And That's Why We Drink - E293 A Hottie Without a Body and the Fun Factory

Episode Date: September 18, 2022

Welcome to episode 293 where we're lighting safe-ish "good-bye" candles for spooky show and tell! Join us for a thoroughly unhinged episode and a monster kick. This week Em brings us the story of the Enfield Monster, not to be confused with the British poltergeist. Then Christine covers the wild, western tale of Alfred Packer, America's favorite cannibal. That's the vibe we're working with today... and that's why we drink!Don't miss our last Here for the Boos tour dates! Check out andthatswhywedrink.com/live

surprise we're doing an episode m i'm so sorry it's my fault i'm so sorry i found out about 30 seconds ago we were recording an episode um it was a combination of eva and i somehow evading telling like because i told ev Eva we were doing an episode. I did not tell Em. And then in the description of the calendar event, somehow Eva also forgot to put the episode in. But we put the after chat in, which is interesting. Together, I really was under the assumption we weren't recording an episode today. But it was a whole hullabaloo that started with me anyway, because we were supposed to record literally hours ago honestly i think all three of us kind of conspired to make

this happen okay i'll take it i mean it's not your fault at all at all but i'll take 33 of the blame and no more no less no more no less um okay well then hey how why what's up how do you why do you drink this reaction was literally like well now i have to mentally prepare to sit here for much longer than i anticipated and i do feel sorry for about that i thought we were do i for some reason in my head the calendar said we were doing an after chat and i was like oh maybe we forgot one from last week so i thought i was going to be here for like 10 minutes max and now it's definitely going to be like two hours. I'm sorry. My story is short today. If that's any consolation.

It doesn't. I really had not too much going on. So we're good. Well, before anyone yells at me, I want to be clear that I know I lit a candle here and I know there's a curtain. Chrissy. Oh, just kidding. Not even an apology. I just want to move it because I want to.

It's that same one that eva got me a while ago um goodbye it's getting down there getting down there so i'm gonna put it somewhere safe fit ish well here i'll show something that i have since we're doing show and tell oh great oh i love show and tell we should make a normal regular show and tell i don't know why adults don't do show and tell i feel like we should maybe they maybe we do and it's just called podcasting we just tell tell tell maybe but like feel like like show and tell like when you actually finally have adult money that's when show and tell should be happening absolutely an interest that that are yours and yours alone honestly i'm gonna figure out a way to insert that into our lives we should start a new podcast where we show and tell and

somebody wait a guest has to bring something and tell like a story wait wait i'm not kidding i actually okay we'll talk about it later okay but i can't change tm tm but actually that exists i don't want to find out because then i'll get threatened by the competition oh my gosh i think we should blindly jump in let's do it okay here's my show just don't look up show and tell on apple podcasts i'm just kidding it's about music it's not about show and tell okay but i'm not okay okay here's my show and tell there's not oh what oh i know you've seen her before she's a babe um we just changed her lights she used to be yellow and now she's pink um but this is uh actually a fan sent this to us and it uh has dan akroyd an original ghostbusters autograph on his head what it is for people who are just listening oh it is uh it's a apparently

a vodka bottle uh vodka it's a glass bottle tequila right it says vodka oh okay never mind but it's a crystal head it looks like a look a skeleton head skull it's a skull skeleton head as some people call it okay um and i just keep it in the old troll hole and uh and throw some lights in there and some little string lights little stringies and yeah she's she's looking glitz and glam today you know what you could do speaking of fire is put one of those corks that have like aick in it and then put a little candle on top. I've never heard of those. Well, Eva got me one from Morocco the first time I ever met her.

And I was like, this is one of the coolest gifts I've ever gotten. I'm glad we hired you two weeks ago. Okay, Eva, listen up. I need you to go to Morocco. And I need to get one of those, please. It's so cool. You put it in a wine bottle and then you can like light it. But I've been too scared to light it because it's so pretty.

Anyway, she is a hottie, that little skull. I think so. I'm going to say she's a hottie without a body because I almost said with a body, but really that would be inaccurate anatomically speaking. That would be so, so medically wrong. So inaccurate. But you know, a head's all she needs. If she had more, she'd be too powerful

that's the thing she's a babe she feels like like uh like what you'd see like in a cgi like roller coaster like it flies past you in like a haunted maze yeah yeah yeah yeah anyway cutie um i really upstaged you with the show until do you have anything else you'd like to show or are we gonna let me just oh i got something because I just looked around. I'm just going to grab something here. Okay. This is a caterpillar wearing a hat. Oh, I love him.

How many legs does he have? One, two, three, four, five, six. Oh, he's missing one. Wow. We're both not anatomically correct with our show until today. You're right. They're all missing body parts. Honestly, she has enough legs, though though for a little Danielle over here. Danielle. Ooh. Well,

Dan Aykroyd signed it. Oh, that's cute. I will say I keep smacking this thing into the microphone. This is, um, I guess I don't totally remember, but at my wedding, my dad pulled this out as he gave his speech and he put it on the table and he said, oh, this is Christina's caterpillar toy from when she was a baby. I have no idea what it had to do with anything. I'm sure it's on video somewhere. But then afterward, he's like, here you go. And I was like, OK, thanks. And so now I have Mr. Caterpillar.

Incredible condition for sitting in my office. For being 30 years old. It's a pretty solid condition. Yeah. Well, he is missing one leg, but out of like, you know, 16 or something. So, you know, he's doing all right. Perfect. Sagu into the fact that I found a website this morning that has a button down shirt,

which I'm not currently in a button down phase, but we're going to get there, I think. And it has all of the foods that the Hungry Hungry Caterpillar. I was just, because I'm planning Leona's birthday and there's a theme that's Hungry Caterpillar and the amount of like party supplies where I was like that. Honestly, wait, that might just be my 31st birthday.

I think that's a way to go because I was so enamored with all the decor. The menu's already written for you. Exactly. That's genius. You go because I was so enamored with all the decor. The menu's already written for you. Exactly. That's genius. You can have every snack out on the table. Salami, cupcakes, lollipops. And I'm allowed to be mean and say I'm very hungry hungry so I'm the caterpillar. Yeah you eat before you get here and I do I eat this. It's just on display for you. Leona has it in German. Do you want to know what it's called in German? What?

Oh, go ahead. No, no. What were you going to say? I know the very hungry, hungry. How many Hungries are there, too? The hungry, hungry caterpillar? I know he eventually turns into a hungry, hungry Schmetterling. Look at you!

But I don't know what caterpillar is okay which is sort of like a rope because they're kind of like a rope oh that's silly yeah and so the the small caterpillar who's never full is how they say it well that is not what how they would describe me um no no no small who's never full's never full. I'm going to stick with hungry, hungry. I don't think it's hungry, hungry. I think that's the hippo. I think it's very hungry. Is that true?

Am I combining them? Well, I am also a hippo, so that makes sense. I think there's a lot of combos happening here. Hungry, hungry caterpillar. Maybe I am messing it up. It's definitely very hungry. Oh, the very... Okay, well, they should have a spinoff where there's the very hungry hippos and the hungry hungry caterpillars no that seems like a dangerous

a danger zone and just lets you know chaos exists in all realms well we already know that i don't need someone to remind me but thank you anyway okay well hey i'm happy to be a caterpillar and a hippo and you can just be standing there while i eat everything on the table thanks a lot i'm glad i get to be part of this thank you for show and tell christine that was so fun that was fun m thank you for show and tell um why do you drink this week or do we have time or are we too too far in now because i see somebody there's a nice guy on youtube who starts commenting um when our stories start honestly i want to be offended but it's probably also useful really useful because you just click the time stamp and it jumps ahead of all this bullshit you know hurtful that people don't want to know what's going on in my personal life but i guess

if they don't want to hear about it they they're not even listening to this part if that guy's accurate with his timing so that's true they'll never know that it hurt my feelings yeah so you know why should they care yeah but they wouldn't even if they could i suppose but anyway thank you for that person's service uh good good job i'm sure some people find you very practical we're very impressed i'm really thankful for your work um why i drink okay um i drink i don't know why i drink i guess i drink because this is the last episode before my ablation. I know. I didn't want to bring it up, but I'm glad that you're getting it so soon.

It's happening. I wonder if that guy is also commenting on YouTube, like how many times in one episode I can possibly talk about my stupid heart. I don't think there's enough characters on a YouTube comment for that. Just know that if all goes well with the surgery i will be done talking about this soon but also find something else we'll find something else but uh if you don't like hearing me talk about my heart then just um give me extra energy and good vibes that i never have to talk about it again after this week so uh i'm nervous about it but fingers crossed that everything goes well why do you think i can't wait for al to text me the things that you say while you're like half sedated, you know? I am nervous about that.

I am more nervous about the bill. I just got it today in advance, which is nice of them to see if I want to like tap out. It's like they're closer to giving me a heart attack every day. Yeah, they're pushing you in the hospital. But yeah that that bill's crazy folks so i i pity anyone who's also having to go through an ablation for more than one reason or any sort of medical procedure even that too they just don't they don't let you they don't let you out of there without is it true i'm not gonna i really keep interrupting you and i'm such an asshole i'm so sorry no no go ahead i wanted to ask without you having to drop a number, cause I'm not going to ask that of you, but is it true that the bill after having a baby is as staggeringly horrifying as I've seen on tech talk? Um, it is very high. I was very

fortunate to have insurance through blaze. I don't know what it would be like under like a past insurer. I also have very good insurance just because every eight weeks I have to get an infusion. So we just pay for the most expensive insurance to get. Got it. Okay. You know, because it evens out, but it is staggeringly high. Yes. Staggeringly. So yeah, I learned that on TikTok. Living in the States, you'd think I would just know that having a baby would be ridiculous but then i somehow fell onto there's always some surprise you know and then i mean especially if you think about oh if you have an emergency c-section like then you have surgery and it's like well now you're getting billed for surgery you weren't even expecting so it's all very shocking but i do

follow some tiktokers who talk about, you know, fighting medical bills. So there are ways to fight back on that. So if you are in that hopeless place, which I will say I have been in that very scary black hole of not being able to pay medical bills. There are some ways to kind of fight back on creditors and stuff. So TikTok your way out of it is what I say. I'm about to TikTok my way out of it because they told me the number today and I went, whoa, that is a big, big number. Yeah. Okay. Anyway, that is all why I drink, but I have yet to hear why you drink. Oh, I don't know. I'm just, I'm leaving for Missouri tomorrow. I'm nervous because I'll be traveling during your procedure, which doesn't make any sense because I wouldn't

be any help even at home. But that's very kind though. I don't know. I'm just getting nervous. Not nervous for you, but I'm just like, I feel like your mother or something. I'm like, you know, should I be there? I don't know. No, you have a girlfriend. Thank you, mommy. And a real mother. I don't know.

