And That's Why We Drink - E30 Slagpot Wormwood and Em’s Nomadic Clown Life

Episode Date: August 27, 2017

Episode 30 doesn’t disappoint. It’s quite a doozy, so don’t say we didn’t warn you. Christine shows off her (very limited) knowledge of the steel industry when Em tells her about the Sloss Furnaces, an extremely terrifying and haunted landmark in Birmingham, AL. Meanwhile, Em is haunted by more disembodied feet and Christine’s lame dad jokes.Then, Christine finally bites the bullet and tells the tragic tale of Sylvia Liken’s death. (Don’t blame me - you guys asked for it!) All we can say is, you think it can’t get any worse, and then it does.This episode is sponsored by Coke/Dope.**Not really. Please don’t sue us.

I'm sorry, am I not interesting enough? I thought we, I didn't know we were starting yet. I know, I just wanted to make you feel that. You didn't say like, all right, and usually I go, oh, are we recording? And I just, you were staring at your phone and I just. Oh, I was texting. I wanted some attention, so. Hey, Allison.

Do you want me to tell her you say hi? No, I just told her. She'll hear it next week. Okay, cool. her she'll hear it next week okay cool what's up oh nothing at all uh i got i cut my hair it looks so good guys i did check it out on instagram because it looks really good that's the most likes i've ever gotten on an instagram picture by the way and it happened overnight i had like two or three hundred likes or something like that the comments too were so nice people i know so into it i know it looks really good it was it's a pretty bitching style it really is it looks i

also didn't tell any well i i hinted at my family i was like what would you do if i cut my hair short and then by the end of the day i was was like, I'm just going to go. I'm just going to cut my hair. Your mom responded while you were in the barbershop? Yep. I texted my dad and he was cool with it. I texted my sisters and they were fine with it. But they responded right away and they were like, it would be awesome.

You should try it. You should do it. Nice. And then I told my mom. And she never responded. And I was like, well, she's going to wake up to a surprise tomorrow. And as I was in the barbershop, she texted me and was like, well, you have my blessing. And I was like, whew.

Yeah. Just in the nick of time, I guess. The last piece of the puzzle. So I've been wanting to do it for a long time. It looks really good. I'm very excited. Except with the way that they styled it, it doesn't actually look good the way it was supposed to be styled.

It actually looks better as bedhead. Yeah, which is like... So I'm like super lucky. Yeah, and you should definitely not take that for granted. I texted Christine after my first shower with short hair and I gave her a run through. Oh, a play by play. A total play by play of all my thoughts that I had. I didn't realize what a difference it is. I'm like collected every thought and then just texted them to me. I like numbered them one

through 10. I was like, of most importance, here are all of my thoughts. I'm going to be honest. I was pretty jealous. No, my hair dries in literally 30 seconds. Now you were like, I can whip my hair on like a dog i tried the dog shake thing and it works pretty well oh that is crazy but yeah nice it's awesome i'm glad you finally did it i also came back from seattle and saw allison that was very fun they went to the renaissance fair we did and she got a bullseye at the archery table that's incredible i saw your post and what a badass you've got we actually did we in like um in three days we actually did like a lot of stuff nice like we were super busy that's very like both of you like i prefer to

just lay around all day well i actually do prefer to lay around all day but but i feel like you're the only one who ever invites me to things because i'm like can't we just sit in the house and drink my ideal day is to not leave the house but i'm also in a relationship now so i have to like pretend i care about being outside so uh allison i hope you plugged it i hope you retroactively plug your ears she's trapped at this point she can't get away it's fine newsflash i like hanging out at home how was being home by yourself yeah so everyone left uh except geo because i wouldn't let him leave um and yeah i made i you know was on a lot of painkillers so i made a vision board yep i i walked into a giant poster today at christine's and i was like what is this because it was a bunch of like weird like like ransom letter cut

cutouts and like a picture of me was on there and she drew a she drew an ipad and then put our sticker on the fake drawn screen of the iPad. Oh yeah because I'm manifesting an iPad right now. I was like what is this and she's like oh yeah I made a vision board while I was hiring painkillers. I was like you had a weekend. I mean you gotta admit it was pretty good. It actually it has a lot of. It's not done yet but I'm working on it and you got featured so. I did. Can't be mad. Yeah so I did that. I even put the Nickelodeon, my rejection letter from last year, and then crossed out all the parts where they said they rejected me in the hopes that this year they won't reject me.

So still in the running. Knock on wood. Knock on wood. But yeah, so that's my life. Anyway, I feel like I have something to say. Do you? Yeah. Well, we have a podcast.

Oh, right. This is a wonderful platform to do that. I have something to say um do you yeah well we have a podcast oh right a wonderful platform to do that i have something to say okay this episode is brought to you by our good friend eric skull eric skull what a name i feel like that's also fitting to be our first uh sponsored yeah patreon definitely it's very fitting uh with his last name being skull it works for both of our categories do you think you changed his name just so he could be on the podcast? Yeah, probably. To Eric, I mean.

Oh. That was like the lamest joke ever. Oh, but it was rich. Oh, God. Oh, that was so good. Good for you, Dad. Thanks. So Eric is one of our $25 patron donators.

And so we, every episode, we're going're gonna have a 25 patron sponsor the episode so this week our first one is sponsored by eric skull so thank you so much for your patreon support um you're also gonna get to choose a topic for our mini video episodes where we will be trying to live record us not losing track i feel bad for you guys already. I feel bad for you. You're the one that's got to edit this. Oh, that's true. It's going to be a video, isn't it? Yeah.

Like we, well, you know what? It just means we're going to have to not fuck up. You're giving me hives. My Tourette's is starting to like, I'm like twitching at the table. This is going to be us on video. I'm going to be like spasming. We're both just going to be like convulsing in weird ways. Also, I wanted to give a shout out.

I don't know how to... I have a lot of mixed emotions about this. Remember how last week I brought up the person who left us an iTunes review? Yeah. Oh, did they write back? That said, the sun doesn't shine out of our butts, and we joked about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I happened to go

on our iTunes reviews, and I see this update revised review and i went oh and lizzie lou i'm sorry we didn't mean to shame you on air i'm sorry wait did she think we were shaming her she goes i hurt you guys really i'm the poo head who wrote the thing about sunshiny poo holes i'm so sorry i heard you talk about my review on your last podcast oh my gosh you really do read your reviews yes yes yeah i love that i can revise this whenever i feel the urge i was obviously eating my bitch flakes the day i wrote that mean stuff sorry your personalities make this podcast you really do rock the sun most light most certainly does shine out of y'all's bums which

is all i wanted to hear thank you very much you know next time she's having a bad day she can just go rewrite and be like you you know what? Never mind. After this, she's going to be like, I take it all back. I retract my second remark. And I felt, and she goes, I was having a super poopy day. I'm so sorry. I want to be team wine and team milkshake. So I didn't mean to shame you.

We were just joking around. Thank you for the kind words. Yep. All right. I just wanted to say, like, sorry sorry we don't like publicly humiliate people on purpose no we just keep tabs on those who do right sure we just have them in our back pocket if we need them right do you think we can do that about every bad review just like yell at them over there i don't know we should go back to that first review you ever saw oh one time christine saw a

review and she was trying to play it cool it was like our first bad review we ever got it was in canada and i know that hurt me more it hurt and she uh she was like i'm gonna be cool i'm gonna be cool and then like five minutes later she's like but also what the fuck i held it together for maybe 25 seconds um we got one that says this has to be the worst podcast i ever heard it's so long because of the silliness of these two girls they are so crazy well are you like well also christine's like hi like screen name was i'm always crazy so it's really a compliment thank you so like you kind of hit the nail on the head there um also last thing for anybody who i'm like sending who's getting patreon donations it came to my attention that one of the packages i sent out the postage from stamps.com wasn't quite enough so they had to pay the difference in the shipping

shit which is like the last fucking thing i want is for you guys to have to be like paying the post office sorry sorry sorry guys so if that i don't know i'm still new to the whole stamps.com thing um and i want to apologize if this has happened anybody please tell me because i want to fix it or send you a sticker everyone is going to send you their personal information like i need five dollars now yeah they'd be like oh it's 35 overpriced no big like lisa's gonna text us from norway and be like listen i need a hundred dollars and i need it tomorrow listen i know but so i if that happened to you truly i'm sorry and let me know oh also sorry if you got dog hair if you got geo hair on so if that happened to you, truly, I'm sorry. And let me know. Oh, also, sorry if you got dog hair. If you got Geo hair in your merch, that happened last week.

So now I have to like intensively vacuum before I ship anything. So everyone's like, let's clone Geo. And I was like, oh boy. Oh my. But can you imagine just a sea of Geos? No, that's my nightmare. It's my heaven, weird. Sorry that I've just been rambling.

