And That's Why We Drink - E279 Burnt Microphones and the Hauntland

Episode Date: June 12, 2022

No AC? No worries! This week, in episode 279, the ghosts will keep you cold. Today Em brings us the tale of the Becker family haunting aka the first televised exorcism. Then Christine covers a big one with the story of Richard Chase, also known as the vampire of Sacramento. We've also got some birthday updates that spill over into our Patreon after chats. And always, please remember the important parable: if you give a man a birthday card, the end... and that's why we drink!

I just wanted to see how long it would take you to switch off. Hi. Hi, Christine. How are you? How are you? Oh, you know, 30 flirty thriving. How are you feeling? I, fuck, I knew it.

I knew it. That's why I paused. I had an intro I was going to do and I forgot. What was it? Okay, let me try again. Oh, God. Let me try again. Em, you look different.

Okay. How long were you working on that bit it only took me a few hours while i couldn't sleep in the middle of the night i thought you were gonna like play like the music to like the cryptkeeper or like something that would have been good i was just gonna be like you look i was gonna say like something i forget i had it all planned out. Obviously, it went down the tubes. Well, I do look different. The day I turned 30, I now have a white eyebrow hair. I did see that. I didn't see the eyebrow hair.

I did see the post about the eyebrow hair. And I am sorry, but you know what? Hey, the worst is over, right? Like now you're fine. Oh, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure. Yeah, the worst, definitely. I don't know if it's the worst for you has only begun because now i can officially start complaining about turning 31 so

but that's that's it never ends you can't just do that every year that's so annoying you can't just you can complain about the big ones i can and i might i don't know i like to keep you on your toes we'll see how things go depending on my, I'll just ruin everyone else's mood and just be like, ah! How was your birthday? This has to be a positive topic, right? It was a positive. It is a positive topic. Overwhelming. But like, exactly. That's, overwhelming is a good thing to me often. It was a lot. I feel like your birthday was incredibly low-key and mine was as high as ever yeah yeah i feel like so i'm watching selling sunset right now and like a season ago one of them got engaged and she brought like a zebra to the engagement party and

that's that's kind of like the level of unnecessary i'm always aspiring for and i it's a little bit literally bring like horses to your, or zebras or something to one of your parties? Isn't that a thing? She brought horses to, um, my, like, it was like one of those pony ride situations, but she, she, and I'm sure I appreciated it at the time, but I was literally so young. I don't even remember it. So it was kind of for nothing sorry mom photo I mean I feel like literally no photos for all I know she's fucking lying but whatever oh she could just wait a second I'm gonna do that someday oh yeah I rented out the whole zoo for you Leanne you just

don't remember and my phone wasn't working that day so well so my mom actually she does have a record of lying to me on my birthday because um um, when I was three, we lived in San Francisco and we did live right next to one of the studios where they shot Barney. So I was like one of the luckiest fucking children on earth at the time. Holy shit. And I, if I said like, oh, Barney's like across the street, I wasn't totally lying. We were pretty close to like, uh, whatever studio it was that they shot for a while um and my mom for my fourth birthday or my third birthday whatever it was um she was like oh we're gonna have barney come over like just stroll on over after his like nighttime walk through the streets

i guess and they were like well he just lives right by. So he's just going to pop on over. And it ended up, of course, being some guy in a costume. And the costume, by the way, in hindsight, like 20 years later, the pictures are horrendous. Like it was the cheapest Barney costume they could have found. His head was like half deflated. But at three, I was convinced. I was like, this is the real deal. And I my mom had had me believe it so well that she couldn't back out of the lie and all the way until I was like in high school I thought it was the legitimate

Barney that she hired so for all I know my god you were one of those people in high school was like no I swear to god like somebody famous I know somebody famous it's Barney yeah we we still text um but uh no I so for all I know the horses were not real but allison this year uh delivered on my 30th with the zebra no not with the zebra but i i cried a lot wow a lot yeah she made it pretty darn emotional um so she did a good job and then my mom uh made of had everyone i think i've ever known on earth send in a video wishing me happy birthday. And then it was literally like a feature film length. I was wondering, because I sent in a video and it was like three or four minutes, like just, you know, like a cameo length of video.

Thank you for your cameo. You're welcome. I almost linked your mom to my cameo. And then I was like, that's not funny uh so I did my hysterical if it had the little cameo watermark in the bottom she would have lost my mind she was ready to kill me anyway because mine was so delayed but um I I did my three minute four minute video and then I was like oh my god if everyone is submitting and I had to like edit mine down to make sure it was like shorter I'm like if everyone is submitting one of these it's gonna be like several hours long this video well it was our generation was not the problem as you can guess

it was all the people who own phones and have never done any version of video uh quality control um because they were just they were given no time limit they were given no landscape or portrait they were just they were riding on the devil's flames and they just so I had an uncle who talked for I think 15 minutes oh my goodness I apologize because mine was so freaking long it was like three minutes long and I felt so bad everyone our age understood the assignment I think it was very I'm very grateful and I don't want to sound like i'm not appreciative but i was like wow i really wish some of them got some more rules sent to them i feel like this is one where i almost again texted like landscape or portrait and i was like okay i don't think i think she would have specified if this should be like if

you want to send a portrait of you at a landscape that'd be yeah yeah yeah, yeah. An oil portrait, maybe? Oh, boy. Well, I'm so happy you had a happy day and a happy weekend. I did have a happy day. And I maybe we can talk about this more in our bonus episode afterwards after this. Because I do want to give you the details on the birthday, but my story is a little long. So I don't want to be that person and make it as chaotic as last episode. Okay, so should we both give our birthday stuff next or in the aftermath? Cause I want to talk about mine a little bit. I want to ask about yours cause I saw pictures, but I don't, um, all I know is like what you texted me, but I kind of want to, um, Hmm.

Play detective and ask you too many questions. Well, I, yeah, I don't want to like take up time, but I just want to give, um, a little, a little credit to blaze cause he worked really hard on it. And, um, he also't want to like take up time, but I just want to give a little credit to Blaze because he worked really hard on it. You want to tell everyone what he did? I didn't mean to like shut you up. I was just saying for mine. No, no, you didn't. I just realized our birthday episode already was so freaking long, so I don't want to overdo it with talking about ourselves.

But here we are. Why not? Oh, wait, hang on. No, so he, well, first of all, I want to admit something to you i have a confession that has nothing to do with our birthdays i don't believe you what i you know that coffin candle i lit it before we recorded but to appease everyone i took it off the shelf and put it on the table what this is this will show you how good of a listener i am as you were telling like about halfway through your story i looked over and i realized that when i had shifted and moved my

microphone i had swung the back of my microphone directly into the flame and i was like what's that smell and the plastic was like off of the microphone stand um and i just kept listening to your story so honestly i appreciate the hmm i don't know if loyalty is the right word but certainly the the dog to a squirrel uh attention i don't know i appreciate your undivided attention i guess divided uh and i just noticed that it was like dripping so as soon as i made sure nothing was like fully on fire um and everything had calmed down a little bit i just kept so it's still the candle's still going strong um but i had to microphone out of the way uh sorry i just wanted to point that out i know that room has white carpet

that's a bold move with a black candle that. To have knocked it over and almost caught so many fires with it. Okay, wow. Yeah, we're going to get some. Oh, man. See, I was just trying to appease everybody by putting it in a stable surface, and then I swung my microphone stand directly into the flame. I love you. I don't know of all people why I was allowed to move into a house from the 1800s.

Like, this is just a disaster. You're going to be the reason that house doesn't exist anymore one day. They're either going to make it into a museum about you or in, like, a ball of flames, you'll just exit that home and take it with you. I don't know. Oh, my God. I promise I'm usually very cautious about. I promise. People are not going to believe me.

Anyway. Okay. So my birthday. it was really lovely and uh blaze woke up with a baby which i was like all right this is a perfect birthday you've already done enough 10 out of 10 um but then he i guess went out so the other thing is he had the baby with him so it was a lot more work than just if you were doing it by himself so he went out and he and the baby got picked up donuts and ice my favorite ice latte and they brought those to me in bed when i woke up and then they took me out to brunch at one of our favorite brunch spots

and what's was it that bagel place you always take me to no it was um autos which i also took you to i think once um with eva oh that's where you got the place hot brown thing aha I thought okay we sat outside that day yes I do remember that um and then we went around and did a little shopping in the neighborhood and then we went home and then at two o'clock he was like okay you gotta go because you have a massage and a facial scheduled and I was like what and so he sent me to do that which was really really really nice and then um and weirdly enough the night before I was like can you rub my shoulder it hurts and so he was like thank god I booked that it's like well I planned famously well yes he did he was very surprised and then I came home and he had like cleaned the whole first floor decorated

everything got me like number balloons, you know, bought a cake from Bon Bonnery, which is like the same as our wedding cake, had like bought a bunch of snacks and food and drinks. And then my family came over and my brother came over and it was just really fun. And then he put the baby to bed and we all played games and drank and hung out. And he gave me a card that I showed Em, which said on the front, it said one year closer to death. And he like hand wrote it. And I was like, that's a really dark thing to do. And he's like, open it. And so on the inside, it said cab for cutie because he bought me concert tickets for next month to see Death Cab.

So anyway, it was very lovely and chill. And then the card, by the way, also looked like it was straight out of like Hallmark. It was very well done. Oh, well, he'll be very pleased to hear that. But yeah, so that's all. It was really fun and easy and chill. And then we both slept in and the baby kind of let us sleep in, which was nice. I thought you were going to say we slept in and the baby like took care of herself no no no i slept until 7 30 i should say not like super late and then i went and took a nap um but yeah so then i think this weekend i'm gonna have some people over to play play games and drink and do like more of like a big group of friends type situation so nice anyway it was great um you were you will be sorely missed, but I know you don't like board games.

So I think you'll probably be OK. Honestly, it's a gift to me to not be there. You're welcome. I'm like, I'm I sure would love to be in a room with you. But doing that is not what I want. But I hope you win and I hope you get so competitive your eyes fall out or something. I'm not competitive. Like, I don't know where you came up with this idea that I'm so competitive.

Compared to me, you're competitive. I guess. I guess so. I just like to, like, have something to do. When there's, like, a bunch of people in a room, I like to have something to do so it's not like, so we're all just staring at each other. Oh, yes. That's not my vibe. But I'm glad you found your vibe.

And I'm glad that we live on opposite sides of the country when you feel in the mood for a board game. Which is always. Which is always. But no, I'm glad you had a chill birthday. I would love to want a chill birthday. It sounds so pleasant and relaxing. And I unfortunately just dragged. Want a zebra.

I want a zebra and I want one in every room and that's fine I think we'll figure it out anyway tune in later if you want to hear all the things poor Allison had to go through in the last couple weeks oh my gosh alright but uh yes and also tell Blaze if he can teach me how to make cards like that

I really am it was a very lovely card I was like he made that apparently your sister-in-law gave him a kit or something yeah she like made a kit so she she's very like crafty so she made like all she like cut out all the cards like pieces of paper into cards and like got him like stamps and you know pens and marker like stuff like that and uh basically gave him like a kit to make his own cards for christmas i was gonna say you know what's craftier than being crafty making your own craft kit kit other people i know teaching someone else how to be crafty you know it's like

you teach you teach a man how to you give a man a card you give a man a birthday card he can read it the end for the rest of the parable listen to our after show on patreon this is delicious thank you put that on a birthday card blaze are you listening blaze okay give a man a card dot dot dot okay wait someone put that on a card for place one day wait that's so cute okay here's my story and also uh fingers crossed i will say well not next week next week i'm gonna be home but the week after that we might be seeing the troll hole soon it has been a long time coming folks i know a lot of people are probably like oh yeah that fucking thing but um it's real and i can't wait it's halfway there it's just just so you all know i don't have any more intel than you do about this troll hole so i'm just that's true i want

i want christine to have the reveal um on the show so poor christine has also not heard about any of the headaches i've been dealing with. Poor Christine hasn't heard about all my complaints. She must be suffering. Woe is you. But anyway, expect in the next few episodes, maybe a troll hole appearance. If everything goes well, we've got some deliveries coming in this week. And if they don't work out, then everything I said is a lie. Cool.

