullshit one was that only the second half was bullshit like part of it was true like maybe the x on her or whatever and like she's had some spooky shit happen but she was just desperate for attention when people stopped caring about the real stuff interesting um and so nandor believed that it's probably the second one where at first she was genuine and had some real issues or at least some real experiences and then afterwards it became a hoax when she saw that

people were losing interest sure um and there were many reports early on from witnesses that the phenomenon was real and was authentic. So that does help in that favor that like in the beginning, there is some shit that people just can't explain. And even her own parents and her own family didn't believe in her gifts until a plate literally exploded in like the mom's hands. Right. So even her own family says like it was probably legit

because they couldn't explain some of it but as for like the things near the end like no one really believes so it just got out of hand it just got out of hand i think she maybe liked the limelight too much and took it too far and then everyone was like okay we see through this wow but now that with uh that book that came out in 2020 it's interesting to see why she kept pushing it even though it sounded ridiculous like if there's a connection to like feminism or independence or wanting control and she was like i don't know if they're if what that i don't know what the connection is but it's interesting to now think about it from that framework. Yeah, it could be like, oh, she wanted her own control over her narrative or whatever. Even if she was like, I know I'm being irrational and crazy, but 10 minutes from now, I'm going to have to go back to being a housewife.

Let me just have the attention. I don't know. Throw some eggs against the wall. Throw some eggs against the wall. Make it all right. I think she always, as far as we know know about her she always maintained that everything was real okay what and again like how wild that he was coming at this from a psychological approach and this is the one that i'm most interested in psychologically absolutely so i'm like what were you thinking

girl and the fact that he even said i'm coming at this psychologically but i also think it could have been real and psychological at the same time could have been both wow i feel like his story ended well of like he wanted to be back in the good graces while still being a healthy skeptic totally and i think it worked he found that medium wow okay that was a great story thank you it took forever because we had so many delays with that stupid bug and everything no i feel like i caused a lot of delays as well um i'm gonna tell you my story but i have to refill my wine okay i have a crime story for you i'm very excited okay and because it is our birthdays yes i was like i'm gonna go to on this day in history and just find a criminal with the same birthday oh that's so smart i was like that's my extent of is it the criminal's birthday

or is this the day of the crime this is the criminal's birthday oh so they have a similar astrological chart to you okay got it yes so you i guess have to share the spotlight today that's fine with this criminal i'm used to sharing it with you so it was an adjustment but we're here um so this is the story of cletus hems okay and i feel you found a cletus okay we were just talking about the fucking name cletus i'm glad i feel validated because you really kind of gaslit me into thinking I was crazy. And I really, I, okay. When I was researching this, I said to Blaze, do you know the name Cletus? And he's like, what do you mean? And I was like, do you know that name? And he's like, yeah, I guess. Christine literally acted like, oh, I acted. You really had never heard the name Cletus before. And I said like, Oh, some,

I remember who I was talking about, but I was like, Oh, someone named Cletus. And she was like, that's a real name. And I was like, that's literally such a name.

You were like, Oh, it's such a, like a hillbilly name or like, it's like the stereotype of like a, like Cletus, like a Southern, like whatever.

Hillbilly. Yeah. And I was like, I've, I said, remember, it sounds like a Roman general or something. Hey, any Cletus listening to this is is gonna really like what you had to say because i'm sure i just damaged my relationship

with cletus's cleat i cleat um no i had never heard that name before so when i found this i was like well who do we even know named cleat why were we talking about that you said it was your dad's dog's name oh yeah my dad got a new dog named cletus and i said what is he like a rome in general and you were like he's a dog from the sticks actually but what are you talking about no cletus i think probably fits him anyone that lives in that area and you were like isn't that a name from the simpsons yes it is i looked it up it is definitely a name from the simpsons it's kind of the like hick guy a stereotype as someone who lives in kentucky i was like how have i never yeah honestly embarrassing you're about to you're gonna run into like 10 cleatus cleat high they're gonna feel like you never heard of me but that's the part where i you told me this i never

heard it and then i did you think i was fucking tricking you? No, no. But then I started researching like, oh, what story should I do? And that came up. And I was like. Ring, ding, ding. Seriously. Like, what are the odds? Anyway, so you're right.