Yeah, no, I'm just traveling to Missouri to visit Blaze's family, so we'll be like out on the farm for a few days. Are you bringing Gio? We are. And I think he's probably going to attack a horse again, so wish me luck. blaze's family so we'll be like out on the farm for a few days are you bringing geo we are and i think he's probably gonna attack a horse again so wish me luck i don't know a living creature who loves a farm more than that dog that dog and you know i don't know a living creature uh more ill equipped to live on a farm than geo because the last time we took him there he just walked into the lake and i was like you gotta get out bud because you don't really know how to swim and he kind of walked in and then was like help me and so i had to go in

and drag him back out well he's also like the size of a little a little i don't know tennis ball but he is the weight of a cannonball so he will just sink right to the bottom hit the bottom real quick also he runs right up to a horse and just screams at it, which is not helpful for anybody, especially the horse. So we got to keep an eye on that one, you know, but it's not cut out for the country. But yeah, so I'm excited for that little mini vacation, but I will be on my phone and making sure you're doing okay over there. Well, that's nice of you, but I will... I'll be a few states closer. Oh, phew. You're welcome.

I will be unresponsive, though. So even if you decide that you don't want to be invested in my recovery, I won't know. So you're welcome to not worry too much about it. I'm ready to talk about something less stressful, hopefully, until my story. Okay, yeah, exactly. Just a little break. This is definitely less stressful. This is, I think, more of a silly story than anything. Maybe it's a silly story. Maybe it's not. You tell me by the end. This is episode 293, yeah? I have no idea. I think it is. It's a crazy amount of episodes.

Yes, it is. That's a lot of episodes. That's a lot of talking we've done. Shit, we're really close to 300. I know it. Okay. Well, I only checked because that was the notes I pulled up and I went, have I done these before? Okay.

only i checked because that was the notes i pulled up and i went have i done these before okay this is the story of a cryptid and it is the enfield monster oh not to be confused with the enfield poltergeist okay i did have a moment of uh-oh that's way too familiar um okay this is a different thing interestingly they're only four years apart um the poltergeist the enfield poltergeist in the uk was 1977 it was also a fun fact the inspiration for the second conjuring movie and i wanted to give an episode shout out to that and that's why we drink um also shout out our episode guide, which you can find on our website. I worked very hard on that. I did, and it's being used right now.

Okay, the Enfield Poltergeist. And Em uses it more than anybody. That's absolutely true. It's just a free service to others, but really it was a task I had to perform for myself. The Enfield Poltergeist, if you want to go listen to that, was episode 56. And episode 56 and episode 56 makes me feel like I was probably still figuring out how to do research so maybe we need to cover that again in the future yeah it doesn't it sound it's that's probably a long time ago

like years ago yeah I feel like I don't know when we covered a QAnon but I think that was the first time I like my skull cracked in half from trying to do an intense amount of research anything before that I feel like I just like don't respect myself there's like so there's like PQA pre-QAnon and PQA post-QAnon that's not helpful it's the same pre-Q pre-Q both times so okay the Enfield Poltergeist episode 56 that was in 1977 and happened in the UK the Enfield monster which we're talking about today though was four years earlier in 1973 and it happened in enfield illinois oh different enfield okay but it would have been fun if there were two like monsters duking it out in enfield it would

have been i would have been like where is the movie about that? So the town of Enfield, which we're talking about, is very small. The most recent census said there was like 500 residents there. Oh, my. Which is actually, I think the population is decreasing. I think back when this incident happened, there were 200 more people there. Really? Yeah. It's getting smaller?

Oh, dear. I don't know what's happening over there i've always wanted to go to that small town by the way where like the population's one have you ever heard of that place no it's somewhere in i think it's in the somewhere in the midwest it sounds like it would be in the midwest yes if you look it up like smallest population there's a town and then they did like a vice i think a vice documentary on that sounds right the person was like the mayor and all this stuff that sounds like something you would do oh well you know what i would really do i know we're getting off topic folks but in california i wanted to take allison here for her birthday but it's too far out of the way but there's a town called copperopolis and the mayor is a dog named copper no i'm pretty sure i think you say at

the end of that well i think his name is copper and that's why it's called copperopolis but it is the dog is the mayor and they have like an ice cream store named after him and they have like a whole town square and well i will say i did just download this is tangent number 45 in the episode already but i did just download an app. It's basically my old Farmville days on an app. Farmtown, I don't remember what it's called, but I named the town Geotown. That's precious. And then they said, oh, somebody wants to be your mayor.

I'm like, why am I not the mayor? It's my Farmville. Anyway, I'm working on that. not the mayor it's my farm bill anyway i'm working on that so well um the to the town of copperopolis uh if your mayor could listen to our podcast real quick and bark if he's interested in us doing a visit there i would we could do a promo like an ad swap you know i would absolutely do and get a billboard there and talk about it here if we got a billboard in copperopolis if we didn't if we did like a tourist ad like go have a great vacation in Copperopolis, have some ice cream and pet a dog. You know how Ohio keeps like advertising in LA and New York

City? Have you seen those Ohio ads? Yeah, you could do that here. Well, Copper, if you're listening, hello, it's me. We love you. Your biggest fan. Okay. Yikes. Enfield is a super small town. And this is back in 1973. This was April 25th. And there's a 10-year-old boy named Greg Garrett. And he was catching lightning bugs, which we both determined in our last after chat we call fireflies. I call them lightning bugs, actually. Oh, shit. Maybe I call them fireflies.

Okay. Whatever. You said firefly. I said lightning bug greg garrett was catching patreon for these this hitting hard-hitting news content okay so greg garrett was catching fireflies slash lightning bugs uh outside when he was attacked oh no in his yard by a monster oh no and here's the first silly part of it all attacked means somehow his shoes got ripped oh sorry i plugged my thing out

this is a nightmare episode oh no this is folks this is this episode is bananagrams i remember when i unplayed you probably all knew it before i did i realized my computer was my microphone was not recording my audio i don't think um so we had to pause and restart and m was like maybe we shouldn't be recording after all and i think maybe the universe was trying to make that happen and here we are the cosmos when i said don't we just need to record an after chat you know what you should have said yeah that's what we should ding ding i should the cosmos is clearly telling us something here wow so anyway we're going to keep forcing an episode on you that's been uh kind of half-hazardly created here in our minds. Let's try it again.

This is what happens. I keep fidgeting and I can't sit still and I don't feel comfortable and I don't look like as well framed as you do. And I think it's making me all... Little old me. You know, to be fair, you had like 290 episodes to look better than me. And I finally have a troll hole. I'm telling you. I feel like every time i see i'm

in a new corner of my office and i'm trying to like make it look nice but nowhere is like working for me so i'll i'll just stop touching everything i think you look lovely thank you why did espn just email me that was there they should be embarrassed because oh my god i think a recruiter is reaching out to sign you up for for what competitive napping okay um okay so here what are they called the globetrotters that's not right that's a basketball team yeah that's what i meant is that what the harlem globetrotters yeah okay that's what i meant you could do like trampoline tricks oh right me and my heart you're right and your broken ass body can do some trampoline tricks can you imagine if like the success rate of my ablation goes from barely being able to walk to being a harlem globetrotter

medical marvel crying oh my god you're a medical marvel also i don't think they use trampolines do they wait yes they do i think they use mini trampolines my doctor certainly will to make sure i can get on the team after the surgery okay okay i'm sorry you were talking about something jesus i hope people really wanted like the most unhinged version thoroughly unhinged okay so there's a 10 year old kid named greg he's trying to catch fireflies and all of a sudden he's attacked by something in his yard and we don't really know what attacked means because i was obviously like i said earlier um my source was newspapers.com so if it wasn't written in the newspaper in 73 i don't really have information on it.

But we don't know what attacked means, but there was evidence of an attack because his sneakers were ripped apart. Okay. But his feet were fine. So I don't. Okay. So then Greg runs into his house. He's inconsolable because he was just assaulted by something that looks i think like a yeti or something whoa and his parents called the police and there is an official police report listed that of the creature known as the monster so that's the first official sighting and then the second

official sighting which becomes the most popular sighting of it all was only an hour later and it was this guy henry mcdaniel who was coming home from work and he pulls up to his house and he sees that all of the lights in his house are on and the curtains are shut ew hate it um he does have kids the teenage kids so he goes inside thinking it maybe they're up to something. But they run over to him screaming that something tried to break into the house. Oh, so they turn all the lights on and stuff to hide. Well, that doesn't make sense. But they closed all the blinds to hide.

They reacted the way I would, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Dark is scary. Yeah, dark is scary and windows being open is a no-go. No-go for me. So apparently this thing that had tried to break in uh it scratched them or it tried scratching the door aggressively and then it even tried to push the ac unit out from the window so that it could climb in oh no

that's quite scary which also makes me feel i mean there's like a lot of discourse on whether or not this was ever really encrypted or maybe there was a series of break-ins in this town and that feels like a human move to be like well i know that this comes out and leaves a gaping hole in the window yeah yeah yeah that's true uh but i guess the ac unit was installed very well good job henry um job mine certainly isn't if anyone wants to break in you gotta climb up here and i feel like if if you sneeze it's gonna fall out um it might it might so they the ac unit was installed very well and they whatever was trying to push its way in apparently didn't do it uh so they said that the break and attempt had just happened and the kids said their

dad must have just missed the creature as he was driving home and he might have even passed it on the road henry opens the door back to go back outside uh to look around and see you know what he can find if there's any evidence of whoever was there and when he opens the door the enfield monster is on his doorstep he's back he's back for more and he so this is henry he told the mount vernon register news he said it had three legs kind of like that little caterpillar of yours it had a short body two little short arms coming out of its breast area and two pink eyes as big as flashlights what the fuck it stood four and a half to five feet tall and it was grayish colored and it was trying to get in the house okay to recap three legs yeah like a tripod for reason, not at all what I was expecting.

Every cryptid in my mind is a bipedal. Yeah. Or at least four, but three seems really odd. Three is like, was one missing? Yeah, unless you lost one. Did it start at three? Okay, so three legs, short body, two arms coming out of its breast area, which is so freaky to me because it feels so like it's almost like it feels like like most people's arms come out of their sides but for

to come out of your front i've just like it's one of those little elements so like i feel like i never hear about a cryptid and so it kind of jarred me it feels like this thing was created by like darwin's worst nightmare like it didn't, like it shouldn't have survived natural selection because nothing on it makes any sense. It feels like everything's slightly off. I think it feels like everything's extremely far off. Oh, okay. He has giant pink eyes, three legs, two arms that can't do anything. To be fair, the pink eyes as big as flashlights, the fact that they're, I'm sorry, but I'm just thinking of fleshlights.

I'm sorry. Oh, God. What the frick? I just think the size of flashlights and they're pink. You know what I was going to say is I was thinking of little hottie without a body or a little skull over there with her little pink lights. But I guess. I did her dirty there then, I guess. Indeed you did.

lights but I guess I did her dirty there then I guess you did if you don't know what the word is that I'm said maybe let's not google it because there's probably a good reason you don't know what it is you're right but the difference is that thing has eyes like flashlights and this one it has only sockets no eyes at all this little skull friend so I guess that's true exact opposites I think great Also five feet tall at max. So that means it was shorter probably than most people it could have ran into. Yeah. So at least it's less threatening that way. But I guess it also looks wildly different.