Anyway, you know, the mystery is there. The usual. everything i said is a lie um cool anyway you know the mystery is there the usual so here's a story that i've never heard of and i'm very excited to show it to you um it was it was the thing that always i don't know why i can't like read the room yet but i thought oh this is a really quick and easy story and then around like one o'clock, I was like, I should try to do some deep diving. And then I found, I'm not kidding, like 13 hours of things, like 13 hours of interviews and podcasts and shows. And it was 1am and I went, okay, here we go. Here we go. So this is the story of the Becker family haunting which is not the name it usually goes by but that's what i'm gonna call it because it's uh it's little tagline i wanted to save

after i said the becker family haunting which is this is the story of the first televised exorcism oh what and it's a two-parter so well no shit after 13 hours of video footage or whatever i i don't know how many other podcasts have covered this um i'd like to think we're about to be one of the more well-researched versions because my brain is still rattling around from all the i could probably recite this at a show and tell at this point. I know way too much about this story. And then in two weeks, you're going to be like, the what, Family Haunted? I know. So the Becker family, if you listen within the next like 14 days, I might remember you. Wow, what a compliment.

If you like it, I hope that, you know, the Beckers are still around and they seem to really appreciate when their story is told accurately so oh good if you're around hopefully you like it um okay so this is going to be a two-parter because i really went from finding nothing to finding everything right and the reason that this even came across my consciousness is because there's apparently a movie coming out about this and all of the like deadline articles and like screen rant articles. They're all really not giving any information except a movie is coming and it's about the first televised exorcism at the end and so i thought it was going to be super quick because every article i read had

like very minimal information and i was like how is there literally something called the first televised exorcism and there's not a single google link about this and it just became very clear to me that it was all audio based. There's really few articles and it's all interviews. So if you want to learn more about this, I hope you're on a road trip or something because you're not going to find any reading material out there. I hope you have a really, really big open floor plan and can just vacuum for hours. That's what I hope for you. I hope you have a whole mansion of dishes to do and

it's the saddest wish i've ever had for you but yeah you know you've got something to do now what's that thing you said earlier woe is you woe is you don't i know it um okay so here we go the becker family the couple is edwin and marcia they lived in illinois i forgot to mention the year is 1971 okay um illinois i think if not chicago proper just outside of chicago um edwin and marcia they've been married for three years now young couple starting life and being all happy and they are expecting and at the time back in the 70s landlords could kick you out for a lot less um and so basically this landlord heard that they were about to have a screaming crying baby and went you're goodbye you're out oh no and if one of the sources is accurate that i read then they

got kicked out when she was seven months pregnant so they had like a hot 60 days to find a place yikes um so i guess this is from the same source that they had been looking for a month and didn't find anything so now they're getting super desperate and they can't find anything at all until they find a listing in the paper for this house that is in air estate and so it was a two flat which is i think just another word for a duplex um and i guess edwin's thought was oh well we can buy it we can rent out the first floor we'll live on the second floor and that way we're making some income while paying off this house and so he goes to the house the house is like in desperate need of repair it is physuct it is either incredibly dirty and or it has been ransacked by the previous heirs

who were like tearing up upholstery looking for hidden heirlooms and hidden money what the fuck it just looks like a complete mess and i guess it wasn't in like the best neighborhood either so it already like kind of gave an odd vibe um and so as they as edwin walks in for the first time with the real estate guy to check out the house before he says yes although he is desperate and optimistic that he can make it work so he's pretty much ready to say yes as soon as he walks in um he's looking around this like dirty old house ripped apart by like the furniture is all fucked up and they walk in to the main hall the main hallway on the first floor and out of the bedroom walks in this

old dirty unhinged clearly mentally unwell woman what and i guess she was i guess the real estate guy was showing the house before they'd all officially moved out and so the woman that walked out was the current and final heir to the home no and i don't know if these names are changed for protection but in this story we're going to call her myra okay and she walks out and she's very dirty very disheveled looks very scary. Like she looks like she's like maybe a dangerous person. And the, she's holding with her a dog, a poodle that clearly has fleas is also dirty. Um, Edwin even said they never figured out if the dog was white or gray because it was just so dirty. And this woman is flings the door open as soon

as he walks into the house and starts cussing him out with the real estate person there and is saying we don't want you here get the fuck out we don't want you here and but she's saying it in a very scary way where edwin called her quote rabid and filthy with her language okay with her language he does um just to like also back edwin up he in many interviews is saying she is mentally unwell like this there's a mental illness issue for sure yeah but um in terms of calling her rabid and filthy i think it's more like her language because it really jarred him he was like i'm an altar boy like i don't like this is not normal and so for can i ask a quick question yeah sorry i don't know

if we know this or if you're gonna say this but like was the house being foreclosed on i so the vibe i got because i am gonna say in like two more bullets that he met a few of the currently living heirs and none of them seem to be able to agree on anything so i'm thinking they just couldn't handle fighting over the house anymore so they they were just like, get rid of it. Okay. I see. I see. I see.

That's the vibe I got. But also for all we know, they knew the house was haunted and they wanted out of here. I don't totally understand. It could have been foreclosed. I, they really, I didn't really get a solid answer. Cause I did sound like they're kicking this old lady out almost. Yeah, it does. Um, and, but so anyway, he he is very very jarred by her he so she's cussing at them and the real estate guy who i guess has dealt with her before uh starts cussing

back at her louder and meaner and then good and then he looks at edwin he's like we've tried everything else this is literally the only way we can don't worry i'll handle this it's like we've done everything else the all we've got is just screaming back until she backs down jeez yeah and so i guess myra was the last family member living there so the she her her family was the original builders and owners of the home and i guess it just kind of stayed in the family and she's not the last living family member to be there but she's only one of five of the heirs okay um and i guess the other heirs didn't want the space so as they walk around um edwin this

is when edwin's seeing how in like horrible condition the house is clearly ransacked for heirlooms and edwin even says that the rooms uh in hindsight one of the earliest signs he could have seen of this place being haunted was that the rooms were weirdly cold one of the earliest signs he could have seen of this place being haunted was that the rooms were weirdly cold but he thought of it as a bonus because the house was so old that it didn't have central air and he was like that kind of works yeah yeah yeah also remember he was desperate and willing to make it work so i think he was putting positive spins wherever he could sure makes sense he also said that the house may have had a creepy feel but he also said in a bunch of interviews that he kind of came from like a broken home and lived in

a few not so great areas and so this felt no more creepy than any other place he'd been yeah i get it buddy i'm like no ac well the ghost will keep me cold i guess exactly and you're like i've literally lived next to a graveyard my whole life so like what's and that was like peak quality home you know like i was like when i was at the tip top the tip top uh so he also so the house is kind of creepy but he's fine with it the house is kind of cold but he's fine with it myra is a whole other story because she's currently living there and he's trying to buy the place and so he part of his like contingency with them was like i will buy this place if myra is out of here because the lap he's agreeing to buy the place before his wife has even seen it because he's just so desperate and also at the time he has

said that he's gotten guff for like buying a house without like checking in with his wife but his arguments like at the time a woman's signature on a mortgage meant nothing so like she didn't need to be there and she had said like just she was also very pregnant she was also super pregnant like okay she so i think he was like i was just if i could find a house i think she was gonna be fine with it we were yeah a roof um and so he said myra needs to be out of here before my wife moves in because if she meets her, she's going to be so frazzled and freaked out. She might back out of this,

which is like for as desperate as they were, he was worried that she would leave because of how scary and dangerous this person felt. And so basically during closing, they said that, okay, we'll get her out of here before you move in. Um, but during closing, they said that, OK, we'll get her out of here before you move in. But during closing, Edwin saw the last five heirs of the house kind of figuring out last minute things.

They all had their own individual attorneys. They all clearly hated each other. They were fighting over small things like pictures and two dollars. And it was just obviously a very silly situation. Silly indeed. Very sad, silly. and um it was just obviously a very silly situation so silly indeed very sad silly um and so the other heirs go over to edwin or maybe the real estate guy and they say we're having a really hard time finding a place to take myra in uh can she stay here for at least a few months while you're here months and here's the thing or so it was 90 one interview he said 90 days one interview he said 120 days that's many months it's many

months and so what edwin did was he used a baby coming he uses to his advantage because he actually was going into the house and didn't have enough money to close that day and he said if you pay me to keep her here then i'll keep her here and also he was able to then be able to afford all the closing costs right oh well and i guess they have that separate yeah so they were like she'll just she'll just stay on the first floor and we'll live on the second floor it's not like she'll sleep next to the crib like she'll have her own space okay that makes a little more sense um and so they paid edwin to let myra stay there until they could figure something else out and this is a quote from him he said i made them pay me in advance which actually allowed me to close the sale i didn't have enough at closing so she stayed with us for a while and she had a filthy mouth and she

ticked us off every time she said we don't want you here i thought she was always talking about just her and the poodle but maybe he also said in another interview he was like that or i think he said it on his literal website he has like a q a yeah and uh he even said like someone asked questions about the poodle and he was like honestly every time i walked into that room the poodle. And he was like, honestly, every time I walked into that room, the poodle would ignore me just like she would. They hated me. So they move in and she's pretty terrible. Apparently, she would literally just open doors and just start maniacally laughing at them. And then out of nowhere, she would just go into like complete cry fest and be super miserable and sad.

So she's clearly like she needs help. And they don't know what to do. It's not they're not family. They are unaware of the family history. Also, they never asked about the house history because they were naive and young and just so desperate for a home. They didn't really want to know the family history. So they were just kind of living with this person hoping that she would keep to herself and interestingly he said on in one of his q a's that like he never saw her leave the house he has

no idea how the dog ever went out for walks or how she got groceries or he was like he was like it's a complete mystery i don't know where she was always in her room i have i never saw her leave the house um so after he buys it and they're moving in myra not myra sorry marcia who's the wife yeah marcia sees it for the first time and already feels off so she went into this house being kind of a believer and the first time she walks in she walked up and knocked on the door and even though it was her place it felt like she needed to knock on the door because it felt so wrong that she was gonna live there oh like that she was maybe not welcome there or like yeah wasn't comfortable there oh i don't

like that it wasn't home and so yeah she said with every step into the house, she felt like something was wrong and bad. Oh, gosh. She got to one room, and this is a quote from her saying, oh, God, something's not right. I don't feel right here. I feel like I should get out and run as fast as I can, but I didn't want to hurt his feelings. It took a lot of him to get this house. The house did not want us there but we just had no other choice and i knew this so i just kept quiet poor thing yeah so as they're moving in

he starts she's feeling stared at the entire time she's unpacking things and like immediately as she moves in there she's putting things on the table she's leaving the room coming back and things are missing yeah wow okay great great start so things are missing. Yeah. Wow. Okay. Great. Great start. So things are disappearing and rearranging on like minute one of them living there. The first night, I think it was the first night they were there, Edwin also found an old used Ouija board.

And he didn't have really any interest in the paranormal. He didn't freak him out he was just like oh this this was the family's and they left it here so i'm just gonna throw it away so he just threw it away oh goodness which i feel like is bad if maybe they had left some sort of portal open or something and now he's just thrown it away i feel like it's better than setting it on fire like i think everybody always thinks you should set things on fire. I mean, me too. Me included as I light my entire microphone on fire. But I feel like the gut instinct is always like, oh, so I burned it. And it's like, that doesn't seem like it always helps.

