And That's Why We Drink - E287 The Gay Bathroom Invite Revisited and a Selection of Mothman Mugs

Episode Date: August 7, 2022

Welcome to episode 287 where we have a crush on everybody! But we also feel unwell due to Em's story. This week Em brings us the unbelievable story of Tarrare, the man who ate anything and everything. Then Christine covers the heart-pounding, unsolved mystery of the Texarkana Moonlight Murders. And who wants to see Em belly flop into a pudding river? ...and that's why we drink!And don't forget to get your tickets for our 2nd Annual Cryptid Poetry Slam and Charity Auction! momenthouse.com/cryptidsunscripted

wow you need to catch your breath uh yeah i do and i'm by the way i'm looking at you and i'm not looking at you so excuse the weirdness today uh yeah I'm I'm just I'm just here for the ride wow today's been a real gnarly what did I call it a clusterfuck recently um you said that you owed me a cluster or I you owed me my own clusterfuck which is honestly the nicest thing you've ever said to me I do officially owe you a clusterfuck because i we it's now 10 10 and uh we were supposed to start recording 70 minutes ago i mean this isn't anything new for us like it's not like oh no we're delayed i know but what is this feeling basically i'm in fredericksburg currently and whenever i record here I use a microphone and I thought I lost the

cords that microphone but I had a backup microphone but that required setting up like from scratch a completely new sound mixer and then Christine and I had to like through FaceTime adjust all my levels as if I know how to and then I was like I mean we can pretend like I know how to use a mixer because this thing is fancy and all digital and so we're just poking around the buttons and somehow the audio is actually working. But then it took an hour for us to figure all that out. I was scrambling and ripping boxes apart trying to find all the right equipment and set up new microphones. And at the end of the day, we sat down and I was about to start my audio and i found the cord just picked up microphone just picked up a cord and went oh my god and it was right there the chaos the anger

the anger truly i was fuming the rage inside of me it was just like i so we could have recorded an hour ago had i just like listen fiddled through a cord maybe the universe wanted me to get some more caffeine in my system before we started who knows who knows but we're here now well this energy actually is really well paired with the story that i'm gonna tell later but and you'll understand why in a second but before we get into that um why do you drink because i had reasons to drink this week but that currently this one just stole the show. Okay. Well, I feel kind of bad because my reason that I drink is not very nice to you.

And I feel a little bit like now I owe you some kindness. Let's call it even. I don't even know the situation yet. Okay. Maybe this can be my... Okay. I like this. See, the universe knew that I felt too guilty to to bring this up so cosmically

i had to just completely panic for the last hour because you felt guilty okay you had to inconvenience me so that i could inconvenience you it's perfect yeah um so i don't want this to sound alarming but i feel a little bit like you've been gaslighting me. And I'm finally realizing like, oh, okay, maybe, maybe I need to call him out. I don't know. Okay, there's this is a multi-layered process here. Okay. Wow. Okay.

Sure. You look ready to rumble. Okay. All I know is my adrenaline's a little too high for whatever's about to happen. I'm sorry. I don't want to send you into a heart situation. No, no for whatever's about to happen. I'm sorry. I don't want to send you into a heart situation. No, no, no. You're not.

You're not. But you are leading with, you've been gaslighting me for a long time, and this is multi-layered. Okay, but it's also me. It could be anything. I could have gaslit you in that conversation about Girl Scout cookies a month ago, but now it's, who knows? You probably did that too, but we'll get to that next week. you in that conversation about girl scout cookies a month ago but now it's who knows you probably did that too but uh we'll get to that next week uh once i what did i how did i psychologically

manipulate you but which in a way where i by the way also don't think i knew i was doing that yeah exactly and i think that's where the layers come in um so i okay i texted you the other day and i was like hey i'm in love with Robin on Stranger Things okay now this is where the story branches into multiple pieces so very quickly okay so you were like oh wow okay so we talked about it and then I posted this TikTok slash reel I guess about how I was and it uses like this Jimmy Buffett law and order sound oh yes I know the trend did you see my post no I haven't actually been on social media lately oh okay so um I've been posting like I've been like reposting stuff but I haven't seen I've been scrolling you know

okay so it's a really fun little trend where it plays like uh Jimmy Buffett and then it goes into law and order so it's sort of like everything's happy and you're telling kind of either a a lot of people use it for like um for their pronouns and things like that where it's like you're telling somebody something and you're not sure how they're gonna react and so it goes into the law and order while you wait for their reaction um and so I did that because I had told like kind of jokingly because I had told Blaze like oh I have a crush on Steve on Stranger Things but I also have a crush on Nancy and Robin. And then it was kind of like a wait to see how you responded. And he was like, that's awesome.

And then it goes back into Jimmy Buffett. OK. Yeah. So I posted that and I got a bunch of DMs. OK. First of all. From Robin? From Robin.

And we're getting married. Bye. No. I got a bunch of DMs from listeners who were like, wait a second. Well, first of all, everyone commented, why do you like, okay, Nancy's fine, but Robin's where it's at because I posted about Nancy and Steve. And I was like, yeah, I know. I love Robin. But Em made me feel like that was the craziest thing I've ever said.

I was like, I love Robin. You were like, what is wrong with you? No, absolutely not. And I remember I was like, man, I must be like off base, like massive off base. And then I posted that and literally everyone in the comments was like, no, we love Robin. And I was like, shit, I should have just gone and like said my truth. And instead I picked Nancy. I thought it would be more relatable, especially in a time where you're already speaking so many truths. Like you were like, but this is my caveat. I almost, right. I like, I like tweaked

it. And then I was like, damn it. Why did I tweak it? I don't know. I thought it'd be more relatable because M made me feel like I was totally nuts. Okay. I did not mean to i just maybe we just have i mean first of all hang on no you could not be gaslighting me more all of a sudden we have absolutely different types and you've known that from the beginning you literally love every gay man there ever was and you want him to fall in love with you and be your husband it's true and you're gonna look at me and say that my tastes and your tastes should be similar. The second I said I wasn't into Robin, you should have been like, well, then that's why Robin's exactly my jam. We can't even agree on pizza.

Are you fucking kidding me? You knew what you were. Okay. Okay. That's fair. Okay. That's fair. Fine. Wow.

Someone really just said, I want to have adrenaline today, too, and just decided to have an opinion. Okay. Okay. Okay. But okay. just decided to have an opinion. Okay. Okay. But okay. I guess I'm just not. Okay. It's like the time I said I love Antony and you were like, what is the matter with you? I don't know.

But I'm the odd man out on that. Everyone says I'm the crazy one for that. Okay. Fair. All right. Fine. Second level of this. Oh, God.

I thought we were done. No, of course not. So then I got a bunch of DMs being like, wait a second. Are you like, I thought we all knew this already, that you also liked girls too. And I was like, yeah, I did too. But then I was confused and I got a couple of DMs that confirmed my confusion because they were confused too, because they said, yeah, you know, I always thought, um, I always thought that, uh, we knew that you also like girls, but then recently on an episode and was talking about their gay bathroom

and said, you were not invited unless there was a queer person in there already. Um, and then they said, so I thought I made it up and so a bunch of people dm'd and said like wow and one person said i felt like i feel like m is gaslighting me because i really thought we all knew this and then m was like you're not welcome in my gay bathroom well obviously i'm biphobic i know and then so i was like okay i'm glad i'm not the only one because when you said that i was like well clearly I need to reinforce my side of the story, because M doesn't even have an understanding here. And so anyway, I felt like I needed to restate it. But then everyone was like, I thought we already knew this. And I was like, me too. But I wasn't invited into the gay bathroom. So now I needed to reinstate my truth. And I wish you know I just I Robin is where it's at well okay the Robin one I cannot get behind you are officially invited to the queer bathroom but you had never publicly outed you've never said anything I didn't know I didn't know nobody

asked you know that's a thing that's fair I mean I assumed but i wasn't going to be like oh and your bi ass can come to the bathroom okay but i did say how in love i was with natalie morales with natalie dormer with i guess everyone named natalie i don't know i guess so but i'm also in love with chris evans but i'm not actually in love with chris i don't know i wasn't going to speak for you i was going to wait for you to come to me. And then now that you are officially part of the queer little club, you can be in the bathroom. Okay, thank you. I appreciate that. But, I mean, you know, I get it to a point, too.

I definitely get it. Because it's sort of like I also didn't want to be that guy. Like, you know, I'm married to a dude. Like, I'm – Don't stop it with that. No, but I got it on Easy Street. So, I'm like, it's not my place to be like, hey, me too. You know.

But, anyway. So, I uh thought it was very funny and i screenshot the one person who dm me that m was gaslighting them because i laughed so hard and then i was like wow i'm gonna say that uh it was one listener but i'm gonna say that our listeners and i have all been gas sure we could we could call it gaslight or we could call it i've been outed before i was ready so i wasn't gonna do that to you i know i mean and i listen i knew fully that this would all turn back directly onto onto me and then that robin argument is a little wishy-washy for sure considering we've never had similar tastes i know i guess uh i guess i just trust my friends too much because like when you're like no that's wrong i'm like oh okay sorry girl you need to get it together when it

comes to your i have a crush imagine if i was like blaze is not it i would probably have them i don't know but you don't say that so i'm still married to him oh i see okay well then hey all right i'll take that okay i'm sorry that was just such a rant but um last night people when that person dm me saying they felt like m was gaslighting them i laughed so hard i feel like you're gonna have it framed and then you're just gonna use it every time we disagree on something no but like this is already turned back to me and we all know it like now i'm the asshole we'll call it even especially given this whole light fia or microphone fiasco earlier let's just you know what you're right i gaslit you and i felt so bad whatever you need to say i guess sure the whole time when you were like

frantically trying to find chords and you were like apologizing over and over and i was like sipping my coffee like i'm just getting getting ready to really just put you on blast. Yeah, for no good reason whatsoever. Anyway, that's why I drink. So I guess I like girls too. Okay, your turn. You know what? I can't beat that.

So welcome to the best side, I guess. Dark side? I don't know. In the best way? Thank you. you're welcome uh I'm sure everyone is very excited to hear your rolling in list of people that you have a crush on it's so long I mean and at this point it's everybody I don't even it's I had to tell blaze I was like I just need you to understand that like I think I just am like mildly in love with every person. That's,

I don't know how else to put it. So that's a cool way to, to live life though. It's hard. It's a lot of, um, it's, it's probably why I was emo in high school.

They're just so frustrated by every person. So, so overwhelmed and so sad and sexually frustrated. Oh God. In Catholic school. Help. Oh, God. In Catholic school. LOL. Well, I'm proud of you. Thank you for officially telling me.

And you can now come to the queer bathroom. Thank you. What if I made all that up just so I could get in the bathroom? That does feel a little Christine-y. It does feel like me. It does feel like something I would do. I'll allow it. Okay.

Speaking of queer bathrooms, you have officially seen the troll hole. Oh. Thoughts? Okay. Speaking of queer bathrooms, you have officially seen the troll hole. Oh, okay. Now this is where we get back onto M's, the superhero of this podcast. Oh, wow. We really just love to whiplash left and right. You know I like to keep you guessing. On the toes, yeah.

I visited for one night, exactly. And of course, priority number one was enter the troll hole. And wow, it did not disappoint. Em, you kicked ass. And you filmed a video, which was so smart. And so I think we're going to put that on Patreon, right? Yes. Okay, cool.

Yes, we can. And the irony is I was supposed to show Christine and then the next episode we recorded you would everyone else would finally be able to see it. But I had to come home last. Oh, right. So you are welcome to describe it to people if you'd like. Oh, it's beautiful. It's it's it's amazing. First off, I mean, I have the same couch now, which was super didn't even know.