Threatening, yeah, has taken on a new meaning here. And grayish color. So that's the vibe we're getting here. Henry slams the door in its face before it can get in, grabs his gun, opens the door again, and shoots at it and hits it on the first try. When he hits this thing, it, quote, hisses like a wildcat. And amazingly, in like a 50-foot span, ran and hid in the shrubs within like three big steps. Okay. I guess when you've got three legs i was gonna say like so each foot got a turn and then she was like oh got to the shrubs 50 feet away um so henry calls the police who can't find the monster but they do find tracks of it um after

the thing i guess ran away and when they look at the tracks, it looks like dog paws, but with, instead of the normal amount of toes on it, it has six toes on the top. So it's almost like someone put two dog paws together. That's kind of the vibe I got. I actually have a picture of it, if you want to see it. Of the print or of the actual monster?

The print. If I had a picture of the actual monster, I wouldn't have sat here talking about it. I'm telling you, of the actual monster the print oh if i had a picture of the actual monster i know i thought i'm telling you i thought maybe this was like a hard-hitting segment where you were going to reveal for the first time i can you imagine if i were hard-hitting um no i can't actually oh shit this is actually a pdf so i can't show you the thing right now it's just i mean it looks like a normal footprint but with an excessive amount of toes that's cool that's great that's just excellent thank you for sharing the vibe we're getting here i feel like i've said that a million times i need to set it a lot i don't know why is

that my new caption uh well blaze says you say lore a lot and i was like you do and then last episode i realized you really do and i was like i never do i yeah you're like the lore of it you say a lot oh i never noticed that either i didn't either and then all of. And I was like, I never noticed that. Yeah. You're like the lore of it. You say a lot. Oh, I never noticed that either. I didn't either. And then all of a sudden I was like, Oh,

there it is. We're really opening a door for people to tune in. Say, you know what else you say? Try men, not tune in. But yeah, they have all of a sudden the opinions are going to flow in.

Um, okay. Noted. I will be aware of my lores and apparently my, that's the vibe we're working with here. That's the vibe we're getting today. These tracks that apparently look like normal prints, but a lot of toes.

The best bet that the cops could come up with, keep in mind we're in Illinois, the best bet they could come up with was that it was an escaped kangaroo. Oh. Which, I've an escaped kangaroo. Oh. Which I've seen a kangaroo's footprint and that ain't it. So I don't know why they were guessing that random as shit animal. Maybe the zoo lost one or something at that point.

So they assumed there was maybe one that had escaped the zoo, but there really was no evidence of a of a kangaroo who escaped except there was one guy who said that a year previously he had lost his kangaroo oh and so it might be him but then i feel like that guy should get his own episode where we go looking for this missing kangaroo and sort of like why he had one yeah you shouldn't be doing that but i wonder maybe because the arms you know are kind of oh in front of it maybe that's why they were like oh it's sort of like why he had one. Yeah, you shouldn't be doing that. But I wonder maybe because the arms, you know, are kind of in front of it. Maybe that's why they were like, oh, it's sort of like a kangaroo. Now explain the eyes. Okay, well, the way you describe them is probably something I can never really explain.

But maybe because the porch light was on and it had like weird reflective eyes. Oh, okay. Hey, yeah. I don't know. Maybe he was holding a flashlight at it and it had like weird reflective eyes. Oh, okay. Hey, yeah. I don't know. Maybe he was holding a flashlight at it and it had creepy eyes. Maybe he was holding two flashlights going... Maybe he was holding two fleshlights.

Is that what you said? Honestly, if a kangaroo showed up at my door and had two fleshlights on its face, I would be... I don't think any other story that ever happened to me would be funnier and more confusing i'd be so confused i meant that the dad was opening the door with a flashlight not the kangaroo but i really like the idea that the kangaroo showed up with either a flashlight or a flashlight i meant maybe the dad

opened the door with two flashlights and that's why he got confused but i don't think that makes much sense either so aha i see i see um well we had different opinions i think of that story oh god okay so henry also confirmed for the police that was not a kangaroo. He saw because he had apparently been to Australia and pet one. I love when people are like, because I'm an actual expert on this, believe it or not. So he said, there's no way that was a kangaroo. I saw it with my own eyes. And basically, this small town agreed with Henry just because it was such a small town that they knew he would be serious about this kind of stuff.

And they knew how much he loved his trip to Australia. He never shut up about it. I know, he always talked about the photos, seeing the kangaroos. So he basically says this thing is not a kangaroo. Everyone in town believes him. But when the neighbors start, or when the cops start going to the neighbors to say like,

hey, has anyone else seen this thing because this little kid saw it and now henry saw it any other stories this is where they actually hear about the little kid greg's story so they only showed up the first time because henry made the call to the police and then when they're asking around that's when greg says oh i saw it an hour earlier i get get it. I get it. Okay. And when they question Greg, like to describe this thing, he adds that the monster had gray, slimy skin. Ew. Okay. Well, they got gray.

Yeah. Hey, grayism. And they both said short arms. Okay. So two weeks later, Henry hears dogs howling outside his house and he goes to look and he sees the monster again. And this time he says that the monster is walking near the train tracks near his house and he didn't seem to be in a hurry. That was how he phrased the walking pattern of this thing. Interesting.

This time, Henry, I guess, reports it again. Henry, I guess, reports it again. And a reporter who came from Indiana, who previously reported on the first sighting, he comes back to town for this new second sighting that Henry's had. This guy's name is either Rick Rainbow or Rick Rainbolt. Wait, I know about this guy. What, I know about this guy. What do you know about this guy? I know you're thinking I'm bullshitting you, but I'm dead serious. This guy reported on a UFO sighting. Yes, I think he's a UFO-ologist.

Maybe, or he had a, oh, sorry, he was a, that's not what I meant. He was a, yeah, like a radio personality. And he was born, I think, as Rain Bolt and then changed his name to Rainbow, Rick Rainbow. That makes sense because different sources had different last names. Yeah, and I know this because Astonishing Legends tells every, like, fact and factoid. That's why their episodes are, like, six hours long. And they said, yes, Rick Rainbow is his real name. factoid that's why their episodes are like six hours long um and they said yes rick rainbow is his real name but i think he changed it um to like you know to the from bolt i really thought

i was going to blow you away with this information and you came real hot with the oh i know him i know him i know that guy i don't really know him but um i remember very clearly that name from astonishing legends when they talked about an a ufo encounter or maybe it was some episode and they were like yeah that's his real name anyway if he's gonna be a reporter and his name is rainbow or rainbolt he really should have just stuck with meteorology like i you know maybe he tried it couldn't cut it i don't know so he brings with him he comes back to report on the second sighting and he brings with him a big game hunter uh to like uh look at the tracks and do like plaster moldings and all that of these animals to be able to try and figure out what the tracks were if it's a

kangaroo or not i guess if it's a kangaroo i hope he had kangaroo on his resume so that we knew that that means that he shot a kangaroo maybe that he observes i i don't know how to make this better poacher who doesn't kill animals sure he's a very gentle killer who kills anyway um he said that of when he tracked the the footprints there was no known animal he had heard of that had footprints like this. And so Rick Rainbow? Rainbolts? Which one are we going with? That's his professional name.

So Rick Rainbow spoke to three locals on top of talking to Henry. And these three locals, or he spoke to a bunch of people, but these three locals said that they also saw something strange. So there was one boy who claimed that he was trying to sleep when he saw a hairy arm come through his window and then slip out. Ew. Another was a sawmill worker who saw a hairy creature running nearby around sunset. And like all of these,

I just feel like it could just be a hairy guy a person it could be a hairy person that poor guy who the sawmill worker saw running could have just been a hairy person who was on a run yeah but i don't like the guy sticking his arm in the kid's window that's freaky no that one makes me think that it's like it feels more like a burglar right yeah or like a yes yes yes so even rick and his crew uh claimed to see an ape-like being but the cameraman didn't catch it in time of course it's like your only job while you're here come on they were however able to catch its audio and apparently the sound of this thing sounds like a combination of a baby laughing and a woman screaming good night that's horrible forget it the audio um uh i think still exists in archives but it cannot be found

online but you know next time you hear a baby crying just scream next to it and that's probably the sound i already do that it's okay i can just please record it next time if you're in kentucky and you think you hear the enfield monster it was actually just leona christine harmonizing sorry the two cryptids that live under this roof combined besides uh rick rainbow's team other investigators came and one of them was this guy hayden hughes who investigated another cryptid which i will one day cover with certainty because the uh cryptids name is the el reno oklahoma chicken man which also sounds kind of like a serial killer honestly yeah so maybe we'll tag team that one

uh okay so back to henry he's getting calls from reporters non-stop it's to a point where he actually considers moving to get away oh my gosh and on top of this the police are now dealing with another problem in town which is all these self-proclaimed monster hunters aka a bunch of midwesterners with guns oh one of the monster hunters claimed to actually see the monster and shoot at it but then said this quote nothing could move that fast with a bullet in it so i guess he's admitting that he didn't actually successfully shoot it then there's another quote or maybe he's saying he did shoot it or he maybe he's saying he did shoot it but it like ran away and he was like yeah that's nothing i've seen before yeah it must

be supernatural too fast to process. There's another monster hunter who says something similar. It ran faster than a human. It jumped higher than a human. It wasn't human. So. Ew. Hate that.

But so things are getting wild. There are a bunch of hunters each night and to a point where parents aren't letting their kids leave the house anymore and not even because they're afraid of the enfield monster but because they're afraid of getting shot guns exactly just people with guns who are looking yeah who are looking for something in the woods to move and they're just shooting at it so it's not a good no that's not a great move guys there was even uh there was one night where there were like five hunters who were getting really drunk in the woods and just started shooting around and like almost hit residents in the area so i think they got arrested um but the town is wait for it blaze drowning in lore because tourists are now coming in to look for this monster themselves, but locals are shooting everywhere and reporters are harassing people looking

for answers. The sheriff eventually threatens to arrest Henry if he doesn't stop talking about the monster and emboldening, emboldening town fear. Okay. But it's like, it's not his fault. Exactly.

Which is what he said. So Henry does not back down. He says, I know what I saw. It's not my my fault you haven't found it yet yeah except here comes like the downfall of him is where the little kid greg who was the other witness he comes forward and says that he made up the story and he claims he did it to tease hen Henry and have fun with the newsmen. But so didn't, and he's the one whose shoes got torn up. But didn't that happen beforehand?