I feel like oftentimes that makes it worse. So at least he didn't burn it. I don't know. I wonder if he would have if he had like a personal issue with Ouija boards. Yeah, I feel like for him, I think for him, it just felt like garbage. He was just like, oh, you're going to throw it away. So at least he didn't I guess set it on fire. But throwing it away probably isn't much

better. Well, so right away more things start happening in the house, including the lights flickering in a really intentional way. They said that it felt really rhythmic or like Morse code because it'd go like flick, flick, flick, flick, flick, flick, flick, it'd go like flick flick flick flick flick flick flick flick what does that spell help me i'm a ghost oh well they should have figured that out

they would have not had to live in mystery the whole time i think it's too bad um they also start hearing knocks and bumps in the house dishes started flying out of the cabinets uh cabinets and cabinet doors and normal doors were all opening and closing by themselves and a mixer flew off the wall and landed uh at marcia's feet oh geez um also they had to start getting multiple keys for each of their locks because the keys would go missing so often and they would reappear twisted and bent no oh god that's fucked up which feels like it almost feels like oh your key can't work so you can't get in yeah and it's like i intentionally don't want you to have access oh yuck so this was one source that i don't know how trustworthy it is i feel like something like this would have been mentioned a lot more in other places but apparently according to one source

something actually quote picked up their cat held it out the second floor window and dropped it 20 feet to the pavement no baby which like by the way at least cats like can land with 20 feet of preparation but like it's still not good still that's terrible and yeah i mean the animals are getting messed with um and again i don't know if that's a legitimate source um the only information i don't have about this is, so Edwin later goes on to write an actual book about this. And maybe he wrote about that in the book and then he just doesn't talk about it in interviews. But I know because it's animals, I wanted to like be extra ginger with that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, I got you. I don't know how real that one is. Okay. no i got you yeah i don't know how real that one is okay so edwin also later reported that two different times in the house he saw a dark inhuman mass that moved very fast in the house yuck yuck yuck so um and there was also one room that uh marcia said no matter how many lights you turn on or open windows one space was always dark like it absorbed all the light yuck i hate that imagine turning every light on opening all the windows and it's still dark in there yeah that's that's creepy it's like intentionally gloomy it defies physics and that's when i am scared oh when am the physicist uh realizes the laws of physics are not being

followed that's me um so this is a quote from Marsha about the haunts that were happening more and more intensely. After a while, there's just no denying it. I think I knew from the beginning. I just didn't want to believe it. The air in that place changed every day from minute to minute. Sometimes you couldn't breathe. Sometimes it was thick. Sometimes it was cold.

It was constant. And I just thought, thought oh it's just an old building that isn't ventilated well but i think i always knew oh no meanwhile as marcia is dealing with all this while edwin is at work like keep like she's taking care of a baby in this haunted home and he gets to leave yeah yeah so he is he is much more unaware of what's going on than she is also he's a skeptic so like she's at home already believing this stuff and it's happening around her and then he comes home and is like not helpful because yeah um and he's also too stubborn to pay attention to the things that he should be noticing

so he's rationalizing everything even things that to him clearly don't make sense but he's coming up with logical explanations or trying to yeah um and part of him also thought that marcia was just making this stuff up from the beginning he which he apologizes for pretty profusely in all of his interviews. He's like that just to. So he thought at the time, one of the interviews he said, like, we were living like fun and fancy free before we had this kid. And now all of a sudden she's stuck at home with a baby and she's feeling too settled. And he thought maybe there was something like after her pregnancy, maybe she was just like feeling lonely or she was like,

I don't know. She, he, he was coming up with a bunch of arguments that in hindsight, he said like, I was really cruel and I put her through. Oh, wow.

I mean, because she would say like, this is going on and I'm really scared. And he would just completely dismiss her. Um, and I don't know, I guess that was his way of coping just being in denial denial right um but so there was like a good six months of 21 months is how

long they lived there i think oh boy um and the first at least six months he was not helpful with her um and it does eventually start getting in the way of their relationship because she's freaked out and doesn't feel like he's listening to her also when he comes home he either doesn't want to hear her stories or as he started believing her he was starting to feel so much shame and guilt that he couldn't protect her that he didn't ask her um he's like just don't tell me about it yeah yeah and later i'm gonna say this in the second episode too but he um later on they go on to do a tv show um they're like they're like one of the episodes of like paranormal witness and he ends up saying like that show really helped us

and also when i was writing my book i like finally sat down with my wife and interviewed her on everything and i learned so much that i should have known 40 years ago oh jeez but he was just i know and he was like i was just too uh first of all in denial and too stubborn and he was like i just honestly felt so guilty i didn't want to know so i never asked her but she also that means she just like lived with all of this by herself right yeah so he also apparently wrote an article i couldn't find it but he said he wrote an article somewhere about um how to keep uh the paranormal out of your relationship i was like don't read that m because it might ruin us forever i was like it's all that binds us. Yeah. And so he, yeah. So anyway, he was just like completely dismissing her, thought she was either making it up or maybe that was his own excuse for

himself. Right. And meanwhile, the whole time, like Myra's probably still walking around, freaking her out physically while she's freaking out spiritually with all this other stuff going on. And Edwin's brother all i guess was also starting to visit more often and he was getting freaked out by things uh what what started to get ed to notice i keep saying ed edwin sorry i don't know if he goes bad um what made edwin start to really notice that yes sorry my my main man my ed winnie okay whatever that's wrong with me what i tried to i tried to up you and i always went down here i always try and it fails a lot of the time so um what did you say e-money or something e-dog but e-money's good too so what e-dog was up to

and what finally got him to notice that something really was going on but he was still in denial but he had his eyes open while hoping it was not true was uh their daughter was getting christened and so they had a few people over at the house oh i have a feeling as the priest came in oh no first of all myra comes out of the room and starts cussing out the whole family for being super wait why are they doing this at the house or is this like because i think part of her i think i don't know i think part of her christening was he would also gonna bless the house maybe like do a two-for-one situation oh i feel like because whenever there

was a baptism growing up it would be like you do it at the church and then like everyone comes back to the house to like have a little brunch or whatever so maybe a little shindig the priest maybe all i know is that he was also there to additionally do a house blessing okay okay um and so when he shows up myra gets in his way and starts cussing out the priest so the priest freaks out and he's he was supposed to be there for longer but he was very much like i'm just gonna bless the house and leave and he's getting ready for his blessing and i don't know what the right word is because obviously i did not grow up with all this but whatever the brass like wand is that has the holy water in it yeah it goes like this yeah yeah i don't know what it's called either. His brass wand.

His wand. Oh, my God. That's great. Which is ironic because it's magic. Yeah, exactly. But so he holds it up, getting ready to do the start of the blessing, and the brass wand shatters. Oh, gosh. Which, like, according to Edwin, and I guess according to me because I've also never seen it i don't know about brass chattering that feels kind of like one of your physics the lines in the sand you know i'll talk to one of my cohorts at the lab yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

um but yeah so it just shatters and so the family kind of freaks out obviously the priest crosses himself and picks up all the pieces and then he just straight up says i have to go you gotta go what are you gonna do he's like this is not for me sorry by the way thanks priest let's bring that back because we haven't said that in so long yeah wait thanks priest really you're gonna just like pick up the puzzle pieces of your wand and leave yeah there's like a lot i'm outie there's a baby here well so that's what edwin says he was like at least bless my daughter's room and then you can go so that's what he does um apparently there's like a funny little thing that happened where he like scotch taped his wand back together no he apparently got lost on the way to the baby's room and like walked into a closet and something silly like that but uh so he blessed the daughter's room, left, refused to ever come back.

Yeah. I mean, I can't necessarily blame him. I don't either. I feel bad on both sides. I certainly if I were Edwin, I'd be like, bless this. No, you're right. No, you're right. You're right.

I feel like it's kind of a double edged sword here. Like neither side seems to be. Yeah. I'm totally on Edwin's side. But also if I was holding something and it shattered in my hands as i was trying to do a blessing i'd be like you know what not for me you know what demons win today yeah so he never comes back and the rest of the house obviously things just got worse so their attitudes edwin and marcia their attitudes towards each other

started changing like i said um mainly for like obvious miscommunication issues but um Edwin in particular was getting very hostile and angry in the house which is very Amityville of like yeah the dad like was getting really hostile you know I feel like that happens a lot on those show what's the show maybe it is I don't think it's paranormal witness um is it a haunting or what's the one where it is i don't think it's paranormal witness um is it a haunting or what's the one where they go to people's houses they do like kind of the cheesy reenactments and the family i think it's a haunting or like my ghost story or something yeah one of those i feel like so many times the dad is skeptical then he goes in and then his his personality starts

changing like this seems like a pattern yeah yeah and also keep in mind this was before any ghost content was out there so right it's not like he was just copying it yeah yeah um so they he started getting super hostile about apparently he was actually getting so angry that there are things he intentionally avoids writing about in his book because either he was so angry in those moments or he made a joke in an interview where he was like uh i don't know if the statute of limitations is up i don't know if i want to admit the things i did when i was angry and i'm like i don't know what that means but okay said that joke i know i'm like uh okay so you were angry got it yikes um and so to to your point where you're saying like oh it's so weird that all the husbands

seem to always be the skeptics and thus the ones that end up getting really angry for no reason um edwin says if you ever feel i guess in a haunted house if you ever feel a hot flash or instant agitation that's a sign and that was my weakness because it was my temper and it made me angry all the time so I wonder if it's just like a dude thing for the anger to be the one, the thing that's triggered before anything else. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I don't know either. I feel like a hot flash for me is like PMS saying, you know, so maybe I have a good excuse. I'm like, it's menopause or it's PMS. I think anyone would be agitated in a hot flash. That's for sure.

I feel like, oh my God god get me out of here um but yeah so he thinks that it was either that he was more quick to anger to begin with or he also said in another interview that maybe it's because he was um really skeptical and stubborn that the spirits didn't really have any other way to like start making him vulnerable except to work off of his anger so i don't know i i'm a physicist not a an expert with this stuff so so one of the other ways that their relationship started kind of floundering was the house and the entities were starting to build a lot of mistrust between them so at the time edwin would call home while he was at work to check on her but the phone would always be busy and he was getting mad because back in the 70s

there was like a phone bill that was based off of the location and how far away the other house was that you were calling and oh my gosh so he was like the phone bill is going to be off the goddamn charts if you're on the phone every minute. Like, what is well, who are you calling? And and Marsha was like, I'm not calling anybody. And eventually I started noticing that anytime they weren't looking at the phone, when they would look back, the phone had taken itself off the hook and the phone was sitting on the floor. self off the hook and the phone was sitting on the floor. Ew. Well, and also with that, like if, if she's saying I'm not on the phone, then he probably thinks she's lying. Why is she lying? Maybe she's talking to somebody. Yeah.