Didn't even know. But that was a fun little little thing uh but so okay wow i'm just trying to i'm so overwhelmed there's so many so that obviously the celery vase is there oh someone mailed me a celery vase oh fun so now we have matching ones but i assume you got one too um i haven't i yeah it's probably in the mailbox but somebody but i don't know who it was because it came from eBay. So it just had anyway. Okay. But so M has like all these. Oh my god, M, I don't even know where to begin. You have like sliding doors that have different backgrounds, which like you had introduced on Instagram live at one point, but most people probably hadn't seen that. like m wallpapered sort of the front of these doors so you can slide the sliding door and have a different background behind you it's so cool like the curtains have like a green screen that you can use if you pull it the right way soundproof soundproof curtains i mean what and then

there's like a yak there's a yak he he's good he he feels like a footstool he's a little hassock situation he's actually called a critter sitter and oh wait i have one of those wait what's your animal it was a panda oh well yeah he's like he's literally meant to be like a little stool for children but i bought him as a footstool i love love him. Yeah. I had like one of those critters sitters, but it was bigger and his name was bandit and he was a panda anyway. And then you have these, Oh my God, it was amazing.

I'm like so overwhelmed trying to even describe it. Thank you. I try my, well, I did try to make everything. I tried to make every inch of it as functional as possible because I was like, I like now that i've got all the

soundproof curtains that are different colors and i've got the sliding doors and i've got my main backdrop i've got like five backgrounds for the next time i need anything i've got i tried to keep it minimal with the lights and the tripods and all that i mean em was like here watch this and was like set the lights to underwater and all of a sudden the lights are just like undulating like water. And I'm like, what the fuck is going on? Yeah. And then it's like one of those, I mean, not to use this comparison again, but it's like one of those, it's like the bat cave. Like you go in and you're like, wow, things come out of the wall.

And they're just suddenly. Things do come out of the walls, actually. Literally. It's the most amazing thing. Like, even a cover on the light switch so that you don't accidentally turn the power off. There's a plastic cover and like, oh, the side table, it goes, it folds up and down, but it's camouflaged into the wall with the same wallpaper. It was like, thank you. So just every little inch of it was like, what the hell? And then all your like amazing little tchotchke set up with like your Funko Pop.

And I forget. Oh, my God. There were so many cool things. I'm like, I am overwhelmed. Even try to remember. My only disappointing thing is the Captain America shield that I finally have a place to hang it. It's just been like leaning in the corner of the room for six months. the corner of the room for six months um but i finally have it on the wall but it is apparently perfectly the same size as my head when my head is in front of the camera and so for all you know

currently uh current viewers if you are looking at my face you would not know there's a captain america shield behind me until i move my head So the only thing I messed up on that whole place was like I was supposed to have a cool backdrop and the shield was supposed to be like the star of the show. And now you can't even tell it's there. To be fair, you do move a lot. I do move a lot. Mostly to cough. So every time we might just have to leave those bits in now so that I'll just start having more of an allergy attack. So everyone can enjoy it.

But I was so glad. Also, this is actually a perfect segue for me to remind everybody. I am not nor do I plan to be engaged to Allison anytime soon. And I know that's a sharp left turn, but every single person, it seems, was confused when I posted that you had accepted my offer to come to the troll hole because I posted a picture of our Evite on Instagram and I had like I put like the little emoji the little like one of those she said yes she said yes but it says like you are invited to the inaugural troll hole ribbon cutting ceremony and like and because so i i thought everyone got it but it tagged me i tagged you and like i'm pretty sure 200 people said oh my god congrats on the engagement

out you and allison are so happy and well and i was like everyone can you imagine if that was the way i announced an engagement like you accepted an invitation to the troll hole ribbon cutting ceremony because alice's again the i and like i was getting inundated with people not inundated but alexander and blaze both messaged me like why does everyone think emma's getting engaged and i was like i have no No idea. I feel like I've made it pretty clear on here that like marriage is not the end goal to me. Not in the car. Not necessarily in the tarot cards. It could be in the cards one day, but like not even currently. Like that's not like everyone relax.

You're not helping the situation, I guess, everyone. All you're doing is giving my mom a heart attack every five seconds when she thinks i've i've not told her i'm engaged oh my god and you've told everyone else yeah um yeah so i don't know what that was about uh but anyway to to clear it up for several people um that post about the troll hole was like for christine that was about me okay yeah alison who by the way alison and i are engaged so i don't know what everyone's problem is i already proposed to alison or vice versa i can't remember too many margaritas but alison's been proposed to where everything's good it's fine and she said yes you know what though speaking of gaslighting and psychological

manipulation i think you did that to people because now everyone knows about your fake wedding and now everyone's gonna be like oh so emin alison could have a fake wedding fake wedding well i only talked about the fake wedding on the patreon bonus but um i guess while we're here yeah or did i already talk about it on the show i feel like you talked about it here i could be wrong it doesn't matter. I think, well, who knows? But let's just say there was once a fake wedding. There was.

And now I think other people are getting their stories crossed. And then Amanda from Wine and Crime got engaged. So that really spun everyone out. Everyone's having a field day. Yeah. Oh, except you. Except me. That's okay.

I'm having a field day by not having anxiety over a wedding. So I'm good. That's true. Anyway, that's a lot of stuff that we gave people. Are you happy now, listeners? Are you feeling, does this feel like a fun episode so far? Because I think it's only going to get more chaotic. I feel like we're just yelling at you and I do apologize.

I feel like we're yelling at everyone. I feel like anyone who walks through the door is going to get screamed at. they're in the danger zone it's like you're gaslighting me well my microphone doesn't work but also i'm not engaged but also what's that in your hand is that the freaking cord you said you lost what the hell i'm literally actually playing with it because i'm so angry you're gonna like destroy it by the end of this call. Okay. Well, here is the situation with this story I have to tell you today. Do tell.

Okay. Well, the vibe of today actually really is on par because this story is also kind of, on par because this story is also kind of you know how when i did my like i was trying to do the of the back door theory and i accidentally covered the backwoods okay so this isn't totally that but you know how like the back whichever one i covered and i wasn't supposed to how it actually has nothing to do with the supernatural this absolutely this is also that and i i apologize and also if if this isn't your vibe or if you I'm not trying. This isn't like us testing the waters to like try new material. Like this is just kind of a one off. And if you do happen to like this and you want us to do more of these, go for it.

But this is just more of a what the fuck story. It's not paranormal and it's not aliens and it's not cryptids. I like a what the fuck. I mean, OK, but don't worry, everybody. Stay in. You don't know if you like it's not paranormal and it's not aliens and it's not cryptids i like a what the fuck i mean okay but don't worry everybody stay in well you don't know if you like it or not it's no it's definitely people are definitely gonna like the story it's just not my usual stuff but it's it's also because i have a murder waiting for you afterwards so don't worry don't go anywhere some things never change some things never change unfortunately i had to do something last minute and thus we have our what the fuck story that i can't wait it was kind of a moment of i i don't it doesn't even have

to be supernatural i'm so sleepy so um i can't i i for one cannot wait okay cool so this is and i think i'm pronouncing it correctly because it's french um this is the story of tarare no clue cool so tarare is somehow historical but also i think has somehow morphed into a lore so that's what that's how we're spinning it on how it fits on this show because i really do think over time like it must have just through the the game of history telephone yeah it this can't be real as as far as i'm concerned it can't be real but maybe it is um but it's because it started with some real facts and i think it's just evolved over time but terair was known as the man who ate anything and he couldn't stop eating anything. I'm just picturing you at three in the morning like, all right, this is the path I'm taking here.

For a second I thought you meant, oh, I could just imagine you at three in the morning because I would also be the man who eats anything. I wasn't going to say it, but yeah, also that. There's a lot of parallels here, folks. Okay, so this is in the 1770s in the south of France. It's 1772 when Tarrere was born. And that's pretty much all we know about his early life. We don't know his real name either. I think Tarrere was like a stage name.

How do you spell it? T-A-R-R-A-R-E. I think with the accent it would be like or something beautiful probably not charming i can't do the throat thing but i think that's pretty well oh god that was a bad one that was a bad one i inserted the microphone literally like like buzz like it like shorted out for a moment i was gonna say it like ran away from me it also i tried to do like a tongue roll situation it did not work it did not work okay terair is how we're gonna do let's do it that way um so he was born in 1772 we don't even know

if that's his real name we think it was shockingly small to for being known as the man who eats everything but i feel like that's always the case i feel like i've met so many people who are like i just have a fast metabolism and i'm like fuck you like yeah seriously this is like a joey chestnut situation yes okay so uh actually like i had a friend growing up and she was always the person who like she just like you she would eat like an entire pizza and then like have another ab by the end of it and i would just feel like i hope that doesn't sound body shabby i was just like damn like how do you do it like let's can we switch lives for a day because i'm not having that experience so we might learn from each other.

But so he was also maybe that was the situation. I don't really know. But people often comment on the fact that he was like maybe 100 pounds by the time he was like 17, which like on its own, I don't think sounds very particularly healthy. Maybe 100 pounds is I don't remember what 17. feel like 100 pounds isn't is is pretty standard for is it teen teenage boy okay skinny boy well it sounds like he never really goes beyond 100 pounds wow but by 17 he was 100 pounds and he was eating so much beef per day it equated to 25 of a whole cow no what so he's eating 25 of a cow basically every day a day and he's 100 pounds and that's just like one example of how much food he was eating and never satiated um oh that's too bad the story goes that his parents eventually kicked him out because they couldn't afford the food bill for him

um i don't know if that's the case they could have kicked him out for probably any other reason and it would still seem like shitty parenting i don't know maybe he just turned 18 and they were like go fly um but anyway he ends up on his own and without any contact from his parents and he ends up becoming a vagabond which oh sure sure sure our favorite our favorite we love walter the vagabond love a good vagabond so ter, he is now wandering the streets. Ironically, well, I don't know if it's ironically, more like sadly, he's begging for food. And based on his hunger level compared to others, he's probably, I don't know if more desperate is the right phrase, but he's certainly very desperate to eat something. And he, I mean, he's literally used to eating like a quarter of a cow yeah a loaf

of bread ain't gonna cut it exactly um so he's begging for food and eventually he gets a job as an opening act for a snake oil salesman also fun fun one of those pirelli's miracle elixir people i also love that they have an opening act like it's like oh no i'm a doctor for sure for sure for sure and i'm selling this to heal all your cancers for sure for sure but here's my opener for sure for sure for sure take the mic it's like what and so basically his opening act yeah i'm just trying to think of like a true medical practitioner or like yeah yeah who's like and now here is my fire breather like truly like warm up the crowd for me you know i do wonder if maybe he could spin it like oh no like i just want people to be like really drawn into my my pitch for my i don't know

yeah i know but i wonder if if he believed it because i would if i were trying to pitch something that i'd created i'd be like oh of course we're gonna get a fire breather because more people will show up that's true but you could be i kind of get it you could be literally asked to do like a ted talk or like at a medical conference and you'd be like i brought my fire breather and if we could bring a fire breather on tour i didn't learn that at clown school if i did i might do you took the wrong elective with my heart heart condition, absolutely not. Would I be taking in fire? So yeah, I already have heartburn.