Yeah, but he got questioned after Henry had already made a report. Okay. But his parents did call the police for some reason. Yeah, well, so here's the thing there's uh for the believers out there of the enfield monster a lot of them say that 10 year old greg uh he they think he backed away and just like said oh i didn't mean it he was pressured into he was pressured into it and it was either he was pressured by the town to say he made it up or maybe his parents made him because they saw that henry was getting harassed and the whole town was falling apart because of the story and so they were like it's just better if you just say it didn't happen

right so we don't really know if that was true or not but he's claiming that he made it up um didn't they call the police for some reason like there was a police report so yeah and that happened before i i think he saw must have happened i think he saw something and truly like i don't think it was like this like a monster with three legs and slimy skin but like he maybe saw something and it freaked him out i mean he's 10 he could have he could have seen a burglar you know like he could have been a person and especially if he just kept calling it a monster a monster like that could be a person who was doing bad stuff so you're right yeah i think he saw something and

he was clearly scared enough for his parents to call the police and believe him yeah exactly so basically after he came forward people stopped taking reports as seriously and uh shortly after this the reports completely stopped happening or started coming through or the reports completely stopped coming through and the story of the enfield monster seemed to fade away until this guy turned 30 because on june, 2022, almost 50 years after the last sighting, an Enfield local named Zach Starik claims to have seen the monster again. So he's still out there. Oh my god, your 30th birthday. And they say, I'm back, baby.

I awoke the beast, apparently. You must have. Something stirred in that small town. Wow. So almost 50 years later, Zack Star claims to have seen the monster. He was driving with his brights on and saw something run past his car

when he realized that it was the monster near a ditch and then it disappeared. So that was almost 50 years later, right? Mm-hmm. Wow. It's 49 years was almost 50 years later, right? Mm-hmm. Wow. It's 49 years later. 49 years later. And Zach, I don't know.

I just wanted to throw this in. I don't totally know what the point of it is. Maybe it's to prove that, like, maybe he wasn't always a believer. I don't totally understand. But he described himself as a rededicatedicated god-fearing christian then he describes himself as a second generation cattle farmer then a fourth generation professional wrestler then the founder of the southern illinois monster hunters like okay all right okay so i don't

know what he's talking about in this tinder profile situation but it's a lot of information that i don't know what to do with i feel like he got like badge merit badges for all these different things and he's just showing them off it's like i understand if he was saying like i'm a god-fearing christian i don't believe in these things supernatural stuff right but to end so drastically differently on i've quite a range i founded the monster hunter club like that feels like i wonder if he's just had to defend being the monster hunter leader for so long that he's like first and foremost before you write me off as some yahoo like i am these other things as well i I'm a very normal, relatable person in this town.

Yes, I'm normal and relatable in Enfield, Illinois, as a fourth generation professional wrestler. Like my father's and forefathers before me. Oh, my God. I can't. So anyway, he claims that he saw this thing and he actually told his story during an interview on the rope and radio network which coincidentally had just made a documentary about the enfield monster so i don't know if he was like i think there's some back and forth on whether or not he was paid to say he saw it to like bring pr to the documentary or you could say the documentary like revamped people's interest

in coming forward with their stories. Well, what they don't tell you is that his wrestler name is actually the Enfield Monster. So he was just trying to do some promo for his Saturday appearance in the ring. Okay. So the last thing I have to say is that there is a research paper in Sociology Quarterly which focused on the Enfield monster and its relationship with social contagion. So social contagion is basically when situations

cause a widespread group of people to rapidly, unanimously develop like an intense behavior. I don't know where. like a mob mentality group think kind of situation exactly and that can okay that applies to a lot of your stories i think oh yeah i think so too and i mean this it can be as vague as like fashion trends but it can go all the way to like there's a town monster and where we all need to be nervous and shoot around shoot around just in case shoot around um but what's so basically in this case it would be something like the entire town going into a frenzy about the monster but what's interesting is the researchers of this study i think they went

into it going like oh yeah social contagion is rampant here. But they actually determined that social contagion was not at play here. So I'm only adding this in as a fun fact of like, oh, you might think it was social contagion, but according to Sociology Quarterly, it wasn't. They sound pretty smart to me. They are no, they're not your average fourth generation professional wrestler. No, I mean, not anybody really is. So they think social contagion was not involved in this because the town only cared about the sightings after the police got involved. So it was more based in human curiosity at first. And despite the media storm, there was very little hysteria because I guess they define it as, well, there weren't a lot of people saying, oh, I saw it. Oh oh i saw it there were very few reports of sightings even though people were freaked out and so that feels

like it it doesn't fall into the category of hysteria what people might consider hysteria is that people were going out with their guns and shooting everything sure but uh it doesn't i guess they don't define that as social contagion because the town seemed uh more worried in terms of like if they were going to see the enfield monster or if like their their kids were going to get shot like it wasn't it wasn't hysterical enough that people were like still choosing to leave the house instead of stay safe right just it feels like the people who were out there shooting were more like drunk locals who kind of just wanted a reason to fuck around in the woods

yeah but for the most part the town was more worried about gun violence than the actual monster right and so for that reason they don't think it was based in social contagion so i love that somebody took the time to like academically analyze this whole situation like that's fun uh but anyway that is the enfield monster that is m good job ah thank you well hey that was a real struggle through and through today i threw so many just cherry bombs grenades at you and you just you got hit by a few but we did manage to pull through to the end and i'm really impressed by you. I had a good time.

It was fun. It was a fun little diddy. Oh, boy. Well, I am realizing it's 649. So I think it's high time I grab my box of wine real quick before I tell you my story. Is that okay? Can you record right now or do you need to bounce? No, I'm good to go.

Okay, cool. This is doing bedtime. Ooh. Okay, well, let me go get a drink, too. Okay, great. I'll see you in just a moment. Hi. Hi.

What did you get? Okay, let me show you. Speaking of show and tell. So, I realized this is what happens when people like you make me clean. Oh. When did I do that to you? I just feel like you're one of those people who wants make me clean oh when did i do that to you i just feel like you're one of those people who wants me to clean things um okay i want you to text allison that because she would laugh hysterically i'm i'm the messy one of the relationship when i'm under your

supervision i get a lot of um you know because i'm a messy person um and what do you get what's happening what do i do in the you were ready to murder me in the uh space camp video because i was just kind of leaving things around and i mean as everyone knows you do leave a trail as the shifter thank you i do and so today i you know i cleaned up my office sort of oh i won't show you because it doesn't look like i did but i did carry my dishes downstairs which means there's not a wine glass for me to drink out of but what are you drinking out of it's gonna be something like a like a bowl what it was gonna be something gross and i did have a few options on the table but then i remembered that by my cricket machine

I have these wine glasses for decorating oh okay that for making gifts and so I found a wine glass wrapped in bubble wrap so it was a surprisingly hinged answer you just know trust me I was very unhinged for approximately 45 seconds I looked inside a really old coffee cup filled with coffee and oat milk and i was like do i just dump this out and then no no no christine been really gnarly oh christine well i'm drinking i'm drinking squirt oh i love a good squirt do you i i that's not that came out wrong i meant the beverage the worst named drink, isn't it? But no, I'm trying to get into, I just keep saying this soda because I refuse to say the name.

I guess I never thought about it because I only drank it when I was little. And now it's like, oh, it has a different meaning. Yeah. We didn't have this in Virginia. Because my neighbors, the Careys, they always bought squirt. Oh. I never, maybe it wasn't Virginia. I never saw it in fredericksburg i it was never like it was definitely a cincinnati thing oh well i i got it it was part of the um

the jetsons party it's left over so i'm trying to it was because we did uh 1960s cocktail appetizers and so we did like an old school like seven up party punch thing yeah and uh it was suggested to mix this in there it doesn't taste that bad i'm just getting it's like a lemon lime it's grapefruit oh it's grapefruit i feel like it's maybe the west coast i know you just said it's in it was in ohio but i'm ignoring you and i feel like this i feel like this is like west coast version of fresca because fresca interesting yeah i was my mom was a big fresca drinker growing up so i did not know squirt was grapefruit okay it was created oh my god um you are so smart okay what keep keep it coming okay oh boy see this is why this is why i want to okay squirt is a caffeine-free citrus flavored carbonated soft drink created in 1938

in phoenix arizona squirt competed primarily against the coca-cola company's fresca shut the fuck up i am so smart yeah you are look at me go um i don't like this enjoy a yummy squirt mixer oh wow that's cool beg to differ squirt but thank you okay um cool yeah you know what i always thought it was lemon lime when growing up i never really paid attention because it was well look at the color scheme. Like, come on. Yeah. Yeah. I never knew, but I really like grapefruit. So maybe I should give that a try. It is, it is growing on me. If you need to warm into it the way that I did, um, the, the vintage cocktail party punch I made. If you want the, if you want to warm into it the way that I had to at the party, you just throw up one of these into a two liter a seven up and a whole

bucket of rainbow sherbet and you'll be good to go the rainbow okay that's like an old-timey punch isn't it oh you just said that sorry I'm like yeah they used to put that in like old-timey punch I think I also don't know what's like when when it's stopping old-timey because I feel like I grew up with it at like 90s birthday parties, but that does mean that people from the 60s and 70s who were hosting those parties made it. So I can't tell if it's in my mind it's a 90s recipe, but it was made by people who grew up during 1960s and 1970s cocktail hour. I wonder when that became like a thing because rainbow sherbet in your punch is definitely a thing I had growing up too. Me too. It's delicious.

It is delicious. It's how we should all drink 7-Up. Damn. Okay, well I'm gonna pour my box of wine directly into this glass. I blew into it so hopefully there's no dust left but you know. Horrific the way that you do things. It's just like, you know, it's sort of like

sometimes you gotta just chill out. You know what I mean? Okay. That's the thing is now having a baby too i'm like i'm glad i'm i'm pretty i'm very anxious person but what are you laughing at did you just say i'm now that i have a baby thank god i'm pretty or something no i swear to god the what came through into my ears was you saying, I'm so glad I'm pretty. Well, let's do that. Let's just end at that. No, I did say that, but I think I was trying to say I'm pretty chill. And then I think I stopped myself because I realized I'm not really very chill. So I stopped at just plain pretty, but I'll take that. Now that I'm a mom, I'm just so glad I'm pretty. Thank God I'm so beautiful and hot and sexy.

Wow. I'm just glad I know how to make a party punch. Honestly, you're one step ahead of me. No, sorry. I was just going to say, now that I have a baby, I'm just glad. chill. I like to just kind of wing it sometimes because you know you don't you don't get much chance to keep things very rigid and scheduled when you're when you have an infant. So I'm sometimes I'm like you know sometimes you got to just nail the curtains to the wall worry about it later. Okay and that will be on a shirt next year. And thank god I'm pretty also. Okay so hang on

step one nail curtains to the wall. Two, chill. Three, be pretty. Look pretty. That's all it takes. That's all it takes. Okay. Honestly, that's my new memoir. I had some ideas before, but this is the new one.