That's kind of all my points for the day. I got none. Okay, good. Mine were all selfish. I got to see my girlfriend and I cut my heaven. Weird. Sorry that I've just been rambling. That's kind of all my points for the day. I got none. Okay, good. Mine were all selfish. I got to see my girlfriend and I cut my hair. Yeah, we get it. Your life's great, okay? I was home alone making vision boards high on Percocet, but, you know, it's fine.

So, what are you drinking? I'm drinking some white wine. Are you mixing with your Percocet? No. I know, I know. This would have been a fun episode if you were. Oh, you don't want that. Give the people what they want, Christine.

I decided to have a glass of wine tonight, so I'm not on painkillers. So, sorry. Mom, Dad, trust me. Also, my dad called me earlier today, and he goes, oh, hey, so you know what? He has a drone accent that I can't emulate. I'm sorry in advance. He goes, you know what? We just moved an office to Westchester, Ohio. And it's so crazy.

Do you know what they call Coca-Cola there? And I went, what? And he goes, dope. Ha, ha, ha, ha. And I was like, are you kidding? It just really goes to show you he doesn't listen to the show. No, he does. Because he just heard that episode.

Oh, I thought he was trying to give you a fun fact. And you could have been like, listen, we just talked about this on the show. He literally was saying it to be like, ha, ha, I got you. And I was like well i i stand corrected you have a wonderful father yeah well he listens to it now and then he said um he was like haha i got you i listen to them sometimes and i find things out about you oh by the way i also heard you're moving into a house that's interesting knowledge to find out through my daughter's podcast and i was like oh shit you know my mother tells me every single time i talk to her i'm so glad you have snapchat and instagram and twitter

and a podcast because otherwise i wouldn't know anything about you and i'm like oh my god could not be more passive aggressive oh my god yeah yeah so yeah apparently he listens now and then he goes yes now i have to listen to all this oh god damn it and shit and fuck and i was like oops so i'm gonna be in my head a little bit about that for a few episodes but it seems like he's getting over it so you have to leave a cussing to me yeah i'll just have to say golly gee he says i'm not gonna say oh my god you know take the lord's name in vain oh right right so i'm gonna have to figure something out okay well are we talking about why we drank at all or i mean i drank because i was

alone all week but why do you drink because i missed geo honestly i just had a great time with him and he loves my haircut guys oh yeah and was like will he recognize me well this was the first time that i've ever like not worn a hat around him that's true and so we were like button heads and like like i was trying to finish my notes and they spent 15 minutes on the floor like head wrestling yeah like rolling around like actual dogs well he kept licking my head and i've never felt him lick my head before because it's always been the way no because that's not a normal thing i don't like i'm just gonna take it as a good sign all right but uh but he had a good time yeah you both don't kid me you both had

a good time we had a great time i missed him so much yeah so that happened um anyway now that you guys have heard about all our dysfunctional relationships you know what i'm just gonna throw it out you failed the test what are you but i knew you'd fail what are you drinking well i don't even have the drink in front of me. Exactly. Oh, well. See? When I call you out on it, of course you're going to win. Takes one to know one. I'm drinking a milkshake that's still in your freezer, so I should probably go get that.

Okay. I'll get it. Okay. All right. Are you ready? I thought I was, but now I can't find my notes. Oh, here it is. I swear to God, Em, this is like your weird habit oh like either i either don't have my notes or i have notes and they're

entirely messy so it's like you know once again we'll go on a journey together let's just put it that way i'm never gonna tire of our journeys together okay ready oh you better believe it all right bring it on. It is. Oh, I also didn't write the location or the name. Oh, my God. Once again, we're back to elementary school with M Schultz. I don't know what I'm reporting on.

That's our spinoff podcast. No, I do remember. It's in Birmingham, Alabama. Oh, I was just there for a wedding. Hey, my cousin who just started listening to the podcast because my brother told her about it last week i just went to her wedding in birmingham alabama oh i know so a shout out to yulia whenever she hears this let me guess she's german she is all right why did you say that with such disdain m no i was taking a shot in the dark all right go ahead um okay it's called the sloss Furnaces. That sounds scary.

I don't know what it is, but it already- They're furnaces. Yeah, but Sloss Furnaces sounds really scary. Fun fact, it's a National Historical Landmark. Hmm. And so fun. So we're one bullet down. Oh my God. You are doing such-

Do you want me to validate you? Is that what this is? We're all really proud of you. We're all cheering you on. Everybody in their cars is just hooting and hollering on your behalf everyone on their commute to work is just full of information now everyone's also changing the channel uh to a different podcast okay so um it was open from 1882 to 1971 and the sloss furnaces were um right on the cusp of the industrial revolution so anyone that was working their whole job was to make steel um and the two main ingredients were coal and ore

okay my dad works on steel so i hear all these things about slag pots all the time to me what ore is you mine it from the ground and then you turn it into i think coke yes wow wow you're not kidding yeah i'm not kidding no because i remember reading about coke and being like okay oh you mean dope more like the drug that's what i was thinking but okay so you know your shit yep yeah i mean you could say that i know a lot about metallurgical steel well equipment corporation of china i think you're just trying to get your dad to acknowledge you a little more i just want his approval that's all i want so um there have been over a hundred reports of paranormal activity um according to the police the police yes like the birmingham police oh geez okay and And it ranges from, like, minor incidents to, like, hearing whistles all the way to, like, physical assault. Shit.

And mainly these reports are coming in during September and October, which happened to be the months that were the graveyard shift at the furnaces because that was, like, right before winter. I guess they worked a little later oh okay okay i get it like coal and steel and all that yeah keep you warm yeah and uh i know things they actually ended up having to discontinue the graveyard shift in the last years of the furnace being functional because so many people were having strange incidents while they were working that it started to actually disrupt production because so many people kept getting haunted oh my god so the first and i can't have been cheap for them either to just like i don't cut a whole ship well maybe geo feels differently he always does you know every time he's still got things to say say it again geo until you want them to no until you want them to in 1887 one worker named richard jowers

he was trying to change the bell on one of the furnaces and he was walking around the edge of the furnace nope as you don't you don't do that and uh he lost his footing casual oh yeah he lost his balance and fell into the molten iron and was incinerated. Oh, my God. And the workmen tried to save what was left of him by, like, using a pipe. What was left of him? To try and fish him out. Why would you even try to fish someone out that's already half burnt away?

Where they're like, oh, we can save a kneecap. Yeah, right. Dish it out. They ended up only finding a shoe with a foot inside of it which seems to be the bane of my existence on this podcast every disembodied foot is gonna haunt you they just all seem to find me also in the early 1900s um there was a foreman a shift foreman who worked during the graveyard shift and his name was james wormwood what a name wasn't that matilda's last name i was about to say it sounds like a roll doll character

probably because it is a roll doll character and um they call them slag does that mean anything slag pot like i said what it's a slag pot that's a thing what's a slag pot i don't know but i had to order them from china when i worked at my dad's company okay there that's dad what's a slag pot because i don't i still don't know right in through an itunes review or something um right right in through a five-star itunes review if you know what a slack pot is um so during the summer the plant would reach up to like 120 degrees oh no and this was also in the early 1900s right so no ac so like no ac no no one cares if you're hot um no one cares if you're hot okay i mean like no one like is even aware of ac to like feel ungrateful right sure um and everything's on fire around you so it's like you know like hell

what's ac gonna do really so there was a hell there was a lot of um lack of sleep plus the heat plus low visibility in the company like in the uh furnaces, because it was getting dark earlier. It made working by the furnace really horrible, and basically unless you were the poorest, most desperate employee, you did not want to work. And James Wormwood, who was the shift foreman, he wanted to impress his supervisors, and so he would force people to speed up their production by making them do harder, more dangerous tasks. He was in charge of 150 men and 47 died under him. That's almost a third.

It was 10 times more than any other shift in the history of the company. Oh, my God. And there was actually one incident on record that there was a small explosion at some point and six of his workers were burned so badly they went blind oh my god i'm sorry dad i mean oh my goodness how do you say it in does he speak french yes he does okay uh does he speak spanish dios mio okay there you go um so one day so he was a horrible guy he was like known as like a cruel unpleasant boss like some sort of scrooge yes but worse so he one day was working up near the furnaces and the methane gas made him get really dizzy so he lost his balance and he fell into an enormous pool of the melted iron oh my god and he died and the pool was the fun fact the pool that he fell into

was the highest blast furnace at the plant and it was known as big alice okay i just want to throw that now i'm gonna question that sometimes i throw things in to see if you're gonna like make a joke that'll like really land on the show it usually doesn't doesn't usually it never actually once again big alice was a big flop from the point from that point on um after he died, workers have felt a strange presence near where he died. And actually, it became so aggressive and so common after he died that that was what ended up causing the graveyard shift to have to get shut down. Oh, I see. Okay. So they think he's the main spirit that's haunting um what a dick the area and it

happens to be right where he died what was his name again james slag wormwood what a whore he sounds like a character that would be like a modern day scrooge or like yeah yeah just sounds like a shitty guy wormwood slag wormwood so um in 1926 a guard was injured after he was this is like one of the examples that he's been haunting the place in 1926 which is 20 years later a guard was injured after he was pushed from behind and told in an angry voice get back to work and we turned around no one was there he searched the entire facility and he was the only one left in the building in 1947 there were three supervisors who were all found knocked out unconscious in the boiler room what and they were locked in there

and they were locked from the inside what so that means they had to have locked themselves in and then fall unconscious and when they were found none of them could remember how they got in there or even working together in that room so that none of them were even with each other the last they remember but all of them say that the last thing they saw was a man with burned skin yelling at them to go push some steel oh my god and then they like blacked out and woke up locked in a boiler room from the inside which means someone with them had to lock the door and then leave while they were unconscious that's terrifying yeah so nobody could have left because it was locked from the exactly so the door had to have locked itself

yikes so in 1971 it was the night before the plant officially closed and there was one security guard left named samuel blumenthal blinda blinda bless her bless her. You think that's her grandpa? Oh, yeah. Now I do. Obviously. Belinda blinked. Samuel blinked. If you haven't listened to My Dad Wrote a Porno. I've had people tweet at me and ask what my favorite porn.