Okay. So anyway, he's this opening act. And because he could eat anything. And this is, by the way, where I think either the lore seeps in or the research I was doing wasn't fully explaining it to me. But it sounds like it wasn't just that he was up the gullet and letting things go down okay um and so that was his act where he would just swallow basically anything gross and he i guess also at the time became friends with uh like thieves who worked with him and as he was doing his show they would pickpocket the audience

oh well that okay that's fun i mean no it's not fun it's not good but it's interesting it's fun as like a cartoon maybe exactly as like a fictional story okay interesting so i guess he ends up like becoming a street performer and doing this kind of stuff in multiple cities because then he ends up moving to paris and doing this for a while and here are just some of the things he would eat oh god these are this is just a few examples so keep that in mind he would eat items like corks rocks which like geo also eats rocks so like whatever you're not special yeah nice try bags of coins which ironic because wasn't he doing this for money well maybe yeah then he keeps it in there it poops it out later oh like other people's coins okay i was thinking that's what i was thinking i was like what if he just like showed off his own bag of coins and then

just kept eating the same yeah because while you were talking my mind started to wander no offense and i started you and probably everyone else so no i'm just teasing but i was thinking well what if you what if he pickpocketed had people pickpocket this is a very like um david blaine thing where like oh the the little thief would wander around pickpocket and then he would like hold up someone's wallet and swallow it and be like see it's part of the show but then he gets to go home and like poop out the guy's it is definitely the street savvy business way so right i you're probably right um he would also eat or swallow quote dozens of apples in a row

that's so gross like imagine like a whatever a bushel of apples is how do you that's horrible and that makes me think it had to be swallowing right because like i don't want to watch someone eat 12 apples yeah it had to be swallowing it which and so here's the other thing though he allegedly would also do this with live animals and i'm sorry that's that's where i was worried we'd be going. And I don't. I'm not glad we ended up there. I'm really not.

So not only did he must have had like this. Not only must have he had a massive fucking throat to be able to do these kinds of things. But also like I think one reference said he had like a deformed jaw that was the quote from the source oh like a snake like unhinge yeah he could unhinge it yeah um i can't imagine any other way you can just swallow an apple like exactly so i'm gonna just roll with that source because other i didn't see any other medical explanation for how it's fitting in his face disgusting speaking of medical things here is a medical memoir that actually discussed uh terrer's case okay just to let you know how why like how uh baffled even doctors were for their time let a person imagine all the domestic

or wild animals the most filthy and ravenous, are capable of devouring, and they may form some idea of the appetite as well as the wants of Terer. Oh, okay. It was like, you can think of anything, this thing, this guy eats it. Also, speaking of doctors, eventually Terer, this is like one of my favorite stories of him i guess if there's such a thing he ended up having to go to the hospital for duh a bowel obstruction yeah no shit because i don't know how he's how do you pass a whole apple i guess you're 12 in a row yeah like does your stomach have the time to break that up i doubt it so or rocks what um what about apple-sized rocks like how are you passing that how are you where is it going after rock-sized apples you're really

screwed no matter what well he okay so he goes to the doctor and he's like there i can't he's like owie my belly and they're like well owie my t belly. And they're like, well. Owie, my tuchus. It's not coming out. My tuchus. And so while he was there, because I guess he's just like hungry for, well, yes, he's hungry. No pun intended. But he's like craving attention so badly that as he's there for a bowel obstruction, because he will eat anything, he looks at his surgeon. He is like, you want to see something? I could eat your pocket watch no uh no he doesn't i'm sure the surgeon should have been like dude like why are you here like you figure that out first and then ask me if you

want to eat my pocket yeah think this through and the surgeon's response was if you eat my pocket watch i'm gonna have to cut it out of you because i'm a surgeon like i will have to you already have a blockage in there right like i please don't make me slice you open to get my watch back to get my grandpa grandpappy's watch out of there so uh he ended up not eating the watch but i thought that was like uh it's probably some good insight into like what a hundred percent a hundred percent i love that the surgeon was like no right so what additionally shocked many audiences i mentioned this already was that he was just so small but he was eating i mean imagine someone that like is like i'm saying so small like 100 pounds is like he's the size of like a tiny little flower right right but uh but i mean imagine

someone who's like really of any whatever average weight means that's gross but imagine like someone who's about 100 pounds maybe even 200 pounds even 300 pounds and just them eating a bushel of apples like that would not look right on the human body like i feel like you would see apples coming out of their little belly no but you're 100 right if you're 100 pounds just on like a scientifically speaking level, you're 100 pounds and you have 12 apples in your body, doesn't that add like 10% of your own weight back onto your body? Not really, but you know.

But yeah, you'd think you'd see like the lumps of apples in your belly like a cartoon. Yeah. So I think that's why people always comment on it because they're like, this little fella, like you could just see the food coming out or the pocket watches in his stomach. So in 1792, he's 20 years old now and Tarrere joins the French Revolutionary Army. And during this food was being rationed. So he was like really not feeling hot because he was eating less food than an average meal. So wow.

And basically he became extremely ill, extremely frail. His hair was thinning and he already had he was known to already have like really wild excess skin which like duh if you're filling up your stomach and then all of a sudden it's empty oh sure yeah i guess he would be stretching it out yeah so i guess his excess skin was drooping more um but there's a rumor that uh when he wouldn't eat this is where i think like i don't know if it's lore or just plain old town gossip that it's just sad but uh there was a rumor that when he wouldn't eat and he was hungry and there was nothing in his stomach his stomach would hang so loosely that he could wrap it around his torso like a belt which is like just a graphic image but i guess it's to let you know how how obvious it must have been to people when he had

his stomach full versus when it wasn't full right right right um he would also during this time when the food was being rationed and he was getting really sickly he also would sweat like crazy and apparently throughout his time like throughout his not just time in the military but throughout his life because he was eating so much stuff and probably as a street performer he was eating even worse things because he was like just eating like showing off and stuff yeah animals and like like raw live animals so he was known to have a horrible smell um yeah because just anything was rotting in his stomach until it passed through disgusting um apparently there was an 1819 1819 medical journal that mentioned his smell that said that he smelled like quote someone whose diet consisted of massive amounts of food

and non-food items which is is the most vague way to... Wait a second. Like, you smell like someone who is inside and outside. What? Yeah. You might smell like you ate food and also not food. Yeah. So that wasn't...

I just thought that was kind of a ridiculous quote. But there were... I saw in other sources, though, that apparently he smelled so bad that he... Like, you couldn't even be within 20 feet of him. Apparently, another source said that you could physically see vapors coming out of him. Oh, gosh. Like the Pepe Le Pew odor lines. Oh, no.

You could see them floating out of him, allegedly. But anyway, basically, he was not looking hot and then all of a sudden he goes to the military and his entire physiology is changing and he like somehow his body can't take it because it's so used to a different way of life sure so the the doctors in the military actually green light him to have four times the amount of food that other military people are eating um which can you imagine the jealousy and the rage if you were that guy yeah yeah oh you get four of our meals uh and that by the way i mean he's used to eating like so much more food than even that that his 400 meal is not good enough for him right eventually

they even try giving him 15 times the average meal and that's still enough and whenever they at this point still not enough it's sorry it's still not enough right and eventually the military doctors are like we have to test this like what is this guy up to and this is our new weapon actually we're gonna use you well basically all they find is that no matter how much food they gave him like the worst side effect they could come up with was the fact that he would just get sleepy after a meal which all of us can relate to right that part isn't really that unique i guess yeah so uh during these tests that they gave him, here are some of the things that he ate.

They are all animals. Sorry. He swallowed a lot of raw meat. It didn't matter what animal it was. It was just raw. He'd eat it. And alive, right? Sometimes alive.

Oh, that's horrible. He apparently would eat entire eels in one bite oh somehow i was not even expecting that that's a lot it gives me like the heebie-jeebies he apparently loved snake meat i was worried you were gonna say snake i don't know if that means alive or can you imagine eating like a python i'm sure that's not what they were giving him but can you imagine eating out like a boa constrictor can you imagine even eating just like a guarded a garter snake and you just like swallow it alive i gotta be honest the thought of it is out of control i'm breaking out into a sweat i'm so like repulsed and freaked out especially

as someone who's not a snake person like even being next to a snake in it not the concept not even being that i have to put it inside of my stomach or inside of my mouth just being in the mouth part is the worst i think like they're putting oh especially if it's alive is it like fighting that's what i'm wondering is it's alive, is it like fighting? That's what I'm wondering. Is it going to bite you? Well, also apparently he ate lizards.

The entire eels really gets me because eels are like extra slippery snakes. I'm so repulsed. I'm so repulsed. He, I'm so sorry. Sepsis. Well, he doesn't. I'm so sorry, but he gonna get sepsis. Well, he doesn't.

Um, I'm so sorry, but he did eat cats and dogs and he would get from it. He would get literal hairballs. The end. Um, me, this is, I am telling myself they were not alive. I don't know. I'm telling myself this is part of the lore. It has to be. It has to be. How big must your esophagus and jaw be for you

to fit a whole like best case scenario it's the worst case scenario for us but best case scenario it's a newborn puppy dog like but like how like how do you get something that size in your mouth i don't get it it does it has to be lore right i'm telling i'm telling myself it's lore it has to be lore um and so here's of the things that those were some of the things i saw him eat while they were testing him which like good to know there were other people who like signed off on that like you couldn't just make him swallow food the size of a cat like why'd he have to eat a cat i think they were just fucking around i guess so well one of the crazier ones crazier than animals is uh he swallowed a wooden box with a note inside of it and then passed it through and the note was still intact so remember these are military doctors and you already guessed it but they were

like okay you're our newest weapon oh okay well i was too dumb to realize that that was actually the next step in the story you were on it so now the doctors and the higher-ups are like cool cool cool you're now a spy for us sure you were our opening act but now you're actually an international spy thank you blaze blaze brought me coffee thank you blaze oh mothman believes in you oh he said he had to pick between 10 different mothman mugs so that sounds right i used my my rainbow mothman mug from you earlier so you are welcome uh So what were you saying earlier? Like, oh, for sure, for sure. For sure, for sure, for sure.

You're our opening act. But for sure, for sure. We're now sending you into the battlegrounds to eat some. You're now a military spy. To eat all their cats. Well, to eat wooden boxes with notes in it and then go into enemy lines and then bring information. Even better. To undercover spies.

But here's the thing. number one he fails because he's passed it too quickly no he's just so bad at being a spy oh he just wasn't trained for it they were just like you have this skill and so now you like have to without any training go be a spy. What? So, like, for example, he could not speak German. Like, oh, well, that would be, that would pose probably quite a conundrum. And so he was caught on his literal first mission. Luckily, what they didn't even tell him, I think, the first mission where he, like, got in and passed this box through his system and information was supposed to be in there they didn't even tell him that it was a fake note and there was nothing written on the paper so his first mission when he got busted i think they knew they probably knew

yeah so they were like they didn't tell him but it was just a test and he actually didn't give away any secrets but he did become a prisoner of war. And that was a... They were like, that's too bad. Anyway. They were like, well, we took a chance. Honestly, we saved 14 meals a day. We can just keep... Honestly, I feel like that was someone's call.

They were like, budgetary wise, it might help us. He's got to go. So he was a prisoner of war. he was tortured and the way they tortured him was by starving him and uh when he got out he got back to the military doctors and he just begged for help for a cure to the his hunger oh which is terrible this is like the 17 1800s i can't even imagine what the medicines looked like at the time for this. They probably gave him cocaine and said, get over it or something. Yeah. I was going to say, which honestly would probably make you more hungry.