It's your version of somehow I manage. Somehow I manage by nailing the curtains to the wall. Okay. So let's see what we got for you today. I think you're going to like this one, Em. Genuinely. Not just like in a horrific way. Because this is the story of Alfred Packer, America's favorite cannibal.

Yeah. You're right. You're going to like this one. You're right. You know I love a good cannibal, whatever that could possibly mean. I think you have like a sick fascination with it as do many people because this is not this is not a lie people are obsessed with this guy like absurdly obsessed with this guy really uh yeah like almost he's sort of like a folk hero almost what a folk a cannibal is a hero i know it's kind of weird

it's like he's i guess it's similar to the way that somebody like a serial killer gets this kind of fan base but there's a little less it's hard to put it's it's a similar idea I think but this guy's I think a lot less egregious than like a flat out like Ted Bundy type oh really because i i have zero patience for anybody who's like i'm in love with ted bundy or yeah yeah kidnap me or whatever the fuck you know i don't obviously don't yeah love that but um this is kind of you know it's kind of more wishy-washy i guess like you can tell me at the end what you think about this. Oh, shit. Okay. I'm ready to hear what you have to say, because I'm ready to just...

You hear cannibal, I'm ready to be fascinated, but also so mad and angry at this person. Sickened. Yeah, you know. So, I don't know. It's hard to say. I'm going to just tell you the story, and we'll see where we land by the end. I think part of it also is that it happened so long ago. You know, we talk about this a lot, that it kind of softens the edges of a story when it's quote-unquote old-timey it's harder to relate to so maybe that's part of it i'm not sure yeah which is but in its own right like a pretty fucked up concept like oh well that one's fine because i feel less attached but it

there is something to be said about like the human mind that i think yes since just keeps things from hurting you as much i don't know what it is it's sort of like a distance yeah it's like you you're i think it's human nature yeah to like distance yourself from something that happened a long time ago um and not relate to it so that might be part of it well i am very excited to hear about a cannibal and to reiterate for the bajillionth time before someone thinks i like actually appreciate or enjoy cannibals yeah i am just fascinated at the concept and i want all the answers but i know i'll never get them and that's what keeps it fascinating to me because to even get the answers would require talking to someone who's done this and i don't want that to happen i'd rather stay in the Well, we did get some answers before for you and they were disturbing.

And I did, I did love that episode and love and you know, whichever way is, you know what I mean? But I, I did love that. I finally got some answers, but I,

man, I'll never have them all. And I, I'm fine with that, but I also am curious. So that's part of the intrigue. Yeah. So Alfred Packer, he has an interesting curious. So that's part of the intrigue. Yeah.

So Alfred Packer, he has an interesting story even before the whole cannibal thing. So here's a 1984 Washington Post article that was written about Alfred. I'm just going to read an excerpt. In the days before bean sprouts and granola, when the West was raw and men ate men packer chewed his way into the hearts of coloradans by devouring five gold-seeking companions what also excellent transatlantic accent but thank you so much but still yeah so that just is like a little log line of what we're getting into today. Yeah. I was gonna say thank you for spoiling for us that he has five victims. Yeah. So Alfred Packer was actually born Alfred Packer in 1842 near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And somehow along the way, he ended up Alford with the E and the R switched.

Oh, yeah. That's interesting okay so his legal name appears on all historical documents and his headstone is alfred but pretty much everybody historically speaking remembers him as alford huh okay and here's one fun fact tale that i like and i'm going to adopt as truth even though it's just a theory or just speaking of lore like maybe it's just this is just legend now but one story goes that a tattoo artist accidentally swapped the e and the r when tattooing his name on him oh and so he just ran with it he just rolled with it uh which you know speak of being chill you know i mean at that point yeah honestly you kind of have to to avoid the shame you have to be like no no no that's my name

that's yeah that's it you're reading it right um and there is no way at this point to verify the story but tattoos were actually really common among civil war vets because they often had their names or their regiments tattooed on themselves in case their bodies had to be identified. And so I will say in that case, it takes a lot to be chill because you're like, well, shit, if they find me, they're going to be like, who's Alfred? I don't know. I feel like that, like your parents, you have to warn them in a letter or something. You gotta tell somebody. Yeah. I switched my name a little bit. Right.

So yeah, that was a common thing to have that, you know, your name, your regiment, some identifying information tattooed onto your body in case your body was disfigured in battle and needed to be identified. And he did enlist in the Union Army during the Civil War twice. So it's possible that he did get his name tattooed and perhaps it was written incorrectly. I know he becomes a cannibal, but gotta say, I'm so far thankful that at least he was on the Union side. I know. It is always a relief when it's like, well, at least, at the very least, you know. At least there's not two total big reasons to hate you. Yeah, not yet. So he was eventually discharged both times for his

epilepsy, but he definitely had time to get a misspelled tattoo first. So I'm going to go with that story and say allegedly, um, just for my own, you know, fun factory, fun factory. Wait a minute. It took us that this long. Yikes. That is sad on our part okay i'll bring it to show and i'll make business cards bring it to show and tell next week so alfred was an odd jobs kind of guy he did just about every gig or jig you might imagine a man doing in the 1800s including shoemaker ranch hand wagon teamster wilderness guide and miner and then he kind of would do these and bounce around and not really stick to one career path for very long. And this could have been due in part to his seizures. He, like I said, had epilepsy.

And some sources say he suffered several seizures a week. So I imagine that would have been tough at the time, especially when you don't really have a safety net for that kind of thing. But others say he was generally unreliable and just plain unpleasant. You know, there's a line there where you have to think, was he disabled? And, you know, maybe like if he had this like chronic epilepsy and was having seizures and could that have been the reason people were like and he's unreliable i don't like that guy right or he's unreliable because he needs to be in bed or at home yes because he's very sick or is it like you know he was actually also had a shitty attitude i don't know right um and there's no way to know but you know looking back on history it's an interesting thought of like maybe he really just was struggling, you know, health wise.

But, you know, he also has the kind of cannibal and murderer thing going for him. So, you know, we can't I'm not that sympathetic in the end about clearly something was wrong with his attitude or his approach to life. So in November of 1873, Alford decided to join up with a band of northwest prospectors on the hunt for gold and silver so he didn't have enough money to cover his travel provisions so instead he was like i have the perfect idea i'm gonna offer my skills to you as a mountain guide and come along with you and you'll like pay for my provisions and house me and stuff. Sure. So the other prospectors thought this was a great deal. So 21 men followed Alford into the harsh Utah landscape just as an unusually harsh winter overtook the mountains.

Okay. Done. Done. Unfortunately, Alfred, he was unreliable in a not so great sense here because he did exaggerate his mountaineering skills and he did exaggerate his guide skills. So once they kind of set off, they pretty quickly realized this guy had no clue what he was doing. Got it. And he's supposed to be leading 21 men through the wilderness so this is the last time you want to realize oh our guide lied about his resume i feel like the reason it does not surprise me too much is i mean he already like accidentally got his name tattooed wrong and he's already like

he's rolling with punches that people usually wouldn't and so i feel like if i i mean i'm going off of one example but i feel like he would read a map wrong and then roll with the punches and then just go with it yeah like he's not i mean i kind of get why people are not calling him reliable currently because i feel like it's like oh well he's gonna make a mistake and maybe maybe he'll get us through it but But he is, you know, he's not going to know what to expect from this fellow. He's not going to dot the I's and cross the T's. He's just, we're going to see, you know what he's going to do? He's going to nail the curtains to the wall. He's going to chill and he's going to look pretty.

I don't like the parallels there. I was going to say he's going to cross the I's and dot the T's, but yours was way funnier. Glad I redeemed myself. Thank you. So he basically had exaggerated his guide skills, lied on the resume. The party had not packed enough provisions. And immediately, this is obviously a problem. And they are like, well, Alfred should have known we didn't have enough food to last us this whole trip.

And he didn't look at the grocery list. Supposedly, he was, you know, the expert and he hadn't said, hey, we need a lot more provisions for this trip. He said he had had experience in the Colorado high country winters and he should have noticed that this was a problem. But he didn't. And on top of that, he got the party lost many times um on this adventure and this if this is like me m except that i would never try to tell anybody i was good at guiding or mountaineering you know everything about this is me except where i'm like i refuse to be responsible for 21 people in the woods like that part i'm stepping out you know

i'm just gonna be honest about my lack of handiwork and my lack of you know honesty is the wilderness skills yeah in this case definitely i never heard you say i'm glad i'm honest you know i've never said that that's true i'm glad i'm I'm pretty. That's all you need. You know, I'm glad I can wing it at the end. The end. So winter in the San Juan Mountains was obviously no joke. The season could last nine months. My nightmare with the seasonal affective disorder. I would be on my butt.

Oh, yeah. Bad news bears for me. The snow drifts could be five feet or deeper at times and there was near constant risk of avalanches and snow blindness and we're going to get into snow blindness later because that is i was going to say i i can venture a guess but no i've never looked into it yeah you'll pun intended i imagine it's like a so bad of a snowstorm that you're like you can't see in front of you yeah like not not quite actually oh shit okay yeah i know it's like a so bad of a snowstorm that you're like you can't see in front of you. Yeah. Like not quite actually. Oh, shit.

Yeah, I know. It's kind of an interesting thing. We'll get to that. But so unlike the indigenous peoples of the region, these newcomers lacked generational knowledge of the land they were living on. So most were trying to learn survival skills on the fly. And this made mutual trust vital among these parties. on the fly. And this made mutual trust vital among these parties. And less experienced travelers were essentially depending on the ones who said, hey, I know what I'm doing. And I've done this before. And, you know, they were basically depending on more experienced guides to be honest and capable.

And Alfred was neither of those things. He said he was capable, but he was lying and he was not capable. So they're all depending basically their lives on this guy and he's flat out lying so aside from fully lying on his resume alfred just seemed generally menacing like he just was not a good there's that shitty attitude around exactly he allegedly asked other party members basically how much money do you have on you right now just flat out uh which is not the thing you want to hear from a guy who has known money problems and has your life in his hands in the middle of the woods essentially okay yeah not that's the vibe we've got is that what you said so that's the vibe we're working

with yeah that's a vibe we're working with um Yeah, that's a vibe we're working with. Worst of all, there was a rumor he'd spent time in prison under suspicion of killing his previous fur trapping partner. See ya. So what a rumor to spread through camp while you're sharing a tent with this guy. You're like, wait, not this guy, right? Uh oh. So after several months of following Alford's sketchy lead, the nearly starved party showed up at the Ute tribe's winter encampment near Montrose, Colorado, where Chief Ouray showed them compassion. So this is kind of a lovely story in that they were shown compassion by the local Ute tribe, and that's spelled U-T-E. And I did watch a number of YouTube videos to make sure I was saying that correctly. But so the chief, Ure, fed them and insisted they make camp and wait for spring before they continued their journey, which I thought was very heartwarming. It is heartwarming,

but I really don't like that the story is so far starting with indigenous people, for some reason, welcome at a bunch of white men and it ends with a cannibal killing five so i'm i don't like the direction we're heading yeah it is a danger zone we're in a danger zone for sure based on history i feel like i know where this is heading who's gonna be victimized we'll see yeah no don't worry that the ute uh tribe comes out unscathed for once in history i think for once in history they're not the victims of this story i know what a refreshing turn of events by the way it's so sad that that's not the norm in these stories but okay that's a relief yeah exactly so basically the ute uh tribe has shown them compassion. They say, come on.