Not. Em, you need to block those people. What my favorite podcast is. And hands down, the answer is My Dad Wrote a Porno. It's also my favorite porn. and hands down the answer is my dad wrote a porno it's also my favorite porn people tweet at me what's your favorite well it's my favorite podcast and my favorite porn heads down funny dad it's a podcast it's not actually it is also a porn it's really funny though it is this guy's dad wrote a porno and he his son and his friends read it but it's like like everyone in

2017 knows dad culture where like yeah you like just it's the most dad thing possible like it's written so either so overly correct that you have to make fun of him for being so like hyper accurate right or like he's so dead wrong like he doesn't know what a cervix is like it's just so funny he can't spell youtube like he spells it with a u yeah which is kind of funny though because the next day after i listened to that episode my dad texted me and said go watch this on youtube and spelt it the same way and i was like oh no is your dad rocky flintstone i think my dad wrote a porno dad you better not have written a porno. I don't want to be a part of any of that. I guarantee you my mom's written a porno. Oh, sure. That should be the sequel. We should pair up with them. Linda wrote a porno. It'll be the American version and it'll be my mother

and not my father. Oh, boy. It'll be real interesting. It'll be great. And my mom won't give herself a ghostwriter name. She'll just go full confidently. I'm Linda. I'm Linda. And I wrote a porno. She's going to be like, no, I'm, I'm going to read it to my audience. She would do a dramatic reading every time. Oi.

Anyway, sorry. Where were we? Something about a guy named Blumenthal, like Belinda's grandfather. Right. Okay. So Samuel Blumenthal on the night that the plant closed,

he was the last security guard to close up the place. Or he was supposed to be. He was taking one last look around the plant and he saw a, quote, half man, half demon. Oh my. And the creature tried to force him up the stairs. Oh my god. When he refused, first of all, why would you refuse? Um, no.

If half a man, half a demon is telling you to do something you just do it it's actually the end of my shift uh actually i'm really tired if you could get someone else to go up the stairs that'd be great just look around if you can't find anyone i'll do it last case but as a as a result of him saying no to the half-demon, the creature began to beat him mercilessly. I'm sorry, what? As a result, Samuel had been covered with burns. From getting beaten up? Mm-hmm.

Yeah, he ended up having to go to the hospital. He had to call other guards to come get him and bus him to the hospital. And he was there alone when they arrived. Yeah, and he had crazy burns all over him, and he died not him to the ambulance to the hospital and he was there alone when they arrived yeah and he had crazy burns all over him and he died not long after the encounter he died and upon examination uh blumenthal was found covered with intense burns all over his body that could not have been done on him on his own oh my god so what who knows he didn't like roll into a furnace and then roll out or something? No, no, no. I don't think that's a thing. So then there was also a worker who this was obviously before the plant died, but this

was another interesting story that I found and I didn't know the year. There was a worker who used to eat his lunch near one of the large flywheels that was used to power the scalding boilers oh right those and uh you weren't supposed to stand next to them but he liked it because i guess the wheel created like a draft there's like a fan oh okay i don't blame him yeah me either and uh it's like i'd rather die than be hot it Sounds like some stupid shit we would do. As he, so one day he was eating his lunch by the big wheel and his clothes got snagged by the wheel and he got dragged into the machine. M. And as he was getting crushed.

M. It took workers over 10 minutes to shut the machine down. M. Oh my God. And his body became so mangled that it became unrecognizable by the time the machine stopped. I mean, he was dead, right? At that point, there was a quote saying that every two seconds he'd come back around the wheel and there would be less of him.

I don't know at which point he died. Oh no. But he was absolutely dead by the time they stopped the machine. So at that point, why stop it? Okay. You you know that's the kind of boss i'd be i'm sorry keep it running are you slag uh reincarnated no i'm belinda blumenthal's grandfather what's the name slag wormwood slag wormwood that's a fake name well yeah nobody's named that um okay so anyway there were also um two more men who were killed near

the same location which makes the wheel a popular spot during uh investigations now oh um other ways people died they were scald by steam great uh splashed by hot iron uh-huh pinched by railroad cars electrocuted and like the guy in the wheel he was snatched up in machinery two of the men were burned alive inside a furnace while they were cleaning it did somebody like turn it on while they were in there no the the gas uh it wasn't clean enough for them to be going in there and breathing it in and so they passed out while and then the furnace turned on on its own later um they both passed out in there and it turned oh my god oh my god oh my god there was a shed that collapsed on a bunch of workers that killed them one foreman was pinned against the iron flow and literally burned in half uh most of the electrocutions

that happened there came from either the water recycling tanks and the steam shovels and the rest fell into the molten steel and were incinerated either before or after dying from carbon monoxide poisoning and or killed by geysers out of the steam pipe bursts. You know, just to be that person. But I was thinking when you said those three guys were in that room and they were locked in, and my first thought was like maybe it was carbon monoxide poisoning because that makes you do weird paranoid stuff yeah and it knocks you out i mean yeah i mean no if you're gonna be a skeptic that's probably the most accurate theory anyone would have it was just like my my one thought of what else could it be but who knows and it was a boiler room so who knows what kind

of stuff was going on there most of the um like the more terrifying occurrences happened um like basically had slag wormwood been working the time that his shift was happens to always be the time that these incidents happen on the property oh so people were injured more during that time period. During the time that slag would have been working. Ugh. So that's all of the history of it. But in 2000, Fox had a show called Scariest Places. I loved that show. Yeah, it was a great show. So it had one of the highest... They went to sloth furnaces and said that it was one of the highest rates of unnatural energy they had ever seen.

Wow. to sloth furnaces and said that it was one of the highest rates of unnatural energy they had ever seen wow in 2002 a cbs team investigated the site and they like left before they were even there for more than 10 minutes no way in 2003 the alabama foundation for paranormal research said there's no doubt that this is a hot spot for paranormal activity during our investigations we pulled data that confirms through our scientific methods and approach that energies are present and cannot be explained this is one of the most active places i've ever seen whoa also in 2003 they had a crew member that went with them yeah and he just caught on fire i'm sorry wait the poor guy was he just like this actually happened on the anniversary of samuel blumenthal's burn attack shut up in the same room that he supposedly got burned in and he literally caught on fire which is technically what could have happened to samuel blumenthal and spontaneous

human combustion so this guy his name was jason and he survived and he said before it happened he saw a strange shape standing in front of him and then he like kind of blacked out and his whole body just felt really hot um he said he suffered burns up and down his body and was taken to the hospital but he still cannot totally recall what happened so he was literally burned like he went to the hospital and had physical burns yes oh my god um because sometimes when people have like a scratch or like a red mark it's like hard to tell but it's like up and down his body oh my god in 2005 there were two psychics who went to investigate and one began to spontaneously bleed from cuts that he didn't have okay before the

investigation um and it was right after he started sensing someone that had died from a really bad injury where he bled a lot oh and i And I don't know where he started bleeding. And there was a clip I saw. There was something. Oh, shit. Oh, okay. It's called furnacefrites.com, I think. I'm telling because everyone's always like, where are all these clips?

So I remembered the website. So on episode, is this episode 30? Yeah. Oh. So on episode 30, I'm finally actually so on episode 30 i'm finally actually like doing something right yeah i feel like we should high five about that so it's called furnace frights and they have a whole tab for videos and there was one where the psychic's bleeding actually shows up oh my god like it's like in one of the clips furnace frights what just google furnace frights

fright furnace.com okay i almost had it you were It's fine. I'm used to saving the day. I know. Yeah, they have videos. Yeah. Wait, so is it... Oh, this is just for the Sloss Furnaces. This is all about the Sloss Furnaces. Oh, my God.