So I don't know what they were doing. So nothing worked. And eventually after he was like his time in the military was over, he just was like, so he had given up on ever finding a cure. He just was like, so he had given up on ever finding a cure. And it's so sad. There were times he was so desperate to just satiate himself that he was eating garbage. And then because he was still in contact with a couple of doctors who were just, I don't know if they were fully researching him, but I think they were committed to trying to find a cure. And so they would check in on him every now and then. i don't totally know the backstory to that but i know he was

talking to a few doctors who follow him throughout the rest of his life um but so he's eating garbage at one point he's eating like old animal scraps where he can find them like anything he can eat because he's also having a hard time finding a job sure um and it gets so bad that i guess while he's at the hospital for his for like talking to his own doctors he starts drinking other patients blood after they were being leached oh my god and then eating the leeches okay i'm honestly i don't know i don't know i feel like you have to at least have a limit for yourself you're like i can't eat something that will try to eat me from the inside oh good right good point but then again he's eating like maybe live snakes like oh my god how do you not get

bitten from inside oh i'm so grossed out or like like i said i don't think he put a whole boa constrictor down his stomach but like imagine something trying to attack your organs or something. You'd think they would. Yeah. Anyway. So he's now drinking other patients' blood. And at one point he's found in the morgue eating corpses. So now he's turned cannibal.

turned cannibal yeah so in 1794 uh while he's at a hospital he goes to for his own issues a 14 month old toddler goes missing no we don't know we don't know we don't know but it's never been proven but he was a highly uh primed everyone thought it was him and he's chased out of the hospital we don't know what happened we don't know the fate of the baby we don't know the fate of we don't know anything more than that but the baby went missing and everyone went maybe it's the cannibal oh my god okay basically um so we don't know if he hurt the kid but people chase him out of the hospital and he went into hiding for like four years. So we actually,

if he was already eating like body parts, like human body parts before then, and then he went into hiding for four years and we don't know what he was up to in those four years. I can't imagine what he was up to. But eventually he pops up four years later at another hospital and he asks to see his original doctor. The doctor gets there and Terer tells him, hey, I have another bowel obstruction because I have been back on my bullshit.

I've been doing my usual stuff and I have a bowel obstruction. I need your help because I swallowed a fork and it's not passing properly so the doctor checks him out and i don't even know if the fork was the situation but the doctor ended up finding out one of the reasons he felt so ill is because he actually had um like the ending stages of tuberculosis. And so Terer died very quickly after that. Oh my God. He's like,

oh, I have a fork in my stomach. Actually, that's not the problem. I mean, it's not not the problem. Right. It's like one of probably a hundred problems. Yeah.

Like lower it down on the list a few pegs. Right, right, right. And so immediately once he dies, doctors are like, all right, we got to research the shit out of this body and so they all they found basically it wasn't like a shocking amount of information but they did find that he had a very large stomach which doesn't surprise me if you're shoving anything and everything in there it was gonna stretch out right yeah um he had a very large liver and a very large esophagus

um there's even a rumor which this makes me feel like it has to be lore but who knows allegedly his esophagus was so wide that when he opened his mouth wide enough you could directly see his stomach i don't remember like is stomach stapling a thing anymore because i feel like if your stomach is that big and maybe that's why i mean it feels like a like a like a never-ending curse of if your stomach is this big you have to fill it up every time but what if your stomach was that big like well yeah i know there's definitely um there are definitely surgeries yeah to basically they shrink your stomach. Okay.

Yeah. I forget. Stomach stapling. I feel like that was a very like 90s thing. That was a thing. Does it happen anymore? You know, I don't know if they, yeah. Well, I know they do gastric.

I think they still do it. I'm pretty sure. There's probably, I don't know anything about that world, but yeah, I wonder if in today's world, I wonder what tests they would have done on him while he was alive to like try to get him to not be hungry anymore do we know what like the problem was i mean he must have had some sort of yes but one one bullet beforehand is that he had a very large stomach a very large liver a very large esophagus but as much as they wanted to do more research on him apparently when they were like trying to look through his organs the smell was so bad

that they just couldn't even continue research they were like we'd rather just let this die a mystery that's so sad um i guess while they were looking through him, though, they found just like so many infections. And that's probably part of the reason that he was smelling so bad is there were infections in his stomach. And he was known to have like a lot of like gas issues because he was eating anything. So, I mean, imagine just burping up and like farting out a bunch of like infections yeah you know yeah caused by like dead raw animals i mean it's just like of course it's gonna be bad and imagine if you had an infection and then you eat more dead raw animal on top of that and it just gets worse and worse and so um i think they just put his body away and they were like, we don't we don't even want to know. Wow. How sad. So the main theories today are that he had hyperthyroidism, which gives you some eating issues.

And then they also thought a parasite, which makes you really hungry. They thought maybe might be both like he had parasites from something he ate that just made things worse. And on top of that, he had a hyperactive thyroid. from something he ate that just made things worse. And on top of that, he had a hyperactive thyroid. I also saw that the name for abnormal hunger is polyphagia. Oh, I think that's I'm thinking I'm pronouncing it right. But this is apparently a very common symptom of diabetes and endocrine diseases. So in today's world, that would definitely be like the starting symptom they'd pay attention to or that's what that would be on a medical chart somewhere for him of like oh he has polyphagia because he can't stop eating okay as for a cause they might look into diabetes or thyroid issues

or something like that sure sure i mean that makes sense and also i do wonder like if you just had one good x-ray back in the day would you have been able to see a parasite? Like, maybe he just had, like, a really crazy tapeworm. Need, like, a CAT scan or something. Yeah. Wow. Ooh, a tapeworm. Ooh, okay.

All of this is so. Yeah, I mean, he probably ate 500 tapeworms as part of his fucking opening act. He's eating snakes. A bucket of tapeworms. Yeah, right? act he's eating snakes get a tapeworms yeah right so and i'm sure any like they're animals that living or dead or raw or not there's probably just things we're not supposed to eat that maybe has things that is how you get a tapeworm like oh yeah i'm eating raw meat yeah he probably had like 85 tapeworms living in there that's gotta be it well i mean as you know me being a professional that's gotta be it called

it m schultz md um so despite how wild this case is it can't totally be lore because this case was covered in several like well-respected medical journals by well-respected physicians. Right. So anyway, if here's what I got to say about this, though, Christine, and as I say this, let me let me scream. Let me not screenshot something for you, but let me just say you said let me scream. And I was like, OK, go for it. Honestly, I'm glad that you would have been there for me. Listen, I would have muted you, but I would have been there. Well, you don't get to meet what I'm about to show you. I'm glad that you would have been there for me. Listen, I would have muted you, but I would have been there. Well, you don't get to mute what I'm about to show you. I'm going to send you a link.

And as I send you this link, I want you to know that after everything I've told you about Tarrere, you might be thinking this needs to be a puppet opera. How did you know? Well, because you're not the first person to think that oh i thought i had an original thought because there is this uh theater company called tobacco factory theaters and they came out with a puppet chamber opera no they didn't uh and it is apparently called the show is called the depraved appetite of terair the freak yikes whoa but i'm gonna give i'm gonna send you this little link and i need you don't even look at anything beforehand

i just want you to start at 52 seconds like pause it start at 52 okay like pause it immediately click to 52 and then press start because i feel like that gives you the best the best idea we're able to put on YouTube or I mean it sure is okay I paused it now let me go to 52 so you think we'll be able to put this on Instagram I think so I think a quick little clip just to let you know okay I'm already disturbed I'm gonna play it it's so silly you could stop it if you want it's just that one little clip m i take it back nobody needs to see this i'm so hungry honestly spoke to my soul but the visuals really pulled me back i don't love it it's not what i was expecting oh they like turned it into like i

think they called it a monstrous chamber or monster monster chamber opera or something um but yeah so some theater company i'm so hungry that's that is my opera like i get like that i can relate to on such a level but then the the visuals of him just like swallowing things oh no the vibe was very much like i feel like this theater company would have absolutely accepted the pitch from forgetting sarah marshall where jason seagal's uh he's like create did you ever watch that movie yeah yeah yeah he like his whole thing is he's trying to come up with like a vampire Dracula puppet show, like puppet opera.

And I feel like they would totally be ready for that next season, you know? They've probably already done it. They probably watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall and were like, oh yeah, this is for us. Well, so, okay. I just wanted to, I saw that. I went to YouTube, obviously, and tried to look up this guy. And actually it was by accident because I was just trying to figure out how to pronounce his name and that was like the first thing that came up and i was like well that checks that well this needs to be in christine's brain forever

thank you so much emma i love that for me thank you you're welcome well before i go i don't know if we'll ever be on this topic again so i just wanted to also give you an additional um secondary factoid great um so when you think of terer i wonder if medical physicians looked further back in history to see if anybody else ever had this condition because what they would have found if they did so because terer was from the seven late 1700s but there was actually another guy that i mean terer was really going through it and like desperate for a cure but there was someone else in the past who had this exact same condition and really spun it into i think what he considered one of his his best personality traits um and he really took off with it and thrived and made it like part of his

like career. Um, and it was this guy named Nicholas Wood and he suffered from the same condition, which makes me think that like doctors must have referenced him at some point to Terer, but I don't see any connection. I don't see any references where they were connected

um but nicholas wood he was born in the in the 1580s so 200 years before okay um terair was and he was nicknamed in town as the great eater of kent he was also known as Nick the Great, Duke All Punch, and the Kentish Tenterbelly. They loved their nicknames back then, huh? Yeah. And I guess I'm sure if they couldn't come up with a cure 200 years later, in the 1580s, poor Nicholas Wood was like, I guess there's nothing I can do about this. I better just monetize it. Yeah.

And so he saw this as like a fun little bar trick that he would do at like public gatherings or like if there was a festival in town he would like volunteer to wow people with this so in a way he was also a street performer but he seems to be like really all for it versus like desperately looking for a cure and i wonder if that's like the well i don't know i was gonna say i wonder if that's a product of the times considering like this other guy had to live through rationing and all that. Yeah. Yeah.

Truly. That's so sad. and so he would, his big thing was he loved to make public bets with people on how much he could eat. And to date, there are only on record two bet, two bets that he did not win.

Really? One bet, I guess, was like, I don't know what the actual goal was, but he ended up in a literal food coma. And then the second time, apparently he bounced back. And then he took another bet. Great. He took several other bets. He took another bet. Great.

He took several other bets, but the only other one he ever lost was when someone dared him to eat 12 loaves of bread soaked in beer. It's not that he probably couldn't fill his stomach with that, but he got so drunk on his way to finishing the food that he passed out. So that one I think he calls a technicality probably yeah yeah yeah that's drinking not eating exactly he's like i could have here are some of the other things he reportedly ate and

this is in one sitting he ate 60 eggs oh lamb i don't know if like a lamb and multiple pies and another in another sitting, he ate apparently 84 rabbits. Okay, well, that's repulsive. Another in one sitting, he ate a whole raw sheep. Mm-mm. In another one sit session, he ate 30 dozen pigeons. Oh, my God. this guy is a monster 30 dozen that's 360 pigeons oh 360 pigeons in one fucking sitting that's disgusting another time in one sitting he ate a pig and then three pecks of plums and i looked up pecks that's a similar equivalent to like a bushel

apparently a bushel is around like 45 pounds of something but a peck is around 12 pounds of something so he had 36 pounds of plums and a pig in one sitting oh my god this guy and eventually he was i think because he was becoming like such a local name, someone came up to him and was like, here's the thing. I want to put on like this like eating exhibition and I want you to star in it. And basically the theme would be you would be eating the meals of giants and people can come watch you eat the meals that giants would eat. the meals of giants and people can come watch you eat the meals that giants would eat. And so some of the things he was going to eat at this exhibition or exhibit, I don't know why I'm saying exhibition.