Is that what you've been doing over there? What are you making? What are you eating? I have a little peanut butter thing. Oh, I was like, I thought you were like playing with a Rubik's Cube or something, but you're making a peanut butter sandwich. I love it. I was spreading peanut butter on bread. I see.

Okay. Well, I couldn't guess what you were doing. I was, of course, I thought it was something whimsical, like playing a Rubik's Cube. It's whimsical in that I'm like filling my human belly because I fall apart otherwise. Especially talking about cannibals. Like you eat up before we get to that part, you know? Oh, I didn't even think about that. No, no.

You enjoy your peanut butter. I should have warned you, but I took one sip of this soda that i'm trying to get myself into and i was like oh i need to put food in there first so you eat up you eat up um please so uh yes they're they're at this tribe's um you know encampment their winter encampment near Montrose, Colorado. And they are, the tribe essentially insists that they stay and wait out the weather. So that's great. So about half the party, only half, took Chief Ure's advice. Duh. And unfortunately, a small group led by Oliver D. Lutzenheiser decided they wanted to keep going and they were going to leave the rest of the party behind. Already big mistake, I think.

So they already they rejected the generational knowledge that someone had just bestowed on them. Yes, exactly. They were just given everything on a silver platter and they went, no, I'm better. I'll figure it out. They were given every chance to rest, recuperate being safe you know well i hope the tribe then found out about this and then they went well good riddance i guess yeah i don't know so basically half of them said never mind we want to keep going um but this is the wildest part it's not the wildest part but it's one of my favorites alfred said to the people the group the oliver d lutz and heiser group that was leaving that he wanted to join them but oliver said if you try to follow us i'll shoot you so he was that disliked that this other group that

was leaving him behind was like if you try to come with us i'm going to kill you like you are not invited you cannot sit with us you cannot camp with to kill you. Like, you are not invited. You cannot sit with us. You cannot camp with us. You are out of here. You better stay here. Honestly. I don't want to see you behind us. Every person that went on that trip, though, because I'm imagining they're the ones that were also spared.

Yeah. At least until further notice. No, you're exactly right. I feel like when they heard this Oliver guy say something like that, like the two other people, like the you and me in the group. Yeah. You know, the ones hiking through the tundra or whatever. You know, the ones who are braving the wilderness

instead of taking the food from kind strangers. Yeah, definitely. I feel like the two people that are most like us on that trip, they heard Oliver say that to him. And then as we were walking up the rest of the hill, we were like, damn, that was kind of harsh. Like, I mean, like, yeah. Oh, we would have felt so guilty. We would have been like, bye.

I'm so sorry. But then after the fact, when all this news comes out, we should have been like, wow. Yeah, that's what setting healthy boundaries looks like. Like, we survived. That's the day that I learned about setting healthy boundaries. Yes. No, exactly. looks like like we're we survived that's the day that i learned about setting healthy boundaries yes no exactly you and i would have been like relieved because we were like we didn't really like that guy but also like wow that must have hurt his feelings um and then in hindsight been like wow you actually saved our lives because you respected yourself and had boundaries and oliver was like i'm making the calls and i have a gun so I have healthy boundaries but next time someone bothers

me I will test out that line be like if you follow me I'll shoot you and we'll just see what happens my mom said that once to somebody and it was when they were breaking they were breaking into her car in our driveway somebody there was like this woman trying to break into cars on our street uh-huh sorry a lot of curveballs just hit me all at once and my mom walked outside saw her there and said i have a gun and i'll shoot you and the lady was like okay i'm leaving and my mom does not have a gun sorry spoiler alert and probably would not have done anything of the sort but that's just the first thing that came out of her mouth and the woman was like okay and she ran away um but yeah so she's basically oliver in this situation she just said if you

come if you open that car door bang bang yeah bang bang so anyway let's get back to this so oliver says if you try to follow us i will shoot you so oliver did not trust al Alfred or just didn't like him enough to not want him in the party. So Oliver's party set out sans. Is it sans? Sans? I say sans, but sans. A normal person probably says sans. Sans Alfred.

And they follow. At least they get directions from Chief Ouray. He says, why don't you go this direction? This is the safest way to proceed. So they take Chief Ouray's wisdom and they follow it. And a few days later, five more members of the original party left and they didn't have quite the same boundary setting techniques. So Alfred did hitch a ride with them and he left as their guide on the next leg of this adventure. Now, remember that there are five more members that went along with alfred on this final leg of the journey i see what's happening so also that makes

me sad though that the people who chose to listen to the tribe or did they go by tribe you yes it's a new tribe yes okay the people who actually stayed and listened to all their wisdom are the ones who actually ended up getting like. I mean, not because of the not because of them, but it's just like, oh, man, like they actually stuck around and listened and respected to what they had to say. And then it's not working out. Took the advice. Well, you'll see how things shift. But, you know, at least the first half did take the advice of the chief and say, you they suggested we take this route and so we are

going to take this route you know so at the very least you know they did follow the chief's advice as far as uh even though they said hey maybe don't wade into this storm maybe wait it out but um they did at least follow his direction so they pick and chose they pick it exactly exactly so here's where things take a turn alfred goes with these five other members on the they're kind of their last leg of this journey and chief uray was kind enough to give them supplies and basically told them you need to follow the same route that all overtook because that's the safest way to proceed so alfred pretty much immediately as they left convinced the party to break off of chief ure's path and climb to higher ridges far above the river because he said the snow was blown off up there by strong winds so it would be a lot

easier to travel up there so pretty immediately he disposes of the uh advice from chief ure and says just kidding i have a better plan and you know the five folks with him are like well he's the expert mountaineer why don't we follow his lead and so they're kind of doomed from that moment got it so one day in april several months after they were last seen alfred staggered into the los pinos indian agency near gunnison colorado alone okay and covered in blood and other people's body parts or something not quite he was alone and people had questions mainly where was the rest of his party yeah where'd they go where are they are they? So Alfred told his sad tale. He said on their journey over the San Juans, he was stricken with terrible snow blindness. And this

is what snow blindness is. It's essentially a condition caused by the sun reflecting off the snow, which can impair your vision and even cause permanent eye damage. Oh, I have heard about this. Like when you go skiing, they have you wear those goggles so that your eyes aren't you know the snow is so bright yeah yeah exactly like it reflects the sun the uv rays can be very very strong reflecting off snow is this is this the so i i don't want to okay blaze is right there's lore there's like there's a oh my god there's a he's right why did we ever question him there's a um i don't know if it's real or not but i always heard that like some people in like snowier areas had like purple eyes or something because like this or

they have blue eyes but the snow hitting it makes it look like it's something about protecting their eyes from how bright the snow is. Their eyes eventually turned to purple. It sounded fake, but I've always hoped it was real. Yeah, I don't know. That sounds like something you would have told me in third grade and I would have believed it. And my mom would have said your friend's lying to you. Yeah, okay.

Okay, hang on. Photocarotitis is a painful temporary... Oh, it's like sunburn on your eyes. Is that what it is? Oh, ow. It's probably the sun blindness. Why does, maybe, maybe I'm not looking in the right spot, but I, yeah, you know what? Someone, I think I read it on like Tumblr or something in high school and I just ran

with it, but I always. It was like one of those like Photoshop, like purple eyes. I just wanted purple eyes so bad. And I thought that in the way that it was translated to me on tumblr was that people who live near the snow have purple eyes and then i was like wow i can't wait to move somewhere with a lot of romantic and then what is wrong with california jokes on you okay sorry maybe it's it can't i feel like i would have heard i would have met someone with purple eyes by now, right? I would say at least if we go, when we go to Denver or Salt Lake on tour, you know, we would have, or even Canada, we would have probably encountered someone by now.

I'm sure our inbox is flooded with people without purple eyes being like, that's not real. How dare you? Yeah. Okay, snow blindness. He's got snow blindness so he is affected by this snow blindness condition um where uh the the sun reflects off the snow and can impair your vision and he says since he couldn't see he fell behind and his merciless crew abandoned him in the mountains woe is me okay uh-huh he had to make it to los pinos. And the fate of the rest of the party is unknown to him. That was his story. And he was able to do it with no sight and no people with them.

By himself. Yeah. They couldn't make it with all eight of their eyes. Exactly. Yeah. Nobody knows. It would be 10 eyes. But you were close.

Oh, right. Right. You were very close. Damn it. Okay. So people were pretty quick, like you, to point out some issues with his story. Number one, there are ways to prevent snow blindness. And someone as experienced, allegedly, as Alford would have known this and would have prepared for this.

So he wouldn't have just been struck by this without any sort of warning. number two issue is that the idea of five men leaving alfred for dead in the mountains was pretty outrageous because in the 2006 oxford university press article this is the name of the article it's called alfred packer's world colon we're just living in it or dying in it because he's kind of a murderer. Yeah. You get me. Alfred Packer's world, risk responsibility, and the place of experience in mountain culture. I like yours better, honestly. Alfred Packer's world, we're just living in it. We're just living in it and trying to keep living in it.

it and trying to keep living in it. So the author Diana DiStefano explores social expectations and camaraderie among mountain communities in Alfred's time, which kind of goes into like what you were talking about. Maybe not, but in my mind goes into with the sociology aspect of like, yeah, group think and the sociology of groups. Because the way she describes it, there are countless stories of people risking their own lives to save others without any judgment, especially when they were kind of in these harsh conditions. It's sort of like if you don't work as a team, you die. And so there's this element of like you don't just abandon someone like this just would not have happened. So this is a really interesting example. I already have goose cam because the story just is so bananas. But this is an example of this guy named Billy Mayer. So this is from her paper. And it's an example of this kind of group camaraderie.

So dynamite back then often got too cold to use in the mountains. So this guy, Billy, often got too cold to use in the mountains so this guy billy would set it by the fire to thaw out in the morning wow okay we can already sense this is probably going somewhere rough yeah one day he left it too long by the fire and it ignited exploding in his face shit okay his partner didn't know how to ski but he put his hands in the ski's footholds, knelt on the back of each ski, and crawled to get help for his friend. Oh. His comrade, so to speak. Oh, my gosh. Okay.