They have... Oh, yeah, you're right. They have, like, actual videos, you guys. They have a bunch of videos, and they also have a whole bunch of experience, like, reviews. But I will say that a lot of the reviews aren't accurate because they're one from 2007 and two um those reviews are mixed with the uh haunted house attraction that this place does so a lot of it is like there's a guy with a chainsaw and it's like not not really like it's an attraction they like don't reference it well uh also do you want to know one of their sponsors dope oh soda coca-cola

god i can't stop referencing that it's everywhere coke is one of their sponsors and they coke is what they made at the factory hey that's pretty funny huh i like how coke and dope are both drugs that's true so okay so psychics started bleeding let's just leave it at that in 2009 the alabama paranormal association they uh did an investigation and they were doing um they were reading for evp's electronic voice phenomenon and at some point one of the investigators tripped and fell and when you play theP back, you can hear right after she fell, you can hear a man say, I'm sorry. Oh. Like as if he like knocked into her or something.

Oh, God. I was hoping it wasn't somebody laughing. No. Not that time. At least it's a polite ghost. In 2011, the workers inside Sloss. Oh, this is not in 2011. Because the plane had shut down.

The workers? No, no, no. I wrote two notes at once. I'll do them separately. Okay. Seasonally employed ghosts. Oh, I know what I did. Okay.

This did happen in 2011. So when the sloss furnaces were open, the workers inside were not allowed to wear any ear protection because they needed to be able to hear the emergency whistle in case someone found the furnaces. So I guess the machinery, machinery though was like deafening so if you didn't have ear protection you were just going deaf oh yeah nowadays you have to wear those giant yeah yeah so in 2011 um another investigation team went in and they were using the spirit box that like says words out loud to you. And you can hear through an EVP, just like a normal tape recorder, you can hear clear as day. And this is actually one of the videos on the website.

You can absolutely hear a whistle blowing and you can hear a man screaming, saying something like emergency or stop or something like that. And you can definitely hear it and it's not anyone on the team. So how does does the spirit box work is it well that was just an evp that was just like a tape recorder but um but the spirit box just says like like essentially microsoft sam robot voice right okay so it just says words yeah so um so then they brought the spirit box and it started spitting out random like a rapid stream of words and it like no one could hear like understand what it was saying but all of a sudden really slowly it started saying a bunch of names and when they looked back they were all people who worked there shut up so they said jameson carol murphy and then they went on to say other names too wait are you serious yeah they like but only those names were said really slowly so the spirit box can say like words that aren't necessarily like

like you can dog house tree like it can say like it can specific names yeah oh wow it's a full dictionary of every english word including names including names oh my god through the regular tape recorder you could also hear screams bangs footsteps that definitely didn't happen while they were there and uh they also um they also ended up going back and getting more evidence and it ended up inspiring ghost adventures to go in 2012 uh to check it out and i guess in their episode they actually got physically attacked and it was caught on film they have the videos on there i was just seeing ghost adventures so um taps who are the ghost hunters and not ghost adventures they also filmed there and they said that they had so much evidence that they actually went back after the show to like do a personal investigation on their own and got even more

stuff like they said that they just it was like the most active places they've ever been to interesting um so now it's a local center um it's like used for concerts parties actually one of our friends who listens to the show caroline she went to school in alabama and she said she went to a like a masquerade ball or something oh cool um but some of the last minute things that people have seen um people have seen eyes staring at them from down the hallway they've seen floating apparitions on stairs behind them when they turned around not just like through their head um people have seen richard jowers and work coveralls standing next to the furnace where he died oh my god um managers will only shut down the building now during the buddy system because they're too afraid to walk by themselves.

I don't blame them. One man felt someone staring at him and after he left the corridor he looked back like he felt someone staring at him while he was walking down that corridor and he didn't look behind him like he just like he knew he was by himself. He didn't hear footsteps. He just

felt someone staring at him. Right. So he turned and ended up going up some stairs and basically did a a giant u and looked out the window to where the other corridor was that he had just been in and he saw like three shadows standing there with eyes staring back at him like there was a group of spirits following him and then they looked back at him through the windows to like say like yeah we were here like we still see you like we still see you we know that you sensed us and we know you can see us now hell no um and then the other evps that have been caught uh you can hear a guy say what happened to me oh that's so sad someone asked uh who if there was anyone there, what their name was. And they said Ellington, which I guess was a name of someone who worked there. They've heard hello, get out.

When an investigator, his name was Cam, when he asked, say the name of someone in the room, the spirit box said Cam, Cam, Cam, Cam, no cam like just kept talking no no no no um m n n no thank you uh they also got uh the spirit box saying the word sloss as in sloss furnaces and when they heard it because you can hear it in real time versus like a tape recorder you have to go back and play it later and like enhance it on a computer the spirit box is immediate so they heard sloss and then one of the investigators was like did we did they just say sloss and then the next word on the spirit box was yes oh no um they've also gotten leave bitch well that's rude and then when they asked is there anyone in the tunnels they got

yes we're here uh someone said evil person another time the spirit box had killed and then during one of the cbs news crew investigations it just kept saying video like it was being like they were being videotaped oh because they were doing yeah and then they kept saying things about technology like video um equipment watching us but yeah so that's all of it oh my god that one actually like really creeped me out well there you go i i want to ask my dad if he's been there because he goes to because his sister and um brother-in-law lived down there that's where my cousin was married um and he travels a lot for his business and he works in steel and he goes to a lot of steel mills so i wonder if he's been oh wow i mean not been there but like i wonder if he knows about it i don't know it's crazy to think like 100 years ago how different it was and how

nobody gave a shit i'm sorry am i boring you i just hit the bottom that's all yeah so it's it's interesting to think like a hundred years ago nobody gave a shit if you were hot or like your eyeball got gouged out by steel yeah you know exactly I'll post this but one time my dad I was debating telling you guys this but one time my dad was at a steel mill somewhere and he sent this photo to my entire family and it was a photo of like safety like how to wear your safety gear and he goes look i found a photo of christina it looks like me at age like 13 wearing a weird orange helmet and he sent it to my whole family and everyone was like how did that happen that like she was on this i'm like that's not me that's

pretty weird an awkward girl but it looks i started to my mom and she laughed for probably 25 minutes because it looks just like me oh weird it's really creepy i've shown it to a couple people at least you know someone out there has struggled just like you you're not alone you're not alone i'm struggling everyone that looks like you struggles that's wild maybe i'll post it if I can find it. But anyway, that's all. All right. I'm ready.

Are you, though? No, I'm not. Because before we started recording, you kept talking about how heavy this is. Guess what story I'm doing. The one that you've been putting off? Yes. All right. Listen.

I have been putting this off for weeks. And i asked if people wanted me to do it and i've gotten enough responses i've gotten no negative responses i've gotten all yeah you should tell this story because it's important um and people had enough good reasons for that i thought you know what it's worth talking about all right comedy stops here guys if you want to laugh leave now if you want to laugh go just turn this off this is the murder of sylvia likens and about a thousand beer bottles just opened wine wine bottles just cracked open all at once. A thousand radio buttons went off. This case was described by a prosecutor in the trial as, quote, the most terrible crime ever committed in the state of Indiana. Okay.

Just to give you a heads up. I want to add that the resources I used were Thought Catalog and Indianapolis Monthly. So let's crack into it. I'm sorry. No, I have enough wine. I don't have enough milkshake. I just drank it. I mean, do you want some wine?

Too bad I'm out. Okay. Anyway, this story takes place in Indianapolis, Indiana. Sylvia Likens was born between two sets of twins so diana and danny were her older fraternal twins and then jenny and benny were that's adorable i know right diana and danny which is like really confusing i feel like and then jenny and benny which is super cute we're one year younger so she really fucked up if they had like jenny and dan and then benny and diana oh my god just to like fuck with everyone nobody would remember that but you know they wouldn't have known they were gonna have two more twins right

that would have been okay i guess they could have changed their names later right yeah okay this doesn't make sense okay uh so sylvia was born between two sets of fraternal twins. Her parents, Betty Francis and Lester Cecil Likens, were carnival workers. The children's childhoods were really rocky and unstable. To give you an idea, Sylvia moved 14 times and lived in 14 different places by the age of 16. Well, yeah, your parents are carnies, right? Right. So that makes sense. Exactly.

I mean, I'm a clown. I know that lifestyle. You know the life. I life i've been i've been i've been there it's a life of a nomad yeah you really if you don't get out early you don't get out i left at 14 i never looked back that was the wrong time to take a sip at least you don't have five children that's true um at least you you know switch your career from clowning to psychology no no clowning to psychology from psychology to tv from tv to podcasts and now i just don't know who i am you need to like i need to soul search yes i need to go to canada not yet, because I can't do this without you.

Okay. You need to go to Canada? Yeah. All right. Okay. I'm just going to accept that. Okay. Anyway.

I need to go to the dildo shop, the wooden dildo shop. Oh, that's what I was going to say. What? What were you going to say? On My Dad Wrote a Porno Today, they were talking about wooden dildos. Oh. Did they say anything about splintering because i still have questions yes they were talking about it and then um the woman what's her name again it's james alice alice yeah alice goes big alice we found the joke everything see i told you it It landed. I knew it would stick. I'm so clever.