He would have to eat an entire calf and like got a leg calf, like a cow calf. He had to eat a wheelbarrow of tripe, which like, couldn't you give him a wheelbarrow of something good? You know, like tripes., personally, not my thing. Not my jam. And then also, this one I could fucking eat for sure.

This is a quote. So, apparently, he would eat puddings that could span the Thames. The Thames. The Thames. As I said it, I realized it. So stupid. Puddings. Which means dessert right yeah i also could just do like a river of chocolate pudding just putting just a snack pack just like belly flop into pudding um but so there was a pamphlet for this event that was going to be

put on and it was starring nicholas wood the great eater of kent and so the pamphlet for this event that was going to be put on and it was starring Nicholas Wood, the great eater of Kent. And so the pamphlet's name was the great eater of Kent or part of the admirable teeth and stomach exploits of Nicholas Wood, which I feel like that should be what we call whenever I go to like an all you can eat buffet. It's like the admirable teeth and stomach exploits of m i for one will not be buying a ticket to that no offense uh you don't

want to see me belly flop into a pudding the size of a river for free i don't need to pay well so apparently i don't know if you picked up on this and it's very interesting that you mentioned my favorite joey jaw's chestnut earlier uh because this exhibit more or less led to the invention of eating competitions oh i see today's mle or major league eating so nicholas wood's career ended when he was dared to eat an entire mutton shoulder bone and all and during that he cracked all but one tooth and since you're gonna say ribs but teeth also makes sense well like to eat the bone too like that's disgusting but so he cracked all but one tooth and i guess he could never really eat anything again after that but while we're here and i am discussing the mle i didn't know if you had a favorite food, and I could tell you what the current record in Major League Eating is for how many could be eaten.

Gross. We got burritos. We got eggs. We got watermelon, donuts, chicken wings, matzo balls, ham and potatoes. You pick. You pick. Pizza, hot dogs, fries. I really like, I mean, this is before I became a vegetarian, but I like cauliflower wings now.

But what about chicken wings? How many chicken wings? Chicken wings. Okay. Let's say wings. Oh my God. There's 14. There's short form wings, which I think mean like normal, like bar wings.

Then there's buffalo chicken wings. i guess it's bone in versus bone out you have to think too but i would say bone in okay well i have a boneless option right here for you what's that boneless uh nine pounds in 10 minutes oh god nine pounds yep and then as for hooters particular hooters wings yeah i would like to know that 281 in 10 minutes gross wow wow they've got everything here there's even like spray cheese in a can there's a lot halloween candy oh how much halloween candy halloween candy four pounds in six minutes that's not good for your poor Tom. For milk and cookies, 48 Oreos and half a gallon of milk in two minutes and 28 seconds. Ew. Two minutes? No. Not even two and a half minutes. 50 Oreos and half a gallon of milk. This is what I'm thinking about.

Yeah. Back in middle school, like eighth grade, i remember my school held a chicken wing eating competition in the theater and we all had to go and watch people uh sit on stage and eat chicken wings in their school uniforms why why i don't know i have no idea it was so gross well uh here's one that i think i know i couldn't beat that what am i talking about uh i was thinking there's a peanut butter and banana sandwich record which is oh which like think about the peanut butter on the roof it would get sticky how much how many is that 36 sandwiches in 10 minutes that's insane that's crazy 36 i'm actually i'm actually shocked by this one 20 hard-boiled eggs in 84 seconds i feel like that should definitely be beaten i've watched that happen it's not pleasant

um i will it's gross and also like i know that this is so dumb and like every time i i'm watching one of those eating competitions i say this and i feel like my mom but like they're not even enjoying the food. Like, what's the point? Like, they don't feel good. It doesn't feel good to eat that many. And like, I will also like, like, what if your like stomach explodes? Like, is it worth it? No, like you don't feel well. I'm sure it takes like weeks to recover. Like you're not actually eating the food. You're just like swallowing it whole i mean i none of it sounds appealing to me i don't get it maybe this is a controversial opinion i'm not into the eating competitions i'm really into it for the stat like i only knew about like

i went through a phase one of my hyper fixations was majorly getting and i um i was really into it for the information but anytime i try to watch one of the videos i can't do it i get like really grossed out i don't know it's like i don't i just like knowing the did you know blah blah blah and then it's like a weird conversation starter but when it comes to like like 14 and a half pounds of burritos in 10 minutes like why like you eat one chipotle burrito you tell me how your stomach feels at night and now they're saying eat 14 pounds of them how about 24 pounds of salmon chowder in six minutes i'm gonna throw up that's disgusting oh man what is salmon chowder no 190 think of the spice though 191 pickled jalapenos in six and a half minutes you're going to get an ulcer you're gonna have a lot of a lot of poopy problems legitimately as someone with many ulcers you're gonna get an ulcer and it's it by the way doesn't

feel good it's not oh i'm sorry there's one for butter oh how much butter seven sticks in five minutes oh my god seven sticks of butter anyway i keep going and going if you want to go look up yourself just look up mle records but um yeah i i'm glad i got to cover that it's a that was a new genre of a story but i'm sorry i didn't have something i promise there was meant to be up until like eight hours ago i had all intentions of telling a ghost story and this just is kind of don't worry this was great i mean sometimes you tell stories about like cryptid and stuff like the tizzy whizzy that are great but they're not even remotely real this one was at least like a real thing that happened you know. Well, I have a story for you that I wish were fictional, but is true. I have the story of the Texarkana Moonlight Murders.

I feel like I've heard of this one. Really? I know nothing beyond the name of the actual, like what you just said. I don't know anything else. But I feel like that string of words has been said in front of me before. Also called the Texarkana Phantom. So if that's familiar at all. Arkana Phantom.

Hmm. No. Do you know about Texarkana? Is it half Texas, half Arkansas oransas or something so it's actually yeah it's three different states so you got texas and arkansas and then there's one more louisiana yes you're so smart that's kind of like we have a a bristol it's not like we don't have all the names combined but there's a city called bristol but it's like part of the county lines is in tennessee part of it's in virginia and part of it's in north carolina oh geez so it's like if you say you live in bristol it's like technically

you're just like in the tri-city one you know i love places like that i always thought that'd be so fun to live in a spot that is for no reason for no reason until you have to fill out your work paperwork and your taxes right you're like shit i'm so confused like let me move five minutes down the road where it's better taxes where yeah i mean i wouldn't blame you so texarkana named after three states texas arkansas and louisiana uh the municipality exists in bowie county texas but also, like you were just saying, in a different county, Miller County in Arkansas. So basically people, when they were, I watched a documentary about this on Amazon Prime called Murder in the Moonlight. It was all right. I feel like.

Give or take. Yeah, I feel like it was a little dry. The interviews were a little long, but some of the information was from there. So I thank them for getting me that info. But anyway, in the documentary, they would say like, oh, well, she moved from the Texas side to the Arkansas side and vice versa. So clearly this is a city where like you have to specify what side you're on got it so you can stand in the center of the steps of the post office building like the federal building this is a very m schultz situation and you can be in two states at once on the steps there um which

is kind of fun because you can have a picnic and one of you sits on one side and one of you sits on the other side i must tell you alison are you listening no okay um there's really nothing i want more than to like do you want to be i like i know it's like probably i know chugi is a word that we've mentioned often or maybe it's just like cringe in general but like what was that movie there was a movie where like they cross the city line just to take a picture of being on the other side of the i don't know i just i state i have no idea i just want i just want to drive to a border and then take a picture of one of us on one side of the border and well i mean we can do that at my house because like you can just walk across the bridge and you can stand on the bridge and I'll take a picture of you.

I'd lose my mind. Also, I like there's nothing I dream of more than going to Four Corners. Oh, I was going to ask. Yeah, that's like I can't think that's that's the best one. I think that's the classic, right? I would say that's the classic. Being four states at once. Oh, it blows my mind.

Sorry, Texarkana, but you've you didn't make it. You didn't make it on Em's bucket list. You're in my top three, I guess. But there you go. Four quarters has you beat. So there are all kinds of special tax exclusions and other laws that residents have to navigate, which sounds like a real pain in the ass. And even though they're in two different states, oftentimes the city just kind of works together as one city because it's just easier that way. Sure. Despite that, Texarkana has two mayors. Isn't that fun?

Two fire departments, etc. So like they are split in some ways. The two mayor situation feels like that Office episode where it's like co-managers. The two mayor situations feels like that office episode where it's like co-managers. Honestly, it feels like a sitcom waiting to happen, like the two mayor's offices. And so that combined with record temps of over 110 degrees makes this place sound kind of like a rough place to navigate. Especially now with these record heats, I feel like that would be, I mean, I we have listener do we have listeners there hi texarkana i don't know if even if you're not from there if you just happen to be there i'm already a little jealous of you yeah do you have to like tip your

h&r block person every year because i feel like i would feel i would at least get them a muffin basket they need a hug sorry yeah so the killings we're going to talk about took place in the 40s. So to be specific, 1946. And around this time, the population was around 45,000 people. So according to a PhD researcher on the following case, Texarkana had become a 24 hour city. And that was because there was this railroad that passed through and there was this demand for entertainment and people were constantly coming and going, especially with the railroad going through town. And so if you think about it, it was actually probably even more active in 1946 than it is in 2022. But people who live there, let us know so world war ii had people moving throughout the country non-stop

and surrounding areas were dry as in like dry counties no drinking allowed so there were a lot of bars in texarkana and people would like flock to texarkana to drink got it not only that but criminals would hop the border in town to escape crimes they committed on the other side. Okay. But also, like, that would be my, if I were a criminal, that would be my first move. I'd be like, hop over. Talk about a loophole. Just, like, jump to your cousin's side of the state.

Be like, I'm staying with my cousin this weekend. Yeah. And that being said, with, you know, criminals kind of being able to navigate this place it was known as a rough place um crime wise and a member of the arkansas police at the time who had himself fought in world war ii actually said that texarkana is calloused to murder because it was that kind of yeah that kind of rough of a town but this case would end up kind of proving him wrong because when this case took place, it proved that the town was not necessarily calloused to murder. Right. Yeah.

Like all of a sudden this one got singled out pretty good. Yeah. This one became a problem. So on a cool Friday night, February 22ary 22nd 1946 the phantom killings began 19 year old mary jean larry and her 25 year old boyfriend jimmy hollis left a movie at the what was then called the paramount theater after a double date they dropped the other couple home and then made their way to classic a lover's lane. And this was, as we probably all know, a secluded road where people would like hook up or make out.

And so Mary Jean and Jimmy parked around what is now Richmond Road at about 1145 p.m. Pretty soon after, a man appeared beside the driver window and shined a flashlight inside. Forget it. Forget it. Yes. So wait, did they think it was the cops or something? So they actually thought it was a prank. Like that.

So the flashlight shined and they couldn't see out because of this flashlight. Right. And all they saw. So Mary Jean reported that there was a white sack over his head, likely a pillowcase with holes cut out for the eyes. I beg to differ i i'm so sorry but you're out of your mind you're out of your mind mayor um so jimmy like i said thought maybe someone was playing a prank and he told the masked stranger you have the wrong guy like okay sorry i know you're probably trying to scare one of your buddies or something but like you have the wrong guy like okay sorry i know you're probably trying to scare

one of your buddies or something but like you got the wrong couple here way to be rational but also like in in 2022 i can tell you that that's like exactly one of the outfits that i think like someone from the strangers was wearing oh interesting it was like a it was like a well i do have a bag over the uh a bag over the face and just the eyes were cut out so i do have a pop culture reference later so oh okay maybe we'll maybe we'll find out is it casper because that's also very ghostly it's not casper okay maybe also casper um so he says you have the wrong guy but then the masked man pulls out a pistol and jimmy and mary jean are like oh okay this is

not a prank this guy is for real so the man orders jimmy to get out and take off his own pants and what yeah this is like part of his mo and some think maybe this was just a way to disarm him okay because like he just said, take off your pants. And then he struck Jimmy so hard with the butt of the pistol that Mary Jean, who was like a little bit farther away, thought that the sound of his skull fracturing was a gunshot. Whoa. Yeah. And he's died. He died.