I'm going to start suddenly start meeting people with that name probably. So anyway, share us a birthday with you. Great. Sorry to do it. So we don't know much about his early life, but we do know he was born and raised in a small town in the south. I guess I'm not surprised by that information now. Tracks. He was described as charming, made friends easily.

Someone described him as a pillar of the community. Uh-huh. Well, that'll do it. Red flag. He even used to be a reverend. Had like a reverend shtick going but he worked as a programmer um and he traveled a lot for work uh it seemed like nobody i don't know the vibe i got was that people didn't completely know what he did for work because they just all said he was a

programmer and i feel like that's a very vague term and again i don't know much about programming programming what i don't know future i feel like a computer programmer and a cletus don't connect that's the part maybe that's the part maybe i just have um also maybe i'm being maybe i'm biased you know maybe i'm being a dick to cleetai exactly one day cletus was out on a business trip when his girlfriend eileenileen Betzels, got a call from his work. And they asked if he was available. And Eileen, confused, said no, he is on his work trip. And they were like, where?

And she was like, Northern California. And his co-worker was like, he's not on a work trip. At least not for us. Oh, shit. Yeah, we don not on a work trip, at least not for us. Oh, shit. Yeah, we don't have a work trip on the schedule. And that's when Cletus's lies began to unravel. Hmm. Hmm.

I'm not a programmer. I'm not. Or a reverend. Or a reverend. Or a pillar of the community. Now, one of those is true. True truth is a lie you know um so rather than this is my favorite part of the story because i feel like this often goes the other direction

oh rather than let cletus know she was onto him eileen was like no everything's fine everything's normal so when he would call she would be like oh no everything's normal like she didn't say like why are you not on a work trip like she was like i'm gonna get to the bottom of this but pretend she was doing the sneaky thing she was doing the christine move that's like such a christine move thank you my favorite thing has been christine is so smart that she plays dumb she does it all the time it's my favorite it's my favorite especially when she's talking to men. It's my favorite activity. And she goes, I'm sorry, I'm just a little confused.

Can you just explain that to me again? I love it because you are kind of implying that you have a stupid female brain, if one at all. And you're just like, I'm sorry, I'm just so confused. Can you explain that to me again? I'm sorry, I'm just so dumb. Can you say it again in easier words? And slowly. And slowly. And then they're like, I can't. And I'm like,'m just so dumb. Can you say it again in easier words? And slowly. And slowly.

And then they're like, I can't. And I'm like, what a surprise. It's my favorite. I've literally, we won't say names, but there have been times where I've literally watched Christine. Tell me in advance. She's like, I'm going to fucking say this and get the truth out of them. And there have been men who have tried to trick us. We have been.

Those sneaky little bastards. We have been almost bamboozled by someone's words and had we not called them out but christine was i was like literally this guy said this and christine was like i'm gonna play stupid and then make him re-explain it to me and catch himself in that stupid love that game it's so fun but sometimes you're so good at it they're so dumb though that's the problem well it's not it's not even that i'm good at it wait a minute are we talking about the obvious wait what wait a minute hang on there have been moments where they'll be like i just talked to em about it and i'm like oh really i'll be like no you did that em is two feet from me and has been because it was a great

day we're on a road trip yeah and i go oh you did just talk to em about it oh weird what did they say oh give me more information yeah explain it to me well hang on let me turn on my phone recorder okay say more say more say more um yeah love that game anyway anyway okay so eileen is a little christine eileen gets it um so she's she's with the like, don't even fucking worry. Everything's normal. But she started looking for clues, started looking through all her shit. Oh, well, that's also very Christine.

Yeah. It's like, while I'm here, I might as well learn about everything. So she goes through all the cabinets because, okay. What? I'm trying to defend her here. Well. Because she hears, oh, what work trip from the coworker? And is like, bullshit.