Doesn't want to tell me who it is. I feel like there's all sorts of layers to that. So he actually tried to trick her or like double blind her like that. And so I guess back in the day, the, um, the phone bill would show you every individual landline you called. And so he was thinking like, Oh, I'm going to wait until the phone bill gets here. And then I'm going to show her all the numbers and be like, you can't deny this. Who are you calling? But it was like, not that like, she's not calling anyone. And so, uh, it just, I think

freaked them both out of like, the phone is literally turning itself off which is just another sign of like we don't want you here we don't want you to be able to call for help we don't want other people to be able to reach out to you yeah that one almost feels sinister in the way of like we don't want you to have access to the outside world like that's so so creepy super like i i hate that because it's like oh even if you think someone might be calling you you'll they'll never hear from you and then edwin started noticing that anytime he would run his morning bath water the plug to fit to keep the tub fill uh filled up would take itself out and wrap itself around the faucet because the plug had like a little chain and the chain would wrap around the

faucet and no to keep itself unplugged so the water would always little chain and the chain would wrap around the faucet and no to keep itself unplugged so the water would always fall out and then he would never get his morning baths oh um and but this was actually another way of keeping their relationship kind of uh strained because what he used to do was he would let the bath water run and that was and then he would go downstairs while the bathtub was filling up and he would let the bath water run and that was and then he would go downstairs while the bathtub was filling up and he would have his like morning moment with his wife oh boy now he's so paranoid about the bathtub and he's trying to figure out why the plug's doing that that now he's instead of going down and hanging out with her he's sitting up in the bathroom just staring at

the bath and probably not helping with the baby and all that. Yeah. Well, the mental gymnastics for denial is crazy. And so but so he was spending every morning now in the bathroom monitoring the bathtub because he started noticing it would only happen when he left the room. Of course, when he's not looking. Yeah. And so now their relationship strained that way. They're not having their morning time together. And also in the bathroom, eventually Marsha feels something touch her in there. And so she starts getting so nervous to do her own like hygiene routines or anything without Ed being without Edwin being there. So now she's terrified to be in the bathroom alone. And by now, Marsha is so scared of the entire house that she officially makes a space in the kitchen where her and the baby just hide out all day.

Poor thing. That's a terrible. Yeah. makes a space in the kitchen where her and the baby just hide out all day poor thing that's a terrible yeah she even said in an interview that they were one of the few families at the time that had a color tv and they had set up a whole nice space in the living room no and she was like i never turned that tv on i never went in there i just stayed in the kitchen and watched my nine inch black and white television because i didn't want to be in that room. Yikes. And then this is a quote from Marsha too. Even though things in the kitchen would also happen, the stove would go on and off. The water would go on and off. The broom would move the fridge and the cabinet doors open dishes flew out of the cabinets. The spirits loved playing

tricks and games in there. She was just saying like I was hiding out in there and yes, there was stuff going on in the kitchen, but she liked the was hiding out in there and yes there was stuff going on in the kitchen but she liked the kitchen the most because there was a door to the outside to escape and there was a bunch of windows so she could look outside and she said that grounded her and made her feel safe yep and there was food there was a sandwich and there was food and there was food keep in mind they're um still they still aren't talking to each other about what's going on because he's still in denial and trying to rationalize everything she's literally hiding out in the kitchen every day and they're just not talking and meanwhile

uh she doesn't feel like she can talk to him about everything going on but he's also not sharing everything he knows because he became friends with the next door neighbor who according to paranormal witness is named walter no i don't know if that's true or if that was a made-up name but not again not again another walter so edwin has found himself a next door neighbor buddy um apparently they would go down to the neighbor's basement and drink southern comfort and walter and walter would tell him all about the original family so um again this is the paranormal witness source which the beckers have said like they definitely drop dramatized things for tv drop dramatized dramatized i think dramatized things for tv dramatized dramatized i think dramatized but i know what you mean they definitely embellished the story so i don't know how realistic this source is but um

the the story goes on the show at least that walter told him about the family before that lived there before the original uh the family that lived there before them slash the original owners and walter would say that he lived next to them for 50 years he never talked to them they were all very strange and they were the original ones to build the house so whatever happened in there was probably they're doing they were very strange okay very strange and edwin so edwin was not telling marcia any of the darker parts that Walter told him because he didn't want to embolden her fears and let her know she was right to be freaked out. Sure. But he did say in interviews, the next door neighbor was real and did inform him on some really dark shit that had happened in the house. But I couldn't see anywhere.

I couldn't find anywhere what that dark stuff was. I think he was like, I don't even want to put it in the book the stuff that that neighbor told me about the family okay um maybe it's in his book but i remember an interview he was like i don't know when we don't need to talk about that oh okay so i think he found out that stuff and was like i'm not telling my wife because she's already so paranoid yeah um and around this time uh this is when they finally get myra out of the house and new prospect uh prospective tenants are coming to look at the place and one was a woman with a baby and as the woman and marcia talked marcia got this weird feeling all of a sudden and turned around and saw the baby who was in like this little like rolling walker uh it was being pushed by

nobody and the baby's feet were not moving so the baby wasn't pushing themselves um but the walker was moving by itself closer and closer to the stairs oh no and luckily marcia caught the baby in time but this is when she started freaking out that even her own baby might be in danger seriously because at that point i think she was more worried about herself and now she's like oh shit so like babies are also fair game um eventually new tenants came in and they were named dan and diane which i think is fun dan that is that is fun it's very fun that's fun this i'm really i'm splitting hairs here looking for the fun in this yeah yeah yeah yeah so they moved into the first door flat and they were around the same age as the couple they also had a baby and marcia kind of thought i like them a lot

they we have a lot in common and also if something happens they'll hear me scream. Oh, cute. So sad. And just like that, that lovely one piece of confetti that you had brought to the table gets burned up and it's gone. By your coffin microphone candle. So Paranormal Witness was the only source that had Dan and Diane talking about their experience there. But they also said the second they moved in, things were going on downstairs. They noticed that the chandelier in their place would swing all the time. And they soon started hearing sounds of domestic abuse upstairs. And they thought that it must be Edwin and Marsha. Interestingly, Edwin and Marsha were hearing sounds of domestic abuse downstairs, and they thought it was dan and diane oh my gosh

and both couples were terrified that the other was abusing their spouse because they were waking up every night hearing a woman screaming in pain oh shit and then eventually they figured out that it was neither of them oh shit yeah so they also thought edwin and marcia were stealing their stuff and turning off their electricity and just being kind of melting their key landlords yeah melting their keys uh so they were like things were going on for them too and as edwin said then came the animals oh apparently any pet who ever lived in that house eventually after being freaked out by something ran away. Oh, no. So Dan had a dog and with Dan got a dog while he lived there.

And within like four days, the dog was gone. No. The dogs also like Edwin and Marsha's dog. So they'd had for a while. They were apparently very loyal dogs they knew they knew kind of the lay of the land it wasn't like a new environment for them this was their home um but they would look at nothing at a wall and just start growling and snarling the cat would run out of rooms hissing and its back would be arched in rooms where nothing was

there um the one dog that was very loyal and as edwin said would defend them from a bear um one night the dog saw something by the doorway that they couldn't see and he got on the bed to defend edwin and marcia and he was snarling and growling viciously in a way that they had never seen their dog act and the next day the dog jumped the fence and ran away oh my gosh yeah oh no um and this is when edwin says that he this is when he was fully truly freaked out because he was aware that he was powerless to something he couldn't see that's what's so scary and you're like you just feel helpless in so many different ways yeah and uh he i guess in his book he was afraid of being boring and so he left a lot

of information out on the dog running away and so he got a lot of slack about like not going to find his dog and then he wrote i think a second book and another interviews he's been like i looked for my dogs to be clear like i went we didn't just let it run the fence jump the fence and then but i guess shoulders he originally had like three or four pages of how he had like all these missing dog signs and he would stay up all night looking for his dogs and the dog just never came home that's so sad but yeah also like i kind of think about the dog though if there was something that scary like imagine how bad it had to be for that dog to be like i'm fucking out of here like sorry i can't protect you from this goodbye yeah yeah um if that was the case i don't i don't know

right so both of their dogs and their cat um all acted weirdly And at some point I think eventually took off. Gosh. And then Dan's dog also did that. So, and I mentioned Edwin's brother earlier. Um, another time he came over, he and Edwin were walking around in the basement and they found a, I don't know if it's a false door,

but a shed, a hidden shed. No, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no no and it was weirdly it was weird that it was untouched considering the heirs before they got there had ripped everything apart so it's interesting that they didn't touch this that's a good point um in the basement so this was in the basement and the basement itself was already a very sinister area edwin says that this was where his fight or flight would always

be kicked in anytime he went down there he was incredibly agitated incredibly angry to a point where later on he found out that he had lost some memories that he of things he had done while he was angry um marcia on day one of moving in said she would never go down there in the basement because something was just so dark about that place. And Edwin, who was having anger issues, especially in the basement, he used this to let you know how bad it was, was that he was obsessed with music. He was a professional musician, actually. He loved playing guitar, all these things. And whenever he would go in the basement, all he wanted was silence with no radio whereas usually he always had music playing but he didn't even realize it until years later he was like i never wanted any sound down there

i know so anyway so they're down in the basement which is already like a horrible primed area him and his brother find this padlocked shed and they open up the shed and they find decades worth of early vintage porn whoa that's not what i was expecting they also find 30 to 40 shoe boxes of stacked paper rubber banded together like baseball cards or playing cards and all of them are different individually cut out of magazine pictures of women's body parts oh my god what it was cartoons magazines newspaper clippings comics someone had been cutting out a leg an arm a waist a head and it was so this is from ed he's saying we're talking tens of thousands oh i mean 30 or 30 or 40 shoe boxes of that shit that he said was up to like 50 years

worth of decades of oh that is so disturbing apparently all the stacks of paper had the same name on it which i don't know if this is the real name or not but uh edwin calls it ben okay and so when we realized that ben was up to no good or he was up to something not good um this is when edwin finally had a name for whatever entity was going around his house and so he started blaming everything on ben got it to a point where he started talking to ben great um and i guess i heard in one interview edwin say once he found this shed full of really creepy stuff he was like okay i need to start like talking to or i need to start listening to my

wife when she's saying the creepy things are going on nice so that's what it took 50 years of porn i'm getting um okay so uh dan remembers that dan was the tenant with diane dan so he's still living there at the time and he even remembers edwin talking to ben all the time by himself and he thought edwin was crazy because he was like you're literally talking to ben and there's no ben um and so he was kind of getting freaked out in his own way meanwhile diane his wife was getting freaked out in a different way all four of these people were having different experiences and none of them were talking to each other um dan and diane weren't talking to edwin and marcia because they were

like we're your tenants we don't want to get kicked out for like being seeming weird or saying we're seeing things meanwhile edwin and marcia weren't telling them because they didn't want to scare their tenants right and edwin and marcia were having their own issues where they were not communicating and then i think dan and diane were also not having a really solid communication either um so around this time like i mentioned earlier edwin's starting to feel a lot of shame and guilt for not being able to protect his family plus they're losing friends because their friends don't want to come over anymore the friends stopped calling the phone because it was always off the hook not because they were putting it off the hook but the ghosts were um and he didn't know

what was right from wrong and he didn't know how to handle it and so he just started getting angry at the ghosts and he began antagonizing them oh no that's probably what they wanted i think so and i think this is going to be your favorite quote of the whole show because edwin said i was basically zach bagans before zach bagans was born oh my god the og because i would yell and i would scream at the ghosts the ogzb right here in our midst and so one night the ghosts kept uh opening a door in the kitchen that Marsha wanted closed. And so Edwin tied it up with string and the door began to vibrate and shake, trying to close itself to a point where they were both freaking out. And Edwin starts antagonizing the ghost being like, what kind of ghost are you? If you can't even break through string, it's like a diss. and so meanwhile marcia hates that he's antagonizing

him because marcia's like i have to live with this fucking thing like yeah you get to go to work i have to deal with it after you've pissed it off and uh so that was just one example of how they were not even listening to each other anymore and edwin was challenging these spirits while marcia's hating it and another night they have a friend over who experienced the door vibrating when tied up this became like a normal thing they would tie up the door and watch it vibrate and try to crack the string and uh the friend stood up kind of not believing it was like well ghosts aren't real and all of a sudden a spindlele was sitting in the cabinet nearby. And it flew out at the friend, past his head, and slammed down on the table with no bounce, which freaks me out.

It's not like it got thrown and then had a little reverb to it. Someone just slammed it down on the table and stuck it there. Oh, no. So then those friends stopped coming over. So Edwin doesn't know what to do anymore about the spirits. There was no internet at the time. There were no Ghostbusters to call. There was no paranormal community to look into.