Yeah. He did not die. Whoa. Okay. I know. and he's died he died yeah he did not die whoa okay i know that's that's how we like thankfully we thankfully he survived um and so we we got this kind of you know story of what happened but yeah she thought that uh it was a gunshot but it was actually the sound of his skull fracturing whoa so jimmy's unconscious and the man starts kicking him, beating him mercilessly. And so Mary Jean, who now assumes this is a robbery, exclaims that they have no money. But the man turns and strikes her and then orders her to run. Ew.

I don't know why that's worse than. It's somehow so creepy. i think because it's so out of character yeah yeah like the one thing you would think they don't want you to do yeah and also i i feel like i've seen those horrible stories where like they make you run and then when your back is turned they shoot you honestly it sounds like such a cat and mouse thing you know it's like run because you can't get very far or whatever or like for run and for a second you think he's letting you go and you're free but it's much worse oh so basically he says run and so she starts running and he chases her of course and then he asks why are you running and she says you told me to and he calls her a liar and then strikes her again oh so that it's just like i know twisted

obviously going into this i'm aware that this was not rational but like it feels much less like you'd at least think it's irrational to us but maybe he thought there was some sort of logical play to this but right even that doesn't feel like he has his own stuff in order yeah yeah it feels um yeah it's sort of like even for a deranged killer it feels like nonsensical yeah i don't know how else to phrase it but it feels i feel like i can at least usually follow the logic in some way. No, yeah, exactly. And like we tried to predict what he was going to do after he told her to run and like none of it was even what happened.

Jeez. So it gets worse because he strikes her. He calls her a liar, strikes her again. And when she collapse collapses, he uses the gun to sexually assault her. Yeah. And there are not really many details on that, and I'm not going to share them anyway. So if there were. So the attacker was suddenly startled by oncoming headlights, and he fled.

attacker was suddenly startled by oncoming headlights and he fled mary jean managed to stand up and she runs half a mile and finds help at the first house she sees meanwhile jimmy wakes up and flags a passing motorist for help who did what i guess you're supposed to do which is he continued down the road and then called police from a safe indoor location oh yeah but like you know it's hard to say because it's sort of like you'd think like stop the car and rescue this kid yeah but i guess technically you're not supposed to let a stranger in your car you're supposed to go call for help i guess that makes sense yeah yeah i don't know what i would do i really don't uh well i guess now we have cell phones, so I would have done that. But he goes and he calls the police from a safe indoor location. And thankfully, they are able to rescue Jimmy at the hospital.

He is treated for three separate skull fractures, but somehow miraculously, he remembers everything about the attack in detail. yeah i feel like the first the second i would have seen someone get hit that hard in the head i'd be like well they're of no help when it comes to telling the story i mean we thought he had died but no he survived and remembered the whole thing so he tells police he had been attacked by a white man around 30 years old now this is where things get a little complicated, because Mary Jean, who was also rescued, said the attacker was a black man wearing a mask. And so a little bit, a little bit confusing, because there are cases where like a white woman will identify an assailant as black, and then it turns out, you know, the assailant is not black.

And especially, you know, this is the 1940s. So, you know, it's sort of like you don't want to doubt victim accounts, but. And we can also we can also look at history from a from a critical lens. And yeah, exactly. And especially because both of them, you know, had a completely different version and were pretty confident in what they saw. But, you know, at the same time, they both admitted that their vision was compromised by the flashlight shining in their eyes. The attacker did wear a mask. It was dark out. And obviously they're going through horrible trauma. So all of this is very iffy. And it's just worth i guess consideration that's all true so at least the victims both agreed the attacker was six feet tall but because of the conflicting accounts police decided the couple must have known their attacker and were covering for him which i don't necessarily think is the case i don't either that or it was a random act of

violence uh although where they were usually was known for being pretty quiet it didn't really like track with texarkana like that wasn't really the kind of violence that usually took place in the town um in the end there was really nothing to go on but jimmy hollis uh the the male um victim, he warned police, quote, if you don't find him, he's going to kill someone. And let's call that foreshadowing. Right. I was going to say, I have a feeling you wouldn't have covered it if it didn't somehow sadly get worse. And yeah, no, it gets worse. Unfortunately, we're only on page two. No, it gets worse. Unfortunately, we're only on page two.

So it was only a few weeks later on Sunday, March 24th, 1946, that the first bodies were found. The night before, Saturday, 29-year-old Richard L. Griffin was out and about with his girlfriend of only six weeks, 17-year-old Polly Ann Moore. They also pulled over at a lover's lane, this time near US Highway 67 West. And the next morning, a passing driver saw their car and thought, oh, it's an odd place to be parked in the morning at a like a lover's lane. So he approached and thought at first that murdered sometime the night before. Richard was on his knees in the front seat and Polly Ann was lying face down in the back of the car. Oh, God. Yeah. Both were shot in the back of the head and Richard had been shot twice. And there was some evidence to suggest that both were killed outside of the car and then placed back into the car, which is kind of creepy. Richard's pockets were turned inside out. And at the time, this is kind of gross, local gossip assumed Pollyann must have been sexually assaulted. But modern reports say it's unclear. There's not really evidence one way or the other. Okay. Okay. There was an extensive amount of blood pooled throughout the car and the ground outside.

Okay. There was an extensive amount of blood pooled throughout the car and the ground outside. One person interviewed in the author of a book about this who was interviewed in the documentary I mentioned said that there was blood like pouring out of the sides of the car. Wait. And that's like wasn't like that wasn't. It was just there was so much blood that when they like open the car

it was like it like poured out of the car oh my god i was really hoping that was going to be like a hyperbole uh-huh uh at least not according to the author of the book on this case that's so i mean obviously so awful but like i also i don't think my brain had ever realized that that could really happen yeah i mean i don't i don brain had ever realized that that could really happen. Yeah. I mean, I don't know the details beyond that. So the only evidence from the killer himself that they found at the scene was a single casing from a.32 cartridge pistol. Okay.

Now, the only connection police could make between this murder and the attack uh was the lover's lane aspect of both and obviously they didn't have this couple's uh eyewitness testimony because both had died right the other thing that they connected was that richard's pants were down around his ankles just like jimmy's had been but he wasn't was he pistol whipped at all like the other guy was? He was just shot twice. Okay. I didn't know if. As far as I know. Okay.

But who knows? Maybe the, this is all speculation. Maybe the killer was like, well, the guy survived when I did that. So now I have to shoot him. Who knows? Honestly, that's a really good point. Like maybe he didn't risk, didn't want to risk it. Yeah.

He's like, I'm not going to do that again. Right. didn't risk he was like yeah he's like i'm not gonna do that again right so despite their age difference apparently nobody in the victim's families objected to their relationship so just to remind you polly ann was 17 and richard was 29 um and she had just graduated from high school uh they their families were both supportive of their relationships um they had no noted enemies they didn't have they weren't in a fight with anybody so it just seemed like a dead end Families were both supportive of their relationships. They had no noted enemies. They weren't in a fight with anybody. So it just seemed like a dead end.

In a 2016 documentary, Polly Ann's brother, Rocky, remembered Polly Ann as a sweet and understanding person who was very well liked by everybody and also liked everybody. And for several years afterward, he wore his late sister's high school class ring in remembrance of her. And it's very sweet. And Polly Ann herself was just deeply mourned and missed. Just very tragic story. There really was nobody to point fingers at. And now police had four victims, two were dead, two alive. There was virtually no evidence and zero suspects. So they were kind of scratching their heads. Damn. And how what was the time frame between the attacks? So the first one was February 22nd of 1946.

And the next one was March. Let me see if I can find it. March 24th. so about a month. So like a month, okay. And then it was only several weeks later, so now we're at April 14th. So these are happening pretty close, like one a month, essentially. So April 14th of 1946, 16-year-old Paul Martin was visiting from out of town and picked up his elementary school friend, 15-year-old Betty Jo Booker.

Now, Betty Jo was a talented saxophone player and had just finished playing a gig with the band Jerry Atkins and the Rhythmaires. I have to get front row tickets. And that's about all I can think about now. Rhythmaires, sorry. The Rhythmaires. Jerry Atkins and the Rhythmaires. front row tickets and that's about all i can think about now rhythm airs sorry the jerry atkins and the rhythm airs and uh they were playing at the vfw club so you probably could have just snuck on in there you know what good to know when i'm time traveling later i'll uh make sure to go only there stop at the vfw in texarkana yeah yeah. So I want to say kind of a fun fact here, which is that apparently this band was not always made up of teenagers. But at this point, there were several teenagers in the band,

including 15 year old Betty Jo, who played saxophone for the band. And this is because the previous members who were adult men got drafted into World war ii and we're looking at 1946 right and so the person who kind of took over the band invited a bunch of like high school friends well yeah well yeah and betty joe to come and uh it's just cool because you know as a teenage girl at that time like you wouldn't think you're you'd be performing at the vfw you know that's so badass in like a legit band and so it was pretty cool that she got to access that space um at that time so the performance ran late and paul picked up betty joe at about 1 30 in the morning and the two of them drove to spring lake park together to have some time alone hours later still early in the morning a family on their way through town just saw a body on the side of the road sprawled out and unfortunately it was paul's body

he had horribly been shot four times once through the nose oh my god once in the ribs from behind once through the hand and once through the neck, it feels like it was almost someone was just like shooting in the air, just hoping something would hit. It makes me think of like defensive wounds, though, doesn't it? Yeah, it does. Like through the hand and through. Like it just makes me think of when people get shot through the hand because they're holding their hands up. Which just gives me the creeps. So he'd been shot, but they could not find Betty Jo.

They found his car about a mile away, but they could not find Betty Jo. So just, I mean, full on panic. When it came out that Betty Jo never got home the night before, a church-led search and rescue party set out to find her. Unfortunately, they did find her and she had passed away. It took them a few hours but they found her a mile away from the car in the opposite direction so that's kind of weird so the car is here uh paul's a mile this way and betty joe's body's a mile this way oh okay well i wonder

if it was the same like telling her to run oh yeah good point oh yeah gross gross i don't know um so they found her body and she had been shot twice they did discover some genital bruising but they weren't sure if this was at the hands of the killer if he had raped her or if she had uh you know had sex with martin with paul her friend um and dna evidence at this point was not a thing um so they weren't sure where the bruising had come from uh however police determined that both victims were killed with the same weapon the 32 caliber uh pistol that was used to kill richard and polly ann uh weeks earlier so're like, okay, this is clearly the same person. Couples are his M.O., lovers lane, that whole thing.