I have to imagine she had some sort of inkling that this guy was lying to her. Okay. Because why else would you be like, okay, I'm just going to go through all his shit because he's hiding something. I don't know. I I mean whether or not I think you'd find a reason to do it I don't know but I lead but I feel like you'd be like well we could I feel like they're hiding something I don't have any evidence I like you're like I'm going to defend her when it's like you're probably the same person so at this point that's fair that's fair okay so she pretends everything's hunky-dory she starts looking for

clues she starts going through all his shit um in the cabinets etc she is going through the kitchen sorry is there a bug yeah you know he's been bugging me oh but continue without comment because you don't deserve it i'm gonna pee my pants okay i'm gonna get on another plane and leave don't blame you i don't what what was with the quickness to that that was so smooth so idiotic is what it is um so she goes through some cabinets she finds a box of tea that has been in there for years but for some reason has never been thrown away much like this creepy demon that is on your cake that was never thrown away she opens up the box of tea and she finds

a key okay okay she's never seen this key before. So she goes throughout the house to see if it matches any of the doors. Are you laughing because it's embarrassing how similar you are? It's embarrassing, ain't it? Did you know that in Spanish? Are you just reading a diary entry from like three days ago that you wrote? This is my live journal. Surprise! Huh.

I played dumb. Then I looked through everything. Then I found a key and opened every door. And when you know it, I swear to God, there's a lemon in this. Sorry. Can you imagine? No, but I might try to insert one. What is it?

A lunar lemon. Your little eel gnome or whatever. Eel gnome. Oh, penne a la gnome. Penne a la gnome. That's actually really good. Honestly, it sounds good. It's actually really good.

Okay. Sorry, this gets disturbing. So we'll get there shortly. So she goes through all the cabinets, blah, blah, blah, finds finds this key and she does not know what the fuck it goes to so she drives out to their vacation cabin this is where they spend summers she what did you do next christine so they had this sort of like cozy cottage situation. And he had always told her this would be. What?

This is the perfect place for us to get away from it all and be, quote, closer to nature. I almost wrote hashtag. Closer to nature. Uh-huh. Okay. Red flag. Red flag. Red flag.

Red flag. Closer to nature, a.k.a. aka in the woods in the fucking woods okay okay so it seems really sinister now even though in the past she just fucking believed that he wanted to just be closer to nature so she has no idea what to expect she goes into the cabin um and sees nothing so she had this key and she was like, I feel like it has to go somewhere. So she searches around the cabin. And the only thing that seemed odd was a sort of like mildewy weird smell. But she was like. It's a fucking lemon.

She was like somewhere out in the woods. So she heard a noise. It's a lemon. You tried. I tried so hard. To be fair, I knew it wouldn't go very far so two bullets so what she searched around the cabin the only thing that seemed odd was the sort of mildewy smell but she chalked that up she chalked that up to being out in the woods.

Then she heard a noise. It sounded almost like a low rolling sound, like someone was rolling a ball or a marble around. She looked everywhere but couldn't figure out where it was coming from. Then she realized it was coming from underneath her. She started rolling up the rugs. She rolled up a particular buffalo plaid rug and found a trap door with a staircase. She bravely, or stupidly, climbed down the stairs.

At first, all she could see was a bed if zach bagans crawls out from out of the bed i'm gonna lose my fucking mind but then she noticed there was someone hiding under it oh my god she described them as looking worn and haggard the first thing she blurted out was who are you and the person said, My name is Zach Bagans. Is that in the notes? Let me see your stupid computer. Her name was Chloe Fisherman. Oh, okay.

Threw me off there. Was she eating bagel bites? Something's going to happen. Chloe's voice sounded muffled. When Eileen looked closer, she realized Chloe was trapped in some sort of glass case. Oh, for fuck's sake. Chloe Fisherman. Don't even say anything.

Hang on. Chloe. C-H-L-O-E. I know lemon's in there. What else is it? Don't even say it. I want to figure it out myself. Because I know it's stupid.