There was no information anywhere. There wasn't even the movie The Exorcist hadn't even come out yet. Right, right. Amityville hadn't come out yet. There was nothing. He said in one interview all he knew of was Casper, which was like the opposite of this. Right. It's not going to help.

interview all he knew of was casper which was like the opposite of this right it's not gonna help uh and so he went back to the same priest that blessed the or tried to bless the house and he begged him to come back and bless the house again and the priest straight up said no and he told him that uh i hate to break it to you but you and your wife need psychological help oh i hate to break totally gaslit jackass so edwin freaks out like you were my last hope and starts cussing out the priest and he ends up getting kicked out of his parish oh no i mean this priest saw it firsthand and was too scared to stay yeah now he's like no you're just crazy like yep what a jackass so when you're kicked out of your parish i guess you're not allowed to go to another one that's like some under unspoken church rules i guess so they felt

like they couldn't go to any parishes and edmund was at a loss and despite not being welcome inside things were so bad at home that marcia was now not hiding out in the kitchen all day but she was now sitting on the church steps every day that That's the saddest thing I've ever heard. She would be there from morning until she had to go home to make dinner with the baby. That's terribly sad. I guess even the kitchen wasn't enough anymore. It's so sad. And they weren't even welcome in the church, so she would just sit on the stairs.

That's just so awful. Yeah. So one day, one of the nuns walking by saw her sitting on the stairs and looked her in the eyes and said you're not welcome here and i guess the nun had heard the story of edwin cussing out the priest or something or maybe the story had it's not her fault telephoned into like oh something demotic's going on in that family don't talk to them i don't know but anyway thanks priest has now become thanks nuns thanks a lot nuns because they straight up said don't come back here so now she had nowhere to go where she felt safe thanks for none thing guess how much you helped none yeah i was trying to think of a way to use none as its own saying

yeah you nailed you nailed it you know nothing does not really work so on top of this the spirits uh became too much for diane downstairs and she began acting different her personality totally changed and her and dan were fighting so eventually it became so much that she left with the baby and dan stayed but marcia remembers feeling like even though they never really talked about things, she lost someone who understood what was going on. Yeah. So now it's just Marsha, Edwin and Dan downstairs. And eventually the couple gets to a boiling point because Edwin is still not telling Marsha everything. He's still in some denial and they're fighting.

And Marsha says, you've changed a lot. and they're fighting. Uh, and Marsha says, you've changed a lot. You're always angry. You're antagonizing these ghosts. You're talking to Ben like he's here. Like, I just want to go home. I'm going to go see my mom. I don't want to be here anymore. I think she saw Diane do it and she was like, if she can do it, I can do it. And so I don't blame her. She took the baby and left. And while she was gone for the next month uh edwin didn't notice a lot of paranormal change but his excuse was like i'm always at work so sure i didn't see anything but he does say this was his lowest point because he just felt like he completely failed his wife he didn't you know didn't know how to protect her or fix anything or get out of this and find a better place and um

interestingly just like how he said well i was always at work so i never saw any real ghost activity he did have an interesting theory which i'd never heard of before but he was like i feel like ghosts are just humans and they do human routines just like we do and that includes sleep because he they both say that the whole time that they had hauntings all the activity was from 6 a.m to 10 p.m and he was he was like they never woke us up in the middle of the night which like by the way thank god if you saw the clock the clock strike 10 at least you knew you were like off duty that's a good point like then you were safe to watch your color tv in peace yeah yeah watch some sat Watch some Saturday Night Live, you know?

Yeah. But he was like, it was just always in that timeframe. And so usually he woke up at 5 a.m. to go to work and then he came home late. So like he did, especially when she wasn't there, he had no reason to come home early. So he just stayed at work. So he never really saw anything that often. But the one time he did feel in danger when he was living by himself was when he went to make

chef boyardee uh we all feel a little like we're on the wild side with some chef right a little on the living on the edge yeah so i guess he put the raviolis in the pot and uh then he was like oh i have to i have to run out and do something. I think he was going to like walk one of their dogs that hadn't run away yet. And, um, he, when he came back, the,

he hadn't started cooking or anything. He just left them in the pot. And then he was like, Oh, I'll get back to this. When he came back, the gas burners were on and the ravioli had burned in the pot. That's so dangerous. Yeah.

So that was when he was like, Oh, this is super bad. Like they could kill us. Yeah. So shortly after this, Edwin gets in his car. He goes back to Marsha's mom's house to win her back and says, come home. We are going to figure this out no matter what.

He has like some burned chef boyardee. He's like, I need my wife to come in. I don't come back. So he ends up, Marsha hears him out, comes back home with him, and they start looking into professional paranormal help. Thank goodness. Which we will learn about next week. What a cliffhanger.

That was so long, but I'm telling you, I almost tried to do this entire story in one take. Yeah, that would have been a long one. Anyway, I'm sorry. I really did talk. I was watching the clock. I did this. I talked for 45 minutes. I'm so embarrassed. I'm so embarrassed. I just I hope I hope I didn't upstage you. I'm just aware. I'm just weirdly aware of it. No, you're good. I mean, this is what we do here on this lovely show of ours.

on this lovely show of ours. I also have quite a doozy for you today. So I will also watch the clock and make sure I don't overdo it with the time. Honestly, if you talk for 45 minutes, call it even folks. Okay, here we go. Let's see what I can pull off here. So, and today I have a story for you.

I want to warn everybody, this one's pretty disturbing. And I know, you know, they're all disturbing everybody. This one's pretty disturbing and I know, you know, they're all disturbing, but this one's like very, very graphic. Great. Like very,

like, hello. It's very graphic. Are you listening? Everybody. Okay. Well, let me,

let me appreciate this last moment of innocence. Yeah. Do you want me to say e-money again or e-dog? You know, you just did. So how about Diane and Dan? I do like I do like the sound of them as a couple. I hope that they fared well after the fact.

Here's a little ditty for Dan and Diane. Two American kids grown up best they can in a haunted ass house in the heartland and the ghost land i don't know yeah okay in the haunt land that's pretty good um i don't know about that but we'll stick with it this is the story of richard trenton chase aka the vampire of sacramento no clue where this is going except that i uh the vampire part kind of gives me a gives me a hint but i really don't know i don't know anything about the story it's i knew the basics and i did not know the details and i kind of wish i could go back to a time when i did not know the details how did you hear about this um it's just a story it's just a like a big story that I always knew about but like or I always knew of um so I figured why

not cover it and then once I realized how dark it was I was like well too late now here you go everybody jeez okay well hey I'm I'm excited to be educated yeah I mean I've covered some pretty fucked up stories so this wouldn't be the first time. I also want to warn you, right off the bat, he's a Gemini. He was born May 23, 1950. Happy Gemini season. Well, yeah, thanks. I am aware of all the lists of serial killers and how many of them are Geminis. There's so many of those memes, yeah. I know I say a lot about Scorpios, but i am also aware that gemini probably have a whole lot

of uh ammo that could be used against us i think we're probably the second most hated if not the most hated zodiac sign that's fair yeah i think it's fair i don't blame anybody for that yeah i feel like if someone told me they were uninterested in me because i'm a gemini i'd be like i get it. Same here. Like I dig it because I've found the happy spots, but I'm okay with you not liking it. Yeah, I dig it. I've made a home for myself here. It's okay. But I understand that if you want to take your bindle and move on, I'm not going to stop you. Okay, so Richard Chase. He's a Gemini born may 23rd 1950 um he lived in a pretty typical household with his mother father and younger sister he did all the classic stuff boy scouts little league

had normal friends but allegedly his father was a rigid disciplinarian he would beat his children very abusive um and according to some sources which uh seemed like slightly less like how you were saying earlier some sources seemed um or was only in a couple sources so it's like you're not 100 sure if this is yeah fully true but some according to some sources richard would wet his bed start fires and torture animals as a child, which, as we know, ring-ding-ding, has been dubbed as the McDonald triad, which is said to occur in children more likely to commit violence in adulthood. But so either way, outside of the abusive household and this potential behavior, he had a pretty standard upbringing. household and this potential behavior, he had a pretty standard upbringing. There was a time when his parents broke up and sent him off to live with relatives for a bit. But when they got back together, they moved the family to Sacramento for a fresh start. And teenage Richard had a pretty normal social life. He was even good looking, like his classmates considered him good looking.

He was even good looking, like his classmates considered him good looking. He made friends easily. He dated multiple girls throughout high school. But while he started, when he started dating, he kind of had a revelation about himself, which would haunt him throughout his life, which is that he was impotent. He, layman's terms, couldn't get it up. And this was a huge blow to his confidence, which, I mean, you can understand as like a teenage boy. I imagine that would be a very difficult thing to reckon with, especially if you're dating people. And, you know, so this is I can see this being. Especially in like the 60s or 70s, right?

I feel like there was definitely not as much information about it as we know today. Yeah, that's true. You couldn't even like, Google it. Yeah. What are you gonna do? Yeah, that's a good point. So he had a huge blow to his confidence. And he developed pretty extreme body obsessions. He went to doctors for help, one of whom said his impotence was a symptom of suppressed rage, but then said, anyway, that's it, and gave no help or advice or prescription or anything. Just was like, oh, you have suppressed rage. Here, let me add to it. Okay, bye. Get out of my office.

I don't know. Yikes. So he became obsessed with his impotence and his overall health, and he decided to start finding his own cure. And so he started reading medical books and really obsessing with the idea of trying to heal himself. OCD, I can see that. I can see that. I don't know that he had that, but it almost seems like, oh, okay, he's just like obsessively trying to find something to like fix his problems, and it gets way out of hand. So. Oh, God. Okay. Yeah. He starts self-medicating with speed, LSD, weed and alcohol. And eventually eventually through all his obsessive quote unquote research he comes to the conclusion that he can't maintain an erection because there's not

enough blood in his body and it's just i see what's see where we're going yeah so to some extent i feel like that isn't the wackiest idea at the start it's certainly rooted in it's rooted in some basic logic anatomy right like the blood flow okay you need that to yeah so right so to an extent i'm like okay i get the train of thought um but as somebody As somebody suffering from mental illness, etc., he became obsessed with blood. Obsessed. Uh-huh. It's sort of like he saw that as his little life raft and he climbed on and he did not let go. And this is the notorious obsession that he would become known for.

So despite all this happening as a teenager, like during his teenagehood, he graduated high school. He moved into an apartment with friends. And this is where his drug and alcohol dependencies worsened. He would get high and walk around the apartment naked, which shocker his roommates didn't love. What? Super not into it. I know it's weird. Like seems right down your alley but no uh they didn't honestly i i did live for six years with someone who was trying to qualify for olympic swimming he was uh in little skivvies pretty often so yeah yeah yeah yeah that that i think he had a reason but what i think about was this guy just walking around naked for like uh he was just high and just wandering around oh he was he was on drugs yes he was hot he would just high and just wandering around. Oh, he was. He was on drugs.

Yes, he was high. He would get high and just wander around naked. Yeah. I didn't know if he. I thought he was just like a nudist. And I was like, that's fine. No. But I get it now.

Yeah. I wish that were. I get it now. I wish it were just that. But unfortunately, no. Okay. So I'm seeing. I'm reading the room now.

Yeah. They didn't love it. He was not reading the room. They tried to kick him out and he refused to leave. So instead, everyone else left. They were like, you know what? We're moving out. You can stay here and have this apartment to yourself.

Fair enough. So he got it. And so Richard started. You know what's always also interesting, though, is that if he were walking around naked and well, I don't know, I don't know where his brain was, but, um, I feel like if your big issue is all stemming from your impotence in that region of you and yet you're exposing yourself, I feel like there's a, there's something there that I feel like someone could unpack. Yeah.