Very cliche and terrifying. Yep. So Betty Jo's saxophone was also missing, and they assume that the killer had stolen it to sell it and make some money. And evidence suggested that paul and betty joe had both fought valiantly to defend themselves and probably each other as well and gone at least for me that that strikes me again is that like multiple bullets in different parts of the body totally makes sense especially like one's like behind him in the ribs it's like he's almost like

getting like turned around or trying to like, like trying to defend someone else. I don't know. Yeah, it makes you. Yeah, it makes you wonder. It's it's just a gruesome, horrible thought. And again, like Fred said, they were very well liked. They didn't have enemies. They weren't like in any sort of bad crowd like

there was no reason that these people should have been targeted so if the public was on edge after the first attack and then the double homicide um now the town was freaking panicked panicked just wigging out i remember this was a town that people said they were it was like calloused yeah so i mean they're clearly able to fear yeah yeah don't worry there yeah in case the capacity is still there in case they needed to re-up they have a reminder yeah a reminder of true terror and so now they're like oh shit and you know it makes sense because if you think like oh there were a lot of criminals that would go in and out of town, like you'd think that would stick to like very specific places and groups of people and types of crimes. Like probably not like just executing teenagers at Lovers Lane. Like that's very different.

That's what talk about a very particular M.O. Yeah. Yeah. And like a very shocking one, too. And so now they're freaking out uh gun stores repeatedly sold out throughout the entire city the local theater canceled late night showings until further notice the texas state police the fbi and the texas rangers got involved and they offered a reward for over six thousand dollars which today is about 125 000 wow wow so that's quite a chunk of change i mean i feel like and like having kids in like lockdown and stuff or like oh yeah you wouldn't want your kids going out yeah yeah especially if you're a teenager and like all that's been happening is like teenagers are dying oh yeah can you imagine being a parent and it's

like your kid just wants to go play saxophone at the vfw and you're like hell no you know just so scary and uh so this reward was offered and of course the one caveat of like asking for the public's help is that a lot of false leads started coming in uh and this can really serve to distract investigators and it's hard because you know we always say like see something say something which is still true but you know of course people aren't always going to be 100 accurate with their leads and so things got distracting um and it was amidst this frenzy that the editor for the texarkana gazette calvin sutton officially coined the name The Phantom for this cryptic killer. Getting away and into the air. Yeah, he's like in the night and he wears like a white bag over his head and he disappears. Yeah.

Just spooky. And so as more investigators responded to the case, one guy, he was a Texas Ranger and his name was, get was get this lone wolf gonzalez yeah that tracks that makes a lot of sense that that sounds right feels very texarkana also it does doesn't it yeah so he's a texas ranger he shows up and he basically proceeds to do absolutely nothing helpful oh good okay he was i was hoping he was going to like be the savior. Be the one. Doesn't it? Like with a name like Lone Wolf Gonzalez, you're like, okay, this guy. You better deliver.

Right? You better deliver. Yeah. And it sounds like he thought he was going to, but basically he showed up and he just was this like extremely famous lawman who enjoyed media attention and wanted respect and attention from the local elites. media attention and wanted respect and attention from the local elites and uh people basically started to say that investigations for him came second after attention and haircuts among other perks he had now in hindsight i mean if he's calling himself lone what was it lone ranger

lone wolf gonzalez texas ranger i feel like we should have seen that coming quickly. Yeah. Yeah. If you call yourself Lone Wolf, it's sort of like, okay. Like you already want to come off as mysterious. Yeah. And like you can't work well. It doesn't work well with others.

You know, I feel like. Right, right, right. It's the vibe. Yeah. An outlaw turned good. A vigilante almost, but like just getting his hair cut instead of actually doing anything productive yeah i i like that we're giving him all of this hate and maybe he was just an introvert like he's like no i'm just a lone wolf no introvert calls himself

lone wolf gonzalez and then like shows up in towns to get like attention on the media. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. But so he shows up and he is extremely famous. He just wanted allegedly this is according to the other people who worked the case. He just wanted attention from the media and wanted to kind of rub elbows with the local, you know, elites, you would say. And the investigation didn't seem to be a priority for him uh at least his presence did one good thing which was calm the public because you know someone again named lone wolf comes in you're like never fear yeah you're like our problems are gone it's okay

we're safe now uh and so they needed some calming and i guess at least it did that so one officer who was active at the time later recalled that things had become total chaos among the local residents so shit everyone was carrying a gun and convinced they were the phantom's next target um and the officer said he would approach houses with his sirens blaring because he was afraid that if he just showed up unexpectedly that he would get shot. Yeah, yeah. Because people were so on edge. And actually one bar owner did shoot an unannounced patron in the foot.

And I say unannounced in air quotes because the patron was just entering the bar to order a drink. And like people were just so people were just so jumpy and have gun access. Anyone getting the hint here? Yeah. Bar owner just like shot him and he was like, what the fuck? I just wanted a gin and tonic. And it was like, oh, oops. Oh, God.

Yeah. People on high alert and everyone's got a gun and everyone thinks everyone else might be a killer. Yeah. It's almost more dangerous to be around your neighbors or like around town than it is. Just stay home at that point. Yeah. So one story goes that the chief deputy of the sheriff's department approached a car one night where a young couple was snuggled up together and he called out to introduce himself and he told them i mean which i think is fair he said there's a killer on the loose you know you two shouldn't be out alone on a lover's lane situation they're like are you aware of what's going on right now this is the worst place to be exactly and so he said aren't you afraid there's this guy on the

loose and the girl then pulled a pistol out and said, mister, I'm glad you told me who you are because I was ready for you. Oh my God. Like everyone is just so ready to pull a trigger. And I'm sort of like, again, then just please don't go making out in a car if that's where he's trying to find you. Like if you have a gun.

Yeah. So you know that you shouldn't be there. You know that if you're going here, you might need a weapon. And then someone approaches the car and you're ready to kill. Why don't you just go make out at home? Make out in the basement, you know? What's going on where you have to go here when there are other options?

That's what I'm thinking. But no, some people just had to make their Lovers Lane fantasies come true. uh some people just had to make their lovers lane uh fantasies come true and even though everyone was like ready for the phantom at any moment uh and around every corner the phantom himself would only strike one final time it was another friday night so now we're at may 3rd so this is only like a couple of months later yeah this. This time early in the month. Okay. So like two weeks later, when police on their way to do some routine work errands, noted a man standing on the side of the road smoking a cigarette beside his car in what they felt was kind of an odd spot.

But they didn't stop and investigate. They just kind of moved on. Around the same time, 36-year-old Katie Starks was in bed winding down for the night in the home she shared with her husband, 37-year-old Virgil Starks. The couple lived on 500 acres of farmland eight miles outside of Texarkana. From their bed, Katie heard glass shattering downstairs where Virgil was listening to the radio in the living room. So she assumes he had broken a glass. Right. Which makes sense.

So she walks downstairs and just walks into the room to check. Instead of a broken glass, she finds Virgil dead and bleeding in his chair. Dead? All she heard was broken glass and he's dead now? He had been shot in the back of the head and there were two bullet holes in the window so that was the shattering glass that she had heard so he's changing it up because he's aware everyone is like on the lookout for lover's lane right so this time it's a different mo he's yeah shooting them through the

window basically so but that's also like think about a town that's already so scared and now you're not even safe at home at home we were just saying like why don't you just go home and now he's like oh everyone's home time to switch it up he's like i'm just listening to the radio in my living room and i'm not even safe there so damn maybe lover's lane was the safest maybe it was maybe we were wrong so katie tried to call the police on the rotary phone but the phantom and again this is like we've talked about like waiting for the nine and before she could freaking call the phantom shot through the window and got katie twice in the head and one bullet shattered her jaw oh my god katie fell to the floor but she was still alive oh my god and so she considered her options

the phantom himself couldn't get to couldn't get in the front door because it was locked probably because they were scared of the phantom coming in and so he went around the house to find another entrance and she sees this but why like he already as far as he knows killed them probably robbery i'm not sure i'm not sure and so katie at the or i mean assault or sexual assault who knows but so at this point katie sees that he can't get in the front door and he starts looking around the back of the house so she takes a chance she is literally become blinded in one eye because of the pain and the blood that has covered her eye uh she's barefoot she's in a nightgown and she fucking runs across the highway she runs out the door across the highway and over the railroad tracks to her neighbor's house.

And unfortunately, no one was home. Oh my god, are you serious? I know, this is where my heart rate is just like through the freaking roof. This is like the most straight out of a horror movie. A true horror movie, right? Of like, of course no one's home right when you could not need them more. That last second, yeah, of hope. But so she nearly passes out and she manages to get the strength

to go to one more house. And she gets to the, and again, remember, she lives on 500 acres. So she's like running. It's not like right next door. Adrenaline is a crazy thing. An incredible thing.

And so she forges onto the next house and she shouts, Virgil's dead, and then collapses in the yard of this neighbor and thank god this guy was home and this guy hurt her so this guy was av prater and he grabbed a gun he fired it into the air to alert another neighbor because again they're so far away i like how that that's like the community's cue. If you hear a shot, it's like a bat signal. I tell you, I hear a shot.

I am from the city. I go inside and close the blinds. I do not go outside to meet my neighbors. But I guess in a rural area, that makes a little more sense. It's what I imagine like SpongeBob with like a conch shell. It's like shooting into the air being like everyone assemble yeah assemble they did so he alerts his neighbor the neighbor rushes to the scene and so now we've got prater the neighbor and prater's wife and baby and they all take katie they scoop katie up in the car and drive her to the hospital despite her tremendous blood loss

she freaking stays conscious the entire time shut up it's amazing yes and so she's obviously a little out of it just a little out of it just feeling a little off today homegirl's only going through it incredibly just a little bit my coffee hasn't quite kicked in um she reaches into her mouth oh my, my God. I forgot about this part. She reaches into her mouth, removes one of her broken teeth, which had a gold filling on it, and tried to offer it to the neighbors as compensation for their health. Honestly, like, that's very sweet. But that's the I feel like that's the ultimate, like is like being too nice if it'd be like be like girl you you're all your eyes covered in blood it's okay like we this is just a civil duty you need these broken teeth more than i do thank you civic duty honestly that moment of like here here's some gold out of my bloody mouth like this is all i have for you

oh gosh that poor girl she must imagine for her to do that like imagine the guilt she had been feeling on the way there being like oh i should get them something or just the not even necessarily guilt but like just like the the gratitude of like yeah yeah thank god someone was there that's true wow yeah so i i imagine that they they didn't need her to repay them for their kindnesses right um and as someone who has received teeth as a gift i think both of us can say you know maybe maybe keep those to yourself especially if they're your teeth that are still in your body maybe keep especially if you're like suffering incredibly also that and you just lost your husband body maybe keep especially if you're like suffering incredibly and you just lost your husband and you're scared and you're being chased by a madman

you're allowed to have your teeth where's a bullet in your head like maybe you keep the teeth yeah yeah uh so once police and the media caught wind of the attack again texarkana is like holy shit the phantom he's back he has struck again but this time as you so astutely noticed there were some indiscrepancies or is it discrepancies well i like when you tell me that i am smart so keep doing that i guess i meant discrepancy. Yeah. As the smart person here, I don't actually know the answer. Oh, okay. Well, then, as the dumb person, I guess I'll say it's discrepancies. So there were some discrepancies, and you noticed some of it. The first thing being that this was in a house, not a lover's lane. Secondly lane secondly though police found nothing was stolen

from the house unlike previous attacks which included robbery and the weapon used was different this is to me the biggest red flag the person used a rifle instead of a pistol oh and was this a copycatter or a completely different killer at the same time or something? So police thought maybe the attack was personal and unrelated to the Phantom. And maybe someone wanted Virgil dead. Huh. And maybe they used this time to kind of mask their own killing because they knew there was a killer on the loose. And they were like, oh, maybe they'll just attribute it to the Phantom. Yeah.