Except that you came up with this. Okay, what? Alice said, can you imagine if it was made of particle board? And I almost like crashed my car. But yeah, so we had an episode where we talked about wooden dildos made in Canada. Remember that girl, Sarah, who everyone shipped me with for a while? Oh, yeah, that's right. Sorry, Sarah.

I'm sure she's devastated. I know. I know. She's probably thinking, who dodged a bullet? She's like, she talked way too much about wooden dildos. shipped me with for a while oh yeah that's right sorry sarah i'm sure she's devastated i know i know she's probably thinking who dodged a bullet like she talked way too much about dildos um but yeah so i think she talked the right amount i think it was the perfect amount i think it's one of our heartier laughs on this show people were like please don't talk about that ever again but yeah they talked about well here we are they go oh a dildo made of wood what and i was like i'm sorry my dad wrote a porno have you not listened to and that's why we drink i know right god damn it no because my first question is how much slack do you have to put on that before you

sell it for it to splinter and in the not splinter in the story in the chapter they talk about it yeah but they had them shipped from new guinea oh lord they were from jonestown wooden dildos from new guinea that was guyana oh i'm sorry different continent okay by the way the netherlands and norway are not the same did i say that oh yeah i did and we can ask lisa again if you'd like england is not in wales okay uh we are really bad at geography wow we're not even hiding it actually a german citizen stop blaming everything on that indianapolis is in indiana which is in america which is in america which is where these children were okay look at that segue it went well so smooth right this time you almost didn't notice that we were just talking about wooden dildos okay but anyway back to carnies but anyway right it really is an easy transition like

wooden dildos anyway back to carnies um tomato tomato yeah same thing uh so the children's right so anyway she had moved 14 times by the age of 16, as you understand. And the parents were always trying to make ends meet, as you understand. Sylvia and Jenny. So, Jenny was the younger, one of the female twin. Right. Younger sister. Underneath her.

Yeah. So, her younger sister, who actually had polio. They were living with their mother in Indianapolis because apparently the grandparents adopted the boys, but not the girls. All right. Sexist. Listen, I know. So they were living in Indianapolis with their mother

after their parents had separated. So it was Jenny and Sylvia living together. And then their older sisters... Oh, the older sister at this point was 18, so she was on her own. But the older sister at this point was 18. So she was like on her own. But the younger son was taken by his grandparents. So Sylvia and her younger sister, Jenny, were living with their mom in Indianapolis and their parents had separated. But her mom was arrested.

Their mom was arrested for shoplifting and went to jail. So their father arranged for the girls to move in with a woman in their neighborhood named Gertrude Banaszewski. Okay. Who was the mother of one of their new friends named Paula, who was 17 years old. So Gertrude Banaszewski, a.k.a. Gertie, had seven children of her own between the ages of 17 and 18 months. Jesus, and she was willing to take three more on

yeah two more but yeah but she agreed to watch jenny and sylvia in exchange for 20 a week uh which their father lester was gonna mail her like that was their agreement how what time was this what time period uh 1960s okay so 20 a week was not 20 today today. No, no, no. Yeah, exactly. I was like, girl, you need to just up your price. Love yourself a little. Have some respect. Babysitters make more than an hour. Yeah, so this was in the 60s. I forgot to give a time period.

So it turns out Gertie was not really a nice lady. The Indianapolis Star described her as a, quote a quote haggard underweight asthmatic who suffered from depression and the stress of several failed marriages so she started to take her anger out on the new the two girls who came to live with her oh my um so the first thing that happened when the lichens first 20 money order was late so it was two weeks in and their father's 20 hadn't arrived yet so baniszewski uh dragged the girls upstairs slapped jenny and yelled i took care of you two bitches for a week for nothing that was the first bit just like a kind of a foreshadowing of what was to come um but things weren't so bad at first so for the first few weeks

sylvia would go to church with the family, listen to records, watch TV with the other kids, go to the park with her friends. And she also went to high school with Stephanie and Paula Banaszewski, who were two of the daughters. But at the same time, there were 10 people under one roof. They didn't have a stove. They only had a hot plate. So they could only really eat soup and crackers that's like all they ate uh they had to eat in shifts because they had three spoons when sylvia and jenny arrived uh but pretty soon they only had one left so what they would do is one person would eat with the spoon rinse it off and then hand it to the next person then the next person will eat their dinner and they'd go through all 10 people jesus to eat um and this is in july so they moved in in july um and at that point like there was some bullying

of sylvia she was a really pretty 16 year old girl um and they kind of gave her a hard time she was occasionally picked on and like given like um spankings and things like that uh but it quickly went downhill so sometime in late august sylvia let it slip that one time she had had a boyfriend and he had gotten under the bed covers with her like they hadn't done anything but he right yeah sure no they really not done anything yeah like she was like oh one time we laid in a bed together so gertrude the mom yelled you're going to have a baby and kicked her in the crotch um and this fake pregnancy outraged 17 year old paula who happened to actually be pregnant by an older man oh shit um who so paula knocked her to the floor and told

her you ain't fit to sit in a chair and that's when all the anger just started being directed towards sylvia so she'd never wait slept with anyone she just was there a movie made about this yes there was christina ricci i believe so i've seen the movie yeah i only remember one specific horrible thing that happens you'll probably hear about it so it involved dope slash coke yes oh but that's not even like the worst thing that happens what oh no that was as far as the movie could go oh my god all right just get it over with is coke sponsoring this episode by the way certainly better not because they're gonna realize how much we're shitting all over it is dope sponsoring this episode i sure hope so because i could smoke some right now there's a lot of money in that all right okay so this is kind of where like the anger towards sylvia just like completely heightened

um and so it's unclear whether this part actually happened or whether one of the baniszewski daughters made it up but as revenge sylvia apparently told some of her classmates in high school that the two oldest girls stephanie and paula were quote prostitutes um and again she's 16 and they're like bullying the crap out of her so who knows like she might have just said it as like an aside or the older sisters a lot of people think the older sisters made it up as an excuse to be angry at her um and stephanie her 15 year old boyfriend coy hubbard heard about that about how she had called his girlfriend a prostitute so he beat sylvia up and he was studying judo so he started practicing his judo on sylvia for the next couple months he would flip her against walls he would flip her onto the floor um and then after that gertrude gave sylvia a beating because she

had spread false rumors about her daughter i remember in the movie version it was that like she said something that like absolutely got misconstrued by like the friend she said it to and that friend ended up telling everyone that the sisters were prostitutes but like gertrude didn't actually do anything or not gertrude um sylvia didn't actually do anything that's that's the biggest theory is that she didn't do anything and a lot of the articles i read were like even if she did like of course she did because she's 16 and these people are like abusing the crap out of her and she just it's it's one of those things i think in the thought catalog article it was like you know if someone says oh

you're stupid then you go no you're stupid you know somebody's like abusing you so you turn around and go well you're right right retaliate oh you're pregnant and she goes no you're a prostitute whatever yeah yeah so yeah it's called being 16 it's called being 16 um but yeah a lot of people believe she didn't even say anything and they just kind of made it up. So Gertrude, the mother, encouraged the neighborhood children to build their hatred towards Sylvia. She told one of Sylvia's friends named Anna that Sylvia had called Anna's mother a hooker. So Anna attacked Sylvia and apparently Sylvia clutched her stomach during the attack and yelled, oh, my baby. clutched her stomach during the attack and yelled oh my baby because gertrude and the children had convinced sylvia that she was actually pregnant because she didn't understand that she she really thought she had gotten pregnant and that she had messed up because she didn't understand that like

that's not how it worked you know um it's really really sad and so paul okay so she really thought that she had been pregnant at that point um so paula who was the one who was actually pregnant uh her new habit was hitting sylvia in the head with anything she could find so dishes bottles cans etc the one spoon the single spoon no they don't want to waste that right um sometimes when a group of kids were beating sylvia up they would order her little sister Jenny, who still lived there, the one with polio, to hit her. And she would refuse, but Gertrude would slap her in the face until she complied. That's so sad. And then later she said that she used her left hand because she didn't want to hurt her by using her dominant right hand.

So things get a lot worse. Like that's just like child's play. Fuck. In early October, Sylvia needed an outfit for gym class. Like it was required from her school. But Gertrude wouldn't give her money to buy one. So Sylvia one day came home and she had a gym outfit. And she claimed to have found it at school.