Hang on. I want to figure... Hang on. Chloe. hang on i would have it would hang on chloe fishermen okay get rid of the l e o uh-huh i don't i it's christine and lemon isn't it no hang on fishermen with an e and uh E. And Chloe without the H. I like how you had to come up. They had to get that creative. She has an alternative spelling. Uh-huh. Mom?

What does he call you? It's my last name. Is it Schieffer? For fuck's sake. Oh my god. Oh my god. my god okay chloe was trapped in some sort of glass case this is a crime this fucking story call the police i already did on myself not only that but chloe wasn't a human yeah she was a lemon a beautiful mummified lemon whose mother the hersene shifter was missing her like crazy

you see what did cletus do what did cletus the reverend do cletus hems had been using his business trips to find his victims oh that's a clever sweat uh spin poor eileen soon found out that nothing she knew about cletus was true even his name cletus hems was an acronym for the m schultz aha honestly genius that you got cletus i screamed honestly i also kind of gonna enter i want to scream but i need to process at first i screamed i it works it's so cool it actually is a cletus spelled the right way c-l-e-t-u-s amazing yeah honestly that's amazing i was shocked cletus what hems h-e well the name last name doesn't really make sense but with a z h e h m z whatever wow the fact that you got cletus to work is out of control shocked because it was right after we

talked about it so odd never heard the name before and thank god for inga's anagram generator because that's what i used for yours wow inga i literally i literally used inga earlier to try to figure out leona's changed our life no i know it's gnocchi the gnocchi the gnocchi okay what did i say earlier pasta pasta no pasta no okay pan all I know penny all I know fucking Inga or whatever her name is she Inga is on it she really is and it really you she figures it out as names like it's really it's literally it's meant for shit that we've been doing by the way but I feel like you're not getting the credit you deserve but I do so dumb I mean you know. I mean, you know what? I kind of had a hunch earlier. I knew you did.

Because I literally said like, oh, we should do something. Should we do notes? We could do something different for our notes. And you were interested in doing our notes more than winging it. And I was like, that's not the Christine I know. On what planet would I ever say let's do work? I was like, she's up to something. What is Eileen?

What's that one? Okay, hang on. Oh, okay. I need to tell you first the fate of cletus oh god cletus hems was convicted of one count of lemon napping in the first degree only one count amazing i really got off only one yeah but i had a plea a plea deal or something to be fair you're now imprisoned in burbank california cellmate Trey Songz with an S, of course. Obviously. And about two dozen cockroaches. That's the L that I deserve, obviously.

Okay. And Chloe Fisherman is Lemon Cheever. Cletus Hems is Emma Schultz, or the M Schultz. And Eileen Betzels. Eileen Betzels. I was trying, Eileen Betzels. Is it Allison? No.

It has to be you, but I don't know what. It's not me. And it's not Allison? No. Eileen Betzels. Betzel has a Z in it, yeah? Yep. Who else do I know with a fucking.

Zach Bagans. Nope. Who? Do I want to keep guessing? Elizabeth Olsen. Your girlfriend. I'm sorry, Allison. I just had to do it wow that was actually my favorite part of the whole story you you nailed it oh wow oh my gosh ah that's so fun I'm trying not to scream because you have a baby but like that really that was exact that really

got me going and I will say there were so many time like i had actually written an entire true crime story that was like way more disturbing but then i was like that i committed yeah and i was like this is kind of not funny because it's like oh i like how in your wildest fantasy with all the creativity in the world i'm like more fucked up than anyone it was too far what was the crime so it was like breaking into okay it was breaking into a hotel room and kidnapping someone named chloe fisher oh shit okay that's bad and it was like oh and i literally was googling ways to break into hotel rooms which by the way uh new anxieties unlocked um and so i found like, like I literally had like 15 bullet points that were like, and he used a whatever generator to unlock the key card, blah, blah, blah. And she woke up to him standing at the edge of her bed.