I'm not sure. And unfortunately, we never really find out the answer to this. My thoughts, though, are maybe he was going to rob the house, but then he saw that she escaped and like left the scene. I would agree with that. You know, like I feel like he was trying to find a way in, which to me is like maybe he wanted to rob the place. Maybe he brought a rifle because he knew that they were on to him with the other weapon maybe he brought a rifle because he was shooting through a window instead of directly at someone's head i'm not sure i'm

with you i think that he just was going to rob and rob the house and then he was like oh shit she's she's on the right i think that makes the most sense um and i feel like it doesn't shock me that he would have a different gun like to use right everyone else had a different gun i don't know i feel like if everyone's got one gun the killer probably has two guns he has at least two guns i think is my theory my great groundbreaking theory yeah yeah yeah um so we're not really sure but life magazine sent a reporter and photographer to run a story on the killings and the cases became national news panic rippled through the city people who didn't have guns yet bought guns and they were hyped up ready to shoot

people started nailing their windows shut because now they're like, we're not safe at home either. And people even set up booby traps outside their houses. So this place is like dangerous for everybody. Like, don't go to the neighbor's house to ask for sugar because you might die. Because there's a trap door on the porch. There's a trap door and you're going to end up in a pit of spikes. They're like ready for this killer. But after this 10-week killing spree the phantom would never strike again oh shit i wonder if he was like i'm flying too close to the sun like i

shouldn't try it again it's hard to say so this is an unsolved mystery it's an unsolved mystery oh christine i know i do have some theories for you though okay so investigators now had to try Oh, Christine. And his new wife, Peggy, was described, this is just, I'm just going to quote it, was described as slow and had served time in jail before. And slow, basically looking back, historically speaking, could have meant she had either a developmental disability or it could mean she just didn't cooperate with police. So they tried to pathologize her. We don't really know okay it wasn't clarified neither one is good um but that was the word that they used she did give investigators several statements that allegedly implicated her husband in the murder uh and then she refused to sign any of the statements so we don't know why that is um but she made the statements then refused

to sign them so weird there could be a number she like got threatened or something that's what i was wondering like i'm wondering if like she regretted saying it i wonder if she was coerced i wonder if she took it back like who knows but um she didn't sign the statements and the statements themselves were apparently also conflicting so she did seem to know the exact model of car in the crime and she do several details and she knew about the style of saxophone that the little girl had oh that's kind of weird and specific i can see now why he's like becoming more and more of the suspect yeah it's sort of like well that you shouldn't know that, you know. Peggy eventually did a polygraph test to iron out the conflicting statements until there was one solid story.

But at the time, a wife could not testify against her husband in court, so they couldn't use her statement in court anyway. Oh, well, ain't that just the pits? Oh, my God. Just how it goes. So next, investigators tried to use truth serum to question. What in the world? Oh, my gosh. You don't know about truth serum?

I know about truth serum, but I always thought I didn't know if it was true or not. It is called sodium pentothal. Pentothal. Sodium pentothal. And it basically is supposed to lower your inhibitions and essentially gets you to talk okay and so they use this on ul and uh unfortunately they gave him too much and he passed out oh my god okay so that was a fail a big fail yeah okay you'd think they'd be like let's try it again but i feel like they also had just found out the truth serum was real and they didn't know how much

to give they're like all of it i don't know the more truth serum the more truth no not exactly there's like a bell curve it's like you've gone too far you know uh-huh um so authorities decided to transfer swinney to the Texas side of Texarkana. So this is where we get into like the differing states because Texas had something called the Habitual Criminal Act, where repeat offenders of nonviolent crimes like car theft could be put in prison for life. And since he had been charged with car theft, there was enough evidence to charge him for those instead of the murder. So they settled for the car theft conviction and he was put in prison for that. So they were like, at least we got him in prison. Then in 1972, he appealed through habeas corpus because he said he had not had any legal counsel to represent him when he was originally convicted and sentenced.

But it was also said that he had chosen to represent himself so that was his own his own choice um then he was like well for this other conviction in 1941 i also didn't have legal counsel and everyone else who was involved in that case was dead at this point so uh the courts were at a loss they were like shit we don't know what to do he's like bringing up this habeas corpus thing so ultimately they just said in 1973 they said we're just gonna release him oh okay so that's what they did okay after his release he went to his assigned defense attorney's home and again he's been in prison now for uh 30 some years jeez wow he goes to his defense attorney's house upon his release knocks on the door kills him thanks him for representing him and getting him released oh okay i know it's such a shocking moment of life oh oh i was like uh-oh. I was like, at any moment, something could happen.

No, I thought the same, but no. He thanks him. The attorney says, I've only done my job. They chit-chatted 20 minutes. And the attorney remembers that the guy was a gentleman. He even offered to pay the attorney once he made enough money. And the attorney said, don't worry about it. You know, not necessary. Wow, definitely a sharp left turn from what i was expecting i know and this is just all leading to a fun fact for you oh okay well there's two here so first of all the attorney said in an interview he started laughing and he said that he recalled walking back inside where his wife asked who was that and he said oh that was the phantom killer

oh that was just the texarkana phantom don't worry about it. BFD. BFD coming to say thanks, you know? Oh, God. And so now this is my favorite fun fact, which is that now it's the 70s, but he had shown up dressed as if it were still the 1940s because he had been in prison this whole time. Oh, yeah. So it's kind of weird. Like he was fully dressed like he was from the 1940s. I mean, he probably looked like a ghost, you know? Yeah.

Well, hey, if you said it was a Halloween party or a costume party or something. What? What'd you say? I definitely didn't say it was a costume party. Hang on. Hold on. Say the thing again. It's a 70s butt.

Where did my brain go? I don't know. But he had been in prison, not a costume party, for 30 years. And so he showed up like all his clothes were still from the 40s. So when he was out and about, like he was dressed like he was from the 1940s. Oh, right, right, right. Sorry. You said he looked like a ghost.

And I was like, I don't know where my brain went with that. I was on board until he said maybe he looked like a ghost. And I was like, I guess. I don't know why my brain thought that. I just meant like he showed up from, it looks like he's from decades ago. You know, it's like as if someone showed up here from 1992. It's like a black guy kid. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'd be like, you got to go to like JCPenney or something. You got to come to my costume party. We're throwing in tonight. You don't even need to change. Just wear that. It's in jail. It's in prison. Don't worry about it.

I really don't know why my brain just like slipped for a moment there. Wow, it was amazing. You were like, oh, you said it was a costume party. I was like, did I? Why did I say that? I think you said, well, it's now the 70s, but he was dressed like a ghost. I don't know how my brain took it. I don't know.

It's like, what is going on? I really don't know what happened there i want to like call a doctor maybe you should i'm a little worried that was fucking weird okay sorry i promise i was on board with everything else but that no you that was the wildest part is that all of a sudden i was like questioning myself i was like i must have said it i don't know where once again where you can use that tweet about how i'm gaslighting you. Yeah. Honestly, do you guys get it now? Okay. Everybody. Oh my God. Okay. So I want to tell you about the final possible suspect. And this, so that was the first suspect, right? And we don't really know much more about him. The final most prominent suspect was this guy, H.B. Tennyson.

He was a teenager who unfortunately died by suicide in 1948. And when he died, they discovered a lockbox with a note buried within. Now I'm just thinking of that fucking Terrier guy eating a box with a note in it. Can you imagine? Like they found that he had eaten a box with a note in it can you imagine like they found that he had eaten a box with a note in it no they um they found a note in a box that confessed to the murders wow okay so but i mean i that feels like a ding ding ding but also maybe it was this guy that just like was pulling a weird gross prank or

something i don't know so you're on something because authorities found that the note explicitly confessed to the murders of virgil starks and the attempted murder of katie along with the murders of booker and martin he also implied there were other murders he committed uh but there were several other notes this is where it gets kind of convoluted because there were several other notes, some of them which were allegedly denials and said things like disregard the other notes. Where I. So. What? Yeah. So there's some notes that say, you know, I killed them. And there's notes say, no, I didn't kill them. And so this kind of muddies the investigation and people debate whether the confession is

reliable. And plus, there's no link that puts Tennyson near the crimes and no evidence that he even had access to a car to be able to go to these lover's lanes. One researcher says the case against him is based on maybes. So it's like basically all like very flimsy circumstantial evidence. And it's thought perhaps the confession was written in a state of mental crisis. Remember, this was before he died by suicide. So, you know, it's hard to say what state of mind he was in. A friend of the late teen even provided an alibi for the night of the attack on the Starks and was like, no, he was with me. We were, you know, doing something. So if that were true,

it would mean that this was kind of just an invention on this teenager's part. So in the end, there were several other suspects considered and dismissed. There was a taxi driver, a hitchhiker, a Texarkana resident who was having an affair near one of the crime scenes, and a German prisoner of war who escaped and vanished into thin air,

which is like its own true crime story that deserves its own episode. It feels like it's going to get its own spinoff episode for sure. Yeah, yeah. But with no access to DNA technology, virtually no evidence, no solid story, they really couldn't name one person as the Phantom, perpetrator of the texarkana moonlight murder so basically just as suddenly as he appeared to terrorize the the twin city as they call it he disappeared and uh in 2020 the fbi released hundreds of pages of documents regarding the case

and if you want to do your own you know armchair investigating you can go dig through those they're available online i do have one fun fact for you here which is that the 1976 horror movie the town that dreaded sundown was loosely based on the 1946 texarkana moonlight murders and if you look up the town that dreaded sundown you can see a poster that i actually recognized um and let me send it to you. Oh, yeah. Oh, God, what a creepy picture. Right?

It's a picture of a guy with a pillowcase tied over his head and, like, two little creepy little holes for eyes. And it looks very much like The Strangers. I feel like I had a real creep factor to this whole show early on because you described the outfit that was similar to the strangers. Well, that makes sense because when I saw this picture, I was like, oh, no wonder I was picturing this exact guy this whole time. Oh, gross. And so the fact that it's, oh, yeah, I just looked up the strangers. That really is like the same. It's like a burlap bag, but it's the same concept. It's the same color, too.

It's like that white color. bag, but it's the same concept. It's the same color, too. It's like that white color. Yeah. So that's the story. And unfortunately, we never figured out who it was. Yeah. Oh, God. Wow. So like someone just, you know, went to bed every night being like, wow, I can't believe

I got away with this. Isn't that horrible? It's awful. And probably has passed now. I mean, you know know it took place in the 40s yeah yeah definitely which just rough means we probably will never know but that's that geez it sounds like that where i wish time travel was a thing you could just catch someone in the act it really makes you wonder if like we'll ever get to the bottom of things like because if you think about it i know i've said this before but like we used to not have

um a way to test dna evidence and oh yeah there might be something one day maybe there's something that like we we have no freaking clue yeah uh like maybe people will be able to track someone's scent permanently right location I don't know. Something like that. Something super cool for sure. So that is that. You can like scan an area and like see like old footage. Rewind the history of it.

A hologram. Okay. That might even be cooler than, not cooler than time travel in general, but like better for so that you don't just. The environment. Yeah. And better so that you don't just environment yeah and better so that you don't just go fuck around and like ruin the rest of the future but you can watch it without interfering

aha yeah i do think it's probably more ethical yeah yeah yeah yeah unless government are you listening government we have an idea that's what we need that's hello michelle obama she's the only one i know you're in the holograph wing right now i need you to like write this down anyway i'm glad we ended this on michelle obama that was a great way to do this we should always end it on michelle obama every time begin during after what have we been thinking this whole time i don't know why we just don't keep it at the Obamas. That's odd. I mean, it'll let everyone know where we stand. I think we're, I like it. Me too.

Okay. Well, Michelle, I hope you're doing well. We love you. Love you, Shelly. And that's why we drink.