But Gertrude said, said no you stole it um and she beat sylvia until she confessed that she had stolen it then slapped kicked and whipped her with a belt um then started turned back to like the whole promiscuity thing um and began kicking her in the crotch over and over and over again uh then gertrude decided she wasn't allowed to go back to school so uh she prohibited her from going back to school and later that day she decided she was going to punish her more for this the theft the supposed alleged theft so she uh lit a match and put them to all of her fingers and then gave her another whipping and this is where gertrude kind of got this idea for heat torture which is just as bad as it sounds um and some people think this came from one of gertrude's

abusive boyfriends dennis wright who had once put a cigarette out on her neck and so maybe like that's what triggered like the idea but um she started encouraging children to burn sylvia with cigarettes and lit matches along with other physical abuse one time paula the older sister who was pregnant hit sylvia so hard that she broke her hand and then she used the cast to beat her afterward oh my god as like a punishment oh my god and then kids in the neighborhood who would hang around started assaulting sylvia like that was in the movie a pastime yeah it would be like everyone would race home from school to like like tire to a

pole in the basement just beat the shit out of her yeah and like they would each be doing it in their own sick way all at one time yeah and their kids yeah and like the little sister like they eventually started like getting a little sister to do it too and everything it's very fucked up um continue i guess and that's where uh things started becoming like sexual nature oh my god but they've been it's been called a sexless sex crime what the fuck does that mean like nobody oh i'll tell you um so the teasing and verbal abuse about her like promiscuity uh-huh got really bad then it escalated into kicking her in the crotch um there was never a rape or forced sexual act but the autopsy later revealed that sylvia's genital region was swollen and horribly mauled holy fuck jesus christ oh my god she was beaten so bad down there

that she became incontinent oh my god um and one night she wet the bed and her abusers decided that uh that meant she had to go live in the basement with the dog um because she was too dirty to live with human beings so she was no longer allowed to use the toilet um and so she had to like just go go like on her in her own clothes on the floor where where she was no longer allowed to use the toilet. And so she had to, like, go, like, in her own clothes on the floor where she was trapped in the basement. And then the Baniszewskis decided that she was too disgusting. So they forced a bathing regimen on her. And several of the children and or Gertrude would force her into scalding hot water as hot as they could make it um and then paula the older sister would rub salt into all of sylvia's wounds oh my god oh my god she wasn't

allowed to wear clothes uh for days at a time so she'd be forced to like walk around naked and that made it easier for the neighborhood kids to torture her. So they would burn, punch, punch her, push her down the stairs, and then they would force her to walk back up the stairs so they could push her back down the stairs. She wasn't really allowed to eat. So sometimes for fun, they would let her come up from the cellar. Then they would give her a bowl of soup and tell her to eat it with her fingers. And she would try because she was so hungry. And then they would give her a bowl of soup and tell her to eat it with her fingers. And she would try because she was so hungry. And then they would immediately take it away and make her go back downstairs. At one point, she had to eat feces and drink urine.

Oh, wow. There was one story I read. I didn't write it down. But one of the earlier things that had happened was that I don't even remember what instigated it but basically she had a hot dog and they pat like her frankfurter whatever and they would pass it around and every kid would like there are nine other people in this room they would all put like condiments on it like whatever mustard mayonnaise ketchup whatever yeah and pass it around and then when it got to her they forced her to eat the whole thing and she she ate it and she vomited and then they made her eat her own vomit oh my god that was

horrible i know that was one of the first things that happened so yeah so it just got worse um so some people at this point you know wonder like why didn't anyone say something um it's just one of those weird situations sylvia and jenny had told their older sister diana but she thought they were just exaggerating and how do you just exaggerate something like that it's like it's not like someone saying they grounded me for a million years yeah yeah it's like i'm like everything you just listed i don't even know how to like shorten everything that just happened i'm getting tortured i'm getting actually tortured but you think like in the 60s too if you're like oh she beat me up it's like well she probably did something

bad you know that's true child abuse was very different back then than now and so like nowadays if someone's like oh she hit her in the head it's like right no that's not okay back then it was like even spank your kid now without like someone like totally calling child services and back then it was like not to be that person but a lot of kids deserve to get smacked these days i have differing viewpoints but we can talk about those in a patreon mini episode uh i don't know if i could do it but they're like i'm talking like toddlers on the plane. You know what I mean?

No. I just want to make them stop. I just want to make them stop. You as a stranger want to hit them? I don't want to hit them. I just want to metaphorically hit them. Okay. Sure.

So basically, everybody they told was like, oh, come on. You're being dramatic. And I guess the dad, when the dad had dropped them off there he had told gertrude like oh their mother um lets them do whatever they want you got to rule them with a hard fist so like he had basically set up like they need to be punished like if they do something bad and he didn't even the father didn't even like check out the the um the living situation like he never he came by a couple times never asked how they were never looked into like it's just awful like he just didn't really give a shit honestly um and he said he didn't want to pry that was his that was his reasoning and it's like you didn't want to pry into how your two young daughters were living okay yeah i mean i don't even know what to say that you're just a

shitty guy yeah oh yeah so um did he like at least have an inkling at all no i mean he probably did but he didn't like look into it well i mean did like the did they like mask it while he was there or something like put clothes on her and let her pee in a toilet um he would stop by and they'd be like oh they're busy or they're not here are mostly what usually happen when people stop by to check on sylvia and there was even a um a nurse who came by who worked for i think child protective services who said oh i heard there's a child here who has open sores and gertrude said um oh she's a prostitute i kicked her out uh she just has sex for money and we

didn't want her here anymore and they were standing above where sylvia was chained up in the basement oh my god yeah so it was like gertrude set up this there was even like a reverend because they were fundamental christians who came by and would like check in on the family because that's what they did you know they would go to like family's households and check in and she would always just bitch and moan about how sylvia was the worst child and like the most promiscuous horrible so she would just set her up as like the worst yeah i mean so she just had the reputation townwide totally and she's like she got pregnant out of wedlock like it was just really bad so she would just give her this terrible

reputation um and at one point their older sister diana visited the home to check on the sisters and gertrude wouldn't let her inside and then threatened to have her arrested for trespassing so she couldn't even come in the door and then um at one point diana saw jenny the younger sister in the street and jenny said i can't talk to you or i'll get in trouble so she's like i can't even talk to you and i mean she was probably like 13 or 14 um so she told jenny that if she said one word against gertrude or if she said one word about their living situation she would receive the same treatment her sister Sylvia was getting. Yeah.

So she was terrified. So after a while, like Sylvia was living in the basement at this point with the dog. They allowed Sylvia to return to sleeping in a bed upstairs. But she told, but Gertrude told the boys, two of the boys to tie Sylvia to the bed. So she couldn't get up in the night to

go to the bathroom oh my god because uh she wasn't allowed to use the bathroom until she learned not to wet the bed and again she was incontinent because they had beaten her so badly down there um that she wet the bed that night oh my god and she hadn't been using a toilet for like you know weeks or whatever so it's like it's easy just yeah yeah she will lose control when you you're not ever having to think about it when you're 16 and incontinent incontinent and terrified so the next morning um this is awful this is the part you were mentioning uh so the next morning uh gertrude forced sylvia to do aease in front of all the children. Then she forced her to shove a Coca-Cola bottle up her vagina. And it was the 1960s, so it was like the really...

The glass ones. The glass ones that are much larger than they are today. And made her do that. Like the whole bottle? The whole bottle? I don't know. Oh, my God. I don't know.

Oh, my God. Oh, my God god then she told her and she was naked like she would make her walk around naked in front of the kids to humiliate her oh my god okay she told her it was time for another punishment for slandering her daughters at school because remember this happened like a year ago at this point oh yeah fuck over it they're just trying to find reasons like not reasons excuses okay um so what happened she said sylvia had branded her daughters so she was going to brand sylvia oh my fucking god what do they brand on her you don't want to know just tell me but i'm gonna tell you so gertie good old gertie

uh told one of the neighborhood boys ricky that he he should tattoo Sylvia. And he was like, awesome. I would love to do that. So they forcibly stripped her, tied her down and gagged her. Gertie heated a sewing needle and carved an I apostrophe and part of an M into her. Then told Ricky to finish the job.

So Ricky took the needle and started carving with the fire, like the flame and then carving into her. Hot needle. And he asked, how do you spell prostitute? So Gertrude wrote it down on a piece of paper and he proceeded to write the words, I'm a prostitute and proud of it into her stomach.

Oh my God. A few minutes later, Ricky, Paula, and 10-year-old Shirley, 10-year-old, decided they were going to brand Sylvia again. So they started to carve the letter S for slave into her chest. Then they ordered Jenny,

the younger sister, to burn her. She outright refused. The sister was like, I don't even care what happens. I'm not going to do it. So instead, 10-year-old Shirley decided to finish the S for slave. And she did it crooked. She did the curve the wrong way because she's fucking 10.

And it turned into a three instead of an s and then after that uh gertie the mother taunted in front of all the children quote what are you gonna do now sylvia you can't get married now you can't undress in front of anyone what are you gonna do my god and sylvia was just crying and crying and she said i guess there's nothing i can do it's on there so after that fucking horrible mutilation uh they forced sylvia back down to the basement where stephanie's boyfriend decided to practice some judo on her um jenny came down to see her that night, her younger sister. And apparently, Sylvia told her, I'm going to die.