Or if he's, or maybe if he's truly just high and just taking his clothes off, it means nothing. Yeah. It's hard to say because there were so many pathologies happening that I don't know if that was one of them or if that was just a weird habit. But yeah, maybe it was like, oh, he didn't, I don't know, didn't have to worry about having an erection in front of people so you just wonder how naked i don't know that sounds like in in one very slight way that sounds like a bit of an upswing like at least you don't have to worry about about that i'm sure not a very far upswing if you know what i mean but okay christine okay christine i i'm also aware that there's a lot of um like issues with that but i feel like at least if you're looking for a silver lighting you know at least you don't have to worry about

that yeah at the very least right yeah um so back at home he now has a place to himself and he is continuously paranoid about his body his his health, and his general lack of blood. He started to worry because he thought his heart would stop beating every now and then. And he suspected, this is where it starts to go pretty off the rails, he suspected that someone had somehow stolen his pulmonary artery. Okay. Yeah, that's a bit of a stretch. Yeah, I would say. He also feared he didn't have enough vitamin c uh which he treated by taking a vitamin c supplement no wrong wow you really threw me for

a second i was like wow that's the most logical thing he's done i was so hoping to read those words next but no unfortunately um this one it was pretty harmless but uh very ineffective he would press oranges to his head and try and try to absorb vitamin c directly into his brain by diffusion uh in case anyone's wondering and the physicist this uh probably does not work, correct? Well, let me take my physicist hat off and put on my nutritionist hat. But I think my thought is like, why wouldn't you just eat them? Like they're in your hands. Like they're so accessible to you. And you could just peel them with your hands.

I know. It's like so. You don't need any tools. You know what's so stupid? I didn't even think of that. I was like, oh, take a vitamin C supplement. But like, you're right right just eat the orange but i guess his thinking was he wanted to diffuse it into his brain so he pressed it onto his head which i i mean i don't get it but i get it i get

it yeah well i feel like if a two-year-old told me that i'd be like oh i see your thought process yeah it seems like well hello you've read a bunch of medical books sir don't you know it's definitely good toddler logic yeah if i need vitamin c in my head then put it on my head your head yeah the rights manifesting to that point i can sort of see it um and up to this point, it's okay. He's harmed a few oranges, but that's about it. Things are about to get bad. And I'm so sorry. So as we know, he allegedly, according to himself, has no blood.

He is missing an artery. But if that weren't stressful enough enough he also feared that his skull bones had disconnected from each other and had started moving around in his head is there more than one skull bone isn't your skull one big old bone uh am i an idiot no i mean i think what i'm what i'm assuming i'm not positive is where your skull fuses that maybe he thought they had separated and they're clacking around in there they're clacking around like how babies have the you know separation uh-huh the fontanelle i wonder if that's what he thought like the i mean maybe his he thought his jaw and his like i'm not really sure what bones he thought were uh disconnecting but my thought is that he

thought the three pieces of the skull had come apart because he thought that uh disconnecting but my thought is that he thought the three pieces of the skull had come apart because he thought that his bones had separated and were like yeah just clanging around in there you know technically your your teeth are your skull bones yeah so they could be rattling around there too that one i think you'd be able to pretty easily notice um it would explain the not eating an orange that's true really i guess he could still eat whatever i'm getting drink the orange juice but so okay so he so his so what's the reason now why he thinks that his bones are oh he's just sort of decided that that's one of his health issues okay i didn't know if it had if there was a trail that

no and to me this is also starting to sound again like ocd like health related ocd the the obsession of like something is wrong with something must be wrong with me health wise um and but it again i i it's not neither of us are experts neither of us no and it's also it just gets so bad that it's not just that. Neither of us are experts. No, and it's also, it just gets so bad that it's like, well, clearly that was not the issue. But to me, I was like, oh, I can see where you're kind of like your brain is coming up with all these explanations of what could be wrong health-wise.

I also wonder, well, I obviously know nothing about this, so I'm just kind of spitting out in the nowhere, but I also wonder if there's any like munchausen situation where he's like coming up with like crazy things that are happening to him even though they're not happening to him yeah i well the thing with munchausen's though is that um you're sort of uh faking it like for attention yeah you're faking it and i think he legitimately was terrified that

these things were real okay so it was more of i would say like a hypochondria situation at the start okay okay then that but i but yeah i had that same thought too but the fact that he like truly believed that his brain you know his skull was exposing his brain and all that uh i think i think he legitimately believed it and if he did by the way terrifying terrifying yeah yeah no and i don't fault him for that and i mean we get into his diagnoses later so like fully you know this is clearly mental illness at play um because there was no reason to suspect that his bones and his head were actually separating. But he really truly believed it. And so to kind of help him keep an eye on that, I guess, he shaved off all his hair so he could see if his bones were moving. That makes sense.

Yeah. And so he saw multiple doctors. He was routinely dismissed as a hypochondriac when he clearly needed some major mental health intervention. And he was ultimately diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia at age 23, which I mean, as you know, I've, I've a limited experience researching that, but you know, from what I've learned that kind of manifests in like late teen early 20s for oftentimes men um and so that would kind of fit where he's sure graduating high school he's done okay so far and then it you know all kind of comes to the surface um so yeah he was diagnosed with this at age 23

left the hospital after 72 hours he went and lived with his mother um and he who had now divorced from his father and while he was living with her he became convinced that she was poisoning him so he wouldn't eat any food she made and she just couldn't handle him so she uh told his dad her ex and he sent richard to live in an apartment on his own so he was on his own now again and uh doesn't feel like the right call i also i don't know what i don't know what the right call is but i feel like he needs help or someone watching him yeah yeah exactly um so now he's alone and he begins to fully hone in on this no blood obsession. And this is where things take a quick, sharp downward spiral and continue. The first thing he did was he would capture rabbits. He would disembowel them and drink their blood and then eat the bodies raw. Wow. Wow. Okay.

Then, as if that weren't enough for your poor brain, M, he blended the organs with Coca-Cola and drank it. That's new. That's an original one. It's an original. Richard Chase. It's an original. So. I call it RC Cola. what's wrong with you i i get it i get it i get it i get it i by here's my thing i want to know why why he why why soda

like just because even he knew it was disgusting and he needed to mix it with something i imagined maybe it was just what he had on hand and it's like if he's already drinking their blood and he's like that's fine why i think it's because the organs were he wanted to blend the organs but you need a liquid couldn't you just do that with the blood before you drank he already drank the blood she was like ah man i needed that for the next part oh i drank that too quickly i don't know yeah i don't know the logic i mean did he logic but i don't i yeah and also this is probably not um a question with a true answer to it but did he enjoy the taste of it or did he gag on it and feel like i just have to do it and get

through it to have more blood? You know, I wonder that myself. I don't know the answer. So I want to put that out first. But my guess is that because I don't think he ever did this. Well, I don't know if ever, but I don't think this started as an enjoyment. Like how you see some people say like, oh, I like the taste of flesh or whatever. I don't think it was that at all. you see some people say like oh i like the taste of flesh or whatever i don't think it was that at all i think he legitimately thought this would cure him and did it more as just like a health

measure quote unquote like i wow i imagine if you have a taste for coca-cola you probably don't have a taste for rabbit organs but sure legitimately i don't know if you if you really thought you needed to eat the organs couldn't you cook those couldn't you just have like chicken liver or rabbit liver you probably could but he didn't i don't know i mean obviously he's not thinking in this he went from putting oranges on his head to blending some boweling rabbits and putting them in a blender yeah exactly it really is a complete nosedive. Yeah, I don't think there's much logic here

that I could really explain to you. Offer, yeah. Yeah, offer, yeah. So all of this to him at the time seemed rational as a way to treat his ailments. He now also believed his blood was turning to powder and needed to be replaced. And so this became a fixation for him, like an obsession of replenishing his blood, if that makes sense.

He also thought his heart was shrinking. So he was, I mean, he had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Yeah, he's going through it. He really was believing that these things were happening to him and he was terrified. So Richard went on drinking his rabbit smoothies uh for a couple of years and just did that uh until he became sick for real uh because he was because he was fucking eating rabbit well actually no uh he got blood poisoning because he injected rabbit blood into his veins. OK. It's one of those things where I have a lot to say, but then I'm very quickly reminded there's mental illness involved.

I know. I know. I know. Because I I have comments that probably would be insensitive until I'm aware that like this guy really thought he was helping himself. And then I'm like, oh, my like this he was like going through hell himself um and so and i i don't say that to excuse what happens later at all but uh you know it's just worth noting um so his father took him to the emergency room septicemia is apparently from what i've heard extremely extremely painful and extremely dangerous. Is that not sepsis? Yeah, it's right. It's a blood. It's like poisoning of your bloodstream, basically.

Yeah, it's it's very dangerous. So his father took him to the emergency room where he told the staff about his blood that he had injected. And so finally, they end up sending him to a psychiatric hospital. I was going to say, like, is he not telling people he's doing this? Like he knows better than to be announcing it to his friends and family. Yeah, I think he probably hadn't told anybody until he was in the hospital and they were like, why is your blood poison? And maybe he explained it.

Imagine the nurses that went home that night. Oh, boy. I'm sure I know nurses probably get crazy stories all the time but i feel like that one takes the cake that one's pretty wild especially if later on a few years down the road you turn on the news and you're like oh yeah that guy you know yeah um so he tells the staff they send him to a psychiatric hospital they send him to beverly manor psychiatric hospital in sacramento uh this point, talk about insensitive. He is nicknamed Dracula.

And it is conflicting sources say he was called this either by the staff or by fellow patients. I like to think the staff didn't do that. But you never know. You never know. Staff once found him with blood smeared on his face. And they found out that he was sitting at the windowsill and capturing birds and beheading them. Holy shit. Wow. And drinking their blood.

So that's a new layer to the mental illness in my mind, or is it? So he knows he's getting sick from doing this, and now it's not stopping him, which makes me feel like there's a whole new level of I don't care. I think part of it is that he thinks he's keeping himself alive this way, almost like the only reason because he's replenishing his blood supply, you know, and so he keeps doing it, even though one time when he injected it, he got sick. Yeah. But yeah. Wow. he got sick. Yeah. But yeah. Wow. Wow.

Wow. Wow. I also I it really has graduated from being like a toxic masculinity thing of like I need it's like so he's not even doing this anymore for an erection. He's doing it because he thinks his blood is powdering away. Right. It's right. Exactly.

Like it almost started as that and then turn into something, you know, and then, you know, he would, I think, again, I'm not a mental health expert. I'm not any expert, but, um, or a medical provider. But I think the fact that he was dealing with that as a teenager and then, you know, schizophrenia usually kicks in when, uh, for boys or for men around like that 20 years old, 20 years old. And so I could see that that could have morphed into something way bigger. It's just horrifying. So they catch him doing this in his room with the birds.

room with the birds and this is actually interestingly reminiscent of a character in Dracula like the book by Bram Stoker who is named Renfield and basically spends his time luring insects and birds into his room to like eat and kill them so strangely enough they're calling him dracula and he's known for this obsession and he does this odd behavior that the character in dracula does so kind of kind of weird um this is not good i mean none of it's good in the hospital he has access to therapy dogs not sure who allowed that when oh my god for harming animals um and he starts stealing syringes and extracting blood from them uh i don't he did not kill any of these dogs i don't believe um so at least there's that but he was he i sorry i know i know no no no ask away i might not have answers but it's worth asking i can't imagine you will i'm just screaming into a void at this point

because it's like but you're probably saying what everyone else is thinking you will i'm just screaming into a void at this point because it's like but you're probably saying what everyone else is thinking you know maybe i just i feel like i don't i don't know what it's like to live like a paranoid schizophrenic i don't i don't i don't have that knowledge but i feel like even if you think oh i need i need more blood so that way i can put it in my body you would think like there's at least the fear of cross-contamination of like, if you really think like, oh, I need more blood, I feel like I would still think like, oh, if I need blood, if I do too much blood, then that might be bad too.