Yes. It took him seven and a half hours to make it one mile for backup. Oh, my God. Which is shocking and incredible um and in the end eight more men joined the mission to save billy and four died in an avalanche along the way whoa so billy ended up dying a few days later in the hospital and people were not upset with him for his like kind of careless dynamite habit that cost four people their lives um pretty much everyone showed up to their to his funeral and this is just kind of

what you did if you were in one of these groups so to quote diana's paper she said group responsibility outweighed personal culpability in alfred's community if someone needed help you just help them it was simple if alfred wanted people to buy that his entire party abandoned him in the wilderness people were not just going to automatically believe that five men just abandoned him and left him for dead that's just it's simply at that time was not what would have happened especially five unacceptable exactly and five people doing that seemed like a kind of unbelievable story. Now, the third issue with his story is how weird Alfred is suddenly really rich. Like he just has so much money, especially after like asking everyone, how much money do you have right now? M, I didn't even put that together. Yes. He,

his first question of everybody was how much money do you have on you right now m i didn't even put that together yes he his first question of everybody was how much money do you have on you right now and then he comes back to town mysteriously wealthy okay i i don't know if wealthy but he had a lot of money the rest of the original party who'd wisely made camp like you had said per chief ure's advice showed up at los pinos that spring and they knew about alfred's usual money troubles so they're like okay the first group oliver's group so to speak who had gone the path that chief ore had suggested they survived and made it back and when they saw fucking alf can you imagine oliver's like wait everyone else died except alfred and then the two of us behind all of fur being like

dude like we did oh we were so smart thank god we picked oliver to lead us you know oliver for the rest of my life you make every call you are my executor you're my you decide you're my life coach you decide all of my future steps um so they so oliver and these other guys see alfred with all this money and they're like hang on you spent the first half of the trip asking us how much money we had and we knew you had all this money trouble so where did you get that cash um so after several weeks under suspicion alfred suddenly had a new story. And he actually signed a confession about this one to verify his new tale. And this is how the new tale goes. The party stayed together, so nobody abandoned him.

But they were ill-prepared for the journey, which, again, would be Alfred's fault because he was the one who took responsibility for being their guide. Right. And one by one the men succumbed to starvation and the cold the survivors were forced to cannibalize the fallen men to survive until one day only alfred and one other man named shannon bell remained crazed with hunger shannon couldn't wait for al Alfred to die of natural causes. So he attacked Alfred, who shot and killed him in self-defense. The woe is me hand.

Woe is me hand. Thumb down. And he ate Shannon. So that is the newest development in Alfred's story. Okay. And he signs a confession saying that uh that that's what happened now this is an interesting twist that i think you will appreciate because this is about the kind of sociology and human understanding of cannibalism and interestingly enough m i don't know if you know this but when al and i were in san diego and we did Whaley house trip. And this was like the week that you two actually met for the first time.

She and I spent a couple of days in San Diego and we went to a museum in San Diego where they had this huge cannibalism exhibit. Oh, I do kind of remember you guys talking about this. I think I was trying to play a really cool in front of Alison that I didn't care at all about cannibals. Yeah. Okay. Well, for once, for once, you didn't care about cannibals because you were so enamored

with Allison. But yes, so we had learned quite a bit about cannibalism right before you two met, which I feel like is just the best kind of omen, you know? I'll remind her later. Honestly, we had a great time and she and I are the type where we like read every little plaque at the at the museum I don't know if don't I know it I know you know already obviously and I'm just like cool and then I leave yeah no we were just like enamored by the cannibalism stuff but uh anyway we'll go back someday we'll meet you in the gift shop, I guess. Yeah. So this is an interesting part about cannibalism.

So in 2022, like in today's age, so to speak, people will focus on the cannibalism thing, obviously, as like the most shocking, egregious part of the story. Sorry, my freaking Alexa keeps going off because I'd return like 16. Hey, stop it. I return like 16 hey stop it i returned like 16 things today and i guess it's i guess it's like dinging every time i i see i like the dings because it lets me know that i have presents at my door oh my ring doorbell already lets me know that so i don't need her to tell me you know but um but yeah and and geo hates the sound so much he just walked out with his ears like pressed against his head he was so upset about the sound he hates it hates it um anyway so it's only done it three times and i'm like how many more times is it gonna do that fucking sound

i don't know god oh okay sorry so people are going to focus nowadays on the kind of egregious part of cannibalism, but it's kind of, it was kind of different back then. So in 1874, if, if his new version of events were true, the, the new version of events that everybody died, and then he had to eat them to survive, to survive, he probably would have just been like a sympathetic victim of circumstance because most people back then would look past cannibalism in desperate times. Sure. And fun fact for you, Anne, in fact, there are no U.S. laws that are technically against instances of cannibalism.

There's no laws against any? Against cannibalism,'s no laws against against cannibalism technically huh yep that's real funky isn't that weird so it's like technically if you were a cannibal you wouldn't go to jail well here's the thing there's a lot of other surrounding layers to this issue which is that um you wouldn't necessarily be prosecuted on the cannibalism alone but if you had killed the person then sure of course it would be the murder that would get you arrested but if say you were in a desperate situation and you cannibalize someone then like there's technically no law against that yeah i i mean i also wouldn't judge somebody if if they were in a situation like that and had

to do it i think like the like why would i have the audacity to judge someone who clearly probably had like a had to have a mental breakdown in order to even get to that place like right who's already struggling enough you know like if it's either eat your friend or die i think you're going through it like my opinion does not matter yeah well but that's interesting because i mean our opinion doesn't matter but like i just found it interesting that the u.s law doesn't say anything about it because no that's that you know what i mean blowing my mind yeah i didn't see that our opinions the u.s law often doesn't take into account which i take a big issue with from the start but we'll get into that another time um but the thing that really gets me is that u.s law is like actually that part's okay you know

there's a lot of shit you can't do like smoke that funny grass that comes out of the ground because you'll go to jail for the rest of your life i feel like there should be your friend i feel like there should be at least one law you know there might be nowadays but the the the core of it is there is technically nothing that says in the law books that you cannot interesting yeah interesting and you know remember that guy who ate his own arm or his own foot or whatever he barbecued his own foot you know um i guess there's loopholes you, you could just kind of pull it off if you really, really, really want to. Certainly loopholes. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So the issue here is the suspicion of murder.

So if he was telling the truth, then people would be able to look past that, generally speaking. But the fact that five people just vanished and he's claiming this and they don't totally trust him that's kind of where the issue lies so this part is like a facepalm moment to me because they sent a search party in summer of 1874 to look for alfred's companions bodies but alfred led the search oh right so he could go oh it's over there over there exactly uh he said i'll lead you where we were and like obviously they did not find anything um no luck and so alfred was arrested and held under suspicion of murder because that was kind of the last straw where they said well you claim to be a mountaineer who knew where you were so if you can't lead us to the bodies then we don't believe you they arrest him hold him under suspicion and in august of that year alfred's story fully fell apart finally when somebody discovered all five of the bodies

of his companions now here's the details of that i was gonna say oh the men were all partially eaten as alfred had said and all of them were missing flesh and other pieces of their bodies which seems to be a recurring theme here today as we discuss the skull and the caterpillar missing their limbs and this is just they really delivered on uh on a theme they really said show and tell who i'm here to be the entire theme of your show uh it's me your aesthetic it's me if this is my aesthetic like you can just fire me now i don't think i deserve to be in the public sphere but it's okay here i am with my caterpillar um so what didn't match the story so they were eaten which didn't match the story, so they were eaten, which didn't match his story. But what didn't match his story is that all five bodies were together lying in their blankets and mostly clothed as if they'd all been attacked at once in their sleep. Wow.

He didn't even try to fake it. Oh, no, it wasn't. The quote unquote crime scene was really pretty damn obvious there was one man's body uh his name is israel swan that showed signs of a terrible struggle and this did not line up with his story of they all died one by one until shannon tried to attack him right so alfred was officially at this point charged with murder and things did not look good for him so he did what any cannibal murderer would do he mysteriously broke out of jail and disappeared for nine years okay sure you know as we would all do probably if we were able to and faced with the circumstance he came up with an alias named

john schwartz and he lived under this alias for nine years until he was discovered in wyoming uh and interestingly enough one story goes that someone in a saloon overheard and recognized his laugh and that's how he was caught can you imagine having that distinct of a laugh that someone can imagine it because it's you oh boy it's your little dolphin laugh your little elmo dolphin laugh yeah i feel like i've got about a dozen laughs i don't know which one would be the most distinct but good to know that the first one you picked is the one i will be avoiding when i go into witness protection honestly if i hear that from across the bar it's i know it's you i know i wouldn't know your laugh anywhere you know oh that's so much okay i'm just used to it by now i do wonder like in witness protection do

they teach you how to like do a different laugh because like some of the things that come out of my throat are really just like a guttural experience and also like something you can't control you know i know like how do you i don't know what you do i don't know okay good to know for all the laughter i know the elmo one is the one i should really be the most nervous about getting caught on be careful got it okay so in march of 1883 alfred signed a second confession and he has a new story now. So this is story number three. I know.

So buckle up. He says that his party was exhausted, starving, and lost. Again, all of this would be his doing because he was in charge of getting them safely from one place to another, but that's besides the point. They all got too weak to continue. sides of the point they all got too weak to continue and after they made camp alfred set out alone for several hours looking for the trail to lead them to safety when he returned to camp from being such a big hero you know yes he found the crazed shannon bell he must not have liked this shannon bell guy because he's always the villain and Shannon is somewhere up there looking down being like what the fuck like what the hell I was the only person yeah I bet you I bet you that was

the one that he got along with the least because every time he's like Shannon Bell tried to eat me that was the one who was thinking like man I should have gone with the first group like yeah he's like all over he was clearly voicing his uh disdain for sticking around and now it's like fine shannon you're gonna be the crux of this whole story fine shannon you're the cannibal now because he says he found the crazed shannon bell cooking flesh over a fire after having killed the other four men with a hatchet now uh alfred says that shannon turned the hatchet on him and in self-defense he shot shannon twice killing his final travel companion and get this alfred nobly waited several days before finally resorting to cannibalism oh my god but he had to do it you know to survive

woe is me once again i know it it. The court did not buy it. They found it damning that Alfred changed his story twice. And Alfred was charged with the murder of Israel Swan because that was the one where they could see the defensive wounds. And he was sentenced to hang. One reporter at the trial said that when Alfred heard the verdict, quote, A reporter at the trial said that when Alfred heard the verdict, quote, instead of the hopeful expression he has borne all through the trial, there was a decided painful expression of sadness and resignation. He looked 10 years older than he did yesterday. However, as Colorado became an official state, there was sort of this like legislative error slash loophole in the criminal codes.