I can tell. Oh, my God. Which just breaks my heart. Oh, my God. Apparently, Gertrude decided she didn't want Sylvia to die just yet. So she came down with an offer of crackers to feed her. And Sylvia said, give it to the dog. It's hungrier than i am jesus because she'd kind of given up right yeah just numb um and at that uh gertrude punched her repeatedly

in the stomach uh the next day gertrude forced sylvia to write a letter to her parents um i'm just gonna read this to you real quick this is a letter that sylvia was forced to write a letter to her parents. I'm just gonna read this to you real quick. This is a letter that Sylvia was forced to write. To Mr. and Mrs. Likens, I went with a gang of boys in the middle of the night and they said that they would pay me if I would give them something. So I got in the car and they all got what they wanted. And when they got finished, they beat me up and left sores on my face and all over my body. they also put on my stomach i am a prostitute and proud of it i've done just about everything that i could do just to make gertie mad and cause gertie more money cost gertie more money than she's got i've tore up a new mattress and peed on it i have

also cost gertie doctor bills that she really can't pay and made gurdy a nervous wreck and all her kids so that's the letter she was forced to write so that night sylvia overheard uh gertrude and her kids talking about how they were going to drop uh take sylvia and drop her in the woods drop her body in the woods she told John and Jenny that they were going to be the ones to drop her there so Sylvia was like they're going to kill me and tried to make an escape attempt

so she ran to the front door but Gertrude caught her just as she was about to make it to the porch then she dragged her to the kitchen offered her some toast but she was so ill that she couldn't swallow um and since she couldn't eat the toast uh gertrude beat her across the mouth with a curtain rod holy crap oh my god so the next day october 24th gertrude and john

both beat the girl uh gertrude swung at her with a chair but it broke before it hit her and then she was so frustrated that she tried to hit her with a paddle but hit herself instead and blacked her own eye um then coy hubbard the boyfriend stopped by and hit sylvia in the head with a broomstick which knocked her unconscious oh my god apparently during that night sylvia pounded on the floor of her basement prison with a shovel and neighbors were so annoyed that they almost called the police but didn't oh my god and then the next day sylvia was taken upstairs for a bath and it was actually like a normal bath like it was just a warm bath comforting bath um but she was placed in the tub fully clothed. And when she was taken out, Stephanie and Ricky realized that Sylvia wasn't actually

breathing anymore. So Stephanie attempted to give CPR to Sylvia and couldn't revive her. And Sylvia was dead. And she was 16 years old. And Sylvia was dead. And she was 16 years old. Mrs. Wright, Gertrude, told Ricky, the son, to call the cops. I think Ricky was the neighbor, to call the cops.

And he had to go to a pay phone to call the cops. And when the police got to the house, Gertrude handed them a little letter that she had forced her to write. And said, oh, you know, these guys took her away and she just came back she was always so sexually promiscuous whatever whatever and as they were as they found the body like the horribly emaciated abused body jenny the younger sister went up to the police and said like whispered get me out of here and I'll tell you everything. So this is what happened to everybody. Gertrude Banaszewski was arrested for murder. And so were Paula, Stephanie, John, Richard Hobbs, and Coy Hubbard.

Most of the younger ones, when they were questioned, said, I only did it because Gertie told me to. Mm-hmm. I mean, you have to remember these kids were, like, 10 or 11. Yeah, but some of them were old enough to know this was fucked up. Sure, like, 16, 17. But, like, the only person, like, it's been compared to Lord of the Flies, except that there was an adult telling them what to do. lord of the flies except that there was an adult telling them what to do and like the older ones did get charged but the ones who were children like 10 or 11 they yeah i know i get it um so the the autopsy showed that sylvia died from uh a hemorrhage in her brain, shock from her wounds,

and malnutrition. Fuck. It also showed that Sylvia's fingernails Oh my God. had broken from Oh my God. from bending backward Oh my God. from clawing

Oh my God. Oh my God. And she had bitten her lower lip so deeply it was severed. Oh my God. She had severed hundreds of burns, bruises, muscle and nerve damage. Her vaginal cavity was so swollen that it was almost swollen shut. But her hymen was still intact.

So indicating, A, that they didn't sexually assault her in, like, the traditional sense. And, B, that she wasn't promiscuous and had never been pregnant like they had convinced her um so gertrude or gertie was uh sentenced to life in prison um she was sent to indiana women's prison and was considered a model prisoner she even earned the nickname of mom in prison uh so she was actually paroled in 1985 got out early uh because of good behavior she moved to iowa changed her name to nadine van fossen and five years later she died of lung cancer good she never took responsibility for her crimes uh she claimed she couldn't remember them and she also claimed that the lord had forgiven her so she was fine

um in 1966 uh paula the the pregnant daughter who actually had a baby during all the trials uh was convicted of second degree murder but when her conviction was overturned on a technicality she pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter um and only got two to 21 years she attempted a prison break in 1971 uh-huh but was pulled in 1972 so she was released in 1970 even after trying to break out uh-huh the year later she was pulled uh-huh two years after that she was completely released um she changed her name to paula pace which actually recently came out like they just recently found her um wow her name to Paula Pace, which actually recently came out. Like, they just recently found her. Oh, wow. Her name is Paula Pace now.

She lives in Iowa, in Marshalltown, Iowa. She was actually working for the school system in Conrad, Iowa. Oh, my God. And she had two grown sons. And she wasn't charged with any additional crimes after they found her but they also she was also fired from her job because she had uh provided false information on her employee application so uh she has slipped off the grid since then stephanie the second youngest um who also spent a lot of time abusing her served no time um what the hell she was 15 at the time she did admit to

participating to some degree but she was granted a special trial because she was a minor and um actually all charges were dropped against her because she agreed to turn um evidence against her entire family and so she gave a lot of information to prosecutors. Apparently, she changed her name, married, had children, worked as a teacher, and now lives in Florida. John Banaszewski was the third oldest of the children. He was an active participant in Sylvia's torture and was 12 when she died. He was convicted of manslaughter. He became Indiana State Reformatory's youngest inmate. He only served two years before he was convicted of manslaughter he became indiana state reformatory's youngest inmate

he only served two years before he was released he changed his name to john blake and drifted aimlessly before apparently experiencing a religious epiphany okay um that he said helped him see the error of his ways uh so he's actually the only member of the entire family to show any remorse for his deeds well that's nice of him yeah good job uh he has actually made no attempt to hide his past and even spoke about it publicly on occasion um he's apparently a lay minister nowadays and a real estate agent with a wife and three kids oh not nowadays he died of cancer in 2005. Okay. At the age of 52. That's the other thing I found out with this story. A lot of the people involved died really young.

Wow. Yeah. Well, it's called karma. Yeah. At age 52. This is a really funny quote that I found in an article. I think it was the one from um the indianapolis monthly um and it said in a masterpiece of understatement he once told a reporter that quote my mom was a very selfish

self-centered woman in a masterpiece of understatement yeah right yes i just love that good writing so marie um was the fourth oldest uh she was 11 when the torture took place no charges were brought against her she testified during the trial and she was the only member of the baniszewski family to cry on on stand well yep at least one of them has a heart yep one of them really knows how to act one of them cried um she reportedly still lives in indiana uh then shirley is the 10 year old who was told to do the needle thing um she was the youngest in the family to actively participate in the torture so she was 10 um she was never charged with a crime and nobody knows where she is nowadays. Probably for the best. Probably. James Banaszewski was only eight, so he was not even

called to testify or arrested even though he probably did play a role in the crime. The least is known about him out of all the siblings. Coy Hubbard is the boyfriend. Right, the judo guy. The judo guy. He was a full participant in sylvia's

torture his quote contributions included using her for judo flips punches shoving her down the basement stairs uh he was convicted of manslaughter but he only served two years before being released um okay so they're all dying early which is great in my opinion but they're also all getting out of jail like it's nothing oh extremely early there was an entire article i read that was like nobody served the proper time for this that's so fucked i mean even the mom gertrude who started the who instigated and led this entire thing yeah was in jail for a few years and had good behavior so she was and was called mom so she was jesus let free so with coy hubbard uh he never changed his name which was odd because most of them did uh he remained in indianapolis most of his adult

life and was apparently tried for another murder in 1982 wow i know but he was acquitted uh he also in 2007 when the movie an american crime is that the one that you watch yeah yep when that was released he lost his job good yeah good good good and that year he died oh also good but also how do you possibly get acquitted for a murder in the 80s when you're attached to the sylvia lincoln's situation like if you're part of that case and then you're tried for murder again why isn't that an immediate um yeah that's a good point but at the same time the um when paula was tried the reason she got a retrial is because her defense argued that um the jury was biased because they had seen media coverage about the trial about the whole murder and everything. Yeah.