Like, but obviously, obviously this person is not stable. Yeah. I don't think there's really a clear line of foresight and hindsight. I would at least think if I need more blood without cross-contamination, I need human blood, in which case, you know, then you're a literal serial killer. Oh, don't worry. That's kind of where we end up. Okay. Okay. Well, I don't know why I'm surprised by that. But I just feel like there's like the of all the illogical things happening here, the most logical one is to streamline human blood with human blood. And so the animal blood is just and mixing it all together and just being desperate for blood at all. That feels like a whole other level of desperation.

I don't know. I don't know. There's no right words. I don't know. Yeah, it's crazy. It's deeply, deeply, deeply disturbing. Um, and the fact that he's, you know, moved from wild rabbits, which obviously also disturbing, but to like people's pets, like therapy dogs, it's, it's gets, and it just gets

worse folks. Okay. It's just just getting it's getting more and more. I don't want to say like I don't care about the bunnies or the birds, but like it's it's getting closer and closer to home for me, I think. Yeah. And it becomes. Yeah. I mean, it's getting more out of our comfort zone. That's another wrong way to put it. But I mean, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. It's almost like catching wild animals is different than taking someone's pet and harming them, obviously. So he was prescribed Thorazine, which is a powerful tranquilizer, although it was suspected that his problems might also be symptoms of heavy drug abuse. And so that was something that they couldn't really alleviate at this psychiatric hospital. But eventually his behavior did seem to improve and he was released

into the custody of his mother, who decided to take him off of his medications and began to wean him off of the medications. Why she did that, not sure. And when he became unstable again, she moved out and left him on his own with no medication. So, yeah, we can imagine that this didn't go well. So he stopped taking care of himself. No bathing, no grooming, barely any eating apart from like the animals he was catching. Wow. So he's just like almost on a strictly blood diet now yeah he's just like eating raw animals how did honestly it's shocking he didn't just drop dead it's really

amazing that this septic thing sepsis happened once and not every every week i feel like well i mean also like i'm even afraid of like eating cooked steak that's a little undercooked like right like this guy's just chugging blood it's just so like i just how is he living how i have no freaking clue um he basically just continued to capture kill and consume animals um he began to capture dogs and cats from the neighborhood okay that's where we're heading next yeah and uh he even got some at pet stores oh for god's sake okay that's the end of that i promise uh a neighbor did say later oh i saw him just carrying different animals into the house and but never reported it hey see something say something folks okay even especially if it's about helpless animals all right okay uh at some point richard showed up at his mom's house with a dead cat we don't know

whose cat it was or whether it was her cat or his cat but he showed up with a cat and in front of his mother he threw the cat on the ground opened it up with his bare hands put his hands inside of the cat smeared the insides on his face and drank the blood all while screaming oh and why was the screaming the worst part of that for me just like screaming at his mother right yeah it just adds some weird like animalistic horrific thing to it um his mom closed the door uh and never reported the incident to anyone honestly i mean fucked up i'm not saying it's not fucked up but also can you imagine seeing your family do that like what the fuck do you do i mean i would like to think i would report it but i think i'd be so scared for my own life at that point. I'd be like, I would just be scared

for my child. I'd be like, my child is ill. I need to, you know what I mean? I, at least I like to think that's what I would think it would feel, but I mean, you know, it's hard to judge somebody else when you don't know that. I think I'd be, I think I'd be scared in just a lot of ways all at once. It'd be terrifying. I'd be, I mean, i obviously don't have a baby so i i don't have that frame of reference um but even if it were you i'd be like what the fuck is going on are you okay but then also i guess with their history of like him clearly needing help and her clearly not supervising right it's not like surprising necessarily that i don't want to say i don't want to say she's a bad mom because i don't know what she's like but it sounds like there's been a lot of incidents where like it was clear he needed to be monitored

and and neither of his parents really did anything they seem to be okay i don't know i don't want to i don't know their parenting style all i know is what i'm hearing and it doesn't sound super hot doesn't sound like i would get advice from them yeah i feel like if anything has ever been described as a cry for help uh here's one a big one yeah i don't know but i don't know maybe he was just trying to scare her and it worked but and she never reported it ever not even later or well i guess she had to yeah we know it now but like at the time you know she didn't report it and again like i i guess on the other hand like who do you report it to i mean yeah was was hurting i don't know you might not

know this either at what point did like hurting animals become like a a law like i don't so they're they're actually they do touch on that later and i bet nowadays it's different but i think in the 70s there really wasn't probably much protection for so like animals realistically like even though it looked real wild the cops might not have been able to hold them on anything i yeah i imagine like what are they going to prove whose cat it is yeah i imagine like that might not be the most effective thing to do and then as far as like a psychiatric thing it's like he's a grown adult now yeah uh so i i told i do get why like how would you go about this but at the same time i feel like i wish i just wait let's just say i wish

somebody had given him the help he needed it's certainly it that's the poster child story for uh see something say something yeah you're watching him rip a cat open with his bare hands yeah yeah eat it maybe call somebody at least a friend a friend let a friend like do you have any advice? I don't want to know. Don't call me. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, just really sad, really scary. Clearly in need of a new hobby. Richard decides he's going to start collecting guns. Whoa. Hey, could it get worse? Yep.

Yep. Here we go. worse yep yep here we go in 1977 police patrolling the nevada desert found an abandoned car covered in blood with men's clothes and two rifles inside along with a bucket filled with blood and a liver uh by a nearby lake they found richard chase naked and covered in blood he tried to run away they caught him after arresting and interviewing him police determined the blood and liver belonged to a cow that richard had shot with one of his rifles um but since there was no human victim kind of going off what you were just saying everything was dismissed and he was set free well shit so it's like uh i don't know, Em.

I don't know. I got nothing. Usually we've got something. I got nothing. Got nothing. And so now, I mean, we'd see he's graduating from dogs and cats to bigger animals, which we can only imagine what happens next. It's almost, I don't, I wonder if he was testing it with a cow, like a bigger person. That's what I think is happening.

He used his guns to shoot it and see if he could overtake it. So on December 27th, 1977, he attempted his first murder. He drove around Sacramento with a new 22 semi-automatic pistol. He randomly spotted a woman named Dorothy Polinsky through her window in the kitchen while she was doing dishes. And he fired at her from his car. Thankfully missed her head by an inch. It went through the window,

through her hair and got lodged in a cabinet so it's just like that time when like there was like a stabbing or shooting and it hit the guy's car keys oh yeah yeah the it's like it just hit your hair like so now you've just got like a chunk missing and now you can look at where a bullet almost hit you terrifying yeah it went through her hair and hit a cabinet and he drove away two days later december 29th of 77 richard saw ambrose griffin age 51 a father of two unloading groceries from his car in his driveway richard drove past shot him twice uh one bullet missed the other hit him in the chest and he fled the scene. Paramedics arrived and Ambrose was still conscious, but he died shortly afterward. At first they thought it was a heart attack, but then they saw the bullet because they just didn't even realize what had happened at first. And so finally, you know, they are looking at

this as a shooting and they first think this must be random. But then they realized that the bullet in Ambrose Griffin's chest was the same as the one in Dorothy's kitchen cabinet. So they're like, OK, somebody. I was going to say, how did we know that Dorothy was this guy? I yeah, I was going to ask how we like knew he was involved. Yeah. They matched the bullets. So nearly that they wasn't much else they could do at this point. So they matched the bullets. They know it's the same person, but not much else to do. Also, I like your cackle witch shirt. Do you like my shirt?

Yeah, I was going to say it earlier. But there never seemed to be a good time because things were too fucked up. There's never a good time. No. Things were too fucked up. There's never a good time. No. So nearly a month later, January 23rd of 1978, married couple Robert and Barbara Edwards came home and discovered Richard Chase standing in their home.

He had found the door unlocked and had let himself in. He ran away, but the house, when they looked, was in shambles. He had peed in a drawer where they kept their baby's clothes. Whoa. And then he had defecated on the baby's bed. That's interesting because I don't know if that's, I mean, everything that's coming out of my mouth is, I don't know if this is mental illness or I don't know how to explain mental illness but um i feel like that almost feels intentional because i feel so not part of his usual mission yeah of like i'm here for the blood i need the blood well like to have done all that other stuff is like i feel like there's a whole other

scenario that's come up in his mind or it was just like it i don't like that feels so out of character i almost wouldn't give that an mo for him yeah i know it's only the fact that they saw him standing there that kind of yeah pinned him to this too because it really is it's random but again you know he he's all this is random unwell yeah and a lot of this doesn't totally make sense in the traditional way. So he later, Richard later said in an interview that he now get where the, or tell me if this rings familiar, he takes an unlocked door as an invitation into a home. He said, yep,

that'll do it. That's, you know, does that remind you? Is that, um, uh, I know it's one of the big ones.

Is it Richard Ramirez? Oh no. I was just saying it's like a vampire oh that's no there's like a serial killer too who also said like oh well the door was open and just yeah that's uh probably probably but any of those guys from the 70s i feel like it's probably they all just really like unlocked doors but no it definitely also feels like a vampire although sort of although you had to invite them in. But still, yeah, I do.

I see what you did there. I do feel a little bit like, oh, that's creepy that he felt like, oh, well, I've been welcomed into this home because they left the door unlocked. It's like, oh, yikes. Like he took it as the invitation. As the sign. Yeah, exactly. As like the welcome, you know.

Creepy. So he said if he reached a door that was locked he would conclude that he was not welcome in that home and he would move on i mean how fucking scary is that which like just psa to everyone lock your goddamn doors please please if there's anything you take from this podcast for all your damn doors for all you know a serial killer is going to leave you alone because your door is locked right and walk away i mean but then again i guess you could argue that there's probably one out there who would only want you if your door was locked i don't know that's fine just lock your door just it's all bad it's all bad uh so a woman named jean layton reportedly at some point watched richard walk up to her house try her door which

was locked check all of her windows also locked and then just walk away and she's like that was really weird and then later it was like holy shit like thank god i locked all the windows and door yeah and this is the 70s like people didn't all lock their doors back then you know no so january 23rd 1978 richard entered the home. Oh, Blaze. I just said Blaze. I mean Em. This is when I was researching this earlier and I was like, Blaze, this is so fucked up. But now I just have to tell you, Em.

Thanks. Yeah, I'll be Blaze. I'll be Blaze right now. Blaze, hold my hand. So he broke into the home of 22-year-old Teresa Wallen, who was three months pregnant. Oh, God. He shot and killed her. He then took a knife out of the kitchen and stabbed her. No, he did not do that.

Thank God. Okay. But thank you for saying it out loud so that we all had to think about it. Okay. He stabbed her heart, removed some of her organs, and sliced off one of her nipples. Oh, shit. Okay. Then he, this is just so beyond, he used an empty yogurt cup out of the trash can to scoop up her blood and drink it.

Okay. Dare I ask what happened with the baby? Or was, I mean, obviously the baby died. I mean, she was only three months pregnant. So, yeah, there was not. So he might have not even known that she was pregnant that's what you're right yeah yeah okay i thought that was i in my mind she he was aware and something was going to also happen to the baby no i think that was just

part of oh wow well let's just make this even more fucked up uh and throw in the fact that she was pregnant of course so um there's more that he does here so um he engages in acts of necrophilia uh with theresa's body then as if that weren't fucking horrible enough he goes outside collects dog feces and puts it in her mouth mouth okay um okay that's all i'm sorry i i'm still i'm still in my own head of like trying to like figure out why and like i don't think i need to i know i know i know i just i my brain doesn't understand i think like humans yeah i feel like we want to like put like explain things and put them in a box but i think this is uh not one that's gonna happen um i don't i really got nothing that's that's a rough one yeah it's uh it's bad so theresa's husband david uh came home and found her like that can you imagine no responding police officers were at a total loss one of them later called it the most bizarre thing he had ever seen

um they couldn't figure out what the fuck was going on there was like a yogurt cup there were there were these like bloody ring marks on the floor near the body which resembled the water stains a glass makes when you set them to set it down on a table right uh the killer wore gloves to commit the crime and he also cleaned the knife he used and then put the knife back in the kitchen and is he also like so with the cow i don't know if there was like a bucket of blood and with this one there was like he was just drinking out of a little cup so like is there is his goal anymore to be drinking as much blood as he can or is it that's not even part of this anymore i think i think the blood obsession is continuing i think he just is adding on to it yeah it seems like it's just gotten. Bigger and more complex.