And so Alfred had to be tried again and this time he was found guilty on five counts of manslaughter and was sentenced instead of to hang he was sentenced to 40 years in prison holy crap okay wow he got off the death penalty got life in prison all right uh so during his time in prison, Alfred managed to secure a government pension as a Civil War veteran. Over time, he was consistently targeted by con men, interestingly, and he did actually lose money to con men once or twice. There's one example I have here where a man wanted to use Alfred to promote his business. wanted to use alfred to promote his business uh and so he said he would connect alfred to a man named william anderson who would appeal alfred's sentence under a notion that a crime which took place on ute territory never should have been prosecuted in the first place so basically there's this other loophole they're trying to say which is oh well this is um you know

indigenous land and the people the u tribe owns this land and so technically you shouldn't have even been prosecuted for this crime because it's their land okay not ours don't love that though if that means anyone could just go over to their territory and hurt them and then not be prosecuted it's really bullshit because it's saying like well that's their responsibility it's their land and it's like since when have you ever said that you know right right since when have we ever claimed oh it's not our land so technically we can't i'm sorry we're not responsible for anything we do on it it's excellent point by the way yeah it's just like what a time to pull that sentence out of your ass you know oh it's not our land at the 11th hour yeah um so this is uh one of the con men anyway so the

con man reaches out says i know this guy who can say you're on ute territory and that's why you should not be prosecuted sketchychy, okay, but whatever. So they're trying to go for this loophole. William, this guy who's trying to appeal his sentence based on this kind of loophole, reaches out to a woman named Polly Prye, who had apparently defended Alfred's innocence in her column in the Colorado Post. So, Polly connects William to the paper's owners, whose names are Harry Tammen and Fred Bonfields, and somehow there's this big

kerfuffle between all of them. Okay. What? And William ends up shooting Harry, one of the owners of the newspaper. What? You know what he probably said first?

He said, if you don't get away from me, I'm going to shoot you. If you try to follow me, you know what I'll do. Yeah. Yeah, he shoots him in his office. Like, they're literally at the newspaper office. And William is trying to get these head of the newspaper to, like, cooperate with his plan on getting this guy out of jail because they were on Ute territory. They get into a kerfuffle.

Chaos ensues. William shoots and wounds Harry and Fred. Both of them. Whoa. Okay. So he was. Shoots both of them. He meant business.

Okay. He was just. I don't know what he meant, but I don't think he knew what he meant. He just had a gun he was probably looking for that fucking enfield monster he's like ah found him you know so authorities brought alfred to denver colorado to testify in the case against william so now okay oh my god it's such a headache so now now Alfred is testifying against this guy, William. Uh-huh.

Because in Alfred's defense, William was trying to meet with the newspaper to get him out of jail. Right. I'm with you. And then shot these people. Uh-huh. And now they're saying, Alfred, you need to go on the stand and talk about your relationship with this guy so it's very complicated it's just a big big big big mess okay um and so when authorities bring alfred to denver to testify they decide to give alfred a city tour of denver how kind yeah Yeah. Apparently, on this tour,

Alfred does, like, kind of the mayoral thing, and he does his little wave, and everybody... He's like the dog at Copperopolis. He's like the dog at Copperopolis, and he takes a page out of Copper's little book, and he wins over every single person he meets,

and suddenly, this is not expected, the authorities take him on this tour of Denver. All of a sudden, everybody in Denver is like, get this guy out of prison. We love this guy. Oh, God, he just used the old schmooze. The old schmooze. He must be charming as all get out because there is this massive outcry for Alford's release. And then they begin this aggressive petition campaign

and the governor decided to commute alfred's sentence and he was released because he's a charming mofo that's freaking i mean i'm gonna say bananagrams for the third third time in this episode but ding ding ding triple threat bananagrams triple threat bananagrams honestly it's shocking so basically he got conned by this guy who said i can't get you out of jail by saying you were on you territory let me just get this newspaper involved oops i shot both of them well now you have to go testify against me oh but while you were touring denver before the testimony you uh won everybody over and now you're out of jail it was it's just the wildest like sequence

of events um so anyway he lived the rest of his days he's out of prison now he lives the rest of his days on his military pension he dies in 1907 so that was six years after he was released in littleton colorado and the littleton independent reported that his final words were i'm not guilty of the charge okay after all this my guy which is interesting too because he was not in prison anymore right it sort of feels like like you were already cleared from that like cleared like you're saying things because your your guilt is showing you're telling on yourself i feel like thou doth protest too much you know it's like why even

insist that but now i see what you meant from the beginning of like oh he was seen by as a hero that's why i was kind of murky because i was like well you know people just seem to love this guy and like he allegedly did some well he did he was convicted of some fucked up shit so you know i don't know um so the question as to why he is a folk hero why people are still so obsessed with him well there is an alleged quote from the judge in his initial trial and i'm gonna read you this quote and i want you to know it's been a little bit um flowered up oh okay what did you say i thought you were gonna say it's a little bit like out of date like aged poorly or something it's a little bit um you know how they did that fun thing where they kind of

embellished quotes and things in the newspaper okay but just do it in the transatlantic accent again oh no i don't know how to do that okay this is the judge in his initial trial stand up you voracious man-eating son of a bitch stand up there was seven democrats in hinsdale county and you up and ate five of them god damn you i sentence you to be hanged by the neck until you are dead dead dead as a warning against reducing the democratic population of our state oh end quote it turns out the only thing the judge actually said was dead dead dead which is a fun little excerpt out of all still dramatic still very dramatic the other two democrats were looking at each other like oh my god we got mentioned i know like uh but so some colorado republicans were enraptured by this like false quote and upheld Alford as some sort of like tongue in cheek folk hero for eating the Democrats, you know, at the time.

And so some of them got a little wild about it. It went a little far. This quote got pretty out of context, was not even really a quote, kind of embellished. Sure. a quote kind of embellished sure and according to a 1984 washington post article these things called packer societies existed in 13 states now m this might be something where you go into a deep dive tonight because i'm on it don't worry you're already googling packer societies in 13 states every april they eat dinner to commemorate Alfred's death in 1907. What?

And in April 1984, the group Friends of Alfred E. Packer had brunch at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. And I'm going to tell you what was on the menu. People? Do you want to know? What? It's like a play on words, essentially. what it's like a play on words essentially they had bloody mary's hearts of palm and steak tartare which is raw beef oh yeah i don't want to join this but i do want to know everything about it in case someone asks me how to join i was gonna say you were

gonna join it but then i was like deep dive on your own on the computer might be a it's more it'll be more of a did you know this is the membership application yeah exactly exactly um there's a cafeteria seriously in the u.s department of agriculture building building that was once dedicated to alfred with a plaque and all uh the plaque was removed in 1977 which by the way was protested furiously by friends of alfred e packer that's so wild to the washington post their membership card displayed by friends of alfred e packer that's so wild to the washington post their membership card displayed a photo of alfred with the slogan i never met a meal i didn't like what is wrong with this nation like i know this how are we fighting against this

so luckily you can still dine at university of Colorado Boulder's Alfred Packer Restaurant and Grill. It is still called that. So if you are in the area, you can still go and have a nice meal. And when it opened in 1968, students like to use a fun little slogan. They would say the catchphrase, have a friend for lunch. See ya. See ya. Wow.

for lunch see ya see ya wow and i think this is why it becomes this kind of like jokey sentiment like it happened so long ago and you know he was released and i think it kind of turns into this folk story this lore sorry blaze so to speak you know where it's like, well, it's just a fun story, even though it is rooted in reality and five deaths, you know? Yeah. I'm not, I don't think I'm going to contribute to any of this, but I just as, just as I feel about cannibalism, I will want to learn everything about this like Packer society. Absolutely. But finally, I think I found a society I don't have the urge to immediately be a member of yeah it took me a lot to pull you out of rosicrucianism if you guys listen to the rituals episode on that so i think uh i think maybe this is impressive i really do like just

get tunnel vision the second i hear there's a society you can join i don't even care what it's about half the time i'm like let's go and then i'm like sit down here it's about half the time. I'm like, let's go. And then I have to sit down and hear it all. I'm like, you are just like, what's the, there's a secret code? I'm in, you know. That's all I need. It doesn't take much. It's, I'm very, very easy to trick. Easy to lure into something, you know. So it reminds me, I know that we're like way over now and I'm sorry, but it reminds me

of when people are kind of into the Jeffrey Dahmer thing and thing and they they they theme their kitchens after jeffrey dahmer and right like by all the the the by all the things that are like covered in blood or like yeah or by the dish towels that have play on words about like eating your friend have your friend over i mean i think it's so gross something like i don't remember what it was but there's like also like the sexual ones it's like eat me like dommer or something no thanks it's bad it's bad um and so it kind of reminds me of that vibe but like again like more removed just because it was yeah like older story i hear you i hear it yeah uh i'm shocked i didn't hear about this person before but maybe it's because he doesn't have the same amount of etsy merch you know i mean

probably uh maybe he does i've just been missing it i think let's let's not find out i don't know i i don't think he does i don't think he has the same like mass merchandise appeal as someone like Dahmer you know unfortunately I will say um but so more than a century this this might sway the opinion a little bit I'm not sure but let me know what you think okay because more than a century after his crime there are still those who defend Alfred's innocence because in 2002 a Colorado museum examined the evidence and insisted that alfred's story of self-defense was true well yeah they exhumed the bodies actually they they were able to exhume the bodies and they told experts what they already knew someone killed and ate the men but whether it was alfred or his allegedly crazed companion shannon bell is a full mystery so it you know they think maybe shannon bell did snap

and kill these people and then had a tete-a-tete with uh alford and that is what happened but i don't know it's a little fishy to me is what i'm gonna say yeah yeah I don't I don't I guess there's no true evidence of it. I don't know. I still feel like if there if I don't know. I don't know how I feel about it. He's sketching me out, you know. Yeah. I don't feel I don't feel good about it. No, I don't think I want to encounter this guy. Packer may perhaps rest in peace knowing that his memory is still beloved by many to this day, whether they're politicians, college students or tourism bureaus. In 2017, Lake City, Colorado, where the five bodies were found, hosted a festival called Packer Days. What is going on? I'm telling you to, quote, celebrate survivalism, backcountry skills and the pioneer spirit, which I argue isn't quite what was happening there. Right. But I do like the idea of it being like a survival camp or survival festival or something. That sounds cool.

That part's cool and it feels very Colorado to me. The part that I don't necessarily think is something to be celebrated is that this guy basically took what the, you know, local tribe told him to do and then said, fuck that. I'm going up this path and then. And then people died, whether or not it was whether or not directly his fault. Yeah, it feels a little bit like, well, that really shouldn't be what we're doing either way whether we're cannibals or not but you know what who am i to say that i am inside in my air conditioning so i feel like it's not not for me and em and i in a past life maybe we're in oliver's group but i think maybe we were in alfred's group we were in alfred's group and in the next life we said we don't want to be outside anymore i think so right oh wow talk about a mystery man talk about a mystery and i'm sorry we kept you so long m after you

thought we were only doing a 10 minute after chat i did think by like 2 45 i would be out of here and it is past five yeah it is eight o'clock here i am leaving in the morning for missouri so still got a pack um but god we cannot get it together today we can do our after chat you are too you were totally right we should do our after chat okay we're gonna do our after chat um i have a fun idea for it if you don't have anything planned but i think you might have something i don't know we'll see we'll see okay okay okay well we'll see you on patreon okay we'll see if things are planned or not help and that's why we drink oh my god