So they both, she and her mother, Gertrude, got a retrial because they claimed that, well, people were biased because they had media influence. So, like, that alone is enough to be damaging. You know what I mean? So they're not allowed to even touch that in a trial. So, I mean, that's the only thing i can think of as like a reason why that wouldn't contribute but who knows um okay so richard hobbs was another neighborhood kid who tortured sylvia he was the one who wrote i'm a prostitute and proud of it

into her stomach okay um he was convicted of manslaughter. He served a short sentence and died of cancer at the age of 21. Good. Diana Likens, the older sister, uh, who had run into Jenny, who said, I can't tell you anything and who wouldn't, who, uh, Gertrude wouldn't let into the house. Um, she had contacted social services actually at one point. And when the social worker showed up at the residence, Jenny told her that Sylvia had run away. Because Gertrude told her, if you tell her anything else, I will do exactly what I did to Sylvia to you. Right.

So no further action was taken. So actually, this is really interesting to me uh diana made headlines recently i don't know if you heard this story she and her husband uh cecil paul newton uh it says comma both diabetics comma okay all right uh that's our descriptor that's someday people will report about us. Christine Schieffer and Em Schultz. Both lunatics. Both luscious. Really weird. One an alcoholic.

One probably diabetic in the future. Apparently they got lost. I remember hearing about this. They got lost in the California backcountry and were stranded in their car for two weeks. Did you hear about this? No. It was pretty recent. They were stranded in their car, and they had nothing to sustain them but rainwater, a pie, and some oranges.

And Knutson, the man, her husband, didn't survive. Oh, shit. Yeah, and he died of a heart attack after one week. And she stayed there a second week and survived. Wait, why were they stuck in this car? Apparently they got stranded somewhere in, like, really rural California. Like, in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, I remember this happening, actually. So he died of a heart attack within the first week.

And then a week later, Diana was almost dead, but she was discovered by off-roaders who just happened to be driving by. Jesus. And rescued. So that's just a weird turn, because I remember that happening, and I had no idea that had any connection to this case. But yeah, so apparently none of these people ended up having... Good lives. Yeah, yeah. Surprise there.

I'm not going to pretend to be shocked. Yeah, real big surprise. I'm not going to pretend to feel really sad about it. Yeah. So that's the I'm not going to pretend to feel really sad about it. Yeah. So that's the Sylvia Likens. I'm really glad to get that off my chest because I have spent a long time researching this and avoiding it. Yeah. I felt secondary pressure from knowing you were to do this eventually.

I know. You knew it was coming, but you didn't know when. Yeah. It's over. Okay. Well, it was pretty horrible. It's pretty horrible. It's called the worst crime in Indiana.

Yeah. Sounds like it. On one little girl. It's really heartbreaking. The dad always said, well, I didn't know. You know, he always claimed like he had no idea. The Gertrude always said, oh, well, the Lord has forgiven me. It wasn't really my fault and her mother who had been in jail when she ended up at gertrude's house apparently was so devastated by it that like on the witness stand she didn't

she hardly she couldn't even speak um and she died shortly after too hmm it's just very i don't know what to say fucking tragic this is where we all take a second and appreciate that that did not happen to us i almost call my mom like yeah just kidding i love you yeah just kidding what did you said before well just like i'm just kidding about every everything i've ever said yeah every complaint i've ever had about you the from uh 2005 to 2009 everything just kidding there's a lot oh yeah um but yeah so that's the sylvia leggins case and it's really devastating um but here we are it is fascinating how like back then um like child protective services would just come over and be like okay she's a prostitute all right we'll put it down in our notes right right you know

it's just interesting how different it is nowadays where like people believe the children over the adults listen had to get it out there i didn't like it sylvia i hope you're a nigerian prince now in your reincarnated life oh wow that's a lot of hoping on a lot of levels i do i hope she's just i hope she deserves i hope she has whatever she deserves and she deserves the world so yeah exactly well i don't even know what to say so anyway you want to talk about slag pots again i want to talk about something funny maybe i'll read a geohoroscope okay yeah i keep typing in geohoroscope into google as if that's a thing god damn it it's weird because when you started that sentence i was like well yeah that's what you would do i typed it yeah geohoroscope right i typed in gi and it

was like it filled the search thing and it was like geohoroscope and i typed in gi and it was like it filled the search thing and it was like geohoroscope and i'm like yep i've done that before that's not sad at all okay okay ready yeah all right geo here you go lend me your ears these new folks you've been seeing so much of lately they're really something aren, aren't they? Yeah, they are. You feel quite happily involved with them. Gee. In fact, it probably feels as if you've known them all for far longer than you actually have. I literally tell Gio all the time that we're from another life.

Yep. Well, that's a big plus, and you'll be seeing a great deal of them over the next few weeks. Gio. It's us. Just don't forget your old friends, aka me, in the process. Why not get everyone together? Gio, we can have a party. I don't understand why we can't. Because you and Gio have spent all your time head wrestling. Every single time I think about you, me, and Gio hanging out together, even in my fantasy world of us, like when I daydream about the three of us hanging out,

you're like in the corner somewhere. I'm not involved. I know. You're third wheeled in my false world. Right. Sure. That's what I'm saying. So maybe you should listen to this horoscope.

Oh, maybe it's actually for me. And include me. Yeah, this is actually your horoscope. It's just a PSA that I need to learn to share my friends. Remember that time I tried to look up both, like the Gemini friendoscope and it was just like your sexual compatibility and we were like let's not let's not discuss that on the podcast there should be like a gemini friendship i mean horoscope right yeah gemini friendships gemini's have a knack for spotting each other from across a crowded room hey buddy they're usually in crowded rooms since they are such social creatures.

Probably. Intelligent? Duh. Witty? Yes. Duh. Charming? I try.

Duh. Gemini loves a good discussion. LOL, I like how we have an actual podcast. That's why they enjoy the company of other twins. Masters of Trivia. Oh, God, this is really... This is literally... Oh, no. Me. Remember that time I beat you at other twins. Masters of Trivia. Oh, God. This is really... This is literally...

Oh, no. Me. Remember that time I beat you at Scooby-Doo Trivia? Let's not talk about it. Masters of Trivia. These two friends swap facts and anecdotes. Wow. The way kids trade baseball cards.

Yes, we do. When these two get bored of one another, they'll easily part ways, but then come together later when they have more stories to share. We really are, like like the perfect match. I think that's a good match, right? I mean, they didn't describe anything I wouldn't say about us. Right. We have a very...

It's very weird. It's very... We're very lucky. It's very lucky. It's very weird. I don't have this, I don't think, with anyone else. And it's not like we've been friends for many, many years or anything. Not even close to many moons.

We have, I think... And we haven't even been good friends for a year. Literally but we have to have wait our friendiversary is coming up when november bitch are you serious listen i didn't know if you're counting like well like professor loman's class or something were we friends then well we sat next to each other but were we friends well you told me all about your insomnia well you were next to me i tried to support you you did you were well you voted for me remember when we had to vote for each other's scripts i did i knew even then you should be a nickelodeon writer oh i said it so sweet okay so basically what we just did was talk about something really horrible and then turned it into something about ourselves.

That's what we do, guys. Typical Gemini. Typical. Typical twins. We talk about things. It's our air sign, obviously. Listen, we care a lot about ourselves. We're really self-centered.

But we really are true to form Geminis, a thousand percent. Oh, for sure. Every waking second of it. I will say also that um i'm pretty sure the sun shines out of my butthole i don't i don't know if you guys agree i mean i have the same condition sure yeah so it's like tough but you know we make it work we do what we can it's fine anyway guys anyway uh the only thing i have to say is by the time this comes out there's like four days left until the next listeners episode so get your stories in email them to me because i sit there in the morning and read them and get

chills this morning i i'm not joking i responded this person will probably know if they listen to this i responded like i'm sitting here at eight in the morning with my coffee in full-on daylight and i got like creeped out and had to close the blinds oh cool got chills like some of them are so fucking creepy i'm just as in the dark as everyone listening because christine reads them i'm really really like ruining the behind the scenes movie magic of this i'm like the steven and the christine of the podcast yes yes i'm like here read this i don't know what it says not you do so much for this show no you do literally don't even say that you started this show i started it and you are continuing and we'll be ending it we'll be ending it okay well wait no we won't i take that i take that i hope not well are we gonna do this until we're 90 but i'm hope i hope i'm not the reason we end it

oh well i don't want to be i hope it's at least a mutual decision. You know how it's going to be, that furry fucker over there. Oh, it's fucking Gio. You're right. He's just going to... He's not going to need us anymore. I feel better... He's going to find his own platform. Oh, yeah.

And you're going to just ride the coattails, aren't you? I'm going to ride the wave of Gio. I've plotted out my whole life of fame. Anyway, guys. Thanks, I guess, for enduring that with us we really do apologize from the bottom of our hearts for everything really yeah dad are you still here no probably not my dad didn't even begin oh no my dad listens to the beginning to see if i'm moving to a new house and then like immediately turns it off oh good okay well and that's why we drink good job episode 30 in the books