Okay. Sure. So two days later. A dog was found. Having been shot and killed. With the same ammunition. That Teresa had been killed with. The kidneys of the dog were missing.

And finally somebody reported something. And the sheriff's department. Noticed the similarities between the dog. Teresa's killing, Dorothy and Ambrose Griffin, the same bullets. They theorize that the killer lived within a square mile radius of all the crimes and they determined the killer was thought to be disorganized and classified by the FBI as an impulsive blitz killer, a murderer who acts alone and without a plan. So I think that pretty much sums it up like he did not have a plan he was doing it alone there wasn't really forethought to this uh so they got that nailed down uh but it's not over yet four days after theresa's murder and a mile south in Marywood Drive Richard entered the unlocked home of 38 year old Evelyn Muroff who was babysitting her 22 month old nephew David

her friend Daniel Meredith had taken her six-year-old Jason shopping for snow boots so he could go on a trip with the neighbors Richard found walked into the house found evelyn upstairs and shot and killed her in the hallway um he took evelyn's body to a bedroom where he attempted to remove one of her eyes uh police noted from the scene that he had found extreme sexual gratification from all of this so maybe that was part of it that his impotence was no longer an issue oh yeah i didn't even think about that you know how some killers get basically get off on the violence and the gore um so they think that might be part of it is that he was also solving that problem for himself yeah i know that i hadn't even thought about the fact

that like it was now almost like reinforcing his beliefs if he's now able to actually yeah good point m it's like oh now you have enough blood i hadn't even thought of it that way do what you've always wanted yeah yeah yeah i hadn't even thought of that that way so then it just so sorry but then it just encourages him to keep killing because if he needs to keep getting enough blood to be able to do that and then basically thinks this is the only thing keeping him going and keeping you said he is um r-wording them also yeah uh correct so i wonder if he's doing that as like to prove that he's finally accomplished this horrible yeah or if he's just like wow like to prove that he's finally accomplished this horrible yeah or if he's just like wow look it's it's working it's working yeah yeah um very very very very very very

fucked up uh but it's not over because then daniel meredith the friend came home with the little boy and richard shot and killed both of them okay got it uh he then went back to evelyn's body stabbed her multiple times uh drank her blood out of her stomach then he got into daniel's station wagon which had just been parked there and uh fled i feel like nothing you say anymore is surprising me but i did i feel like you said something about an eyeball it's all now combobulated discombobulated in my head now i but i feel like very few things are surprising me but i did think oh it can't get worse than people and now it's children also yeah it's almost like it's escalating to points that you can't even see coming yeah so a concerned neighbor called the police i mean there were

multiple shots uh and the same first this is this guy i hope got some intensive therapy because the same police officer who had shown up first on the scene at Teresa's murder showed up here and found the same bloody rings on the floor and finally realized, oh, this guy's drinking the blood. That's why the rings from like a cup being set down over and over are showing up. So weird that it took two instances for that to get figured out. I think. But like, why would you assume that? You know what I mean? Like, it's such a rare thing. are showing up so weird that it took two instances for that to get figured out i think but like why would you assume that you know what i mean like it's such a rare thing like why would you be like what are these circles of blood on the floor and there was no dna yet right uh there was dna there

was just no way to trace it i'm just kidding sorry that was a good joke good job he is hilarious i know you really found a way to insert humor in thank you because I was out of goddamn laws I know I'm sweating so much because I'm just so horrified there was there was no way to trace DNA okay because I was gonna say like that's a perfect match with a little sip of the cup and all that like on the like a mouth DNA situation yeah but I guess also if it's just filled with blood like oh yeah that's i don't know if you're gonna be able to find i mean he was prepared enough to wear gloves so he was not leaving fingerprints behind so there was he was certainly leaving spit behind though yeah you're

right if it's mixing with blood like how yeah whatever with such a gory scene um so oh god so this is when they're like okay great this guy is literally drinking blood and sending the cup down and then picking it up um so daniel's stolen station wagon was found near the scene of the crime which was not far from richard's home and as you can imagine this whole area people's sense of safety was like turned upside down, violently shaken. The entire community was on edge. There was no like pattern. It wasn't like, oh, he attacks only women or, oh, there's like something specific he's looking out for. And so anybody could be the next victim.

I did think it was interesting that one of his first gunshot victims was a man. I did think it was interesting that one of his first gunshot victims was a man. And I do wonder if any of this still traces back to his impotence of like, oh, that looks like a strong man who has two children. He clearly can get it. Oh, yeah, I don't know. Well, I don't think he knew about the children. I think that was another thing with the pregnancy where it was like, oh, father of two. He was just out in the driveway. Gotcha. Let's humanize him, even though it makes it more fucked up. But I don't think he knew that. I thought that he was aware that it was a father. Yeah, no, I think it's more,

that's a good point though, but I think it's more of just like an opportunity thing. Like he just saw him unloading groceries and was like. Which is not that I think that like people should be targeted, but it also the reminder that someone could just do something at random because you're the one there is just so scary yeah it's the same as with um to me at least it reminds me of the um israel keys story of like there's no rhyme or reason you can't even pretend that you're prepared you can't even trick yourself into thinking you're safe because you just don't know um so the the pattern was unclear to everybody um richard seemed to just appear suddenly randomly kill indiscriminately no matter

who you are man woman child cat dog doesn't matter uh the fbi formed a profile they described the killer as a loner someone who was slovenly malnourished. Well, yeah, they hit that one right on the head. Possibly, but not likely, living with parents, but otherwise alone, as well as having a history of mental illness and drug abuse. Ding, ding, ding. Police released a composite sketch of a man who had been seen acting suspiciously in the neighborhood days earlier. Several witnesses described the man in the sketch as disheveled and wearing dirty clothes they didn't realize at the time that the dirty clothes were actually just blood stains on all of his clothing oh god okay yeah but thankfully this sketch worked because richard's former high

school classmate nancy Holden, recognized Richard in the sketch. And so when the police looked into his arrest and hospitalization history, they started putting a profile of him together. A detective compared the composite sketch to a previous mugshot of Richard. And the mugshot actually had a mustache and goatee so the detective drew them on to the sketch and went aha yep there he is okay so they eventually knocked on richard's door they got no answer and so what they did was they pretended to leave but they hid out and stalked the door until he left i see and he walks out the door like out of a horror movie covered in blood oh my god wow just like just non-stop wow stop this guy not even hiding it not even a little bit uh the police

arrested him they found Daniel Meredith's wallet in his pocket so ding ding ding ding ding ding pretty much smoking gun he also had uh the bucket he used to carry evelyn's blood from the scene along with the 22 caliber pistol that was linked to all the bullets they had found uh in the interrogation room richard revealed nothing he didn't acknowledge the murders or that incident in nevada with the cow where he was discovered naked yeah and then once dogs were mentioned he scoffed about being in trouble just for a bunch of dogs quote unquote oh shit which is like uh buddy there's a lot more happening here than just that yeah and then apropos of nothing he blurted out irish setters are the best

oh isn't that horrible Irish setters are the best. Isn't that horrible? Yeah. It's the absolute worst fun fact ever. I'm so sorry, everybody. Officers, meanwhile, search Richard's apartment. They found nearly every inch of his entire apartment covered in blood. Just like fucking the shining elevator scene, basically. Holy shit.

The kitchen was especially macabre, except the knife drawer, which was clean and orderly and described as like surgically clean, this knife drawer. So weird. Yeah, he never, this is horrific, cleaned the the blender so he had never cleaned this blender so it was also like dirty moldy old organs all blended up with your new ones oh yeah and they said the smell was i mean there's not even a word for it probably but just thinking about it it's like sickening um they found several pet callers in the kitchen i'm sorry everybody uh and inside the fridge they found several body parts they also found human brain matter on richard's bed wow uh he appeared for trial in 1979 prosecution sought the death penalty but defense fought for second degree charges pleading insanity

the argument basically boiled down to whether or not the crimes were premeditated and because he wore gloves uh cleaned a knife to cover his tracks the jury felt he was sane enough to know right from wrong right and they found him guilty on six counts of first degree murder he was sentenced to death by gas chamber uh and in prison richard's fellow inmates were terrified of him. And so I guess, understandably, I guess the way that they decided to approach this terror was to goad him into taking his own life. telling him to take his own life. And he secretly stored his daily medication, these tranquilizers, until he had enough to take it once to overdose.

So on December 28th, 1980, Richard Chase died by suicide at the age of 30. He was only 30. Wow. After all that. Yeah, in my mind, he was like a six-year-old man at this point. Yeah, yeah. He lived such a crazy life. Yeah. In my mind, he was like a six year old man at this point. Yeah. Yeah. There's such a crazy life. Yeah. There was so much, so much happening. Um, and it's really

fucking sad on so many levels and just alone. The, the mental illness alone is just so tragic. But then on top of that, the number of people that were just number of people and animals that were hurt and killed and lives ruined just because, you know, this person could not get any help. It's just very, very, very, very gruesome and horrific. And I'm so sorry that I brought it to you today. Well, I feel like you've done a good job of holding off on it for a while. It was kind of bound to happen. It's been a while since I did just like a super duper fucked up one, I think. I feel like I just don't remember what I did recently, but.

I don't either. I think this is it's one of the blessings of being so forgetful. It's nice to know in a couple of weeks I won't I won't have this stored in my head for much longer. Yeah. But it's still not a man. It's not quite as horrific as the Cletus Hems story, but. Yeah, I was wondering if there'd be a Cleo Fisherman, Chloe Fisherman, I don't know, cameo at some point. I wish. I wish. She charges a lot for her cameo so tell linda how much 69 dollars i was good yeah uh-huh i'm surprised you didn't do 666 666 dollars um by the way one of the things that christine got me for um my birthday was a pokemon card of myself and the weight on it was 666. Just so we're clear. I forgot the birthday exchange was only on Patreon.

Yeah. So if you want to see the fun gifts. It wasn't even a birthday exchange yet. We haven't done your presents yet. I'm still waiting for them. I'm still waiting for them to be relocated to me. It's very obnoxious, but. I don't need any presents and dude okay in due time uh you

will have a surprise gift giving extravaganza that's so fun um you really fucked me up today i know and i was really upset this morning and now i did it anyway i'm sorry i'm not sorry enough to not have done it but i i am sorry honestly that's kind of the whole purpose of this whole show it's like oh i know i'm gonna rock your worlds in the worst way and unfortunately you're gonna be stuck with that feeling that i'm gonna hang up and leave you to it toodaloo just enjoy your time yeah i uh i'm very glad that um here it's almost eight o'clock so i can really go downstairs and have a nice stiff drink because I need it. Oh good. I'll certainly find a nice

bowl of carbs and do something with that I think. Oh my goodness. Well also check out our bonus content if you're on Patreon to hear all about some extra birthday behind the scenes stuff. It's a little palate cleanser you know. It's going to be a

really thick palate cleanser this know. It's going to be a really thick palate cleanser this time. It's going to be a... It's going to feel a lot better than how I feel currently. Yeah, yeah, let's hope so. Oy, oy, oy. And that's why we drink.