And I was like, this is, I mean, too far. The only reason I'm beaming is because it's not true. But like also go me, like look at the power. For like a fake story, I i was like to be like just kidding it seemed a little like actually it's you yeah you did that fun um it seemed a little too far so i kind of had to like rewind and do like um oh man can you imagine if you did that and i also did the leona story man no no no it was perfect perfect. Oh, but I love that you made it. We did the same thing for our 30th. Again, once again, the day you did that, I wrote in my calendar.

Oh, you poor thing. I did. I wrote in my calendar. You've had a year to think about this? Oh, my gosh. I feel so bad for your stress level. No, no, no, no. I did that thing where I was like, hey.

I'll worry about it then. Let's pretend it doesn't exist. Yeah. Until 10 days ago. Did you get like a calendar alert oh i did every day for the past two weeks i put it in my calendar um home slice is that a fucking ladybug on your wall girl what is going on you live in the jungle i swear to god jumanji is happening i'm not kidding girl i've seen like at least a dozen bugs in here today can i tell you my brother and i've recorded in here three times maybe neither of you use your eyes and i'm the

one noticing things maybe but the buzzing i would have heard although maybe it's because it's nighttime and it's dark out oh and the lights are bringing them in yeah sorry i didn't mean to take away from obviously your no it's not a surprise no are you kidding me this is so nice anyway i feel so bad that i literally i started this episode with like um i didn't even know finish no because i feel like it uh it was also that thing of like i am gonna do a story but it's a crime so it's a little awkward because i can't make it super dark like how do i make it funny without bombing everyone out right but i had to make it up but it has to be real so i sound real yeah so it was a very weird um little turn of events but anyway honestly cletus

the fact that you and it was not intentional by any means and i saw cletus and i shrieked i would have i totally would have to fuck do you know i was hoping for that moment with the with trying to it's so funny did you come up with that name today no because i was literally on the plane trying to figure out the leona thing on that anagram website and i it would have been funny if it was happening at the same time i was like what the fuck are you two doing why are there all of a sudden two people on here at the same time people are disturbed well like so I wanted that moment with Leona. I was trying to find a name.

I can't believe you found Lemon. That's pretty good. I'm surprised you haven't realized yet that Lemon is in her name. I did. I even wrote in the initial Instagram post to get ahead of it. I wrote like, yes, Em has told me that it's one letter away. I even honestly sacrificed the name Renee. I was just looking at her first and last name.

Girl, you got to pick a different letter next time or something because that kid has so many L's and E's and her stupid name. Like I, I was like, honestly at this, like it was all L's, E's and N's. Yeah. And so I was like, how do I make up a name? Like Len, Len, Len, Len, Len, Len, Len, Len, Len, Len, Len, Len. I'm just trying to make it happen. Oh my my gosh that's so fun okay the other thing what is that i couldn't come up with a name until i put the m schultz of course so i tried i tried m schultz and it was like a couple things but i was like not much to do with eight letters obvious yeah so the m schultz really like opened up some doors for me me too that's how i got that blue check but the in front of everything it

looked real official that is me um so anyway i i figured you would figure out pretty quickly which is why like it's a short story two bullets after you uh were like i know what's happening i was like well this is a lemon also love that you speaking of like the psychological approach the way that you know yourself so well. I mean, you really wrote your character. Which is embarrassing because I never. You wrote your personality down in like three bullets. I literally never would have thought of that until you were like, wow, what a Christine move.

And I was like, oh. Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. You're not, you don't even realize how much you show. The fact. Or how much you know. The fact that I was like, and it was awesome how she did this.

And you were like, that sounds like something you would do. And I'm like, wow. So I'm just sitting here going, what an awesome protagonist. She fucking crawled into the basement like a dumbass. Honestly. Well, I, so for a second I did think I was like, oh, maybe this is about me. But then you said Cletus and I was like like how on earth would that name have gotten here because i well the only reason i thought anything was because you said like no we should do our notes and i was like i know i was

like there's got to be a reason and i was like we're doing our birthday episode maybe she worked really hard on a birthday story and then when you said it was just kind of like a random story i was like there's got to be something else to it and i heard the name and i was like oh that's funny and i was like honestly maybe it's just because cletus and i you you double tricked me out of it it's a good guess until you brought up a character that sounded exactly like you and then i was like this fucking the third time when you were like wow again it's you i was like all right i gotta say it's a lemon they found a lemon you really like you you you outsmarted me and i gave up and i was like oh it's just because someone's name was Cletus and that totally works.

And then I was committed to not even trying to figure it out. But you really described yourself perfectly. And I was like, aha. Well, that's where we are now. Love that I'm Lizzie Olsen in this story. Good for me. Yeah. Hmm.

I didn't think about that. But I will say that was without question my favorite part of the whole story. I will say I tried to make it the coworker, but I was like i can't because no that was that would be me the co-worker but i couldn't that was super smart also it was super smart to pick a name that wasn't you because i would have probably tried to figure it out i figured it was because you've done herzene shifter you've done all the anagram inga has given you all the confirmation can you sponsor us can we sponsor you yeah, hang on a second. No, man.

Oh, wow. Elizabeth Olsen. See, that one I did not see coming. Hercene Shifter and Cletus Hems. So those are our names now. Someone make shirts. What a dumb. And then someone make a little onesie that says Penneola Gnome or something.

The Lunar Lemon. The Lunar Lemon. I really do love that. That's really cute. I was like, that could totally be a name lunar lemon the lunar lemon i love it there was just some extra letters like half of them like most it's like it's not good enough uh inga find some other words for us this is your job inga she by the way if anyone needs an anagram you fucking check out you check out inga she worked hard i'm so proud that we both used inga's page i'm so proud that we've both done stories about each other.

So silly. And I like how the whole story was just me, just fucking Lemon. I knew the second I said, if Lemon shows up and then you laughed a little too hard, I was like, yeah. And I laughed so hard. And then I was like, can you imagine? Can you imagine? What a silly sight.

You know what I did think might happen though? My brain on the plane. I was like, if she did a story a story i wonder i wondered if you were going to revisit the america's herstein shifter and you were like the story was gonna be like i ran into the shifter and this is what happened and this is the the um that's the sequel to the story where lizzie olsen like takes her mask off and it's the shifter done done done we figured it out that's part three yeah i love that that was so nice i feel so loved i'm so glad um i'm sorry that it was so chaotic and uh that's how it's got out what are we shocked

no can you imagine a clean story about us no forget it um so thank you for watching and or listening um i guess we'll do a little aftermath episode for patreon yeah that'll be fun of prezzy oh i really love that story i feel like you're not getting enough praise for no no no no such a good story it was not that good and what are you talking about and i um i'm trying to think of the other things i put in there that were like little homages just so you the buffalo flag the buffalo actually i added that after you figured it out because i was like i was gonna put that i was like it's too obvious but then once you figured out i was like the second you said chloe fishman i was like i know that means something chloe that's a clue man

that's a stupid fact that lemon schieffer works turns into chloe fisherman with no questions asked inga was like oh i got you and i was like girl we're all gonna fuck it up together girl what um and so anyway small town in the south I'm trying to think if there's anything I said like oh you share a birthday um oh he used to be a reverend you know that already and also we um it's a job that nobody can really understand

yeah really understanding I always struggle with the podcast his family didn't know what he did for work yeah yeah yeah um I did uh google produce or podcast producer synonyms and program working stupid rhyme zone's a good place to go excellent yep um and then i said northern california work trip that was um we found lemon in san jose i didn't pick up on that um stupid it's funny as if you named lemon jose i would have literally never picked up on it found in a tea a box of tea i was like oh tea's cool obviously it didn't even

cross my mind speaking of tea i keep eyeing this candle yeah it's my favorite one i burn that every time it's earl gray it's lennon fog smell yes i burn it every time. It's Earl Grey. It's Lennon Fog Smell. Yes, I burn it every time we record together. Yeah, it's almost empty already. That's so nice. Isn't it cute? Wow. I feel very loved. I guess maybe I should tell you next time I do things like that. I wonder if you

storm off after we record and you're like, Em didn't even notice the scent that was filling the room. Honestly, I'm too busy watching Squidward's brain get nailed to a wall. Blaze tried. I don't know if this is in the episode, but Blaze tried to get that bug and he was like, Squidward is nailed to the wall. I can't get him to move this bug.

You know, for being nailed to the wall, you did absolutely align him perfectly. I feel like he's pretty level. Honestly, I've never appreciated a compliment more. Thank you. What is the story with this guy? Oh, oh my God. That is the, let me just make sure I get the, um, so that is a diorama from the Civil War Tales at the Homestead Diorama Museum.

And I do want to point out that tales is spelled T-a-i-l-s oh what are these animals oh they're doggies they're cats they're cats and i will tell you that the um civil war tails museum is located in gettysburg pennsylvania and it is a unique museum featuring handmade miniature soldiers in dioramas of civil war scenes are you reading that off of something yeah oh okay it's like wow you're really selling it it is in comic sans and all the soldiers are cats where did i feel like you're really not giving us any context into like how you discovered this okay like why is it here okay who bought that for you or when did you go irrelevant no uh you just find it in all the streets my brother and i did an episode on beachy sandy of uh obscure museums oh and so

we wow that makes so much more sense the umbrella museum we did a bunch of music i love the umbrella museum i'm sorry it was not the umbrellambrella Museum. It was the Umbrella Cover Museum. Now that is something I could get into. Is a real thing where they literally, it's in Maine, of course, and it's a museum just of the covers of umbrellas. That's so cruel. Cool. That was a literal gruel moment. It's a gruel. It's so gruel.

So gruel. It's so gruel. And so I found this, somebody emailed us and said like oh here's a civil war tales t-a-i-l-s and so i read a few reviews of that and so for uh i think it was either christmas or my last birthday i don't remember i think it's my last birthday alexander got me this little die a personalized diorama and it's juniper and moonshine and you get to pick if they're confederate soldiers or union soldiers because it's a civil war diorama okay fair i don't know if that's fair yeah so they're little union soldiers okay thank you thank you for i mean the blue obviously but

yeah although it wasn't confederate blue confederate was red i thought oh maybe girl please don't do this to me on camera oh my god uh union's blue right i think you're right if it's not wasn't confederate gray confederate's gray with the shitty flag on the hat on the helmet or something wow well unsurprising to anyone america failed us america has failed us um blue is union yeah blue is union yes and gray is civil war so i think i got thrown off but yes you're right blue is union and i'm right because blue is okay and look they even um they put them and alexander was like it was a little alarming because they sent this and they're like the cats are like screaming into battle it's very alarming they're really going ah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah kill the racists so it's a little creepy um yeah so i

appreciate the intricacy isn't it fun so they handmade that. So here's... Why did it rattle? Oh, I don't... I don't know. Oh my God, I'm so sorry. So here's what we do on and that's why we drink officially. I would like you to do the behind the scenes

of Beach to Sandy here. Oh, it's really chaotic. And I gotta ask, do you... Like, what happens if you looked at obscure museums and because they're so small, like, what if the reviews

are only bad like were there like were there bad reviews were they we only read bad reviews that's the whole point i know but i feel like if it's a small business like no so that's kind of okay like you're still hyping them up i guess no no you're getting to the you're getting to the to the nitty gritty of it which is that we find bad reviews but it's like the dumb ones where you're like okay oh it's a one star view by like a karen figure okay where it's sort of like oh really a one star review for a second i was like because these people obviously really try no no no i feel so bad for them honestly the way we frame it is always like oh we're these are other people not us 99% of the

time it's like oh we're making fun of theer. Like the joke is like the people who are reviewing it in such a ridiculous way. And so we're kind of highlighting the businesses. Like a lot of times it'll be these have gotten old and we don't really do these anymore. And we did have like a COVID special during COVID where it was like, you know, mask. We don't do that anymore because it's gotten so old. That's all I needed to hear. Yeah. Got it.

But there were reviews. Still to this day are reviews. Like we just did cat cafes and there was a review where it was like, they are discriminating against me and my Second Amendment right. Like just like to bring a gun. I see. That's all I needed. And it'll say to bring a gun into this cat cafe. And you're like wow so it's

always someone who has their little people painted red in their living room or that's someone who wrote that right their cats on their horses are painted in a gray gray uniform yeah yeah yeah so anyway that's kind of do you have a favorite idea a favorite place so far that you've covered oh i feel like you probably get that look that question no i never get that question actually like a favorite place that you actually want to visit and a favorite place with the best worst reviews wow m that's a great question i do feel like the obscure museums was such a gold mine because there are so don't be alarmed the door behind you is opening but i think a cat is coming in thank you can you turn and look yeah juniper thank god because the door behind you that scared me so much more than if the door was gonna open sorry the door just started like and i was like if emma sees that out of the corner of their eye yeah um i feel like we're

already doing the bonus footage i know we are i'm sorry this is this is like a sneak peek um no i don't know i think i think my favorite ones are just the kind of random obscure ones i just love the like i think obscure museums might have been my it's a good topic in general i could i could i would go on a first date and talk about that right that's a great topic there were so many where and our i also liked american girl doll cafes you find some weird fucking people but yeah i don't want to visit those it was more like i do because i want to witness i want to pull a nandor photo and just stare at people just do a psychological study on everyone everyone at the american girl doll cafe what are you ordering like what's the

what's the top sale sandwich there? What's happening? Like, do they name their sandwiches after the dolls? Do you have dolls sitting at the table you can eat with? If you bring the doll. Do you get a discount? Do you get a discount? Do they get anything?

Also, do you get to go if you don't have a doll? What if you're an adult? Can you go without a doll? Oh, it's not even a restaurant that's attached to the store. No. Oh, it's not even a restaurant that's attached to the store. No. Oh, that's weird. I literally thought it was like a, buy your doll and then also here's a cafe. Oh, I don't know.

Like a cafe in the store, like a Barnes and Noble, Starbucks. No, they're like a full restaurant. Oh, that's so odd. Yeah. First of all, that sounds like a wasted business opportunity to not also sell dolls there. They might sell dolls as well, but I do know that their business for the cafe is like it's a full-scale restaurant like you bring your doll we have to go well you and xandy have to go but then second round we have to go no way why not i'll go and tell you about it you and xandy go maybe that's what i that's how i loop myself into beach to

sandy maybe i actually go to the locations after you've reported on them you can be our on the scene reporter i would love to do that. You would be so good at it. If you ever need both content, I'll happily fly to any location. I think Allison and I are too anxious to do it, and you would- I'd happily do it. I know. I would have a blast at the American Girl Dog Cafe. Are you fucking kidding me?

You would show up and just report back, and we'd be sitting here like- I'd be like, all the reviews were wrong. It's fucking amazing. It's the best. And you would- I'll be the redemption episode where I just hype everything you would give it honesty hour and a plus all the shitty reviews if you ever need me to get on a plane and go somewhere with an american girl doll sandwich i would happily go for you i'm not saying people should say anything about that i'm just saying if we're i'm just saying if

you think it's a good idea why don't you write into beach and sandy at gmail i'm just saying if i'm already going to a city and you've reported on something there i might pop by why the fuck not i might pop by and why shouldn't you just address an email to beach sandy gmail.com and write dear zandy schieffer i'm gonna actually dm them on my verified account so they actually notice me and see what happens from there whoa do you think that'll work i don't know i hear they're pretty picky about who they like actually speak to well well one of them talks to a lemon so it can't be that hard i just peed my pants is that what happens at 31 help me that's what happens when you birth a child

okay i don't want to do that part no no it's uh i wouldn't recommend it anyway thank you everyone for listening are you still here listening. Are you still here? What are you doing here? And that's why we celebrate our birthdays. Happy birthday. We're both in our 30s. I want to die. We're so elderly.